Hannah Tennant-Moore - Wreck and Order

After I booked my flight to Sri Lanka, my mother told me the temple she’d brought me to was Cambodian. But what did that matter, she was just so happy that I was following my inner light and she didn’t mind saying she was proud of herself for raising a daughter with such important interests in shit that really matters, not like some Wall Street asshole trying to finance his third yacht, but anyway she had to go, she and Rick were going for a sunset hike, there was really nowhere better in the world than Phoenix, why didn’t I visit more often? My father also thought it was terrific I would be leaving the daily grind of America’s corporate machine to get to know myself on my own terms. He must have been secretly happy I was getting away from a boyfriend who sounded unstable at best, but Dad rarely allowed himself to criticize my choices.

—

It was almost too simple to get to Sri Lanka, nearly nine thousand miles away. Twenty hours on two planes, during most of which I slept away my hangover from partying with Jared right up until my morning flight out of L.A., and then I was blinking at the buses and cabdrivers crowding the airport exit, the men in suits and flip-flops calling me madam and gesturing to the backs of their taxis, the bright smell of sewage and the ocean, the tanned backpackers and women in saris piling onto buses, one of which had a sign that said KANDY, the Buddhist epicenter of the country, according to my guidebook, and my first stop. I took the last free seat and jammed my backpack under it. As the bus grumbled away from the airport, a tiny man wearing a fanny pack walked up the aisle, collecting fares. “Kandy,” I said. He wrote 325 on a scrap of paper and handed it to me. About three dollars for what the Lonely Planet promised to be a three-hour ride inland. The woman sitting next to me pulled a curtain over the window to close out the sun, but I caught flashes of the outside world when potholes or short stops jostled the curtain aside: piles of burning rubbish in dirt yards, women in sarongs with soapy armpits standing barefoot on rocks in muddy rivers. The driver blasted talk radio, a steady stream of chatter in a language I hadn’t even heard of until a few weeks ago. An unanswered Brahms ringtone played every few minutes from the seat in front of me. At least I remember being sure at the time that it was Brahms, and thinking it was unusual for me to recognize a piece of classical music. But I just googled “Brahms ringtone” and none of them sounded like the tinny waltz I can still, for some reason, hear clearly. No one on the packed bus was doing anything but trying to stay put as we bumped along the washed-out dirt roads. I gripped the seat back to keep from tumbling into the crowded aisle. The things I’d planned to do on the bus — read my guide book, change into sandals, drink water, eat a protein bar — seemed funny now. I was ecstatic with the freedom of being unable to accomplish even the simplest task. But as the sky above the curtain darkened, I remembered the problem of my physical self. How would I know when to get off the bus? How would I get to the guesthouse? Was Kandy safe? Could I get in a rickshaw with an unknown driver after dark? Where would I get drinkable water? Was the man standing in the aisle beside me intentionally putting his crotch that close to my face? The ticket taker interrupted my boomeranging worries by tapping my shoulder. “Kandy. Here. Kandy.” The bus stop throbbed with hurried people carrying baskets of pineapples and mangoes, food stalls at which sweaty men fried snacks that looked too colorful to be edible, a barefoot hunchback groaning and holding out his palm. Before I was even aware of my bewildered presence inside this scene, a smiling rickshaw driver pointed to the back of his three-wheeler. “Rose Land?” I said. “Yes, madam,” he said. “Two hundred rupees only, madam.” I heaved my pack onto the small bench at the back of the rickshaw and clambered in after it, relaxed in a way that reminded me of kindergarten recess, when I rarely knew the rules of a game well enough to care about winning.

I arrived at the guesthouse that my guidebook recommended just after dark and shook the gate, secured with a tiny padlock, until a middle-aged woman with a serene face and wild gray hair admitted me. The front room was large and spare, except for a snoring blond dog, a few plastic chairs, and curling posters tacked to the walls, one of a monkey eating a banana (STAY FIT!), another of cherubic white children photoshopped onto a field of sunflowers (BE A SWEET HEART). There were no available rooms at Rose Land, so the owner offered me her grandsons’ upper bunk for two hundred rupees. Of course the boys wouldn’t mind sharing a bed, I shouldn’t be silly. She handed me a faded pink towel from the pile atop the dining room table. I felt again the odd relaxation of being beholden to circumstances, far from my phone, my car, my bed, every person who knew my face — alone in a way I never was in Paris, where the city’s judgment and coldness weighed on me even in sleep. No one here seemed to care whether I knew the rules or not. I excessively thanked the owner for making room for me and asked her name. “Call me Mary,” she said, and pointed to a bedroom on the other side of the courtyard.

A sunburned Norwegian, a lanky Dutch guy, a dreadlocked Italian couple, and a small, excitable Frenchman were smoking cigarettes and eating cream-filled cookies around the table outside. The Italian woman offered me a cookie. I licked lemon cream as I listened to their introductions. The Norwegian girl was traveling for a year before starting a master’s program. The Dutch electrician had just phoned his boss to extend his trip for a month. The Italian couple was stuck in Sri Lanka for two weeks because their six-month Indian visa expired. The French guy had been country-hopping for three years and would do so as long as his savings lasted. He took the cheapest bed in any given town — a mattress on the floor of a poor family’s living room, a hammock in a backyard, he’d take it, he didn’t mind — he only ate curry packets from the street vendors (fifty rupees fills you up for hours!) and he only traveled by bus and foot: a first world tramp on a third world vacation. One way to spend a life, no worse than most. The Norwegian girl offered me a beer. I was too exhausted to be tempted.

I propped my backpack against the bunk bed in Mary’s daughter’s room, which she shared with her two young sons. Sarasi was sitting on the double bed, looking over her sons’ schoolwork. I thanked her for sharing her room. “It’s no problem for us.” She had the faintest hint of a British accent. “I just hope we won’t bother you in the morning. We wake up at four thirty.” I asked where she worked, rummaging through my bag in search of pajamas and a toothbrush.

“One of the best hotels in town, thanks to my English. Growing up in a guesthouse, you know.” She tried to sound bored, not proud. At least I hoped she was secretly proud, which would have made my presence in her bedroom less of an intrusion. Her hair was short and gelled, unlike the long, slick braids I’d noticed the women on the bus wearing. The small radio in her room was tuned to a station that played Billy Joel, Cyndi Lauper, Michael Jackson.

A black Lab pushed through the flowered curtain covering the entrance to the room, tongue dangling. “This is my puppy,” one of the boys said. “He is called Teega.”

“Hi, Teega,” I said.

“Careful for—” Sarasi said, just as Teega pounced on the protein bar I’d just taken out of my bag. He sprinted out the door. I lunged after him, but he was a galloping blur of black fur, swinging the square of calcium-enriched puffed rice from his mouth, running victory laps around the table in the courtyard. The Dutch guy leaped in front of him with a balletic karate chop. Teega paused, gave his stolen goods a fierce shake, and then continued his rampage, sugar-free caramel smeared over his snout. Mary stepped into the courtyard, holding a slingshot armed with a tiny pebble. She yelped, cocked her arm, and fired a warning shot onto the tin roof. Teega let the emptied bag drop to the ground. He prostrated before Mary, tiny head between overgrown paws. “Bravo, Mama,” the Italian woman cried, flapping her hands together. Mary returned to her bedroom. Her daughter peered out from behind the flowered curtain.