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I nodded.
“Nao Kao? You still hear me?”
“Yes, Mom, sorry. How long is the baby sick? Will she be ok? Tell Noy I’ll send more for medicine next month.”
“You should tell her yourself, Nao Kao. The baby is very sick. It’s a bad one, but Noy is a good nurse to her. She is a very good mother, Nao Kao. You should be proud of her.”
“Calls are expensive. I can pay for phone calls or pay for medicine.”Or ice cream and canoe rides with Liss,my conscience reminded me.
“Ok, but next week you call her, not me. And think about what I said, if it is safe to stay and study.”
“Yes, mom. Good night.”
“It’s almost afternoon here, my son. Sleep well and study hard.”
Malaria. Medicine. Babies. Two babies. I inhaled deeply, calculating what it would cost this time. I could buy more rice, more peanut butter, less chicken next month. A few dollars saved on groceries in Ann Arbor could buy a lot of medicine in Laos.
I thought about messaging Liss, but looked at the time and knew she’d be fast asleep. She had enough worries tonight; it was her country under attack this time, not mine. Better to let her sleep. We saw each other almost every day now. First, she was my window into campus and also America. She knew every sidewalk and bolt hole on campus, the out-of-the-way places to take a walk or shoot a roll of pictures or sit quietly without an entire sorority house traipsing past.
Perhaps more importantly, she had become the laughter in my days, and an escape from the realities of needing to put food on two tables, one here and one on the other side of the world. She was my reminder that not every young person was weighed down by the need to feed a family. I pushed from my mind what would happen when she graduated and left Ann Arbor. I had three months to figure it out.
LISS
In the endI never should have doubted. He replied overnight, a weekend LinkedIn nerd like me, with a gracious note that my message was a pleasant surprise. We exchanged a few texts. He suggested we stay in touch.
When I saw how quickly Nao Kao responded and read the words he wrote, I realized I never doubted he would reply. Unexpected and unwelcome can be synonyms, but in this case, what was unexpected would never be unwelcome. For all that had happened, I would have replied as quickly.
The Chinese believe in the red thread of fate, the invisible thread that ties together those whose lives and destinies are fated to intertwine. The red thread may twist and stretch through time, but it never, ever breaks. As I considered his note, and the twists and turns our lives had taken over the past two decades, I could not help but think that maybe he and I were bound by our own thread.
∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞
“So, is thiswork or pleasure?” the flight attendant, Janelle, asked.
I was stretching my legs in the galley again, taking advantage of the mid-flight quiet. Most of the crew was tucked up in their sleeping berth, with just one attendant left in charge of the lot of us. This was the easiest part of the flight, though, with most passengers asleep or at least making a pretense of trying. Janelle had a stack of oldPeoplemagazines in her lap, and had been thumbing through another disinterestedly when I appeared looking for more water.
“Maybe a bit of both?” I replied hesitantly.
She laughed.
“A little late to decide. Where did you say you are headed?”
“Vientiane.”
She looked at me quizzically.
“Laos,” I clarified.
“Wow. Laos. Flight crews are good with their geography, you know – all that time looking at route maps. But I’m not sure even our captain could point to that one on the map.”
I chuckled, remembering how frequently Nao Kao had lamented that sad fact.
“I have been flying to Asia for twelve years, but you might be the first passenger I’ve encountered going there,” Janelle continued. “Does Delta even fly that route?”
I shook my head.
“Korean or Vietnam. Codeshare only.”
“I guess that explains it. And you’re traveling by yourself?”
