Chapter Three (Somewhere No one Knows my Name)

Chapter Three

We landed in Bangkok just after midnight and the airport was chaos. I followed the crowd through immigration and baggage claim then out into the arrivals hall where taxi drivers swarmed around me shouting prices.

I picked one at random, climbed into his cab. He turned around and smiled showing gold teeth.

"Where you want to go, miss? I know best hotels, very nice, very clean."

"No."

I'd thought about this on the plane and if I was going to do this I needed to commit completely.

"I need somewhere cheap. Very cheap. In the suburbs."

His smile faltered. "Cheap? You sure? American lady want cheap hotel?"

"I'm not American and yes, I'm sure." I pulled out some cash and handed him more than the ride would cost. "Somewhere poor people stay."

He looked at the money and then at me and shrugged and started the car and pulled out into traffic and I watched the gleaming airport fade behind us as we drove deeper into the city.

The buildings got shorter and shabbier, the streets got narrower and more crowded. After about forty minutes he turned down an alley that looked like it hadn't seen maintenance in decades and stopped in front of a building that I wouldn't have as rented storage space back home.

"This area very cheap," he said. "Hotel is there." He pointed at a structure that might have been painted white at some point but now looked gray and defeated. "You sure you want stay here?"

I looked at the cracked concrete and the rusted balconies and the flickering neon sign that said something in Thai and felt my stomach drop because this was real now and I was actually doing this.

"I'm sure."

He shook his head like I was insane but helped me get my suitcase out of the trunk and drove away quickly like he was worried I might change my mind and ask him to take me somewhere civilized.

I stood on the sidewalk and stared at the hotel. Every instinct screamed at me to call another taxi and go somewhere with clean sheets and working plumbing but that would defeat the entire purpose so I grabbed my suitcase and walked inside.

The lobby was tiny and smelled like cigarettes and old cooking oil and a young man sat behind a desk playing on his phone and when I walked in he looked up with complete disinterest.

"Room," I said.

"Fifty dollar one night." His English was heavily accented but understandable. "Two hundred dollar one week."

I pulled out cash and counted two hundred dollars and handed it to him and he took it and gave me a key attached to a piece of wood with the number seven carved into it.

"Up stairs, end of hall. Breakfast not included."

I climbed the stairs and my designer luggage bumped against walls that had stains I didn't want to identify and I found room seven and unlocked it and stepped inside and immediately wanted to cry.

The room was barely bigger than my walk in closet back home and contained a bed that sagged in the middle, a tiny table with one chair, and what I assumed was a bathroom behind a door that didn't close properly.

I set my suitcase down and sat on the edge of the bed and it squeaked alarmingly and smelled like mildew. I thought about my apartment with its memory foam mattress, cotton sheets and heated floors and suddenly everything crashed down on me at once.

I was dying.

I was in a foreign country.

I was sitting in a room that probably violated every health code in existence.

I had three months to get pregnant.

I didn't know how to do any of this.

The tears came hard and fast that I couldn't stop them. I lay down on that disgusting bed and sobbed into the pillow that smelled like other people and let myself fall completely apart because there was no one here to see it and no one who would judge me. For the first time since Dr. Morrison had said "two years" I let myself feel the full weight of my terror.

I cried until my head throbbed and my eyes were swollen and my chest ached and when I finally stopped I rolled onto my back and stared at the water stained ceiling and thought about my father's words.

Find the solution no one else can see. Execute it perfectly.

I could do this. I had to do this.

I sat up and wiped my face with my hands and looked around the room and decided that if I was going to pretend to be poor I needed to commit fully, which meant learning how to survive without money and staff and all the things I'd taken for granted my entire life.

I opened my suitcase and changed into the plainest clothes I'd packed and looked at myself in the cracked mirror hanging on the wall and barely recognized the woman staring back at me.

No makeup. No designer clothes. No expensive jewelry.

Just a woman who could be anyone.

I lay back down and pulled the thin blanket over myself and tried to ignore the sounds of the city filtering through the walls and eventually sleep came and when I woke up it was morning and sunlight streamed through the dirty window and I felt like I'd been hit by a truck.

I was starving and thirsty and had no idea how to fix either problem because I'd never had to figure out meals for myself before and the smallness of that realization sat heavily in my stomach alongside everything else.

There was a small shop across the street and I went downstairs and outside and walked in and stared at shelves full of things I didn't recognize and tried to figure out what I could eat that didn't require cooking. A woman behind the counter said something in Thai and I shook my head and she switched to broken English.

"You want what?"

"Food." I picked up a package of crackers and a bottle of water. "This."

She told me the price and I paid and went back to my room and sat at the tiny table and ate crackers for breakfast and wondered how people lived like this every single day.

By noon I was bored and uncomfortable and desperate for something to do so I went back downstairs and asked the man at the desk where I could find even cheaper housing and he looked at me like I'd lost my mind.

"More cheap than here? Why you want?"

"I just do."

He shrugged and wrote something on a piece of paper and handed it to me. "This area have people who rent rooms. Very cheap. Maybe too cheap."

"Perfect." I took the paper and tucked it into my pocket and decided I'd go look at it tomorrow because I was exhausted and every part of me hurt and I needed to rest.

But when I got back to my room I couldn't sleep and I couldn't stop thinking about how I had no idea how to cook or clean or do laundry or any of the basic things normal people did every day and the panic crept back in slowly because how was I supposed to convince anyone I was poor when I didn't even know how to survive without money.

I spent the rest of the day lying on the bed and staring at the ceiling and trying not to think about whether I'd made a terrible mistake and whether I was going to die alone in this horrible room in a country where no one knew my name.

But somewhere beneath the fear there was something else too, something small and stubborn that had kept Chen women upright for generations and it whispered the same thing it always had.

There's always a solution.

I just had to find it.