America Dreaming

America Dreaming(Barbara Mullen) AMERICA DREAMING
A Short Story
by
Barbara Mullen

That autumn of 1956, twenty-two year old Molly slipped into her assigned seat on a PanAm Clipper Ship that would transport her half way around the world. Afraid she might wake up and find it all a dream, she crossed her fingers for good luck. This is what I’ve wished for since I was a little girl she reminded herself to calm her jitters. All she knew about the Orient she’d learned in books by Madame Chiang Kai Shek, Somerset Maugham and James Hilton and during training sessions at the Foreign Service Institute in Washington, D.C.

Molly had read the headline “State Department Interviewing candidates for Foreign Service” in the “Denver Post” several months earlier. Though she had a job in a book store working for an elderly boss she adored and was finishing her senior year of college at night, she could think about nothing but that newspaper article all that day. Her mood fluctuated by the hour from: why would they consider interviewing me, a young girl whose travel had been limited to a train ride from Michigan to Colorado to: I’d be perfect for the job; nobody has dreamed as much about seeing the world as I have --which is forever. I’d represent my country with unbridled enthusiasm. I love my country so much. In fact, I believe everybody in the whole world loves America. Why wouldn’t they? It’s the greatest country that ever was. I’m proud of President Eisenhower and Secretary of State Dulles for the way they’re keeping the world safe and free. I would do any lousy job I was asked to do if it helped to spread good news about my country.

Realistically, Molly had figured she wouldn’t have an ice cube’s chance in hell of getting this utterly spectacular job, but she applied anyway. Therefore, she was dumbfounded when she made it through her first interview and then passed the State Department tests and, after an FBI screening, was hired. Three months later, grateful to have finished weeks of training sessions at the Foreign Service Institute in Washington, she was dumbfounded to be given an overseas assignment immediately.

She glanced around the plane and smiled at a fellow passenger, a white haired Chinese gentleman just across the aisle.

“And where are you off to, girl?” he asked her in a lovely British accent.

“Bangkok,” she answered.

“What for?” he said.

“For at least two years.” Molly shouted this time to be heard above the roaring of engine propellers. “To work for the U.S. Embassy in Thailand.” Because he seemed puzzled, Molly added, “The Information Service, Voice of America, press releases, movies, libraries ….”

“And what does this Information Service inform people of?” he asked.

Molly, not expecting to clarify her country’s mission this early in her career, repeated the explanation of U.S. policy she’d been given at the State Department for the past few months. “We inform people in underdeveloped countries about our aid programs and warn them of their Communist enemies that are creeping steadily toward their borders.”

“I see. And the Thais have agreed to all this assistance?” he asked her.

“The Thais and many other countries as well. We don’t force our aid or our opinions on anyone at the end of a gun barrel. America is trying to win the hearts and minds of people all over Asia.”

“What a shame that a young girl like you should have to save the world for the rest of us,” the gentleman said before turning away and gazing out his window.

Taken aback by what seemed a deliberate rudeness, she whisked up a little square linen pillow that a smiling sandy haired steward had given her and clutched it to her chest until the plane had taken off from San Francisco Airport. An hour later, the same steward came back to make up her berth for the night. Between the crisp sheets and blanket Molly wriggled out of her clothes down to her underpants. Pulling her knees up close to her stomach, she hugged the pillow to her bare skin until she dozed off.

The next morning a burst of sunlight through her porthole window shocked her into a swift awakening. Quickly trying to orient herself, she pulled a terrycloth robe from the netting hammock above her head and then padded down the aisle to a sparkling clean restroom to wash up. By the time she returned and dressed her steward arrived to turn her bed into a seat again. A few minutes later he brought her freshly scrambled eggs, toast, coffee and orange juice on a tray.

Later that day in a restless mood she descended the spiral staircase that led to a lounge area on the lower deck. Immediately, to her relief, an older American man seated at a sleek little bar held out his hand to greet her. “Johnny from Iowa,” he said. “How would you like some champagne?” Before she could answer he had started to fill her glass from an open bottle.

Grateful to have company, Molly soon confessed to her new friend, “It’s amazing how much braver I was back in Washington.” She laughed. “Hope I’m not making a mistake going to live 10,000 miles from home. I told everybody, even my family, that I was thrilled with my assignment to an exotic place like Bankok, even though all the other young people in my class were being sent to cities like Paris and Vienna and Rome. I said it so often I believed it.”

Johnny, so far an intent listener, refilled their glasses and then in a no nonsense Midwestern voice said, “Well, honey, you better damn well start getting used to the idea cause you’re going to be there in less than thirty-five hours.”

Then a group of passengers who’d been gathering around the bar chimed in and agreed with Johnny that Molly would have to adjust to a whole new life in a matter of days. For some reason, Molly unexpectedly felt like a trapped animal. “Okay,” she said, “I do really want to do this. It just seems so real suddenly. That’s all.”

Before leaving the lounge, Johnny placed his hand on her shoulder and whispered in her ear, “Seriously, Girl, you’re awfully young to be moving to the other side of the earth. That’s what Bangkok is. Every step you take in any direction from the center of that city, you’re going home. And you don’t know a soul there. If you were my kid, believe you me, I’d send you packing back to the states the next time this plane hit solid ground. The government can’t hold you prisoner just for going home. I think it says so in the Constitution. And they can’t say you’re AWOL. Hell, you haven’t even started the job yet.”

“Whew. But if I wanted to change my mind I would have to do it in a hurry cause I’d have to Western Union my big brother for money to buy a ticket from Honolulu back to the States.” She smiled. “Tell you what, I’ll mull this over while I’m watching the Hula dancers they promised us at Honolulu airport.”

“Don’t worry. If your brother can’t send it, I’ll buy the ticket for you, little lady,” Johnny said. “Just let me know before we have to board the plane again in Hawaii.”

Listening to these concerned people had got her nerved up alright, but as it turned out the stop in Hawaii was shorter than expected and the passengers were being ordered to board the plane with five minutes to make a run for it.

Several hours later she and the rest of the PanAm passengers found themselves trotting around a rocky beach on Wake Island as a Naval Officer explained why large long necked birds now lumbering about the island had never learned to fly. Molly tried to feign interest in this bulletin but to be fair, concluded that anybody stationed in this remote place for too long could begin to get excited about birds too stupid to learn to fly. Sad though, Molly thought, that there’s so little to remind people of the fierce World War II battle here that took so many American lives. Then looking out at nothing but ocean in every direction as far as the eye could see she felt very far from home indeed.

While the Clipper Ship kept flying further and further from home over the blue ocean, through lunch and cocktails and dinner, Molly began to question whether the worries of her fellow passengers had some merit or not. At dusk, as the plane prepared for landing in Tokyo, it struck Molly that Tokyo was her last chance to change her mind. But was there such a thing as Western Union in Japan she asked herself. If not, I’d have to accept Mr. Iowa’s offer to buy my ticket home. She sighed. Jasus, I‘m worse off than Dorothy landing ker-plunk in Oz where at least the people spoke English.

Inside Tokyo’s terminal, as loud speakers blared instructions in Japanese, Molly noted with a start that many of her fellow American companions, including Johnny, were already disbursing to make their connections to Lost Horizon or God knows where. Molly raced around the center of the terminal looking frantically for her friend Johnny. Finally she gave up and shrunk back against a wall. From her retreat position she watched hordes of people scurrying into adjacent corridors like herds of nervous cattle, she thought. And here I am all alone. Oh my God! I should have accepted Mr. Iowa’s offer, then and there, in the lounge bar, she thought. But why didn’t I?

At last a Japanese guard in a crisp black uniform noticed her. “Miss Callahan?” he asked.

“Yes. That’s me,” Molly stuttered.

“I thought it might be. Pan Am has been looking for you. Come this way please.”

Once in safe hands in the security office, Molly tried to stop her hands from trembling while sipping tea. In silence, she thanked President Eisenhower for her Official Business Passport that had passed its first test in the real world. Then she faced up to the reality: If I don’t want to live in Tokyo Airport for the rest of my life I’ll have to get back on the Clipper Ship. At least on the plane I know somebody will feed me and give me a bed.

With the Clipper Ship airborne again and now heading south toward Hong Kong, Molly was at least thankful for the temporary familiarity of her comfy berth. The next morning she awoke just before the Clipper Ship began to circle the Kowloon Peninsula and the blue green bay dotted with small sail-fishing boats and crowded ferries that surrounded it.

Once alone in her room at the historic Peninsula Hotel, Molly tried to conjure up the nerve to venture out into her very first Oriental city. Disbelief that she was actually in Hong Kong, the renowned and literary setting of so many books, seemed to make her feel unworthy of this monumental occasion. Finally she forced herself to shove her passport and wallet into her travel purse and head toward the elevator. Moving cautiously, she approached a concierge at the front desk of the grand, but terrifying, British lobby and inquired where to exchange some dollars and how to get a taxi to take her to the ferry dock.

Half an hour later, proud of herself for having found the ferry and enjoying the amazingly beautiful ride to Hong Kong, Molly was ready for her first glimpse of the city. The maze of frantic traffic, narrow winding streets, hustling crowds of Chinese, brightly painted shops and colorful signs alongside stone and concrete Wall Street like buildings, she had expected. But she was startled by the rest – the rickshaw drivers by the strength of their slim bare legs hauling well-dressed Europeans through the streets, women in alleys dunking clothes in pails of grimy water, squirming fish piled atop vendor tables dripping blood onto the ground, children in ragged clothes begging on the sidewalks.

The contrast of European wealth existing nonchalantly alongside Chinese living in a state of pathetic poverty caused her to stop and rest her head against the side of a British bank building before going any further. The hotel concierge had warned her, “Be careful. The city is overrun with refugees who’ve escaped the Communist China Mainland with only the clothes on their backs. Now they live in ragged tent cities on the sides of the hills overlooking Hong Kong. Beggars are everywhere in the city.” Seeing this human suffering for herself was more affecting than any words could have described adequately. Suddenly, overwhelmed by waves of nausea, Molly whirled around, ran the three blocks back to ferry and returned to her hotel.

Seasoned Foreign Service people at the Institute had assured her that Hong Kong was the loveliest city she would ever visit in the Far East. Parts of it were, perhaps, but Molly was certain she could never appreciate its natural beauty in the midst of such misery, squalor and hopelessness. If Hong Kong is the best, she worried, what will I find in Bangkok, where it seems now I will end up?

The next day she boarded a smaller PanAm plane that flew further south all night over water and jungle while moving further and further away from Hong Kong and Tokyo and Hawaii by the minute. The possibility of ever finding her way back home seemed more remote with each passing hour. At daybreak, when the plane reached the South China Sea, the captain announced, “We will now be flying over Thailand, formerly Siam.” Out her window, Molly saw only wide stretches of rice paddies with narrow streams of water snaking through them. Gradually, the first signs of human life appeared in the form of small thatch houses clustered together here and there. Minutes later the captain reported that that they would land in Bangkok in twenty minutes. Molly closed her eyes and prayed, Oh, God, let me live through the first day.

A blast of what surely was the hottest steamiest air produced anywhere on earth closed in on the passengers the second the plane doors opened. Molly and her plane-mates descended the ladder, then trudged across a patch of brown scorched earth to the terminal, a modest one story wooden structure. Molly heard her name being paged as soon as she entered the building.

A moment later a uniformed man in blue shorts, stiffly starched white shirt and blue tie approached her. He introduced himself as a chauffer from the U.S Embassy and ushered her and her carryon bag through customs with ease. Then without another word he retrieved her small trunk from a baggage wagon and led her outside to a parked gleaming black limo.

In the back of the limo where she’d been directed to sit, Molly was left to guess where this silent stranger might be taking her. During the long drive to the city on a two lane road as they passed miles of rice fields, Molly sat in silence, staring numbly out the car window at groups of workers in the paddies, their backs bent forward, faces hidden from the brutal sun by wide circular pointed straw hats, and water buffalo sloshing lazily through muddy rows of rice plants.

The phrases “primitive” and “tossed back a thousand years in time” had gotten stuck in her head repeating themselves like a scratched 33 record. At the Foreign Service Institute she had been told that Thailand, the only Southeast Asian country never to have been colonized by a European nation, had remained the most authentic. Seemingly untouched by the outside world, they had said. She remembered now that at the time she’d envisioned elegant palaces and gold trimmed Buddhist temples, never once water buffalo.

Once inside the city limits her limo pressed on through miles of narrow rough roadway lined on either side by wooden shacks. With their front ends wide open, some of houses served as both living areas and vending stands for fish and vegetables. Inside the huts Molly caught glimpses of mothers moving about with tan skinned babies strapped to their backs and outside, bare bottomed toddlers playing in the brush.

Without warning, Molly’s limo made a sharp turn onto a cinder drive that led to a two story wooden home that seemed out of place in the neighborhood. The chauffer got out, opened Molly’s door and spoke once more: “This is your boarding house, Miss Callahan.”

He guided her toward a separate one-room building several yards to the left of the large screened-in house. Inside the small dwelling a handsome Thai woman in a long black skirt and bright yellow cotton blouse introduced herself as Madame Prapee, owner of the boarding house. In English with a slight British accent, she explained that this room, a former massage parlor, would be her quarters. With a slight gracious bow toward her clasped palms pointed upward, she announced, “Dinner will be served in the main house at eight o’clock.” A moment later both she and the chauffer departed leaving Molly alone in the room with her trunk flung open on the floor.

Unable to absorb this new reality, Molly stood unmoving in the center of the room for what seemed several minutes before noting that the front entrance was still wide open. She darted over to lock the door and to her amazement saw that a black silhouette of an almost nude dancing girl covered the length of the side that faced the street. Under the dancers bare feet was a Sanskrit message and beneath that, one in English, that read: “Come in and Relax Massage Shoppe.”

She locked the door securely and then slowly let her gaze roam about the room that obviously had been hurriedly converted from its existence as a massage parlor in time for her arrival. The walls, however, had retained an electric green and black paint and the mosquito netting over the bed had remained the pinkish red color it had been dyed at some point or other. As though the décor wasn’t enough to astonish her, Molly remembered with a start that this was a Friday and that the chauffer had told her an Embassy car wouldn’t pick her up until Monday morning.

She fell onto a lumpy mattress on an immense teakwood bed and stared up through the filmy mesh of netting at a band of a dozen or so tiny lizards scampering about the ceiling. “Chinchucks are friendly little creatures who will eat the not so friendly insects sharing your quarters” she remembered reading in a “Welcome to the Tropics” State Department pamphlet a few weeks earlier.

Exhausted and worn out from too much anxious thinking, Molly closed her eyes and fell into a sleepy stupor until twenty minutes before Madame Prapee’s promised dinner.

Badly in need of a shower she leaped off the bed and searched for some means of bathing herself. What she found was a water hose dangling from a window into a bamboo enclosure in the yard a few yards from her hut. She swallowed hard, pulled on her cotton robe and made a dash for the makeshift shower. Slapping mosquitoes off her fresh healthy American skin, she gave herself a swift thirty second wash and dove back into her Oh my God new home.

Creeping gingerly into the dining room of the main house, Molly got her first glimpse of the other guests. Poor displaced persons who’ve somehow ended up along with me in this jungle hideaway, she suspected. Relieved to hear English being spoken, she exhaled and slipped into an empty chair at the table. The diners, other than her, were all men, one middle-aged un-talkative American scientist who seemed to vanish behind thick horn-rimmed eyeglasses, a German businessmen who’d been in the country many years and who offered unasked for advice to her throughout the meal, a neatly bearded Austrian professor with mischievous eyes that she liked at first glance, a Vietnamese French tutor who admitted to having migrated aimlessly into Thailand years earlier and never returned home, a handsome Dutch shoe salesman, not much older than her, who made her sorry she hadn’t prettied up more for dinner, a thought that startled her, considering her doubts about getting through this next week of her life.

Derrick, the Dutchman, a tall slender fair skinned fellow, turned to her and asked if she might be having a bit of a culture shock. “I promise, if you live through the first six months you have a fighting chance of staying out your tour of duty,” he said, his kind smile encouraging Molly to finally speak. Before long, happy to have more interested listeners, she admitted to some fresh misgivings about joining the Foreign Service and new doubts about whether she could live up to expectations of the job.

After a meal of prawns and fried rice and pineapple, a young Thai girl carried a tray of filled coffee cups and cream and sugar from the kitchen and passed them around the table. Then Madame Prapee addressed Molly. “I have something I must tell you that will help you,” she said. “It is about the spirit house you may have noticed to the side of your cottage. You can see it from your windows. Well, the little spirit people come each night to protect the one who sleeps inside your quarters. I am telling you this because I hear in your voice that you are a long way from home which has caused the fear malady to capture your heart. Do not be afraid while in my care, young lady. My spirits will watch over you and shield you from anxiety and danger.”

She paused a moment while everyone waited silently for her to finish her story. “The spirits stay until the sky is no longer dark. In the morning I will show you proof of their benevolent presence during the night. Each evening before retiring I bring gifts to them. In the morning you will see that the spirits have vanished and that my presents have disappeared. Look out your window tonight when you hear a rustling noise and you will see me placing the offerings inside the spirit house. When I have returned to my house, you will sleep peacefully.”

Molly thanked Madame Prapee politely and promised to follow her orders, then excused herself from the table. Derrick walked her to the door and surprised her by saying, “If you like, I can give you a guided tour of Bangkok tomorrow to cheer you up.”

“I’d like that,” she answered, thinking Oh yes, please. I’ve never needed a friend this much -- even if for a day.

On the way back to her renovated massage parlor, she stopped in front of the miniature Siamese temple, the spirit house, propped up on four-foot high stilts, and contemplated Madame Prapee’s promise. Then slowly taking in a breath of the air that was only slightly less clammy than it had been that afternoon, she walked over to her bungalow and swung open the “Come in and Relax” door.

Maybe I should consider the fact that I am the only guest with my very own spirit house a good omen, she decided while slipping into a nightgown and crawling between the sheets of her giant bed. Then hearing a sound outside, she sat up in the dark and pulled aside the mosquito netting. She got out of bed and peeked out the screened in window near her bed. As promised, it was Madame Prapee, her flowered nightdress fluttering at her feet, setting items on the floor of the spirit house. She held up a lantern in front of the miniature temple for a few seconds long enough for Molly to have a short peep inside.

And there are my spirit guards, Molly gasped, in the form of live toads and tiny lizards leaping about on a bed of straw and happily gulping down their “gifts” from Madam Prapee.

Molly went back to bed actually relieved to have banished her previous visions of spirits from some sort of Holy Beyond hovering over her all night. At least I know what they look like now and they seem harmless enough, whether they are spirits reincarnated or not, Molly reasoned just before escaping into the most sound slumber she’d had in four nights.

The next morning before breakfast and before meeting Derrick to tour Bangkok, Molly sat on the edge of her bed and contemplated her next move, beginning with an unavoidable truth: I am here. I could call this a whopper of a mistake and be miserable. Or, I could try to remember a few things. For instance, that I have always wanted more than anything to travel and to do something worthwhile with my life. And how I believed in my country’s commitment to raise the standard of living of people in underdeveloped parts of the world. And in American efforts to encourage democratic aspirations everywhere.

If none of my reasons have changed, why the self-doubt now? Is it because this commitment seems tougher up close than it had in Washington? Maybe, but I’m not expected to rescue the world single-handedly for heaven’s sake. I think all I have to do is show up and do a decent job. Surely I could do that.

The first thing I have to do is get rid of the scared little girl that seems to have inhabited my being for the past few days. I could start by assuming a more confident me again. I could pretend I actually planned to end up in a place where I can’t drink the water or eat the vegetables or take a real shower or watch TV or buy a new dress or speak the language or sleep in a bed without netting to keep bugs from crawling up my rear.

In addition, I could try not to get depressed too easily and only cry for good reasons. And I could make an effort not to go crazy with the heat or hysterical during the monsoons. So what if these people are more different from me than I’d imagined, maybe then they’re more the same too. But more important, what if this is my country’s finest hours with most of the world loving us, with possibilities endless and failure unthinkable? And what if had missed out on it entirely?

Suddenly hungry for the poached eggs on toast and sliced papaya breakfast Madame Prapee had promised them, Molly leaped up from the bed. She ran to her suitcase and shaking out her very last clean and, by the way, prettiest dress, she shouted to the chinchucks on the ceiling: “What the hell! Here’s to Buddhists and spirit houses and fine looking Dutch boys!”