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By Root 461 0

is already a large group of people waiting at Tshelingkhor when I scramble off the bus. It is dusk, and a heavy mist is creeping over the tree tops. Inside one of the huts, Tshering’s shop-cum-bar, I study the shelves behind the counter. I have a choice of Orange Cream Biscuits and tea, or Orange Cream Biscuits and several brands of Bhutanese whiskey: Dragon Rum, Triple XXX Rum, Black Mountain Whiskey, Bhutan Mist. I drink three cups of lukewarm tea and then switch to Bhutan Mist. Tiny knives scrape my throat on the way down but the final product settles warmly in my stomach. “Gari mala,” the old man beside me says glumly. He is drinking Triple XXX Rum. I ask him where the toilet is and he gestures to the door. Outside. I stand up but he waves me back down. “Ma di, ma di, ” he says, making a strange wriggling gesture with his fingers. “Pat-ba!” Finally, a young boy steps forward and translates shyly for me. “He is telling don’t go, miss. He is telling leeches.” If leeches can get up your nose, they can also get into other orifices. I sit back down. Just then, everyone in the room jumps up. I can hear it too, the distant rumble of a truck. Outside the mist has turned into a fine, cold rain. The truck stops, a flatbed already overloaded with sacks of rice, but the driver waits while we clamber on before turning onto the Pema Gatshel road.

I know we are driving along the edge of a very steep gully, but in the darkness I can see nothing except the occasional glimmer of the truck’s headlights on the clouds in the ravine beneath us. In my gut, though, I can feel the immense emptiness between the soft, deeply rutted road we are on and the bottom of the gulch somewhere down below. Beyond, across, I know there are mountains but I cannot see them. It is like driving on the edge of the world.

The truck turns a corner and we are splashed with mist from a waterfall. At the next corner, the truck flounders in mud, rocking back and forth. The Bhutanese begin to pray. I don’t know what I am more afraid of: the road giving way, the truck tottering and the whole lot of us tumbling over the edge, or my bladder full of tea bursting. The truck lurches forward, engine straining, then slides back. Everyone is scrambling to stay perched on top of the hard rounded sacks of rice, and I look desperately for something to hang on to. The old man from Tshelingkhor offers me a length of rope which is not secured to anything, a shovel handle, and his own cloth bag full of empty bottles. I shake my head to each. Finally, he grins lewdly and motions at his crotch. “Apa! Yallama!” I say, exasperated. Our fellow passengers, who have been watching this attempt to find me a handhold, burst into laughter. They laugh for the rest of the ride. Just when they begin to quiet down, someone shouts, “Apa! Yallama! ” and they explode again. I laugh, too, looking up at the sky of shifting clouds illuminated by the moon buried somewhere deep inside them.

Do Not Eat Your Spelling Tests

In the staff room during morning break, Maya is opening a stack of mail and skimming the letters. I pick up an envelope addressed to “Miss Dorji Wangmo, class VIII B, Pema Gatshel Junior High School” and ask Maya what she is doing. “Girls’ mail,” she says. “First the matron has to read.”

“But why?” I ask.

“Love letters,” she says, not looking up. I don’t know what to say to this. An inquiry into the privacy of mail is obviously pointless.

“See this one. The boy is writing ‘from your dear brother Tandin Wangchuk’ on the envelope, but look here, inside. ‘My dearest sweet Dechen, I am missing you a hell lot,’” she reads triumphantly, then crumples up the letter. She looks up and sees my expression. “We have to,” she says. “Otherwise these girls will spoil their studies.”

“But you don’t read the boys’ mail,” I say.

“No,” she says. “I am the girls’ matron.”

“But does anyone read the boys’ mail? The boys’ warden?”

“No,” she says.

I stand there, chewing on the end of my pen, remembering Mr. Om Nath’s strange tone when he talked about looking after the girls, thinking of how often