by Tiffany Tsao
She shrugged. “Tante Sandra probably told her to keep it a secret. The whole point of running away is to not be found.”
Impeccable logic. Still, I found myself bothered by the fact that Oma had lied so thoroughly and for so long—about Tante Sandra, about the cancer too. It frightened me to think that our grandmother might have had hidden depths.
The shark made another pass in front of the crowd, and a little girl to our right buried her face in her mother’s skirt.
“Hey, how do you feel about finding someplace to eat?” Estella asked suddenly. “It’s almost three.”
My stomach growled by way of response. We’d eaten breakfast just before leaving the hotel, but it was hardly enough to tide us over until dinner.
What more was there to uncover? I wondered, casting a last glance over my shoulder at the shark in the tank. If we couldn’t trust Oma, who could we trust? What else was still submerged in our family’s seabed? What rotting carcasses of ships? What skeletons nibbled clean?
“It’s a nice day,” said Estella as we exited the aquarium. “Why don’t we eat somewhere outside?”
Nontouristy dining options simply didn’t exist on the waterfront. We ended up at a restaurant where the walls were plastered with life preservers, oars, and photos of men posing with their caught fish. The wooden rafters were draped with nets and plastic lobsters on strings. The tables were covered in red-and-white-checkered oilcloth.
The crab cakes were too salty to eat, but the mussels and cioppino we ordered to share were decent enough. From the canopy-covered area on the pier where we sat, we could see the afternoon sun glisten on the water. The waves lapped against the posts below, and the sloshing sound they made forced me to relax.
The lunch rush was long over, but a family of four occupied the table next to us: a wife and husband and two young boys who bowed their heads when their food arrived. The father prayed on their collective behalf, and from his accent I could tell he was American, though the exact ethnicity—Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Japanese?—was much more difficult to place. Because their eyes were closed, Estella and I stared unabashed, and I saw a yearning sort of look creep into my sister’s gaze. The parents were trim and clean-cut, the mother wearing a pastel-pink polo shirt and khaki pants, the father in the same outfit but with a blue top. The boys—aged around eight or nine and five or six, respectively—were dressed in matching clothes as well: red-and-white-striped T-shirts and blue jeans. They clasped their small hands and squeezed their eyes shut in exaggerated imitation of their parents.
The perfect family, I thought sardonically, even as I knew Estella was thinking a more earnest version of the same thing, contemplating her life as it might have been, if she’d had kids, if things with Leonard had turned out differently, if she had wound up with somebody else.
As the father’s words winged their way up to heaven, his eyebrows flexed and his forehead crinkled, as if his face were being sculpted by a dexterous invisible hand into ripples and arches. It reminded me of how Leonard had looked when I’d once stumbled across him in prayer. I’d opened the door to his study and found him kneeling on a purple velvet cushion, hands raised and palms upturned, oblivious to my bursting in. I’d never seen him look so vulnerable. As his lips moved, myriad expressions flickered across his face—ecstasy and pain, entreaty and satisfaction, worry, sorrow, effort, exhortation, pleading, resignation, peace. I should have left the room immediately, but I was spellbound and he hadn’t heard me come in. I couldn’t catch most of what he was saying, but at intervals he would break into a babble that sounded like “shibola-la-la” or “elia zerubabayel”—“speaking in tongues,” I learned this was called. Or he would inhale deeply and on the exhale utter “Jeeee-zus, Jeeeee-zus,” like he was wheezing. There would sometimes be a word in between: “Jeeeee-zus. Lord Jeeeeee-zus. Jeeeezus. Precious Jeeee-zus.”
“In Jesus’s name, amen,” the father concluded. The family’s eyes flew open and they began to tuck into their food.
Estella and I ate in silence for a while. And she sounded almost mournful when she opened her mouth to speak. “Sometimes I wonder how Leonard would have turned out if only he hadn’t died.”
“You think religion would have actually made him good?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Who knows? But I’ll say this at least.” She cracked a crab leg in two. “He was the most bearable toward the very end.”
* * *
Leonard’s discovery of Jesus was neither spontaneous nor singular. Many of our set converted from Buddhism or were “born again” at around the same time. If the Krismon brought the entire country to its knees, it also sent a good number of Chinese scrambling for salvation in Christ.
The Krismon was what we called it in Indonesia—shorthand for monetary crisis, “krisis moneter.” Bloomberg, Reuters, and the other global news services termed it the Asian financial crisis, or sometimes the more lurid “Asian contagion.”
Thailand triggered it. Following the decision to uncouple the baht from the US dollar, the currency’s value fell by 25 percent. Other currencies in and around Southeast Asia followed suit, including the Indonesian rupiah, the combustion of which was perhaps the most spectacular of all. It revealed that our astonishing growth was being fueled by massive amounts of private short-term foreign debt. Panicked big-business owners, pribumi and Chinese alike, began pulling out of the rupiah, which sent it plunging even further. Defaults were rampant and bankruptcies widespread. Banks liquidated, jobs vanished, food prices soared.
And as always in Indonesia, the Chinese were blamed. We, the unassimilated traitors. We, the heathen parasites on decent Muslim pribumi society. We merciless merchants, we hoarders of riches, abandoning the nation’s sinking currency like the perfidious rats we were, and tripling the prices of rice and cooking oil to squeeze a profit out of these dry times.
Never mind that the wealthy pribumi businessmen were divesting themselves of their native currency as well, or that all shopkeepers, regardless of ethnic origins, were forced to raise their prices. Anti-Chinese suspicion and resentment had been simmering in the national psyche for decades. Searching for scapegoats, high-profile politicians and army officials began denouncing us in public. In towns and cities outside the capital, Chinese-owned shops were vandalized, stoned, and torched. The water was coming to the boil.
The most well-connected of us predicted the events of May 1998 several months before they actually arrived. Chinese blood might have denied us power in politics and the military, but money did ensure we had favorable connections with those in the know. A minister here, a general there, let drop an enigmatic warning of bad things to come for our kind. Word spread, rustling through us like wind through a rice paddy, and to whatever extent we could, we prepared ourselves for flight. Condominiums, apartments, and houses were set up in Singapore and Hong Kong—the regional strongholds of our people—and valuables were stashed away. Long-term visas and permanent residencies were applied for via agents. We might not have been able to stop the train, but at least we had our ears pressed flat against the tracks.
The rumblings grew louder as mass discontent rose. For more than thirty years Suharto had relied on economic growth and prosperity to buttress his corrupt authoritarian regime. Now that the Krismon had swept away the foundations, his power crumbled. The opposition he’d attempted to censor, exile, and kill came out of hiding and reared its head. Protesters clamored on university campuses for the president to step down.
Then May rolled around. The violence that broke out in the city of Medan was the precursor. Clashes between student demonstrators and armed security forces somehow morphed into the looting and burning of Chinese-owned stores. The same would happen in Jakarta on a grander, bloodier scale. The police and military opened fire on unarmed students at a protest at Trisakti University. Chaos erupted. Cars and buildings were set alight, with special attention paid to our businesses and homes. Our men were beaten, our women raped.
“Our businesses and hom
es,” I have the gall to say. “Our men, our women.” As if any of our affluent set shared in their fate. While Chinatown was burning, along with anyone unlucky enough to be trapped by the flames, those of us who’d had the means to purchase foreknowledge and plane tickets were already abroad, watching the footage on CNN and BBC.
Leonard’s parents invited all of us Sulinados to take refuge with them in their family’s Singapore mansion. Opa had already purchased a house there, but it wasn’t quite ready to live in, and the same went for the luxury condo my parents had bought. So in the end, most of us did end up sheltering with the Angsonos. It was very spacious—more a compound than a house, with several guest villas behind the main structure. And though no one said it, I think the members of both clans felt that there was something to be said for communally weathering out the storm. It was comforting to huddle together on sofas as we watched the riots rage on big-screen TVs. Perhaps having company distracted us from the guilt we felt not only at being able to escape, but at feeling lucky about having done so—not to mention the knowledge that niggled at us, deep down, that the wrath being meted out on those small-time shopkeepers was meant for the filthy rich like us. We were all Chinese supposedly, of one race, of one blood, of one yellowy hue. But in truth, we were divided into two very different creatures: Our breed had wings and theirs didn’t. And now, with the onset of bad weather, we had flapped away and left the wingless to be trampled underfoot.
We and the majority of the other wealthy Chinese families continued to wait out the next several months abroad. We made cautious trips back to Jakarta as necessary to tend to business, but remained on our guard, keeping one foot in and one out. Only when political stability of a sort had been restored did we inch our lives back into the country, but never quite as fully as before. We kept the overseas real estate and assets, along with the foreign residencies and citizenships. It was the only sensible thing to do.
The rest of the country rejoiced in this new era—the termination of the despotic Suharto regime and the onset of democracy and reform. For them, violence had been a necessary price: the pain of a woman birthing freedom, squeezing its enormous head out from between her thighs. For us Chinese, the unrest of 1998 had driven home the fact that we were aliens in a hostile land.
The financial crisis and the May riots: I think they were what prompted so many of our set to zealously embrace the Christian faith—or, rather, a type of Christianity that I’d certainly never encountered on the rare occasions my family had gone to church. This souped-up, rebranded version came with live bands playing loud music and pastors in designer suits. It came with stages instead of altars and mood lighting instead of stained glass. The singing alone could take an hour, the lyrics displayed on giant screens above the musicians’ heads. I had to admit, the sermons were far more compelling than any I’d slept through in the past. Listening to them was like listening to a life coach, but with God thrown into the mix. Topics included how to unlock your fullest potential by giving your life to Jesus, and how to effectively receive the spiritual and material blessings that your heavenly father was itching to shower you with.
Who knew that following Christ came with so many great perks? Accordingly, people took comprehensive notes and highlighted relevant passages in the Bibles they brought with them. When they sang, they stretched out their hands, grateful for all God would provide. And when praying, they babbled in the same way I would hear Leonard do later, when he too joined the flocks of the saved.
I gleaned my observations from the two services Estella and I were invited to attend. The first invitation was extended by our cousin Christopher, which should have raised suspicions from the start. Chris was much older than us, and we’d never been that close as kids, but it turned out he’d promised God he’d bring each of his cousins to church at least once.
The other invitation came from our friend Nikki, whom we’d barely seen since Candy’s baby shower, when she’d shown off her new eyelids. We bumped into her at a charity luncheon. In her usual brash, frank way, she invited us to her church’s Easter Sunday service, providing we had nothing better to do. We didn’t. As I’ve said, our family were nominal Christians by and large. Besides, our mother had always taught us that Christmas and Easter were the worst days to go to church; the crowds were unbearable, and one had to take the trouble of arriving early in order to get a seat at all. Ma had been right. Estella and I showed up five minutes before the service, and the auditorium was already a zoo. Luckily, Nikki had saved us seats. We exchanged cheek kisses. Her eyes looked as large and natural as ever.
No spiritual change of heart from Estella or me came of either invitation, apart from an unwillingness to attend any more services if we could help it. Each time, we could sense our hosts glancing at us every now and then, gauging our reaction every step of the way. Chris awkwardly asked us afterward if we wanted to go out for lunch with him and his wife. We declined, pleading another nonexistent engagement. Nikki was shrewder: She’d locked us in beforehand for an Easter champagne brunch at the Hotel Mulia that did actually end up being fun. She must have been embarrassed about trying to evangelize us, for it seemed as if she were trying to avoid speaking about the service or the sermon altogether. Instead, she flitted gaily from topic to topic: what the rest of our friends from high school were doing these days; the guy she was dating; how things were going with Estella and Leonard. (“Oh, you know, marriage” was my sister’s standard evasive response, which she always delivered with an equally evasive smile.)
As the stack of oyster shells piled up on Nikki’s plate, she told us that if her boyfriend proposed, she was going to get a boob job: “Two presents in one: for me and for him.” This set all three of us laughing, until Nikki suddenly stopped and looked sad.
“Jarvis is a good catch,” she said, still speaking about her boyfriend. “The most respectable guy I’ve ever dated, at least. My parents couldn’t be happier—they keep reminding me I’m almost thirty. But he keeps commenting about how small my boobs are. What do you think? I mean, I’ve always liked them… till now.”
It was the most disconsolate I’d ever seen Nikki. I raised my glass of Bollinger and motioned for Estella to raise hers.
“I’ve always envied your boobs,” I said solemnly, maintaining my poker face until the three of us once again broke into guffaws.
“You know,” she said after our second round of laughter had died down, “I think that’s why I’ve decided to follow Jesus.” The phrase “Follow Jesus,” which would have sounded artificial coming from anyone else, rang surprisingly true on her cupid-bow lips. She continued, “Jesus couldn’t give a flying fuck about my boobs.”
That brunch with Nikki happened a little less than a year after the riots. The economy was much weakened, but at least it was still limping along. The interim president, Habibie, had declined to run for a full term. Within months the country would have yet another president, which seemed surreal. What we didn’t know was that we’d have two more over the span of the next five years.
Still, the most important thing, financially speaking, was that families like ours were out of the danger zone. Though Indonesia’s economic outlook was shaky, the worst was clearly over. Our fortunes had been diminished considerably, but they were more or less intact. Building them up again would only be a matter of competence and time.
Unfortunately, it was that first quality—competence—that would prove problematic for the Angsono clan. It wouldn’t have been an issue if Leonard’s father hadn’t unexpectedly died of a stroke in early 1999. (He was stuck in a severe traffic jam when it happened; by the time the car made it to a hospital it was too late.) Albert Angsono had been a formidable businessman indeed. Leonard’s great-grandfather and grandfather had laid the foundations for the family’s wealth, but under Om Albert’s stewardship their riches had skyrocketed. Leonard may have been the eldest and only son, but he was nowhere near the financial visionary his father was. His two uncles and their sons were far more able, but long
standing Angsono family tradition demanded it be Leonard who take the reins.
Our family was also undergoing a personal crisis, though not death (not yet). While we were cooling our heels in Singapore, we took advantage of the high-quality medical facilities and arranged a raft of overdue checkups for Opa. He was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Despite Tante Betty’s grumblings, Om Benny was named the head of Sulinado Group.
So began a new era, for both us and the Angsonos. However, though we Sulinados, like most other Chinese-Indonesian tycoon families, would be able to run in place until the economy began to genuinely recover in 2001, under Leonard’s inept leadership, the Angsonos somehow managed to sink even further than they already had. Sono Jaya had survived the Krismon, but needed major surgery if it was going to bounce back. Leonard insisted on taking the lead and butchered it beyond repair.
Exactly what made Leonard act the way he did was difficult to say. I’m not sure if he knew himself. Perhaps he was crazed with grief. Om Albert and Leonard had never been particularly close, but nevertheless, they were father and son. Most certainly, there was pride involved—Leonard must have always known on some level that he was a disappointment to his father. Where Angsono the elder had been disciplined, focused, and shrewd, Angsono the younger was spoiled, lazy, and not very bright. Perhaps Leonard saw this as an opportunity to prove himself a worthy heir to his late father’s leadership.
Whatever the case, he eschewed his uncles’ and cousins’ frantic counsel and proceeded, with determination, to run the family empire into the ground. One couldn’t even call it an execution—this was no clean shot to the heart, no quick severing of the head. Just a frenzy of mad stabs, protracted and horrifying to watch: the poorly timed selling of various branches of the conglomerate; a string of ill-judged acquisitions and mergers; imprudent attempts to dispute debts and deny corruption charges via expensive and time-consuming court battles.