Sea

by Heidi Kling

  “Oh. Like surfing—something I did when I was younger, back at home.”

  “Hang on.” Deni stepped off and then stretched his leg back over the seat, facing me.

  Beaming from ear to ear, I leaned into him. I couldn’t believe we were daring to sit so close hidden only by the gatekeeper’s booth.

  “I used to body board all the time when I was a kid.”

  He was looking at me like he wanted to get closer.

  “Used to?”

  I busied myself with unsnapping my helmet, struggling with the clasp. “Yeah—with a friend of mine ... but not anymore.”

  “Let me.” I could feel his breath on my neck as his fingers tried to find the snap. “It’s easier if you stand.”

  He offered his hand, helping me off the bike.

  And then we were face-to-face again.

  He moved in closer to concentrate on the clasp.

  “There! You are free.” He lifted the helmet off my head, letting my hair fall loose around my shoulders. But he didn’t move back; he didn’t step away. “You don’t body board anymore?”

  “No.”

  “Something to do with your mother?”

  “Another day,” I said. I closed my eyes as Deni ran a finger tenderly over my hand, shivers running up and down my spine. I rested my forehead against his chest like I’d been dying to do all day. I didn’t want to talk about the past. I wanted to hang on to him, to this moment, the smell of sweat and exhaust and coconut—a hint of cigarette smoke still hanging on his clothes.

  “Thank you, Deni,” I whispered into him. “I had a magical morning.”

  His hand ran down my hair. “Magical?”

  “Magical means better than perfect. Almost make-believe. Even without the pictures, I know I will always remember.”

  He pulled me away from him, tilted my chin up and looked down at me. And then he smiled, dimple and all.

  Then laughter and chatter rang out from the other side of the pesantren gate.

  The sounds of real life. Well, this real life anyway. Which didn’t seem very real at all.

  “Just one more second,” I said. “I have something for you.”

  I reached into my pocket and pulled out the tiny golden statue of the temple that I had bought earlier. I set it in his open palm. “Cheesy, I know, but I didn’t want you to forget.”

  “Not cheese, ole-ole,” he said. I looked at him quizzically, so he translated, “When foreigners come, they bring gifts, ole-ole. It’s just not usually from our own country.” He laughed, looking at the little metal temple.

  “If you don’t want it,” I joked, taking it back. He wrestled it back from me and tucked it in his pocket, then he brought me into his arms.

  The feeling of his hand cradling the back of my head was the safest I’d felt ever.

  “I too will always remember,” he said, his voice low. “Especially now that I have your junky tourist toy.”

  “Hey!” I punched him gently.

  Breathing him in, I replayed it all in my mind, a kaleidoscope of snapshots: the temple and then riding through traffic as if our motor was being carried by the hands of angels.

  And this moment.

  I stared up at him. He stared back. Neither one of us was laughing anymore.

  His face turned suddenly serious. “Now, if I could, I would like to meet your father.”

  CLAY

  We found my dad easily enough.

  He was sitting on the steps of the meeting hall, dressed in the same stiff clothes he was wearing that morning.

  “Hi, Dad,” I said, prepared for the lecture of a lifetime.

  But instead of looking pissed, he shielded his eyes and squinted up like he didn’t recognize me at all, like he was seeing a ghost. Dad’s wrinkles deepened around his eyes as he inspected me more intently. “Oh my goodness. The way the light is bouncing off your face, you look exactly like your mother.”

  “Really?” I said, feeling uncomfortable. I glanced at Deni, who was standing there with his hands shoved into his pockets, probably thinking Dad was crazy.

  “Wow, the resemblance is uncanny,” Dad continued like he was in some daze.

  “Well, she is my mom,” I said. “Genetics and everything,” I added, trying to lighten the moment. Maybe it was my windblown helmet hair ... or maybe something else. Like the fact I did something adventurous and rebellious and romantic and awesome.

  Something that Mom might have done.

  “Vera missed you at group.” He glanced over at Deni and narrowed his eyes questioningly. “Where have you been?”

  “Dad, this is Deni. Deni, this is my father, Dr. Jones.”

  Dad offered his hand to Deni. “I’m pleased to meet you again, Deni. We met at the welcoming ceremony.”

  “It is nice to meet you too, Doctor.” Then Deni was straight to the point. “I hope you can help me and my friends. And that you did not get the wrong idea of me from Bapak.”

  Dad waved his hand through the air to put Deni at ease. “I trust my own opinion over the opinions of others.”

  Deni’s stiff shoulders relaxed a bit.

  “I’ve heard you are the leader of the Aceh boys,” Dad said.

  “Leader? I do not know about leader,” Deni said modestly. “But I am their friend, yes.”

  “Good. While we are here, we hope to accomplish a few things. One is rearrange your sleeping arrangements so that an older boy, like you, would be in charge of a group of younger boys. What you showed last night was dedication to your friends from Aceh.”

  Deni shrugged. “They have no one else.”

  “Right. So we plan on restructuring all the dorms in this way. And we are hoping you can help us motivate the other boys and spread the word that this is a good idea.”

  “Yes. I will help.”

  “Great! We could also use your help with translating to the younger kids. You are obviously fluent in English, and it’s paramount in therapy sessions that the younger ones understand.”

  Deni stood up straighter. “And what do I get in return, Doctor?”

  “In return? Like payment?” Dad asked.

  I squirmed. What did Deni mean?

  He studied Dad hard. “I need to get back home, Dr. Jones. I need to get back to Aceh.”

  Dad looked at me. I looked at Deni.

  “Aceh?” Dad asked. “But it’s still underwater.... The reconstruction has barely started.... You live here now. Your schooling, your housing, everything is taken care of.”

  “Aceh is my home. Yes, I came here, but now I want to return. If I help you, if I do these things for you, if I get my friends and the little ones to do what you ask, will you help me get back to my home?”

  Dad looked torn. I could tell he didn’t want to promise Deni something he might not be able to deliver. But he didn’t want to lose Deni’s help either. “I will be happy to talk with you about it as things progress.”

  Deni’s eyes were intense. He wanted a clear answer. “Then yes?”

  Dad paused for a second. “For now, will you take a strong maybe?”

  Dad had to run off to a meeting with Vera, so Deni and I walked silently back toward the dorms, my mind spinning from the strange request he made of Dad.

  Dad, who normally checked on me every five seconds at home, hardly noticed I was gone for four hours? What if something had happened to me? He wouldn’t have even known I was gone. Not that I minded not getting grilled about where I was. And I was happy we weren’t caught, but still, it was odd.

  Dad was so distracted here. And Deni, he wanted to go back to Aceh? The epicenter of the tsunami, where his entire family was killed? And what was he doing with Dad, some sort of blackmail the way he bribed the gatekeeper with cigarettes? It made me feel weird, him talking to my dad that way. Maybe he was using me to get something from him?

  I felt sick as I glanced at Deni from the corner of my eye. Was I wrong to feel so close to him?

  We walked by a group of older girls who were staring at u
s suspiciously. “Do you know those girls?” I asked, breaking our silence. Maybe one of them liked Deni. Or was Deni’s girlfriend. I hadn’t even thought about that before. Did Deni have a girlfriend? And if he did, what was he doing with me?

  Deni nodded at the girls and waved. They waved back, and I heard some “Halo”s, Indonesian for “hello.”

  He lowered his voice when he leaned in toward my ear. “They are talking about us because we are walking alone.”

  I was glad it was only talk-talk and I was sure glad he was walking with me and not with one of those girls. Talk-talk away.

  “Why is your father so surprised I want to return to Aceh? Why would I want to stay here? Does Bapak use rich donor money to buy us meat?” he asked, his hands in the air. “Buy chicken to eat with noodles? Do you know what his house is, Sienna? A palace. A golden palace. Some of the children here are his servants. They say even his water is gold. He eats meat every night off golden plates while sometimes we have so little rice we go to sleep hungry. This is not right. I am better off living on the watery streets of my home.”

  “I didn’t know he was so rich. I don’t think my dad knows either.”

  Deni’s fist was clenched. “He is very rich. I do believe he did a good thing taking us here after the tsunami. But Bapak can do more for us than he does. The Koran says: Those who devour the wealth of orphans wrongfully, they do but swallow fire into their bellies, and they will be exposed to burning flame.”

  I didn’t talk. I just listened.

  Deni shook his head like he was confused. “My plan is to move back to Aceh, find a job and send for the rest of my Aceh friends ...” He glanced at me as if he was asking if he could trust me to go on.

  “You can tell me,” I said.

  “Yes,” he said. “I think you are a friend, Sienna.”

  I was suddenly completely aware of Deni’s hand swinging by his side. We were walking close to each other again. Closer than I saw any other pair walking together.

  “Yes, Deni, I am your friend.”

  We walked by another set of girls who were whispering and pointing in our direction. “Are they talk-talking too? Why are you laughing? What’s so funny?”

  “You,” he said fondly, “are a funny American.”

  “Why am I funny?”

  “Your America is so different from here. Here, if a boy walks with a girl, people think they will marry. That is why they talk-talk.”

  “Marry! Because we’re walking together?” I stopped in the middle of the path.

  “Yes, marry.” When he repeated marry, he looked shy. “We walk with a group if we don’t want people to talk-talk. And we never sit in a room together. Especially here at the pesantren.”

  “Never sit in a room together? Sit?”

  “If we knew each other from school ... Pretend this”—he waved his hand through the air—“is not my life. Instead we are in Aceh. If you are a girl I know, you come to my family house for tea, but we sit in the main room of the house with my family. That is the visit.”

  “And then you’d probably be expected to marry me, right?” I joked.

  Deni’s eyes were serious. “Yes.”

  I was shocked. “I just turned fifteen!”

  “But I am seventeen. I am a man. And you, in Indonesia, are a woman.”

  Talking about this must have made Deni upset too, because his right hand clenched tightly into a fist again.

  “You must really miss your family,” I said quietly.

  “I miss my family very much. My mother was very kind.”

  As if I was on autopilot, I stepped off the main trail and onto a path I didn’t know. It wasn’t the boys’ or the girls’ side. Deni followed me.

  “What was your mother like?” I asked, slipping behind an outbuilding. I glanced over my shoulder to make sure the coast was clear. Some kids were watching us, but they didn’t detour off the main path to follow. Deni didn’t seem to worry.

  “Ibu, that is the word for ‘mother,’” he said. “She was tall and proud. She was an artist. She wove beautiful baskets and dyed them all the colors of the rainbow. Ibu was greatly ... apa?”

  “Liked? Admired?” I guessed the word he was trying to use to describe his mother.

  Deni nodded, leaning against the paint-chipped wall. We were facing the river. The orphanage was behind us. “Some people believe it was meant to be—that the wave came because the Acehnese were fighting a civil war and Allah came to punish us. But I don’t believe that. I don’t believe Allah would punish my mother. She never harmed anyone. The sea just came.” His knuckles were white, his fist clenched tight. It was all I could do not to throw my arms around him.

  A salty droplet of sweat slipped off Deni’s arm, and that was it.

  I reached my fingers out carefully. We were behind the building. No one could see. I lifted his fist up and gently cradled it in my palm.

  He glanced down at his hand and then into my eyes and it was happening again. That rush. That buzzy, hot feeling I had when we first met, when he held my hand and touched it to his forehead. That I had last night in the rain and today, again, as I squeezed against him on the back of the motor, as we lay side by side on the grass, as he cradled my head in his hands.

  His Adam’s apple quivered when he swallowed, but he didn’t say anything; he didn’t try to move away.

  Slowly, I uncoiled his long fingers one by one until his hand was flat. I gently raked my fingertips across his palm, like a thin comb sifting through a plate of silky sand. He sighed as I tangled my fingers in his.

  “Rambut pirang,” Deni said with a raspy choke. He lifted up a piece of my hair. “Rambut anda cantik. You are beautiful. Like the sun.”

  “I thought I looked like SpongeBob?” I grinned.

  He smiled. “Him too. Especially when you are all wet from the rain.”

  Our entwined hands reminded me of a mold I saw once at a flea market, marble fitting perfectly into clay.

  DAY FOUR

  CEREMONY

  The goat was gone.

  The old goat who saved his own life by climbing on the roof during the storm. I asked Elli about him as we finished art therapy. It had been a good session. This time we drew family. I included Oma, Bev and Spider and Elli. I wanted to draw Deni but knew that would look awfully conspicuous.

  Elli included Vera, Dad, Tom, the cook, her teacher, the pesantren owner and me in her drawing.

  New morning sun beamed down on the concrete slab we were drawing on.

  I pointed to where the goat used to be, tied to the volleyball net. “Goat? Dimana?”

  With a gray piece of chalk I drew a decent-looking goat on the sidewalk. The girls’ eyes opened with recognition. Elli shook her head sadly.

  “What?” I asked. “Where is he? Do you know?”

  Elli started a new drawing. With orange chalk, she drew a stick figure like I had before. Orange with yellow hair and orange shoes. “Sienna,” she said with a smile. Then she drew herself next to me and a bunch of her friends. Then she drew a long table.

  “Are you hungry?” I asked, not getting what she was trying to tell me.

  Vera, Dad and Tom were meeting to discuss afternoon therapy sessions. Vera had left art a little early, saying that I was doing such a good job with the young girls, I would be fine on my own for the last fifteen minutes or so. She didn’t even seem mad that I ditched her group yesterday, but she did eye me suspiciously when I told her I’d had something important to do that kept me from going. Of course I didn’t tell her what that important thing was. But felt good that at least it was the truth.

  Occasionally, between chalk drawings, I scanned the path for Deni.

  I didn’t see him.

  Eventually, other kids started to wind down the path toward the meeting hall. A European donor was visiting this morning, and the Acehnese kids had to rearrange their schedules to perform the welcome ceremony to greet her.

  I thought about what Deni said. Was the pesantren owner really getting
richer off these donors who thought the money was helping the kids? I thought about his golden plates, his golden life. I wondered how much was true and how much was rumors.

  I lay awake for hours last night staring at the broken ceiling fan, urging it to move, wondering what happened at the boys’ group meeting after I left Deni behind the outbuilding.

  I really wanted to be there, but Dad wouldn’t budge. I even resorted to begging—“I’ll take notes, I’ll run the video camera, I’ll help translate.” (Dad’s eyes lit up at that one.) But it didn’t work. He reminded me again how inappropriate it would be for me, a girl, to be sitting in on their boys’ meeting.

  Last night after giving up on the fan I squeezed my eyes shut, counted goats, thought about home. I even did the relaxation techniques Dad taught me: first relax your toes, one by one; are they relaxed? Okay, now relax your ankles; are they relaxed? Good, now relax your calves, et cetera, et cetera. Nothing! All I could see was Deni’s back to me on the motor, my arms wrapped around his waist.

  Now my whole body was awake and alert and ... whoa ... the opposite of relaxed.

  The band of girlettes tumbled onto the grass in a heap, playing and scrambling with my chalk. I squinted at them, shielding my eyes from the sun. Dad said I shouldn’t wear my sunglasses here so people could see my eyes. “Only tourists wear sunglasses,” he said on my first day. “Besides, eyes are the windows to the soul, Sienna.”

  True. So they saw into my blinded soul. I grinned to myself, and then suddenly a flash of red and white and gorgeous was standing between the sun and me.

  “Hello,” Deni said, all fresh and clean in his school uniform. His shirt flapped opened around the collar, and I couldn’t help staring at his smooth skin, already glowing with morning sweat.

  “Hello,” I said back, my lips curling up. Then I realized the girls were watching me watch him, and I needed to fill in the silence. “Do you know where the goat is?” I blurted out. “The girls don’t seem to know.”

  The goat? You think about him all night and then ask about a goat?

  “The goat? The goat was eaten,” he said.

  I gasped. “By who? Who ate the goat?”