Kitchen Curse

by Eka Kurniawan

  From behind the wheel, Marwan looked over and muttered, “Too bad it’s not my ex-girlfriend.”

  And they all smacked the dashboard and laughed.

  AUNTIE

  Auntie Six Fingers. Even though she didn’t seem to like the nickname that’s what everyone called her, because she had an extra finger growing next to each of her thumbs. But I called her Auntie Dear, and maybe that’s why she returned my affection. Really, Auntie was so pretty and kind that if I’d had the choice, I would have wanted her to be my mother.

  Mother wasn’t terribly mean, but Auntie was so very nice that I often thought about what it would be like to be her daughter instead. It was usually Auntie who busied herself every morning getting me ready for school. She would help me put on my uniform, socks, and shoes, check that my books were in my bag, and before I scurried away she would stand me before the mirror, squeeze me in between her thighs so that I couldn’t escape, and apply a thin layer of powder to my cheeks. Auntie also taught me how to braid my hair. “Girls should look pretty,” she would say.

  Out of everyone, she spoiled me the most, maybe because I was the firstborn child and the only daughter. She would often let me do my homework in her room, explaining this or that, unlike my mother who always got impatient with my stupidity. Every once in a while she let me sleep in her bed, too. The point is, Auntie was like an angel to me—if I was having a hard time, she calmed me down and comforted me; and if I was feeling silly, she would remind me not to go too far. Of course, my little brothers were envious of how close we were, especially because Auntie often gave me little gifts, but no one was more jealous than my mother.

  But what could a mother really do to a woman who was so kind to her daughter? The only thing she did was order me to go do this and that, to keep me busy and away from Auntie. Her efforts led nowhere, though, because we always found a way to have fun together.

  We lived in a big house, so almost everyone had their own room—even Father and Mother had their own separate rooms. Possibly they met in the same bed only during their most intimate moments, before parting once again. Like I said, Auntie occasionally let me sleep in her room, but sometimes she wouldn’t open the door when I knocked—maybe she was already asleep—and other times she would say she wanted to be alone. But she usually was delighted by my presence, as long as I didn’t mess up her things.

  In order not to stoke Mother’s jealousy any further, every once in a while I would make the sacrifice and go to Mother’s room to spend the night with her, cuddle with her, kiss her cheeks, and massage her back. But this just seemed to annoy her. Mother said I tossed and turned in my sleep, always kicking here and kicking there, even though I didn’t talk in my sleep or snore—which made me feel even closer to my Auntie.

  Sometimes Mother would grumble, “Sleep in your own room tonight, don’t bother your poor aunt.” But she clearly just said things like that to disguise her jealousy. I never bothered Auntie—I made her happy. If I snuck into Auntie’s room and lay down beside her, we would spend the night telling each other silly stories. As I got older, Auntie was the only person I talked to about my catty classmates, the only person who saw the love letters boys had sent me. Auntie would read those letters and laugh, and help me write polite letters of rejection in response. “You don’t want to hurt their feelings,” she would say.

  But Auntie herself, for as long as I knew her, had never had a boyfriend, even though she was truly beautiful. If I’m being totally honest, she was a little prettier than Mother. Not that much prettier, but prettier. And her looks complemented her temperament, which was so kind and sweet. The idea that men weren’t interested in her seemed ridiculous. I often wondered about it.

  I suspected that men didn’t want to get close to her because of her two extra thumbs, but of course that was silly. If I were a man, I certainly would not care about having a wife who had twelve fingers like my Auntie. And what’s more, if it really bothered someone so much, it seemed to me it wouldn’t be too difficult to just chop the extra fingers off with a machete. Of course, I didn’t want Auntie to get hurt, but I was pretty sure a doctor could take care of it. In any case, to my small head that explanation didn’t make sense. I knew a man would have to be very stupid not to adore a beautiful woman like my Auntie, even if she had eight or nine fingers on each hand.

  Finally I came to the conclusion that in fact many men cared for Auntie. Some of them had probably sent her love letters, but I didn’t dare go prying into her wardrobe to find out, because Mother and Auntie had both taught me to respect a person’s privacy. Maybe there were men who had just told her directly, face to face, that they loved her. Maybe they had even proposed. But because Auntie had twelve fingers, I thought, she probably felt ashamed and refused them all.

  My poor unfortunate Auntie! I wanted to tell her that she wasn’t even the tiniest bit less beautiful because of those two extra fingers. But I never had the courage to say it, because Auntie really didn’t like anyone talking about them. So my thoughts just flickered like that for a spell, coming and going, until I forgot all about the subject—perhaps because I just couldn’t be sure whether or not my suspicion was right.

  Auntie had come to live with us one afternoon when I was only five or six years old and had just started school. I was in awe of her from the first moment I saw her, and so were my two little brothers. When she appeared with Father, Auntie looked beautiful and radiant. She was wearing a frilly white satin dress, with her hair pulled back in a bun. She smiled at us, even though she was a bit worn-out from the journey, gently pinched my cheek, and bowed to kiss mother’s hand.

  Mother introduced her to us: “This is your aunt, my distant family. From now on, she will be living with us.”

  Auntie had only brought one suitcase with her, and Father showed her to the room that would become hers. Other uncles and aunts had come to visit before, from Mother’s or Father’s family, some very dear to my parents and others they barely knew. They would stay for a few days, weeks, or even months. But none ever stayed as long as Auntie Six Fingers. It seemed she would be with us forever.

  If I asked her about herself, she would tell me about her parents and her younger brother, but it was always too vague for me, or maybe I was too dumb to really understand. I never pressed her to tell me more about her family or her village, because that seemed to make her sad. Still, once I couldn’t help asking, “Aren’t you homesick?”

  “Why would I be homesick? There is nothing more fun than living in this house with a lovely little niece like you.”

  I knew that was a lie. But it was true she really cared about me. One time, when I was cuddling with Auntie and fishing for compliments as to why she liked me so much, Auntie said, “Well, I promised I would never have children of my own.”

  “What?” I asked, startled.

  She was surprised, too, by her own words, which had apparently just slipped out, and she tried to avoid any further questions by quickly continuing, “And that’s just fine, because if I had my own child, maybe I wouldn’t care about you so much!”

  This also seemed like a lie, and even a little girl like me could sense it. I tried to find out more about Auntie’s background from Mother, but her answers were just as vague. Mother would even reply crankily that I would never meet them so what did it matter to me who Auntie’s mother and father were. It was true that I didn’t know many of our relatives. And I got more or less the same answer from Father, on one of the rare times he came home—he was hardly ever around, often gone for days on business trips that didn’t interest me. After a while, Auntie seemed to suspect that I knew she was lying, and then one inevitable night she whispered to me, “Auntie has a secret.”

  She whispered this to me in the exact same way I had whispered to her that I had fallen in love with some boy in my scout group. Those days I was obsessed with the trashy novels traded in school, and the fact was that I was starting puberty. Maybe because I was so taken with made-up love stories, I imagined that
the secret must have something to do with romance.

  Just think, maybe at one time Auntie had really had a lover, or maybe she had even been engaged to a man who was as handsome as a prince. But one day this handsome guy had died—maybe it was a car accident or malaria. And maybe poor Auntie had loved him so much that she had vowed to never have another man’s child. Thinking of this, I was sure I had solved the mystery of Auntie’s life.

  But as it happens Auntie didn’t tell me her secret. Instead she said, “Ah, you’re still too young.”

  Of course I was quite disappointed, but I had been taught not to put pressure on people or sulk. I did still wonder whether the secret had to do with her extra fingers. When I was eighteen, I couldn’t wait any longer—I reminded her that she had a secret to tell me about her fingers and why she would never have a child (although maybe the two weren’t related at all). Auntie just laughed, ruffled my hair, and repeated her deferral: “Let’s wait until you’re a little older.”

  I was forced to put it out of my mind and reassure myself that the time would come when Auntie would tell me of her own accord. And I was busy enjoying my youth. I spent my days with my friends, going to movies and concerts, meeting boys and going on dates. Of course I never forgot about Auntie. She was always my closest ally in our house, the first person who knew the names of my boyfriends, the only one whose opinion I trusted when I was choosing a dress to wear to one of my friends’ parties.

  Auntie rarely left the house, and I often left her to go meet boys, although we still occasionally went shopping at the supermarket. But when I grew bored of my friends, it was just the two of us again. Spending more time with her after the whirlwind of my teenage years, I began to realize Auntie was getting older. Lines were beginning to shadow her face, just like with Mother, but Auntie was always beautiful in my eyes.

  On the second day after my wedding, when we were together, giggling and chatting about my wedding night, I once again remembered the secret that had never been told. But Auntie’s answer disappointed me once again.

  “Don’t think that just because you are married, you’re now old enough.”

  Then my husband and I moved into our own house. We worked and had children. On the weekends, I often brought my children to see Auntie and Mother, other times one of them would come to my house and play with the kids. I even had the thought that I would bring Auntie to come live with me, but after mulling it over I rejected that idea—of course that would make Mother way too jealous.

  After my two younger brothers finally left the house to make their living, while Father kept busy with his same old habits of traveling on business that still didn’t interest me, the two women grew close in their own strange way. I would often arrive at the house to find them chatting warmly. By this time I had grown wiser about not upsetting Mother.

  Then the sad day came. My beloved Auntie died, and I hurried home to view her body. She was buried next to my grandmother and grandfather. In her will, she left me everything she owned. Maybe she really just meant for me to have the valuable things, like her rings and necklaces, but I gathered all her clothes, from her gowns to her faded house slippers. I wanted everything that was left of her, from the plot of land she owned outside the city all the way down to her nail clippers. There was no sign of her mysterious secret until, as I was cleaning out her closet, I found a photograph. I was so shocked that I showed it to Mother, demanding an explanation.

  Mother herself was shaken to see that photo, now faded to pale sepia, and with difficulty she confessed. “I allowed her to live in this house with us as long as she promised to keep her mouth shut about it and never have children.” Her eyes welled up, and then spilled over, and two little rivers flowed down her cheeks. I realized she had been holding back these tears most of her adult life.

  I quickly hid it away in my bag: the photograph taken on Father and Auntie’s wedding day.

  PIGPEN

  Edi Idiot kept watch over the campus during the day, but he wasn’t a security guard. At night, he ruled in the dark shadows of the leafy bowers, but he was certainly not a demon. He was just like us: he liked to eat and then take a good crap, tell stories, sing “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” so loud he was practically screaming, or, if he was feeling lackadaisical, sit quietly and watch a group of girls chatting in the distance in the hope one of them might shift her position, making her skirt ride up.

  He lived in a corner of campus that was quite comfortable—as comfortable as a pigpen. The building used to house the large mimeograph machine, which had been tossed after the embrace of newfangled computer technology. The death of the mimeograph was a blessing for Edi Idiot, who was trying to save up by not paying rent. That was where he slept when he was tired, got laid when he had a girlfriend, and tried to kill himself when he had temporarily gone insane.

  He had been there for four years and had adjusted quite contentedly to life in his pigpen, his most glorious palace. There was no Ruthless Landlady ready to stick out her snout and stare if he were to bring a pretty girl into his room (and then lock the door so they could commit a few sins). There was also no Greedy Landlady to demand rent (or money for electricity or a little donation to chip in for the daily paper or a contribution to spray for mosquitos carrying dengue fever). But what was more wonderful than all of that was the fact there was no Bossy Loudmouth Landlady to forbid him carousing and carrying on with his dear friends.

  Indeed, his hobby was making all kinds of commotion that any Landlady would find unforgivable. Strumming a perpetually out-of-tune guitar and singing at the top of his lungs. Or reciting maudlin love poetry. Or inviting all his nomad friends—who lived in their own pigpens, chicken coops, dog kennels, and ghost dens, which could be found in almost every corner of campus—back to his place, loudly apologizing, “Forgive the mess! Please understand, my maid is on vacation!” These times spent together were more precious to them than anything. Drunk on cheap white palm wine they bought by the roadside, they would talk about how rotten Hegel and Heidegger were in one breath and then how rotten certain porn stars were in the next. They were creative people who had never read Voltaire or Cervantes but invented turns of phrase more innovative than the work of any highbrow author: whores were “lip-licking machines” and ejaculating at the height of orgasm was known as “taking a delicious piss.”

  He was Edi Idiot. He had finished elementary school in nine years, middle school in four, and high school in five. Only God knows how many people are still considered fools by the national education system, but are nevertheless accepted into college. That was why he got the title “Idiot,” and his idiocy grew all the more apparent when he majored in philosophy but couldn’t even remember Aristotle’s birth-date! Above all, though, he was an entertaining friend: never too shy to borrow money, his eyes bugging out whenever he talked to a girl whose shirt happened to have come unbuttoned, and always falling asleep in the lecture hall (but kind enough never to bother the professor by selling notes to the lecture, which was the same every semester). He could be spotted a mile away. He only owned four pairs of jeans and four shirts, which he rotated on a weekly basis, so he always looked creased and dirty unless it was the first or second day of the week. His hair was even more distinctive—dreadlocks meant to be like Bob Marley’s that weren’t the product of a salon or a soak in seawater or a potion of mysterious herbs but simply achieved by avoiding shampoo for eight months, one week, and three days! Don’t ask how many battalions of lice lived in his hair.

  Nighttime was when he felt most free. He could go out and see a concert and come home at daybreak. Or if there was no entertainment to be had anywhere in any corner of the city, he and his friends would entertain themselves, betting on dominos. At first, they gambled with pocket money, but once they had all been cleaned out, they would bet their imaginary lovers. Edi Idiot liked to bet the actress Ayu Azhari, but once he had lost he was forbidden to claim to be her boyfriend for a whole week, a tragic punishment for a man who didn’t have a girlfriend in
real life.

  Sometimes, though, he would be feeling virtuous, and then he would gently remind himself, “Edi, it’s already nine o’clock. It’s time to go to sleep.” Then he would get right down to tidying up his pigpen. He would hang the three pairs of jeans and three shirts he wasn’t wearing at the moment on the nails hammered into the wall. He would clean off his bamboo mat, beating it with a short stick to chase out the dust and cockroaches, before unrolling it in the corner of the room. His pillow was already quite mushy—he had found it in the student council office and had fought over it with a friend who now lived in another building not far from the pigpen that used to be the mimeograph building, but ultimately won it in a wager to see who dared enter the faculty office in the morning before washing their face. His blanket was a special gift from his second-semester girlfriend; it was light brown and thick enough to keep him warm in the freezing rainy season—which was a comfort when he remembered how she had broken up with him, despite the fact that, swear to God, she was mercilessly ugly, no prettier than a toilet hole.

  Once he had completed these rituals, he would ease himself down onto the bamboo mat. For a moment he would think things over and say to himself, “You’re a student, aren’t you, so it would be good for you to read for a minute or two before going to sleep.”

  So, he would take up one of the few books he kept in his pigpen on a small table not far from where he was lying. That book was a composition book, worn and torn because for almost as long as he had been in school it was the only book he picked up with any regularity. Reclining, he would open and read the notes inside:

  “One rice with vegetables, two pieces of tempeh, hot tea; coffee and two fritters; one order of pecel with an egg and ice tea; rice with vegetables, one piece of tempeh and one piece of tofu and warm orange drink; one rice with vegetables with two pieces of tempeh, two shrimp crackers and an orange drink; one order of pecel rice, two potato fritters, one shrimp cracker and an ice tea …”