Where I Found You

by Heidi R. Kling

  “Good point.”

  “Now we must get off.”

  I begrudgingly peeled my arms from his body, and he looked at me like he could tell I didn’t want to. I didn’t care. What was one more secret?

  When I hopped off and tried to stand, I felt like I’d just gotten off a horse. Wobbling, I rose on my tippy toes to stretch out my legs as he laughed.

  “You aren’t used to it yet, the motor,” he observed.

  “At least I didn’t fall off.”

  “I wouldn’t let you fall,” he said with an intensity that surpassed his words. Blinking, I basked in the moment before pulling my digital camera out of my backpack to take a shot of the monument.

  Deni eyed the camera appreciatively. “Those cameras are much money, yeah?”

  “I don’t know. I got it for Christmas last year from my oma, my grandmother.”

  “You like taking pictures?”

  “Yeah. Sometimes I worry my memories will fade without them.”

  “My memories never go away.”

  I stopped. “Really? You’re lucky. No matter how hard I try to keep them in my mind, some images slip away.”

  “What does ‘slip away’ mean?”

  “Well. Like with my mom. Sometimes I can’t remember her the way I used to. I still remember her, I don’t mean that, but it’s like her face in my mind is disappearing. Fading. Like a photograph, picture, left in the sun. It’s hard to explain, maybe.”

  He looked like he understood the gist of it but was missing one crucial bit. The part I hadn’t shared. “Your mom is in America, no? You will see her soon?”

  I bit my lip. “No, she’s not… She’s… Well, she’s gone.”

  He looked at me with sympathy but didn’t request details like most strangers would. Maybe because he understood and didn’t want to talk about what happened to his. We were both quiet for a second before he said, “Take a picture of me.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. I do not want you to forget.”

  My cheeks flushed.

  Deni leaned against the motor and flashed me a sly smile. Just the little image of him on my digital screen sent goose bumps to places I didn’t know goose bumps grew.

  I seized the day and took several, just in case I didn’t get the chance again.

  “Let me see.”

  I tilted the image toward him. His face lit up when he saw the shots. “Ahhh, not bad. Perhaps I should be an actor?” He struck a pose on his motorcycle that cracked me up. “America is ready for Indonesian celebrity, no?”

  “I don’t think America could handle you, Deni. Besides, you’re much cuter.”

  “Cute?” He wrinkled his nose. “Like a baby goat?”

  “Um. No. Not like a baby goat at all.” I stumbled over my words.

  He leaned in close, his dimple deepening in his smooth cheek. The way he gazed into my eyes, I knew he understood exactly what I meant.

  I flushed from the inside out.

  “So…” I blinked, happy shivers chasing down my spine. “Ready to go in?”

  Vendors cruised up and down the main dirt road leading to the temple selling touristy things like Borobudur T-shirts, statues of the monument, and postcards. They flashed their wares in our faces and used cheesy car salesmen voices to convince us to buy. One young boy wouldn’t take no for an answer, so I bought a couple of T-shirts, a bunch of postcards, two miniature statues of the temple, and a sitar, and stuck the loot in my backpack.

  “So how much does it cost to go in?” I asked Deni when we were standing under the entrance sign.

  “Tourist price one hundred thousand rupiah. For Indonesians, only five thousand rupiahs. About ten dollars of American money for you. About fifty cents for me.”

  “You translate the money well.”

  “If I’m going to be a big star of movies one day, I must know all about America finance,” he joked, but there was a truth to his words. He wanted more for his life than a bunk at an orphanage. That was obvious.

  I handed the man in the booth pink paper money. Deni ordered the tickets, and I was happy he let me treat without the money thing becoming an issue.

  As we wound our way up a set of steep stone stairs into the ancient Buddhist temple, I remembered Dad telling me about this place, that each level told the story of the Buddha—as you curled around, you read more of the picture story carved into the stones.

  I told Deni what Dad had told me. “I always wanted to see this in real life; now here I am.”

  “Yes, it is good to be here, learning something new and seeing history up close. What is the story of the Buddha?” Deni asked.

  I walked up a few stairs to an elaborately carved piece of stone. “The story is that Buddha was a virgin birth, like some of the other major religions.”

  Why religions were so obsessed with virgins I’ll never know. I didn’t say that out loud, of course. It was bad enough saying the term “virgin” in front of Deni. Flushing, I continued the basic Wikipedia version I knew. “Buddha was a prince, bound to be the next Hindu king. They were Indian and lived at the base of the Himalaya mountains. The Buddha’s parents wanted to keep him sheltered, so he stayed in the palace and was essentially pampered like one of your movie stars,” I winked in his direction.

  “I bet he had a fast car,” Deni said. “Or motor.”

  “Shh,” I joked. “But no. Cars weren’t invented yet, and besides, his parents would never have let him have one even if they were. They were super overprotective, didn’t want him to see any of the bad things in life like poverty, pain, or…death. You know. Basically, like how my dad is with me. Hold on a second, I want to take a picture of this one,” I said, snapping a few shots. “You get in there, too, if you want?” I said, hoping he would, which he did.

  “When he was older, about our age, the Buddha wanted to go outside. His parents forced him to stay in.”

  “Like Bapak.”

  Deni made a face, and I laughed. “Exactly. Then one night his curiosity got the best of him and he snuck out of the palace.” I leaned in closer to Deni. “When he snuck out, he took a few servants with him. But what Buddha didn’t know was that they were really angels in disguise.”

  “Oh. Angels?”

  I explained what an angel was. His English was good, but this was a complicated story. I would be completely lost if someone was telling me this in Spanish even though I was in my third year.

  “As he rode his horse out of the palace gates, the angels held their hands under the horses’ hooves. Hooves are feet. Horse’s feet. You know horses?” I acted out a horse, giving it my best whinny, and he laughed. “So that Buddha could sneak out in silence. Cool, right?”

  “Like we did today. Only the gatekeeper held our hooves, no?”

  “Haha, yes. Just like that. Once he was outside the palace walls into the real world, the angels pointed out three things Buddha had never seen before: an old person, a sick person, and a dead person being prepared for a funeral. He had no experience with death before.” Swallowing, I lowered my voice, knowing a tough part in the story was coming up. “In fact, he didn’t know people died at all. He thought everyone lived forever.”

  Deni and I were standing so close our shoulders touched. Our eyes met as he prodded me on. The heat was palpable. I swallowed and kept talking.

  “Which, of course, we know isn’t true. So finally Buddha figured out he must transcend mortals’ fate—pain, et cetera—through enlightenment.”

  I watched Deni as he examined the stone carving in front of us. “Enlightenment?”

  “It means like reason over blind faith, the ability to think for yourself. Thinking for yourself,” I repeated to make sure he got what I meant.

  “Yes. I do that. I like that.”

  “Yeah, me, too. Well, I try to, anyway. Sometimes people make it hard.”

  Like Dad. And Vera. And now Bapak.

  “So Buddha set off on his own path, deciding he should suffer because others did.”


  “He should suffer, why?”

  “To better understand. To learn empathy and compassion.”

  “Do you think he was right?” he asked me seriously.

  “I don’t know. I guess the human experience is to suffer at least some.”

  His face shadowed. “It has been my experience, yes.”

  We stood there staring at each other. Other tourists passed by us, but we didn’t move.

  He broke eye contact, glancing down at his feet. Then he raised his eyes and met mine again. “I think you are a good storyteller, Sienna. No one has told me a story in a very long time. And it is interesting about the boy named Buddha. He has not seen what I have seen, but he wants to. He wants to live and see the bad things instead of to not know.”

  “You got it. And thank you. Do you want to tell me a story, too?”

  “What story do you want to know?”

  “All your stories. The pesantren, how you got there, how you got your scar. How you got your limp. Something about your life before.”

  The sun broke through the clouds and beat straight down on us. I wiped sweat off my forehead with the back of my hand.

  “That’s a lot of stories. I’m not a very good storyteller.”

  “Lie.”

  He smiled sheepishly. Caught.

  “I can wait,” I said.

  “I know.”

  I knew he wouldn’t let me fall off that motor just like he knew I wouldn’t push this. It’s like we saw ourselves in each other.

  I liked it.

  “I wonder what is up here?” Deni said, taking the lead, and changing the subject all at once.

  I followed him up another flight of stairs. At the top, I pulled out a new bottle of water and shared it with him.

  As I tucked the empty bottle back into my pack, Deni peered inside a gray-stone cutout shaped like a diamond. “Look.”

  A beautiful stone Buddha sat in the lotus position and stared back at us. I reached my camera through the cutout and took some pictures.

  “Sienna?” Deni said, his voice passionate like it was last night in the rain.

  “Yeah?” I turned around, and whoa, he was closer than I expected. Like, chests inches apart close.

  He licked his lips, and my heart took off at a gallop.

  Suddenly a group of loud, chatting Indonesian girls approached us, pointing to their cameras. They spoke to Deni in speedy Indonesian, I assumed. “America” came up a couple times.

  “They wish to take their picture with the beautiful American girl who looks like an actress,” Deni said, trying and failing to hide a smile.

  “What? No way.”

  “Yes. They are from the countryside and have rarely seen girls with SpongeBob yellow hair. That’s what they said.”

  “They did not say ‘SpongeBob,’ did they?”

  “No.” He smiled, touching my elbow quickly. “Just beautiful rambut kuning, yellow-haired girl from the Gossip Girl.”

  “You know Gossip Girl? No way.” I laughed, imagining him watching prep school drama in subtitles, and thinking that’s what American girls were all like.

  “The Lively girl,” he said.

  “Blake Lively? I wish I looked like Blake Lively.” Ugh. How could they even think that? “I’m so sweaty and gross.”

  “Gross? Apa? What is gross? Another word for ‘beautiful’?”

  He was serious.

  Seriously adorable.

  So I stood in the middle of the group of excited girls, who put their long-sleeved arms around me. I assumed they were hot in their hijabs and long dresses, but they weren’t even breaking a sweat. We all smiled at Deni, who took our picture with the girls’ cameras and then with mine.

  “Thank you. Thank you,” the girls said as they moved away.

  Deni leaned over and said quietly into my ear, “They asked if you were married.”

  “Married? Oh my God. What did you say?”

  “I said belum”—he grinned—“which in English is ‘not yet.’”

  My eyes flew open. Did the girls ask if we were married?

  Deni and me, to each other?

  “In Indonesia we don’t say no,” he explained. “We say ‘not yet.’ Everyone hopes to be married one day.”

  I stared at him. Sure, I wanted to get married one day, too. When I was eight, I’d wanted to marry Spider. But not now. Not at seventeen.

  His face clouded over.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  He looked like he might tell me a secret, a secret he clearly didn’t want to tell. At the last second, he shook his head. “Another day. I can tell you a story of that another day.”

  “Can I have one now? Just to tide me over?”

  “Tide you over?”

  “Um. Bookmark. Like, something to keep me happy until you’re ready to tell me the other one.”

  “Ah, a story to keep you happy? Okay. Yes. I will tell you a story.” As we silently weaved our way back down the curved stairwell, the shadow lifted from his face, and his eyes lit up. “You know the story of Islam, Sienna? The story of Muhammad?”

  “Sort of. We studied it in my social studies class.”

  “Muhammad was an orphan boy, a prophet, but he does not know at the first. Then an, as you say, angel, visits him. He receives the word that there is one God, and that God is Allah. That is what we say when we say our prayers. The angels tell him to spread the word, and he does. There are many, many tribes spread out across the desert. They are fighting. Muhammad unites them together. Allah tells the words of the Koran to Muhammad. Muhammad writes the words down, even though he could not read. He says to the people, ‘This is our book. This is our religion. Apart we are nothing, together we are whole.’”

  I smiled. “I like that.”

  “Yes. And you are Christian.”

  I shrugged. “Yes, I guess so.”

  He looked surprised. “You guess? But you are from America? What do you believe, then?”

  What do I believe?

  “Good question.” I shrugged again. “I used to believe in God, but now…I don’t know.”

  He looked at me strangely, and I remembered something Dad had told me on the plane: Indonesians assumed everyone has a proper religion. If they don’t, there was something wrong with them. That’s the last thing I wanted. I searched my brain for a change of topic.

  “You see the mosque?” Deni asked, pointing out into the far distance.

  Phew. I squinted into the sun. Sure enough, there was a mosque peeking out of the thick green vines miles away.

  Deni’s forearm glistened with sweat as we leaned over the railing to look. “When the wave came to Aceh and took everything away from us, it did not take the great mosque. Great and proud. Flooded but not destroyed.”

  We stood silently for a moment, hot air melting into my skin.

  “So Muhammad lost his parents, too, huh?” I asked.

  “Yes.” Deni nodded, staring out at the white tip of the mosque floating above the trees. “He did.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Outside the temple, we stopped at a food booth. Deni asked the clerk for a minte nasi bungkus, a packed meal to go. Wondering what I was getting myself into, I followed him to an emerald patch of grass, Borobudur rising up behind us.

  Deni carried plastic bags filled with liquid something tied with rubber bands in one hand and something wrapped in brown paper in the other. As he juggled everything, he explained our menu: ayam goring (fried chicken), gulai (coconut curry,) and layers of green banana leaves that held small servings of sticky white rice.

  Carefully, he made two plates of banana leaves, one for me, one for him, like he was taking this meal very seriously.

  “And tempe,” he said. “You like sambal?”

  “I know tempe,” I said. “Is sambal like salsa? If so, bring it on.”

  Laughing, he poured it on my tempe.

  On the grass, we ate the meal silently, using our right-hand fingers as spoons, after I busted out my hand san
itizing wipes, of course. For dessert, Deni held a fresh coconut to my lips, its fuzzy brown top sliced off with a straw sticking out. “Drink,” he said. “It’s very sweet.”

  I wrapped my hands around the coconut, thinking he would let go once I took it, but he didn’t, and so my hands were on top of his as I drank. A tiny bit of milk dripped down my chin like sugary rain.

  Deni wiped the drop off my skin. “It tastes like candy, no?”

  “Yeah,” I said. I sighed and lay back on the grass, feeling spinny and dizzy, full and happy.

  Deni did the same, resting his head on his entwined hands like his arms were wings.

  Birds flew over us, oxen-driven carts rumbled slowly by, and the palm fronds rustled in the breeze above us.

  When I felt his eyes burning into my skin, I tilted my face toward him. “Hi.”

  “Hi,” he said, a slow smile crawling up his lips.

  My stomach flipped. Good lord, that smile. Deni smiled like the sun. I’d never get tired of it.

  But then his smile faded, leaving me cold in its wake. He blinked, sat up quickly. Raked his fingers through his hair.

  I sat up, too, wondering what had spooked him.

  “Do you know sate kuda?” he asked.

  “Um. No. What is sate kuda?”

  “Horse meat.”

  My nose crinkled. “Horse? Seriously?”

  He laughed, but it wasn’t a real laugh. “I knew not to order it for you.”

  “Thanks.” I fingered the moist blades of grass and soil, still curious as to why he freaked out.

  “More to drink?” he asked. “Es jeruk. Ice orange. It is my favorite.”

  “Orange is my favorite flavor, too.”

  The bubbly soda tasted like a Popsicle, which reminded me of Spider, which reminded me of home. It made me feel weird in too many ways at once.

  “Can you take a picture of me, Deni? So I can show my friends later?” I’d barely thought about them, and it made me feel guilty.

  I handed him the camera and took another long swig of the sweet orange drink. “Try to get the motor in the background, okay? Oh, and the temple. Hey, why don’t you squeeze into it, too? I’ll try and take it of us both.”

  He smiled and the weirdness from the moment before vanished.