Fractioned by the slits of the shutter, I saw a boy peering back at me. Soulful eyes, a scar etched across his forehead. Our eyes met for a second.
What the heck? Getting up on my knees, I pushed the shutter all the way open, leaned out into the pink-dawn light, but he was gone.
Was I still dreaming?
My head throbbed with pain and confusion. Then I noticed my miniature roommates scurrying around the dorm fitting their
jilbabs
onto their heads and carrying rolled-up carpets under their arms like they were late for peewee yoga class.
“What is that noise?” I asked, covering my ears. Loud chanting swarmed our dorm room like camp reveille on speed.
Elli glanced up at me and said, “
Azan!
Allah!” Then she ran out, a swarm of other girls nipping at her heels.
That noise was Allah? I must have still been dreaming.
Then I remembered Dad mentioning “call to prayer” on the plane. Every morning at five a.m.
Which meant I’d never sleep past then.
I groaned and buried my head under the pile of wrinkled clothes I was using for a pillow. I tossed and turned for a while, but it was no use.
I couldn’t sleep and the call to prayer was not going to stop.
But then it dawned on me that I was alone. Privacy! I got up and dressed, then braved the
mandi
quickly, brushing my teeth with bottled water and spitting the toothpaste into the drain on the floor. I did the same thing with washing my face. The worms, now dead and turning a ghastly shade of white, were still floating in the bucket.
I didn’t have enough bottled water to wash my hair, so I twisted it back into a bun and put on a wide crocheted headband to conceal the two (three?) days-with-no-shower ick factor.
Maybe I’d brave the bucket wash tomorrow.
In a fresh white polo shirt, cotton pants and with sunscreen on my face, I felt a whole lot better than I had last night.
I knew I had one mission for the day: to find my mysterious drummer and to look for Deni. If what I guessed was true, if the rebellious leader of the Aceh boys and the drummer guy with the haunted eyes were one and the same boy, I might have a good day.
With my tiny tour guide gone, I followed the trail alone toward the chanting. The call to prayer blasted from rusty speakers along the path, but I was already getting used to the chanting. I walked across the soccer field and over toward the edge of the grounds where a low wall faced the river. The street kids weren’t hanging out on the dirty shore. Just a few stray cats and scrawny-looking dogs lurking around the rocks, sniffing at trash, so I sat down on the wall, back to the
pesantren,
and waited in the morning sunshine, thinking about those eyes staring at me in my dream state, that scar. That boy.
When the prayer ended, I heard happy yelling and turned to see a flood of children pour out of the meeting room and toward another long blue-roofed building. The air smelled like ripe bananas and cooked rice. I guessed that was the dining hall and walked over to find Team Hope.
“Good morning, Sienna!” Dad cried from the end of a very long table. “Come, we saved you a seat.” He patted the empty spot on the wooden bench next to him.
“I see you survived the night,” Tom teased. “And the
mandi?”
Microorganisms, buckets of worms, dawn wake-up.
“Barely.”
“It will all take some getting used to,” Dad said. Then he lowered his voice and leaned in toward my ear. “Did you have the nightmare? I was thinking about you. I could barely sleep.”
That was nice. “Sort of,” I said. “Just like on the plane, the dream was a little different.”
“How so?” Dad asked.
“I’ll tell you later. It was no big deal,” I said, playing tough. The last thing I wanted was to act out a play-by-play in front of Team Hope.
Dad cocked his head. “Okay, we’ll find some time later to talk. About the other thing we talked about too,” he said. I knew what he meant. Deni.
Breakfast turned out to be plain sticky rice. A short, smiling woman who Dad explained was the cook carried a giant pot up and down the rows of tables, scooping one white lump into each of our wooden bowls. The kids, in turn, dug in with their fingers, scooping the rice into their mouths.
“There isn’t any silverware?” I asked.
“Nope,” Tom said, a grain of rice in his beard. “Isn’t it great? I love Indonesia.”
I noticed the cook kept her left hand tucked behind her as she scooped with her right.
“Why is she holding her hand behind her back?” I asked.
“Should we tell her?” Tom said, his eyes sparkling.
“Um. Yes, that’s why I asked.”
“Guess,” Tom said.
“It’s a custom?”
“You could say that.” Tom grinned. Oh no. Tom grinning like that was never a good thing.
Vera, rolling her eyes at Tom, lowered her voice and leaned in toward me. “They do everything here with their right hand: greeting people, eating, serving, everything. You
never
use your left hand in public.”
“Why not?”
“Because you use the left hand for cleaning yourself,” she said matter-of-factly.
“Cleaning
yourself? Like a washcloth in the shower?”
“No, cleaning yourself like your hand is toilet paper,” Tom said, and burst into rumbling chuckles.
“Ha, ha,” I said. “Good one.” Even though I loved him, sometimes I could hardly believe Dad’s friend functioned in the real world, never mind made it through medical school.
Vera flashed him a chastising look. “Thomas, seriously. Sienna needs to understand this. It’s not a joke.”
“Sorry, sorry.” He waved her away and went back to scooping food into his mouth.
With his right hand.
I narrowed my eyes.
“Dad, come clean,” I demanded. “Is Vera telling the truth?”
When he heard “come clean,” Tom laughed out loud again.
“Shush, Tom,” Vera said. “You don’t want to embarrass the kids. To them it’s perfectly normal.”
“I know it is! I think it’s a great custom. It’s hygienic, and it saves money on TP.”
Dad lowered his voice too, bending his head toward me. “It’s really no big deal, but I’m sure you noticed there was no toilet paper in the
mandi?”
“Uh. Yeah. They obviously just ran out, right?”
“Can’t run out of something that was never there,” Tom said. “And people have to wipe with something.”
Wipe with something?
“They wipe themselves with their hands?” I said a bit too loudly. “Seriously?”
Dad nodded, trying to act serious, but the corners of his lips were raised. “You pour the water over your bottom and then—well, you wash your hands very well afterward. It’s quite sanitary once you get the hang of it.”
The pitcher in the bathroom.
That’s what it was for.
I screeched a whisper. “Do you all do that? Do you wipe your butts with your hands?” I looked from face to face. All three members of Team Hope shrugged. Guilty as charged!
“When you work abroad, you adjust to local customs,” Vera said.
I shook my head in disbelief. I couldn’t imagine wiping my butt with my own hand. I mean, seriously, if the kids at school found out about that, I’d be shunned forever. “So because they don’t think it’s sanitary? That’s why they don’t use toilet paper?”
“It’s also a waste of resources,” Tom said with a mouthful of rice. “They can’t afford to waste paper like we do. We shouldn’t do it either, but we do. Ask your social studies teacher when you get home. We’re the most wasteful country in the world.” Watching Big Doctor Tom shovel piles of food into his already two-ton belly didn’t just prove his argument; it won the case.
“Yeah, well. I’m not doing it!”
Dad nodded. “You don’t have to. That’s why I brought the baby wipes.”
Subject change. Someone? Anyone? “Let’s talk about something else,” I said. “So after art, do I have a break before therapy?” I wanted to start asking around for Deni.
“We’ll break for lunch,” Dad said. “And yes, then group therapy with Vera in the afternoon.”
“Is there anything else to eat?” I was still hungry after my small bowl was empty.
“I’m afraid not, honey. They don’t have much, and to share with us is very generous. Maybe we can go out to lunch later in town,” Dad said.
Glancing down the rows of kids, I thought about how they must still be hungry too. Rice wasn’t much for a whole meal. Besides, no protein, dairy or vegetables? That wasn’t good for growing kids like Elli. I thought about our kitchen at home with the big bowls of fresh fruit I took for granted; the endless boxes of pasta and cereals in the cabinet and organic milk and yogurt in our fridge.
“Can we do something to help them get more food? Talk to the
pesantren
owner or something?”
“The thing is, they rely on donations to keep the place going. If they have a donor come, they have a better variety of food; if they don’t, it’s a lean month for the kids.”
“Oh. It just seems like, maybe we could think of something? Maybe donate something?”
“We are. We’re donating our time. It might seem odd to you, but it’s all we can do, sweetie ... ,” Dad explained. “Our specialty is mental health, so that’s what we’re giving them. They aren’t starving; look at them.” I looked around at their mostly happy faces. They were thin, but definitely not skinny.
“Compared to most developing countries, believe me, these kids have it good,” Tom added.
It didn’t seem like enough.
And then a loud ruckus broke out at the other end of the table.
Some older boys were roughhousing around, but they seemed kind of angry. A big scrappy boy pushed a scrawnier, shorter kid, and I couldn’t really tell what was going on, but the energy in the dining hall changed. Chatter quieted; everyone stopped eating to watch. The kid that got pushed started whaling on the bully, and then a group of maybe three or four older boys took sides and got all up in each other’s faces.
My stomach squeezed like it did at school when the rare fight broke out, usually among the football players. I hated fighting. The cook yelled at them in Indonesian. She grabbed the scrappy boy by the back of his T-shirt and threw him out the door. Scrappy’s friends protested, standing up with their arms raised, talking fast in Indonesian, but one of their voices was louder than the others.
He spoke slowly and firmly, his feet steady on the ground like he wasn’t moving until she heard what he had to say. His friends stopped yelling, so he lowered his voice too but kept his tone serious. I had no idea what he was saying, but there was fiery passion behind his eyes, and I could see that the woman was listening to him. He was gesturing, and I guessed explaining what had happened. Then he looked at her expectantly, but she was already grinning like she was his friend too. He nodded once gratefully as she walked away.
Impressive.
The other boys sat back down at the table and reluctantly continued eating, looking at the boy like he was some kind of hero.
But he wasn’t looking back at them.
As he cast his eyes down the table, they stopped on mine just for a moment, a flash of something in them. Some sort of question. Was he checking to see if I was watching? I raised my eyebrows once, a tiny smile on my lips. He nodded back quickly, but his eyes danced. I knew it.
“That’s him,” I heard my voice whisper to Dad. “The leader of the drum circle. He’s the leader of the Aceh boys. I know it. That’s Deni.”
“Hmm. Maybe you’re right,” Dad agreed.
Tom asked incredulously, “How do you know for sure?”
My heart skipped a beat when I said with utter authority, “I just do.”
He stayed only a few seconds longer before he disappeared out the same door his friend was ejected from.
“I’ll see you at art!” I said, darting for the exit.
It was sprinkling now. I looked around but didn’t see him at first. Then I noticed an older boy heading down the path away from me. From this distance I wasn’t sure it was him, so I sped up. As I got closer, I could see he was walking with the same slight limp as the drummer. Bingo.
The rain fell harder and I walked faster. I didn’t have a plan other than to ask him his name, and for now, that was enough. But then thunder cracked once above me and the rain seemed thicker and hotter and was falling faster. I jumped and ducked behind a building, watching as a younger boy about six or seven cried out at the sky’s snap too. I wasn’t sure what he was doing out here alone while everyone else was eating.
The older boy whipped around and without a second thought scooped him up onto his shoulders. Lightning zipped through silver clouds and lit up the path. The older boy glanced up at the sky as if daring it to do it again. I was close enough to see water dropping against his clenched jaw, pouring down his sinewy arms.
And then he was looking at me too.
I felt like I was caught spying, but he wasn’t mad. He was just staring, and so was I.
I couldn’t look away; my eyes fused to his. Finally, lamely, I waved.
He didn’t wave back, but he didn’t turn away. What should I do? Calling out through the brewing storm, “What’s your name?” suddenly didn’t sound like the greatest idea.
Streaks of electricity shot against the sky as the-boy-I-guessed-was-Deni grabbed hold of the younger boy’s ankles, dangling from his shoulders. Then he furrowed his brow and yelled, “The storm comes,
rambut kuning.
Go.”
Rambut kuning?
What did that mean?
And he spoke English?
I flashed on my nightmare. The boy stumbling down the aisle of the crashing plane.
I grounded my feet in place to keep from running after him as he took off into the storm as fast as he could manage with a limp and a kid on his shoulders.
Finally, with thunder cracking over my head, I ran too, toward safety.