“Yeah?” I asked, meeting his eyes.
Our chests inches apart, he licked his lips as my heart pounded.
Suddenly a group of loud, chatting Indonesian girls approached us, pointing to their cameras. They spoke to Deni in speedy Indonesian, I assumed. I heard them say “America” a couple of times.
“They wish to take their picture with the beautiful American girl,” Deni said mischievously, like he found it very entertaining.
“What? Really?”
“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.”
“But how could they? 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. They must have been so hot in their
jilbabs
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?
What did you say?”
“I said
belum”
—he grinned slyly—“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.” His face clouded over when he said that. I wasn’t sure why.
“Isn’t that a good thing? Getting married?”
He looked like he might tell me a secret. “Another day,” he said finally. “I can tell you a story of that another day.”
But I did get one story then.
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, but I’d like to hear you tell it.”
“Then I will. Muhammad was an orphan boy, a prophet, but he does not know at the first. Then an angel visits to 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. Then many, many tribes are spread out across the desert. They’re fighting. Muhammad unites them together. Allah tells the words of the Koran to Muhammad. Muhammad writes them down, even though he could not read. He says to the people, ‘This is our book. This is our religion.’”
“I like that. Especially how he unites the tribes together.”
“Yes. Apart we are nothing, together we are whole. And you are
Christian.”
I shrugged. “I guess. Sort of.”
He looked surprised. “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 what Dad told me on the plane: Indonesians assume everyone has a proper religion; if they don’t, then there is something wrong with them.
I didn’t want him to think there was something wrong with me, so I quickly changed the subject.
“Do you speak Arabic too?” I asked. I was already so impressed that Deni spoke three languages: Indonesian, Acehnese
and
English.
I knew English and two bits of conversational Spanish.
“Our prayers you hear at the
pesantren
are Arabic,” Deni explained. “We study Arabic at school, but most children do not know it to speak other than their prayers and the Koran.”
Then, as if on cue, we heard the faint chanting of the call to prayer. I couldn’t tell where it was coming from.
“You see the mosque?” Deni said, pointing out into the far distance.
I squinted into the sun. Sure enough, there was a mosque peeking out of the thick green vines miles away.
His forearm glistened with sweat next to mine as we leaned over the railing to watch, to listen. “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, moist air melting into my skin.
“So Muhammad lost his parents too?” I asked softly.
“Yes.” Deni nodded, staring out at the white tip of the mosque floating above the trees. “He did.”
MAGIC
Outside the temple, we stopped at a food booth and Deni asked the clerk for a
minte nasi bungkus,
a packed meal to go. I followed him to an emerald patch of grass, Borobudur our picnic’s backdrop.
Deni carried plastic bags filled with liquid tied with rubber bands in one hand and something wrapped in brown paper in the other. As he juggled everything, he explained what we would eat:
ayam goring
(fried chicken),
gulai
(coconut curry) and layers of green banana leaves that held small servings of sticky white rice.
He made two plates of banana leaves, one for me, one for him.
“And
tempe
,” he said, handing me some sort of soybean cake. “You like
sambal?”
It looked like salsa, which I didn’t like, but when in Rome. I said yes, and he poured it on my
tempe.
On the grass, we ate the meal silently, using our right-hand fingers as spoons. For dessert, Deni held a fresh coconut to my lips, its dark green 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; milky water dripping down my chin like sugary rain.
Deni wiped the smear of liquid 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 back on entwined hands like his arms were wings.
I watched birds fly over us, heard oxen-driven carts roll slowly by, and the palm fronds that rustled over us in the breeze.
Then I felt his eyes burning into my skin, so I tilted my face toward him. “Hi,” I said.
“Hi,” he said, a slow smile crawling up his lips.
My stomach flipped.
Then his smile faded; 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 said.
“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 moist blades and soil, still curious as to why he sat up so suddenly.
“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. Then I felt weird in too many ways at once.
“Can you take a picture of me, Deni? So I can show my friends later?” I asked. I suddenly felt guilty for not thinking about them more.
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! And some of the food!”
My enthusiasm cheered me right back up. Deni too.
He smiled and the weirdness from the moment before vanished.
Click.
Outside the
pesantren
gate Deni flipped off the ignition. The high-pitched rattle stopped, but my ears kept ringing.
“You enjoy the
motor
ride?”
I hugged his waist tight. This time I wasn’t letting go so easily. “It was just like body boarding back home,” I said, pressing my cheek into his back.
“Body boarding is what?”
“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.”