Sea (6 page)

 

 

De-boarding the plane at the Yogyakarta airport, my eyes darted this way and that, taking in the flood of different faces.

The airport was sort of like the ones in Hawaii: all open and bathed in moist hot air like a sauna with too many people piled inside. My new shirt was already sticky with sweat. Women draped in colorful robes and head coverings walked by, carrying bundles of packages or full baskets of food. Some men were wearing turbans, and some women’s faces were covered with veils, with only their dark eyes peering out. Most of the veiled women walked straight ahead without looking around.

“Man, it’s hot.” I paused, shifting my backpack from one shoulder to the other. “Don’t they have air-conditioning here either?” I asked Dad. Dumb question. If they had it, why wouldn’t they turn it on?

He didn’t humor me with a response because he was reading a sign posted above us that froze me to my spot in line.

Finally something written in English and that was it?
Death.
A scene from that scary movie where the girls end up in a Thai prison because some jerk at a beach resort planted drugs in one of their bags played in my mind. I patted my pockets and prayed that the customs officer didn’t find anything on me. Where did I put that extra Tylenol PM? Was that considered an illegal drug here?

Sweat poured from places I didn’t even know had sweat glands.

Then Dad pulled out some American money and paid the armed Indonesian officer. “What are you paying him for?” I whispered through clenched teeth. Was he paying him off to let us in? A bribe?

“Visiting visas,” Dad said.

I gulped with relief as the officer waved me through after I handed him my passport. Spending the rest of my life in an Indonesian prison? Not part of my plan.

“Our host should be waiting for us outside. The hard part is over,” Dad said, resting a palm on my head and ruffling my hair like he had when I was a kid. The relief in his smile matched mine. We made it over the ocean in one piece.

The closer we got to baggage claim, the more the open-air terminal filled with spices. Whiffs of cinnamon and cloves wafted through the heat. Locals were selling wraps weaved in all colors of the rainbow. Flowing skirts and elegantly carved wall hangings were displayed in small wooden booths. Masks, marionettes and large orange spiky fruits I’d never seen before were for sale by eager shop owners who called out to us, “Lady, lady!” holding up their wares.

“Can we buy stuff?” I asked Dad as a gap-toothed man dressed in a deep purple tunic pedaled by right through the center of the airport driving a meat-on-a-stick cart. My eyes darted from him to another booth. “Hey, are those puppets made out of paper?”

“They’re shadow puppets,” Tom said, sweat trickling down his hairline. “Pretty cool, huh?”

Vera scooted between me and Dad. “We’ll have plenty of time to shop later,” she said, as if I were asking her. “We have to get our bags.”

We did and then, near the airport’s exit, a group of men stood holding signs with various names written on them. I scanned for ours. Not one read TEAM HOPE.

Vera’s high forehead glistened with sweat as she poked at her BlackBerry with her pen. “We have a message. The driver went to the wrong airport.” She looked apologetically at Dad. “I’m not sure what happened.”

Dad touched her elbow. “No problem. We’ll just take a cab.”

Keeping Vera at ease was apparently a top priority.

“Hey,” Dad said, “did everyone remember to take their malaria pills this morning?”

Everyone nodded except for me. “Oh, sorry. I forgot. Is there a drinking fountain?” I asked.

Tom burst out laughing. “Yeah, if you want to get malaria! Bottled water, sweetheart. Remembering that will save you a lot of time in the
mandi.”
He handed me a fresh bottle of water out of his backpack.

“What’s a
mon-dee
?” I asked.

Vera’s eyes widened. “You didn’t tell her, Andy?”

“She read the Indonesian handbook,” he said. “Didn’t you, Sienna?” He raised his eyebrows expectantly.

Uh.

“I read some of it,” I exaggerated. I did flip through it, but I was looking mainly at the pictures. But I couldn’t exactly admit that now and look totally unreliable. “I don’t remember anything about a
mandi.”

Tom snickered. “Then
clearly
you didn’t read the handbook.”

“You only had umpteen hours to read it.” Dad sighed. “Never mind. Let’s just get our bags and hail a cab. They’ll be expecting us at the
pesantren.
You can catch up on your reading there.”

Feeling guilty, I looked down at my ratty orange Converse.

“Hey, cheer up, kid,” Tom said. “Now you’ll get to find out about the
mandi
the fun way.”

I slugged him on the shoulder. Whatever this
mon-dee
thing was, how bad could it be?

As we waited at the curb for an empty cab, motorcycles whizzed down the busy street in front of the airport, weaving through taxis and tiny square cars that were screeching along way too fast.

“Look at that lady,” I said, pointing out a woman dressed in a traditional black robe and head covering. She rode a motor scooter sidesaddle. “Oh my God,” I cried, “is that a
baby
on that thing?”

Sure enough, a toddler was balancing on the driver’s hip as she zoomed past us.

“They all drive
motors
here,” Tom explained. “Women, men ... even babies.”

I was shocked. “Do they crash a lot?”

“They crash all the time,” Tom said. “See those helmets? They call them crackers because your head cracks open if you crash while wearing one.”

“Don’t they work?”

“They’re cheap plastic helmets. Not like the ones at home. In fact, a volunteer I knew crashed while riding here. Split in half when he hit the pavement.”

“His
head
?” I was appalled.

“No, silly, the helmet,” Tom said.

“So he lived?”

Tom shrugged. “No. He died.”

Fabulous.
I looked to Dad for help.

“Tom, that’s enough,” Dad said.

“Yes, lovely, Tom. Thank you,” Vera chastised him.

I was shocked out of my gourd. “This place is nuts,” I said.

“Just stay off
motors,
kid, and you’ll be fine,” Tom said, picking something out of his teeth with his fingernail.

“I would NEVER go near one of those crazy things. Why do they even sell helmets if they don’t work?”

Vera stroked the skunk stripe in her moist hair. “Careful about making rash cultural judgments, Sienna. Remember, they might think our customs were odd if they came to America.”

Like what? Helmets that worked?

I stepped farther back from the curb as a female driver wearing a chic black pantsuit cruised by. The sun was bright, the tropical air too hot and too wet. I pulled my sunglasses out of my bag and slipped them on.

Vera, now adorned in a dorky floppy white hat, squinted into the light. Horns blared, and I noticed the skyline was brown, like Los Angeles on a high-alert-no-playing-outside kind of day. It also smelled like smoke.

“It’s pollution, and from burning garbage and rice fields,” Dad said when I asked him why. “They don’t have air pollution laws like we do in California,” he explained.

An empty cab finally pulled up, and an enthusiastic driver hopped out, a cigarette hanging from his mouth. Dad spoke to him in Indonesian and we all squeezed into the backseat, which reeked like melting plastic and BO. Dad sat next to him, shotgun. He pulled out the address and gave it to him. I was impressed by Dad’s grip on the language. Though I didn’t understand a word of what they were saying, I listened to them talk as the driver lit up another cigarette and blasted off into traffic.

At first I didn’t think about the immediate danger as I rolled down my window to avoid the secondhand smoke. The hot air felt good on my face. I could have called it wind, but the air wasn’t moving enough to earn that definition. Then I realized how fast we were zipping through traffic. And the fact that there was nothing strapping me into my seat.

“Remember that scene in
Star Wars
where Han is zigzagging his ship through the asteroid field?” I said in a shaky voice. “This is just like that.” I was trying to be cool and breezy like Tom. Trying not to think about our heads splitting open on hot black asphalt.

“Arrrr.” Tom pounded on his chest, a terrible Chewbacca imitation. Everyone did it except me and the driver. The driver probably thought we were insane.

“Don’t distract him! He needs to concentrate on the road!”

“Live a little, kid,” Tom said with an obnoxious grin.

I rolled my eyes as the driver jerked the car to the right and then a sharp left to avoid crashing into rows of outdoor market stalls. I imagined the baskets of fish and fruit and brains splattered all over the streets.

Live a little.
Okay, fine.

“I’ll give him some credit. He must be very good at video games,” I mumbled.

Tom cracked up and then pointed past me. “Check that out!” We whizzed past a booth selling funky wooden clocks in every shape and size you could think of veiled by a kaleidoscope of blankets blowing in the breeze. “I’m going Christmas shopping while we’re here for sure. Look at those bamboo cooking supplies!” Tom said.

While I was worried about our body parts being splayed all over the road, Tom was dreaming about playing Santa.

What had I gotten myself into?

A short, shoeless man stood beside a booth at the top of a driveway, a cigarette dangling out of his mouth.

“Are you sure this is the right place, Dad? Where are all the kids?” I asked.

I stepped cautiously out of the cab, and noticed the thick air had turned into drizzle.

This was the orphanage?

The man said something to Dad in Indonesian and then held open a decrepit white gate for us as the taxi driver unloaded our bags.

I hung back by the cab, clutching my backpack to my chest.

“Vera? You
sure
you guys gave him the right address?”

Cats were everywhere. Skinny feral cats: on the cracked tile porches of the dying square buildings I saw through the gate, on the mostly dead lawn and now, rubbing against my pant leg.

I was more of a dog person.

“Sienna, come on,” Dad said, coaxing me away from the cab. “We’re here.”

When the taxi skidded off, shooting wet dirt into the air, I resisted the urge to run after it.

And then boisterous yelling rang through the silence. Some boys about my age were messing around across the way. Dressed in grungy T-shirts that looked more like dishrags than clothes, they were pulling aluminum cans out of a filthy river.

“Are those the orphans?” I asked, wincing a little as I said the
o
word. “I mean, are those the kids that live at the
pesantren
?”

“Street kids, probably. Collecting cans to sell,” Tom said.

“The street kids don’t live here?”

“No,” Dad said. “Some might be runaways, some orphans.”

“If they don’t have a home, then why don’t they live here?”

“Come on, sweetie. We have to find the owner.”

I should have moved, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the kids.

“This school is capped for the number of kids they could take,” Dad explained. “In fact, the
pesantren
owner was able to take only one-third of the tsunami orphans who wanted to come here from the refugee camps in Aceh.”

I cringed as another black cat, this one carrying a dried-up bone in his teeth, slinked against my leg. His body was so thin and scrawny. Didn’t anyone feed him?

Dumb question that I didn’t even bother asking out loud.

If nobody was feeding the street kids, why wouldn’t the cats be on their own too?

That’s when a man about Dad’s age, but shorter and wearing a black cap on the crown of his head, walked down the path to greet us.

“Welcome!” he said, arms outstretched. “Thank you for coming, doctors.” He spoke in thick-accented English. “How were the logistics of your trip?”

“Excellent, thank you,” Dad said, extending his hand for a shake.
Excellent
was a bit of an exaggeration, I thought as they exchanged pleasantries and introductions.

And then the owner said, “Now we go meet the orphans. They have prepared a special evening ceremony to greet our welcomed guests.”

“What time is it?” I asked Dad.

“We landed around five p.m. It’s about seven p.m.,” he said. “That reminds me.” He fiddled with his watch, resetting it to Indonesian time.

I followed Team Hope and the
pesantren
owner down a muddy path past dozens of white-paint-chipped out-buildings decorated with blue accents. Peeking through many open windows, I saw empty rooms, with kids’ clothes draped over scrappy-looking bunk beds.

On the overgrown lawn, a lone goat was tied to a palm tree with a fraying rope. The same tree held one end of a ripped volleyball net. Besides the mews of the starving cats, the place was silent. Ghost town silent. Like a summer camp might feel like if you stumbled on it years after it was shut down.

The owner walked with purpose, his feet solidly pounding the ground, speaking to my father in a polite but assertive tone until we came to a long rectangular building, also white with blue trim but with double doors etched in elaborate Indonesian designs.

It was the center of the door that caught my attention. Two carvings shaped like the flower bulbs Oma planted in the winter and waited patiently for spring to bloom.