Sea

by Heidi Kling

  I stood there awkwardly while they talked, staring at two thin mats that replaced the bamboo tea spread on the floor, the yellow moon glowing outside the open window.

  Azmi finally left the room, shooting me his standard hang loose.

  I raised my eyebrows at Deni. “What was that all about?” I asked.

  “He’s wondering about you. About us.”

  “And what did you tell him?”

  Raking his fingers through his hair, he shrugged.

  “So that’s it? I’m a shrug to you?” I teased.

  “Yes,” he teased back. “That is all.”

  The room was steamy hot. “Who is sleeping here?” I asked, gesturing toward the bamboo mats.

  “You,” he said. “And Siti.”

  “Where will you sleep?” I asked him, biting my lip.

  “With Azmi,” he said, but didn’t break my gaze. “In the other room.”

  I was suddenly very aware that this was our last night together.

  “Don’t go to sleep yet,” I whispered.

  He lowered his dark eyelashes. “You have special plans for us?”

  I couldn’t help but smile back. After the day we’d had, we could use a nice night.

  “Maybe ...”

  “Ibu and Bapak. They are here. Siti will return after her prayers. And Azmi will be waiting for me.” He looked at me questioningly but moved closer, our chests nearly touching in the shadowed room.

  “Then we don’t have much time,” I whispered. I threw my arms around his neck. He pulled me in close. I wanted the whole night together. I wanted everything. But this was what I had: one moment, and I wasn’t going to waste it.

  “I don’t want to leave you,” I said.

  “Then stay.” His voice in my ear was hushed but intense. “You don’t have to go.”

  “I can’t.... My dad is probably worried sick. I have to go back.”

  I listened for footsteps as he pulled back a bit. He cupped my face in his hands.

  “Then I’ll fly to America. I’ll help rebuild my home and I will save money. Sienna, I promise. I will find you.”

  I ran my hands down his arms, laced my fingers through his. Invited his face to mine.

  His hands roamed down my back, clutching me to him. Hard. Desperate. I reached under his damp T-shirt, covered his heart with my hand. His lips found mine and didn’t stop and didn’t stop and didn’t stop until we heard a clanging in the other room and knew our time was running out.

  I kissed his scar, his neck, his ear. “Find me,” I whispered back.

  DAY TEN

  DEATH

  Roosters and the call to prayer woke me at dawn.

  My neck was sore. Siti snored quietly beside me. I wanted so badly to turn her into Deni. Most of the night I lay awake in a hot sweat, thinking of him. Remembering his promise: I will find you.

  I never allowed myself to think that we could really be together.

  And now, like Deni, I had hope.

  Hope for someday.

  No one else was awake yet, so, yawning, I stumbled to the porch. The sun beat down so hard it already felt like noon.

  I thought of the logistics of us meeting up again.

  How long would it take to save the money to come to America? Months? Years? Years was not good.

  Maybe I could persuade Team Hope to come here again. Back to Aceh. There was still so much work to be done. Maybe we could fly back next summer? Or we could write at least? I rubbed my temples, feeling an odd mix of joy and misery. Joy that I would see him again, but misery imagining life in the meantime without him.

  I waited outside while the family rolled out their mats, preparing to do their morning prayers. Deni sauntered out of Azmi’s room with a knowing smile on his face that raised my whole body temperature. He caught my eye through the window and I blushed. I watched Deni rise and fall in prayer. I watched the sweat glisten off his chest. I watched his face scrunched with concentration.

  And then I knew. No matter how long it took, it didn’t matter. He was worth waiting for.

  I listened as roosters crowed.

  I leaned back against the wood slat wall.

  Maybe Deni could do an exchange program? We could go to college together!

  It didn’t matter what we did. We could just be together.

  When the call ended, I stood and glanced through the window again as he rose from his mat, opened the front door and greeted me formally. Then, closing the door halfway so no one could see, he ran his fingers down my forearm and explained in a low voice, “Ibu bought a special breakfast of Dutch treats for you yesterday. The chocolate bits are special desserts for Indonesians.” He squeezed my hand. “I am happy to introduce you to my family.”

  I thought back to our first conversation when he explained traditions, that if a boy brought a girl into his home to meet his family, he wanted to marry her.

  This was Deni’s family now.

  Breakfast was set up on a low table: steaming coffee, a white loaf of bread with the crusts cut off and a bowl full of chocolate sprinkles like the ones we use to decorate cupcakes with at home.

  “Thank you, Ibu,” I said.

  Spooning a bunch of sugar into the coffee, I accepted every refill offered until my hands were shaking.

  Azmi and Bapak left to go fishing right after breakfast. “The fish do not bite as much as before the wave came. But we work hard and we’ll sell at the market today,” Bapak said. I didn’t know if I’d have time to come back before I left for the airport that night, so it was sort of sad watching them go.

  When Siti and her aunt disappeared into the kitchen, Deni touched my arm.

  “How did you sleep?” he asked.

  My toes curled. “Terrible.” I smiled. “You?”

  “The same.”

  As he leaned back against the wall, his veins stuck out from his arm. I glanced back toward the kitchen. For the moment, no one was watching us, so I twined my fingers into his. “Deni,” I said quietly, “I hope we find him today.”

  “Me too,” Deni said, squeezing my hand. “Me too.”

  Deni, Siti and I sat in a row on the hot seat of a three-wheeled bicycle called a becak. The driver, a teenage boy, sat behind us pedaling along at a slow, easy pace. We cruised through dried mud streets past yelling street vendors, motors and oxen carrying their wares. I asked Deni to take a picture of Siti and me posing with the driver, who struck a hang-loose pose just like Azmi.

  Deni then asked Siti to take one of him and me together. He put his arm around my shoulders, squeezing me gently. Siti raised her eyebrows and clicked, but didn’t say a word.

  After the ride, we decided to split up again. I needed to head back to the orange reproductive tent to talk to the mysterious woman and Deni had a few more places that asked him to come back today as well.

  We planned to meet up in an hour for a cold drink.

  “Today is the day,” he said to me with an optimistic wink. “We will find him.”

  “Fingers crossed,” I said.

  I slipped back through the slit of the tent. It was a different person at the counter, younger, just a couple of years older than me. She was wearing black cotton pants and a flowing white blouse. Her jilbab hung loosely around her head, some stray long hairs falling across her heart-shaped face.

  “Can I help you?” she asked. She had wide brown eyes and a soft smile.

  “Yes. I was here yesterday talking to a woman? Is she here?”

  “Sorry, she is not here today. Only me.”

  My heart sank. “That’s weird,” I said, looking around. “She asked me to come back today....”

  Crap. Now what would I tell Deni? He’d have to follow this up on his own. After I was gone. My eyes burned just at the thought of it. I wouldn’t be there the next day to help him.

  My heart sped up with annoyance. “Will she be back tomorrow?”

  “Yes. You are an American?” she asked me, her voice calm and even.

  I nodded, tapping th
e floor with my shoe. I wasn’t in the mood for small talk, but she seemed so nice, and it wasn’t her fault her coworker was a flake. So I asked, “What about you? Are you a volunteer?”

  “No.” She shook her head. “I work here. I am from Aceh. I was here the day the wave came.”

  “You were? That must have been awful.” I glanced toward the tent door. I really needed to talk to Deni.

  But the girl kept going. “I fell off the back of a motor trying to escape the wave. I stayed far away in another village for months afterward. A family cared for me until my strength returned.”

  She laughed then—awkwardly, nervously, like the kids at the pesantren after they told their sad tales. “Thank God a nice family found you,” I said.

  “Yes. Now I am here.” She spread both arms in the air. “Fortunately most of my family survived, and this clinic also is my family now. So many lost their children in the tsunami. We are here to help women and children get healthy again.”

  I glanced around at toddlers playing together in a corner, women deep in conversation.

  “It seems like a neat place. Well, I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be rude, but I have to go. Please tell the other woman who works here that my friend—Deni is his name—will be back tomorrow to ask her if she knows anything about his father. I won’t, well, I won’t be here anymore.” My voice cracked. “But hopefully, she’ll be able to help him.”

  “Deni?” the girl asked.

  He was probably already waiting for me. “Yes,” I confirmed with a nod, and headed toward the slit in the tent. “Please tell her Deni will be back tomorrow.”

  I ran as fast as the heat would allow toward the meeting place.

  Siti was sitting alone, her head in her hands.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  She didn’t answer.

  I sat down next to her, wiping my forehead with the back of my shirt. “It’s roasting today. I’ll get us some drinks.” But she still didn’t answer, and then she started rocking back and forth, sobbing. “Siti? What’s wrong? Are you sick?” I asked. It was so hot. “Come on, let’s find Deni and we’ll take you back home.”

  “No,” she said, but it was more like a wail than a word.

  “What is it?”

  She raised her head, tears pouring down her face. “The wall.”

  “What wall?”

  She pointed out a decrepit wooden building. A gnawing sick feeling grew in my chest. It must be something really bad to make Siti so upset. Squeezing through the thick crowd of people, I noticed the wall was covered with Polaroid snapshots.

  As I got closer, I realized they were pictures of faces.

  Hundreds of faces. I gasped. The pictures were of dead people, grisly, horrible pictures of hundreds of corpses. The worst pictures I’d ever seen in my life: close-ups of bloated, cut, puffy faces, most with their eyes closed.

  “What is this?” I managed to croak out.

  “The wall of the dead,” Siti said quietly from behind me.

  The pictures were so horrifying I had to look away.

  “Where is Deni?” I demanded.

  “Deni is gone.”

  “What happened?”

  She pointed to a picture on the bottom row of a middle-aged man with chiseled features and a short beard. He looked just like Deni.

  “Deni’s bapak,” she whispered.

  “Deni just saw this wall?”

  “Yes!”

  “Did you know about this?” I accused her. “Did you know he was dead?”

  “I did not know!” Siti cried. “We never saw the picture!”

  “Siti,” I said in my firmest voice, “I need to find him. Where did he go?”

  I ran in the direction Siti pointed.

  Away from town. Away from the picture.

  Toward the sea.

  A friend of our family lives in Manhattan, close to what used to be the World Trade Center. She said after 9/11, after the buildings fell from the sky, there were photographs of people who worked there. Missing people. With notes and phone numbers and contact information for strangers to read. She cried every day when she passed the walls, imagining the people hanging those pictures and writing those notes. Hoping someone would call with information about their loved ones.

  I couldn’t believe this was happening to Deni.

  Catching sight of his back ducking around the corner of a tent, I yelled, “Deni!”

  But he couldn’t hear me. There were too many people. Too much noise.

  “Deni, wait!”

  He reappeared on the main path, walking fast, practically running, away from the wall, away from me. I didn’t know where he was going, I only knew that what he believed was true—wasn’t. And then he disappeared, and there was no way I could catch him.

  His father was dead.

  And there was nothing I could do now to help him.

  I was halfway down the crowded, gummy road when someone grabbed my arm.

  “Sienna? What happened, sweetheart? What’s wrong?”

  It was Amelia. She was wearing a World Doctors T-shirt, and her short hair was sticking up in front with sweat.

  “I ... he ...” I burst into tears, and though I tried to squirm away, Amelia firmly guided me into her clinic through a makeshift curtain into a private room.

  “Tell me what happened,” she said.

  I sat on an exam table. Suddenly I couldn’t keep anything in. I told her everything.

  “I need help, Amelia,” I said. “I don’t know what to do about Deni.... I have a plane to catch and I can’t leave him, but I also can’t ... Oh God, everything is such a mess.”

  She stroked my arms and my hair and talked to me in a soothing voice. I choked back tears until they turned into hiccups. The way she spoke to me, touching me, reminded me so much of my mom.

  “Do you”—hiccup—“have any kids?” Hiccup.

  She shook her head. “Not yet. But we hope to. When we finish this trip, we’re going to try.”

  “Good. Because you’d be a great one. A mom, I mean.”

  “Thanks, honey.”

  “My parents used to work together ... like you do. They just went out for two weeks a year after they had me. They didn’t want to stay away long....” My voice choked up again as I thought of them together, remembering us as a family.

  Amelia touched me under the chin. Her nails were short but nicely manicured, the way Mom kept hers. “I bet they wanted to rush home to see such a sweet girl as you.”

  I held on to her hand. “This is going to sound kind of weird. But can I have your address? Or e-mail address in Australia? Maybe when I get back home, we can keep in touch?”

  “Oh, honey,” she said softly. “I’d love that.”

  Her Acehnese assistant came in and told Amelia she had an important phone call.

  While she was gone, I tried to pull myself together, but I had no idea what to do next.

  “Sienna,” Amelia said, reentering the room and wiping my eyes with the sleeve of her blouse. “I need to tell you something. Something very important. That was the Reproductive Health Clinic. You two were right about someone looking for Deni.” She tilted her head and said softly, “But it wasn’t his father.”

  LIFE

  I was still sitting on the exam table when Amelia brought her in moments later.

  Amelia touched my arm. “Sienna. This is Rema.”

  Same wide eyes. Same soft smile. It was the girl I was just talking to.

  “Hello,” she said. “I am sorry to bother you, but I have a question. I told you the story of running from the wave? I was with a boy. On his motor. I fell off as the water came,” she said. Then she lowered her voice to almost a whisper. “May I ask you, what does your friend Deni look like?”

  When she said his name, I felt sick the same way I did when Spider’s mom came out on that rooftop telling me I had to go home right away. Like whatever words came next were going to change everything. “Deni? Um. He has dark wavy hair,” I started slowl
y. “He’s about this tall,” I said, leveling my hand above my head. “He has a little beard, a half of a goatee.” Her head tilted in question, so I clarified. “You know the word goatee? It’s like this.” I pulled on my chin to describe Deni’s facial hair.

  Her eyes flashed with recognition.

  “But lots of boys look like that,” I said defensively.

  “Does he drive a motor?” she asked.

  Yes, but so does everyone. “He used a friend’s when we were in Yogyakarta,” I said.

  “His father’s name?” she prodded.

  I wanted to run out of the room. “Rhamad. It was Rhamad. Deni just found out that ...”

  “His father is dead,” Rema confirmed with a sad nod. “The picture is on the wall.”

  She knew? “Deni didn’t know,” I said, narrowing my eyes. “If it’s the same Deni ...”

  “I just found out myself. I didn’t know where he was. I could not tell him.”

  It was the same Deni.

  But what does she want with him? Goose bumps rose on my arms, and Rema’s eyes were wide. She clutched her white blouse too hard, crunching the silk material up into a ball. “You’re ... Amelia says you are traveling together. You are ...” She frowned. “Deni’s girlfriend?”

  My mouth was dry. After last night. After everything we’d been through, there was only one way to answer. “Yes.”

  Rema looked at me with tortured, watery eyes, like I’d just stabbed her in the heart. “We were engaged to marry,” she said. “Before the tsunami.”

  Deni was engaged?

  Amelia held on to my arm to keep me from tipping over.

  Rema waited for a reaction. I tried to catch my breath and failed.

  “He heard someone was looking for him; that’s why we—that’s why he came back. He was sure it was his father.” I faced Rema. “It was you?”

  She nodded. “Yes. I stayed for many months with the family that found me. I was very weak. When I returned finally to Aceh, only two weeks ago, Deni’s family home was destroyed, his family lost to the sea. I could not find many of Deni’s friends, and at first, I didn’t try to find him. But then someone said a group of kids were taken to a pesantren in Yogyakarta or Jakarta. They didn’t know which one. I was hopeful Deni may have been one of the lucky ones. He was so good on that motor. But there are so many schools it was hardly worth the effort to try, and after losing everything, I wanted him to have a good life. To study and succeed.