Sea

by Heidi Kling

  “But then I couldn’t bear it anymore. I could not let him think I was dead. I missed him. I loved him. So I spoke to the refugee camps and all the relief organizations here, told them, if he came back, where to find me. I took my job and I waited to hear news—and then, once I learned of his father, I looked harder. I started calling all the pesantrens in Jakarta and Yogyakarta, hoping, looking.”

  I bit my lip hard. “He wouldn’t have left unless he thought you—he must have thought you were dead.”

  She nodded. “Everyone thought I was dead. I thought he may have been dead too.”

  “Did Azmi and Siti know you were alive?”

  Her eyes filled with tears. “Azmi and Siti. I am so happy they are okay. I have only recently been strong enough to work. I have not seen many of our old friends. But then I was speaking to my coworker and she told me Amelia was speaking about meeting an American girl who was traveling with a boy. A boy named Deni. Please. I need to see him. I need to see Deni.”

  The three of us rumbled down the potholed road until we came to an even worse road. I couldn’t believe I was sitting next to Deni’s fiancée or ex-fiancée or whatever she was. Is. I ground my knuckles into my temples.

  “How do you know where he is?” Rema asked me curiously.

  I will find you...

  “I just know,” I said.

  Amelia stopped the car but left the engine and the air conditioner running.

  We sat inside for a few minutes, parked about a hundred yards from the mosque. I didn’t know for sure if he was inside, but if I ever knew him at all, then that was where he would be.

  Rema looked really nervous and was wringing her hands. “I hope this does not cause a problem for you, Sienna. You have been so kind.”

  I forced out the words. “He thinks you’re dead. He knows his father is dead. Just go. It’s okay, really.”

  I’m not going to say it was easy watching Rema get out of the car.

  In fact, it was really, really hard, and I felt guilty for hating her, for wishing it was me going into that mosque to comfort him. But I could never give him the gift she was about to.

  I wasn’t the girl he needed to see.

  “Good luck,” I said to her as she stepped out.

  I watched Rema walk toward the mosque.

  Amelia gently laid her hand on top of mine. “Sweetie, I know this is the worst timing on the planet, but it’s already four p.m. If you’re going to make it to the airport, we have to leave now.”

  No.

  “I can’t leave him without saying good-bye. Whatever happens between ... them, I still need to say good-bye.”

  I didn’t want to spy, but I had to know if she found him. I walked up the stairs and peeked through the cutout windows. They were standing on a prayer mat, in the center of the room, Deni and Rema, framed in the arch of their mosque. He was shaking his head, talking in their language, clutching her arm. The light from the windows reflected on the floor. Rema looked down at her bare feet and Deni reached out, lifted her chin.

  I felt sick.

  I couldn’t watch for another second. But I couldn’t tear myself away.

  Amelia finally led me back down the stairs.

  “I’m going to the ocean,” I said.

  I wanted to be alone.

  She nodded. “I’ll be in the car, waiting,” she said. “It’s going to be okay, sweetie,” she called after me.

  I stepped over sand and rocks and muck and mud. I stepped over sad and broken creepy things like a beat-up tennis shoe, a muddy piece of cloth, half of a plate and a headless doll.

  I stepped farther and farther away from Deni.

  The air was humid and broiling but smelled like the ocean smelled at home.

  What did Deni say when he saw her?

  Did he think he was seeing a ghost, like Dad did that first morning at the pesantren when he thought I looked like Mom?

  Deni, I can’t even imagine.

  As horrible as this was for me, your worst day just became your best.

  ACCEPTANCE

  I sat alone on the pebbly shore.

  I was going to miss my plane.

  I didn’t even have my backpack with me—it was still at Azmi’s. I just had my camera and the clothes on my back. No Deni. No parents. No way home. Nothing except the blue-brown water lapping against the rocks. Flying creatures buzzed around my head. Too late, I slapped them away.

  The air smelled like spices and rot.

  It smelled like regret.

  We never should have come to Aceh.

  He would have been happier not knowing about his father. He could have lived forever with hope.

  What was so good about the truth anyway? It just made everyone miserable.

  Angry tears stung my eyes.

  And then I noticed something in the water.

  I had to stand up to know for sure. But humps, dark humps, were rising up and down in the low waves close to the shore.

  No. It couldn’t be.

  Sea turtles.

  There were two of them, swimming side by side. Just like the ones on the front of Mom’s postcard from Thailand.

  Huge ancient turtles floated along as if this place wasn’t damaged at all. They looked exactly as Mom described in her last words home to me.

  The Indian Ocean.

  Chills ran up and down my spine.

  This is the place I hoped for a miracle.

  Where my mom would magically appear, explaining that she’d been knocked unconscious for three years. Like Rema, she’d been living with kindly strangers who nursed her back to health, and now poof, here she was.

  But that miracle wasn’t mine today.

  That miracle was Deni’s.

  One of the turtles looked at me with wise brown eyes, and I dared to say something stupid. “Mom,” I asked quietly. “Are you here?”

  I watched the turtles some more, remembering when I first met Deni at the pesantren, the drum circle, kissing in the alley in the rain.

  “Mom? You can hear me, can’t you?” I said out loud.

  Never mind. I’m being ridiculous.

  Then the bigger turtle spun around and peeked its head up like it was listening to me.

  “Hello.” I knew I must sound like an idiot, but I didn’t care. Deni was with Rema. I’d already lost. “Mom,” I started again. “I’m in trouble.”

  Except for the hum of the waves, everything was still.

  I listened. Listened for her voice in the waves.

  Weirder things have happened, and if her spirit really was here with me, with her crazy mixed-up teenage daughter, I needed to ask her for help.

  “How am I supposed to say good-bye to Deni?”

  I shut my eyes. Imagined her reply.

  When you see him, you’ll know the right things to say. And if for some reason you don’t get the chance, trust he knows how you feel.

  Trust he knows how you feel.

  I opened my eyes again.

  “Thanks, Mom,” I said as the turtles disappeared beneath the turquoise sea.

  GOOD-BYE

  Deni had a bittersweet smile on his face as he walked toward the ocean alone.

  I hoped the tears in my eyes stayed where they were.

  We didn’t say anything at first. There were just no words as we walked together over the rocks and debris along the shallow shoreline.

  I knew this was the last time we’d be alone together. He was back home. And now he belonged to another girl.

  Small fishing boats bobbed around not too far out.

  My heart caught in my throat.

  Nothing was worse than good-bye.

  “Sienna?” Deni said finally, quietly, breaking the silence between us.

  He looked at me the way he always had. We were back to being Deni and me.

  “I’m so sorry about your father,” I said, sniffling. The tears in my eyes were beginning to fall.

  He rubbed his chin, nodding. “So am I. But I’m not sorry I had hope.”
r />   “You were right to believe.”

  He touched my forearm gently. “I didn’t tell you about Rema before—it was too hard to talk about.” He glanced out at the ocean as if seeing it happen again. “We were trying to escape the wave. People were everywhere. Tugging on us, trying to get on the motor too. Remember when I told you the boys tried to jump on the motor? We crashed. My leg was bleeding. I pushed the motor off of me and she was gone. I never saw her again after the crash. She must have been picked up by the crowd. I revved the engine, tried to go back to find her, but the water was coming-rushing to me. I ... couldn’t turn around. This giant wall was coming and she was nowhere.” His face broke. “I had to leave her behind.”

  I couldn’t believe he’d been living with all this guilt. No wonder. “It wasn’t your fault....”

  A shadow of pain crossed Deni’s face. “She says she lay alone in a village ... I looked for her for two weeks! No one had seen her. I saw that wave come. Bodies were everywhere; there was no way she could have lived and then ... she lives ...”

  He squeezed my arm. “It was my fault she was alone. I should not have left.”

  “It’s okay, Deni,” I said, laying my hand on his. “You didn’t know. It’s a miracle you found her. That she found you.”

  “I would never have known she was alive if we hadn’t come.” He broke my gaze, looking back at the sea. He didn’t let go of my arm. “But now I have made you a promise too. And I don’t want to break my promise.” His face crumpled. “I don’t know what to do.”

  I took both his hands in mine. They were big, warm, soft and familiar.

  But his eyes looked like they did when he was telling me about his nightmare that night in the rain. I remembered Dad’s words: He’s already lost way too much, Sienna. Do it for him.

  It made me sick to say the words.

  “You have to forget about me. You have to stay here with Rema.”

  His eyes flashed, angry, like he wanted to swat away my words. “How am I supposed to forget about you?”

  The crashing waves filled in the blanks.

  I sat on the sharp rocks, pulling him down next to me. No one was here, no one could see. I put my arms around his neck, kissed his face.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said, rubbing his eyes.

  “I am too.”

  He hugged me, pulling me closer to him. We hung on to each other like that.

  “I wish you have a happy life back in America,” he said, his voice cracking. “A magical life. I have my ole-ole to remember.” He pulled the fake statue from the temple out of his pocket. The one I gave him.

  I nodded, swallowing back tears.

  He tried to smile. “You like motor now, no?” He raised his eyebrows. “What do they call them in America?”

  “Vespas,” my voice squeaked out.

  “Vespa,” he repeated. “Buy one. You are rich American.” He grinned. “You can remember us.”

  I saw us on the moped. Me clutching on to his waist, my face buried in the sweat of his back.

  “You can remember me.”

  His fingers wiped the tears across my cheek. “And you make me a promise,” he said, his eyes red and moist. “You promise to always hang on tight.”

  I could barely form the words. “I ... promise.”

  We were quiet for a moment, watching the waves soak the shore. He let go of me and reached into his pocket. Handed me a neatly folded piece of paper. “For you. Forgive me the bad English. Please do not read it until later.”

  “When did you write this?”

  He licked his bottom lip, his burnt caramel eyes soft. “Last night while I watched you sleep.”

  My tear slipped onto the paper. I grasped the note in my palm, afraid to let it go.

  “I want you to have a happy life too, with ...” God, this was hard. “With ... Rema. Finding each other after all this time is remarkable.” I squeezed his hand. “Like the mosque still standing after the storm. It means something bigger than us. Bigger than we can understand.”

  “I understand,” Deni said tenderly. “It was the same thing that brought you to me. Brought your father to the pesantren. Helped to chase away our nightmares. It’s all the same thing.”

  “My mother,” I said, because this was my chance, my only chance to tell him. “I told you her plane crashed in this ocean.” I said it quietly and slowly. “The Indian Ocean. It was three years ago, off the coast of Thailand, which would mean really close to the epicenter of the quake. It means her plane crashed somewhere out there—” I pointed out at the endless sea.

  “Before she ... before she died”—I cleared my throat—“she mailed me home this postcard of two sea turtles swimming off the shore. It was the last thing I have from her, and while you were up there with ... I saw them. I mean, maybe not the same ones, but two sea turtles just like she described. It was like she was trying to say something to me.” I frowned. “I know it sounds weird ...”

  We probably shouldn’t have because of Rema, but because he was Deni and I was me, we did it anyway. I buried my face in the small of his neck, touching my lips to his salty skin.

  Deni whispered into my hair, “Your mother loves you. She is everywhere protecting you. She is here with us now. Your mother, my mother, my father, my sisters. They do not disappear when they die. They leave us their strength.”

  A giant wave crashed over a log adrift at sea. The log bobbed around, twisting with the motion of it, but it didn’t sink. It stayed afloat. I scanned the top of the frothy water, hoping to point out the floating humps to Deni. But the sea turtles were gone.

  “Saya akan rinda Anda,” I said. I will miss you.

  His eyes filled with tears, and I could barely stand it.

  I wanted to tell him that you can meet someone and they can change your life forever, even if you have only known him for a short while, that when you leave, you’re a different person than before you met him ... and I understand that because of meeting Deni.

  I wanted to tell him that, all of that, but I knew he couldn’t say it back.

  “Saya akan rinda Anda,” he whispered. “I will miss you too, Sienna. And terima kasih, for everything.”

  “I thought that’s only what tourists say.” I dared to look into his eyes.

  “It’s what you say. So I will always use it. I will always love it.”

  He touched my hand to his forehead and then he touched his own heart.

  We held hands like we would never let go.

  We held hands until the log floated all the way out to sea.

  THE HAZE

  I sat alone at the Aceh airport holding Deni’s unread note in my hand.

  I felt so utterly alone that I unzipped my backpack and searched for Spider’s shell.

  I made myself a deal: if it was broken, if it was shattered, my life was officially over.

  But it wasn’t. It was perfect.

  So I set it back in and opened up my journal. Took out my postcard from Mom. I was rereading it over and over again when I heard my name and looked up.

  Running through the airport, face flushed, beard longer, eyes wildly looking around, Dad spotted me. “Sienna Hope Jones!” he yelled out, his hug nearly crushing me. He was crying, I was crying (well, I was already crying, then I was crying even harder). I must have looked so weird standing there bawling, Deni’s note in one hand, Mom’s postcard in the other.

  “Are you okay?” he demanded. I got the feeling if I said no, I’d be in even bigger trouble.

  “No. Yes. I don’t know.”

  “You aren’t hurt? Sick?” he said, checking me over. “Nothing’s broken?”

  Do hearts count? “I’m okay, Dad.”

  He rubbed his forehead. “I would have come sooner, but there was a huge storm, my plane was delayed; it was a nightmare. I just kept imagining the worst. Don’t you EVER leave me again without my permission, do you understand me?”

  When I nodded, he hugged me again. Then he dug into his pocket and handed me a tissue
. “When Nada gave me the note you left on your old bunk—everything came back—your mom’s crash. You’re just like her, you know. I should have known you’d come alone.”

  “You think I’m like Mom?”

  “You’ve always been like her. You’ve just ... been subdued for so long, I stopped worrying as much. I let down my guard, and then this happens....” He looked off into the terminal, like he was explaining it to someone other than me.

  He squeezed my hands tighter and stared me down. “Sweetie. I can’t lose you both.”

  Then he glanced down at the open journal balancing on my backpack. At the two sea turtles. At the glassy blue ocean.

  “What is that?” His face froze with recognition.

  I handed it to him.

  My heart pounded as he read it, eyes as glassy as the sea in the picture.

  “Where did you get this?” he asked me.

  “After you came home.”

  “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I wanted to have something special just from her.”

  “And this is part of the reason you’ve been holding on to all that hope?” Dad asked.

  I shrugged again. “I guess.”

  His fingertip ran down her writing like he was seeing her again.

  I felt terrible. Terrible for scaring him and terrible for keeping the card a secret. Terrible for reopening all the hurt.

  But I had to ask him the question that had been weighing on me for so long.

  “I want you to tell me what happened to Mom.”

  He kept staring at the card.

  “I was at the Indian Ocean, Dad.”

  “Yes,” he said quietly.

  I took a deep breath. “I don’t understand why you let her go that day. Didn’t you know it was dangerous? It was raining? Why didn’t you stop her?”