Where I Found You

by Heidi R. Kling

  Dad looked at me cautiously. “Is it…hard for you to be here, knowing we are so close to where we lost her?”

  The Indian Ocean.

  “Yeah,” I admitted. “I know it sounds stupid, but I’m still always hoping she’ll turn up.”

  Dad gently spun his ring around and around his left finger. “It’s been so many years, sweetie. They combed the ocean, the land. I didn’t come home until they were sure—”

  “But they never found the wreckage,” I finished. “I know.”

  Dad sighed. “While we’re here,” he said, in a voice more wistful than air, “I was thinking of maybe doing a little ceremony. We could drive out to the Indian Ocean, say a few words…”

  My chest seized, and my eyes pinged with tears. He couldn’t be serious. “No.”

  “Sienna, I think maybe it would be good—”

  “No. No way.” I dug my fingernails into my palm. What he was asking for… I’d fall apart. I’d worked so hard to keep it together for five years and he wanted me to throw it all away?

  I couldn’t. I wouldn’t.

  “Just think about it?”

  “NO.”

  He breathed out a long, slow sigh as my heart raced in my chest. “Okay.” Dad stared at his ring. Tapped on it. Pulled it halfway off, then stuck it back on.

  Too bad Vera hadn’t heard our conversation, so she could give up hope that my mom’s husband could ever be fully hers.

  “There’s nothing quite like being on the other side of the world,” he said.

  Dad patted my knee, and together we watched the Fudge Popsicle Haze disappear into the horizon, sure we were both thinking about the same person.

  Chapter Nine

  My favorite little girl didn’t walk, she bounced.

  “Hello!” she said, skipping up to us, the last glow of sunset painting her white hijab pink.

  “Hello, Elli. This is my dad.”

  “Nama saya Andy,” he said, shaking Elli’s hand.

  “Doctor Andy,” Elli said proudly.

  “Yes,” I said. Then to Dad, “Isn’t it about her bedtime?”

  Dad checked his watch. “Yes. It’s almost nine.”

  The sky was getting dark, and I remembered I hadn’t gone to the bathroom or brushed my teeth since the airport. I confessed those facts to Dad.

  “Seriously?” He groaned. “Okay, let’s find the girls’ mandi and then get you some more water. Aku mau mandi?” he asked Elli.

  “Kamar kecil! Waay saay!” She grabbed my hand and skipped down the path.

  “Way say?” I asked.

  “WC,” Dad said, walking fast to keep up with us. “Wash closet, like they say in England.”

  Dad followed us partway down the path and then stopped short as if a force field had glued him in his tracks.

  “What?” I asked.

  “I can’t go any farther. This is the girls’ section, and men aren’t allowed.”

  “But you’re my dad!”

  “Doesn’t matter, kiddo. No boys in the girls’ area.”

  Dad dug into his backpack and handed me two energy bars and two bottles of water. Then, almost as an afterthought, he handed me a package of baby wipes.

  “What are these for?”

  “The mandi. It’s sort of like camping. You’ll see.”

  Oh yes, Tom’s mandi joke. I guessed I was about to find out the “fun way.”

  “You need to use the bottled water to wash your face and brush your teeth. Remember when you wash your hair to keep your mouth shut the whole time you’re pouring the bucket over your head. If you get even the slightest amount of water in your mouth, you could get sick from the microorganisms living in it.”

  “Microorganisms? Why didn’t you tell me this before? What bucket? There aren’t any showers?” I could feel myself starting to hyperventilate. “Dad, I haven’t showered since we left home. I need to clean up.”

  “Honey. Calm down. Don’t forget to take your malaria pill tomorrow, and remember to wear flip-flops in the mandi. You don’t want to get a fungal infection.”

  I gaped at him. This was getting more fun by the second.

  He looked at me wearily before he said, “Okay. Well, I guess I’ll see you at breakfast.”

  Butterflies sputtered in my stomach. “Wait! Where is breakfast? How will I find you?”

  No cell phones. No landlines. He wasn’t even allowed in my room! I didn’t know my way around, and he was just ditching me?

  He spoke to Elli in Indonesian. “Elli promises to take excellent care of you,” he said with a wink in her direction. Then his tone became more protective. “If you need anything, you can ask Vera. She’ll be bunking in the girls’ area, too. I’m not sure which dorm, but you should be able to find her easily enough.”

  No thanks. I’d rather tough it out alone.

  Dad kissed my cheek quickly. “You’ll be fine. Sweet dreams.” The way he said it wasn’t the same way most dads said it. I heard him loud and clear.

  Think good thoughts. Try not to have a nightmare. I can’t help you here.

  “Okay.” My throat clogged with homesickness. “I’ll be fine.”

  You’re seventeen. Pull it together.

  “I know you will,” he said, his face showing confidence that mine lacked.

  And just like that he was gone.

  Pulling open the creaking door for me, Elli pointed inside. “Mandi!”

  In the middle of a wet, moldy floor was a hole cut into once-white tile. Next to the hole sat a dirty blue bucket, a metal pitcher, and a rusty drain in the ground. In the corner of the furry green floor was a squatting bug-eyed creature. I shrieked and jumped back behind Elli. “Is that a frog?”

  Elli erupted into a fit of giggles. Then she skipped into the filthy room and scooped the frog into her hands, presenting the bumpy amphibian to me as if it were a rare gift.

  “Kodak,” she said. “Kodak.”

  When the frog croaked, I flinched, and she broke into more giggles.

  “Okay, here goes nothing.”

  Elli stepped out, and I closed the mandi’s rickety door. There was no clean place to set my backpack, so I tried to balance it on my lap as I pulled down my pants and squatted over the hole. Dad’s warnings haunted me: fungal infections, microorganisms. My scalp itched, and for a second I considered attempting to wash my hair but then gagged when I glanced down into the blue bucket, the one I was (per Dad’s instructions) supposed to pour over my now-greasy hair. There, in mucky water, bobbed two wiggling brown worms.

  You’ve got to be kidding.

  I was going to kill Dad in the morning for leaving me there.

  Then I noticed there was no toilet paper. I remembered the wipes. Careful not to fall on the slippery floor, I dug into my bag and grabbed a couple. But there was no trash can. Should I toss them in the hole? I didn’t think that looked right, so I opened one of the energy bars. I set the chocolate chip bar loose in my pack to salvage for later and stuck the used wipes into the wrapper.

  And I thought the plane was bad.

  Cursing under my breath, I got the hell out of there.

  The first thing I noticed when I got back to the dorms was that the girls weren’t wearing their head coverings anymore. Dressed in nightgowns, with long dark hair flowing down their backs, a crowd of little girls was gathered around something in the center of the room.

  The second thing I noticed was that “something” was my open suitcase.

  T-shirts, pants, bras, flip-flops, my digital camera, even my journal were strewn all over the dirty floor. “Girls!” I called out. “That’s my stuff!”

  I started shoving everything back into the suitcase. Some of the girls helped, but most backed off nervously.

  One girl, taller with a thinner face than Elli’s, was wearing my blue polo shirt backwards. Another kid was opening and shutting my compact powder case. Then I zoomed in on Elli, who had opened my journal and was flipping through the few pictures I had stuck inside before the trip.r />
  “Hello!” she said to me. She waved around the one picture I had of me, Bev, and Spider, taken when we were about eleven, and then she flung it into the air like a baton. Before she could launch it again, I snatched it out of her hands and the whole upper corner, half of Spider’s surfboard and part of his head, ripped off and fell onto the floor.

  Elli looked mortified as she picked up the ripped piece and handed it to me.

  She didn’t know. She was just a kid.

  I retrieved my journal from Elli, my camera from another girl, and set them up on my bed.

  “Go ahead and play with the rest. I don’t care,” I said, swallowing away a gnawing feeling of regret for the greater good of keeping the peace.

  The kids looked up at me expectantly, not understanding my words, so I gestured with my hands and forced a grin. “It’s okay! You can look!”

  Elli spoke to them in Indonesian and then went back to giggling and digging through the only things that reminded me of home. I knelt next to them, showing them my stuff. When they started yawning, I realized that no grown-up was coming to tuck them in. There were a few other staff, the teachers, Dad said, but they slept in their own rooms at night. The kids were on their own, which was part of the problem.

  I guess that’s where I came in.

  “Time for bed, girls,” I said, and pointed to their bunks. Elli reached out cautiously, threw her arms around my neck, and gave me a squeeze. I hugged her back and tucked her into her bed. When I turned around, a whole group of girls was standing up, in one straight line, waiting for their hugs.

  The sweetness of the gesture made me all teary eyed.

  I gave them each a hug and a tuck into bed before heading back to my own bunk.

  When I hopped onto the top bunk, I felt the rock of motion, which reminded me of the plane, which reminded me of my night terrors.

  “Oh no,” I said out loud. I’d forgotten to ask Dad for a sleeping pill. How would I fall asleep? My body clock was upside down and backward.

  But if I didn’t fall asleep, I wouldn’t have the nightmare.

  Maybe I’d just stay up all night and think about stuff. It was better than drifting off and risk scaring the crap out of these already traumatized girls with a stranger’s screams.

  Once the room was filled with the gentle breaths of sleeping girls, I sat up cross-legged, mindful not to hit my head on the water-damaged ceiling or the blue shutter, and opened my journal, slipping out the other pictures from home.

  I saw a younger Spider in the slit of moonlight coming through my window, leaning against his surfboard, a lopsided smile on his sunburned lips.

  Oma leaning over her flower garden digging in the fresh earth with a wooden spoon instead of a real tool and her gray hair pulled up into a loose bun. She was dressed in her favorite butterfly-patched jeans and white beaded tunic and was frowning at the camera. She didn’t like to be photographed, and Dad had caught her off guard.

  My picture of Bev was from the school debates the previous year. Wearing a brown suit with a white button-down shirt not unlike the shirts the kids wore here, her mouth was open. She had been talking when I took the picture for the yearbook, her eyes fierce with passion. I loved that she looked like a young Hillary Clinton.

  But the best picture of all was of Mom. She was grinning at the camera, holding the dimpled hand of a fluffy-haired baby wrapped to her chest in a red sling. Dad said she used to call me dandelion girl because of all that blond fluff. The picture was slightly out of focus because Dad said Mom was laughing when he snapped the photo.

  It was my favorite picture of the two of us. Mom’s crinkly, blue-eyed smile was what home meant. Before. Now. Still.

  I shut the book and leaned over my bunk to check on the little girl sleeping beneath me, her eyes shut tightly. She looked so tiny and alone I had to resist the urge to curl up next to her like my mom used to do with me. But because I wasn’t her mom, because I wasn’t even her sister, I whispered instead, “Good night, Elli.”

  ’Cause I was the only one there to say it.

  Chapter Ten

  Startled, I jerked upright, smacking my head on the corner of something hard. Again.

  Cursing under my breath, I blinked.

  Someone was there. I’d been asleep, but someone was there.

  He was there.

  Fractioned by the slits of the shutter, I saw the 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 and 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 hijabs 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 filled our dorm room like camp revelry 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 remember Dad mentioning “call to prayer” on the plane. Every morning at 5 a.m.

  Burying my head under the pile of wrinkled clothes I was using for a pillow, I tossed and turned for a while. Was the guy really there watching me, or was it my exhaustive overactive imagination—and maybe a little bit of wishful thinking—messing with my dreams?

  That had to be it. Dad said boys and girls did not mix in the dorms. Ever.

  I flopped onto my back and stared at the ceiling. Well. There was no way I was going back to sleep now, so I figured I might as well get up and get dressed.

  I 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 gross factor.

  Maybe I’d brave the bucket wash tomorrow.

  In a fresh shirt and linen pants, and with sunscreen on my face, I felt a whole lot better.

  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, 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 sound. 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. 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, fungal infections.

  “Barely.”

  “It will just take some getting used to,” Dad said. Then he lowered his voice and leaned in. “Did you have the nightmare? I was thinking about you. I could barely sleep.”

  That was nice. “Sort of,” I said. “It was a little different this time.”


  “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.

  Dad and Vera exchanged a skeptical glance.

  “Um, hello,” I said. “Yes, you should tell me.”

  “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.”