Work Text
Saturday, 3rd January 2009
Thick, long black hair. Big, round blue eyes. Pert nose. Pale skin. Tall. Thin. Serious-faced. But so, so timid in bearing, at least at first, always. Ðéa, they called themself in their introduction to me a few meetings after the first, early in my childhood. My twin “womb-sibling,” they claimed, whom they had lost millennia ago. Well, I am currently in that special dream again, then, where I really look like a twin of this other person except for my much shorter hair, also except that I feel I am still me in mind, and I am whole and not half-blind and half-crippled like I am in reality, and I am somewhere other than home, or the small boarding school for people with special needs that I built five years ago with a few friends, or… wherever Kak Nessa and Kak Nina semi-kidnap me to. Ðéa and I meet this way for some time every night, and I always look forward to it each day till it’s time to go to bed. Because it’s relieving to escape the cacophony and demands of my duties and responsibilities for a while, it’s nice to be able to see and walk well, it’s even nicer to see Ðéa again, and it’s much, much nicer to feel whole at last, though I can’t really explain what makes me feel whole here, not just physically at that, and I don’t mean the three sexes that I’ve got – we’ve got – in this form. For some time each year, I can even “meet” Ðéa during the day, by them hitchhiking on my senses and consciousness, sort of, though people claim it makes me look loopy and weird. Ðéa seems to have been waiting for me, each time. And in fact, they are doing so now, greeting me with a small but happy smile. I beam back at them. Nothing more is gestured, and nothing is ever said aloud, but there’s no need for those, really, as our presences immediately meet in the middle and tangle with each other, just so, chattering all the while but not in words. Ðéa leads me to our nest by the hand, looking back every so often as if to check whether I am still physically nearby despite our linked hands and fingers and wrists. I pad along after them in content complacency, giving them a smile each time they look back. Our home away from home is a lush, shaded little island on the middle of a rushing, bouldery mountain stream, often wreathed in mist. I have always been deposited here when visiting this cozy dreamland. It somehow never got smaller as Ðéa and I grew. There is a thick, jagged ring of various trees – most of which look pretty exotic to me, really, such as one whose thick, star-like, wide red leaves serve as bases for yellow star-like flowers to bloom – on the middle of the island. It shelters a generous patch of thick, fluffy, soft moss under the high ceiling of the interlocked boughs of the taller trees, and that is where we built our nest. In one span of time, we even managed to make vines with pine-like needles for leaves drape over most of the trunks, branches and “doorway” to fully hide the little nook from any possible curious eyes from outside, although the occasional brisk breeze can still pass through. There is a generous mound of cosy blankets, furs, cushions and pillows on the middle of our little hideout, ringed by a clutter of other things, and we dive into it with alacrity and perfect synchronicity right after entering. I am still very much hyped up from my most-recent failure of applying for a graduate scholarship, something that my mother has been pushing me to take since before I finished my undergraduate degrees about five years ago. So, immediately after we’ve settled down and in my native tongue that Ðéa seems to understand perfectly despite their rather Caucasian looks, I chatter about the process, the waiting, the fretting, and the mix of dashed hope and utter relief on receiving the notification about the rejected application. And they listen as they lie sidewise on their side of the nest, staring at me with mellow, half-lidded eyes, with half of our limbs tangling. But the failed application is not the only thing that bothers me greatly, at present. No, It’s a… twin problem, just not this twin, and not any of my little siblings, either. It’s like this: There’s a special something that’s… hard to explain, but there, between me and Ðéa, which makes me feel not alone, not lonely, whether I’m in fact alone or in the crowd of my siblings and parents and relatives, though we never see each other physically, and I sometimes wonder if Ðéa is just a figment of my imagination, like my parents and relatives claim. It’s unlike even with me and Dimas, my closest sibling not only in age but also relation. This odd link has made me interested in everything about twins, triplets… all, including the three pairs of twins who are also my third to eighth younger siblings. It’s also what made me fight for the twin pairs of my younger siblings not to be adopted out, let alone separately, when Mami kept popping them out and we struggle to cope with their presence in many ways. And I’ve just heard from my mother this afternoon that children of our distant cousins, a pair of three-year-old twins by the name of Natalia “Lia” Christina and Nathaniel “Niel” Christopher, were to be separated for adoption after their parents had died in a car accident quite recently, as their grandparents can’t take care of both at the same time. To say that I was – and am – upset and outraged about it would have been a huge understatement. To be honest, I am mostly frightened for the poor little twins, not as much eager to take care of them, as I already have so many much younger siblings and even a few young students. – Ðéa is not quite sane anymore after the forceful separation that they said happened to us all those millennia ago, when we were both children, before they somehow found me here and just knew that the old me must have died some time after, and they admited it themself. I daren’t imagine what would happen to my poor, poor little cousins should they be separated from each other, without the benefit of nightly reunions via “dreamland chatroom,” on top of remembering the no-doubt-traumatic accident that robbed them of their parents and caused them to be separated. So I tell Ðéa my plan to adopt the little ones myself, next, complete with the explanation of the circumstances. They are upset, as well. Quite upset, in fact. They abruptly leave the nest. I follow only when I sense that they have calmed down a little, because they have made me upset as well – more upset than before, really – by reciprocity. Such a vicious circle! And I got ambushed once I step foot outside our home. Ðéa traps me in a bear hug and murmurs feverishly into the crook of my neck in a voice too low even for my hearing – heightened as are my other senses in this dreamland – to catch. But what alarms me greatly – even more than before – is that they have retracted their presence from mine. “Nanti kurawat mereka baik-baik,” (`I’ll do my best to take care of them,`) I tell them soothingly, unable to give a more physical comfort as they’re still pinning my arms to my sides, and unable to reach out to them mentally as they’re blocking themself off from me. Well, I hope it’s not an empty promise, really, seeing that my income isn’t great and I’m already physically in charge of eight little brothers and sister plus a few students, but it’s not the point right now. I just don’t like seeing and feeling Ðéa this upset, and they’re currently trembling. They drag me to the stream, in answer, and I end up sitting sidewise on their lap while our bare legs are half submerged in the cold, bubbling, rushing water, churning round the boulders. I hug them close to me, with one arm round their back and the other round their neck, when, an eternity after, they relax their bear hug a little. “Mereka nggak akan kepisah satu sama lain, Ðéa, aku janji,” (`They won’t be separated from each other, Ðéa, I promise,`) I whisper into their ear, after stroking their back for a while, with their head cradled on the crook of my neck. “Ibuku punya ppengaruh lumayan gede di keluarga besar kami. Nanti kubujuk dia sampai setuju kalau si kembar kami yang rawat.” (`My mother’s got a rather big influence in our extended family. I’ll convince her that we’ll take care of the twins.`) Ðéa shakes their head and clutches me tighter. I frown, puzzled. “Bagaimana dengan kamu dan aku?” (`How would it be with you and I?`) they whisper at last, after I poke them gently but repeatedly on the nape of their neck to hopefully get them to talk. “Kita kan di sini. Memangnya kita kenapa?” (`Well, we’re here. What’s wrong with us?`) I’m bewildered, now. They jerk away from me a little and grasp my shoulders rather painfully, in response. They suddenly look and feel quite angry, for the first time in… well, ever. Complete with stony face and glaring eyes and twisted lips and a snarl deep in their throat and… something that seems to… boil and coil and snap, like a mass of jagged but sinewy something rubbing against each other and jutting out, deep in their presence. “Ini bukan dunia nyata!” (`This is not the real world!`) they exclaim, with a hint of tears in their ragged voice. “Kamu perduli sekali dengan mereka – bagaimana dengan kita?” (`You are extremely concerned about them – what about us?`) Oh. Oh oh oh oh! Ðéa rarely talks about this, even rarer than them talking at all about their days after my past self was gone, but they did talk about it, at times: about us meeting outside of this idyllic place, reuniting in truth, hopefully never to be parted again, with me coming to their “realm” or them joining me at home. And my pride kept barring me from saying yes to either option, although my heart would eagerly say it hundreds of times whenever they asked me. Well, how not? Even right from the start, when we – or maybe just I – were small, I could see that they were – they are still – in a different – higher – class than I was – than I am. I was born to a young couple who were trying to build a life together and two businesses at once, so I had to raise myself, mostly, and ended up adopting some roughness that I saw from the adults. When Dimas was born, as I was nearly seven, I was too busy helping take care of him while desperately catching up to Mami’s terribly high expectations and demands of me to care about bettering myself in that area, or even about the idea of meeting Ðéa outside of the dreamland in the first place. And I had been hospitalised in a mental institution for about half a year, before that, for mentally failing to cope with everything she heaped on me. I was too busy trying to keep myself and my little siblings alive and well enough while still trying to catch up with my irreasonable slave-driver of a mother’s expectations, after that, while the poverty that surrounded us remained, as my parents popped up children in proportion to the profits they managed to generate from their businesses. And the school that I and a few friends open since five years ago isn’t something that any of us can boast financially or even physically, at that; certainly not good enough for such a highborn to even visit for a few minutes, let alone living in. In short, I am embarrassed of myself, and dread inviting Ðéa to my packed, noisy, often dirty home or my tiny, equally packed, equally noisy, almost equally dirty school-plus-dorm. My real looks aren’t anything to boast about, either. The various racial features inherited from my extended families don’t meld well with each other in my short, stocky self. My “bottle-bottom” spectacles and braced feet only worsen the look. I feel unworthy, and fear so horribly that they’ll leave me forever once they find out, deeming me too uncooth or something like that. And now, given the outburst, I get the inkling that, all this time, Ðéa suspected – or even knew – that it is the real reason of my denials to their increasingly persistent offer. Damn. I feel even more ashamed, now, and guilty for accidentally, figuratively rubbing the non-separation of my little cousins on their face, while they have been hoping for so long for us to finally meet in the physical world. But I still feel not confident about meeting them physically. Soon, perhaps, but not just now, not yet. “Tunggu sampai aku lulus S2? Datang ke upacara kelulusannya, ya?” (`Wait till I’ve graduated from my master’s degree? Come to the graduation ceremony then, okay?`) They shove me off their lap with a short, pained sound, as the answer. I let myself fall into the stream and wake up from the cold. My face is wet.
Monday, 9th March 2009
It went through: the scholarship application, at last, after five other failures all these years. Even if it’s not what I wanted, planned for, hoped for: studying in England, studying creative writing or special education or child’s psychology, travelling all over Europe during holidays, and trying on various lines of work for the sheer experience of it as a part-timer during school days. But “Make do with what you have” has always been my motto, anyway. My upbringing and family situation have seen to that. This is no different. And at least, this time, the make-do part is a full-ride scholarship, abroad; to my next choice of master’s degree – a study on English as a language – at that. All accessibility options are said to be available there, too, and I can bring my “spouse and/or children” with me during my stay there, with the additional expenses included in the scholarship. This will let me escape Mami’s demands and the stresses of raising a bunch of children for a little while, although I don’t look forward to the studying, after the hectic years of doing just that in addition to raising my little siblings. Well, and this will bring me that much closer to meeting Ðéa again, too. I hope so, in any case, as we’ve never met again in any way after that night early in January, before I got custody of my little cousins. How I miss them, and feel so, so, so guilty for such bitter parting…, not to mention hollow. So I send my yes and thank-you in reply to the acceptance notification, plus a note about bringing my children – a strange notion, still, that, despite all the months I’ve spent with them – with me. A scholarship, at last, affirmed and confirmed. In the United States. In California, to be exact. In Malibu, to be even more exact. On applied English linguistics, because it’s the subject that got approved by the scholarship board, although I don’t know why’d they approve it, given the fact that my bachelor degrees were on international relations and anthropology. At Stark University, because it’s the uni the scholarship participants have been going to these two years, or so the officials said. While my spoken English is still not so good, despite three years studying it at and outside of uni work and five more years attempting to speak it in any chance I can. While my studies will not be the only thing that demands my full attention, but none of my other extended family members or friends will be there to help me distract the perpetrators. Oh, well. I already said yes. And this will bring me closer to Ðéa… hopefully. In two more years, I will be able to meet them in person, at last! And maybe introduce them to everyone, too. Uh, yes, everyone. Umm, I need to tell my family soon about this scholarship, especially my younger siblings, who are more my children than Mami’s by now, as weird and wrong as it sounds. My friends, too, especially Logi, or that best friend of mine will get the info from any of them and… erm… well, I’d better not think of that probable eventuality. Bottom line, and most importantly for now, I need to tell the newest twins under my care, my legal children, ASAP, as they will accompany me away for two years or more. Huh. I already said yes, moments ago. Irrevocable. A master’s degree. Abroad and far away, on the other side of the world. While I’m taking this mostly just to escape everything and better myself for Ðéa, and my mother pushed me to take this most likely so that she could boast of a family member doing master’s study abroad. Hence little to no actual push to study, and I’ll be far away from those who might encourage or force me to do so, mostly Mami. And I’ll be towing a pair of hapless, helpless three-year-olds with me. A pair of three-year-olds whom I have been acquainted with – not even close yet – just these three months… under the shadow of my guilt about not being there with Ðéa, at that, not to mention some cold-shoulder treatment from most of my younger siblings, who think the newest twins are invaders who are going to take me for themselves alone. And the three of us will be on the total mercy of a scholarship from BBN – Badan Beasiswa Nasional, the National Scholarship Agency, the semi-government agency that manages it. Huh. How will it feel, going and living abroad, alone for once in my life except for two children who are just slightly older than toddlers that I don’t even know well yet? How will it feel, flying to another continent entirely, on the other side of the world, with winter time and probably snow and most likely icy weather? Are there lots of freaking tornados in California? Or is it some place else in that country? Am I just prolonging Niel’s and Lia’s lives for a little while in doing this, instead of them dying with their parents in that car crash months ago? Will I be able to survive there, let alone thrive? Will it be a good environment to raise a pair of highly impressionable children, if only for two years? Are the rumours about gangsters and public gunfights and hedonism and extreme liberalism there true? Are people there kind and accomodating to disabled folks like I am? Will I be able to understand their dialect well in reality, removed from the staged and clear words in the recordings meant for listening and pronunciation studies? Will I even be able to speak English, only English, without pausing and stuttering too much? Will my interlocutors be patient with me, understand what I’m saying? Will I be able to navigate round the campus and lodging and take care of myself plus the twins all on my own, in a totally foreign country that I didn’t even have much drive to research about? Will I be able to pour my attention on them, as adoptive mother instead of just a baby-sitter or the eldest sibling, without sacrificing my studies? Will I even be able to muster the will and the discipline to complete the course within the time and GPA parameters, therefore dodging penalties, after dividing my time equally between that and Lia and Niel? It’s not my first, second or even third choice, after all, and I’ve been thoroughly fed up of formal schooling by now, after Mami rammed it down my throat since I was three and expected the best and fastest from me for that. Stark Uni seems to focus much on technology in all its study programmes, too, which is far from my forte. And how will I face Ðéa should I fail at this, after promising to see them in my graduation ceremony? Uh. Just moments after saying yes, and I’m already dithering. Great. I’m beginning to regret this. Heavily. But I already said yes. Oh, damn. What did you just commit yourself into, Ava?
Friday, 13th March 2009
My parents were shocked. My younger siblings, too, all eight of them. My friends, as well. My extended family from both sides, no less. Our family friends, at that. Gits, all. Why were they surprised that I got a scholarship abroad? Well, Logi wasn’t shocked, or surprised. But they’re disappointed, and that’s not better in my eyes. My only comfort has been, ironically, Lia and Niel, who were ecstatic with the impending move to the world out there, and who have been tailing me absolutely everywhere since then, in fear of being left behind. Worse, in fear of being separated from each other in case of them being left behind, or so I deduced from their babbles. – Damn their grandparents, and damn my parents too. Those oldies talked about putting the twins for separate adoptions for financial consideration in front of them, not long after lia and niel got out of the hospital those few months ago. The fossils believed that little children can’t possibly understand when the adults are talking about them. Huh, even I understood the gist of what my parents were talking, when it came to me, when I was these twins’ age, and I was a perfectly ordinary child if not for my weak ankles and sight. Well, if not for Ðéa, too, but nobody’s really realised or believed how real they are. And none will, if I can help it, even after I meet them in person – and I shall, God willing! – or there’ll bee all too many questions and suspicions abound, especially with my history of being dubbed sertifiably insane, however short the time I was hospitalised in a mental institution. In any case, neither lia nor niel are ordinary, I suspect. For one, they’re often too quiet for children their age, with uncanny remarks about the past, present and/or future, and also many interests that are usually reserved for adults when they do talk and play. For two, they tend to shy away from toy miniatures of city cars, in which their parents died and they were severely injured. – Possible eidetic memory recall; possible preternatural maturity or innate gifts, too. Well, but I can’t think about those yet, or about myself for that matter, now. – There are younger siblings to placate and arrange the care for until I return. There are jobs and projects and responsibilities to quit from and handed over in amicable terms. There are numerous papers to complete for myself and for my new adoptive children. There are many, many things to buy, to pack and to put away. There are various contingencies to prepare for. There are savings to figuratively break open and/or reconfigure for an abroad withdrawal. There is also Logi to convince that this decision won’t land me and my little tagalongs in trouble. Huh. I’m not one toe away from home yet, and I’m already pretty overwhelmed. Curling up tighter on my narrow, crieky bed – just a mattress set on the floor beside the left-most bunkbed set in the bedroom that I and all the little ones occupy – I bury myself from head to foot under my tattered, fuzzy blanket. Trying not to groan aloud on the thought, meanwhile, because I’m sharing this tiny bed with a fussy, clingy pair of twins who had to be battled before sleep, just as it’s been since Monday. Nathaniel Christopher and Natalia Christina. They’re going to be my sole responsibility in about a couple more months or three. While I need to take an intense study that I don’t truly wish for. My whole being aches on that very thought. Sleep-deprived, stressed out, inexperienced, physically and financially challenged…. Great. I’ll be already a mess when the time comes to depart sweet, sweet home.
Wednesday, 3rd June 2009
Everything is finished, at long last. The passports, the visa, the air tickets and other papers are ready. I’m going to leave my home country for the first time ever, in about a fortnight from now. With two children that are not much beyond toddlerhood yet in tow. I feel weak, all over. Everyone is ecstatic now, about me getting a scholarship, about me going to America, about the hope that I’ll bring my younger siblings there someday soon, about me continuing my education, and/or about me achieving something, after the week-long shock. Everyone, except for me. And Ðéa, because till now I haven’t seen them again, even in our home away from home. And Logi, but they’ve insisted to go after me anyway if my new little family is in trouble, so they sort of don’t count. Though it’s a nice thought, I’ve got to admit. After all, I and the little ones won’t be able to return home for two or three years once we’re there, or even more, if I don’t manage to get some children-friendly work during the summers and save enough money for the pricy peak-season round-trip tickets for the three of us. A familiar soul keeping us company there might boost our moral and soothe some of the homesickness. Eh, is this how settlers and pioneers felt, in those western old-time tales? It’s aweful. More than three-quarters of me wishes I didn’t say yes to the scholarship, screw my pride and screw all those chances, including finally seeing Ðéa in person at the end of this ordeal. Ha. What a coward.
Thursday, 18th June 2009
There was no representative from the scholarship agency waiting for me, Lia and Niel at the airport. While they promised they would accompany and assist us from here onward. The absence was excused with an apology via phone. My family fretted. I shrivelled inside. – With such a negative beginning, what would fall on us next? Was Logi’s dark predictions about this venture going to come true? And, because non-boarders aren’t allowed to enter the boarding room, I and my little tagalongs said our farewells outside of the room, just now, then we were entrusted to a worker from the airline, who promised to deliver us to one of the flight attendants once on board the plane. We’re treated like some baggage, and I thought things couldn’t be worse. Seated here in the boarding room, with the twins playing cars with their shared suitcase and my own suitcase on the bit of empty space in front of me, all that I wish is that we could return home. And we can’t. Not if I don’t want to shame myself before my family and friends, and my family before our relatives and friends; not if I don’t want to set a bad example for all eight younger siblings that come after me, especially the ADHD, hero-worshipping Dimas, and also the students at my school; not if I don’t want Logi to tell me “I told you so.” And not if I want to see Ðéa again. What a nice trap I’ve let myself into. Logi doesn’t need to tell me the dreaded, dratted sentence. I tell myself that. `I told you so.`
Friday, 19th June 2009
08:33 PM
My head throbs. My eyes feel squished and watery. My ankles, quivering within the confines of the boots since more than twenty-four hours ago, feel like they’re being stabbed by a million needles each, constantly. But despite the concentrated pains there, I feel so sleepy. And exhausted. And sticky. And achy, all over. And heartsick. And thirsty. And nervous. And overwhelmed. I rode in a trans-continental aeroplane! I can’t say I liked the experience, though. Daydream fell short of the reality, and not because the reality’s better than the dream. – All the fear of crashing when taking off and touching down and during turbulent patches, spanning the whole three long air travels – from Jakarta to Hong Kong, then from Hong Kong to San Francisco, then San Francisco to Santa Monica; twice changing aeroplanes during long hours of transit, in which I and my charges and our luggage were deposited in the uncomfortable boarding room for the next flight over like pesky sacks, first in Hong Kong then in San Francisco; thrice – twice in transit and once just now – fussing about retrieving my baggage while trying to herd the clingy, tired – and consequently tearfully bratty – Niel and Lia; the twins missing their naptime s and exhausted by their plays and unable to rest well during the flights, seated upright in the same seat for hours like that, and thus insufferable for everyone in the respective aeroplanes till they took involuntary naps, having been exhausted by inconsolable crying and whinging; the precious stock of drinking water that I was forced to empty before boarding the first flight, given the no-liquid policy on board, only to find how expensive the mini bottled water sold in the plane was, that I still had to buy in consideration of my little charges in such a long flight…. And now I’m alone again but for the twins newly asleep in crisscrossing clothslings at my either hip, ironically in a very crowded place, in an unknown airport. Huh. I am standing on a piece of another continent, one that I never stood upon before in my whole life. My booted feet are rooted on a little patch of carpeted floor by a glass wall just outside the baggage area of this airport terminal, on the other side of the world. But nothing feels nor looks special. The sounds and words people have been making all round me, they’re just some white noise that doesn’t seem different from the other airports I visited, including where this trip began. The things they wear and carry aren’t special, either, as seen by my limited sight, blurred further by exhaustion and sleepiness. And, ironically, now that I’m so close to my goal, everything feels like a crushing failure. It’s… surreal. The flight attendant has left us here. She did seem harassed, somehow. I can’t – won’t – blame her for leaving us before the promised guide from BNN arrived. No, I blame the scholarship agency which promised me many, many things, and didn’t deliver until now. Totally. Because they promised my guide for the next two weeks was going to meet me and my little entourage outside of the baggage area here, and I’ve been waiting for two hours already for whoever that person is. They didn’t even pick up my calls all these hours. I feel so stupid and embarrassed and tired waiting out here in the open, in easy view of passers by. Not that they care. Nobody has even tried to hustle me off somewhere else, thus far. They’re so busy talking fast and walking fast and rustling fast, focused in their own purposes, like individual fishes in their own bubbles, even late in the evening like this. Their purposeful bustle just makes me feel even lonelier, even more daunted, somehow. Even colder and smaller, too. Even more like a child people often claim that I look so much like. Even more afraid, as well, because now the agency seems to be pulling the same absence as before. But before, I still had my family nearby, and I was still in my own country. What is the agency playing at? Why do that to a poor scholarship participant? A practically blind and crippled one at that? While she got little children with her? Damn. Should’ve shaken off my pride and just… go home, and find other alternatives to see Ðéa again.
08:50 PM
Trying to guide a heavy, unwieldy trolley along an uncertain path in an alien place is hellish. The trolley must be dragged awkwardly from behind with one hand while the other hand sweeps ahead with the cane, since I can’t rely on my – currently very, very limited – sight, with my eyes too painful and watery to open like this, given me staving off exhaustion and sleep for too long. I can barely understand the instructions of the few kind souls I’ve encountered, too, because of their thick dialect and rapid talk and visual landmarking. And worse, some people are either so much in a rush or so glued to their gadgets or both that I – therefore also the twins – and my trolley, moving so slowly amidst the crowds and maybe not within the correct human currents, are often bumped and jostled and squished or tangled together. Stumbling and falling afterwards, often with the flavour of curses added from those tangled up with me, is a painfully familiar occurrence, in all senses of the word. It’s been ages, it feels, and yet we’re still trapped within this bustling airport building. Claustrophobia is beginning to set in. And worse for me now, though maybe better for their sleeping schedule later on, the twins have been rudely awakened, and have taken up whimpering softly once more. “Sabar ya,” I murmur croakily to them for the umpteenth time, begging just as piteously. (`Be patient, please.`) If only I could indulge in a similar crying session…. And with the brief loss of concentration caused by that thought, I trip, again. – A too wide, too hesitant sweep of my cane makes it slide before the path of a person rushing to the opposite direction so close to my right, trips the said person, and got lodged under the falling… man, who is loudly and angrily cursing at me over the clatter of whatever he has been carrying. With the cane still connected firmly to my hand, down I spill onto him, too, twins and all. “Sorry sorry sorry!” I babble weakly, repeatedly, even as I fall, even as I do my best to scramble back onto my wobbly feet, aided roughly – and most likely, unintentionally – by the man shoving me aside as he does his own scrambling. “Watch yourself, girl! That’s my new camera You’re breaking!” My heart pounds. I wish I didn’t understand him. Why couldn’t I understand those kind, instruction-giving people instead? And I heard no sound of breakage! The man roars more things at me, but the words are nearly unintelligible to my ears this time, thankfully. I back away, out of the range of his spit-rain and his anger, still babbling sorry, still with a frantically thumping heart. He grabs and yanks at my cane, just as my other, flailing hand manages to hit the side of my trolley. I scream. The twins scream. The cane, ripped away from my grip, clatters loudly onto the tiled floor. The crowds surge away from us, before they suddenly thicken, clumping into one mass that surrounds him, more than me. He growls something about me costing him… something-something interview? With… Tark? Tork? And I must… pay? Then… what? There’s too much of “Bitch” and “Fuck” thrown in, and the twins are still sobbing loudly in my ears. Worse, he has begun to advanced on me again, despite the struggle I can feel and faintly see him exerting against the other, clamouring strangers who are maybe trying to hold him back. With one hand flailing for the handle of the trolley and one leg doing the same for the cane, I retreat once more, clutching the crying children with my free arm. “I have no money!” I screech. Somewhat predictably, he snaps a sarcastic bark of laughter, followed by yet another barrage of curses. And then, suddenly, he surges forward and shoves me away. So down I go again, this time backwards, and crack my head goes on the tiled floor, hard, while all breath whooshes out of my lungs. I feel so, so dizzy, and nauseated, and humiliated, and like I’d just been exploded by something. Everything feels surreal. And then, things begin to trickle back in. The tiles are cool under my back. People – far more than just one – are yelling. – Are they yelling at me? Or about me? Or about a wholely unrelated person or matter? Perhaps that rude man who shoved me? What are these, squirming and yowling on my front? – Oh, the twins. …The twins…. `The twins!` – My heart pounds harsher on the realisation. `Is that madman still here? I must get the children and myself to safety. We’re not punching bags!` Laboriously, aided by a few pairs of hands whose owners are babbling concerned-sounding things at me, I sit up and scramble to my trolley. Everything hurts, especially the back of my head, and I feel both faint and oversensitive, but I can’t stop. We must get away. Thankfully, the madman seems to be gone already. Now I just need to muster some strength to push the trolley towards the exit, and hopefully, the twins won’t remember this horrible experience later on. Hopefully this will soon be just a nightmare for me, too: one that I can forget or even laugh about in the future. Well, a nightmare among other nightmares, but at least it’ll soon be just a patch of history… right? So I right myself and my cane up, give the heads of Niel and Lia a brief, shaky caress, And scream, again, when a large hand lands lightly on my shoulder from behind, where the kind strangers aren’t present. And, it turns out, the hand belongs to a man. “Hey, calm down, kid. It’s all right. Looks like you’ve just lost a catfight. What happened? Where are your parents?” The hand resting on my shoulder twitches, but the anger behind the soft, rumbling voice doesn’t seem to be aimed at me, so I relax a little. “No. No parents. – Who are you? I mean, your name? What’s your name? May I know your name?” I babble, even as I shrink away from this new stranger – yet another man. “Harold Hogan,” he says, and there’s an odd, ironic tilt to his voice when he adds, somehow almost humorously, “I’m here to rescue you.” I shake my head vigorously, uncaring of the blooming pain at the back of it. “I need to… go. Have to go. Go. Outside. To the city. Thank you, Mister Harold. Sorry, no. I must go.” I retreat further away from him, clutching the handle of the trolley with one hand and lifting up my newly retrieved cane in preparation to defend myself and my charges with the other. To think that I thought the nightmare was ending already, just now…. And then the man offers something that I find very, very hard to deny right away, even as he finally lets go of my shoulder: “At least sit down for a little while somewhere before you collapse back on the floor? You look like you’re about to faint.” Or at least it’s what I think he says – some of it, at any rate. Now that he has more to say, his words blur together faster, again, just like those spoken by the kind people before and just now. Not that I fully understand the things that I do think he says…. “I don’t know. Where to sit, I mean. I’m sorry. Can’t see. I mean I can’t see. I’m blind. Almost blind,” I respond to what I know, in the only – embarrassing – way that I can do it. “Night, too. Must go to city. Don’t know anything about city yet. Search hotel. My children sleepy. Not book hotel yet.” And then, I realise what I’ve just said. `Oh damn. Why did I say I’m new here? Forget telling him I’m practically blind in all senses of the word!`
09:3
0 PM
Mr. Harold Hogan, who said he prefers to be called Harry instead, guided me and my fussy charges to what felt like a minimarket, after exchanging concerned words with the crowd that helped me get free from the madman. It’s an expensive minimarket, in my – admitedly rather uninformed – opinion, which demanded five dollars for a tiny bottle of apple juice; and I had to buy three, for myself and the endlessly whimpering children that were still nestled in my arms. All the same, now, after a few minutes spent drinking the overpriced beverage and taking deep breaths, while perched on a steel bench outside of the minimarket with the twins seated to my either side, I don’t feel so shaky anymore. The substantially insufficient drink is worth the price, just for this. The undemanding companionship Mr. Harold – Mr. Harry – offers, as well. He hasn’t even asked for my name, all this time, just parking himself somewhere nearby on the bench, commiserating with me about the displeasure of long travels. He is somewhat distracted by something, maybe his mobile phone, but I find I can’t begrudge him that. Besides, the mild distraction causes him to speak slower in his responses, which is a boon to my yet-unaccustomed ears. Then the suspected cause of the distraction rings, and Mr. Harry moves away with a quick “Just a moment, Miss” thrown at me. “’Ntuk, Mi,” Niel whimpers plaintively the moment the virtual stranger vacates the bench, as he burrows deeper into my right side and plops his open, half-empty juice bottle – thankfully upright – on my lap. “’Sih lama ‘ga?” (`Sleepy, Mummy. We there ‘ready?`) My heart clenches on his address. – “Mami.” I asked the twins to call me that when I told them I was going to take care of them from then on as my own children, months ago; and, against my expectation, they readily agreed. It still feels fresh until now, regardless of how long it has been since the first time either of these little ones called me that. It still feels fake, too; a title that I haven’t earned in the least. I’m yet to behave truly motherly to these children, and I don’t yet feel motherly towards them, either, deep in my psyche. I have always been embroiled in my jobs and shepherding everyone younger than I am at home and, during these three months or so, preparations for coming here. I’ve always been too busy and tired to do anything special just between the three of us, except for distractedly supervising some private playtime and/or mealtime in random moments. Stress and exhaustion are cheap excuses for emotional distance that can all too swiftly be addicting, and definitely not mother material. So why in the world did I ask them to call me that? “Sabar ya,” I whisper to the little boy, while nuzzling the top of his head. (`Be patient, please.`) – An empty plea, not even an answer; but Niel seems to be contented with that, judging from how he wordlessly climbs onto my right thigh, claiming it for himself, right after I’ve plucked the bottle from his new perch and re-capped it. “Lia?” I check on the other twin, next. But the little girl just utters a soft, sleepy moan when I find her own bottle loosely gripped in her hands and pluck it away for storage. She doesn’t react when I shift her onto my other thigh. Already more than half asleep, then, poor baby. To think that I promised her and her brother that we’re going to sleep in a bed tonight…. There’s still time to fulfil that promise, though. So, without waiting for Mr. Harry, whose voice I can’t detect amidst the hubbub, I pack up the juice bottles – empty or not – in the nearest bag with enough space for them, re-lash the drowsy twins to my either side, then climb back to my feet. I’m already feeling better and less jittery, so there’s no more reason to stay here and torture these poor children more, with that. There’s no use waiting here for somebody who won’t ever come, either. That damn lying, cheating scholarship agency…. Before I can begin to direct the trolley to – hopefully – the exit gate, however, Mr. Harry calls out to me while trotting closer. I can only deduce “name” and “kid” from his barrage of words, and maybe “boss,” so I tell him, “My name is Cintosha Chandra Avandia. You can call me Ava. My children Nathaniel Christopher and Natalia Christina.” He’s long earned this courtesy from me, indeed, and even beyond that, although I don’t know how to repay his kindness more without hurting myself or the twins in the process. “Let’s go, then. Do you know where your hotel is? What’s its name?” he says, next, or at least it’s what I think he says in his distracted rambling. He helps me push and direct the trolley deftly and briskly from his place at the other side of the handle, meanwhile, which makes me suspect that his time of loitering with strangers like me is nearly or already at an end, signalled by that phone call he’s just received, since he usually let me direct the trolley myself before this. “No hotel yet,” I reiterate. “Internet at home bad; not very accessible, too. You know good cheap hotel?” Well, might as well plunge in. He already knows of my plan – or the general lack of it – and that I’m new here. “Ah, kid,” he sighs in response. A part of me bristles indignantly, being considered a trouble child, judging from his tone, but another part – the survivalist part, maybe – insists that I not correct him on the address and perception. Being considered a child has many downsides, but not a few upsides as well. I can only hope that this decision won’t backfire on me and my little tagalongs.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Saturday, 20th June 2009
02:40 AM
Within one moment and the next, I sit up with a start, eyes unseeing. This bed is too comfy. This room is too empty. Where am I? Where are the children? Why did I fall asleep with my feet on the floor? My bed is on the floor with no frame to hold it up away from it! What’s going on? What happened, for that matter? Why am I still wearing dayclothes? I was sleeping! But did I mean to go to bed? What did I dream just now, anyway? Surely it’s not a Ðéa-dream? This smells like a hotel room, and feels like one, just much too quiet. I rub at my eyes, clearing them from all the grit and cobwebs. But my eyesight doesn’t improve, even after my eyes are free of obstructions, and even after I have additionally cleaned them with a little bit of the mini bottled water I’ve just found by sheer luck on the long wooden counter – maybe? – across the bed. Messing with the touchscreen panel on one of the bedside tables does not cause the room to brighten, either. My heart plummets to somewhere beneath my socked feet, beneath the lush, squishy carpet. I shiver, but not because of the chill of the air conditioner running in this alien room. I can still see vague shapes, colours in dim spectrums, broad shades of light and shadow, but… but…. The shivers turn into shakes. My heartbeat picks up its tempo and vigour. That long time ago, the eye doctor who diagnosed me with weak optic nerves plus glaucoma and cataract warned that I was going to lose my eyesight at some point, sooner or later, measured in months and years rather than decades. She said that stresses could quicken the process. And I’ve been under a lot of stresses, quite recently, even more than years before. Plus there’s the enthusiastic meeting between the back of my head and some tiled floor at the airport, just last night. It’s not just some nightmare. The tender spot at the back of my head is a very real evidence of it. One of the places that the doctor warned never to suffer hard impacts, if I could help it, for the sake of my eyesight. It’s been fifteen years since that verdict was spoken, too, well beyond the count of “years.” My heart thumps faster, harder, rebelling on the conclusion my brain draws. Turning round and falling on my knees, I bury my face in the thick, soft, fluffy blanket covering the bed. Having my eyes closed and obstructed doesn’t differ much from having them open, now. Helplessness is an unpleasantly cold, clammy feeling all over my body, inside and out. I can – could – read with my own eyes. I did read aloud for others, including the twins, and the last time was a couple of days ago. I like – liked? No, like – to decipher handwritings. I like the sensation of writing with a pencil or a ballpoint pen then highlighting the words with various colours. I like colours. I like sketching and drawing things. I like bicycling. I like watching sun-touched sceneries for hours. I like to eternalise that kind of scenery with the camera I spent years saving for. I like to watch and play with bath toys bobbing on the wavy, chlorine-tinged water of a swimming-poolr, especially when I have company. My super-thick, magnifying spectacles helped me a lot; and even now, it sits in my pocket, digging into my right hip, ready to be used at a moment’s notice. But they can’t be used any longer, no doubt; not by me, at any rate. Wearing these specs won’t return me my eyesight. I mightn’t even be able to see – see, really see – Ðéa again, should we meet. And with that bitter realisation, sobs break free from my strangled throat.
07:20 AM
“Hey, kid, did you–? Oh.” Mr. Harry knocked at the door, asking if I and “the littler kids” wanted to get some breakfast downstairs. Now he gawks at me, freezing at the door after I’ve opened it for him. Well, not surprising, that. I must look a sight to him, with swollen eyes, rumpled clothes worn since early Thursday morning, and a woebegone look on my face. “Are you…. What’s wrong?” Mr. Harry remains at the door, even though I’ve retreated to the bed, not so far away. He only comes in when I beckon at him, and takes a seat at the lone chair set at the desk across the door instead of on the bed beside me. So polite and considerate. I’m truly fortunate that I met him – or rather, he encountered me – yesterday night, or things might’ve gone worse than before, than now. He somehow got permission from his – very rich, no doubt, and very generous – boss to help me find a hotel to sleep in for the night, since I wouldn’t be able to travel to Malibu so late and in such exhaustion. I think I even met the boss, briefly, or maybe even rode with him to the hotel, but I can’t trust the fuzzy, choppy memory I retain from the last leg of last night. And now he’s asking me what’s wrong with me. I really, really owe him this much – and even more – don’t I? After all, somehow, in some way, he also managed to get me an overnight stay at one of the two smaller bedrooms in the suite rented by his boss, didn’t he? When my a-quarter-awake self was fussing with room prices, having just been woken up at the end of the car-ride? So, after a deep breath, regardless of my stammering English, regardless of the fact that he is yet a virtual stranger to me, I tell Mr. Harry everything: the scholarship and the absent agency’s representative, my congenital and growing visual impairment, my occasionally weak ankles that seems to get increasingly worse these days, my fears of how I’ll function and work and care for the twins if I go totally blind before my studies are finished, my not-so-good English skills…. My eyes have gone leaky again by the end of the rambling confession, my face is buried in my hands, and there’s a warm body pressed flush against my side, with an arm thrown over my shoulders. Mr. Harry says nothing, to my endless gratitude, and the twins haven’t stirred either on the bed behind us. Better yet, the man, briefly leaving my side, then proffers the mini bottled water to me, the one that I ironically tried to use to ‘revive’ my eyesight before he came. “I’m sorry,” I blubber, after a short glug of the water. “Thank you. I’m… I’m….” But what can I say? My mind feels empty and numb, now, after reopening those wounds. The water bottle crunches in my tightened grip. I should’ve obeyed every instinct not to persist to come here. I wish I listened to Logi and did something else to escape Mami’s pushiness about me attaining my master’s degree. I wish I could hate that angry stranger who helped clinch my new reality, too. But as it is, I just feel so, so, so exhausted with everything. “I…,” I stutter, take several deep breaths, wipe my free hand across my wet face. “I… I’m sorry,” I try again, in my most level voice. “I cannot. You will embarrass. I mean, I’m like this. People maybe think something… things…. I embarrass – I’m… embarrassing.” Mr. Harry chuckles, but I can’t detect any mockery or cynicism in his voice. “Believe me,” he says, in a clear, slow voice that nonetheless doesn’t seem condescending, “my boss can be way worse than you in public. I’m used to it.” A tired, dispirited huff of laughter tears itself out of my abused throat. “Oh,” I say, with my face once more being cradled by my hands, “I remember. How much, this room, last night? Must pay. Car travel too. This so nice. Too nice. Can pay little by little? Could you, ask your boss? I don’t want debt.” He squeezes me closer briefly, and there’s a smile in his voice when he says, “My boss has many faults, but a miser and a bad man isn’t any of those. Don’t worry about it, kid. Just worry about the littler kids and yourself. It’s already more than enough.” More than enough. I agree with him. But still. “Must pay you, and your boss too, some way.” “Eh,” he shrugs, with one arm still loosely slung round my shoulders, “just don’t give up on your dreams and those babies. They need you.” Then, after a contemplative pause, he adds a little hesitantly, “It’d be nice, too, if I knew you’re safe – all of you. Got a lil sis bit older than you. You remind me much of her; and if I was your brother, I’d like to know my sister’s safe, too. – Your scholarship agency seemed….” Mr. Harry doesn’t pick up his words again, even after some time spent in companionable, only semi-awkward silence. But he needn’t, indeed. I can very well fill in the blanks myself. My chest clenches. I try to distract myself, by coaxing the twins into sleepy wakefulness, by introducing them to a half-enthusiastic Mr. Harry, by taking a thorough – if hurried – shower for myself and my half-awake charges, by discussing the cheapest lodging plans available in Malibu with Mr. Harry, by shepherding the all-too-energetic Niel and Lia – having been woken up thoroughly by the warm water and the not-so-long trek to the breakfast hall – through a meal of all available dishes shared in little bites; and still, Mr. Harry’s unspoken words ring in my head and haunt me like a persistent, malevolent ghost. What’ll the scholarship agency pull, next time?
10:10 AM
I jolt away from my brooding mood and my mobile phone when, through the open door of the bedroom, an unknown man appears and yells, “Ooooooh! The lost lambs!” Lia, who has been trying to scale my back to my shoulders, falls back onto the bed behind us with a startled squeak. Meanwhile, Niel, curious as ever with people, scampers across the carpeted floor from the bedside table that holds the room’s landline phone towards the stranger. With a squeak that nearly matches Lia’s, I toss the phone away, mid-texting to my mother – in hope that she’ll spread the news to our entire extended family, and also whichever family friends she cares to notify – to report my own little family’s safe arrival in America. Diving forward, I fumble on thin air for a second before my flailing hands – mostly by luck – manage to catch Niel round the waist. “Niel! Jangan suka begitu, nak,” I scold him half-heartedly through the frantic heartbeat that feels like pounding in my throat, as I draw him close to me. (`Niel! Stop that habit of yours, child!`) The little boy wriggles and whinges in my tight hold. Watching from the open door, the stranger chuckles mischievously. The sound gets fainter as the said stranger moves away to the other smaller bedroom next door and… gives an order to Mr. Harry? Oh. Oh. Oh. It’s the boss! A bratty boss, for certain, but one who let a total stranger room in his excess space for the night without any dangerous ulterior motive – any that I could detect or have experienced, anyhow. Well, then again, which boss isn’t bratty at some point or in a way? I certainly got ample experience in it from my various employments, which began as an occasional stint in primary school. And this one isn’t as bratty as many out there, I know that. Sighing in response to the situation and my own digressing train of thought, I drag Niel onto my lap and cuddle him, telling him in a whisper not to stray from me since my eyesight has gotten worse and I can’t keep him safe if he’s out of my reach. He shakes his head to that. His words, delivered in an innocent, earnest tone, chills me to the marrow: “’Tu kan Oom Tony, Mamiii. ‘Nti ‘mana-mana ba’eng.” (`Dat’s Uncah Tony, Mummyyy, doncha know dat? We’ll go v’rywhere widdim.`) Neither of the twins woke up during the car-ride and room check-in last night, as far as I was aware, and they were never out of my hearing’s reach this morning, even when I was taking a shower. There was no mention of an Uncle Tony anywhere during all that, and I don’t even know who “Tony” is! So how did Niel know before me? I really, really, really don’t need this complication on top of everything else. So, swallowing hard, I choose to ignore it and instead ask Niel to be wary anyway, before I release him to play trampoline on the bed with his sister – a luxury that I won’t encourage on our own beds, whenever we’ll get them. And still, I can feel his stare on my back as I root round the carpet for the whereabout of my discarded mobile phone, even though I can hear him busy squealing and chattering with Lia.
01:20 PM
The bus speeds and sways, sometimes jerking and trundling on some uneven patches. Faintly citrus-flavoured wafts of cool air, all artificial, dull the heat radiating from outside the large windows and briefly shun the smell of sunkissed everything from my nostrils. The blinding light of afternoon sun, however, remains, since the twins love to watch the passing scenery whenever we’re in a ride, and so the deep-green curtain on the huge window beside my seat has been tied back. The seating itself is rather cramped, especially with everybody toting smallish cabin luggage of some sort, whether plenty or few, and with both of the twins perched on my lap like this, but the seats are generously padded, regardless. To my limited experience of public transport even in my own country, all these make it a rather fancy affair for an apparently pretty common public commuter transportation for a comparably short distance – between Santa Monica and Malibu. We’ve been some time into this supposedly hour-long trip to the bus stop nearest the hotel that Mr. Harry has helped me book a room for until next Monday. Mr. Harry himself, who happens to be travelling in the same direction after driving his boss to the airport, is seated beside me, on the lane-side of the double seat we’re ensconced in, shoulder to shoulder with me – or rather, shoulder to ribs, since he’s tall – and not uttering a peep. He seems to be pretty busy with his phone, nonetheless, judging by the quiet beeps, bleeps and chirps it’s been emitting thus far, almost constantly. Keeping silent for the whole ride isn’t good for my chances of staying sane – away from my dark thoughts – and forming a good acquaintanceship – or maybe, even, friendship – on the side in this alien new world, though, is it. So, at last, I pipe up, “Do you live here, Mister Harry? I mean, in Malibu.” “Yes,” Mr. Harry rumbles in reply. Short, but not curt or impatient. I’m encouraged. “Where do you work?” – I want to say, “Can I work there, too, during my holidays from uni?” but wariness holds me back. – Many foreigners, especially female, are trapped into human trafficking in that way, or so the news programmes sometimes say. I shan’t be included in that number! Nor will these little children who have been babbling intermittently to each other in a murmur on my lap, for that matter. Mr. Harry shifts a little, putting away something – maybe the phone he’s been busy with? – before turning his head to me, judging from the direction of his voice and the shift of the shadowy shapes beside me.“Stark Industries, from Stark International,” he says, still without reservations it seems. “Stark University is a rather new addition to the ranks. It belongs directly to Stark International, though, naturally, not Stark Industries. – And just call me Harry, please, not Mister Harry. I’m not that old yet, you know.” “Oh?” I raise my eyebrows, interested. “What is – are – there beside that – those, I mean – ehh, no, that, right? I assume Stark Industries are – is? – like… child company, or something, of Stark International? I mean, what else, I guess, beside Stark University, and what are in that other one? Stark Industries? Umm, and, sorry, for calling you Mister Harry. Want to be polite, just that.” We’re getting into a conversation, at last! But this bloody language barrier won’t let me be! Thankfully, Mr. Harry doesn’t seem to mind my bad English, just like before. “Oh, some,” he chuckles. “Stark Weapons, for one.” He pauses, but I just nod my head for him to hopefully continue, clueless to what he is talking about and intrigued to find out more; relieved, as well, that I am no longer alone with my fretful thoughts of… well, everything, from his childish boss to what am I going to do if BBN has really stranded me and my little tagalongs here. But then, “Do you know Tony Stark?” Mr. Harry abruptly asks, after a sudden pause. I shake my head. “No. Must I – I mean, should I know?” – Is “Tony Stark” related to the Uncle Tony Niel talked about? Or Mister Harry’s – no, Harry’s – boss? But there must be millions of people named “Tony” out there. What’s special about “Tony Stark,” anyway? Harry snorts, sounding amused. “Nah,” he grins. There’s an inside joke there somewhere, I know, but he doesn’t seem to mock me by it, so I let it just be, not digging further. “Tell me more? Stark Weapons is in Stark Industries, right?” I prompt him, smiling. And for once, maybe because the short, easy phrasing, or maybe because we’ve been a while into this conversation with me being active in it, the words feel more natural and fluid on my tongue. The next bits that spew forth from my mouth, though, put the illusion of competence to rest. “You said ‘for one’. What is the two? I mean, second – the second company, other than weapon? If you can tell me, though.” I’m beginning to resign myself to sounding like a total idiot. I still stumble the longer I talk. But exercising one’s language skills is like exercising muscles, isn’t it? I’ve long known that, given how my various relatives and friends tried to teach me their respective mother tongues and cultures. So, given how little I’ve used my English speaking skills thus far, I guess I’d better be grateful that I’m still more or less understandable in the first place. Well, and that this particular conversation partner of mine seems to have the patience of a giraffe calmly chewing on young leaves on treetops, of course. He talks, and talks, and talks, still in the slow, clear pronunciation that he uses when talking with me after I asked it of him early this morning, and I listen: about the divisions under Stark Industries: about Stark Weapons, about Stark Communications, about Stark Energies, about Starkware, about Stark Mobile. Then he moves to talking – more briefly – about the divisions under Stark International other than Stark Industries and Stark University, hence about Stark Foundation and Stark Grants and the Stark Exposition for Science and Technology. He even talks briefly about his job as a driver for Stark Industries, to which his boss belongs to. He seems so happy with his job, in his own bland way: contented, satisfied, even fond. The siren call for me to ask – beg, even – for a chance to work in that conglomerate has ratchetted quite a few notches at the end of his long, informative narration, during which I have also won several thumb-wrestling matches with the increasingly bored Lia and Niel. `Patience, patience,` I tell myself, then ask my own questions to various details that Harry has expounded about. `Have to make sure everything’s fine first. Have to. But it’s not like I’ve got glowing credentials here, anyway; I don’t even have a work permit! Do they accept part-time jobs done by a newbie at uni? Got the twins to think about, too, don’t i.` And he answers. And we talk. Unfortunately, the twins choose a very ‘good’ time to whinge for my attention, asking me to retell my unconventional first meeting with Logi, one of my constant friends growing up aside from Ðéa, Kak Nessa, her little sister Kak Nina, and my little siblings.
02:10 PM
The main space of the hotel room Harry speedily booked for me late this morning is small and rather cramped. It’s barely enough for a somewhat crieky, somewhat weathered, tough, small double bed placed to the left going in past the bathroom, set against the opposite wall, furnished with a couple of standard pillows and a thick, fuzball-riddled duvet. It’s flanked by a pair of bedside tables with bare tops, each of which has a narrow drawer beneath the top, with one containing what might be the menus of room service and the other a pocket notebook and a pencil. A small desk plus its accompanying stool are nestled on the corner opposite the front door, with a row of electric outlets set on the wall it’s facing, which is opposite the bed. Beside it, running along the right wall perpendicular to the front door going in, is a low, narrow dresser which stretches directly opposite the bed beneath a hanging, rather small flat-screened television set. The tiny, compact bathroom whose wall runs beside the bed opens its door to a small, simple wardrobe closet across the hallway to the front door, making the closet stand beside the other side of the dresser. It’s tiny for a hotel room, maybe, yet so large in my perception. Usually I spent holiday trips with at least eleven people crammed into one room – my parents and us, their nine children. At home, I sleep alongside all my siblings, too, in what would have been the master bedroom – the parents’ bedroom – elsewhere. Now the occupants will be just me and a pair of three-year-old twins – who are even now running all over the bed, thankfully after I’ve wrestled their shoes off. “I…. Thanks, erh, Harry. You help me, much.” I fidget with the hem of my T-shirt, as the tall man and I cluster on the narrow hallway leading to the front door, flanked by the doors of the wardrobe and the bathroom. A large, strong hand lands on my tense shoulder and squeezes it warmly. “You’re quite welcome, kid,” comes the equally warm reply. “Now, I must be there for my boss at the airport, soonish, n’wanna see my lil sis ‘fore that if I can. You gonna be all right here?” I give him a somewhat jerky nod. “Let the children say good bye to you?” He squeezes my shoulder again, before letting his hand fall. “Sure. N’you may wanna bring the kids to the mall later. There’s a few rentable trampolines there. They seem to like playing trampoline on the bed so much. It’ll be safer there, too.” I laugh. But inside, I wince. “Don’t tell them?” I beg him, even as I pad away to the bed to gather up the twins. “My wallet thin!” He laughs in turn, teasingly. I huff at his humour on my expense, but ignore it otherwise to call the children to me to say farewell to our new friend. However, after the little ones have given him a good-bye hug, as we’re all gathered just beyond the door, the air becomes somewhat awkward again. “Sorry, bothering you. But, umm, can I – might I? Get your number – your phone number? If you would? Let me, I mean? Just… to talk, for talking. I like talking with you. If you would? I’m sorry, if I rude or something. I just…. You tell me – told me – you want to know… how I am – how we are. Do you want, still? Do you still want…? – This place, everything, so new to me. I know only you here. Want to know your sister too if she want. Then….” “Gi’m.” Harry suddenly snaps his fingers three times near my waistbag, which rarely leaves my person since Thursday and contains all the necessary things including my mobile phone. “Oh,” I mutter dumbly, reeling, figuratively screeching to a stop. It takes me an embarrassing, long handful of seconds to process his abrupt request, then oblige it. Mutely, I nod when, finished with inputting his number into the phone, he insists that I contact him if I’ve got any question about Malibu in general or a particular place in it, or if I need help about the children, “Or anything else, really.” He only folds my phone into my hand when I verbally agree. I feel like a kindergartener being lectured by her elder. Still, something, moved by his concern and consideration towards me and my little charges, bulldozes through the awkwardness of both the moment and the topic, and I blurt out, with cheeks burning, “Would you like to be my friend?” In moments like this, I’m happy I’m now nearly totally blind. As it is, I am glad, too, that I’m way shorter than he is. The top of my head barely reaches his shoulder; so, currently, I’m staring at his chest, putting no effort to make as if I were looking right at him. I have never asked anybody this. Classmates, colleagues and peers – they’re all automatically acquaintances to me, friendly, and friends for whatever length of time I manage to maintain contact with them. Even Logi, my friend outside of family, school and work, asked for my friendship first, during the last night of my lower secondary school’s farewell camping trip. But now that I’m in a completely foreign country and situation, that there’s nothing tying me and Harry together but his surprising kindness and care and the fact that we were travelling at roughly the same direction these two times, I’m desperate for some acknowledgement of something more than distant acquaintanceship that’s just a step up from “total stranger.” I only wish the words wouldn’t sound and feel so childish, insecure, raw, even to my ears. I can only hope that– “I wouldn’t give my number to you and keep an eye on you if I didn’t care, y’know. Want a pinky swear for that? I think Jenny did that with her friends. She’s my lil sis, by the way. I’ll definitely talk about you to her. Who knows, she might wanna contact you herself.” –Oh. Oh. “Thank you,” I repeat, more fervently than before, with a semi-histerical laugh bubbling in my throat. “No need pinky swear. So girly. Childish. Nice though. Not meaning Jenny childish! But thank you for… everything.” Still not raising my eyes to meet his, I switch the phone to my left hand and stretch out my right for a handshake. “Friend?” Harry drags me into a bear hug instead, with his left arm round my back and his right arm round the back of my neck, pressing my face into his chest. I feel truly like a child, with this bear hug, but for once I don’t mind it. I regret not returning Harry’s hug before it’s too late, though. I face the narrow, Harry-less hallway blankly for a long time, even after the echoing sound of his quick footfalls on the outside hallway tiles has faded, clutching my phone in one hand and the hands of the twins with the other, all as if to a lifeline.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Sunday, 21st June 2009
02:27 AM
I wake up far too early again. The world remains a mess of blurry shapes and colours, unfortunately; worse now that my eyes are yet barely adjusted to wakefulness. A trip to the bathroom revives me a little bit, but sadly doesn’t make the alienness of my new reality go away. The discomfiture of seeing just shadows of shapes and dim translucent light instead of the full thing remains a roiling, slithering mass in my chest and a terrible itch just beneath my skin.
08:30 AM
It’s a pattern by now, started yesterday morning: breakfast in the hall, followed by smuggling titbits off the sideboards into paper napkins, finished with picking up breakfast bags from the receptionist counter. Harry isn’t with us today, though, unlike yesterday. The twins asked about him, wondering if he’d join us, just before we got out of our hotel room for the daily ‘foraging’ of food, which will have to last till nightfall, just like yesterday. They even asked me to call him, and I managed to dodge that only by saying, “Oom Harry lagi kerja, nak.” (`Uncle Harry is working, children.`) But right now, as we’re trying to settle down back in our room, a text message pops up on my phone, and it turns out to be from Harry. As Lia has somehow predicted, minutes before.
From: Harry HoganText: Kid, you awake? Sorry to bother you. But well I know I’m bothering you, yes. :P Tony got me up at an ungodly hour, after we returned from his party AT 2 LAST NIGHT. Got to eat finger food the whole night and couldn’t even get drunk to forget that horrible unmanly meal coz I was working. Goody. Don’t get drunk though! Won’t bail you out of jail if you get caught by the police. Now was that Chinese restaurant any good? Good portion at least? Did the littler kids bother you too much? Did you get much trouble going places with your age and toddlers in tow?
I give the phone – and by extention, the page of the text still open on it – a frown. The two of us – Harry and I – chatted about various things after he left me here last afternoon, all by text message. The topics ranged from the general layout of USA to what’s there in this hotel and its surroundings, from jokes to several somewhat personal questions and anecdotes such as our jobs and little siblings – the latter of which he only has one: a little sister by far by the name of Jenny, the one that he talked about briefly before he left me here. My phone balance has gotten worryingly low for my projected triangulation of time and need and just-in-case by now, because of that, but I couldn’t help it. I really, really, really needed to know that I wasn’t totally alone out here, caring for a pair of little children at that. I still need it very much, really. We never – directly, at least – asked each other about what we had just been doing, however. This makes our friendship ramp up to a new level, doesn’t it, in the western standard? But isn’t it too fast for such a new thing? At least that’s what I got from all those websites about types of relationships all round the world, and also from people’s anecdotes about their friends. Won’t a friendship crash fast, too, if it’s built too quickly like this? I really, really, really don’t want that! But if I try to let it stay in the brand-new-buddy zone, will Harry think I am too aloof or secretive? Will he think I’m too open too fast, too desperate for company despite the fact of it, if I initiate something new from my end? What’s the thing about “Tony,” anyway? Niel mentioned an “Oom Tony.” Harry mentioned a “Tony Stark” that might be a popular public figure out here. And now he also mentioned a “Tony” that’s maybe his boss and maybe his friend… or maybe both, in some strange way – a type of friendship that I’ve never known before, if it’s true. Again, are these four “Tony”’s related? Are they the same individual? Or two different individuals, maybe – Uncle Tony that’s also Harry’s friend, and Tony Stark that’s also Harry’s boss? Harry never mentioned a friend named Tony in his messages yesterday, though…. And what’s that about regarding me as a kid? I’m bloody twenty-one years old! Well… nearly… but still! Can’t Harry and his boss see that? But then again, even the hotel staff who helped me and the children navigate the breakfast hall pretty recently asked if we were going to be all right alone like this; or, if not, they could help us contact “Cousin Harry.” Hmph. One of the twins slips into my lap just as my frown turns into a scowl, remembering that breakfast incident. It turns out to be Lia, judging from the voice when the said twin pipes up, “Oom Harry ‘napa, ‘Mi? Ga bisa dateng ya?” (`S’rong wiff Uncle Harry, Mummy? Can’t come, huh?`) My eyes widen, losing the scowl. – How does she know that it’s Harry who’s just texted me? I never talked with either or both of the twins about his messages to me – even yesterday, when there were a whole bunch of those! My hair stands on end. But I force my tone to remain light when, dodging her question, I ask her to please go play with her brother, and I’ll see about inviting Harry if he’s not working, either this afternoon or tonight. And then, while absent-mindedly keeping an ear on the twins’ toy car race, whose track spans the bed and the two bedside tables, and whose obstacles include the pillows and my – closed – laptop, my chat session with Harry begins for the day, with all caution about acceptable questions and diminishing phone balance resignedly thrown to the figurative wind.
To: Harry HoganText: You are lucky. I have been awake since 02:30 AM. I wonder what Jenny would do to you if you woke her up early because you were woken up early. ;) I am
not a child, btw! What I said was right. I’m 21
years old.
From: Harry HoganText: Well I just won’t tell you will I? Don’t wanna give you ideas after all. :P At any rate people know well that misery loves company. And I’m happy to spread my misery early in the morning after a 2
hour sleep. Speaking of which though why didn’t you use the time to sleep as much as possible to get rid of the jetlag
? Was joking about waking you up just to chat you know. Could always delay replying till the afternoon if that’s when you wake up. Or is there anything wronger with your eyes or the littler kids
? Could steal some time to visit
if you want some company. Could bring Jenny with me to keep you company for the day too. She’s free today and seemed interested when I talked about you.
I laugh a little wetly. `Cheeky, overgrown prat. And why does he avoid talking about my age? Damn prat.`
To: Harry HoganText: If you’re happy to spread misery so early in the morning, then I’m jenious to do the same in days randomly, or maybe prank you. Nothing wronger
with my eyes or the kids
, btw.
…No, not my eyes, just my situation, and my future prospects, and my pride….
From: Harry HoganText: Whoa! You Jenny in disguise? O_o
To: Harry HoganText: Hmm. I could join Jenny to beat you… Good idea. :D
From: Harry HoganText: Whoa! Hey! One Jenny is more than enough!
To: Harry HoganText: I wonder what she would say if she saw this message…
From: Harry HoganText: Nothing to see here. Move along, move along. This is not the Harry you are looking for. Delete delete delete
To: Harry HoganText: Your password is incorrect. The action cannot be excecuted.
From: Harry HoganText: Peanut butter? Jelly sandwich? Chocolate cookies? Vanilla ice cream?
To: Harry HoganText: This computer need a password, sir, not messy food.
From: Harry HoganText: Coca-Cola? Sparkling cider
? Orange squash? Oolong tea? You drank oolong tea last night at the restaurant? Or maybe green tea? Jasmine tea? Now I really got the urge to haunt some Chinese restaurant…
To: Harry HoganText: This computer need a password, sir, not drink list. :D
From: Harry HoganText: So tell me the password Ms Computer.
To: Harry HoganText: The password is: “Sorry I wake you up so early this morning and I will not repeat it again when not important.” :P
From: Harry HoganText: I did say sorry! And you said you’d been awake since too early O’clock. Well the password is too long too. I’m in danger of forgetting it. In fact I’m forgetting it right this second. Now I need to go drive a car for a world class sulker so bye bye!
I give Harry the character rendition of a tongue-sticking-out emoticon as the answer, before escaping the messaging page, locking the phone up, and stowing it on the desk, far out of the range of the still-ongoing bed-top car race. Well, damn, I forgot to confront him about claiming to the hotel staff that he’s my cousin. Never knew such a big, honest-seeming, prim-and-proper-seeming guy could be this slippery…. I give the thought a shake of the head; and then, to hopefully forget the torture my stomach is dishing out on me, I dive into the race on the cheer of my little ones, with my own favourite jeep – with its body painted neon blue and its wheels coloured lurid pink.
01:20 PM
An unknown number sent me a rain of text messages, claiming itself – himself? Herself? Themself? – as “Tony,” Harry’s friend, although Harry’s mentioned as “Happy,” not “Harry,” there. And that person, right away, claimed familiarity and boredom, as if we’d been speaking with each other for a long time already. This is a very, very unwelcome, unnerving development. I’ve tried to ignore it. But the message downpour won’t stop, and my phone balance, set on abroad mode like this, with half of the messaging fee burdened on me as the recipient, won’t survive the drain; not after the hit it took from my conversation with Harry yesterday and this morning. Worse, many of the messages are variations of:Heeeeeey u ther??????andIm boooooored!!! Useless, uselessly often repeated, and… well… Now I find that I hate chatspeak, when I must depend so much on a text-to-speech application like this. It ruins the pronunciation of the screen reader of the mobile phone, forcing me to spell the message letter by letter and wait for the audio output to read those for me each time. It’s always reminding me that I have to rely on screen readers on my mobile phone and computer, now, instead of my own two eyes, and I hate it even more than the tideousness of letter-by-letter spelling. To top it all, forget responding to the barrage; by the time I’m finished with reading one message, at least three others have arrived, from the same person at that. Even worse, maybe picking up my potentially dangerous misery and not knowing how to alleviate it, the twins fret and whinge. There’s no napping for them, and no playing either. They keep clinging to my homeclothes – soft, baggy, thin shorts and an equally soft, even-baggier, even-comfier T-shirt – wherever I go. And my phone keeps ringing its text message alert. Giving up at last, I lay myself on the bed, with my head turned a little to the side to avoid pressing on the tender bump on the back of it from two days ago. Lia quickly scrambles to my left, worming herself into my arms, and Niel, having no other option, parks himself on my right, clinging to my back. I send a plea home for a speedy top-up on my phone balance. Then, it’s time to send back a message to the unknown number.
To: TonyText: Write good English, please. My screen reader cannot read your text well. How do you get this phone number anyway? Then please don’t send so many messages. The money in my phone is limited. More message mean less money. I need the money in the phone for emergency call.
And “Tony” – instead of the requested top-up of phone balance from home – answers, right away, in ten separate messages.
From: TonyText: So booooooring. I dunneed a second Pepper!
From: TonyText: A blind huh? Well you can help me test some new prototype programs for their accessibility
then! Wanna wanna wanna? Good pocket money ahead! Can even fork out some of the pay to put money in your phone as you said it.
Y
ou strange girl.
From: TonyText: No telling Happy I got your number! He’d be a most un-Happy critter if he knew. Pity me! (I capitalized the H in Happy if you didn’t know. Clever huh?) I’m writing good English! See? (Not see with your eyes I know! Don’t be mad at me okay?) I’m just soooo boooooored.
From: TonyText: Got ideas for accessible toys? You could ask the littler kids for ideas too. You can invite me to play then. Promise I’ll behave!
From: TonyText: In fact can I come? Please please please please please please. It’s so boooooring here. Will behave I swear! Can bring the 3 of you some donuts or burgers or both or whatever please let me come? You felt like good company and here it’s all baaaaad.
From: TonyText: Ooooooo. I wanna cheese burgers! You like cheese burgers? Wanna some? Get me and we can party on cheese burgers!
From: TonyText: Don’t tell Pep I’m bailing out of the meeting though!
From: TonyText: I’m surrounded by old booooooring people with old booooooring arguments. Save me!
From: TonyText: Please can I come? I’ll come anyway if you don’t reply in the next minute! This machine needs some cooling down before it explodes! Else I’ll just hit the bar HARD and Pep’ll be doubly mad at me. I put the hard word in all capitals by the way so I really mean it.
From: TonyText: Come ooooon. More pocket money for you if you don’t tell Haps. Don’t tell Peps either! She’s *WORSE*!
This “Tony” is like a leaky tap that’s too stubborn to be plugged! They’re a creepy leaky tap, at that. I can’t decide whether Tony is a rich teenage brat, a genius five-year-old with ADHD and/or autism, a mafia boss with the fettish of acting like a boy, a lonely child trying to act brave and confident and outgoing, a creepy sexually disordered stalker of random people who is applying a new strategy to a new victim, or maybe a genius-professor type who is deeply attuned with their inner child and has long forgotten about how to interact socially… not that I myself am any good with social interactions, though, really. But still. And who’s “Happy”? Or “Pepper,” really? Codenames? Are “Haps” and “Peps” variations of those?
To: TonyText: I’m sorry. I don’t know you. How can you know me? I am not a programer, too. I don’t know how to help you. How do you know there are children here? We are taking a nap. I’m sorry. My phone money is nearly empty. I maybe cannot answer your messages if you send me so many messages. Half of the fee per message is paid by the reciver. I have told
you. I need some money in phone for emergency call. I can’t do that if it’s empty. I don’t know who is Happy or Pepper too.
Fourteen messages appear on my phone’s inbox as the response.
From: TonyText: Sending you some selphone balance. Making you a mobile bank account. Those are what you meant with that bit about money in phone right? Now can I come there? Please please please please please?
From: TonyText: Saw your name at the college. Is Avandia your last name? Sounds like a first name. Why language studies? Boooooring. Can I enroll you in IT too as a double degree? It’s my college so I know well it’s got good IT program. Not the best yet but it’s still a new college!
From: TonyText: Why Chandra? Researched it. It’s a god’s name. Male. Huh.
You round like a full moon when you’re born
? But you aren’t
pimply like the surface of the moon.
Can I call you Chan-Chan? I’ll call you Chan-Chan! You Indian? (Asian Indian I mean. Stupid Columbus.) Do your family call you Chanayah or something like that? Do you even still have family? I don’t and I don’t mind so don’t be mad at me okay?
From: TonyText: What’s Cintosha? Sounds like a Russian name but it’s not. I checked. Is that an acronym? Ooooh. Neat! Want me to call you Tosha instead? But Chan-Chan’s better so maybe not.
From: TonyText: Golfing is boooooooring! Save me!
From: TonyText: The littler kids might like the golf car. Or maybe just run around the field. At least it’ll be of some entertainment.
From: TonyText: Haps said the kiddies like the trampoline. Let’s meet up at the mall if you don’t want me to come there. Those little monkeys will go jumping around for HOURS!
From: TonyText: I swear I’m NOT a perv. Just save me from these horrible chit-chats pleaseeeeee. Let’s meet up at the mall or at the beach or wherever.
From: TonyText: You can tell Haps but don’t tell Peps! I just need somewhere awaaaay from here.
From: TonyText: Hap’ll understand. Pep won’t.
From: TonyText: Will send you some McD. Saw good car and doll Happy Meal there. Or you wanna some other? Talk to me at least!
From: TonyText: You got the notifications for celphone balance and that mobile account yet? Look! That’s one good distraction there so thank you.
From: TonyText: Better yet if you invite me to your fun. I need some fuuuun! But not the fun I usually have with girls! Promise you I’m not a perv! Promise I’ll just sit all quiet!
From: TonyText: Snicker snicker snicker that oily oily oily man thinks I’m closing a deal with him. Nope I’m checking in with the bank for that mobile account.
Uh. Note to self: ask Harry how to get cheaper phone plan here, right after this. – It’ll be too late if I must send yet another begging message for someone to top up my phone balance from home! And what’s this with Tony sending me some phone balance? How? I didn’t ask them to, for that matter! I just asked them to please stop! And what of that mobile bank account they keep talking about? Did this unknown person hack into my personal information at Stark Uni? How did they know I’m enrolled at Stark Uni? And… erm… visiting me…?! Meeting up…?! Heh. Second note to self… get “Tony” to really shut up. They’re really creeping me out! Still, they could be a potential friend, from afar; if only I know who the friends are and can be sure that they are not stalkers or casual phone tappers… or even worse. Logi could help… I think. They claimed they’re a rather good judge of character, even by looking at a photograph of a person’s face. But I haven’t even met this “Tony” yet! How could I send Logi the photo if I haven’t even met the target yet? But inviting that creepy, chattery stalker here – to my hotel room – would make the precaution a moot point, wouldn’t it, even if by doing that I might get the photo Logi requires for their divining? I sigh, and give Tony my curtest-possible reply, one for all those messages, while the twins snuggle deeper into my either side, seeming to be deeply asleep at long last, on their own at that.
To: TonyText: I ask my mum to send me money in phone so I can call and sms people. If it’s phone balance then yes it’s right, but don’t send me that. I get it from my parents from my money that I left at home. Thank you. But if you send messages continously then I have no more money to get phone balance. No need bank account. Don’t have mobil bank account and don’t plan having that too. Already have usual bank account. Already enough. Like creative writing/geographie/antrophology
/education but no those
in scholarship so I choose next choice after those
. No very little about tecnology so I don’t think I’ll go to IT. No last name. Avandia is third name. How you know my name and university and twins? Please don’t look. It’s private right? I think western people like private. Eastern people are more open but not open like
this. I don’t know you yet. I know Harry but not long yet. Is he whom you call Happy or Haps? I don’t know if you are male or female too. Some girls are called Tony right?
And, in response, Tony sends me thirty-two messages, including the verbose denial that he is a girl.
Monday, 22nd June 2009
04:01 AM
“Tony” turned out to be the man who gave me and my charges a ride and an overnight stay in his hotel suite when we firstly arrived in the United States. Harry’s boss, in other words. All the prior generocity was not for free, apparently, as I had firstly assumed, judging from how he’s been keeping me awake intermittently all through the night with his messages. No longer wheedling for a visit in my hotel room or a “friend-date” somewhere in the city, he’s shifted gears, so to say, and he’s been spending yesterday until now talking about his technological ideas, mine, and… well, other things, most likely – things that I’ve been too sleepy and miserable to remember, let alone contemplate. But then, can I really count this strong-armed, intrusive acquaintanceship as payment for those favours? After all, despite the hundreds of messages we’ve exchanged with each other, which have been contributed mostly by the prat, my phone balance has never run out, and he promised me he’s sending some balance to my mobile phone. I’ve never actually gotten the chance to check the balance, busy taking care of the twins and texting, forget trying to sleep, but still. And now the poor mobile phone is vibrating its text message alert again in my hands – one, two, three, four, five… thirteen times – when I’ve barely finished replying to the previous seven messages in one. `Damn you, Tony. When do you ever stop? I’m knackered!`
08:12 AM
To: Harry HoganText: Harry, do you know easiest rute from hotel to Stark University? I need to go there for confirming my scholarship today. My scholarship agency has not replied to my e-mail. Thanks!
09:20 AM
From: Harry HoganText: Got permission. Will pick you up at hotel soon. We go by bus.
Prepare what you need. We’ll return to the hotel for your things if everything goes well so no need to lug everything to the campus yet. Send my regards to the littler munchkins.
11:45 AM
“I’m sorry, Miss Avandia. We’ve just checked, but the BBN agency only paid the amount required for the downpayment of the entrance fee. The agency also has no scholarship program arranged with us under your name. The amount paid so far is enough for if you meant to secure a temporary place with us, before you found a way to pay the required installment prior to first day of class. But, unfortunately, it’s not enough to secure you a permanent place in the program; and without it, we can’t secure a place for you in the dorms. I would suggest you contact your scholarship agency for clarification and further funding, or apply for a scholarship from Stark Foundation, or find a student’s loan as soon as possible, or explain your problem to the embassy of your country and let them handle it. We still have time until the fourteenth of September; it’s the first day of class. With the downpayment for the entrance fee already paid, your place with us is secure until then. You will need to secure three thousand dollars more for the entrance fee and one thousand for the first semester, after classes begin but before this year is out. The tuition doesn’t include accommodation, however, so I’d suggest you secure that too before class starts.” No scholarship. I must pay four thousand dollars if I want to go on with the study programme anyway; at least for now, and it’s without counting in accommodation and daily expenditure. Four thousand dollars that I don’t have. Scholarship that I don’t have. The professional-but-kind-sounding woman that’s seated across from us – me, the children and Harry – in the foyer of the administrative offices building still talks, on and on and on, and Harry talks with her, but I can’t even open my mouth. I can’t even breathe, truly breathe. In just one moment, after waiting a quarter of an hour for the staff here to verify my claim of scholarship, after all the hopes and efforts of my family to send me and the twins here, after months of my own hard work and preparation and waiting and dreaming and hoping, my whole world has shattered. And to think that I’ve brought two little children here. And I promised Ðéa we’d meet on my master’s degree graduation day. No scholarship. No Ðéa. No shelter. No money. No future. I feel faint. Everything feels surreal. My heart feels like it’s fallen to the depths of my guts and let out ponderous, erratic beats there. Reality feels so far away, but at the same time so near, so acute. Sharp. Harsh. Unforgiving, cutting. Cold. So cold. Not the cold I like, too. I’m alone. I sway on my seat, I think. I don’t know. My body feels detached from the rest of me, or maybe I’m the one detached from the rest of reality. I can still feel the cold, though, the clamminess, the whispers in my ears. Somebody jostles me. My booted feet no longer rest on the carpeted floor. People are talking, faintly; I can still hear them. Good. I want to hear! I don’t want the cold, the muffled detachment. Please? Somebody? Help me out? Away from here? – What’s going on? What’s happened? Something’s tugging me further into oblivion. I fight with all my might. Oblivion feels like dying. I don’t want to die! I haven’t seen Ðéa again. I can’t die on them! Not after we parted on bad note. Hands lay me out on a lightly padded something. I struggle weakly to sit up. – I’m not dead! I can’t lie down or I’ll die! I sway harder, feel my brain squeezing inward in my overstuffed skull, feel nausea faintly churning up in my belly, feel my heart thumping even harder and more erratically, feel children’s voices screaming in my empty, empty head. Hands are steadying me. People are still talking. – What are they talking? Who are they? I can’t recognise their voices. A sharp-smelling something is put under one of my nostrils. It stings the nostril, stings the tunnel inside, stings my airway, stings my lungs. It stings me awake, little by little. Or rather, it drags me into reality, little by little, like trying to pull out a heavy spoon which has been drowned in a bowl of moistened maizena with a delicate weaving yarn instead of fingers. A hand pats my cheek a little roughly. It works in tandem with the sharp-smelling something. I’m glad. The touch also means, “Come on, come on, don’t do this. Come back. Pay attention. I want to speak to you.” I recognise it, I get it. I fight. I blink. I blink again. Somebody is wrapped round me, like a wall of muscles, feeling and smelling like a man. But why can’t I see? Who is that? What’s going on? Why’s everything dark? “Uh,” I mumble blearily. Even I sound so far away. My tongue feels so heavy, too; just like my limbs, just like my shoulders, my head, my heart…. But my head is clearing up, little by little, as an oxygen mask is fitted over my nose and mouth. My hearing follows suit. Maybe my eyes, too, soon? “Hey, hey, Kid? Can you hear me?” “Uh?” Harry’s voice, reverberating on the wall of muscles flattening my right ear. And he sounds like he has been calling for me for a while now, in time with his rough patting on my left cheek – now my left ear, after the mask’s addition. So his voice is the source of the whispers I heard? Then, the children…? “Thank God,” he sighs. And the wall of muscles wrapped round me sags, as if in relief. But Harry, me, twins. Stark Uni. Administration staff…. No scholarship. The world gets fuzzy again. Oh. Oh. Oh, no. What a nightmare! “Harry?” I slur out. “…You…?” “Yes, it’s me,” comes the answer, even as my fingers clutch at something that might be his shirt, spasmodically. “…Kids?” “Just outside, with a pair of staffers.” “My eyes…?” I reach up a clumsy hand, rub at one eye, then the other, then blink again to get the blackness out of my sight. To no avail. “My eyes,” I whimper. My breath hitches despite the oxygen supply. “My eyes. My eyes.” The world is so dark. What’s going on? Electricity shortage? But Harry isn’t alarmed! Nobody else is alarmed with the darkness, too. So… so… so…?!! “Hey, kid?” Harry drags me onto his lap, cuddling me close. I have neither the will nor the energy to spare for alarm or confusion over his action, though. “My eyes. My eyes,” I plead. My hand, still rubbing vigorously just above the rim of the oxygen mask, go damp, then wet. “Harry, I….” My throat closes up. My brain spins faster inside my squeezing skull. The darkness will be a reality if I speak about it. But isn’t it dark already? I’ve opened my eyes as big as they can! They even prickle when my finger touches the eyeballs! “Harry,” I swallow. My throat makes a clicking sound inside. “Harry, I can’t see!” A large hand grabs my finger before it can continue rubbing at my eyeballs. I blink, blink, blink, blink again. The world is still dark. My heart tattoos a more frantic rhythm in my chest, in my hands, in my ears, in my throat, in my feet. My body feels cold, so cold, so distant, again. “Harry, I can’t see.” `Harry, I can’t see. I want to die. But I can’t die. I brought little children into this problem. It’s a foreign, foreign country. No scholarship. No sight. No place to stay and to work and to study. No meeting Ðéa again.` My voice sounds so small and far away, but I persist. Harry must know. He may have some solution to this – temporary, it must be just temporary – predicament of mine, just like he did for the other problems since we met days ago. “Harry, I can’t see. Dark. All dark.” And, in response, he tucks my face into the crook of his neck, tucking his chin on top of my head in turn. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, and his breath is as wet as my cheeks.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Monday, 22nd June 2009
05:30 PM
Harry was kind enough to help me extend my stay in this hotel for the next seven days while we were still on campus, seeing that it was already check-out hour by the time I managed to pull myself into some semblance of composure. He was also kind enough to distract Lia – who was the more upset of the twins – with a pony ride all across the bed, when we arrived back here and I broke down again, having found my two binder books plus assorted writing tools in my uni backpack. He stayed with me and the twins as long as he could, too, just sitting on the lone stool the room possesses and not forcing me to talk or get a hold on myself. I know all that, and I do appreciate it – appreciate all the time and energy he’s set aside for me, and for the twins as well. – He’s got a job, he’s got a life away from us, and he’s actually got no responsibility whatsoever over us, so he actually didn’t have to care. He’s already very, very generous with us, in that light, staying that long and doing that much, especially seeing how he doesn’t seem to be that fond of children, or maybe just not accustomed to them. But still, being the adult when I really, really, really which – need – to be the child I’m so often assumed as, even for a little bit more time, is so very hard to experience right now. I fell asleep not long after Harry was gone, perhaps a few hours ago. I don’t know what the children did – or what they wrecked, more likely – while I was oblivious. Even now, I’ve got no motivation to move anywhere, just lying here on my side of the bed under the mussed blanket and staring sightlessly at the ceiling. I don’t even know if the ceiling lamp is turned on or off. And with that thought passing over the fore of my mind, my tears break free once more.
07:40 PM
Neither Niel nor Lia dared to disturb me, as I wallowed in my utter misery. Consequently, they wetted themselves, trying to go potty using a toilet much beyond their size, and broke a hotel-owned glass, trying to take a drink from the tap in the bathroom, and spilt the squishy, watery pudding from one of the breakfast bags onto both the clothing they’re wearing and my own clean clothing in the suitcase, trying to sate their hunger and comfort themselves. I join them now, weeping.
09:50 PM
Taking a communal shower with the twins was thrice longer. Oftentimes, I snapped at Lia for being overly clingy, and at Niel for being overly squirmy. They wept over it. And now at sleeping time, I weep over the fact that they avoid my proximity like the plague, never even once trying to sidle their way to my side of the bed after I’ve put them on theirs. I’m so useless at everything now, at being a mum most of all. To think that I asked the little ones to call me mother all those months ago, and to think that I am the one who brought them into this predicament in the first place….
Tuesday, 23rd June 2009
03:33 AM
Weird, vague dreams, with their jumbled colours and shapes, haunt me in waking moments. If only I could always sleep and revel in those dreams, revel in being able to see…. But dreams aren’t always pleasant, are they. I think I’ve been woken up by a nightmare just now, one that I can’t remember any longer now that I’m awake, and Ðéa wasn’t even in it. Wakefulness creates a nightmare of its own. However much I was warned as a child that I was going to lose my sight sooner or later, and probably also the muscle strength on my ankles if I were that unlucky, reality still hits me like a Tom&Jerry hammer over my head, flattening me like a pancake. And still, in such a sudden, permanent darkness, I must clean the broken glass from the bathroom tiles, clean my and the twins’ pudding-soiled clothes, and – most importantly – mend the bridge between me and the children – my children, as rarely as I do acknowledge the bond. I took their presence, their regard, their adoration for granted. And now that I’ve lost such a close and glowing attention gifted to me, in a time where light in whatever form is akin to a living fossil or even extinct altogether…. I turn round and bury my face in my pillow. It quickly goes wet, again. Pathetic. If only I could smother myself…. It’s a very, very, very tempting idea.
04:48 AM
The soiled clothes are reasonably clean, if thoroughly wet from a rather long session under the showerhead. The pieces of broken glass have reasonably been swept aside to the far corner by the meticulous, multiple aplication of my boots as the broom. All the useless things have now been piled together on the corner of the dresser nearest the door, ready to be binned or given away. I have also had an early breakfast, which consisted of a granola bar – one of some that Harry bought for me in a minimarket on campus grounds on our way out. Everything that I can think of has been done. And yet…. I bounce my mobile phone idly from one hand to the other. It’s been silent since before Harry left me and the children here; before we arrived at the uni, even, I think. What’s wrong? Did Harry somehow warn Tony to stay away from me? Did Harry himself choose to stay away from me? My heart twinges with an unexpected feeling of loss and hurt. And growing dread, too. I lost Ðéa, though it’s totally my fault. I don’t want to lose anybody else! It’s ridiculous, though. Harry and I have known each other only since last Friday night. It could be argued that I’ve known Tony since about the same time; but then, I knew him only as Harry’s generous, a little bit eccentric boss who didn’t speak much to me, not yet the creepy, stalkery, chattery, pushy, sometimes chirpy, often confusing texting buddy who began as an unknown number claiming as “Happy’” friend. In any case, both of them are virtual strangers – should have still been strangers – to me. So their absence shouldn’t make this much impact on me, right? I purse my lips. – Speculating about people’s motives is unhealthy, isn’t it? I am already in a fragile enough state; no need to add avoidable problems, especially if they’re – possibly – just made up. Anyway, I am so, so, so tired of crying, of feeling vulnerable, of feeling raw, of feeling helpless, and speculating about bad things will just make it all worse. So, bracing myself as much as I can, I unlock the mobile phone to peek inside. Try to, that is. The mobile phone’s battery is dead. No wonder…. Damn battery. Damn my inattention, too. And damn me for speculating about negative things. I might be wrong, now, and for once in my life I really, really, really hope I’m wrong.
07:01 AM
Three hundred and forty three unread messages!!! I don’t know should I be grateful for Tony’s incessant, pushy cheer and chatter, or irked with those, or even offended with his bluntness in various points of the backlog of messaging deluge. Harry’s increasingly worried messages, numbering seven in total, got buried in the masses of concern, verbal pokes, new ideas, development of day-old ideas, updates of tiny, inconsequential things, rants and musing references about people I totally have no clue of who they are, demands to reply, pushier demands to visit, and vague plans to entice me and the “mini Avandias” out of our “laire.” Still, Harry’s messages were the first batch that I replied to, in hope that I can allay his worry. And now that I’ve replied to them all, in batches, with the knowledge that neither Harry nor Tony have actually left me out of their lives despite my new state of total blindness, I feel even more vulnerable and raw instead, with the addition of unidentifiable emotions stuffed in my head. What a sick conundrum. And…
From: TonyText: Busy huh?
Want me to find you and the littler kids a nanny or 3?Then you can help me in the lab and garage full-time! Can kidnap you to places to for accessibility tests then.
From: TonyText: Promise you they won’t be pervy kidnappings!
From: TonyText: Deal?
10000 if you tell Happy you want him to come to your place and bring me with him without telling him you know me or I got your number! 20 if you help me with the prototypes right now and suggest good things to do! I’m so booooooored! Don’t wanna go to bed though. Perfect waste of time that.
From: TonyText: Will tell you how I got your number *IN PERSON* if you manage that. Will finalize the deal then too
. But you’ve got to promise you ain’t never ever gonna tell anybody! No telling Pepper ESPECIALLY.
From: TonyText: Pepper is an angel, but a scary angel.
From: TonyText: No. A super dooper scary angel who is extremely good at everything and loves to boss me around.
From: TonyText: Happy is just marginally better. Don’t tell him!
From: TonyText: No. Don’t tell *THEM*!!!
From: TonyText: Why don’t you reply? Don’t tell Happy! Don’t tell Pepper too! I’ll be mad if you tell them! You don’t want me mad, trust me.
…Still, Tony doesn’t leave me alone!
08:42 AM
Niel woke up crying from a nightmare. He tried to eel away from me when I tried to comfort him. Only after I babbled apologies to him did he subside, gradually. Meanwhile, Lia’d BEEN woken up by his earlier jostling about and sobbing, and she immediately latched herself onto me, no apology needed, though I still offered her some. Their ways were a little different from each other, and maybe from other children their age, too, but the message was the same: “You left us in some way. Don’t leave us again.” So now I hug them tight, conveying “I won’t.” I can’t make it a verbal promise, because I don’t know what’ll happen next, but I’ll do my best. That is my promise. And that is also the promise that I shall give Ðéa, should we meet again. Screw my pride. Screw my on-and-off doubt about their “realness.” I need my family, whoever they are, especially in times like this.
01:21 PM
Navigating such a big space as the hotel’s breakfast hall, filled with many delicate things and total strangers, is a horrible, horrible nightmare when one is newly totally blind and has to herd a pair of little children along, in more ways than one. Or at least, that’s what I experienced this morning after the incident with Niel’s nightmare. Various eyes were aimed at us – or at me, maybe, specifically – while a member of the breakfast staff guided us to an empty table as per usual. What were not usual, other than my total blindness and the added watchfulness from all round the room, were the pair of highchairs that were already set there, and the pair of breakfast staffers who offered to spoonfeed the children. They demurred and deflected when I asked them why they went so far out of their way to assist me and the twins, and only went away – reluctantly – when I insisted for the fifth time that I could still feed both myself and my children on my own, after promising that I would get one of them should I need any assistance. Well, “Get the staff” turned out to mean “Rise from your chair and we’ll crowd you like starving ants round a particularly delicious sugar crystal.” I felt cornered and pathetic, instead of assisted. And judging from how increasingly bratty Lia was behaving, she found the arrangement – or maybe the people, I can’t tell yet – just as unnerving and discomfitting. Even the affable Niel was cranky, instead of Happy with so many new people about. We returned to our room ahead of my predicted time, with the twins crying because of me scolding them for their rudeness, and with me just one more trigger away from the same predicament because of all the unexpected stresses. Each of us was toting a breakfast bag that’s twice larger and heavier than before, wrapped in a polyester goody bag instead of the usual paper pouch, and it apparently contained fancier and more varied dishes than we’d gotten used to at this hotel. And then, once in our room, I bumped against the stool on my way to the suitcases parked on the small, out-of-the-way space by the far side of the bed, between that side and the far wall, and found that it was occupied. By Tony. Who had been waiting silently for he-refused-to-say-how-long inside of my room, who never stopped jittering as he explained that I was going to get a nanny and we were going to move to the hotel’s presidential suite and he’d welcome a spot there for when things got too unbearable for him “out there with the hyenas.” I told him I would like to punch him very, very much, after letting out my shrillest scream in recent memory for the shock of the intrusion. He said, “Get in line, Chan-Chan,” and proceeded to jabber my ears off with… undiscernable things. He confiscated my mobile phone, too, before I could ask Harry for some help in evicting his boss from the premises. I did sock him on the shoulder for that, hard. And what I got was a throbbing fist and Tony laughing. Clearly, I’ve neglected my self-defence practises for too long. And now, I’m still slogging through the various dishes that he ordered from room service, without consulting me at all previously: eating some, feeding Lia and Niel some, badgering Tony to eat some, and packing the rest in the few containers that I brought from home, actually meant for leftovers once I got installed in my more permanent residence. I feel like a doll being dragged and swung round by a careless, boisterous child: no say, no aim, no agency. The fingers of my free hand drift to a spot just under the neckline of my T-shirt, tracing the vaguely disk-like, irregular lump of the fiery-red pendant Logi gave me a few years back through the fabric, even as the other hand snaps the lid of the last container shut. That friend of mine is always a mysterious, rather mystical person, and they’re the only one who objected – rather strenuously at that – to me travelling here and toting the children with me. Did they know…? They said to grip the pendant tight with my bare hand and focus on wanting aid from them, if there’s ever a need…. Well, now is– “Hey, Chan-Chan, something’s wrong with your heart? N’I don’t mean the figurative one. Been rubbin’ that spot much, I notice. – Or d’you hide a tiny cel in there? Don’t tell Haps or Peps please! Promise I’ll behave! What d’ya want me to do? But don’t tell’em!” –The time…? Tony is now draped over my shoulders. While my ankles, unsupported by either my boots or their braces or the pair of walking canes I’ve also brought all the way here, happen to not feel so well, trembling so near the flight end of fight-and-flight instinct as they’ve been, in addition to being naturally weak. So down the two of us go, spilling onto the cold, somewhat sticky tiled floor, with me buried under a ton of human flesh packed in a deceptively skinny frame. And the twins laugh at these silly adults behaving very much like little children. The manhandling! The indignity! I give up. I’ll call Logi! However futile such a mystical gesture, most likely meant just humorously, might prove to be.
Friday, 26th June 2009
I didn’t call Logi, in the end, whether through the usual or unusual channel. I… didn’t need to do so, and still don’t, for the time being. I… managed to make my point in some cases. As the result, my little family didn’t move to the presidential suite, the nanny idea has been put on hold – although Tony claimed she’d be on standby – and, even though I can’t get rid of him since Tuesday and he’s been coming and going here at odd hours, inviting himself in, Tony’s presence is… almost bearable. It’s enough for me, for now. Harry is another regular visitor, to the twins’ delight, even if both men’s paths somehow never meet. He comes toting foods and drinks, usually, seeming intent on babying us, just like his boss is. Bickering about the source of the money for my extended stay and the steady supply of sustenance is practically a tradition for us in each of his visits, as he is just as good as Tony is in eeling out of difficult and probing questions. “Let’s wait till You’ve got a good job and a good home” is always his ace card whenever I manage to corner him verbally, followed by, “No worries. You can pay for all these in increments after everything’s steadied enough. Now let’s just pay attention on getting things steady, huh?” “Pepper” – or “Miss Potts,” as Harry sometimes addresses her – is a topic shared by the two men whenever they ramble about things. She is an intriguing, elusive figure that I both dread and wish very much to know personally. Pepper sounds like a very intense, very competent, very organised woman, though, the type with neat plans in her hands and the ability to speedily enact them with the least cost and effort. Rather like my mother. And I got a love-hate relationship with my mother. It’s actually part of why I’ve been putting off Tony’s increasingly insistant, increasingly tempting offer for me to work with him – not even for him – in building things: I simply can’t match Pepper’s glowing credentials as Tony’s assistant, and I don’t want to be bossed about by Mami-Lookalike after I’ve travelled across the world partly to avoid her. Besides, I’m not an engineer in whatever type, thus I can’t actually work with him. I’ve always been leery of mixing personal relationships with money, anyhow, ever since a close family friend turned distant after the business he tried to build with my parents crashed and burnt. But now, Tony seems to have changed tactics. He asks me why I’m always refusing his offers of employment. My only recourse is to hide behind my lack of various skills needed to e his assistant, including the social type, as humiliating as it is.
Saturday, 27th June 2009
Tony cracked some of my defences down. But then, I cracked some of his, too. Tony confessed, just now, after an agreement of full-truth exchange with me, after he got his answer first about why I was reluctant to work for him, that he’s been giving “good tips” to the breakfast staff for being “helpful” to me and my little tagalongs. Go figure. My daily ordeal these days has been caused by him. He refuses to stop those tips and that instruction, too. If only I could murder him with impunity….
Sunday, 28th June 2009
Harry can’t come visit today, since he has a little tradition with Jenny – his little sister, who studies at Pepperdine, another uni in this town – to spend the day with her on every Sunday, whenever possible. Tony is absent as well, both in person and by text communication, though without any explanation. – Well, still, I think I can hazard a guess for this one, by now, with how often we’ve exchanged text messages and chatted in person these days: He is most likely held up in his well-touted lab or garage, or tied up in a weekend meeting with a supplier or a potential huge customer or some such, for the benefit of the company he works for; an important thing to do, then. But still, the free time they have left me with is awefully terrifying. I took the twins to breakfast, but the persisting issue of overly, awefully attentive “assistance” sent us back up here to our sanctuary pretty soon, again. I tried to play stacking up blocks with them, then, but my lack of hand-eye coordination ruined the buildings Lia and her brother were trying to erect, and reminded me all too much of the recent – total – downgrade to my blindness. I typed up a pleading letter to BNN to please, please, please send us back home, next, citing my new blindness, but then deleted it out of a lingering sense of pride. Lunch of cold leftovers from the previous days was had by the three of us after the aborted attempt, followed by me washing our dirty laundry and spending a relievingly busy time turning whatever I could grab into clothelines or the like. Rearrangement of our things came next, simplified and gathered together whenever possible to suit my new set of needs, but that also reminded me of my new disability. And here I am, standing before the sink in the bathroom with its door locked tight and staring at nothing – the only kind of staring I can do, from now on – after Niel oh so innocently and hopefully asked me to read him and his sister a bedtime story from his picture book before they go to sleep. Neither of the twins ask much since I took them in, but reading to them before bed has always been one of those few demands they never fail to put before me, a legacy tradition from their birth parents. I managed to fulfil the tradition by retelling the stories from memory thus far; but, apparently, they – or Niel, rather – have been missing talking about the pictures as much as listening to the stories. My ankles quiver, responding to my mental distress, but I stubbornly keep upright. I’m already blind; I won’t be a cripple, too – or at least, I won’t show too much weakness in this area. At least not now. Not if I can help it. Which is quite a pathetic statement, given what I could do about my sight or Tony’s bulldozing intrusions this fortnight. If only that unknown man hadn’t shoved me to the floor…. If only I had thought to protect my head from colliding so hard with the unforgiving tiles at that airport, at least…. If only I hadn’t been reckless enough to say yes to the scholarship, even…. If only I hadn’t promised Ðéa that, which would necessitate me chasing after a scholarship – whatever scholarship – only so that my pride would allow me to meet them in the flesh at long last…. And I brought little children with me. And as if on cue, high-pitched, childish angry yells break up from the direction of the bed outside. I pull my hurting hands away from their death grip at the rounded rim of the sink, and grasp at my face instead. They become wet in no time at all, and only now am I being aware of loud sobs echoing in the enclosed air of the bathroom, in tandem with the reverberation on my throat that feels like it has been going for some time already. Perfect. The three of us need some nonexistent TLC from some nonexistent loved ones.
Monday, 29th June 2009
02:34 AM
Being draped over by an unknown, drunken stranger – a drunken man – on opening one’s hotel-room door in the middle of the night, while one can see nothing and has prepared nothing for defence or good cover, after a barrage of ding-dongs from the door-bell that’s as potant as a particularly noisy alarm clock and therefore disorienting, is the most terrifying thing in the world, I can attest to that. It’s even marginally more petrifying than getting totally blind, in my considered opinion, now that I can think somewhat clearer. Knowing – later – that the stranger is actually Tony doesn’t help that much, with how grabbier and clingier his drunken self turns out to be. His loud entrance has woken up the twins, too, and now I must contend with the whining and glue-like tendency of all three of them. “Tonni, take a shower,” I tell the bigger brat, while hauling him with all my might towards the bathroom. – He’s just confessed his plan to “crash” at my place, at least from the bits that I can deduce from his slurred words, and ignores the fact that there’s just one bed in the room. My outright refusal to share a sleeping place with a non-close-relative man met with a very familiar stonewalling, so now I approach it from a different angle, which also has the bonus of me and my innocent little charges not smelling the potant air of alcohol and women’s perfume – and something else – round him. Still, I dearly hope this won’t be a regular occasion, or he might give the twins a bad example. I don’t need any more trouble heaped on my overflowing figurative plate!
03:42 AM
Tony is asleep on the bed, in the biggest pair of shorts and T-shirt of my own that I’m lending him, and so are the twins. As for me, having been woken up so rudely and thoroughly, I cannot sleep anymore and, remembering that today is the end of my little family’s stay here as stipulated in the lodging extension as processed by Harry for me last Monday, have chosen to pack up. There are various bits of clothes that I must gather and fold from the various ‘clothelines’ all round the main room and the bathroom. There are also littler bits of various other things that I must search for, pick up and separate between mine, Lia’s and Niel’s. Having to scour the floor, table tops, shelves and drawers and the spaces below the furniture for all those with hands and feet takes much, much time and attention. And an overabundance of patience, as well, not to mention a deadened sense of hygiene, both of which now I find I sorely lack for this kind of painstakingly meticulous, awefully limited-resource work. Sweeping every centimetre of surface and every foreseeable – and not-so-foreseeable – nooks and crannies with bare hands and feet, for things that I can’t see, and encountering all kinds of dirt and dust and all sorts of unmentionables overlooked by the hotel’s housekeeping staff there in the meantime, is a sheer torture. I can’t – don’t want to bother to – count how many times so far that I’ve got to just stand still and regulate my breaths, to prevent myself from exploding into some aimless, senseless rage, or hyperventilating, or breaking down into tears – again. Thoughts of if-onlys just make it worse. It’s gotten too much, though, at present. And so, uncaring that my hands are sticky and dirty from all kinds of things, I bury my face into the corner of the bed below the twins’ feet and clutch at the bedsheet as if to a lifeline. It doesn’t take long, before the patch of bedsheet beneath my eyes gets damp. I’m pathetic.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Monday, 29th June 2009
05:30 AM
Tony is still snoring away on the bed. The twins are likewise sound asleep, if silently. Everything is finished, on my end, ready to go. I just need to contact Harry, to beg for employment somewhere – wherever, as long as it is decent and at least somewhat friendly to me and my little tagalongs, and preferably with accommodation included. But it is still too early in the morning to do such a thing, from what I know about the habits of western people – through stories and rumours. And so, it’s back to the first point: Everything is done, and I’ve got nothing to do for hours yet. And I desperately need something to do. Because seated here on the stool with nothing to occupy me, with nothing to see at that, and despite the faint sleeping sounds almost constantly drifting from the direction of the bed to my right, I feel terribly lonely and hemmed in from all sides. At home, whenever I wanted to escape the packed, noisy house and all my duties there for a while during my admitedly few spare times without being jobless or totally removed from social contact, I could always count on freelance physical jobs like washing cars at the nearby petrol station or washing dishes in a nearby restaurant. Sometimes Logi was even there to go with me to somewhere natural and quiet and cool – in both senses of the word, or Kak Nessa and Kak Nina – sisters, first cousins to me – would semi-kidnap me to go help them with their event organising. Once, I even got a full season of staying and working in a hidden paradise right on the edge of my country, and I still keep in touch with those I met there. Well, I don’t know where the latter people are at present, including Logi, but I know it’s evening where my family and other friends are, so, technically, I could contact any of them to kill time and slake this longing for good, simple social interaction without being a bother about it. I’ve never been close to my parents, though, and my little siblings are too far apart from me age-wise to really bond over, and talking with my friends would take too much time and energy for this morning, so this path is sadly closed to me. But Logi said I could try to contact them whenever and wherever, and so did the people in the Gift Islands – the hidden, not-so-little paradise I had the honour and delight to stay in for six months before my undergrad graduation, so…. To: LogiText: Gi, kamu lagi dimana? Aku ngganggu nggak?(`Gi, where are you? Am I bothering you?`) How glad I am that Logi replies swiftly – suspiciously swiftly, in fact, compared to our prior communications. I haven’t even gotten the chance to text somebody from the Gifts! From: LogiText: Mau aku ke sana?(`Want me to go there?`) Their response, plus how quickly it’s sent, re-sparks my suspicion that somehow, in some way, they’ve known about the difficulties I was going to face here, which weren’t even hinted at before my family and I arrived at the airport, to send me and the twins off here. They strongly advised me not to come here, after all, despite all the different arguments I gave them. And if indeed they’ve got this “sixth sense,” are the tall tales they have been telling me true, then? About the nine interconnected “realms” – dimensions with their own galaxies – centred on each a planet, or in one case a huge asteroid; about the various – vastly different – races that occupy these worlds; about innate powers in each individual that people on Earth usually call genius or magic or sixth sense or metaphysical power or the like; about their peculiar method of communication through the fire-red stone pendant that’s even now lying against my breastbone; about a world – planet? – full of molten, shimmering, dancing heat that’s not at all some prop for a sci-fi film that’s their home…. Still, they might be waiting for my response even now, and they’ve been my friend since the day they approached me when I was twelve – really twelve – and about to graduate lower secondary school, anyway. This may overhaul my whole perspective about them; but on their end, it really doesn’t change anything. And I won’t let them eel out of the question, too. To: LogiText: Kamu lagi dimana, Gi? Kok tau aku mau SMS?(`Where are you, Gi? How in the world did you know I was about to text you?`) Strangely enough, I have the impression of them laughing at me as I read the response they finally give me, although there’s nothing in it to suggest that. From: LogiText: Mau kubawain apa dari rumahmu, Va? Cabe? Ikan asin? Aku lagi sama dede-dedemu ini.(`What do you want me to bring you, Va? Chilli? Salted fish? I’m currently with your lil sibs here.`) Homesickness ambushes me like a sucker punch to the gut, though usually I did my best to escape home. My breath wheezes out and refuses to return. Doubling over, I let my mobile phone clatter onto the tiles of the hotel room floor as I bury my face in my hands. For the umpteenth time this fortnight and for the second time early this morning, my tears break free. I feel so pathetic.
07:08 AM
To: Harry HoganText: Harry, have you woken up? Might I ask you something? Do you know place where I can work? Washing dishes or washing car is okay. Place where I can stay with my children too. Thank you. Sorry to disturb you. It can’t be avoided. We must check out today.
07:11 AM
From: Harry HoganText: Huh you crazy or what girl? Still so early! Go back to sleep
From: Harry HoganText: We’ll think about it at least couple of hours from now ok? What in the world made you think you must get out of the hotel today anyway? No worries I’ve negotiated long-term discount and delayed payment last week
From: Harry HoganText: Sorry didn’t tell you. Forgot
07:30 AM
From: LogiText: Va? Ahssta? Aðuraziva? Shzlaribattur.(`Va? Hello? Are you [surviving] all right? It’s been two hours.`) I scoff at the text message, still feeling rather hurt by their cruel teasing that has sparked that wholely unexpected bout of homesickness. Well, but maybe irrationally so. Logi must have meant their earlier offer to me genuinely, after all, especially when seen in the light of this message and the words they used. – They do not usually speak in their native tongue outside of my study sessions about it, and I know for a fact that they do not ask for somebody’s wellbeing – somebody’s survival – lightly, not even in my native tongue. They told me quite seriously when I began studying that, spoken or written intentionally, their language could command fire and/or heat, and thus it can be dangerous for the speaker, the interloqutor, and the environment round them, if they are not of his people by birth. Logi themself has also confessed to me some time ago that their people is a pretty powerful folk but rather more susceptible to death than even humans, when removed from their hot and fiery environment – something that I always thought as just some fancy joke or prank aimed at my sense of imagination, although they did prove the efficacy of their language on a candlefire, which suddenly blazed high on the utterance of a simple greeting. And now they use that language, to basically ask whether I am alive or not, because I’ve been beeing a sulky brat these two hours and refused to answer their kind offer to keep me company here. Damn. Now I feel so, so guilty. Well, then…. To: LogiText: Ahssta. Raðoeraziva.(`Hello. I am [surviving] all right.`) Now I’ve established myself as a sulker and a bratty one at that. Not a proud realisation, that. I’m not twelve years old! I must behave like I’m twenty-one, my true age. Starting from searching for jobs online without Harry’s help, I think.
09:04 AM
“Tonniiiii, wake uuuuup,” I sing-song, even as I yank the blanket off the uninvited guest sleeping on my bed – at least until this morning. Lia and Niel giggle hard from their shared perch on the stool by the desk, having woken up an hour ago and now more than ready for the day. “Tonniiiii, wake uuuuup.” I poke repeatedly at the exposed cheek, next. A groan answers me, at last, and an uncoordinated shove tries to push me away. “Tonniiiiii, already morniiiiiing.” I pull a little bit at a stray lock of curly hair by the said uninvited guest’s temple, then pull harder when it doesn’t elicit any reaction. “Tonniiiii, we must goooo.” A grumpy mumble. “If you don’t wake up, I water your head.” He dives under the duvet. “I must search for job, Tonni. My money is little. Come on. If not I lock you in the room.” No reaction. “I don’t joke lho. I will water your head. My friend hate it. You maybe hate it too.”
09:40 AM
I did get Tony out of the bed with – if I say so myself – a rather well-aimed glass of tapwater. And now, at the table we’ve claimed for ourselves – that is, I, the twins and Tony – in the breakfast hall, he’s retaliating by stealing bits and pieces from my selections, instead of getting some for himself on his own. Very much like my little siblings. Still, I don’t appreciate him stealing my porridge right from under my nose. Well, he doesn’t appreciate me wacking his hand solidly with my porridge spoon. “I’m having an epic hangover and wet and you’ve got no pity whatsoever for me? Holy cow! You’re quite a mean fourteen-year-old, aren’t you?” “My age is twenty-one, not fourteen!” I retort… admittedly rather childishly. “You are worse. Like you are five year old.” “Nope. Don’t believe you. Twenty-one-year-olds aren’t this tiny and round and squeaky-voiced. I bet you’re still twelve.” “Twenty-one.” “Twelve.” “Twenty-one.” “Twelve.” An epic spoon fight commences over the porridge bowl, in the next moment, cheered on by Lia and her brother.
10:27 AM
From: Harry HoganText: Found you
potential job at several establishments. Think I’m gonna ask around at the Chinese restaurant beside the hotel though so you don’t have to move out yet.
From: Harry HoganText: Jenny wanna meet you. She thinks she likes you. She’s got a spare hour late this morning. We’re coming there after we’ve talked to the Chinese restaurant’s manager/owner/staff.
From: Harry Hogan
Text: Might be a ridiculous question. But do you happen to know where Tony is? Pepper has been searching for him. His cel isn’t active and he’s got several engagements today according to her
.
From: LogiText: Aku pulang kampung ya. Kayaknya kamu oke-oke aja. Jangan cari aku dulu sementara ini.(`I’m going back to my homeland, okay? Seems you’re just fine. Don’t look for me for some time yet.`) From: DimasText: Mami bilang ga ada duit buat pulsanya. Terus kenapa kok cepet banget abisnya? Lagi ngapain nih di amerika? Kirim oleh-oleh dong!(`Mami said she’s got no money for the phone balance. And why in the world did it run out so fast? What are you doing in america? Send home some trinkets!`) From: DimasText: Dian Rian Dani Deni Dio Tio Dea pada minta oleh-oleh juga. Kak Logi selalu di sini pas kakak ga ada. Kayaknya kangen tuh. Cieeee. Ada apaan niy?(`Dian Rian Dani Deni Dio Tio Dea also asked for some trinkets. [Elder] Logi is always here now that you aren’t present. Seems like they’re missing you. Wheee. What’s going on, I wonder?`) “Chan-Chaaan, where’re we goin’ now? Back home? To a spiffier hotel? To the airport? Wanna some spiffy vacation resort! No wanna sunlight. M’a vamp right now. Head hurts. All ‘cause of you meany squishy.” “Mami, ayoooo.” (`Mummy, come ooooon.`) “Mami ‘napa?” (`Whaff’ong wicha, Mummy?`) Everything feels suffocating. Logi , the person whom I’ve been regarding as practically my tenth sibling, has just left me, with hurt feelings born out of a stupid miscommunication that could’ve been avoided if only I was less dramatic about things. Just like Ðéa, who got pushed away – hopefully not for the last time! … by my damned pride. Harry’s going to come and bring his sister – yet another stranger, if not entirely unknown – here, and I’m not at all prepared, in any way possible. Tony’s being a whinging, overly chummy little brat, draped face-down on the bed behind me and babbling whiny demands, complete with the occasional tugs at the back of my rumpled T-shirt. Niel is just as antsy to go, if ironically less bratty about it, and Lia is being too perceptive of my inner struggle for my comfort. I didn’t manage to find a job on my own, too, and now it seems I must depend yet again on Harry’s generocity. I feel really hemmed in from all sides, even more than before. So many things to do; so many demands; so little time to do all of them; so–. The mobile phone rings, vibrating nearly out of my lax grip. It’s from a US number. It’s from Stark University, it turns out. And the news the caller brings…! – “We would like to inform you that Stark Foundation is starting a new scholarship program for outstanding international students at our university, and your name was included on the list of recipients, Miss Avandia. If you’d like to accept it, you could choose to go through with your original master’s program, or you could choose a new one. We’d also like to inform you that there are a few more programs which have just opened. And if you would rather go by your own means, there’s a good discount for the first batch of students in those new programs. They are the Creative Writing Department under the Language Studies Faculty, the Anthropology Department under the Social Studies Faculty, and the Geography Department, also under the Social Studies Faculty.” It takes me a long, long time to answer, and not only because I feel so overwhelmed. Because Tony is snickering behind me and giving the caller instructions and… and… and…!
Thursday, 2nd July 2009
Tending a coffee shop as a refiller and coffee mixer isn’t so bad. I am paid daily, I am paid enough for – as I understand it – eating and lodging and a tiny spare, I can bring my children, the children can help as long as no law-abiding busybody knows that they help me, I learn much about coffee making and coffee mixing as well right from the first day, and I can have one glass of any non-alcoholic beverage sold there – not just coffee, which I don’t really like – at the beginning and end of each workday. Being bossed about by everyone in the joint feels rather aweful and gets tiring fast, though, partly because then I’ve got no reprieve whatsoever all day, between them and the customers and my tagalongs and my own needs. Pride speaks here, too, admitedly: My double bachelor degree certification means nothing here! Or did Mr. Thomas – the owner of the coffee shop – look at my out-of-US background and promptly write me and my achievements off as unimportant? I did work as dish and car washer during my school and uni years, trying to get additional pocket money as well as some relaxing physical tideum and work experience, and I did ask Harry to get me a job, however menial it might be, but–! “Girl,… one. Double. Cup. Of. Chocoffee. With . mocha. Cream. And. Cherry. Sprinkles. Now. Don’t. just. Hang. Around. there. It’s. work. Time. And. Don’t. spill. The. Cup. Again. Or. There. Will. Be. No. cuppa. For. You. This. Evening.” Well, come to think of it again, it’s not the lack of acknowledgement to my scholarly achievements that really bothers me. No, this trumps it. He needn’t talk to me as if I were an idiot! And it’d be an insult to the few mentally challenged people I know, too, since I needn’t speak so condescendingly slow to them like this. Speaking slower helps me understand and absorb the words more, but not like this! – And I was just taking some weight off my feet for a minute, while there was no customer needing my dubious expertise at the beverage counter. My ankles have begun to swell and wobble alarmingly since a few hours ago, but I do hate the braces that could keep them functioning despite this condition, and I did hope that letting them rest for a little while might persuade them not to bother me for the rest of the day, hence what I did just now. But– “Girl! Did. You. Hear me?” –Oh. Well. “Clear, sir,” I bite out, tiredly, struggling with the last shreds of politeness and control left in me. I wanted to say, “I have a name! Don’t call me just ‘girl’!,” but… well, I do need this job, and I think the bastard’s shrewd enough to realise that. And coldly practical enough to exploit that bit of weakness, too. After all, he doesn’t just have me work at the beverage counter all day from seven in the morning till twelve or so at night, fixing and mixing – mostly non-alcoholic – drinks, but he also has me clean the floor and tables and counters before and after each workday, plus other things such as daily bookkeeping for stocks and expenses on my own laptop and actually fetching the necessary stocks from his disorganised storeroom. By his taciturn permission, his two other employees, a young girlfriend and boyfriend by the name of Jessie and Doug – the girl at the customer counter and the lone security force at this little eatery, respectively – also give me orders and complain to him when I don’t oblige them, which got me no end-of-day cuppa two days ago – when it happened – and a long lecture, flavoured with Mr. Thomas’s brand of maddening, about helping fellow workers, as though I were some misbehaving little child. And… “Oi, you there! Get busy, why doncha? I don’t have all day! What are you, a snail? Not everyone ain’t have work to go to like you, y’know.” …Let’s don’t forget – or rather, let’s do forget – about some rude and crude customers.
Friday, 3rd July 2009
Tony hasn’t contacted me in any way, shape or form since Monday, after our row about him managing my life, especially in that overbearing way of his. True to their forewarning, Logi hasn’t contacted me, either, till now. And Ðéa still hasn’t dragged me to our home away from home in the dreamland; already for months, now. No message from home either, but that’s usual. But Harry has been advocating for my reconciliation with Tony, which is unusual, to say the least. Coupled with the twins’ almost tangible longing for their fun “Oom Tony,” it makes for a gloomy day today. Not to mention, the customers – and Jenny, too, who is my only texting buddy other than Harry, now – have been so excited about the big day tomorrow, which is the United states’ Independence Day, which reminds me of my own country’s independence day next month, which I won’t be able to celebrate given obvious reasons…. And there won’t even be a holiday for me tomorrow, although Mr. Thomas did promise to pay me double the wage, to account for the national holiday overtime, and also for me taking over his place in the food counter for the day in addition to my own duties. Still, my ankles throb painfully on the mere thought of the additional hecticness, and my ears already ring with the antics the twins get up to, verbal-wise, to attract my sadly limited attention to them. It seems like, with four days of carrying the children in their criss-crossing slings for whenever they get rowdy in their attention-seeking, which is nearly always, and with the prospect of no reprieve tomorrow, my shoulders would like to join the fun, too. They’re beginning to throb as enthusiastically as my braced feet, which are also stuffed all day in my boots. Not for the first time since Monday, I wish I could just bawl my eyes out and make it all better in that way, like a toddler would think.
Saturday, 4th July 2009
11:23 AM
“Devil’s spawn!” It’s the first indicator that things have gone from bad to worse in Mr. Thomas’ book, I’m beginning to learn lately. He loves his lectures, he loves his scoldings, he loves his belittlings, but he rarely swears, and this is the first time I hear the word “devil” coming out of his mouth, which makes it the rarest swearword to date. It’s been a very slow morning; I guess a Saturday and a national day would do that to people who could afford to sleep in; but it’s getting towards lunchtime and customers are beginning to trickle in. Although, the flow is still pretty manageable, and I see no reason why he’d swear so. “Sir?” I venture, even as I’m gingerly carrying a tray of chocolate cake – with mocha cream and colourful sprinkles that I had to push Lia’s hands away from – and tea – with vanilla ice cream, raisin and flour “bubbles” – to the customer counter. Mr. Thomas has just finished delivering half of the ordered things to our latest customer, it seems, and he should’ve been here to deliver this tray to the same customer by now, but, judging by where his squawks originates, he’s still away in the middle of the seemingly half-full room, at where I last knew the customer to be. I know little to nothing about waiting tables and customer service, but I don’t think swearing at customers is good for business, and I’ve always got the impression that, unbearable as Mr. Thomas can be most of the times, he’s a rather savvy businessman. And then, the man calls to the room with a rather rude question, at least in so far as my understanding of the English language and the North American culture goes, with the gist of if any of them brought the Devil’s child into this establishment. But which child? Where? I’ve been hearing nobody but my own two semi-trouble-makers, whom Mr. Thomas, Jessie and Doug tolerate. And in any case, Lia and Niel are with me right now, holding on to each of my trouser-legs after being scolded for trying to ride on my boots, so of course none of them are there. Well, if nobody would like to help squash my concern and curiosity, I’ll help myself. The orderer of this tray is where Mr. Thomas is, right? Going to where the ranting Mr. Thomas is won’t be much problem, right? After five and a half days of cleaning this small building, my mental map and knowledge of the area should suffice… right? Oh, well. Let’s just do that. So clump, clump, clump I go, padding on my braced boots while feeling for the most unobstructed way onwards, with the twins now tailing behind me like baby ducks. With lots of excuse-me’s and sorry’s when I inevitably bump against chairs and tables and the sides of people’s bodies, I creep almost steadily towards where Mr. Thomas is still ranting, which is – at present – a boon for my sense of direction. And then, after delivering the tray – with a little mishap involving the other tray that Mr. Thomas delivered before this and the customer’s head, for which I apologise profusely – and noting that the general murmur among the tables is getting restless, I pat softly at Mr. Thomas’s back after a little fumbling and murmur a reminder – a warning, on another slant – to him, “Mister Thomas, please.” He shrugs me off, and now rants at me. The only upside to the situation is that he no longer talks to me in a maddeningly slow manner anymore. Well, and that he is no longer berating whoever he scolded before. That makes it two upsides, then. But still! “Umm, Mister Thomas?” Some of the customers are abruptly getting up to leave, judging by the sharp and sudden scraping of chairs on the tiled floor. If this keeps up, the Thomas Café might lose some patrons, and– “Get the Devil’s spawn outta here.” –“Erh, sorry sir?” “Get. That. One. Out. Of. Here. You hear me? Drop it as far away from here as possible. You’ve got the rest of today to do that.” And then the man shoves me towards where he’s been facing, and I nearly fall on top of an apparently empty table neighbouring the one where I’ve just delivered my tray, if not for some handy technique from my days of learning martial arts in the Gifts and at uni, plus Niel’s timely warning. “Sir? Where….” He shoves me further, actually shoving the table as well in the process, and there, a tiny squeak that’s far meeker than any of the twins in an uncertain mood, originating from across the table. “Okay, okay, I hear, I go,” I tell the incensed man, in a louder tone than I wanted to let out. “But my bag, I need it, my phone in there, my wallet too.” And just like that, within a very small window of time, I fetch my originally-meant-for-uni pack and return to where Mr. Thomas is still standing along with my children and the unknown being across the table. He is… gracious enough to shove a wad of money into my hand as I skirt the table, once more with the twins tagging along behind me, but I find myself tongue-tied on the face of this generocity for many reasons – reasons that I can’t yet tease apart from each other and define for myself. One apparent reason, as I’m finding out at present, is how tiny his alleged “Devil’s spawn” is, and also how trembly they are, and how afraid, judging from how they cringe away from my super-light touch. It’s just a one-year-old! Or maybe even less! Mr. Thomas never indicated any hatred towards little children. Or else my own little children wouldn’t be here, and I would of course not work here. So what changed? Or what’s different with this one? “Hello,” I murmur at the tiny, quivering ball of bones and worn-textured clothing, which just shrinks smaller and gets shakier when I caress one tiny, skinny upper arm. The reaction, which is a first in my whole list of interactions with little children including my own little siblings, is very, very upsetting; but Mr. thomas is still jabbering away about how “evil” this child is, now citing their red eyes and chalk-white skin and pitch-black hair, so I’ve got no other choice but to– –“Owwh! No bite! Pain!” And the bite of these tiny, sharp teeth on my bare forearm indeed hurts! I got bitten by children sometimes, by my little siblings and once by Niel, but that’s mostly in play. This isn’t; I can tell it. Mainly because the tiny bag of skin and bones, which has migrated unwillingly into my embrace just now, is currently quivering so hard and trying to melt through my arms, while uttering such pitiful tiny mewing noises in intermittent bursts that makes me think they’re trying to stifle more than a few sobs. A year-old, stifling sobs. I feel sick. We’re out of the little eatery in no time at all, the children and I, and soon aboard a passing bus with similar alacrity. “Sorry, okay? But please no bite. It pain,” I tell the anonymous tiny toddler that’s still quivering in my arms once we’re as comfily situated as possible in the public transport, with Niel and Lia at my either side clutching their own little packs, with the unknown child seated in my lap and sharing it with my own pack. “I not wanna pain anybody, let alone you, but bite pain, whoever do it, and nobody like to get pain, including me. But I will try not hit you. Ask my children. They not hit by me.” Maybe it’s foolish to speak to a toddler – a fearful one at that as if to an adult, but I don’t know any other way, as I also talked like that to my little siblings, and don’t feel inclined to start looking for a cuter – dumber – effect, either. In any case, the poor little one’s shakes faded a little. Success.
11:47 AM
To: Harry HoganText: Harry, do you know how to tell the police that I found a child? There was a child in the restaurant. The parents were not there. Mr Tomas said devil’s spawn to the child; he said red eyes white skin black hair. The child is very small; maybe 1 year old, so thin too. Mr Tomas said I must throw away the child as far as possible. I bring the child to my hotel room. Can you help me? The child is very afraid about unknown people so please be patient. The child bit me when I first held him/her. S/he maybe bite you too. I am suspicious that the parents really left the child in the restaurant but I can’t tell him/her that!
11:50 AM
From: Harry HoganText: In LA. Will contact few people to help you. Will go back there soon as I can. Tony is being whiny n jerkish n grumpy n confusing n sometimes all too silent n overall unbearable. Please talk to him!
To: Harry HoganText: If you are not here, it’s okay, don’t tell anybody. I prefer that you help, not other people. This is strange problem and I don’t really like strangers too. You are not stranger anymore to me. The child just make me more afraid of strangers. The child can stay with me until you come back. I feel I like the child. If I could be his/her mother, I would like to be.I’m sorry to hear that Tony is like that, but I can’t do anything. He went away from my hotel room suddenly, and he was angry. I don’t think he can be less angry if I contact him; maybe even otherwise. I told you about this before, didn’t I? I somewhat miss him but he can’t do whatever he wants with me although he tries to help with doing that. I am not a doll. I am not his doll.
From: Harry HoganText: Mr Stane and Pepper are mad with him. His latest drinking binge resulted in him throwing up all that alcohol into Mr Stane’s lap during the very very important board meeting that Pepper dragged him to yesterday afternoon. He’s been drinking much again since Mon.
To: Harry HoganText: I am not his nurse or his mother. I would like to be his friend but friend doesn’t dictate people’s life, right? I don’t have many friends, but I’m sure you have many friends, so could you please share your experience with him? Lia is trying to push the new child away from my lap so I must take care of them now. Talk to you again? Happy independense day!
12:10 PM
From: Harry HoganText: Alrighty. I’ll be there tonight. Did that despicable man let you be free for the whole workday? What’s the workday from and to anyway? What time I mean
To: Harry HoganText: Work day is every day from 7 to 12 AM. Thank you, you would come. But if you are bussy, don’t come. We can search another day. I would like to buy pyjamas for the new child so at least the child could sleep while we are waiting for info about parents.
10:17 PM
It happened so fast. I couldn’t escape. I couldn’t take any necessities with me. I couldn’t even warn Harry and/or Tony about all this. I could just barely stay with my three charges. Someone who claimed herself as one of the hotel’s house-keepers came up to my door and, after some urgent ringing of the door bell, tried to warn me that there were “fishy people” who were looking for me and asking after “a small, skinny, red-eyed child.” She – Claire Littleton – wanted to help me run away, with the further assistance of the hotel’s “airport driver,” while the other staffers were distracting the said “fishy people.” I hesitated, and it was our undoing. Some of the “fishy people” had come up by the time I dubiously agreed to go with her, and I tried to slip away anyway, carrying all three children in my arms, while Claire was arguing with the newcomers, claiming that her brother worked in CIA office, and she’d visited him sometimes, and she’d never seen CIA agents dress or behave “like this.” But half of the party soon caught up with me and even tried to wrestle the children off of me, and Claire couldn’t object after one of them had shown her the CIA credentials she’d demanded to see. I was ushered out of the hotel as though a criminal in an arrest, and shouting out for help only served to get my mouth gagged till we crossed the parking lot to a vehicle that might be a van. They said they just wanted to talk. But nothing they’ve done since this afternoon indicates that. They tried to “talk,” yes, but everything that they asked pertains to my personal data before I arrived in the United States, my relation to “Tony Stark,” my relation to the child I found in Mr. Thomas’s little café, and they sprinkeld the interrogation with demands to medically examine me and my children. Once, they even tried to rest my newest charge from me and spirit him/her away to who knows where, when – somehow, in some way – they found the evidence that I wasn’t – yet – the child’s legal guardian. I applied the toddler’s tactic of biting at hands, then, plus a few of my own martial arts skills, rusty after a year of absence from practise as I raced to finish my final papers for uni and hindered by me trying to defend all of us in such close quarters. It… partially worked. It helped that the new child seemed intent on clinging to me, and my own legal children likewise. But now, we’re locked in a tiny, empty room after a few people managed to keep us still and jab needles into us anyway. I can’t ask for help. Hell, I don’t even know where we are in relation to anywhere. My captors must’ve consider me defanged, since they haven’t checked in this bare cube of a room for quite some time already, and they didn’t pat me down before shoving us in here in the first place. Well, they aren’t wholely wrong. Except…. My left hand slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly meanders towards the front of my shirt, caressing my poor little tagalongs on the way. Then, after raking my fingers through the matted hair of the unnamed toddler, who huddles the deepest and the smallest in my lap, the said fingers creep into and down the shirt, before they curl round the pendant of uneven glowing-red stone Logi gifted me years ago. They promised that I could reach them wherever they are with this, even when mundane radio waves are stumped. But they didn’t seem to be Happy to be in further contact with me last time, did they? Should I let them cool down – so to say – first? Will they be captured alongside me and my charges, if they come here and any of our captors happen to also come in? My lungs squeeze themselves on that thought. No to contacting Logi, then. No to waiting meekly here any longer, too, in case Logi comes in unannounced anyway. No to cooperating with the CIA-that-are-not-CIA agents, either. Well, all the visible options have been exhausted. But still, there must be some other way. I won’t accept a no! Isn’t there any sympathetic agent round here, at least? But then, how would I be able to trust that hypothetical agent, if they offered their services to me? Damn.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Sunday, 7th July 2009
01:02 AM
If I liked spy films, I would like these clandestine meetings. If only. And as things stand, I don’t like any of those films, although I’ve been exposed to that genre through a few cousins. Like and dislike don’t play a role when it’s the matter of survival and freedom, still. I’m aware of that, at least, even if I… well, don’t like it. An androgynous-sounding somebody – sounding a little like Ðéa, in fact, and generally like most people I met in the Gifts – who claimed themself as Sasha, a… shield?… agent, snuck into where I and my charges had been held, in the late evening of the day we’d been captured, and offered to spirit us away to their home, where nobody would find us unless we wanted to be found. I was naturally highly suspicious of the open-ended, out-of-the-blue, awefully interpretable thing and, fearing that I would be too tempted to agree, instantly said no, despite Niel’s whinging for me to say yes. Fortunately or not, this particular agent’s tenacity apparently surpasses mine and their fellow agents. They have been visiting us at odd intervals, somehow without getting through the locked door at one end of this tiny cubical, bearing energy bars and water bottles and chamber pots for all of us. They sadly can’t bring us changes of clothes since, according to them, they would be found and in danger for helping us, with such evidence, even beyond the chamber pots that, while they do help us maintain some semblance of decency, would suggest to any sharp non-helping agent that somebody from among them is in regular contact with us. But still, this show of kindness alone has admitedly worked its magic in softening me. It’s why, this time, indirectly, I let them sit a while for a chat, by not getting skittish right after our usual ritual of drink-eat-urinate/defecate has been concluded. And this time, maybe noticing how comparably relaxed I am, they not only promise me a safe haven, like the times before, but also describe what the safe haven is, including how to reach it. It sounds fantastical. A stone hut in the middle of a dense forest somewhere up high, surrounded by a mote supplied by and draining into a partially underground stream that also creates a small waterfall. A secluded sanctuary that cannot be reached by any mundane means, since it lies in a tight clearing of clumpy trees perched so near the edge of a very high, very dangerous cliff. A secret retreat which has been undiscovered for thousands of years, which has been in Sasha’s family for just as long. The only way to reach the place is by water transportation, and this kind of transportation does not actually refer to the mundane way of doing it, as in travelling by boat or even submarine. No, this water transportation refers to moving from one place to another almost instantaneously through bodies of water as both beacon-points and conduits; hence the mote round the hut, which is – according to Sasha – actually just the size of a large ditch and shallower than a usual ditch is. Just like what Ðéa once said, when I asked why our home away from home is on a tiny island surrounded by a stream. And Sasha is frank about even the lack of real evidence to help me trust them, despite all the detailed recounting they have elaborated just now. Above all, it’s what helps convince me to trust them, in addition to Niel’s out-of-event burbling about a cosy nest of pillows and cushions and boulsters and blankets and leathers and furs encased within a frame of wood, and also Lia’s assertion that “Auntie Sasha” is all right, just lonely and lost. The new, littlest child has no opinion whatsoever to add to the mix, just clinging slightly less tightly to me whenever Sasha comes visiting; but that’s sadly not news to any of us; and, indirectly, it’s an affirmation, too. Well, being ganged up like this, what can I do?
05:37 AM
The watery teleportation is… all right, I suppose, for the price of an instantaneous, on-the-spot travel, although I have experienced it just this once. But, even now, about half an hour afterwards, it still leaves me feeling that I am thoroughly wet and going to drown. Interestingly, while Niel and Lia seem to suffer the same sensations as I do, or even worse, judging from how they’re whimpering softly and gasping and gagging a little and clinging to me even while wriggling uncomfortably, the littler, still-unknown, still-nameless child seems to relish it instead. They – and I know the child’s a they, by now, from days helping them go potty – are slightly more… alive… now, wiggling round and crooning in a cheerful sort of way and actually trying to escape my arms. On another note, for one who so eagerly and tenaciously urged us to take sanctuary in their secret bolthole, Sasha seems pretty reluctant to show us round. They’ve gone back to “work,” but they said nothing but that before they went, nor did they lead us elsewhere, away from the spot we landed on. Which is still the outside of the stone hut they described, that much I know, judging from the sounds and the breezes and the feel of the ground under my boots. Shall I go? Or shall I stay here? Or… shall I come in anyway…? Well, the last option feels iffy to me. I have never barged into anybody’s home uninvited. And Sasha didn’t invite me in, just now. I didn’t even enter my own and Ðéa’s home away from home, if Ðéa didn’t lead me there, each time, whenever we met there. Ðéa…. `Damn it, Ðéa. How I miss you. I wish I never said that. I wish I just agreed and let you drop by my home like Logi. Logi’s like family, so are you, so why did I do that? Stupid Ava.` Argh. The second option will only lead me down more maudlin thoughts and regrets like this… including how I’ve practically pushed aside everyone who could and would help me. The first option, then. However tired and achy I am. Although Sasha said there’s no way out of here. “Nak, yuk kita cari jalan turun,” (`Children, let’s find the way down,`) I tell the little ones still clinging to me, before carefully prying Lia and Niel off of me, who are thankfully back to normal already. “Kalian yang lihat jalannya, ya? Mami ikut di belakang. Hati-hati.” (`You find the way, okay? Mummy’s behind you. Be careful.`) Before I can enact this desperate, risky plan, however, something is suddenly there behind me, and a second after Sasha’s voice comes from there, reporting the rumour running rampant in their “workplace.” “I had to make sure that your escape was not notice, and that it was not related to my disappearance,” they continue apologetically while guiding me onto a stone surface that might be some stone floor. “I had to be seen by as many people as I could, doing my usual duties and habbits. I used the chance to find out what they knew about you, as well. The rumour came to me because of that.” A damp-smelling, cool-feeling void suddenly yawns before me – without a sound, without a movement like a door would do. Sasha leads me after them into the void, then, which seems like an alien’s door. “Tony Stark found out from his driver – your cousin? – that you were missing. Apparently, he tracked you to my agency. He has been pestering the upper levels about you and the little ones on behalf of the driver,” they add while seating me on a cushion set against the wall near the door, and seating themself beside me right by the door, with Niel sprawled on their lap and Lia plus the yet-unnamed child huddling in mine. “And a few hours ago, he managed to get your belongings and the samples that the technicians managed to get out of you. He seems to be nearly through with demanding that you be presented to him, now, and the whole place has been made quite restless by that demand.” I am… puzzled. Mightily so. And I tell them just that. “I mean, if it’s really Tony that I know… well, Tony work in company, yes, and he’s good, and he say he own a college, but he’s that…?” I try to explain, but end up just waving a hand vaguely. “Powerful?” Sasha supplies. “He is,” they affirm when I nod. “So you do know him well, then? Hmm, what a powerful friend you have… unknowingly.” I shrug, getting uneasy – even more uneasy than before. “Not well,” I demur. “I don’t know who is he really. Just he is Tony. I know Harry better. New friend. Meet in airport. Not really my cousin.” They pat my shoulder lightly, companionably. “Do not worry. I do not plan to use you, nor do I wish to,” they say. “I wished to know you better, in fact.” They seem to hesitate for a moment, but then they forge on. “This might be an odd question, but are you familiar with the name Voðen?” I stiffen up. Well, I suppose, I’m giving out the answer already by this reaction, though not by my choice. “What you know about Voðen?” I ask back warily. Voðen is Ðéa! They told me when I was chattering about my siblings and their nicknames, a long time ago, then asked them if “Ðéa” was their full name or nickname. They call me “Ola,” short for “Volúna.” And, that time, like all the times before and after, we were in a dream. How did Sasha find out, then? “Did you meet Voðen?” I prod further. “No,” is the answer, delivered in a low, thoughtful tone. “No, not recently. But you are quite similar to them, in my senses, despite your physical differences. Who are you to them? Are you their reborn twin?” “Who are you to them, yourself?” I clutch Lia and my new charge to my chest, and wish sorely that I could take Niel from Sasha without escalating the situation – something that I can’t afford, right now. I am answered with a small, flat chuckle, this time. “A somewhat distant relative,” they reply, dryly. “But it is not why I asked you. No, Voðen and I met a long time ago by your reckoning… and by mine, by now. It was by happenstance only. We promised to see each other again, with or without the knowledge of our respective families, but we never did.” They go silent for a long while after that, and I, relieved that they don’t seem to be about to ransom me for my self-styled twin and odd but beloved dreamland friend, am not about to bother them into getting that idea themself. They continue by themself, in any case, after a while. And what they say is, “I thought you were Voðen in the guise of an Earth female.” Huh. “Earth female,” I repeat dumbly, then, “You sound alien. Where are you from?” In fact, they – their words, their mannerism, and all – sound like the folks I met in the Gifts, but I shan’t think about that right now. They chuckle again, but a little warmer, now, more amused. “My siblings and I were born on Earth. Our parents were from Ýmirheim, however. And, no, before you ask, Ýmirheim lies not in this realm, this set of what you call galaxies. It is connected to Earth on several points, however. Or do you already know that?” “Realm,” I murmur. “Nine realms?” `Ýmirheim!` my mind shrieks, meanwhile. `It’s where Ðéa said our ancestors came from.` “Ah. You did know!” they sound interested. I shrug. “A friend.” Nope, I’m not going to tell them who. Logi told me, and they seemed to guard their name and lineage jealously, right from the start of our friendship. I’m not going to make this bump in our friendship worse by telling this stranger about that. Well, Ðéa told me, too, but I shan’t tell this to them, either. Now, better distract them…. “Why you search for Voðen?” They inhale sharply. I cringe, expecting the worst. And I’m not disappointed. “A few decades ago,” they begin after a thick pause full of roiling something, similar to Ðéa before the latter booted me off the dreamland for the foreseeable future, “my family was… slaughtered, in our home. Burnt alive. All. Down to my youngest siblings.” Their breath hitches, and their subsequent words waver noticeably: “I was away, sneaking back into Ýmirheim. I wanted to urge them to relocate there, and, for that… I needed some proof. I had… misgivings. But I was too late.” A ragged, wet quality tinges their voice heavily as they audibly drag themself to go on: “I hunted down their murderers. But they deceived me. They told me that they were forced to, by… other parties. I… did not realise it, not until I witnessed an atrocity that they did to an Earth male, which I was to participate in. But they do not know that my allegiance has shifted.” “Shifted?” I nudge carefully. They pat my shoulder again, this time with noticeably trembling fingers. “SHIELD, it has been infiltrated right from the start by these vile creatures,” they reveal. “I simply blend in with the other double agents. My allegiance is…. No, I do not have any allegiance to anybody, at present, although I suppose I will have to give it to you and the Monarch, should I wish to return to the homeland of my ancestors and live there.” “Me?” I squawk, flabbergasted. Lia and my new charge jolt a little in my lap. Oops. They may have been asleep and now I woke them up. So, cuddling them close and stroking their heads, I lower my tone as I continue, “Why me? I don’t know where Ýmirheim, even.” That place is just a word, to me, till now, and likewise everything related to it, including the royal title Ðéa once tried to convince me of having. “What are you called?” Sasha asks back, instead. I shake my head. “Your people brought me to that place. You know.” “Not the name of your guise. Your true name,” they persist. “Guise?” I’m confused, though I’m beginning to have an inkling of what they wish of me. “You look like an Earth female, now, but you are not always such, are you? Especially not if you are Voðen’s lost twin.” “I don’t know,” I hedge. They exhale a wet, rattling breath. “Please,” they beg. “We do not have much time. I need to return you to that place you were held in for a little while, so that Tony Stark knows what SHIELD did to you. – Please, I need to know. I have no desire to be alone for the rest of my life. I have contemplated ending it several times already. I… I need to belong to a family once more.” I frown. “Don’t push,” I warn them. “My apologies,” they sigh again, apparently with their face in their hands, as they sound muffled. “Please. Are you…. Are you really Volúna? Reborn?” It’s my turn to suck in a sharp breath. Nail to the head, that. Ðéa believes so. I tell Sasha that, frankly. “We meet in dreams, Sasha. I don’t know it true or not,” I caution them, additionally. “We don’t meet again, since some months ago. They told me that, but we never meet like this. In real. How you know anyway?” They stare at me, for a long moment, it feels. I fidget. Then, instead of answering, they tell me, in a quiet, intense tone, “Voðen loved you so. They did not need to tell me that. Once in our brief time together, they accidentally hinted that they thought – or perhaps imagined – that you were there with them… and they were about to tell you what I had just told them in confidence, before they spied me nearby and stopped. I suspect that they have been doing that for centuries, to stem off madness from the loss of their twin. My own twin elder siblings were quite close to each other, even when they bickered or fought, and they did those many times. My only relief that day,” they gulp in air, “was that they died together, so that neither should survive to mourn and eventually go mad.” They cried almost silently afterwards, for some time, and my own eyes burn with the titbit they have just shared with me. I still don’t think – don’t believe – can’t – that I’m Volúna, Ðéa’s long-lost twin, reincarnated. But, again, the link doesn’t lie, and I do miss Ðéa’s silent, attentive, oftentimes quirky presence, whether they are my twin or just close semi-imaginary friend. I have to admit, I love them, too. And with that, my own tears break free, just as silently.
09:40 AM
Sasha promised that they wouldn’t leave me after depositing me and my little ones back in our former prison… and they keep their promise, invisibly – or so they claimed – standing so near behind me that we lightly touch each other. `Tony Stark is outside,` they remark in amusement right into my mind, as we practised a few times before they brought us here via their water transportation. And, sure enough, presently I can hear Tony’s most bratty tone grating at… a few somebodies, perhaps, from outside, and getting closer. `He doesn’t sound mad,` I comment back. They laugh, thankfully in just our shared mental link. `You do not know him well, do you?` they muse. `Well, I do not, myself, but I am one of the individuals tasked to profile a few key persons, including him. Trust me, from all the research and observation that I have been doing on him, he is… quite incensed. Either that, or quite fond of his escorts, which I severely doubt.` `Angry? At me?` I inquire, worried and quite wary. We didn’t part in a good note at all, after all. They give a mental headshake, in answer. `At those who abducted you and treated you this way,` they affirm. `And ironically, the order came from and was performed by pure SHIELD agents, not the double ones….` I snort. Aloud. But thankfully it’s before the door jerks open and Tony’s voice squawks, “Chan-Chan! You stink!” My three limpets jerk awake from their naps, just so. “Tonni,” I greet him dryly. “You wake up my children.” But I smile, hoping to show my appreciation of his rescue, despite the words. A hand grabs my own and impatiently tows me outside of the closet-like little room. It’s Tony’s, apparently, as he sounds so near now, jabbering my ears off. Sasha’s presence leaves my back as we exit the closet altogether. I regret it, for the missed chance of a possible friendship just as quirky as mine with Harry and Tony and even Logi and Ðéa. Also for a lost chance to ask more about Ðéa. But the regret soon gives way to tiredness, in all senses of the word, as my heart and body and mind ironically perk up at the big possibility that I and my children – all three of them – will be free and safe, as soon as Tony spirits us away from here.
12:20 PM
“That’s an ancient piece of tech!” “That’s an even more ancient piece of tech! No wonder your replies came so slow!” “You packed no dress in there? What about parties, Squishy? Planned to be a hermit at college?” “What? No other pieces of tech? Not even one? That’s all? Awh. Poor you. We must fix this ASAP!” “Huh, no good tech for the littler kiddies? Poor rugrats.” Tony keeps a running commentary on my and the twins’ every belonging that I’m inspecting, here in the front room – front parlour? Vestibule? – of what he introduced as his “Malibu house.” Even when I come to the underwear. “This is my new laptop, you know,” I grumble, while seizing the said laptop back from his grabby hands. “It’s from my savings, from my salaries, for some years,” I point out peevishly when he… grabs back, and succeeds. Then, after a pause for thought, I amend myself a little while resignedly relinquishing the laptop to him for the moment and focusing myself on repacking my things, “Umm, it and the spare battery, actually, and the headphone too. It may be ancient for you, but it’s not ancient for me, okay?” He doesn’t respond to that. Instead, still seated on the floor nearby, he babbles about this place, with Harry – seated on another patch of the floor opposite me – chipping in at times. And then, just after my things are packed, like a cheerful and somewhat benevalent funnel wind, he drags me all over the house. And it’s a huge house. With all three children still hanging on my front. With my poor legs still suffering after so long being braced and walking. With Harry just calmly following us from behind, though he takes the children into his arms when my legs can’t take the additional burdens anymore. And still, Tony chatters on and drags me places. “…And here is the kitchen!” Tony chirps at last, as he, Harry and I trundle into the last unexplored indoor space in the massive three-story place, not counting the underground lab space, the bottom-most garage, and the rooftop helipad, which would make it six levels. And then the berk proclaims just so, as if it were a given already, that this is my home from now on. Would anybody find some fault or weakness in me, then, in the fact that I can only sit in some sort of stupour now that he’s dropped the bomb on me and the whole hullabaloo has finally… well, maybe not ended, per se, but at least petered out for the time being? In a bid for self-reassurance and some semblance of peace, I take back my three charges from Harry and cuddle them close. This yet-alien house is truly enormous, overwhelmingly so, and its owner is nearly just as overbearing. So the presence of these precious knowns tells me, like nothing else can, that I can still be in charge of at least an aspect of my life, that I can still focus on some familiarity, that I’m not getting lost or sidetracked from what’s actually essential to me. I am further grateful that, with the tour finished for the time being, the three of us adults are seated catching our breaths – figuratively or literally – at the table, now; a thick rectangular – or maybe square – marble affair with blunted edges and corners and metal cyllindrical legs. With no detailed exploration of my own and having never visited – or seen – this place before in my life, and with everything so silent including the human occupants, the space all round me feels blank, albeit airy. Not a satisfactory environment to be in, let alone desirable, but I’ve been making do with it ever since I became totally blind, and it’s… rather peaceful, at least. Well, but prolonged silence is not good in this case. So… “Where is this?” “Told you. It’s the kitchen,” Tony grumps from opposite me, farther than I predicted. `How large is this marble table? Crazy.` “No. I mean… this place, this house.” I wave a hand vaguely at our surroundings; the one that’s not being hugged to death by my little ones, that is. It’s Harry instead who pipes up, from my side of the table but a way’s away, which makes me incongruously think of the cost it must have required to get a marble table this size. – “It’s still in Malibu, Ava. Malibu is small, for a city, but diverse enough. We are presently located on the edge of the Pacific Ocean. Mister Stark told you there’s a private beach outside, didn’t he? Malibu’s not as touristy as Santa Monica, though, which is where you and I landed, weeks ago. This particular house is set aside from the main population of the town, which are mostly clumped at either side of the Pacific Coast Highway. This place got its own street, for necessity’s sake. It covers the ggarden, the house and the beach.” I relax some more. Knowing a little bit more about my surroundings beyond this house makes me feel less moorless, less turned about, especially after the whirlwind rescue from Sasha’s “workplace” and the equally whirlwind tour of the house. – I’ve researched as much as possible about Malibu, in preparation for staying here for the next two or three years, but getting the real-life update from someone who knows this area intimately makes all the information more anchored in reality, less of a blank space in my mind’s eye, though I still can’t affect any escape should I and my tagalongs need it, given the recent downgrade of my sight. So, “Thanks, Harry,” I smile at him. I don’t know if he smiles back at me or not, but his next words are definitely less high-strung than before, which I haven’t noticed til they come to this point. “The college isn’t far from here. If you agreed to the scholarship for the rest of your college tuition and accomodation, I’d accompany you there to finalise the deal and move into the dorm, once you’re rested and I got some time.” “No no no no. She stays right here. Commute, Haps, commute. There’s something spiffy called commuting, nowadays. Dun wanna fish’er outa any stupid place ‘sept maybe some party. It’s pretty bothersome, y’know. Got better things to do. I’ll just get the college to agree or something or I’ll cut’em off,” Tony interrupts before I can say anything. My mind got snagged and derailed… but it’s not only because of the interruption. “Mister Stark?” I mumble and frown to myself. I’ve heard the name thrown about a few times by Harry most recently, in the presence of his boss – Tony. But only now does my terribly frayed and exhausted mind begin to connect between the powerful “Tony Stark” that Sasha mentioned, the apparently famous “Tony Stark” that Harry once mentioned mysteriously in the bus between Santa Monica and here, this chattery, pushy, clingy, energetic, childish, bratty Tony and… Mr. Stark that’s Harry’s boss and… the owner of… Stark University? Harry introduced himself by his first and last name, and put his nickname and surname on my phone’s address book. Tony just introduced himself as “Tony” when he texted me, though, and only said that he’s “Tony” when he invaded my hotel room. Why? Harry seems to be a private chauffeur, instead of a company driver as he alluded to before, too. Tony… Is he a Stark, or the Stark? – A worker in the Stark Conglomerate, the owner of Stark University, or the owner of all in the conglomerate? Well, does it matter, anyway? But if he’s the Stark–! What, then? The head of a conglomerate, not even just one big company, and the four of us – I and my little children – are under his mercy, for now. Is it wise, to tangle myself with the likes of him? I and my little ones got kidnapped mostly because of him! Well, he got us out, too, but…. “Ava?” – A hand lands lightly on my shoulder and squeezes a little, coming from behind me. Harry. Still, I flinch and suck in a sharp breath, derailed once more, this time back into reality. “You weren’t following?” Tony interjects from opposite me, sounding exasperated… and something else, it seems, before either Harry or I can speak. On my weak headshake he huffs and grumbles, before standing up and flouncing off to… somewhere, without any more word. I feel even more stunned, and somewhat stung, and even more adrift. “Harry?” I beg weakly. But I don’t know what to say, or to do, next. What can I say or do, anyway? In this place that’s not mine, in this place that I still don’t know despite the purported detailed tour, when the host – who is also my rescuer and the head of a conglomerate – has just dismissed me so brusquely? And I failed to do as little as paying attention when the said host was speaking, in any case. He squeezes my shoulder again, in response. “Wanna have some lunch?” he murmurs. “Seems like the boss don’t need me right now.” Lunch. More money to spend. More money that I can’t afford to spend. – The kidnappers didn’t seem to have touched the hard cash that I got stuffed in a few spots in the luggage, but it’s still of limited amount, given the times ahead. Besides, Tony seemed upset already on the notion of me potentially living in the dorms, most likely for safety reason as he alluded; what about getting out for lunch in reality, without even telling him? I shake my head. “No money, Harry,” I remind him. “I have biscuit. You want?” No need to remind Harry about Tony’s loud protestation recently about me leaving, I suppose; he knows his boss better in that regard. But, “Nah,” he says, then half-hauls me to my feet – the limpets included – by way of tugging at my upper arms. “Come on, my treat.” He ushers me out of the kitchen, apparently back to the front door. “You need to relax,” he tells me on the way. “And the kids need some open space to run around. I’m calling Jenny to help look after them once we’re outside. She’s on standby since I told her we got you back. She really wants to meet you now. Time and drama sweetening the mystery, I guess. She’s better with little kids than me, too.” “Your… treat?” I parrot, uncomprehending. “I pay,” he clarifies. “Come on. We can look around town after that. You can pay for some trampoline time for the rugrats, then, while you take some rest. It’s not expensive. Tony’s most likely in his lab now, or his garage. He won’t surface until dinner, if even that. We can return by dinner or after that and bring him something to eat.” “But you already…. The hotel?“ I protest. “Told you. Don’t mind it. You pay only when you have good and steady job,” he tells me, exasperatedly, as he continues to steer me out of the house by my shoulders. “You can treat me to something nice, too, then, if you want, but not before.” I snort. “Dunno when.” “Tony promised that,” he says. I stiffen a little. I stiffen even further when he adds, “He told me, while we were searching for you, after I told him you’re missing. He was mad. Not with you, though. You should’ve seen him tear into that super-shady spy agency….” “I don’t know I can do what,” I tell him quietly. “My English isn’t good enough even for operator.” And I nearly failed a few classes in my International Relations bachelor degree for being undiplomatic. “Operator?” he wonders, as we emerge into yet another hallway. “Phone operator,” I clarify, glumly. “I never like it. But I’ll take that job now if there is nothing else. We need stay somewhere, and eat.” He hums, then abruptly changes the topic, as we at last emerge onto what seems like the front porch. “Ever ridden a motorbike?” “Jenny loves it when I ferry her back and forth to and from the campus with my bike,” he explains smilingly on my confirmation. “Can’t always do that, but I try. You might like it, too. – Now sit here for a while. Need to contact her before we’re off. Can’t keep an eye on the rugrats on my own. I’ve only got two eyes and two hands, after all.” I laugh a little, even as I move away and do find my seat on the tiled top of a low wall. “In my country, there are more motorcycle than car. Many more motorcycle,” I tell him apologetically. “I don’t go with car often, but I go with motorcycle often. But nice, if you can help me with motorcycle. I want to know what it like here. I mean, going with motorcycle.” He hums in acknowledgement, as his phone beeps out what may be a text message in progress. Meanwhile, Niel is wriggling down from my lap, swiftly followed by Lia, so I’m left with only the yet-unnamed third child. “Hati-hati ya. Jangan ke mana-mana. Di sini aja,” (`Be careful, all right. Don’t go anywhere. Just stay round here,`) I warn the twins, then just keep an ear to their nearly silent exploration while otherwise focusing myself on my new charge. “What’s your name?” I whisper while stroking the limp hair of the baby, which has gone worse with days of not showering. In fact, I wonder why Harry didn’t offer us to shower first. Don’t we smell and look aweful? I certainly think so. Well. Men, I guess. So I return my focus back on the baby, who is shifting in my lap and snuggling closer, but otherwise doesn’t make a noise. “Can I give you name, then?” I ask… and they nod. – Whoa. What a not-baby response! So they just look small, then? Maybe even like Sasha’s theory about me and Volúna – that my body is just the outer shell of the Ola that Ðéa sees each night for years and years? Or maybe this is not a human baby, so the physical and mental developments aren’t like that of a human’s? It’d explain why those… SHIELD?… people were so eager to get samples of their body. It’d explain the “devil eyes” that Mr. Thomas raved about on the middle of his own café, too. Well, if they’re an alien, and I’m really an alien inside… then maybe I’m not alone here. Damn. I miss Ðéa so much. I hug the little one close, tucking my chin in to nuzzle their head, and exhale a ragged sigh. I feel cold and horribly alone, all of a sudden, though Harry’s still texting away nearby and Niel and Lia are talking to each other a little way’s away in front of me, and the air is humidly hot. Twins, Sasha said – confirmed. Halves of one. Unseparable. Ðéa explained it to me long ago, and I didn’t believe them – refused to believe them. Now I’m feeling what they’ve purportedly been feeling for thousands of years, and now I believe them, too, when they said this link’s a curse, more than a blessing. `Damn it. Where are you, Ðéa?`
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Monday, 8th July 2009
00:02 AM
Utter exhaustion sends me straight into dreamland, made faster by the comforts of a clean and fresh body plus full stomach and an unbelievably soft and cosy bed, capped off by the knowledge that, for this night at least, I and my children are all safe, after such a long and sometimes trying day. However, dreamland is not the mass of jumbled images and sounds and feelings and thoughts as before, indistinct or fleeting or blurry. But it is not my home-away-from-home with Ðéa, either. No, Ðéa’s presence is so conspicuously lacking, although the environment feels so real and oddly quite familiar, and I feel whole like I’ve never been since I last shared a dream with Ðéa. I am just… tiny, and pretty young, and barefooted, and clad in a dress, quite unlike when I was with Ðéa. And a somehow familiar somebody – a detested and quite feared somebody, though there’s somehow a deep-seated, well-hidden need to prove myself good and make him proud – is dragging me harshly by one hand along the golden halls that is… home?… to me: a stocky man with slabs of muscles instead of flesh that nonetheless towers over me, it seems, with thick golden red hair and, when he glances back crossly when I try to pull my hurting hand back so my hurting bare feet can have some rest, I see that he has a full set of mustache and beard with darker colouring on his face, topped with bushy eyebrows of the same colouring as the other facial hairs. His scowl is unmistakeable despite the covering, though, and I am somehow intimately – unpleasantly – familiar with it. It spells much trouble for me, Ðéa, or… our mother? Well, us, and we absolutely cannot afford it. So, with pounding heart and trembling legs and throbbing feet hidden by the dress I am somehow wearing, which I never wear in reality, I try to keep pace with his strides again. It’s not long, though, when I dare speak up – squeak, rather – despite the dread poolling in my gut. Or rather, the little child – seven? Eight? Definitely not ten yet – I am involuntarily hitchhiking on does, and I just feel my mouth and throat – our mouth and throat? – work to get out the urgent words. “Father, where are we going?” `Whoa! Father? What a father!` I privately shriek. I shriek aloud, next, just as the child does, when the man harshly twists the little, slender forearm trapped in his iron grip. Without looking back at… us?… and in fact speeding up, making us trip over our own even-more-throbbing feet and dress and end up being truly dragged along the polished golden tiles of the floor, he points out that, if I wish to be acknowledge as female, then I must obey the males in my family or future family and keep absolute silence unless bidden to speak. `This again,` the child thinks frantically. `Oh, no. What now?` But the dreadful thoughts are so intimately… mine, not a stranger’s. The pitter-pattering of little bare feet rushes towards us from behind, and utter dread freezes all of my insides. It is Ðéa, running after me, concerned and worried and angry for me, although I don’t know how I know. A second after, I get the undeniable confirmation, in any case, though Ðéa sounds… just as little and young as I am, and just as afraid. “Father, please! We were just playing at being women!” The horrible man glances back and scoffs at what he sees. “Get rid of that ridiculous dress, boy!” he snaps to Ðéa. “Get rid of it now.” “But Father, where are you taking Ola to?” comes the plaintive plea, and I dearly, dearly, dearly wish Ðéa would stop antagonising the man. It’s not answered, anyway, just like before, when the child – Ola? But Ðéa does call me Ola! So is this child… the “before-me”? – asked the same question. And the man halts long enough just to let Little Ðéa – garbed in a dress identical to mine – catch up, just so that he can swipe one strong, booted feet across, toppling the frantic twin with a squeak of surprise and pain into a messy heap on the floor. My soul – and it’s mine! – shrivels, and I – it is I! – automatically squawk, “Father! Please!” The man is not my father, but if–. “Eep!!” I am yanked by my sore, sore hand to continue the painful, dreadful, endless journey. Ðéa scrambles along behind us, pleading uselessly to the creature towing me along. And we pass by guards and servants who look away or even duck into a different path from our trajectory, their presences coated in cloying fear or apprehension or pity or all three. Nobody will help us. Nobody can help us. `Not even Mother, even if Mother knew what this man is doing to us,` a little voice whispers into my mind, sounding like mine, but… which mother? All the same, I hope the journey stops soon so I – and Ðéa, poor Ðéa – can get a breather. Well, I wish I never hoped so when we’ve travelled past a fantastical shining rainbow-coloured bridge, spanning across a vista of deep space complete with distant stars like the long, shiny tongue of an absurd giant, and to a golden domed building at the end of the bridge. “Where are we going, Father? Ðéa and I are not prepared yet for a trip,” I dare open my mouth again, driven by desperation, my heart pounding even faster and harder. Something horrible is lurking at the end of the journey, now I know, although again I don’t know how I know, and I am desperately hoping to avoid it. In answer, though not directed to me, the man says, “Muspelheim,” to the operator of the panel of buttons and levers and monitors before us. I throw up. Latching on to me from behind, Ðéa whimpers helplessly. Because the child and I know very well that we ought not to go there, not in this body of a three-quarter milaða as Ðéa once told me – the milaðen, that is: a people who are made for the cold and lots of water. `Not till we are much bigger and much more skilled with our powers, thus able to withstand the natural heat and dryness of that world, which is naturally against us as we are mostly of milaða blood,` the little voice in my mind adds. My captor slaps my cheeks for the mess I’ve just made, but the pain is much dwarved by the horror and terror I and Ðéa are feeling. I would be willing to be slapped some more if only we needn’t go there – and we are barefooted because the man dragged me right out of our quarters while we were playing! “Father, please…,” Ðéa begs, even though, through our link, I’ve just pushed them to just go away, to save themself, or at least to shut up so as not to attract the ire of this cruel, cruel madman. Well, fortunately, Ðéa doesn’t get slapped. But quite unfortunately, seeing as they’re still clinging hard to me, we’re both transported away in truth via a noisy, dizzying, blinding rainbow tunnel in the next second, just after the operator bows deep to the man, indifferent to our plight, judging from the presence I can sense. And, as I – we – dreaded, dry heat ambushes us the moment the noisy, chaotic, powerful, space-drilling rainbow tunnel retracts from us. Much dryer and much hotter than the place we left behind. And two pairs of little, bare feet immediately land on hot ground that feels like it’s about to melt. I can’t see where we are. My eyes are blurred with the heatwave and my own tears of agony and terror, compounded by an echo of Ðéa’s, just as theirs is compounded by mine. But I don’t have to see it to know it’s horrible, not in itself, but for the two of us. “Behave,” the man orders sternly above the twin sobs of little children, “and I might fetch you, in a month. You had better start walking to the visitor housing now.” “No! Please! Take Ðéa! It was my idea to dress as girls!” I plead through the gagging and sobbing I can’t end. “Please! I’ll doubly behave! Please!” I go to my hands and knees and presses my brow to the ground in front of the man’s boots, regardless of how agonising it feels, regardless of how low I think – try to think – of the man, regardless of Ðéa’s stridant protests through their own noisy weeping. And, against my expectations, the man agrees. He never says anything, but he summons the operator of the rainbow tunnel, and soon after I am left alone, kowtowing in front of nothing. Reeling from the acute sense of horror, agony and betrayal spilling over from Ðéa, as well.
05:31 AM
At first, I don’t know where I am, I don’t know who I am, neither why and how I am here. My surroundings are definitely far softer and cooler than the last place I was, before I was jerked into the jumbled dreaming that I used to despise after I went totally blind. And, while I was alone before, at the last moment, now there are three… sleeping?… beside me. And I can somehow sense them, not only hear their breathing – acutely sense them, at that, including the facts that they are children smaller and younger than what I was experiencing so recently, that they are sleeping restlessly, and that… the sun has risen? Somebody else – or two somebodies, even? – is watching the four of us, too, but not physically. While we are totally vulnerable, lying here. My heart picks up in tempo and eagerness to escape my ribcage. – What happened to me? Am I still me, whoever I am? Why can I sense the bloody sun rising without being able to see it or feel it on my skin? Why can I sense five presences here? What will change in me, next? If I met Ðéa again, now, could they explain it to me? Or will they also treat me differently? Will I treat myself differently, for that matter, let alone treating Ðéa thus? If that child – Ola – was really me…. I left Ðéa, then. I asked the man to spare them, hence leaving them to go on, far away, with echoes of my misery as company anyway despite their apparent safety and comfort. It was a very stupid decision. I left them. And then, they said, I died. How did I die? How am I alive? For what reason? Is this just the norm for twins of Ðéa’s people, of Ola’s people? Who am I, anyway? Ola? Ava? A melding of the two? And how did that horrible snippet invade my mind? Did Ðéa do it, instead of greeting me properly? Are they that mad at me? Or did Sasha do something to my mind when we were practising mental communication this morning – no, last morning? Why? I want Ðéa, not that horrible whatever! I don’t know what to feel about this place I’ve just found myself wake up in, either, for that matter. Now I remember, I was so tired last night that I was barely aware when I took a shower and brushed my teeth and helped the children do so, before we toppled into bed and succumbed to slumber. Harry guided us in every step, and, on hindsight, I am thankful that he is not the sort of man who would take advantage of a barely aware woman. But now that I’m awake, if not freshly so…. Well, this bed is certainly quite soft and comfy and fluffy, springy as well, and the air is cool and somehow also smells of the sea, quite different from the nightmare I just had, but it’s not mine, nor is it the one the twins and I have been sleeping in these few weeks, before our family was added by one and we were all kidnapped. I don’t know where exactly we are, if it’s even in Tony’s humongous house, and it frightens me. If it’s Tony’s house, and he got us free without knowing that it was unnecessary by that point, on top of letting us ride in his car and housing us that night weeks ago with him in his hotel suite, and we already spent the night here just now, claiming this vast-feeling room as ours however indirectly for at least one night…. I swallow back the stale bile that threatens to escape my mouth. We’re deep in Tony’s debt. How will we pay the debt to someone who can have practically everything with his money and apparent influence? What does he want from us as payment, anyway? I don’t know what’s Tony to me now, but it doesn’t change the fact that I’m in debt to an unpredictable near-total stranger, while I and my charges are stranded in this foreign country with practically no means yet to return home. We are totally under his mercy, and we can only hope that he won’t demand horrible things from us, and I hate it. I fear it, like Ola feared the man who so casually and irrevocably threw them away, uncontested by anybody. Well, I’d better ask Tony up front about how to repay him, then, to avoid… future unpleasantness. I’ll have to get myself and my charges back to our hotel room and our previous job, too, to create more distance and less debt to this man, and hopefully to also lose whoever are watching us without being here. And to do that, I must prepare myself for the day, before trying to hunt down the landlord for some very uncomfortable talk. Despite the fears, and the unrestful night I’ve just had. Without leaving my sleeping children free to be harassed or taken by whoever watching, as well, though I don’t really know – can’t really tell – where those two are. Quite… awesome.
05:53 AM
I seat myself on the bottom corner of the bed – the humongous, awefully comfy bed, with lots of decadently fluffy pillows and blankets and paddings – I slept in last night, which is still occupied by my children even now. I feel very, very, very lost, and confused, and scared all over again, though now the not-here watchers have been reduced to one. A quarter of an hour ago, I thought to just do a cursory exploration of the bedroom to orient myself, also to find where Harry dropped my luggage, as the room felt big in my perception and Harry didn’t tell me where he put everything. And I did explore, and then I found that the room is huge indeed, and that’s not counting the rather expansive and lengthy balcony right outside of it and connected to it, which seems to overlook the very sea itself and probably runs along the whole side of the house. This room is even more than just a bedroom, at that, as it has its own little kitchen corner to the far left going in, complete with not-so-mini fridge with things in it, a three-tap water dispenser with cool sealed storage underneath it, and even a kitchen sink and counter with appliances parading atop it and cabinets of dry and tinned goods below. It has its own – large – bathroom to the far right going in, as well, fitted with a huge bath-tub, a large shower closet with glass walls and grated rubber flooring, a sink atop a wooden cabinet stocked up with towels of various sizes and forms and… various other things, a modern toilet with a somehow warm seat, and pegs and racks that seem equally modern. And it also has its own wall of electronic knick-knacks to the right going in, in-between the door and the bathroom, with a cluster of a few kinds of sofa and chair set before it, and the only thing on it that I more or less recognise is the huge flat-screen television set. Even the things one might find in one’s bedroom – wardrobe, writing desk, cabinets, etc – are well equipped, well stocked and… well… huge. And the room’s not designed only for an adult occupant, at that, given the not-so-small presence of a soft and fenced play area set on the corner opposite the wall of electronics and the cluster of seats. This room feels like the dream one-stop laire for a decadent idler mum, as the play area for children even contains many things that would occupy the children on their own for a long time. It’s so… very… luxurious. Too luxurious for a charity case like I and my children are at present. Damn it. Now I really must find and confront Tony about… well, everything. Via text first, though, because I don’t even remember what’s outside this room, let alone how to go elsewhere in the house to hunt down my quarry.
To: TonyText: Where are you? What is my job? How do I pay for everything? Thank you but this is too much! I only helped you little compared to this.
Unlike my expectation, though, there’s just one single reply; short, at that.
From: TonyText: Thank me by not complaining.
Is he mad at my apparent ingratitude? Is he mad at me – still mad at me for everything before? But he didn’t show it, when he retrieved me and the children and when he showed us round…. Or is he mad that, after I failed to pay attention to his prattle about the house, I left with Harry without asking if he’d like to join? I bite my lip. I really don’t like not knowing about somebody like this. I don’t like owing him this much, even more. Not when he was just a creepy, quirky, chattery, pushy friend, and especially not when I now know that he’s a big name with bigger money – and, most likely, influence – world-wide. What else can I do, though, so as not to make him madder? Come to think of it again, I really need to repay Harry’s generocity, too. Well, if it’s true that you can get to a man through his stomach….
To: TonyText: Can I use the things and ingredients in the kitchen?
From: TonyText: Make me some good strong coffee. Havent slept in quite a while.
To: TonyText: There’s coffee here? I don’t know. You should sleep, not drink coffee, if you haven’t slept yet.
From: TonyText: Coffee. Tea. Chocolate. Milk. Syrup. Soda. Ask Jarvis. Happy bought them.
From: TonyText: Wanna put Ireish whiskey and sparkling wine there but Happy said no.
From: TonyText: Project not done yet. Will need you later to complete it.
To: TonyText: Who is Jarvis?Can I make you chocolate milk so you can sleep?
If I could repay him a little this way….
From: TonyText: Im hungry.
Oh. Oh. Oh, well. All right, then. Tony’s different personality still flummoxes me, and concerns me just as much as before, and he hasn’t answered me who or what “Jarvis” is, but his request, however abrupt, is doable.
08:20 AM
Cooking is a vital necessity, when one has at least eleven mouths of growing children to feed at home everyday. Making do with the available ingredients for the best, easiest, tidiest and most plentiful meals is likewise necessary, especially given my family’s limited means, my own limited mobility and time, also the mess children can make, especially the ADHD Dimas and my littlest sibling at two years old Dea. What’s stocked up in the kitchen of this room is, therefore, comparably quite bountiful and luxurious, and the cooking chore quite light, and the children with me are the quiet type anyway. Using the ingredients in the fridge and pantry that I recognised and the appliances that I was reasonably sure I could operate, I’ve made and fried a big batch of rissoles with three different kinds of filling: the savoury-salty one with melted cheese and dubed boiled egg and bredded bacon, the sour-sweet one with mayonnaise and tomato slice and minced beef, and the spicy-sweet one with spicy sausage slice and carrot matchstick and minced veggies. Reasonably easy to make, easy to eat, reasonably healthy, plentiful, varied, filling, and hopefully to Tony’s liking – and, if there’s some leftover, Harry’s as well. It’s definitely to my and my children’s liking, though, seeing that we’ve demolished three rissoles each – even the littlest one! Now for the next stage:
To: TonyText: Where are you? You said hungry. I made breakfast. If you tell me where and how I get there, I will bring it to you.
To: Harry HoganText: Hello, Harry. Thank you for yesterday. Have you eaten breakfast? Are you near? I have made food. If you want, I can keep some of the food for you. It is good to me and the kids. We already ate three.
Just as I’m typing and sending the text message to Harry, though, the door to the bedroom jerks open, and Niel sing-songs happily as he streaks towards the said door, “Oom Tonyyyyy!” (`Uncle Tonyyyyy!`) And there, one of the previously non-physical peeping-toms. “You watch? When I wake up?” I’m not a good diplomat. I’m not a diplomat at all, most of the times, despite the academic title I gained from one of my bachelor degrees. I’m not surprised of what my mouth blurts out, therefore. But I am when Tony easily agrees and proceeds to ask what more do I need and how did I know and could he learn to know too while grabbing a few rissoles without asking first. Well, he’s just as undiplomatic as I am, then. It’s somehow… comforting. It’s not at all comforting, though, when he follows with jumping onto the bed and snuggling down under the covers in the same manner. This place is his, including the bed, but… still….
09:18 PM
Dealing with Tony in his home and for quite a length of time in person has turned out to be… well, not far easier or far harder, really, but certainly different. Understanding what he’s talking about verbally is by far the harder thing to deal with, with his rapid-babbling tendency and the way he jumps from topic to topic or from detail to detail like a frog on some sort of froggy energy drink, without a chance to repeat or digest like I could when it’s on text messages. So I highly admire Virginia “Pepper” Potts and how she’s been Tony’s personal assistant for a year, as she said in her introduction just now. She handles Tony and his rapid-fire requests with perfect aplomb and swiftness, though it’s night already and her working hours should have been ended a few hours ago and she should already be relaxing somewhere. I doubt I can match her, especially any time soon. Therefore, now that I have been suddenly interrogated on my personal data, background education and employment, plans for the near and not-so-near future, and the situation between me, the scholarship agency which cheated on me and Stark Uni, and even on my family members and habits – the last two were solely courtesy of Tony – and Tony’s just proclaimed, with the air of a scientist having a eureka moment, “That’s settled, then! You’re my other personal assistant!” I can only gape with incomprehension for several long seconds. “Personal assistant?” I squawk at last, incredulous, when the proclamation finally registers. “Yeah, why?” the prat retorts instantly, as if affronted on my behalf, which is just as ludicrous a notion as me being his personal assistant. After all, I am the one who complain here! “You have Miss Potts,” I try to point out, starting from the very obvious. “Miss Potts is very good. Why you need more?” “I just do,” he returns flippantly. I huff and send his general direction a glare. “I’m blind,” I continue, dredging up my best words, wording and argumentative skills from inside the whirlwind of thoughts and feelings his pronouncement has caused in me. “I know very little about this house; this place too; all the place. I never wanted to go to America, so I didn’t search often about this country. I only searched about Malibu and the university before I went from Indonesia, and I didn’t find much. I told you too, I am not good with… diplomat thing. And personal assistant need that skill.” He gives me a dismissive snort for that. Then, just as maddeningly, he says with deliberate slowness and emphasis that reminds me unfavourably of Mr. Thomas, “First: I can make you things to help you, if it’s not there already. Second: Well, you learn, obviously, when you’re not studying for your master’s degree. If you still wanna go for uni, that is. I can’t stand formal education, personally. Oh, and third: You’re an internal assistant, while Peps is the external one, so you just deal with me and my personal things and wellfare and all. So, you’re also my research assistant, cause I spend a loooong time in my labs, n’y’know that already.” “His babysitter, in short,” Ms. Potts chimes in, and I can hear the grin in her voice. I slump against the back of the sinfully comfy couch of his “for guests” living-room downstairs, irritated and even more confused and torn than before. “You make me things? Why, if I am an assistant? Assistant should help, right? Instead of be helped? And you not a child. You don’t need babysitter.” “Yes!” the prat crows, as the response, sounding so triumphant that I dearly wish to grab something not necessarily soft and hit him repeatedly with it. “You are my assistant. Deal!” He takes off from the room suspiciously all too soon after, with a last, “Get the paperwork, Peps! Don’t complain; now you’ve got a girl-buddy to bitch about me!” thrown maybe over his shoulder before he completely vacates the battleground, amidst my sputtered denials and half-formed complaints and curses – the last of which are indulged in my own language. I can only bury my face in my hands, after that. It’s far too late at night for me to suffer from something like this. Worse, Harry, the other prat, dares to pat my shoulder, with a mock condescending, “Now, now, that’s your new boss you’re no doubt cursing, Chan-Chan. We don’t want to start on a bad note, do we?” “He came to hotel but I didn’t know,” I growl back at him. “He plan things for me but I don’t know about it too. Already bad start.” And the response? He cackles. I seize the pillow which cushioned my back seconds ago, then thump him with it, glad that he’s on the same couch with me for a different reason now, and gladder that he’s not my employer. He retaliates. And the pillow war is on.