A week later, I felt a part of the village in a way I hadn’t anticipated. There was so much I wanted to tell Caleigh and Dane. Alex and I walked along the now familiar, dusty road to school and were greeted for the last time by the staff. Pak Naiman, the school principal, asked solemnly what I thought of his country. “I have never met nicer people,” I reassured him. Indonesia was the fourth most densely populated nation in the world. The standard of living was extremely modest by Western standards. An average salary was two to three dollars per day, yet the people were more generous than any I had ever met.
“We worried what you would think of Muslims,” he said haltingly. “Because, it’s only a very few extremists who cause the problems in our country and in the world.”
My eyes filled with tears. That these warm, generous, people who had opened up their homes and their hearts to us should have any worry about what I, as an American, thought of them was deeply disturbing to me. Hoping to reassure him, I told him the tragic acts which had been committed were the work of extremists and neither I, nor the majority of Americans held this against them or any Muslim country. Our eyes met and an understanding seemed to develop, which was unimaginable to me just a week ago.
On the last day, the villagers brought candy, batik clothing, and fresh fruit for the bus trip to Surabaya. “Eat the durian before you get on the bus!” the senior teacher whispered. “It’s not allowed on public transportation,” she said, pointing to a foot-long, oblong fruit with a thick thorn-covered green husk.
Alex sniffed the fruit. “I can see why! What’s it taste like?” The odor was as strong and penetrating as a bad case of flatulence.
“It is banned in hotels because it smells like rotten onions but the taste is like custard flavored with almonds. I’d be glad to keep it,” the teacher said, “so you don’t have to worry about it.”
That evening there was a shadow puppet theater or shadow play production in the village the teachers insisted we see. Called wayang kulit, it was a beautiful performance of puppets made from buffalo skin, with an Indonesian orchestra composed of bamboo xylophones, wooden chimes, gongs, and singers. The puppets were behind a thin cotton screen lit by a halogen lamp.
“Amazing how lifelike these one-dimensional puppets are behind the screen. The shadows seem almost alive, the way they seem to run and fly, don’t they? I wish we knew the story behind it! Oh, look, Alex! Now they’re dancing!”
“Beautiful, aren’t they?” he replied, his arm around my shoulder. He gave me a squeeze. “I can’t wait to tell the kids about it. Maybe we can make one at home. Not as artistic as this but I bet Dane would like to string up a curtain and light a couple of lanterns and put on a shadow play.”
“You’re so good with them. We’re so lucky to have you in our lives.”
The next morning, the bus swerved along narrow crater-filled roads, passing vehicles on both sides. White-knuckled, I clutched Alex’s arm each time the driver swerved in front of another bus or truck. It appeared we were bound for a head-on collision every time we rounded a curve. Three hours later, we stepped off at the airport, dusty, dirty, and shaken.
“Just think, in an hour we’ll be in paradise.” Alex collected our luggage. “We’re staying at Alam Indah in Bali. Thank goodness they’ll have someone picking us up at the airport.”
An hour later, we checked into a traditional Balinese hotel. The outdoor lobby was surrounded by palms, ferns, and flowering shrubs whose fragrance hung heavy on the humid air. Offerings of flower petals, incense, and fruit were laid out in small, woven bamboo trays around the perimeter. The hotel clerk needed only to shake a fly swatter at the comical monkeys who roamed the grounds to shoo them away.
We sat at a round bamboo table, finally alone. “It’s really been a whirlwind of activity since the engagement, hasn’t it? I can’t believe we’re finally alone,” I said. Alex took my hand and the young clerk returned. “Would you like coffee or tea, madam?” he asked. “We are serving tea right now with homemade cakes and scones.”
“Apparently not for long,” Alex said. “What do you want, Grace?”
“Mmmmm. The lemon tea and that pastry look good.” The Indonesian pastry looked like carrot cake. “Oh, look, Alex! He’s back.” A monkey darted to the offering placed at the base of a nearby statue, unpeeled a small banana and stuffed it into his cheeks. The clerk got out the fly swatter and the monkey quickly ran off into the lush forest surrounding the hotel.
“I’ll have the same,” Alex said.
After our tea, I bathed in a large, luxurious bathtub, scrubbing until my skin was as smooth as the polished marble floors and counters. I dressed in a long cotton batik skirt and white blouse and sat outside on the veranda where Alex was waiting his turn to shower. The mesmerizing scent of incense burning hung in the air. “I promised the kids I’d call. It’ll just be a few minutes. It should be about 8:00 a.m. there.”
“Okay. I’ll shower while you do that. Tell them we have all sorts of stories for them when we get back,” he said before burying his nose in my long, wet hair. “You smell so good,” he murmured. “Let me go before I get carried away!”
It took several minutes for the call to go through. “Hello? Hello?”
“Mommy!” Six-year-old Dane cried in a muffled voice.
“Dane, what is it? Is something wrong?” A raspy, scratching sound over the phone made it hard for her to hear. “I can’t hear you sweetie. Are you okay?”
“Mommy, Hope is gone!” he cried.
“What do you mean? Have you and Grandma looked everywhere? Did she have her collar on?”
“Yes.” Dane sobbed. “Here’s Grandma.”
“Dahlia? Is everything okay?” My heart rose to my chest. I was two thousand miles away and felt helpless to comfort my son. “What’s happened?”
“The kids are okay, Grace, but I’m afraid Dane is right. We haven’t seen the puppy since the day before yesterday. The kids were outside playing with her and I called them in for dinner. We left Hope in the yard for about fifteen minutes and when we went back out, she was gone. I’m so sorry, Grace! The kids are just heartbroken.”
Dahlia said something inaudible to the kids before she returned to the phone. “Grace,” she whispered. “There’s something else I have to tell you.”
“Dahlia, what is it? I can hardly hear you. Can you speak a little louder?” It sounded like Dahlia was crying on the other end. “Did you call the animal shelter? Maybe she wandered off and someone turned her in. Is Sktecher okay?”
“Sketcher is fine. He was asleep on the sofa the entire time. I called the shelter and the pound. We put up signs and have walked around the woods and driveway. We asked the neighbors. I feel terrible about this. That puppy just disappeared. But that’s not what I want to tell you. Oh, this is so terrible.” She lowered her voice. “There’s something else …”
“What’s wrong?”
“Oh, Grace, it’s Caleigh … I’m so worried about her.”
I inhaled sharply and feared the worst. “Caleigh? What’s happened?”
Dahlia cleared her throat. “I think she’s been cutting herself, Grace.”
I wasn’t sure I heard her correctly. “What did you say?”
“I can’t be sure, but the day after the puppy disappeared, I noticed marks on her arms. Little ones scabbed over. Perfectly straight, like she’d made them herself. I went into her room to say good night and she was in pajama pants and a tank top. That’s how I noticed them, cuts from her elbow to her shoulder.”
“Did you ask her about it? Maybe she got scratched somehow.” There were no words to nail it down. I knew there was something wrong.
“Of course I asked her! That was the strangest part. She put on her robe and pretended like there was nothing there. She didn’t say she’d been scratching her arm, or been injured somehow, she just said it was nothing with this blank expression on her face. Oh, I feel like it’s all my fault for not insisting they bring the puppy inside.” Dahlia blew her nose with a loud honking sound.
“Tell the kids we’ll be home the day after tomorrow. Thanks, for telling me. Don’t worry, it’s not your fault. Just keep an eye on her, okay?” I suddenly felt a foreboding chill in the tropical heat.
Alex came out of the shower, wrapped in a towel. “What happened?”
“I just had the strangest conversation with Dahlia. The puppy is missing, and worse, Dahlia thinks Caleigh’s been cutting herself.” I sat dumbly on the edge of a rattan chair. None of this made any sense.
“What? What do you mean, cutting herself?” he asked, sitting beside me, his face tight with anxiety. “We don’t even know for sure, that’s what’s going on, sweetheart. Do you think we should fly home tomorrow?”
I gripped his hand. “No. It’d be a nightmare to try to change the tickets now. I know Dahlia and Stan are taking good care of them. It means so much to me that you would offer, but it’s just one day more. Let’s go out for dinner. Maybe things will look brighter tomorrow.”
The sky was a sea of stars. We walked hand in hand along an illuminated boardwalk on the ocean. Dusk fell slowly, the waves and beach still lit by the sun’s last rays. The cries of gulls shattered the silence and highlighted the worry I felt. Palm fronds curled curiously toward one another against the steadily darkening sky. “I just don’t understand how Caleigh could be cutting herself or how a puppy could disappear. I’m so worried, Alex. Dahlia seems to think Caleigh might have started cutting because of the puppy but I’ve seen this a thousand times. It’s usually in response to a deep-seated psychological pain. I wonder what could be bothering Caleigh this much?”
Gulls scavenged along the beach, flapping their wings like underwear hung out to dry on a windy day. The horizon was heavy, almost crushing the rolling waves underneath it. A few pleasure boats, scattered like white flags raced the rising tide. We walked ahead along the dusk-draped shore, the water coming up around our ankles and the waves lapping the shore. Sunlight danced on Alex’s hair and the sea surged with what should have been laughter.