Nothing’s been the same since Bu left.
Bu is Bu (short for Ibu = Mother in Bahasa
Indonesia) Nareine, the wife of Pak (short for Bapak = Father) Ahmed, the
couple I live with. The couple I live with sorta.
I went to Jakarta for a weekend last month. This
weekend was at the end of a week that saw Bu in Bandung visiting her sisters
and her daughter. I had eaten instant noodles for lunch every day and had good
dinners at the little restaurant down the street owned by the family of an
English Education major I have helped with her final project. Pak had gone
before me telling them to keep a tab of my meals and he would pay it. (I pay
him and Bu to feed me my meals. They buy me the instant noodles I eat for lunch
at least 3 times a week when I can’t get home and back to school in the limited
time I have between classes at lunch time.) So…I get back to Garut from Jakarta
in the middle of the afternoon. I had
told Bu that was about when I planned to be back. I saw Bu outside, greeted
her, asked about her family in Bandung and told her about Jakarta. Around my
usual dinner time, I went into the main part of the house where I usually find
my dinner. NOTHING! I noticed that the refrigerator
was missing as were a lot of the kitchen pots and pans.
There’s a house Pak had been fixing up so that one
of their sons, his wife and child could use.
It is behind our pond on another pond. The son’s family had been living
in a house on our pond. I found Bu at the son’s new house. The son, an English
teacher at my school, and Bu explained that they had spent the day moving the
son to the new house and Bu into his old house. Seems the steep stairs to the
bedroom were hurting Bu’s knee so she moved to the other house which has only
one floor. Pak was going to stay in the main house I live in. I was told to go to my English Education
major’s place for dinner and that regular meals would continue on Monday.
No problem. I went, had a good dinner with fun
people and came home.
Monday morning at the usual time I heard the noises
associated with my usual breakfast (a fried egg. I make the toast and am
capable enough to spread the peanut butter and Nutella. I always make my own
instant coffee.) When I went through my bedroom door I found that it was Pac
who was doing the cooking. An egg is an egg. I could fry it myself if they
trusted me enough not to blow up the house with the gas stove.
When I came home for lunch I found what looked like
a miner’s lunch container and a rice cooker sitting on the table where I eat. There were three aluminum containers stacked one on the other held
together with a frame that had a handle. I also found my usual plate of cut up
papaya. This is the way meals have been since then. It seems Bu is cooking across the pond and
sending mine over to me.
The meals are always good. Wait…There always parts
of every meal that I find good. That’s a
better way of saying it. I have eaten all the Greek Sponges I am ever going to
be able to eat. They are balls of puffed tofu – almost to the consistency of marshmallow
then fried. I call them Greek Sponges because they soak up the frying grease like
a sponge. (That loses some of my meaning by writing “grease” and not saying “Greece”.)
Last week twice I was served what I think was beef cartilage cooked it a sauce.
Things I don’t like and and therefore don't eat end up as fish food.
Since that first day I was back from Jakarta, things
have changed. One day a comfy chair is gone. One day the movable kitchen
cupboard is gone. I always ate my meals alone but now that Pak is eating across
the pond, thing are even more quiet at home.
What inspired me to write was a Shel Silverstein poem
I remembered today.
I’m eating my cornflakes with sugar and teardrops
since the milkman ran away with you.
He took my every dream and forget to leave the cream
so I’m sitting here wondering what to do.
I’ll have my coffee with sugar and teardrops. I’ll
have teardrops and lemon in my tea.
I’ll have a teardrop shake and a teardrop malt but
everything’s gonna taste of salt
Until the day you both come back to me.
