Grief and Sympathy

Grief and Sympathy

By Dewi Anggraeni

My palm moistens and my heartbeat quickens. I stop listening.
I sit down.

"Ibu*) Jauhari? Are you there?" finally the voice, at first
sounding like it is coming from a different dimension, pulls me
back to the telephone conversation. I look down at my lap, where
my hand is loosely holding the mouthpiece, and resume possession
of it.

"Yes, Ibu Srimurni. I am still with you. No, I wasn't aware
that Puspa hadn't been attending school for the last ten days. As
far as I was aware, she left home every morning, ostensibly... er
to go... to school." My mouth is so dry I feel as if the power of
speech has been sapped away from me.

We agree that we have to meet for a more private discussion.

I ring for a taxi, because I don't trust myself to drive.

All of us, Puspa, Purina, and no doubt Sofyan, have been
summoning our inner strength to handle our individual and
collective grief from Chaerul's death. And we are still trying to
piece together, with even greater pain, the circumstances of his
death. This realization made me quietly lower my eyes, as if
shielding myself from the glare of accusations from outside.
Being the only adult, I should have taken more responsibility
over the situation, over how we handle our emotions. Purina is
barely an adult, even though she has recently got married. And
her husband Sofyan is no older than herself. Yet, come to think
of it, Purina was the one who would have experienced the biggest
shock. She received the phone call. Understandably I have been
watching her closely, and maybe, somehow neglected Puspa.

That evening, we were all sitting around after a dinner
welcoming Purina and Sofyan back from their honeymoon. By then we
had learned not to miss Chaerul. We had learned that Chaerul had
set up house somewhere else, with someone else. The atmosphere
was cheerful and chatty, even slightly silly. There was no
warning of what was to come.

Purina, much to Sofyan's embarrassment, was reading a rather
bawdy poem she had downloaded from the Internet, when the call
came.

She was the closest to the phone, so she answered it. "This
the Jauhari family home... Yes, you can speak with me," she said,
with a rather bewildered expression. "I am the eldest daughter.
The only adult man in this family is my father and he does not
live here."

Puspa who had stood up, probably expecting it to be one of her
friends, stopped short not because she had heard what Purina had
just said, but because she saw her face. We all had a glimpse of
it from where we each sat. As if sensing the foreboding, we all
became tense and watched Purina's face.

She turned away from us, and for at least two minutes did not
say a word. Then we heard her determined voice, "I think you've
made a mistake. How could you tell it was him? Yeees, but anyone
could have a birthmark on his inner thigh! No! Anyone could
have ..."

By this time I realized that Purina was shaking. I stood up
and moved toward her.

"No! I don't believe you! No! You can't speak to my mother!"

"Purina!" I yelled, "give the phone to me at once!" as I
grabbed the mouthpiece from her.

What I heard didn't immediately register. It was as unreal as
hearing that a UFO had landed in our courtyard. Then I was sure
it was a crank call and was on the point of hanging up, when the
voice said, "Ibu, we understand your shock. You may hang up on
us. When you have recovered, please call us, and ask to speak to
First Inspector Prambudi. Please write down this number..."

Later that night, after identifying what remained of Chaerul -
for I was sure it was Chaerul, Inspector Prambudi and his
subordinate offered to question me at home, but I refused. Puspa
had to be protected from all of this at any cost. She was after
all only fourteen. And Purina had suffered enough.

I bore the full brunt of the humiliation, admitting that my
husband had left us, because he had been having a relationship
with another man.

"How long ago was it?" asked Inspector Prambudi.

"A little over two years."

"What was the man's name?"

"Ronny. I don't know his full name." I was shaking
uncontrollably. One of the police officers present stood up and
spoke to someone outside the room.

"Mrs. Jauhari, did your husband stay with Ronny?"

"Not as far as I know. I think they broke up about six months
ago."

"Do you know if he took up with anybody else after that?"
I stammered, "I don't... know." I forced myself to stay sitting,
although the room had begun to move. When an office boy came in
carrying a tray with a glass on it, I remembered thinking he was
going to spill the contents of it on me, so I stood up to stop
him from dropping the tray. But my legs gave way and the world
snapped into darkness.

I refused to describe what I had seen to Purina. I knew it was
Chaerul. Even devoid of life and physically incomplete, he was
still recognizable. And no one could have an identical birthmark
at the exact spot.

"Is it true that they'd cut off his head, hands and feet?"
asked Purina in half whisper, her eyes pleading for me to say no.

"Yes, dearest."

Purina broke into quiet sobs. We remained in companionable
silence, each with our own way of coping, intertwined in common
numbness.

"Mum," Purina looked up, her face pale and wet, "how did they
get to contact us, if there was no identification whatsoever on
him?"

"Sweetheart, I don't know if you want to hear this," I said
softly.

"Tell me, Mum. I need to know. I'm not a child."

Suppressing an urge to scream from a sudden pain behind my
nose, I told her.

"What?" Purina screamed, "he had our telephone number tattooed
on his back?"

"Yes, sweetheart. And according to forensic, it had been done
some months ago. Oh God, it appears that he'd had a
premonition..."

Purina staggered to the window and inhaled deeply. When she
returned she collapsed into my lap and cried like a child.

"I thought he behaved strangely at my wedding, Mum. But I
dismissed it as emotion. He was prone to being sentimental. Mum,
I should've paid more attention..."

"Hush child. Don't begin to blame yourself. You were not to
know. No one was." The pain had descended to my chest, then shot
to the pit of my stomach. I should have known.

Despite my protests, Purina and Sofyan stayed with us for a
number of weeks after Chaerul's funeral. During that time I was
relieved to see that Purina had made a perfect choice for a
living companion. Sofyan's steady and mature character was a
great help to all of us. The three of us did our best to protect
Puspa. We only began discussing anything remotely related to
Chaerul's affairs when she had gone to bed.

We were also grateful to the police for complying with our
request about not revealing our names to the media.

I paid the taxi driver, then walked slowly towards the
headmistress' office. Fortunately for me, the students were all
in class. With each step I pray that nothing terrible has
happened to Puspa. What has she been doing every day for these
ten days? Has she taken up with a dubious group who are into
drugs and free sex? Dear God, please don't ever let that happen!
What have we done to deserve all of this?

"Please come in, Ibu," says the secretary, holding the door to
the office open.

I thank her, then step in quickly, not looking back when the
door is closed behind me. The headmistress rises from her seat,
shakes my hand to welcome me, and walks towards the more
comfortable lounge chairs nearby. We then sit at a ninety-degree
angle facing each other, a very discreet position.

She begins by telling me that not long after Chaerul's
funeral, Puspa started to show very visible mood swings. At
first, her close friends tried to hang around and comfort her,
but Puspa was not very responsive. Gradually they left her alone,
and she seemed to prefer it that way.

"At times she was just uncommunicative, lately she'd burst
into tears for apparently no reason. Yet she wouldn't talk to
anyone, her friends or teachers", the headmistress said.

The door opens and a woman comes in with a tray of drinks and
snacks. Srimurni, the headmistress, nods and lets her arrange the
glasses and plates on the table before us, then waits until we
are alone again.

"Her schoolwork has also suffered," Srimurni continues. "She
was always late with her homework. Sometimes she forgot to do it
at all. How has she been at home?"

I have to admit that I had not paid much attention to her
schoolwork, and in acknowledging that fact I felt the shame of
inadequacy as a parent. But I stop short of apologizing to
Srimurni. It is to Puspa that I have to apologize.

I am glad the headmistress does not try to express
understanding of my situation, because it is not something one
can easily understand. However I think she knows that I am at
breaking point and want very much to end our discussion.

"At this stage, Mrs. Jauhari, I would like to offer to speak
to Puspa's close friends and find out what they know."

"Thank you, Bu. But please, no. Not yet. Let me find out from
Puspa herself, first."

I left soon after that, having drunk the sweetened tea but
barely touched the sweetmeats served.

The backdoor opens. I hear Puspa's footsteps. Pretending to be
reading a newspaper when she appears, I greet her with a smile,
and ask her about her day.

"Okay", she says and nothing more. I remember now that for at
least two weeks she hasn't been very chatty about her days or her
school adventures.

When she has gone to her bedroom, I stand up, take a deep
breath, and walk toward her room.

I knock, then without waiting for an answer, open the door and
pop my head in. "May I come in?"

"I suppose so," she says, without turning to look at me.

I go in, pick up her dirty clothes that are strewn all over
the floor, then sit down after removing some magazines from the
chair near the bed.

"Sweetheart, where have you been these last few days? You
haven't been at school."

To my horror, she turns and glares at me. "What do you care?"

"Puspa! Of course I care! You are my child, and I don't want
you to get into anything destructive. Why don't you think that I
care?"

"Mum, you and Purina and Sofyan have been having huddles
whenever I am not around. You think I don't know? You don't
include me in anything, its as if I don't exist. You treat me
like an outsider, as if I wasn't family. If like you said, I am
your child, so why do you treat me like that?" her voice breaks
into shrieking, and she is crying.

I am dumbfounded. When I finally recover my faculties, I grab
her shoulders and sit her down on the bed.

"Puspa! We haven't been leaving you out. We haven't been
treating you like an outsider. To tell you the truth, we have
been protecting you from the pain of knowing the full story about
your father's death. I confess now, it was probably our, rather
my, biggest mistake. And Puspa, I apologize, sincerely apologize.
Sweetheart, I didn't know how well you could take it. Oh, if you
only knew how scared I was of losing you!"

"Losing me? How?" Puspa is genuinely astonished.

I sit beside her, holding her hand. "I don't know. Oh
sweetheart, I don't know. I just know that I was scared you'd
freak out when you found out how your father died."

Suddenly Puspa turns to look me in the face. "Mum, I know how
he died. That's what cut me so much. That you guys didn't tell
me, and I had to learn about it from other people!"

"Who? Did your friends talk about it?" I am horrified.

Puspa stopped crying, and despite her tear-stained, teenage
complexion, she looks somehow wizened. "My friends? No, they
tried so much to protect me as well. They never said a word about
father in front of me. Yet I knew they knew."

"How did you know that they knew?"

"All their mothers knew that's how. Many of them came up to me
and said something like, oh you poor thing! Fancy discovering
your father's body like that! Oh Puspa, have they found out who
did it? Oh Puspa, have they found the other body parts yet? Mum,
they all knew! Yet you didn't tell me!"

The following day I rang Srimurni's office, informing them
that Puspa is not returning to the school.

"Mum, are you sure sending me to another school is a good
idea?"

"No, I am not. But at least you don't have to be exposed to
those sympathizing mothers."

*) Ibu or Bu is Indonesian for Mrs. or Madam, literary means
Mother.