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.