Leaving home

Briony Kidd

Olivia glides from the taxi and slips through the opening gate, nodding to the security guard without pausing.

In one movement she takes out her key, fits the key into the lock and pushes her way inside. She closes the door quickly behind her. She is alone.

The room is a rectangular white-tiled box. Almost immediately she begins to sweat. The ceiling fan turns, squeaking softly. Flopping onto a brown sofa that is too short for her body, Olivia is surprised by the weariness of her limbs.

Her calves ache as though she had spent the day tensed on the balls of her feet.

Two hours later the dinner dishes are cleared away and her housemaid, Rita, has gone home to her husband. She picks up the phone and dials. She orders a taxi for 8 a.m. Later, lying in the dark, she is aware of a faint scrabbling from the far corner of the ceiling. Bloody possums, she thinks, almost asleep.

Olivia Price has lived in Jakarta for nearly a year. In that time she cannot remember having walked more than a few hundred meters. Every morning a big black taxi waits outside her house.

Each night an identical vehicle waits outside the school where she works. Even on the weekends the routine holds. She will emerge from a restaurant or movie theater to find the taxi waiting, the driver smoking or perhaps reading a newspaper.

She opens the rear door, gets in and the taxi pulls smoothly onto the street as she recites her address in the same firm, well-enunciated sentence. No need to attempt Indonesian because the Silver Bird drivers understand English.

She books her taxis in good time -- sometimes a day or two in advance. Probably, she could send the security guard to do this but she does not like to wake him if he is sleeping. Besides, he is unreliable.

He might come back saying that its not his fault, there are no taxis to be had. She shudders at the thought. Neither will she go out to the street to hail a taxi herself. There is something about the feeling of waiting and hoping that makes her feel sick.

Her life is carefully structured to avoid such moments. She has standards. She never makes her departure until the shiny black cocoon of a Nissan Cedric comes to bear her away.

So when the Silver Bird does not arrive the next morning, Olivia is shocked.

There is no warning. The taxi just is not there. She calls the company.

They are apologetic. They don't know what happened, they will send another right away.

She looks at her watch, 8:15.a.m. If she does not leave soon she will be late. Never mind, there is still time.

In truth, she sees life as a foreigner as a mine field of potential humiliations. There are a thousand opportunities a day to misunderstand, to be misunderstood, to be trapped, to be robbed of self-determination.

Really, she thinks, it's possible to be caught in the wrong at any moment of the day. Gesturing. Eating. Paying a bill. Her fear is being stranded among a group of Indonesians who cannot or will not speak English.

She finds her face freezing into a mask of exaggerated friendliness, her childish bahasa rendered suddenly worse than useless. She is too tall. Conspicuous. Inappropriate.

But her own kind are equally to be guarded against. Once she found herself cast adrift upon a sea of expat wives (so-called even though many have jobs these days).

She had thought the luncheon at the hotel was business, with issues of education to be discussed (the problem of boys, Asian versus Western styles, junk food in the cafeteria). Had she known it would degenerate almost at once into networking, Olivia would certainly not have attended.

Networking. How she loathes both the word and act. She once heard it referred to as "gossip with a goal". She does not gossip and her only goal at such times is to be left alone.

Perhaps if she had chosen a different field, like science and philosophy. But no, she suspects even philosophers are dragged into the mire these days. Only geniuses are spared, and manual laborers.

At least among Indonesians she has camouflage. They will put her eccentricities down to cultural differences. Her failure to get out a coherent sentence will not occasion comment.

But those expat wives! She cannot escape them. Some of them work at the school with her. Others live in her neighborhood and shop in the same supermarket. They keep trying to connect with her. They cannot see another white face without trying to form an instant alliance. They expect her to commiserate and confide and be open but not familiar.

They expect too much.

Twenty minutes later and still no Silver Bird. Olivia is officially late.

It takes half an hour to get to work, and that is if the traffic is good.

She has been late a few times but never for a class. Now it's certain that she has missed the first period of the day. She opens the front door.

"Pak Budi!" she calls. "Pak Budi!"

A smiling face appears over the stone wall next to the house. It's her neighbor, a well-padded woman, a large plastic bauble in each earlobe.

"Mister Budi already go home, Bu. Little girl sakit (sick)."

Conscious of a stab of resentment toward this unknown child, Olivia nods and shuts her door.

Oh God. She is going lose her job. No, they probably won't fire her. She can phone now and let them know. They won't fire her, they will just scold and disapprove. But she feels this is somehow worse. She does not phone.

Olivia picks up her briefcase and leaves the house, gazing nervously into the oncoming traffic on the street.

A truck passes. A pedicab, a Mercedes, a Kijang, another pedicab. Then, a black Cedric. She flaps one arm wildly. The driver does not even glance in her direction.

So when a battered lime green taxi approaches, Olivia flags it down. She gets in, her hands shaking. The driver grins at her over his white headrest cover. She hesitates, oblivious to the annoyance of traffic backing up behind them.

"Plaza Indonesia, Pak," says Olivia.

The taxi smells of clove cigarettes and oil. Dangdut music plays tinnily on the radio.

Plaza Indonesia? For what? All she knows is that she is not going to work. It's too late.

Olivia likes shopping centers. There is something about those long white corridors that makes you feel anonymous, invisible somehow. Men and women, Indonesians and foreigners -- all in it together.

It is a sort of dream world, muzak and lighting numbing the senses. You can forget which floor you are on, or what you came to buy. It doesn't matter.

As she rides the escalator to the second floor, something occurs to Olivia. She does not have to be here. Actually, she does not have to be anywhere.

She is on a short-term contract. She has no family to speak of. She has no house, no mortgage, car, dog or bird. "I am completely free."

For one long moment Olivia is stunned. Should she find another job, another school? Should she leave this country and never come back? She might change her personality from the inside out. She might cut her hair.

"What have I done to deserve this?"

Stepping off the escalator she finds herself turning to get on the next one going up. As it carries her higher and higher through glass and metal, Olivia gazes down at the marble floor far below.