Silly Girl

By Santi Dharma

When Meriem took the mikrolet to the office, the smells were always the same, day in, day out.

In the morning, the air hummed with freshly washed, perfumed bodies, but then intruded the choking sweet odor of cigarette smoke and exhaust fumes which always entered on a back draft, even if a window was left open just a crack.

By the late afternoon, on the way home, the bodies were stale and sweaty, the perfume vanished; men's shirts became one with their singlets underneath and women's hair, so perfect and in place in the morning, was now all at angles, little pieces of tissue dotting their foreheads like strange ornaments.

Sometimes, Meriem's nostrils would sting at the affront of odor from a man or a woman sitting nearby. She knew it was no fault of their own, but there were times when she almost gasped from the stink. But when she looked over at them, she did nothing to give away her nausea.

But as she sat in the van, and this day rushed into evening, she was suddenly immune to the smells. In her right hand, she clutched a small piece of paper, and with the sweat from the heat and her nerves the ink had etched a small tattoo onto her palm.

*****

When she was growing up, Meriem always believed that you met someone -- that special someone -- like the way it happened in the movies, or the short stories she devoured in the weekly teen magazines. But it was not that she believed it, really, but that she wanted to believe it was true.

She was the second of three children, her two brothers as different from her as they were from each other. Joko, elder than her by three years, was tall and strong and liked sports. He was married now, and she was an aunt. He was her brother, and she loved him as that, because she knew she should, but she hated his ways. He was not like the kind, caring, romantic men in the stories she had read.

All he thought about was himself -- when he was a teenager he would take all the water in the bathroom, take all the time in their, reading and looking in the mirror, because girls loved him (people now said he looked like an older Donny Kusuma from those commercials), or he would polish off all the food left at the table, never thinking about Amir, their youngest brother.

But then Amir, who was 24 and studying graphic design, made no fuss about food. He liked to draw from the time he was young, but it was not planes or car that he put on paper from his first days, but women in pretty suits, or their mother, her oval face framed in a colorful dress. He was tall, too, but he stooped and wore glasses, and the kids in the neighborhood started calling him "Mr. Bean" when the TV series started playing.

Meriem loved him, not like with Joko, because she had to as his sister, but because she knew that there was something sad about him. He kept to himself, like he was wounded or something; wounded by life, wounded by Father, who had treated him since he was small like there was something wrong with him. When Amir had spoken up and asked if he could study fashion design, Father had looked at him with this strange, twisted face, like he had said he wanted to change religion. It was not an option, obviously, and Amir went to the graphic design school instead.

Father was like that. You could not have a conversation with him. He went to his job at the ministry, came home, sat down, said nothing. It was not like Amir's silence, which seemed to be because he was scared of being shouted down if he said too much, but because he did not have to answer to Mother or the children. As he sat there in his chair, with his newspaper in front of the TV, he seemed to be proclaiming: Here, I have given you this home, with a roof over your head, food on the table, so what more do you want?

Meriem was maybe too much like him, in that she did not like to say much, and also too much like Mother.

If you did not know her, Mother seemed kind and simple, just another housewife. People would come over -- almost always Joko's friends, there weren't any other visitors -- and she would say something soft, very motherly. "You look hungry, that Joko has been keeping you running around town, come, I'll get you something." So kind, people thought.

But together, Meriem, who people considered quiet and shy and dreamy, with no opinion in her head, and Mother would fight. Not big battles, not cats and dogs, but hurtful words said here and there. It had always been like that, since Meriem was small, but now it was worse.

You don't eat enough (how could she when Joko polished off everything?). Why not try something different with your hair? Remember, goods left on the shelf passed their due date never get picked?

Meriem would turn and stay quiet as she went to her room. There was no point in arguing. She just said what she wanted to say in her mind.

For a long time, she was scared that what Mother said was true. For Meriem could not meet boys, or not the boys she wanted. In high school, most of the boys were like Joko, rude, crass, selfish, unthinking. She did not want to know them, but instead stayed together with her few girlfriends.

When she went to secretarial academy, there were no men to speak of. OK, there were a couple, but they were like Amir -- she did not think they thought much about women. And when she joined the pharmaceutical company, she was not really interested in any of the men at work. Anyway, most of them were married.

It was not that she was shy around men, and she was not ugly. She was tall and thin (she did not like to eat, always lazy about meals) with a small, heart-shaped face on her long neck, not plain, not pretty. She knew some of the men liked her. There was one, Heri, in the marketing department who would sometimes stop by her desk to talk and ask her how she was doing. But he was not very exciting to her; he had zits and he was all nervy when he talked (once he touched a paper on her desk and it stuck, like a magnet, from the sweat)

When he called her at home, she would always tell Mother to give him a story. And then he stopped calling, and would only say a quick hello as he walked by.

"Well, you can't play hard to get at your age," Mother said. "You're a silly girl."

* * * * *

It was strange the way things happened. Fated? Perhaps, perhaps not.

The account executive who usually went out to shows and exhibitions to check on the salesgirls was out sick and Meriem's boss said she would have to go. She didn't want to, but she could hardly say no.

What was the point of checking on them? There they stood, the makeup etched on their faces like paintings, their skirts too short, their mouths moving, parroting the briefs on this new men's pick-me-up, spouting words they probably did not understand. But then what did you expect for Rp 40,000 a day?

"Are you helping them?"

Meriem turned to face the speaker, a tall, well-built man who stood beside the stall, trying a sip of the tonic. He was white- skinned, well-groomed, good looking.

He had an amused look on his face, like he knew what she was thinking about the girls.

"Just checking that everything is OK. We're part of the promotion, it's our product."

"Well, you don't look like one of them," he said, quickly catching that she could take what he had said the wrong way.

"Not meaning anything bad by that. I mean, you don't look like you're a promotion girl."

Meriem smiled. She hadn't taken it the wrong way. She liked the way he looked and sounded.

He asked her about where she worked, and then told her he worked for a bank, and it was only a few streets away from her office.

"Are you going back soon?" he asked.

She nodded.

"Well, I can give you a ride if you want. I'm a good guy, you know."

Disbelieving of herself and without even knowing this stranger's name, Meriem said yes.

* * * * *

They talked a bit in the short journey to the office, but it came in spurts. His name was Jannus, his parents were from Sumatra, but he was born in Jakarta. His habit was to fill a silence when she would let the conversation lull.

He let her out of the car, scrawled his name and cell phone number on a piece of paper and said goodbye. Meriem went into her office; it was an odd feeling, to meet someone like this and let her guard down. And to like him, without knowing much about who he was, what he did.

He called her the next day: Could she meet for lunch?

They met at a small Sundanese food stall nearby, where there was the best sayur asam and pepes tahu. They made small talk again -- her family, where she went to school, what her father did in the ministry.

"And you?" she asked.

"Oh, nothing special. I wake up, go to work, come home, that's that. Work, no play. I'm just a dull man."

He smiled again, that beautiful smile, his full, thick lips curling over his teeth.

Meriem felt like she wanted to touch him.

"I have a wife," he added, like an afterthought but both of them knowing what it meant.

Meriem's heart sank.

"She used to work in insurance, but now she's at home, she's pregnant."

Meriem said nothing.

"I like you," Jannus said softly. "It doesn't matter, does it?"

She smiled, shook her head slightly and they ate in silence.

In the next few weeks, Jannus would call her at work. They would talk about nothing in particular, but Meriem always found an excuse not to meet him. Then he called her again one late afternoon, telling her his wife had lost the baby.

Could they meet?

When he picked her up at the office, Meriem could tell it had been a difficult few days. Dark circles framed his sad eyes.

They drove a bit, saying nothing.

"This was really important for us, for my marriage, but now the baby died, I don't know if I can stay with her," he muttered, looking sideways at Meriem.

He told her his wife was a nag, and that they married because of his and her parents. Now that his father was dead he wanted out.

They pulled over on a quiet street; it was getting dark.

"From the first time I saw you, I liked you," he said. "I knew you were different from the other girls."

He leaned over, put his head on her shoulder and kissed her neck.

* * * * *

Later, it was always a blur when she tried to remember what happened.

There were only a few things which she gleaned from her memory: the musty smell of the room, how cold the floor tiles felt when she walked on them, the dirty orange bedspread with the elephant pattern on it, the old man from room service, in his tattered white shirt and funny bow tie, her taking a bath with the mini bar of soap and the cold water pouring out of the shower head, making her shiver.

They said nothing when he drove her back to the bus stop outside her office. But as she got out, Jannus murmured, "I'm sorry."

It was late and she sat in the mikrolet, looking blankly ahead but her mind racing with a thousand thoughts. In her hand was the paper with Jannus' cell phone number, but now the number was smudged. She looked at it again, and she could not make out if the fourth number was "8" or a "0".

But it did not matter, she knew. For she would not call him, or take his calls again. She had been a silly girl, like her mother said.

Glossary:

Mikrolet: Public minivan Sayur asam: A type of vegetable soup Pepes tahu: Steamed tofu wrapped in banana leaves