Silly Girl

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