The Mirror

By Maria Magdalena Bhoernomo

Ever since she was a first grader in elementary school, Wika would sit before the dressing table in her mother's bedroom.

She enjoyed imitating her mother putting on her makeup. She applied the reddish orange lipstick on her lips and powdered her cheeks. Then she thickened her eyebrows with a pencil.

She loved to see her face in the mirror. She looked beautiful, like her mother. That's what many people said.

"What are you doing, Wika?" her mother asked her one morning.

"I want to be as beautiful as you, mom," Wika answered.

Her mother took a deep breath. She seemed upset.

"I want to be loved by many men, like you!" she said again, smiling sweetly.

Her mother sighed again. She knew Wika was too young to understand the plight of a divorced woman. She was too small to see her struggle to feed herself and her daughter on her own. Wika could judge only what she could see.

Holding back her sobs, Wika's mother went into the bathroom. She did not want her daughter to see her in tears. She decided to let Wika always believe that her mother lived a happy life.

***

When Wika was two years old, her father fell in love with another woman and then divorced her mother. It was not long after the divorce that Wika would often see her mother make up her face before receiving her guests.

Her mother would take the guests, about the same age as Wika's father, into the bedroom, but Wika was never allowed in. Still, Wika was happy because all the guests would bring her candy.

She was content to play with her dolls and eat the candy, until her mother would leave the bedroom with her guests, walking familiarly arm in arm and smiling broadly. Wika though all the men who came to the house must love her mother very much.

Wika was also happy to see every guest give some money to her mother before they left, promising to come again.

In her happiness, Wika gradually forgot about her father. She did not care when he did come to visit, bringing with him a new doll. Her father's face was taut and tense, so different from her mother's cheerful gentleman visitors.

***

From the time Wika was three years old, her mother received more and more guests. About eight men came to see her every day. Often, a guest was waiting in the living room when her mother was still with another man in her bedroom. Once it happened that five guests came at the same time so that her mother let them come into her bedroom by turn. Wika believed that all these guests loved her mother very much.

"You want a new bike, Wika?" her mother asked her one day, after receiving a lot of money from one of her guests.

"I want a younger brother or sister!" she said.

A sad gaze came over her mother's countenance.

"I want to play with a younger brother or sister. I'm tired of playing with dolls," she said.

"If you have a younger brother or sister, they may pinch you, Wika."

"If they dared to do so, I would do the same back!"

"If so, you had better have neither a younger brother nor a younger sister, Wika!"

Wika kept quiet. She began to rock her doll in her arms and kissed it lovingly.

Then her mother took her to a bicycle shop. After she got a new bike, Wika often rode it round her yard, carrying the dolls on the back of the bike.

***

Wika was growing up and was a third grader now. She began to be worried about her mom. It often occurred to her that her mom was different from her friends' mothers.

She also suspected her mother was not happy. It was often clear to her that her mother was very tired after receiving a guest in her bedroom. She sometimes noticed her mother crying when leaving the bedroom with her guests.

Her worry began to weigh her down. One day she asked her mother why she looked sad.

Her mother did not reply but hurried into the bathroom.

"You haven't answered my question, mom!" Wika protested when her mother left the bathroom with glistening eyes.

Smiling, her mother said: "I'm never sad, Wika! Believe me!"

Wika was no longer a small child. Nine-year-old Wika had often watched melodramatic TV films. She could detect sorrow behind her mother's smile. When she saw her mother's wet eyes, she knew her mother was not happy. It suddenly came to her that the visitors must be the reason.

"Do all the men who come here hurt you, mom?" Wika asked.

Still smiling, her mother shook her head, which felt heavy that day.

"Be honest with me, mom. How do they hurt you?"

Her mother understood that Wika had begun to see what was happening before her. Still, she did not want to be honest with her about what happened in the bedroom. Let this remain a secret to Wika until the end of time. When she is grown up later and finally finds out what the secret is, let time decide.

Wika decided to mind her own business. She would lock herself in her bedroom if a visitor came, reading comic strips for hours. When she got bored with comics, she suddenly wanted very much to enrich her vocabulary with her dictionary.

She read her dictionary carefully in her bedroom. One day she came across the word: prostitute.

"Has mom been a prostitute all these years?" She panicked when this question suddenly cropped up in her mind.

***

Several months went by and Wika had done her best to forget that unsettling question. She suspected her mother would fly into a rage if she asked her this question. She did not want to provoke her mother to anger.

One afternoon, however, her mother suddenly asked her to put on makeup and told her she would like to take her to a party in a hotel.

"What party, mom?"

"A very nice party! Very nice, I can assure you!"

"Whose party is it, mom?"

"My best friend's.

"Has he ever come to our house?"

Her mother was still smiling when she nodded.

Rather lethargically, Wika began to make up her face. The reddish orange lipstick was applied to her lips, then a thin layer of power on her two cheeks. Then she thickened her eyebrows with a pencil. Deodorant perfume was finally sprayed under her armpits.

"You are really elegant, Wika," her mother said.

Wika gave her mother a sweet smile.

"You must be sweet to everybody, Wika!" her mother told her before they left home for the hotel.

Wika could only nod her head. But, arriving at the hotel, she felt awkward. Many of the men she saw there were those who often visited her house.

After finishing her meal, Wika suddenly felt nauseous and her head began to swim. She was still conscious when her mother gently took her into the room and laid her down on the bed.

She did not know for how many hours she had been passed out. And she did not know what had happened in the room. Once she came to, however, her heart smashed into pieces. Her lips felt painful and so did the nipples of her small breasts.

There was a searing pain between her legs. Disgustingly, she looked at spots of blood on the white bed cover. Her gown, her panties and her bra were spread at the edge of the bed.

"Weep as you please, Wika!" her mother said, in a very flat tone. She was sitting on a chair, counting a big sum of money.

Her mother was right, Wika thought. The only thing she could do was to weep. So she wept her heart out. She wept and wept until her voice turned hoarse and she felt weak all over. Finally she fainted.

When she came to, her mother firmly said to her: "You are the daughter of a prostitute! That's a fact, Wika! You had better be one yourself. As a prostitute you can conquer men in bed. You can collect a lot of money every day without having to be bothered with washing the clothes, socks and ties of a man called a husband. You also will not be bothered with preparing dinner for a man whom you call your husband but who can some day betray you and leave you with only resentment and suffering!"

Strange as the words sounded to her, Wika had often thought of them when she imagined her gloomy future. Her discovery of the word "prostitute" in the dictionary had made her think of the pain that lay ahead. Now this terrible time was here and her mother had encouraged her to face it boldly.

"Here's ten million rupiah. All yours! You earned it when you were drugged. You can always get a lot of money next time as long as you are always ready to service the men who come to our house. It is now time for you to learn to live independently!" her mother said, throwing a wad of Rp 100,000 banknotes onto the bed.

When she returned home from the hotel, Wika's heart was stabbed by pangs of pain and confusion.

She locked herself in her bedroom for days and eventually dropped out of school.

When night came, one or two clients would come into her room.

This went on for some time until one day she could no longer bear the torture. She felt pain not only on her lips, nipples or vagina but, most of all, in her heart of hearts.

"I do not want to live like this!" she said angrily when sitting before the mirror of the dressing table. Imagining the face of her father, she used her two hands to break the mirror into pieces.

-- Kudus, 2001

-- Translated by Lie Hua