To Be a Family. Joan Kilby
Wayan’s wife, was sweeping the ground clean of leaves and bits of palm frond and flowers left over from the funeral offerings. She glanced over and smiled at him but made no move to talk. That suited him just fine. After yesterday’s exotic festival of people, color, noise—and yes, too much rice wine—he needed time to himself.
He carried the plate of fruit and his copy of Lizzy And Monkey out to the bale shaded by a thatched roof in the center of the courtyard. He sat, crossing his legs on the woven mat that covered the raised platform, and reached for a slice of papaya. The compound was peaceful, with a pleasant smell of wood smoke from the cooking fire. A slender young woman in a sarong lit incense sticks on a small shrine in a shady corner. Chickens scratched in the dust at her feet.
Wayan was a fisherman, but from what John could see, the women did most of the work. The men saved their energy for religious rituals and chatting over a glass of rice wine in the evening.
Tuti came through the ornate stone gate that guarded the entrance to the compound. Her hair was again in pigtails and she wore a pink T-shirt and pink shorts. The toddler was once again glued to her hip, which couldn’t be good for Tuti’s back. But these people were strong, used to doing manual labor from an early age.
She was halfway across the courtyard when she saw him sitting in the bale. She paused, uncertain. He motioned to her. Obediently she walked over, adjusting the baby, a little girl with wisps of black hair and a drooly smile.
John held the baby while Tuti climbed onto the bale. She took the child back and nestled her between her crossed legs. When he offered her a piece of mango she gave it to the toddler.
“How are you this morning?” he asked.
Tuti smiled shyly, leaving him unsure whether she’d understood him or not.
From his wallet he took out a photo of himself and Nena, a shot of them perched on stools at an outdoor bar on Kuta Beach. He wore a T-shirt and board shorts and had his arm around her. Her black hair was cut short, Western-style, and she wore a yellow dress.
He showed Tuti the photo, watching her face to see if she recognized her mother. And him. She glanced up, her eyes speaking a question.
“Yes, that’s your mother—Meme.” Tuti nodded. He pointed to his photo and then at himself. He started to say, bapa—father—then changed it to, “Nama saya John.” My name is John.
The feeling of connection with her was persisting—growing even—but he hadn’t come here intending to claim her. And if he wasn’t claiming her there was no point in telling her he was her father. He’d talked to Wayan about this when he’d first arrived and Tuti’s uncle had agreed.
It felt surreal even having such talks. He and Wayan had also discussed setting up a bank account for Tuti’s support payments so Wayan and Ketut could continue to care for her. Was that enough? It didn’t feel like enough. He was Tuti’s only living parent. But what was the alternative? Move here and look after Tuti? That wasn’t going to happen. Bring her back to Australia to live with him? How could he rip her away from her home and the only family she knew to bring her to a foreign country?
Yet it felt wrong to just go away and leave her behind. Tuti was his family. Family was a big part of who he was. He was close to his parents and his sisters and he loved spending time with his nieces and nephews, teaching them to swim, playing cricket with them on the beach.... They would all adore Tuti.
Tuti stared at the photo of her mother for a long time. Reluctantly she held it out to him. John shook his head and gently pushed it back. “You keep.”
She smiled again, her eyes shining. She understood the meaning of his gesture if not the words. John couldn’t help but grin back. With her jaunty pigtails and dimpled smile she was cute as a button. He set his teacup on the platform and brought out Katie’s book. Tuti edged closer, to peer over his arm. Not wanting to hand it to her while she was holding the sticky baby, he opened to the title page and showed her the inscription Katie had written.
“Bukuh for Tuti,” he said in pidgin Balinese, pointing to her name. She have him a half smile, half frown, clearly not understanding. Later he would get Wayan or Ketut to explain.
He read the story aloud, letting her look at the illustrations as long as she liked before he turned each page. He wasn’t sure how much she understood but she listened attentively and more than once laughed, whether at the story or the pictures, he couldn’t tell.
“Do you go to school?” he asked.
Clearly recognizing the word “school,” she nodded vigorously, her face lit. In a flurry of movement she handed him the toddler and scrambled off the bale. John held the tot in one arm, keeping the book away from her sticky, grasping fingers with the other.
On the ground, Tuti reached for the baby. “Come. School.”
John slid off the bale and, with the book tucked beneath his arm, he followed Tuti out of the courtyard and down the stone steps to the narrow potholed street.
High on the hillside, set among lush vegetation, a hotel looked out on the ocean. Across the road was an open-air restaurant with just a few rickety tables and a languid ceiling fan stirring the hot air. The village straggled along a mile or so of coastal road, small houses interspersed with homestays for tourists and a few small shops selling dry goods, fresh produce and, outside, liters of gasoline in glass bottles.
Tuti hurried down the road, glancing over her shoulder to make sure John was following. Between buildings, through banana trees and bougainvillea and coconut palms, he glimpsed the curving sweep of a black sand beach. A ragged fleet of outrigger fishing boats with their triangular sails was returning with the morning’s catch. At a cleared lot John paused to watch as one boat landed. The fishermen hopped out and, joined by other men waiting on the beach, dragged the wooden hull up the sand.
Tuti tugged on his hand, impatient with his interest in what to her was everyday life. Her destination was nearby, a squat cement building covered in chipped green paint. She walked up to the doorless opening. “School,” she said proudly.
John kicked off his flip-flops and ducked his head to step over the threshold. A table and a chair for the teacher were at the front of the room next to a blackboard on an easel. A woven mat covered the floor, presumably for the children to sit on. An old tin can held stubs of pencils and a plastic basket contained perhaps a dozen dog-eared notebooks. There weren’t any desks, or books, or posters depicting the alphabet or the multiplication table, much less anything as expensive as a computer.
He was surprised at how small and ill-equipped the school was. In Bali, elementary school, at least, was compulsory and free. And he’d seen large, modern schools in some of the bigger towns. But Tuti’s village was tiny and remote and no doubt couldn’t attract the government funding needed for a bigger school.
Tuti bounced on her bare feet, wanting his approval.
John forced a smile. “Good. Very nice. Tuti go to school here?”
She nodded, her grin widening, and held up a finger. “One…year.” She sifted through the notebooks and found hers, showing him rows of wobbly Balinese script.
His stomach hollowed. Tuti was so eager to learn, so proud of her tiny school with its acute lack of facilities. How much learning could she do here? Read and write, add and subtract, that seemed to be about it. When he got back to Summerside he would see about sending books, stationery, laptops, whatever he could afford to improve the situation.
Tuti quickly ran out of things to show him. A few minutes later he emerged from the school to see Wayan coming up the path from the beach. He wore a sleeveless T-shirt and shorts wet around the cuffs, and carried a woven fishing basket on his shoulder.
“Morning,” John called to Wayan. “Did you have a good catch?”
Tuti, seeing the grown-ups were going to talk, ran back up the road to the compound.
“Yes. Good.” Wayan’s wide grin showed a gap where a tooth was missing. He lowered the basket and lifted the lid. Half a dozen fish,