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"Sweetie," her mother says. "I would, but I have to finish the sermon for tomorrow. Ask your dad when he gets home."
"OK," Hildy says. She turns to leave.
"Will you keep an eye on your cousin?" the R.M. says, "I mean, on Je
"OK," Hildy says again. "When is Dad coming home?"
"He should be here for di
She lies in bed and listens to her mother shout at him. She wonders if Je
So Hildy and Myron are watching Je
"She hasn't been turning in her homework?" Myron asks. "Then what does she do all the time?"
"That's why we're watching her," Hildy says. "To find out."
Myron lifts the binoculars. "Well, she's lying on her bed. And she's flipping the light switch on and off."
They sit in silence for a while.
"Give me the binoculars," Hildy demands. "How can she be turning off the light if she's lying on the bed?"
But she is. The room is empty, except for Je
Myron stands up. "I have to go home," he says.
"You're afraid!" Hildy says. Her own arms are covered in goose pimples, but she glares at him anyway.
He shivers. "Your cousin is creepy." Then he says, "At least I don't have to share a room with her."
Hildy isn't afraid of Je
It seems to Hildy that her parents fight more and more.
Their fights begin over James mostly, who refuses to apply to college. The R.M. is afraid that he will pick a low lottery number, or even volunteer, to spite his family. Mr. Harmon thinks that the war will be over soon, and James himself is closemouthed and noncommittal.
Hildy is watching the news down in the basement. The newscaster is listing names, and dates, and places that Hildy has never heard of. It seems to Hildy that the look on his face is familiar. He holds his hands open and empty on the desk in front of him, and his face is carefully blank, like Je
Hildy's mother sits on the couch beside her, smoking. When Mr. Harmon comes downstairs, her nostrils flare but she doesn't say anything.
"Do Je
Her father stands behind her, tweaks her ear. "What made you think of that?"
She shrugs. "I don't know, I just wondered why they didn't take her with them."
The R.M. expels a perfect smoke ring at the TV set. "I don't know why they went back at all," she says shortly. "After what happened, your uncle felt that Je
She looks over Hildy's head at her husband. "Was it?" she says.
November 26, 1970
Darling Je
We passed a pleasant Thanksgiving, thinking of you in America, and making a pilgrimage ourselves. We are traveling across the islands now, to Flores, where the villagers have rarely heard a sermon, rarely even met people so pale and odd as ourselves.
We took a ferry from Bali to Lombok, where the fishermen hang glass lanterns from their boats at night. The lantern light reflects off the water and the fish lose direction and swim upwards towards the glow and the nets. It occurred to your father that there is a sermon in this, what do you think?
From the shore you can see the fleet of boats, moving back and forth like tiny needles sewing up the sea. We rode in one, the water an impossible green beneath us. From Lombok we took the ferry to Sumbawa, and your father was badly seasick. We made a friend on the ferry, a student coming home from the university in Java.
The three of us took the bus from one end of the island to Sumbawa at the other end, and as we passed through the villages, children would run alongside the bus, waving and calling out "Orang bulan bulan!"
We arrived on Flores this morning, and are thinking of you, so far away.
Love,
Mom and Dad
Hildy keeps an eye on Je
Only when Hildy looks through the binoculars, watching her cousin turn the bedroom light on and off without lifting a hand, does Je
No one else sees the way Je
The R.M. worries about James, and Mr. Harmon worries about the news; they fight busily in their spare time, and who knows what James worries about? His bedroom door is always shut and his clothes have the sweet-sour reek of marijuana, a smell that Hildy recognizes from the far end of the school yard.
Je
This is a trick that her father taught her in the blackness of the prison cell, when she cried and cried and asked for light. He said, close your eyes and think about something good. From before. (What? she said.)
Are your eyes closed? (Yes.) Good. Now do you remember when we spent the night on the Dieng Plateau? (Yes.) It was cold, and when we walked outside, it was night and we were in the darkness, and the stars were there. Think about the stars.
(Light.)
In this darkness, like that other darkness which was full of the breathing of other people, she remembers the stars. There was no moon, and in the utter darkness the stars were like windows, hard bits of glass and glitter where the light poured through. What she remembers is not how far away they seemed, but how different they were from any other stars she had seen before, so bright-burning and close.
(Darkness.)
Do you remember the Southern Cross? (Yes.) Do you remember the birds? (Yes.) She had walked between her father and mother, passing under the bo trees, looking always upward at the stars. And the bo trees had risen upward, in a great beating of wings, nested birds waking and rising as she walked past. The sound of the breathing of the cell around her became the beautiful sound of the wings.