where it remains

It was raining, and there she was standing. The wind was soft, and the lights falling on the sidewalks loomed over her umbrella. She was wearing a skirt with a bright yellow sunflower pattern. Her white shirt was wet. I noticed that she had cut her hair short, but the eyes behind the glasses were clear as always, as bright as the sun in the morning.

Bayu said he didn't want to sit with any girl and complained how annoying they'd get with their stupid colorful pens, bags, books and stuff. But I'd sit with her. I'd sit with her through all the subjects in the fourth grade if I had too, including math. I wished we went to the same school.

I get to see her once a week, every Sunday at the free traditional dance class provided by the local government in the city area, thirty minutes by bus from our school. Sunday, for me back then, was the best day of the week. Bayu would bring some home-made foods cooked by her mom, and I would get some bites, sometimes more. Dancing doesn't need shoes and my sandals were just two month old.

And I still remember the way she danced, moving quietly like the night. At 12 o'clock every Sunday her parents would come and pick her up and for two seconds, just two seconds, you got to see her smile. You got to see her run to the open car door. You got to see her go, disappear around the corner; an end to start another beginning, a week long of waiting for another dance class.

It was two o'clock and it was raining. She stood there with her umbrella. Bayu's mum had picked him up. I sat there as if waiting, pretending that someone would pick me up. But all I could see was her, standing there with her umbrella. The rain carried by the wind fell soft on the sidewalk.

I was a dull boy; sport was never my cup of tea. I though I was a good sketcher, coloring with crayons was a lot of fuss. My marks had fallen like dead soldiers in the Belgian war since the beginning of this term, but I didn't care.

Our dad had left us several months before, after a big fight with mom, he never returned. And for me, that's a good enough reason to stop studying all together, pretending to be some fucked up little kid instead of just a lazy little donkey.

My only source of entertainment was the rain, sometimes heavy and sometimes soft, that fell all afternoon. It was, after all, the rainy season and the smell of the wet soil, the fog in the mountain feet, the waving green trees at a distance from the window, they're begging for my attention.

To tell the truth, the fourth grade was not much of a fun than the fifth. It's funny that the class is actually a bit smaller, funny, because in a way we were getting bigger.

Bayu said that his friend Rudy knew her friend and that her name was Tanya. A weird name if you speak Bahasa. You asked her name and you get Tanya. I guessed that her parents loved to play tricks.

To describe her in color, she was a yellowish-white. A lot of yellowish-whites roam the city. The toy store on the fifth street has older yellowish-white and even yellowish parents, pale wrinkled creatures. But this yellowish-white was special, she shone. And Bayu was the blackest living skinny kid alive. I for sure was a caf* latte brown with some peanut specs covered in dust, but who cares? I certainly don't.

I once saw her without glasses on. She said she wanted to wash her face, and I, out of whatever it was, stole a way out of the class and followed her from a distance. And she removed her glasses, took the running water and washed her face. At exactly 4 meters away she looked at me, with her beautiful two eyes, directly at me. After what I thought was a hint of smile, she looked away, in the most elegant of ways. My heart melted in my knees, and that was the end of me.

But apparently not, because after three months of joining this God condemned dance class, I finally got the chance to talk to her. It was two o'clock and she was there, her friends already leaving. The rain was shimmering and there was no sign of a car arriving from any corner. "I'm going to say hi", I thought.

There's a big tree shading the main street 10 minutes before the dance hall. It was the biggest tree I've ever seen in my life. Bayu said that it was probably because we're so small and that everything else seemed bigger or taller or farther. That in five years it would just be a tree, nothing special.

Everything looked so big and amazing when we're kids, and when we grow up, things will start to get the way they are, making us bored, and people start killing themselves.

Tanya, with her tiny little fingers washing her face, was like that tree to me, and I'm going to leave it at that.

Bayu's friend Rudi said that his friend told him that Tanya lives in one of the houses behind the Empat Lima football field, that her parents were rich and that she's got a brother who's got the latest Nintendo. He said that his friend said that Tanya is good at Tetris. I was a genius at hide and seek, and with her apparently a master at Tetris, whatever Tetris was, we must be suited to each other.

And she's great at Gambyong, we could one day dance together. People would see us and say how great we are - Tanya and me.

So baring these things in mind I stood up. It was raining but what the hell, I'm wearing sandals anyway. Water dripped from branches above the gate opposing the hall and there she was, with her short hair waving and her ever-lively eyes.

I stood a meter away from her after crossing the wet street. There was no contact until, suddenly, I slipped.

"Heeh!!" she screamed, almost worried.

I wasn't a skater or a funambulist, but I did get myself a hole in my right thigh with a twelve centimeter twig two months before Christmas simply because I failed in my impersonation of Tarzan, falling from a ledge of a gutter and regretting the futile effort of clinging to a half rotten banana tree.

"I'm okay, thanks!" I thanked God for not letting me fall on my butt.

She laughed, it was contagious. I laughed too. That's it, I'm going to marry this girl and we're going to have lots of kids.

"You're Dhika right?"

She knew my name! How in the hell would she know me? Should I ask? I once asked my mother to change the name to Agus, because I had two friends who were Agus and they're both stinking rich, but apparently 27 people in our school were Agus and I had to stick to the quota. Anyways, yes, I'm Dhika.

"Yeah, you're Tanya right?"

"Tanya? No! I'm Mei Ling"

Darn that kid named Rudi. My friend Cahyo had an uncle named Rudi and we once caught him ripping a page from a Dragon Ball manga to wipe his nose. Never trust anyone named Rudi, that's a consensus we made, I can't believe I forgot about it.

"Mei Ling? I was born in May too!"

"That's a Chinese name you stupid," she laughed.

Never before did someone call me stupid and make me happy at the same time. What she did to me was way crazier than Santet, I felt pins and needles in my stomach, sand in my knees, and I laughed like a stupid cow.

I was soaking wet, and as the rain got heavier, I stepped closer under her umbrella. The skin of our hand touched and I felt my heart beat faster by the second - and then her parent's car appeared.

She said goodbye and disappeared behind the closed door. Time stood still but the rain kept falling. The sky was grey but my heart was blooming, it was going to be a long week.

It was the last time I ever saw her. A teacher told Rudi - whom Bayu and I vowed never to trust again - and he told his friend and that friend told us that she had moved to Jakarta with the rest of her family. Though I can see her smiling face every time I closed my eyes, time passed, and she slowly faded away.

...

Adam is calling, started with easy talk about last night's stupid incident and ended with another blind date to set up. What is so wrong with a 29 year old single guy? Absolutely nothing!

"You're going to like her. She's a friend of my wife and she's fun. Her name is Mei Ling," he said on the speaker-phone.

"Okaaaay, seven o'clock tomorrow at the usual cinema," I said uninterested, walking back to the living room.

"Mei Ling huh? She couldn't be born in May, could she?" asked John.

"That's a Chinese name you stupid," I replied.




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the short story was published on The Jakarta Post, Sunday 05/17/2009, I hope you guys like it :)