Drive-by Saviours (36 page)

Bumi forgot about Yaty as best he could and looked forward to the silent visits of his timid son and conversations with his precocious daughter. They never came together, and each visited every other day at best, making his hermitage worth the mental strain that filled the rest of his days. Bunga had inherited her father's intellect and, apparently, none of his defects. She was top of her class in virtually every subject, had an unaccounted-for love of sports and games and had dozens of friends. She belonged to the Girl Scouts and studied martial arts. She had her mother's love and sympathy for the poor and the underdog and was never plagued by the doubts and fears of her father.

Over months of late-night discussions, when Bunga brought her father his food, he fell into the role of a parent to a teenager. Spurred by an unearned sense of pride in her achievements, relief that she hadn't fallen prey to his own shortcomings and fear that life would betray her idealistic energies, he muttered comments like, “You'd better go study for your math test then.” She'd smile and say, “Yes, Sir,” and when she scampered off he'd find crumbs in his beard and feel a fool for his attempted paternalism. He was more like a family pet than a father. He provided nothing and had earned no right to lecture.

Yet Bunga visited him faithfully every other night and told him things that most fathers would never be privy to: about her first kiss with her Christian boyfriend, the boy's pathetic attempts to touch her budding breasts. Every other night she confessed to Bumi her successes but also her insecurities, confusions and even her sins: slapping her brother, disrespecting her mother and father, sexual fantasies about classmates and teachers. He didn't deserve such confidences, yet he couldn't turn them down. He needed them for the same reason he had once needed to read. For joy.

That joy came with a price. Hearing Bunga describe Mathias as her father was a kick in the hindquarters for Bumi. But, as her confessions became increasingly intimate and detailed, he suspected that he was more like her diary than her pet, and he bandaged the wound of what he lost with gratitude. Her admiration for Mathias was grudging and reluctant, just as Bumi's had always been for Yusupu. He only wished, through all those six months, that he could offer something more in return.

While Bunga's confessions could take as long as half an hour (at which point she would apologize, look around nervously and excuse herself) Baharuddin's visits were comparably brief and professional, a food delivery service. Bumi marvelled at Baharuddin's utter difference from his sister, his slow, distracted movements, almost twitches, as he glanced around looking anywhere but into Bumi's face. Baharuddin seemed at a complete loss in Bumi's presence, as if he needed some kind of lifeline to pull him back to the familiar.

Bumi did what he could to boost the boy's confidence. He started with the obvious strength of his artistic talents. “I was so impressed with your drawings. Can you show me more?”

Baharuddin revealed a hint of a smile and said, “Okay. Mom said they're good but Dad… Mr. Mathias thinks I should study harder and get my head out of the clouds.” He looked about to laugh, then stared at the ground.

“The clouds?” Bumi asked, unable to resist the chance to mine for dirt on Mathias.

“Just a metaphor,” Baharuddin said.

Bumi was overcome with a heavy laughter and Baharuddin stared at him blankly.

“Sorry,” Bumi said. “It's just that I know it was a metaphor, of course.”

“Oh,” Baharuddin said. His shoulders slumped.

“Son, in my eyes you have grown in an instant from a toddler to a boy who knows about metaphors and imagery. I can only laugh.”

Baharuddin shook his head. “I'm going in now,” he said. He put the plate back down for Bumi, hesitated, left it on the ground and turned around to add, “See you later. I'll bring my sketchbook next time.”

Baharuddin was like the awkward teenage girl and Bunga was ready to embark on a political career. Bumi sprawled out on his back and looked, as he had when he was a child, for guidance in the stars. They stared back and said nothing. He became lost in their eternal futility.

Baharuddin was true to his word. He took great pride in showing Bumi the rest of his sketches.

Bumi thought them exceptional. “You must win all kinds of prizes for these,” he said.

“Oh no, I don't show them to anyone except Mom and Mr. Mathias. And Bunga, sometimes.”

Bumi cocked his once-famous eyebrow of scepticism at Baharuddin. “You're kidding,” he said. “These should be hanging in every gallery in the country.”

The sketches showed skill and imagination. Baharuddin translated abstract ideas into mythical images of flying buffaloes fighting in the sky as chickens wearing suits or factory workers' uniforms gazed up at them from opposite ends of a rice terrace.

“Where do you come up with this stuff?” Bumi asked.

“I dream it.”

“I hope you realize,” Bumi said, “that you have been given a great talent.”

Baharuddin nodded slowly.

Looking at one sketch of Yaty with her arm crammed inside a pregnant pig, Bumi was surprised at the twinge of anger he felt. “Your mother has changed since I knew her,” he said.

Baharuddin gave that same distant nod.

The last thing Bumi wanted was to turn the children against their mother, and he didn't want to lead his own heart, or what was left of it, down that road either. Better to turn them against Mathias, if possible.

“Listen, Baharuddin,” he told the attentive child. “Don't listen to Mr. Mathias. Your talent as an artist is astrological.”

Baharuddin rewarded Bumi's compliment with a smile that melted some of the coldest winters he'd known.

“You really like to draw, Son?”

“Yes!” Baharuddin answered with a certainty almost unnatural for a child in an adult's presence.

“Then keep doing it,” Bumi said. “As much as you can. To hell with studying.”

Bunga was more overt with her complaints against Mathias. It was obvious to Bumi that she respected her new father, but she was vexed that he treated her like the hired help. “I know it's my traditional role and all that but sometimes I miss the way it was when I was little,” she said.

“Your mother used to do all that work for us,” Bumi said.

Bunga nodded. “Mr. Mathias won't even let her get a job,” she said. “He says she is the Queen here and that is her job, but he won't hire a servant. So I do most of the housework and I also take care of the animals—except those filthy pigs, Mom takes care of them. Mr. Mathias says it's good for me to do domestic labour. He says if I think too much about school no good man will want me. The boys don't do anything.”

But other than that one complaint Bunga praised her new father and expressed gratitude toward him. He had saved them from misguided vengeance, provided for them and treated them as if they were his own. Bumi wanted to question her logic, the joy she, Baharuddin and their mother seemed to take in being possessed. But he resisted that temptation. His nemesis, by all accounts, was a good man, a better man than he, an adequate protector, provider and giver.

Never much of a sleeper, Bumi's recently freed mind picked apart the words of his children. He sought some weapon to use against this superior foe. No matter how he analyzed this problem he could conceive of only three weaknesses, three consistent complaints the children had about their stepfather: he treated his daughter like a servant, he had no faith in his son's art and he gave Beti preferential treatment. To Bumi, for whom circumstances had left nothing in life but his children, these were three massively egregious offences. But, to see things from Yaty's perspective, he knew that Mathias's armour remained shiny and impenetrable. He did right by his new children and Bumi knew this.

BAHARUDDIN WAS MORE SHIFTY THAN USUAL AND HE RUBBED HIS
chin on his upper wrist a few times, snapped his head sideways a few times and said, “I read about Toronto on the Internet. I think you must have really missed us if you wanted to come back from there. They have so many art galleries.” As he spoke, Baharuddin put his forehead to the ground and reached out with his hand, a non sequitur movement resembling a Muslim in the act of prayer.

Bumi looked at his deferential son and pondered the boy's statement. He noticed that Baharuddin's hands looked a little rough, a little reddened, and he chastised himself for not noticing it before. He took hold of his son's hands but Baharuddin yanked them away, as if shocked by the physical contact.

“Son,” Bumi said.

But Baharuddin was already on his feet. He backed away awkwardly and rolled his head as if cracking his neck. “Goodnight, Dad,” he said. He turned and trotted into the house.

Bumi had little time to worry about how to explain the paradox of the West to his son. It was hard enough to explain, without this new complication, how Canada had granted him no leeway, freedom or status, excluded him at every turn, and yet had supplied him with a white man who brought him to a black doctor who gave him the blue pills to cure his illness. And now it seemed his son suffered the same illness. After six months living as an unwelcome pet and sometimes useful diary, Bumi didn't get much time to consider what to do about Baharuddin's potential illness. For the second time in eight years, he was the victim of police brutality.

The four muscle-headed perpetrators made sure that Bumi could see their faces but could not cry out through the dirty sock they stuffed in his mouth as they dragged him from his nylon cave and kicked and punched for the better part of an hour. Unlike his torture eight years earlier, this time he thought about little other than the pain and the question of why. The experience brought back that other session, and even though they didn't touch his genitals or anus, those most sensitive parts felt a very realistic phantom of pain. Hearing no call to prayer this time, Bumi could no longer bring himself to blame God, who was increasingly absent and irrelevant the more Bumi learned to embrace the dirt.

These assassins, despite their thuggish approach, were experts in the administration of pain. Their blows seemed to cut straight to his kidneys, liver, bladder, heart, lungs and veins, until the pain circulated throughout his body. They never touched him from the neck up and they made almost no sound. Despite his low tolerance for pain, consciousness refused to desert him. When they pulled the sock from his mouth he had nothing left with which to scream. He smelled his own urine and feces in his only pair of pants.

“It is dangerous for you to stay here,” a hoarse voice whispered in his ear. “Some of your old neighbours and friends have heard that you are haunting us, even that other island freak with his island accent like you.”

Bumi had been thinking up to that point how similar Rilakans and Torajans were. For Bumi, who had been across the ocean, the differences seemed like almost nothing. He hadn't the energy to argue with this hoarse voice and its harsh Indonesian language, the only one they shared.

“Since you are a ghost,” the hoarse voice said, “we cannot protect you like we can your widow and her family. Maybe you should haunt somewhere else, for your own safety.”

Had he been able to respond he would have told the man that he would rather become a real ghost than a fugitive again. Instead he lay still and silent, felt the sting of the cool moonlight on his back and the burn of being dragged on his front, back into his tent. He heard the sound of its zipper closing. The crickets and frogs sang him into a painful sleep, during which he made no movements.

INTO THE DITCH AT NINETY IN CHAPTER 23

M
y failure as a counsellor complete, i jumped onto
a grant cycle and rode it out like a gradual downhill, barely having to pedal. I went with forces greater than myself, rather than try to shape anything of my own. I churned out, cut, pasted and edited applications. I spent an hour each morning scanning the newspapers and Internet for new streams and pools of money. I made calls in search of corporate social responsibility leads, but as always the most money came from government and private philanthropic foundations.

Within three months the social work department of the health centre had more money than ever before in its thirty-year history, and I was home by six every evening. I slipped into my routine with no trace of Bumi and no word from Mikki. She had a funny way of showing that she missed me. Still, order had been established in my little world. I felt more comfortable than bored for the first time in a few years.

As the stress of the previous few months dissolved, Sarah transformed herself completely. She honoured her remaining few short-term modelling contracts, none of which involved her suddenly marred, but still spectacular legs. She tweaked the business plan to perfection and worked to sell it to potential investors in the industry, and several banks and credit unions.

I had barely noticed how my girlfriend had faded over the years. It wasn't just that I paid her less attention. She had become less vibrant, more worn and plain, less imaginative in her vivid explanations of simple things. Long stories were replaced by summaries, the assumption being that I'd heard them all before anyway, which was for the most part true. Once you take shortcuts you cruise through life together, distracted by other things. She took shortcuts because I'd lost patience for the scenery. Now she had reinvented herself and I was the same, but with more free time.

The first time I read Sarah's business plan was about two weeks after I returned from Portland. She had done her research, not only of the global and local clothing industry, the competitors that specialized in sweatshop-free garments and higher-end fashion, but also in the art of the business plan. It was tight and it answered all the questions I could imagine an erudite banker asking from the other side of some massive oak table.

And yet, it lacked something. It lacked a plot. It didn't tell the story of Sarah. Sure it had the obligatory mission and vision statements. The latter promised a beautiful world of smartly dressed rich people, sufficiently fed Third Worlders looking forward to their work week, and fat-pocketed shareholders, but somehow it failed to connect the beginning to the end, the ambitious young woman to her happy ending.

She had written herself out of the thing, and she was its protagonist. She was asking them to invest in her. Her ideas, her imagination, her attention to detail, her knowledge and experience, her awareness of a problem and a challenge and an opportunity and a niche. It was her creativity and love of beautiful clothes, and her commitment to children, that would make the financiers' investments profitable.

With her permission I translated her personal story into business-ease. It was much the same as writing a grant proposal. The guys with the money and silk ties love their money too much to throw it into some vacuum where it is said good ideas come to play. They want facts, figures, proof of problems and untapped solutions. They want to know that the people handling the money are capable of basic math, at least, and punctuation. But they also want to hear a good story. They want to be convinced and inspired. They want a believable plot and a happy ending. A successful proposal must have all of these elements.

I was about halfway through my revisions when I got a call from Lily. “So I hear you're a rising star,” she said.

“Am I?”

“I hear your health centre's never done better.”

I made some show of humility, but probably came off less humble than I intended about my fundraising genius. I reluctantly conceded that, indeed, I was born to write proposals.

“Ever think about switching industries?” Lily asked.

“Only about eight hours a day.”

Lily came off as unassuming but she was a wildcat opportunist, quick to pounce and not one to let go of the jugular when she got close to her goal. I learned this lesson the hard way, when she offered me a dream opportunity to use my money gift in a brand new way.

She had scraped together a small pot of money. It was enough to pay me for a few months. I was to write a large-scale proposal to the Ministry of Labour to support the wages of a full-time migrant farm workers union organizer. If I could convince an anti-labour Labour Department to fund the most powerless workers in the province, I could turn a temporary grant-writing assignment into a full-time job. I'd be able to work with migrant farm labourers, people kind of like Bumi, but in their case legalized slaves. I would help them fight for their rights. And like a lame gazelle I fell backwards into her wildcat grip. Unable to think of any other options I succumbed, accepted the offer without negotiation or consideration of consequence. I didn't even ask her how she was doing.

OF COURSE SARAH DIDN'T WANT TO SELL OUR HOUSE AND MOVE
up north to Cauldron. Of course Sherry was unimpressed that so soon after I invented a new position for myself and negotiated a considerable raise I wanted to leave. Of course my mother worried that I would fail to raise the money needed to keep myself employed, especially with Sarah unemployed.

My generally absentee sister came closest to being supportive of my plan. “Are you really unhappy with your work?” she asked.

“Bored out of my fucking mind,” I said.

“Really? I had the impression that you were doing quite well.” This response was quintessential Mikki. I complained incessantly to her about the bureaucracy, the brain-freeze, the routine, the backbiting in the guise of friendship at the ‘community' health centre. I had even told her about the recurring dream I had that I was a chicken running around stamping out fires with my chicken feet and the fuel for the fires was an important grant proposal I'd written in my human form. As a chicken I couldn't seem to keep up and the dream ended with a sense of relief when one of the fires engulfed me and a swarm of hungry relatives surrounded my roasting carcass.

Somehow this all registered with Mikki as ‘doing quite well.'

“I guess many people consider me a success,” I said. “But I'm miserable.”

“I just thought you got what you wanted,” she said, “based on what you said when you were out here, how you were such a good grant writer.”

“Maybe being good at something and enjoying aren't always the same,” I said.

“Then why would you want to write proposals at all? Why leave one grant-writing job for another?”

She had a point, but I tried to explain that this new grant-writing job was a means to an end.

She didn't get it. She wasn't much of a compromiser, not one to separate process from product. I thought maybe that was the secret to her recent success. “You could always skip that step,” she said, “and come out here and be an English tutor with me. We can start our own school together when we raise enough money—you might find tutoring more rewarding than all that grant writing.”

Of all the responses to my lapse into the lion's jaws Sarah's should have been the most predictable. “If you don't want to work at the health centre any more, why not use those skills to help my business?” she said.

My response was total, unprecedented collapse — her question was like starch remover and I crumbled into a malleable ball on our living room floor. Sarah, totally confused, put her arms around me from behind and clutched my chest. She could think of no other response, and I couldn't either.