Sea (7 page)

“You ready, kid?” Tom asked quietly.

I had no idea what I was supposed to be ready for, but when the
pesantren
owner opened the creaky door, it became clear what he meant.

A sea of faces stared back at me. At us. Dressed in black and white, some of the younger children squirmed on the tile floor until they noticed the
pesantren
owner. Then they sat immediately at attention: backs straight with legs tucked underneath.

I flashed on a school assembly at home in El Angel Miguel. Principal Sanchez couldn’t get us to shut up for ten seconds. But this tiny, stern-faced man in wire-rimmed glasses could quiet them with one look? That’s power.

Scanning the crowd more carefully, I noticed the boys were wearing white long-sleeved dress shirts tucked into black pants with small black hats, like the one the owner wore, on the crowns of their dark heads. The girls dressed in the same colors but with flowing
jilbabs
covering their heads, necks and shoulders. Most of the girls wore skirts instead of pants.

I was really glad I hadn’t shown up in a tank top and shorts.

“All the orphans are gathered for our honored guests,” the owner explained.

The room looked split by gender, with the girls on the left and the boys on the right, the younger kids kneeling in front.

“The two hundred children of the tsunami from Aceh are in the center of the room,” he said in a not-so-subtle voice.

My eyes darted to the group he was talking about; I recognized some of the kids from the DVD. When I saw their faces, I heard their voices, heard their stories. Saw the wave rising up and over ...

The owner addressed them in Indonesian, and suddenly the kids started clapping and cheering. A tall older student, a boy, translated his words to English as we stood in front of the room. “These are visiting doctors from America who have come to meet you,” he said. “Orphans from Aceh, please stand.”

A huge group, more than half the room, stood up; some of them stared down at their feet uncomfortably. I caught the eye of one little girl. She was standing in the front row of tsunami kids, a curtain of black hair falling out of her
jilbab,
veiling an eye.

She looked just like the shy girl in the video! The one I wanted to meet. I smiled at her, hoping she’d notice me, but she didn’t.

“Orphans from Papua, please stand.”

The Aceh kids sat down and about fifty other kids stood up. Tom whispered to me that many of those kids suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder too, because many witnessed their parents’ deaths in street riots.

His words hit me like an anvil to my chest. If you bottled up all the trauma in this room ... I couldn’t even imagine. And these kids were my age and
younger.
Suddenly I was very glad we were here. Like Dad said—these were people who really needed his help.

“Thank you, children,” the
pesantren
owner said, and then he turned to Team Hope. “The Acehnese orphans have prepared a special welcome ceremony for you. Children?” He nodded to the crowd and led us against the wall, where we were apparently supposed to watch.

A dozen mixed-age boys stood up off the floor and carried gold and red drums entwined with dark leather straps to the front of the room.

One of the boys stood out immediately.

He and his drum were the tallest, broadest, most striking. The other boys’ eyes were only on him, silently asking him where to sit, what to do next. He told them with gestures of his head, his hands. His lanky body moved with a sort of shrug, like he was almost annoyed to be there but had committed to going through the motions anyway.

I totally got that.

Once situated in a circle on the floor, the instruments splayed across their laps, the boys began lightly slapping both ends of the drums with their palms. The tone was soft at first, then elevated until the beat came harder and faster, their music creating a rich sound that vibrated through the flat-roofed room so frenetically that my pulse raced along with it.

I couldn’t stop staring at the tallest boy, the one pounding his drum like he was out for vengeance. I didn’t know how he did it, but his music throttled its way through me, straight to my core. He glanced up. Once. Caught me staring. His eyes electric, but steady. I still didn’t break his gaze. Instead I sucked in a breath. Blinked. Took in the sight of him. The sweat trickling down his temple, his square-boned jaw, his rippling arm muscles as he beat the crap out of that drum.

When his strong hands slowed to a quiet rhythm, when the thumping finally faded to a slow, easy pulse, applause erupted around me. Almost as an afterthought, I clapped along too but couldn’t stop looking. Couldn’t unlock my eyes from the drummer wiping his forehead with his sleeve.

I hadn’t expected to find anything like
him
behind those carved doors.

“The Aceh orphans are talented,” the owner said to my dad. Then he lowered his voice. “Talented, but problematic.”

Did he mean their nightmares and anxiety were problematic? That they screamed out in the night like I did? That he wasn’t sure how to help them? But something about his tone told me that he meant something else. Something less kind than all of that.

As the applause died down, as the boys packed up their drums and wandered back to their seats, I wondered why the owner referred to the kids as the Aceh orphans anyway.

Just because they survived the tsunami, why should they be defined by it?

I’d be beating the hell out of a drum if someone kept referring to me that way too. What if Dad had been with Mom on that small plane? What if I had lost both of them to the sea?

Then a chorus of little girls approached the front, taking the place of the drum circle. They stood side by side, facing their peers and four American strangers.

“The song is about a fragrant
jeumpa
flower that grows only in Aceh,” the translating boy explained in a throaty voice.

Of course, I didn’t understand a word of what I assumed was now Acehnese, but I could tell by the far-off looks on their faces that the girls were singing about their home.

When the song ended, the girls bowed and we all clapped.

I was already glancing at the back door, ready to bolt. The hot, stale air was suffocating, and my shirt and pants were both stuck to my skin with glue-like sweat.

Just when I was about to flee, a line of older boys began to form, winding their way toward us.

“What’s going on?” I whispered to Dad.

“They’re coming to meet us. The boys first, then the girls.”

He had to be kidding. “All five hundred?” I eyed the door.

“I think so. Are you okay? I know this is an awful long time to stand.”

I fanned my face. “It’s just so hot in here ...”

Too late.

One by one, the boys approached us like we were a receiving line at a wedding reception. When I realized the leader of the drum circle was first, my heart sped up. I stopped worrying about the heat. Wished I were wearing something clean. Something nice.

Out of the corner of my eye, I watched the drummer take Tom’s right hand, hold it to his forehead and then let it fall as he touched his own heart, bowing as he did.

Closer now, I noticed the boy’s thick sideburns, his full, serious lips, the stubble of goatee peppered across his chin like it wasn’t sure if it should keep growing or fade away.

I swallowed. I was next.

Quickly, I wiped my sweaty hands on the sides of my pants.

“What is that?” I whispered to Dad, suddenly wishing like heck I’d read that handbook.

“It’s their welcoming handshake,” Dad whispered back.

And then he was standing in front of me.

He looked about sixteen or seventeen. When his eyes met mine, they were so intense and dark. Bottom-of-the-ocean dark, the darkest eyes I’d ever seen. Up close his eyes were even more piercing, like he was trying to peer right into my soul.

Before I had time to wipe the new nervous sweat off my palms, he reached out, took my hand in his and lifted my fingers gently to his forehead. His skin, the color of driftwood, was soft, smooth, hot to the touch. When he let go, when he let my fingers fall gently by my side, his penetrating look dove even deeper. When he touched his heart with his palm and shyly bowed his head, then, only then, did he lower his gaze.

Whoa
.

My brain was swimming, and I had to focus to remember the one Indonesian phrase I overheard Dad say to the taxi driver.

“Terima kasih,”
I whispered. Thank you.

At that the boy raised his eyebrows, mischievous, teasing.

What? Had I pronounced it wrong?

I hoped he couldn’t hear my heart pound. I tried to calm down, but it was hard to do. Practically impossible, in fact. When he finally walked away, I watched the hard muscles in his back ripple under his white shirt, shadowed with sweat. He walked with a slight limp, which only added to his allure. I wanted to find out why.

But he didn’t turn around again.

When he opened the back door and slipped into the daylight, I had to fight the urge to run after him.

“Sienna?” Dad’s voice slowly pulled me back to reality. “This young man is trying to get your attention,” he said.

“What? Oh. Sorry.”

Standing in front of me waiting to greet me was another boy. A new boy. I gave him my hand, but I knew his welcome would feel nothing like the one that came before him.

Even after the hundredth greeting, I started to eye the door again, distracted, wondering about the drummer. Then the little girl from the DVD wound her way up in line to greet me. I smiled at her, and when she grinned back, the space where her two front teeth should be were tiny pearls budding from her gums.

“Hello,” I said.

“Hello!” she mimicked, her voice sweet as maple syrup.

She repeated the traditional gesture, my hand to her forehead, and gave another shy grin, like she was inviting me into a game only she knew how to play. Her energy dazzled me. Both of her parents were dead? How could she seem so alive?

At the end of the greeting, she didn’t let go. Instead she tugged on my hand, led me out of the crowded room and into the drizzle. I glanced back at Team Hope, who were standing around chatting. The little girl was the end of the line, so it probably didn’t matter if I took off. I almost called out, letting Dad know that I was going, but instead I held on tight to her hand because it was pretty obvious that she knew more about life here than I did.

“Hello!” she said again once we were outside.

“Hello!” I said back, trying to match her enthusiasm.

“Nama saya
Elli,” she said, touching her chest.

Oh. My name is Elli.

“Nama saya
Sienna.”

“Sienna!” she said. “Sienna!”

Shyness evaporated, she dragged me by the hand down the same muddy path we walked to the meeting room. Past the decrepit dorms and into one of the white buildings with open blue-trimmed windows that I had been peeking into before.

The room was in worse shape than I had imagined.

Metal bunk beds lined the floor. Articles of clothing flopped awkwardly over rusted frames. The air smelled like moldy bread and stagnant pond water. Two small rattan dressers on the far wall held overstuffed drawers. The open window had no glass and no screen, just chipped blue folding shutters that I doubted could even keep the big bugs out.

I focused on keeping my expression neutral so Elli didn’t feel my honest reaction to the place that was now her home.

“You,” she said happily, pointing to the top bunk by the window. “Me.”

Then she pointed to the bottom bunk under the one she said would be mine. My reaction probably wasn’t what she wanted, so she repeated louder and clearer, “Sienna.” Point. “Elli.” Point. She tilted her face expectantly.

I got that she wanted me to sleep above her; I just didn’t want to imagine actually sleeping on that stained mattress. I forced a grin. “Okay.” I pointed to the top bunk. “Sienna. Thank you, Elli.
Terima kasih.”

She giggled and clapped. We were communicating.

Glancing out the open window, I watched early-evening light cast shadows across the moldy walls. I thought about the boy with the limp and wondered if he was thinking about me too.

I found Dad a few minutes later passing out newly inflated soccer balls with his trusty sidekick Vera. A group of boys were crowded around Tom, listening to him eagerly as if he was the coach in a huddle.

“Hey,” I greeted Dad.

“There you are! I lost you after the ceremony.”

“Oh, sorry. This is Elli. She sort of dragged me out and then showed me around her room. She wants me to sleep in there with her. Is that okay, or am I assigned a different dorm?”

“That sounds great! We were going to put you in with the youngest girls anyway.”

While Dad and I started talking about the logistics of bunking with the kids, what to look out for as far as PTSD signs, Vera approached a group of teenage girls.

“What’s she doing?” I asked.

“Gathering interest in her group therapy session. We hope all the survivors with PTSD symptoms will participate, but we’re definitely not going to force them to.”

Dressed in various pastel-colored
jilbabs,
the girls listened to Vera intently. Some nodded, intrigued, while others looked away as if they didn’t want to hear her words at all.

I would definitely fall into category B.

Past them, I noticed a group of older boys I recognized from the ceremony but who were now dressed in T-shirts and long pants, sauntering along the edge of the lawn. I scanned their faces, but the drummer boy wasn’t among them.