Critical Syllables

The boy comes into the corner warung with what I take to be his mother and his sister. The two women take their seats and withdraw their phones from their purses but the boy remains standing and kind of ping-pongs from table to table around the warung. Occasionally he stops, folds his arms as if he is about to strike up a conversation, but then quickly drifts onward. I note that the boy has an odd facial affect, sometimes appearing to ruminate, sometimes lifting his eyes toward the ceiling, lips moving silently, not as if he were speaking words but as if he were chewing on words. Like a moth, he flutters about the warung, completely unattended to by mother and sister, and then lands behind his mother. He reaches into her purse and pulls out a hair clip, grabs his mother's hair from behind and begins to fashion it into a bun atop her head. She scans her phone while the boy styles her hair. I note then that this is not so much a boy as a young man, for he has a light mustache. The mother finally reaches to the back of her head to undo the hair bun and the boy settles for a ponytail. He rushes to the front of the warung, folds his arms, sways from foot to foot, looks at the sky, and then returns to the table and picks up his mother's phone, which he holds very close to his eyes, tilted at an angle, seeming to look not so much at the screen or what's on the screen but upon the greenish light of the screen. He holds it very close to one eye as if the light itself were somehow pleasurable. I have not heard him speak even once, but then neither has the mother or sister spoken. I wonder if this boy is autistic. Some of the movements and attitudes are familiar to me. He is lively in his environment and yet somehow completely at odds with his environment. It is as if he is trying to find a place to fit in. Again and again he returns to the constant flame of his mother and sister.

 

A friend of mine in Java, a child psychologist, was recently instructing me on how to remember an experience. You must note five things associated with the setting, she said. People or things or sights or smells. Whatever. I was thinking about that when I awoke in the morning, and then realized that I had completely forgotten the woman's name. 

Yesterday, the maid showed up unexpectedly at my house. The neighbor's toilet would not flush and she brought two plungers, one for me, one for him. Mampet, she kept saying, but I couldn't understand what she meant, because I had never heard this word before. The plunger itself made the matter clear. 

"Did you already try it?" I asked.

"No, Om."

"Why not?" 

"Takut."

Scared. She was scared to use the plunger. 

"Do you want me to do it?"

"Yes, please." 

But the plunger, as it turned out, was ineffective. The septic tank itself is backed up. 

"Well, I guess we need to call Mayo," I said. Mayo is the builder. 

"Who?" 

"Mayo."

"I don't know Mayo." 

"Sure you do. He's the boss here. He's Ibu Dency's huband." 

"Oh! MaYO!" 

The stress on two letters, one syllable, can make all the difference in the world.

Every long once in a while, I check in with my face in the mirror--and I noticed this morning that I have developed hooded eyes. Hooded eyes are when you have excess skin folding down from the brow bone to the lash line. Hooded eyes are hereditary and tend to be more marked in old age. Notable people with hooded eyes include Taylor Swift, Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, and Jennifer Lawrence. Hooded eyes are also known as bedroom eyes.