Tales of a Female Nomad (23 page)

Tu Biang was definitely in trance, but it could have been self-hypnosis, which I have seen many times in dance performances here. Perhaps Tu Biang is using trance as an escape valve, to release emotions she is not permitted to have. She has many good reasons to dislike her cousin the king.

Or perhaps we have heard the voice of an unseen world, the world inhabited by spirits?

In recent weeks, I have often found myself thinking about “spirits.” It’s unavoidable. All those offerings and altars and prayers. All that talk about different worlds.

There’s no doubt that my spiritual development is still rather primitive; but since my arrival in Bali more than nine months ago, I’ve come to believe that there is such a thing as a spirit. That we are not just flesh and bones and blood.

Once I have accepted the existence of a spirit, anything is possible. If the spirit leaves the body when we die, why wouldn’t it want to visit now and then to see what’s happening? And why not step in from time to time with advice?

If I were Tu Aji’s kind and benevolent father watching his son the king damage the name of the dynasty, the ceremony at Bulung Daya would be the perfect place to send a message.

Jan and I talk into the morning. Neither one of us knows what to think, but there’s no doubt that we’re both in a place, spiritually, that we’ve never been before. At this point, we are both convinced that there is such a thing as a spirit. It’s a slippery concept and we are not altogether comfortable with the implications, but we work on it together for most of the night. I’m so glad she’s here. Today would have been difficult to handle alone. I’m going to miss her. She leaves next week.

While Jan is moving west around the world, Mitch is honored by his peers in the New York Press Club as Nellie Bly Cub Reporter of the Year for stories he wrote in 1989. He is presented with a plaque at a banquet at the posh Water Club restaurant in Manhattan. My ex is there to support and cheer him. So are my parents. I am not. When I find out about the honor several months later, I feel both proud and sad. I would have liked to have shared that moment with my son, and I know I was missed.

Years later, when Jan, Mitch, and I talk about the fact that I was a very peripheral part of their lives for many years, I hear for the first time how much they missed a traditional mom. They were twenty-two and twenty-three when I began my travels. My mothering years were over. My kids were adults and they didn’t need me any more, I thought. They saw it differently. They missed not being able to talk to me and share what was going on in their lives.

In the early years of my travels, I wrote letters frequently, and I spent as least two weeks every year with each of them. But I wasn’t a part of their daily lives, and I wasn’t at the other end of a phone for those supportive conversations that kids (even adult kids) need from time to time.

I thought at the time they were pleased not to have a hovering mother nearby. I was flattered, surprised, and pained to learn that they both wished I’d been closer.

The last few years have been easier. I’ve had both a phone and e-mail.

After Jan leaves, friends of friends arrive from the U.S. and I spend a month introducing them to Bali. A few months after that, I join Jan in Thailand and we tour the country together. When I return to Bali, I spend some time at an ashram on the eastern coast of the island.

When I finally come back to the
puri,
I discover that Tu Biang’s mother, the tiny Tu Nini, is dying.

Her room is filled with the earthy smell of incense, rising from an offering that has just been placed on the floor at the foot of her bed. In the palm-leaf container are rice and meat and vegetables and sweets, the ingredients for a betel-nut chew, a glass of liquor, and a cigarette, bribes for the evil spirits who are killing her; perhaps they will reverse their curse. Evil spirits get their offerings on the ground. Ancestors and gods get theirs on raised altars.

The room is hot, and heavy with humidity; the fan in the corner is still. Tu Nini, dressed in her
kebaya
and sarong, is in bed, her head and chest propped up on pillows. She is surrounded by four women, each one massaging a limb. I relieve Tu Biang and take the tiny right arm in my hand, gently moving my fingers across skin and bone. There is no flesh.

The IV, assembled by her grandson, Dr. Rai, is standing on the floor, its plastic tube ending in a needle in Tu Nini’s arm. From time to time, a family member studies the drip and decides she’s not getting enough to eat. During the half hour I sit there, two people, separately, adjust the clip. The IV is not a sacred medical tool; it’s food. Why not give her a little more?

Tu Nini cannot move her arms or lift her head, but in spite of the cancer that is swelling in her stomach like an eight-month-old fetus, she can see and speak.

“Did you bring me a
manggis?
” she asks when she sees me.

She and I share a passion for the purple-skinned fruit (mangosteen in English). It is the juiciest, sweetest, whitest, most wonderful fruit in the world, and she remembers that I have just returned from the eastern part of the island where
manggis
grow.

I am devastated at having to say no to a dying woman. There is a custom in Bali that when you go away, you return with
oleh oleh,
often some food that is specific to the part of the island where you’ve just been.
Manggis
are not in season. Instead I have brought cookies and crunchy soybean snacks. If I were dying, however, I would want
manggis
too.

When I am replaced at her side, I run to the small outdoor market in Kerambitan. No
manggis.
I hire a car to drive me to the town twenty minutes away, where there is a huge market. I check dozens of fruit sellers. No
manggis.
I return to the
puri
empty-handed.

Tu Biang laughs her infectious giggle as she tells everyone that I have been running around trying to find a
manggis,
which Tu Nini cannot even eat. There are probably some imports in the big supermarkets in Denpasar, more than an hour from here, but I cannot go. There is not enough time. In a few hours we are going to a trance medium, a special one who can undo curses.

Tu Biang has visited trance mediums twice in the last two weeks. She is certain that the cancer growing in her mother was planted by a particular woman who, it is said, does black magic. The woman, whom I know well,
is
different. She rarely sits with the other women when they weave their offerings and gossip, hour after hour. And I have often seen her sitting on her porch, reading a book, something one rarely sees Balinese, female or male, doing. And she always wants to talk with me about world problems and history and philosophy and religion. I like her. Whenever I go to see her, Tu Biang warns me that I shouldn’t.

I once asked this woman’s husband if he thinks his wife performs black magic.

“I have seen her sleeping upside down in her bed, her head to the ocean and her feet to the holy mountain of the gods. They say that is something a
leyak
would do. But how can I know? I can’t.”

Leyak,
it is thought, are the human collaborators of evil spirits. By day they look like everyone else, but at night they become cats or monkeys or even bright lights. Most of their evil is done after dark, when they cause hideous things to happen . . . illness, death, pain. Nearly everyone I know in Bali claims to have “seen” a
leyak.
They hang out at night in cemeteries, at crossroads, near banyan or fruit trees, and in places where two rivers meet.

One night a few weeks ago I asked Tu Aji if he thought black magic was real.

“Let me tell you a story,” he said. “Once, many years ago, when Tu Nini was a young mother, her marriage was in trouble. She went to a special priest who, like other
brahmana
priests, had access to the palm-leaf books that hold the secrets of both white and black magic. She asked him to make her attractive to her husband. The priest chanted and lit incense; he used herbs and leaves and flowers and fire as he sang. Then he wrote Sanskrit letters and drew a picture on a small white cloth. ‘Tie this next to your body, under your sarong,’ he told her. ‘It will make your husband love you.’

“Soon after she put on the cloth,” Tu Aji continued, “she started waking up in the mornings with knowledge of things she should not have known, like who had become sick during the night, and who had died. She knew who had had secret liaisons the night before and with whom, but she had no idea how she came by the knowledge. Then one night Tu Nini turned into a cat. She ran through the village on tops of walls, peered into family compounds, entered bedrooms. All night she observed events that only a cat could see.”

The next morning, terrified by the memory of the experience, the young Tu Nini returned the magic cloth to the priest.

I do not know what I think about all this. Does accepting a world of spirits mean that I have to accept a world where black magic exists? I’m not ready for that. But I imagine that mischievous spirits can cause mischief, and evil spirits can cause more serious trouble. Spirits probably don’t change their individual personalities. That’s why the Balinese entertain them with music and dance, feed them rice, and create beautiful art objects for their aesthetic enjoyment. It’s important that the spirits stay happy.

I’m still skeptical about the cats and bright lights and curses of the
leyak.

Tonight, Tu Biang, Dayu Biang, and I are bringing the dying Tu Nini to a
balian taksu
to ask for help. A
balian taksu
is a healer who is able to go into a trance by emptying his body of his own soul and filling the space with the soul of a spirit from the other world. Most
balian taksu
work with one particular spirit who guides them through the invisible world. Through that spirit, the
balian
can talk to all the dead spirits, the good and the bad.

Last week a different
balian
said there were
leyak
hanging around the
puri,
and that they were attracted by certain fruit trees that were planted in the wrong places. Tu Biang came back to the
puri
and ordered the trees to be cut down, including the papaya tree near my room. Tu Biang is hoping tonight’s
balian
will be able to undo the curse that is causing Tu Nini’s illness. For the first time, she is bringing Tu Nini.

The healer is a small man in his fifties with curly black hair and a jovial face, creased with laugh lines. He greets us warmly and loudly, like an old, somewhat coarse, friend. Tu Nini is carried in and placed on her mattress on one side of the healer. Tu Biang is on a mat near her mother’s head. Dayu Biang and I are sitting on a mat across from them.

The smell of incense mixes with the sweet perfume of jasmine flowers and the rich smokiness of sandalwood burning. After his effusive greeting, the
balian
sits quietly with his eyes closed. Then he begins to twitch, his face, his shoulders, his whole body. Then he grunts. And mutters. And jerks some more. And then he is still and silent. Minutes pass.

Suddenly, the silence is slashed by a howling animal noise. The healer leaps up and runs back and forth in front of us. He cackles and howls and jumps as though he is pouncing on prey.

Don’t laugh, I tell myself as he begins to snort and squeal like a pig. Then he begins uttering nonsense words. I fight the urge to giggle, feeling guilty and traitorous until I look at Dayu Biang. She too is struggling to keep from laughing. I relax.

The noises, the words, the pouncing, the sitting continue for ten minutes. Tu Nini is silent and motionless, her eyes closed. Then the healer sits. He lifts a knife and passes it over the smoke of the burning sandalwood. He takes a stack of incense and waves it over the knife and then over a bowl of holy water. Then he talks to Tu Biang, giving her the consecrated incense. She nods as he speaks. Then he closes his eyes, twitches some more, and then is calm, back in the room with us, chatting as though nothing has happened, though he appears tired. We return to the
puri.

The next morning I wake up at seven and walk to Tu Nini’s room. Tu Biang is standing outside the door, crying. A relative from across the street is standing with her, also crying. I am not sure if I am supposed to see their tears, so I don’t. Instead I go inside.

There are two women massaging Tu Nini. Her breathing is a choking, guttural sound. I know, though I have never heard it before, that this must be what they call a death rattle. I quickly leave and sit outside my room with a cup of coffee. My heart is the only thing I can hear until Tu Biang arrives ten minutes later and stands before me.

There is a fixed smile on her face through which she says, “My mother has just died.”

I do not know how to receive the news. I nod and smile back. Tears are filling my eyes.

“When I went in to her,” says this small, beautiful woman still smiling through her pain, “Tu Nini asked me for permission to leave. I told her, ‘The western doctors have told me there is nothing they can do. Last night the
balian
said it was in the hands of the gods.’ I told her, ‘If you are ready to go, Mother, I give you permission.’ Then she lifted both arms into prayer position above her chest, and she died.”