Fiction In Translation
So What’s Your Name, Sandra?
Her son’s name was Bison and, wouldn’t you know, she’d enjoyed calling him “Son” for short.
Translated from the Indonesian by Tiffany Tsao
*
Four months after the death of her one and only son, Mama Sandra took a trip to M ỹ S ơ n , Qu ảng Nam, Vietnam.
She left Jakarta on a Friday morning in early October, changing planes in Kuala Lumpur. The ticket was cheap. After the two “incidents” a few years back, Malaysian Airlines was always offering special deals, including on the KUL-HAN route. But having no privileges when it came to keeping well informed, Mama Sandra was ignorant of this fact. Instead, she saw the price and thought our Father in Heaven had given the idea His blessing.
Receiving this divine signal with outstretched palms, Mama Sandra promptly liquidated what remained of her leave: nearly twenty whole days. Her supervisor, a thoroughly Javanese man from Solo, was aware some recent tragedy had befallen his underling. So he signed off on the matter without asking too many questions.
There wasn’t much that Mama Sandra knew about Vietnam: It was communist and, like Indonesia, a member of ASEAN. She’d only stumbled across the Hindu temple ruins of M ỹ S ơ n, those remnants of the ancient kingdom of Champa, by sheer chance—because she’d stayed up till three in the morning killing time on the internet, lingering over search results for the English words, “my son.”
Her son’s name was Bison and, wouldn’t you know, she’d enjoyed calling him “Son” for short; even though “Son” also reminded her of “Sonia,” which was what some of her favorite big-screen Bollywood actresses were named.
Her decision to go to Vietnam hatched several hours later. Mama Sandra woke up, head heavy and throbbing. She made straight for the kitchen, with all its clutter and its colonies of cockroaches hiding beneath the dishwasher’s plywood board base. She put a pot of water to boil over a low flame, lifted the blue plastic food cover on the dining table, and reached for a banana so ripe it verged on black, twisting till it came off the stem.
She chewed deliberately, then rose slowly to her feet and retrieved the first-aid kit on top of the fridge. She needed Panadol—the extra strength ones that Bison used to take. They came in red strips, sheathed in plastic blisters that glinted like glass. The texture of the plastic-welded foil reminded her of the small metal file attachment on nail clippers. The pills looked like bloated grains of white rice and tasted bitter, like medicine should. Of all the painkillers she’d tried, Mama Sandra had found that these were the most effective.
When the caffeine in the pills began to kick in, clearing her head, she began her daily ritual, her usual routine—at least, since that fateful middle-of-the-night when a friend of Bison’s, another college student from the kos where he was staying, kept calling until she finally got out of bed to answer the phone. The ritual was this: sob uncontrollably over the death of her child, her firstborn, her only, her beloved anak siakkangan.
After about twenty minutes, Mama Sandra dragged herself from the table to the stove and made some instant coffee. While waiting for the sugar to dissolve, she picked up the mountain of dirty clothes on the floor and stuffed them inside the washing machine. She took out Bison’s old suitcase from the storeroom—a seventy-two-litre-capacity American Tourister that the kid had taken with him when he’d left for college, fifty-five kilometers away in Tangerang.
Then, as she sipped her coffee, she phoned Betris, her promising young niece who worked at the ministry of foreign affairs. Mama Sandra declared her intention to get a passport.
*
Mama Anton’s jaw dropped when she heard about the travel plans. She and Mama Sandra came from the same small town in North Sumatra and were both active members of the women’s choir at the local Batak Christian Protestant Church. Mama Sandra, like practically everyone else Mama Anton knew, had never been abroad.
Mama Anton herself only ever heard tell of what lay yonder from her two twins, Anton and Antonia, whenever they went on one of their weekend excursions to somewhere else in Southeast Asia: how, in other places, everything was cleaner, more orderly, more expensive, and so on and so forth. But Mama Anton suspected her two kids of exaggeration. They knew she had a fear of flying. She’d have made her occasional pilgrimages back to their hometown, Harianboho, by bus if she could.
Post-funeral, however, Mama Anton had been staying over at Mama Sandra’s a lot. She’d seen with her own eyes how Mama Sandra, curled up like a kitten, would cry in her sleep. How she’d call out for her late son—Bison! Bison!—her hands clutching at empty air, just how Mama Anton imagined Job from the Old Testament grieving for the loss of his children. And so Mama Anton pronounced herself in support of her friend’s crazy plan.
“I’ve already picked up the passport, Ma Anton, but what should I tell Amang Pendeta?” asked Mama Sandra, suddenly recalling their pastor.
They were at choir practice and the director had just begun talking about the church party that coming weekend in celebration of Gotilon, the Batak harvest.
“I sure hope Amang Pendeta won’t mind,” Mama Sandra murmured uneasily.
Lucky for her, it was Mama Anton who was there at her side. The woman had known Bison when he was no bigger than the joint of her pinkie. And they’d been friends since Mama Sandra had first moved to Bekasi in 1992—all alone and anemia-pale, baby in a sling wound around her right shoulder, skin and bones from a diet consisting mainly of rice with saltwater “soup,” sleepless with fretting about how to pay the rent on her home in the Snug and Simple Housing Subdivision (a.k.a. S.S.H.S).
It was Mama Anton who’d fetch little Bison from school whenever Mama Sandra had to work an afternoon shift; who picked up his report cards every once in a while and who let Bison bathe with her kids whenever the water from their faucets ran brown; who presented Bison with an envelope containing 500,000 rupiah when he graduated high school; who let him use her computer and dial-up internet to check the results of his university entrance exams—and because of all that, Mama Anton understood.
She took Mama Sandra’s hand in hers and squeezed.
“Eda, just go, dammit,” she said. “Better not tell him, or he won’t let you leave.”
*
So Mama Sandra flew to Hanoi, the heavens rolling out a red carpet of sunny sky. She sat in seat 58C, only one narrow aisle away from a white woman who kept her eyes glued to the monitor embedded in the seatback in front. She could see clouds, like mattresses floating in the sky.
And just like that, clouds became her new favorite thing. My, don’t they look sweet from up here, she thought.
Then, in a flash (despite the complex multi-step procedure required for a memory to emerge from a human consciousness, and without the memory even bothering to get a second opinion about whether it should surface), Mama Sandra was reminded of pink cotton candy—Bison’s favorite treat when he was little, when he was alive.
Mama Sandra would bring some home for him whenever she worked the morning shift, before she returned in the evening. The cart she bought them from could usually be found at the intersection by the clothing factory in Bojong Menteng where she used to work. The vendor liked to hang around the secondary school nearby. From there, she’d walk back to their house in Rawalumbu, a bag of fluffy sweet cloud swinging from one hand.
Once home, she’d recline on the mat in front of the TV, her head propped up on one elbow, cradled in her palm. Bison would sit nearby, leaning against the wall. Pinching off pieces of cotton candy, they’d watch the family quiz show that came on every evening, laughing at impatient fathers and miscommunicating siblings.
The last hundred times she’d recalled this ritual they’d shared, mother and child, Mama Sandra had started to cry. This time, possibly due to the small dosage of terror she felt as a first-time flyer, she could only sit helpless, frozen in her seat.
The last hundred times she’d recalled this ritual they’d shared, mother and child, Mama Sandra had started to cry. Just a few hours ago, she’d navigated her way through Kuala Lumpur airport with some difficulty, especially when using the monorail to change terminals, even though Betris had given her directions for every possible situation she might encounter along the way. Twenty sheets of A4 paper!—but only after Betris’s father, Mama Sandra’s eldest brother, had given her an earful for aiding and abetting her aunt—complete with a cover page bearing a drawing of a pointing hand.
Betris had advised her aunt to rest for two or three days in Hanoi upon arrival so her constitution could adjust to the climate, which was generally more humid. Then she could continue her journey to the city of H ội An, before finally pulling into port in M ỹ S ơ n. Mama Sandra had agreed.
When the inflight meal was served, the sight of the fruit salad on her tray reminded Mama Sandra of Mama Anton. She thought of how tied up her friend must be at that moment, preparing harvest parcels for Gotilon (even though the bitter reality was that all the fruit was bought in bulk from the market—sorry, Amang, we’re in Bekasi now, not back home on the farm!). And then she managed not to think about Bison anymore for the rest of the flight.
*
Names were a baffling matter to Mama Sandra now. “Mama Sandra”—no one ever used to call her that. Her relatives back in Harianboho had called her “San” or “Sandong.” The people she’d met when she moved to Bekasi called her Bison’s mother, Mama of Bison—“Mama Bison”—submitting to the nationwide norm of calling a mother by her firstborn’s name.
The other mothers in the Batak circle, the parsautaon, sometimes jokingly called her “Borneng,” which was short for “Boru Nainggolan.” Because her father had been Nainggolan, even though her mother’s father was Hutahaen. And since Bison’s father was of Sinaga stock, of course that made her son a Sinaga too. Then her husband had run off with another woman, and all that remained was her, the solitary Borneng, with Bison her Sinaga son. The Sinaga sweat and tears that had gone into that boy’s blood didn’t amount to a shallow bowlful. Oh, but never mind that. He’d stay Sinaga for life.
Now Bison was no more, and with him “Mama Bison.” The reason: if her friends kept calling her “Mama Bison,” a newcomer to their church might ask about Bison to make small talk—What boru does his wife come from? How many children do they have?—though after the funeral and dozens of He’s at peace with our Heavenly Father now, Eda , all that was left was “Sandra”—Sandra the Borneng, the Boru Nainggolan.
Ise goarmu?—What’s your name? Let’s hear your name.
That’s what all the aunties back in her hometown would teasingly ask Mama Sandra when she was just a little thing, cute as a candlenut. She’d come home from Sunday School and they’d be there, faces beaming.
“Sandra,” she’d answer shyly.
“And what boru, Sandra?”
“Boru Nainggolan, Inanguda.”
Now, she would always be Mama Sandra, even if this name had its complications too. Wasn’t someone likely to ask, “So how’s your daughter Sandra doing?”
Sandra’s not my daughter, Inanguda, it’s me. I have a kid named Bison, but he poisoned himself.
Poisoned himself? But why?
Because I told him he was no child of mine. And then I kicked him out.
But why did you kick him out?
I found out he had a boyfriend, Inanguda.
*
So, ise goarmu, Sandra?—So what’s your name, Sandra?
Ise—ise goarku, Inanguda? —Sorry, Inanguda. I’m sorry, but . . . my name?
*
In keeping with Betris’s instructions, Mama Sandra boarded the number 86 bus from N ội Bài airport to Hanoi’s city center. All through the ride she could hear women’s voices, a ceaseless rising and falling like a drowsy lilt. They went over a big bridge and it reminded her of the Ampera Bridge in Palembang, which she had crossed long ago, also by bus, as a young woman bound for Jakarta to seek work.
She showed the conductor the printed sheet of paper and pointed to the name of her destination. When they arrived, he tapped Mama Sandra on the shoulder. She disembarked at Long Biên Bus Transit Terminal. Everything was going according to plan.
Taxi drivers were calling out to her. She kept repeating, Sorry , like a mantra. She crossed the street, entered a café, and ordered an egg coffee, which Betris had directed her to do as well. The girl had made her aunt practice using a taxi app.
“If you value your life, Namboru, do as I say!”
This was what Betris had exclaimed just a few days before Mama Sandra’s departure, since she seemed to regard a woman in her fifties traveling abroad by herself to be on some sort of suicide mission. So did Mama Sandra, but what could be done now? It was too late. Here she was.
After entering the wifi password into her phone, “12345678,” she sent an update to her brother and Betris and ordered a taxi.
In keeping with her aunt’s budget, Betris had booked Mama Sandra a room at the Real Hanoi Hotel, which was cheap and near Hoàn Ki ếm lake. Mama Sandra had trouble finding the place. She walked up and down the length of the street seeing only a building under construction, until she realized that the alley just next door to the construction was actually the route to her hotel.
Warily, Mama Sandra ventured down the narrow lane. Thankfully at the first bend she was greeted by the sight of a tall, narrow shophouse—which was what all the buildings in Hanoi looked like—bearing a sign with the hotel name.
The people she’d met when she moved to Bekasi called her Bison’s mother, Mama of Bison—“Mama Bison.”
A man in a white collared shirt opened the glass doors for Mama Sandra. On the wall behind the reception desk hung a framed award from a flight and accommodation booking website. Affixed to the surface of the desk were laminated sheets bearing the wifi network name and password—“maria1234”—which Mama Sandra took as a sign that the owners were Christian, just like her.
Suddenly she gasped—the realization hitting her that she’d forgotten to pray before her plane had taken off. If they had exploded in mid-air, thought Mama Sandra in horror, if hundreds of someones’ someones had died that day, it would have been all her fault.
The receptionist put her in room 601. One of the two porters standing in the lobby hoisted Mama Sandra’s suitcase into his arms and began carrying it up the stairs. I guess there’s no lift, thought Mama Sandra, hurrying after him. When she reached the second level, she saw the doors, numbered 101 and 102. So the ground floor was zero! Suddenly she felt exhausted.
When they finally reached 601, there was a Buddha statue with joss sticks upright in a small pot on a little table nearby. But Mama Sandra was too tired to notice. For now, she steeped herself in her relief that the proprietor was Christian, though the sight of the altar the next day would give her a shock. Once inside, she didn’t even check whether the room was deluxe enough to have windows. Completely worn out, she fell fast asleep.
*
Initially, Mama Sandra tried to enjoy her time in Hanoi—wouldn’t anyone after all? Morning came and she woke up and stood in front of the mirror, pulling brightly colored clothes from her suitcase and trying them on. The plan was to take the first train to H ội An when day four rolled around . In the meantime, she thought it would be beneficial to adapt to her new environment. She selected a hibiscus print blouse, which Betris had given her for Christmas two years back.
She decided she would stroll around Hoàn Ki ếm Lake with her Vietnamese pocket phrasebook in hand. As instructed by Betris, she visited a temple to see the corpse of a giant turtle behind glass. This was unwise because her mind immediately began seeing Bison in the glass case instead. Beating a hasty retreat, she left to sob on a bench by the lake. For lunch, she found herself at a nearby KFC, then she went to watch the Th ă ng Long water puppet show along with all the other tourists.
She watched from a shared bench in the corner and didn’t understand a single word. But the fall and rise of the narrator’s voice, the sound of the percussion: it was so dreamlike, so sentimental. Sitting there, Mama Sandra began to cry, high and shrill, causing the white tourist beside her to ask, “Are you OK?”
She managed to hold back her tears for the rest of the show. But after it was over, after rushing out of the theater, on a bench by the lake, Mama Sandra resumed her usual ritual once more.
*
She’d named him “Bison” because it sounded manly and strong, even though he’d have to grow up without a father. And one day, little Bison came home sobbing hysterically because the boy next door, Agus, had just learned about the wildlife of North America—among them the bison, which was a species of buffalo. From that point on, all the kids called him “Bison the Batak Bastard.”
She’d named him “Bison” because it made her think of the word “bisa,” which could mean “able” and also “poison,” which then brought to mind the Bible verse about being as innocent as doves and shrewd as serpents. For she felt that was the one way her only child would ever escape the deep, dark, damp well that was the life in which he’d been born and raised.
She’d named him “Bison” because whenever her lips formed the syllables, a feeling of calm would wash over her. Bi and son , bi-son, bison, bison . At least this was the case before that fateful Saturday night when her son had asked her if they could talk, when he confessed that for the last three months he’d been dating someone named Setia, a boy from Solo, two years his senior at the same university.
*
Her itinerary changed: (1) she would stay in her room, (2) through the tiny window she would take in the city and the landscape of the lake. The window always showed her a falsely overcast sky, its flimsy pane smudged with the residue of over a hundred rainfalls.
She combed through the search results for images of “my son” till the crack of dawn. She visited Bison’s Facebook profile and re-liked all of his pictures. She immersed herself in articles—every article—on Wikipedia about the history of Vietnam, Hanoi, and the kings of Champa who’d built M ỹ S ơ n. The only interruptions came from the time it took to walk between the hotel and the nearby KFC for lunch and dinner, and to speak to the receptionist.
She’d named him “Bison” because it sounded manly and strong, even though he’d have to grow up without a father. “I like it here,” she told her niece and brother via text, although every afternoon, once the caffeine in Bison’s favorite painkillers had smoothed out the turmoil lumped in her throat, she would burst into tears.
Everything rolled on like a flashback in a film: no dialogue, but also no song-and-dance numbers to break it up. Mama Sandra’s days went by to the tune of no music at all. Just repetition after repetition, repetition after repetition, and repetition after repetition. Until day four finally came and Mama Sandra missed her train to H ội An.
She woke up only when the receptionist phoned, asking if she wanted to extend her stay by a night. Head pulsing , still in a daze, she said, “No,” and as a consequence, there she was: on a bench by Hoàn Ki ếm Lake, her dead son’s suitcase at her side, with no clue what to do or where to go.
*
At long last, she rose and began to walk, dragging her suitcase full of clothes—all of them rolled and sealed into ziplock bags (Mama Anton was the one who’d helped her pack).
So this was how to leave a life. It was exactly how Bison had left for university, except she was going to a place called M ỹ S ơ n, which she’d found out when asking the receptionist was actually pronounced “mi’i sen.” She clearly wasn’t headed there anymore. Not today. Probably not tomorrow either.
Then again, she still had till next month to actually reach it—mi’i sen, M ỹ S ơ n, my son, my Bison—if only to restore, to rescue her soul, what was left of it, if only for the sake of sending that one message: “Ma Anton, I’ve finally made my peace.”
For now, she’d just have to keep relying on the painkillers.
*
Ise goarmu?—What’s your name?
Sandra, Inanguda. Tongtong Sandra goarku—Sandra has always been my name.
*
She was back at the temple again. She crossed the bridge. She paid for admission—30,000 dong. She entered alongside a group of local tourists. A middle-aged woman in a Tiger Beer jacket was busy speaking to her four kids in Vietnamese.
Then Mama Sandra was there in that room, face to face again with the giant turtle corpse behind glass. She circled the case a few times, eyes fixed on the gigantic reptile. Wikipedia had told her that the Golden Turtle God had lent a sword to Vietnam’s king at the time. The sword had been used to liberate them from China. According to the legend, the king had returned the sword to the god. Now it lay tucked away in the depths of the lake.
“Can’t see it, but it’s there,” she’d mumbled a few days ago when the tale had sprung to mind, as she stood in the toilet at Kuala Lumpur airport gazing into the mirror.
Now, in the temple, Mama Sandra began crying again. Bewildered, the people around her began to stare. She turned to find the Tiger Beer woman standing beside her, hand in hand with her little boy. The child was dressed in a blue jacket. His cheeks were smudged with chocolate.
“This is my son,” Mama Sandra told the woman in English, pointing to the turtle in the glass case, tears streaming down her face. “This is my son.” She felt the woman would understand somehow. “This is my son, you know.”
