Eat, Pray, Love

things that you know.” I don’t like the way my voice sounds—just the teensiest bit desperate. I
don’t mention anything about the invitation he’d once floated for me to live with his family.
That seems way out of line, given the circumstances.
He listens to me politely, smiling and shaking his head, like, Isn’t it so funny the things
people say?
I almost drop it then. But I’ve come so far, I have to put forth one last effort. I say, “I’m the
book writer, Ketut. I’m the book writer from New York.”
And for some reason that does it. Suddenly his face goes translucent with joy, turns bright
and pure and transparent. A Roman candle of recognition sparks to life in his mind. “YOU!” he
says. “YOU! I remember YOU!” He leans forward, takes my shoulders in his hands and starts
to shake me happily, the way a child shakes an unopened Christmas present to try to guess
what’s inside. “You came back! You came BACK!”
“I came back! I came back!” I say.
“You, you, you!”
“Me, me, me!”
I’m all tearful now, but trying not to show it. The depth of my relief—it’s hard to explain. It
takes even me by surprise. It’s like this—it’s like I was in a car accident, and my car went over
a bridge and sank to the bottom of a river and I’d somehow managed to free myself from the
sunken car by swimming through an open window and then I’d been frog-kicking and strug-
gling to swim all the way up to the daylight through the cold, green water and I was almost out
of oxygen and the arteries were bursting out of my neck and my cheeks were puffed with my
last breath and then—GASP!—I broke through to the surface and took in huge gulps of air.
And I survived. That gasp, that breaking through—this is what it feels like when I hear the In-
donesian medicine man say, “You came back!” My relief is exactly that big.
I can’t believe it worked.
“Yes, I came back,” I say. “Of course I came back.”
“I so happy!” he says. We’re holding hands and he’s wildly excited now. “I do not remem-
ber you at first! So long ago we meet! You look different now! So different from two years!
Last time, you very sad-looking woman. Now—so happy! Like different person!”
The idea of this—the idea of a person looking so different after a mere two years have
passed—seems to incite in him a shiver of giggles.
I give up trying to hide my tearfulness and just let it all spill over. “Yes, Ketut. I was very
sad before. But life is better now.”
“Last time you in bad divorce. No good.”
“No good,” I confirm.