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“What is this life? Do you understand? I don’t.”
This was Wayan talking.
I was back in her restaurant, eating her delicious and nutritious multivitamin lunch special,
hoping it would help ease my hangover and my anxiety. Armenia the Brazilian woman was
there, too, looking, as always, like she’d just stopped by the beauty parlor on her way home
from a weekend at a spa. Little Tutti was sitting on the floor, drawing pictures of houses, as
usual.
Wayan had just learned that the lease on her shop was going to come up for renewal at
the end of August—only three months from now—and that her rent would be raised. She
would probably have to move again because she couldn’t afford to stay here. Except that she
only had about fifty dollars in the bank, and no idea where to go. Moving would take Tutti out
of school again. They needed a home—a real home. This is no way for a Balinese person to
live.
“Why does suffering never end?” Wayan asked. She wasn’t crying, merely posing a
simple, unanswerable and weary question. “Why must everything be repeat and repeat, never
finish, never resting? You work so hard one day, but the next day, you must only work again.
You eat, but the next day, you are already hungry. You find love, then love go away. You are
born with nothing—no watch, no T-shirt. You work hard, then you die with nothing—no watch,
no T-shirt. You are young, then you are old. No matter how hard you work, you cannot stop
getting old.”
“Not Armenia,” I joked. “She doesn’t get old, apparently.”
Wayan said, “But this is because Armenia is Brazilian,” catching on now to how the world
works. We all laughed, but it was a fair breed of gallows humor, because there’s nothing
funny about Wayan’s situation in the world right now. Here are the facts: Single mom, preco-
cious child, hand-to-mouth business, imminent poverty, virtual homelessness. Where will she
go? Can’t live with the ex-husband’s family, obviously. Wayan’s own family are rice farmers
way out in the countryside and poor. If she goes and lives with them, it’s the end of her busi-
ness as a healer in town because her patients won’t be able to reach her and you can pretty