95
I finally sat down with Wayan and told her about the money I’d raised for her house. I ex-
plained about my birthday wish, showed her the list of all my friends’ names, and then told her
the final amount which had been raised: Eighteen thousand American dollars. At first she was
shocked to such an extent that her face looked like a mask of grief. It is strange and true that
sometimes intense emotion can cause us to respond to cataclysmic news in exactly the op-
posite manner logic might dictate. This is the absolute value of human emotion—joyful events
can sometimes register on the Richter scale as pure trauma; dreadful grief makes us some-
times burst out laughing. This news I had just handed to Wayan was too much for her to take
in, she almost received it as a cause for sorrow, so I sat there with her for a few hours, telling
her the story repeatedly and showing her the numbers again and again, until the reality began
to sink in.
Her first really articulate response (I mean, even before she burst into tears because she
realized she was going to be able to have a garden) was to urgently say, “Please, Liz, you
must explain to everyone who helped raise money that this is not Wayan’s house. This is the
house of everyone who helped Wayan. If any of these people comes to Bali, they must never
stay in a hotel, OK? You tell them they come and stay at my house, OK? Promise to tell them
that? We call it Group House... the House for Everybody.. .”
Then she realized about the garden, and started to cry.
Slowly, though, happier realizations come to her. It was like she was a pocketbook shaken
upside down and emotions were spilling all over the place. If she had a home, she could have
a small library, for all her medical books! And a pharmacy for her traditional remedies! And a
proper restaurant with real chairs and tables (because she had to sell all her old good chairs
and tables to pay the divorce lawyer). If she had a home, she could finally be listed in Lonely
Planet, who keep wanting to mention her services, but never can do so, because she never
has a permanent address that they can print. If she had a home, Tutti could have a birthday
party someday!
Then she got very sober and serious again. “How can I thank you, Liz? I would give you
anything. If I had husband I loved, and you needed a man, I would give you my husband.”