“Keep your husband, Wayan. Just make sure Tutti goes to university.”
“What would I do if you never came here?”
But I was always coming here. I thought about one of my favorite Sufi poems, which says
that God long ago drew a circle in the sand exactly around the spot where you are standing
right now. I was never not coming here. This was never not going to happen.
“Where are you going to build your new house, Wayan?” I asked.
Like a Little Leaguer who’s had his eye on a certain baseball glove in the shop window for
ages, or a romantic girl who’s been designing her wedding dress since she was thirteen, it
turned out that Wayan already knew exactly the piece of land she would like to buy. It was in
the center of a nearby village, was connected to municipal water and electricity, had a good
school nearby for Tutti, was nicely located in a central place where her patients and custom-
ers could find her on foot. Her brothers could help her build the home, she said. She’d all but
picked out the paint chips for the master bedroom already.
So we went together to visit a nice French expatriate financial adviser and real estate guy,
who was kind enough to suggest the best way to transfer the money. His suggestion was that
I keep it easy and just wire the money directly from my bank account into Wayan’s bank ac-
count and let her buy whatever land or home she wants, so I don’t have to mess around with
owning property in Indonesia. As long as I didn’t wire over amounts bigger than $10,000 at a
time, the IRS and CIA wouldn’t suspect me of laundering drug money. Then we went to Way-
an’s little bank, and talked to the manager about how to set up a wire transfer. In neat conclu-
sion, the bank manager said, “So, Wayan. When this wire transfer goes through, in just a few
days, you should have about 180 million rupiah in your bank account.”
Wayan and I looked at each other and sparked off into a ridiculous riot of laughter. Such
an enormous sum! We kept trying to pull ourselves together, since we were in some fancy
banker’s office, but we couldn’t stop laughing. We stumbled out of there like drunks, holding
on to each other to not fall over.
She said, “Never have I seen a miracle happen so fast! All this time, I was begging God to
please help Wayan. And God was begging Liz to please help Wayan, too.”
I added, “And Liz was begging her friends to please help Wayan, too!”
We returned to the shop, found Tutti just home from school. Wayan dropped to her knees,
grabbed her girl, and said, “A house! A house! We have a house!” Tutti executed a fabulous
fake faint, swooning cartoonishly right to the floor.
While we were all laughing, I noticed the two orphans watching this scene from the back-
ground of the kitchen, and I could see them looking at me with something in their faces that
resembled... fear. As Wayan and Tutti galloped around in joy, I wondered what the orphans
were thinking. What were they so afraid of? Being left behind, maybe? Or was I now a scary
nora
(Nora)
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