Where I live, I only keep one piece of a broken mirror. I put this poor thing in a tightly locked locker. I hate seeing my reflection in the mirror. But my friends, even the closest ones always suggest to me to buy the bigger one. Truly, spending time in my room for one night is Dante’s nine circles of inferno for girls especially. Like, seriously, can girls live without a mirror? They need a bigger, even better, mirror to help them dress and put make-up on. But since I can’t help myself, I know there’s nothing I can offer to provide them with at least one regular-sized mirror.
Unfortunately, I seem to capture a more violent tempest. Mirrors are everywhere. I am reflected in everyone’s eyes and I hate to be there, in their eyes. It is far worse. There’s no point then sealing my broken mirror in a remote part of the house. It isn’t even a solution to close my eyes tightly because, in the pitch dark, I tend to see myself lost in the infinite corner. My attempts, in many other ways, lead me to the root cause of this bleak: how despicable to be myself.
Funny, among the rest of the body parts, I tend to get attracted by the eyes. They are magnetic, oh no, probably a black hole swallowing with tidal forces the dust of exploding stars. I always get drowned by it, like an invitation to swim in the appealing ocean: curiosity meets great danger. However, I always dive too deep, too far, away from the lighthouse. Thus, so many times, in everyone’s eyes, I find myself breathless in the big bowl of sea monsters. I can’t help myself for this particular and common case as well. At this point of helplessness, how will I ask for help from anyone to the point that I can’t even help myself?
Somehow, I keep myself afloat in Bima’s eyes. I even levitate sometimes to see the horizon. I dance with the waves whose steps ripple and music of course from the migrating flock of birds. Bima’s eyes are dark brown sweet muscovado, some Indonesians have this type of eyes too, but his are sweeter. The eyes that keep me on guard but at the same time I will just submit myself as his Lady Macbeth. Ah, who can stand straight under men’s flirting eyes? They can make Dostoevsky sound like Homer or probably Kafka sound like Shakespeare’s Sonnets.
Bima’s eyes aren’t those common pairs hiding lies under the blanket of heaven’s plate tectonics. They don’t have that look of desiring fancy French croissant you don’t negotiate by price. When those eyes were fixed on me, I couldn’t help but beg, please, “Capture me, never release!” and if he just happened to put a mask on those, prying the game to fool me, it would be an invitation for him to have the pleasure of fooling me forever.
“Sandra,” he called me in the breeze he made from a whisper, “you are in turbulence and I am steady enough to hold you.”
“Are you sure?” this is a typical stroke I always unconsciously say to make things harder, to place him in a lifetime trial. Poor me, I am so good at putting my own happiness at risk.
A week later, Bima is no longer mine. Strangely, I didn’t protest, question, or even shed a single tear. Things always meet their endings once they start to go on graciously and beautifully. I got used to this life scenario. He said that one night his relatives told him about me. The real Sandra that everyone knows. The truth about Sandra he should know. How odd, people keep telling the narratives of me but those aren’t mine.
In an epic story, one has got to be the hero. Bima always desires to be a hero or at least a member of an honorable society. He loves to climb the social ladder: a better job, better education, a prettier wife, more outspoken. With me, it means all dignity is stripped from him. With me, it means he committed devoting himself entirely to the nation’s most grim enemy.
“He said one of your family is a member of the communist party,” like a gunman, Bima is skilled enough to end everything in a single shot.
“Bima, I am glad. I am not the object that feeds your masculinity,” I am not a gunman, just a sloth who loves to read. Do you think a reader like me could beat a gunman?
And once again I sank.
Sandra. That’s my name. The correct way to spell it should be sandera. Very intentional how my father named me. Sandera in Indonesian is prone to become news headlines. It means abduction, prisoned, or held captive. However, I know how it is supposed to carry meaning far before I know the force of its morph. At that time, despair was my sole companion. My father was raised by a military family. He is highly disciplined, he has a strong value for camaraderie, as well as a sharp and demanding pride.
It was hurting his pride and humiliating his very essence and existence to marry my mother, the daughter of a communist believer. Can you believe it, he blames her beauty. She is the most beautiful girl in town, winning her means validating his manliness. He wouldn’t be aware that in the future, it will destroy his pride. He thought as the years turned to decades, the horror event could only be a meaningless past, completely forgotten. But as decades passed the tragedy metamorphosed into a devil he named Sandra.
It’s still a mystery to me, a riddle I could never have a chance to speak about out loud. Even my teachers said if I wanted to survive this world and live at least a decent life, I should say nothing about communism. I should make myself clear that if ever anyone asks me about communism I should say, “I don’t know.” Mother made me promise too. She endlessly tells me that it was a trap to be a member of the communist party due to illiteracy.
To not know would be the greatest bliss.
But here is the problem: my bruise is my father’s trophy. I am always left puzzled by the way he tells his friends how proud he is as a member of civilized society after punishing his little communist daughter. As if I deserve it as if my mother deserves it too. He is a person with wonderful consistency: hitting the same spot over and over again. Over and over again while spitting the words, “You little communist” in my face over and over again. How can I refuse to know when the bruises are real?
It is then an accomplishment: abandoning his family. People in town believe it so. It is the right thing to do. The best way to close a chapter is to start another one: marrying a proper person and breeding a good seed. Believe it or not, although I hate myself so much, I love my existence because it keeps humiliating him.
He left. Bima left. The rest many others also left. I wonder who else will this time.
The right thing to do is to avoid people like me. Who can take risks in this economy? It is just the past. I know. People around me who demonstrate that they care so much about me can’t stop saying, “You should forget”. How could anyone forget lifetime scars? I struggle. I entered the same state’s employment. But, I got a hint to do well-done in the interview.
“During my time, when I was applying for civil servant, I was asked whether or not I was involved with the communist party. Your answer, Sandra, should be clear and sure, you have nothing to do about it. You don’t know. You will get the job then.”
I am not one of them, they were all massively executed, and there is no place in the present for a communist. But I am my father’s trophy his sandera of pretence heroism. Honestly, what did the communist party do to this country that their actions exceed my father’s violence? Yet, I never had the chance the speak to him.
“It’s such a damned fate to have you as my daughter. It’s a huge shame,” he said.
I often think God sent me in my mother’s womb so that one day I could become my father’s punch bag. Too much hatred I feel for God, what else should I mean as a human being?
He has gone but found, he has left but there. Ramadhan and Eid are such permanent and prolonged desolation. My relatives would gather to perform whole-year trials. What becomes the source issue of my singleness? Why finding decent jobs are challenging for me? What is the root cause? Same issues and one similar solution. They believe that it is all because every Eid I never make any attempt to ask forgiveness from my father, without his blessings, God wouldn’t ease my way. I could be trapped in singleness forever—another shame for the entire generation in the family.
If that’s the case, living miserably is my thing. I am ready to become God’s enemy then. No problem. He sent me to this world to become his punch bag and still, I have to beg for my father’s forgiveness. Violence is his love language, and the only solution is I should beg for him. Every time during Eid, I always witness the tragic death of common sense.
It’s one month left before Ramadhan begins. I should be happy. I should be grateful to the fullest. So, I unlock my locker, take the broken mirror, and see my own reflection. “Who is this girl?” asked I to my own reflection. Nothing, I find no answer. How can I put it? Why do I find myself meaningful in nothingness? Being grateful, first of all, should know what you are grateful for. Being happy, first and foremost, should feel what you are happy about.
It’s a few days left before Ramadhan. I should feel festive. Look at the lights, fireworks, food stalls. Why do I feel like I voluntarily submit myself to the slaughterhouse, oh how festive! Towards home, to finally reaching it, I couldn’t get rid of that feeling, facing Divine Comedy’s The Gates of Hell. Who knows? Seriously, who knows The Gates of Hell is actually my house’s front door? For the love of God, any place in the world, why should it be at my house’s front door? Miserably, in the very first place, I am obliged to go home during these festive moments.
“Hello, I am the Satan in the final canto half trapped in the ice. Hello, I am your daughter.”
“Welcome back lost soul. It’s time to beg for forgiveness to your father,” said my family as usual like a chant in the most eerie night.
“No, thank you.”
Although I rip myself open to do it.
Although I am cursed, being God’s arch-enemy.
No, thank you.
Putriyana Asmarani’s Identity Politics of Malay Rajas received a research fellowship scholarship at National University of Singapore, her essays, fiction, and book reviews have been published by notable Indonesian and international media; The Jakarta Post, Jawa Pos, The Suryakanta, Indian Periodical, TelusuRI, Cassandra Voices and many more.
