Page 39 of Next Time Will Be Our Turn
Yours always,
Tulip
An Interlude
IZZY
I rifle through the rest of the pages before looking up at Nainai. “There are so many letters.”
“I think at some point they stopped being letters I wrote to Ellery and turned almost into a diary of some sort.”
“Yeah, I can see that.” I hold the pages tightly in my hand, feeling the heaviness of the words, the intensity of them. When Nainai took them out of her bag earlier tonight, I’d stupidly thought, for a moment, that they were pages of a handwritten novel she’d been working on. There certainly seems to be enough here to make an entire book out of. I definitely won’t be able to get through the whole stack in one evening.
The thing that struck me most about these letters isn’t so much the content but the voice of young Nainai. God, who would’ve ever guessed that my steely grandmother was capable of such silliness, such uncertainty, such raw honesty? She wasn’t exaggerating when she told me last night how frightened she wasas a teen. Her fears and insecurities are in full view in these letters. She really didn’t hold back when writing them.
“Did you—” I clear my throat and start again. So awkward asking my grandmother this question, but curiosity got the better of me. “Did you date anyone else at Berkeley? After you broke up with James, that is.”
“Yes,” she says easily, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.
“Um…any girls?”
Nainai sighs. “No. I thought about it. I thought:Here is my only chance to try it out. See if I actually like girls, or if I only like one girl.But in the end, I was too afraid. Heteronormativity is so insidious. I thought life would be a lot simpler if I were only into boys, and anyway, no other girl captured my heart the way Ellery did, so why go out looking for trouble? That was my way of thinking back then. That anything outside of a straightforward hetero relationship was trouble.”
“Yeah,” I say quietly.
Nainai wraps an arm around my shoulders. She smells of dust and magnolia flowers and incense.
“You know what though? I have since learned that the best things in life are often very, very troublesome.”
“Did you ever send these letters to Ellery?”
“Of course not. Are you crazy? You’ve seen how melodramatic they are, how unrestrained. I could never have shown them to her, oh no.”
I smile, but then I feel the weight of those years Nainai spent alone, writing letters to the love of her life which she never sent, and the smile wavers. “I can’t believe you spent all your time atCal not talking to Ellery, not even once. That’s heartbreaking, Nainai.”
“Yes, it is, isn’t it? We were both too young and foolish and prideful to be honest with each other.”
I look down at the pile of letters, ready to continue reading, but Nainai places her hand over mine.
“You read too slow,” she complains. “We’ll never get to the end of the story at this rate, and unlike you, I would actually like to go home for the night, because my love is waiting for me.”
“Gross, Nainai.”
She grins and pats my shoulder. “Now, be quiet and listen…”
Chapter 12
MAGNOLIA
2002
I had the very best intentions when I moved back to Indonesia. Of course I didn’t give up just because I was back home. I had some fire left in me. I was no Iris, blazing a trail for herself to greatness, but I was determined to at least carve a tiny space for myself. Mama and Papa celebrated the return of their golden child. I say “golden,” but a more appropriate term would be “pliant.” They celebrated me and not Iris because I was the one they could mold into the daughter of every Chinese-Indonesian parent’s dreams.
Right away, I started working at the clinic. It had grown into something arguably successful: a steady stream of patients and even more coming in through word of mouth. There were now five doctors on the roster, six if you counted Mama, which most of the time they didn’t. The other five doctors were all men, each of them well-respected OBGYNs or pediatricians with good connections. In addition to the doctors, there were twelve nursesand three receptionists, all women. Nurses and receptionists were very cheap and easy to come by in those days, and there was a high turnover at the clinic; they were being hired and fired at the doctors’ whims.
I suggested to Mama and Papa that I could maybe offer some counseling services to the expectant women and new mothers, and maybe even the kids if they needed it. It seemed to me like an obvious way to expand the clinic’s services. But at that time in Indonesia, mental health wasn’t a recognized part of a person’s well-being. There was still a huge stigma around the subject—most people saw it in very black-and-white terms. You were either “normal” or you were “crazy.” And if you were the latter, then you belonged in a mental hospital, locked away from the rest of society. There was no in-between, no room for those of us struggling with postpartum depression or anxiety or anything like that. So when I broached the subject of adding a mental health section to the clinic, Papa snapped, “You want our clinic to be known for having crazies?” and Mama glared at me like I was the biggest disappointment in her life.
Later, after Papa had stopped raging, Mama came into my room and said, “I think maybe you should run these…American ideas by me first, before presenting them to your father.”
