Page 51 of Next Time Will Be Our Turn
Papa got to his feet and pointed a finger at me. My whole body felt like it was on fire. Something inside me was screaming to back down, but I sat there, frozen, staring up at him defiantly.
“Do not disrespect me like that,” he said in a low, dangerous tone.
I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. Truth be told, I wanted to laugh. Who the fuck cared about disrespect right now? He’d just seen his eldest daughter’s face beaten beyond recognition, and he was upset because I was talking back to him?
He turned to Mama and his finger pointed at her. “Teach your daughter some manners before she embarrasses us.” With that, he strode out of the house, slamming the front door behind him.
There was a moment of silence, then Mama shook her head. “Why would you do that, Magnolia? What were you trying to do?”
“I was pointing out the fact that he was being a misogynist.”
Mama threw up her hands. “Stop being so American with your black-and-white thinking. You know Papa was trying to help.”
“No, he wasn’t. He was trying to save face. Everything you guys do is to save face. I just never thought it would come before protecting your own daughter.”
“Wearetrying to protect you! Both of you. I thought youwere smart enough to see that.” Mama got to her feet and hugged her handbag to her side as though it were a baby. I followed her to the foyer, bursting with a million things to say to her. At the door, she paused long enough to mutter, “You were supposed to be the good one. Don’t let this destroy everything you’ve worked so hard to build.” And with that, she was gone.
I looked around me, at the beautiful house I shared with my husband. This was everything I’d worked hard to build. And yet it had never felt emptier. It might as well be a Lego house I could smash apart with one swing of my fist. I walked back into the living room.
Iris met my eye. Then she deadpanned, “That went well.”
I snorted. Before I knew it, we were both doubled over with laughter, the wheezing, gasping-for-breath kind that left our faces tomato red. We held hands, and I grinned at her familiar face and her huge belly and thought of the life growing inside it, and this. This I hadn’t worked hard to build, but this, this was what felt real. This was what was worth me risking everything for.
Dear Bellery,
I never once thought that I would ever look forward to going to the OBGYN. But I do! Ever since Iris moved in with us, I started accompanying her to her OB visits. She used to go to our family-owned clinic, but since Mama and Papa basically disowned us, we’ve had to look for a new OB. We found one that we like and, oh my gosh, Bellery, that first visit was amazing. I know it’s such a cliché to get allemotional listening to the baby’s heartbeat, but I couldn’t stop myself. I got all snotty and teary, and Iris rolled her eyes at me, but she was getting a bit sniffly too. She was seven months along then, so we were able to see the baby’s form pretty clearly during the ultrasound. I swear the baby was waving its hand at me. I say “it” because Iris still refuses to be told the sex, so for now, the baby is an it. We got printouts of the ultrasound and I taped them to the fridge door, which Parker says is creepy, but who cares? Every morning as I reach into the fridge to take milk out, I see the ultrasound and I smile and tap it for luck. Now that Iris is in her third trimester, the OB advised that she come in for checkups once every two weeks, and I’m happy at the increased frequency because I can’t wait to see another glimpse of the baby.
Iris and I are spending a lot more time together, and we still get on each other’s nerves, but I’m also starting to see a side of her that I’ve never seen before. For example, I never knew that she was afraid of the dark. How weird is that? I guess I just always saw her as this boss babe who isn’t afraid of anything, but one time, we had a blackout on our street, and Iris was so scared. She started freaking out, and I had to tell her to breathe deeply. Later on, I thought about it and I felt so sad, Bellery. I never spared a thought for how strong Iris has had to be her whole life. As far back as I can remember, our parents always said I was the “good one” and Iris was the “problem child” and I’m only now realizing that maybe there was a good reason she chose to rebel. Maybe she saw at an early agethat our parents didn’t love her the way they should, that they only saw us as commodities, and so she had to grow a thick skin to protect herself from the world. And I don’t even know how she must have felt watching me acquiesce to their teachings, molding myself into what they wanted me to be. No wonder she was so tough on me, always poking and prodding at me, trying to get a rise out of me…trying to get me to rise up and stand up to them.
Iris is so strong. I don’t know how she does it. Erik, of course, was hounding her for a while, swinging back and forth between begging and demanding her to come back. The morning after she first came to my place, I took photos of her bruises. After weeks of Erik harassing her, Iris finally sent him the photos and told him that if he didn’t leave her alone, she would press charges. That did it. I wish she would press charges, but I know it’s her choice at the end of the day, so I haven’t pushed her into doing anything she’s not comfortable with.
The other day, Iris and I went shopping for baby stuff. We went to a huge mall—actually, all the malls in Jakarta are huge, because there’s not much else to do in this city aside from going to a mall. You’d be so impressed, Bells. You’d be like “Wow, they’re so much nicer than any mall in LA, Tulip! Who would’ve thought?” Then I’d remind you that LA has The Grove, which is gorgeous, and you’d be like “Yeah, but we’re in Indonesia, so it’s way cooler.” And I’d tell you that you’re a big dork.
Anyway, as I was saying, we went shopping for baby stuff and it reminded me of when I first arrived in LA atage sixteen and Iris took me shopping for clothes that would make me look less fobby. I felt so clueless then, and I remember how Iris would pick things off the rack and dump them in my outstretched arms, and when I had a giant pile of clothes so tall I could barely peep above them, she herded me into a dressing room. She was always so in control. But when we went this time, we were both kind of lost, because this was completely new territory for us. And I was so glad that I could be there for her and share this experience with her. It was so overwhelming. In the movies, they only ever really show the couple looking for a crib and not much else. Looking for the perfect crib was a challenge, but that part was at least kind of fun. Then we had to turn our attention to the feeding part of the whole thing.
Did you know that there are at least twelve different brands of baby bottles, each one shaped in a wildly different way and promising that its design wasthe onethat would get rid of colic and give baby a better feed and develop its brain and do algebra and…
And that was just the bottles! Then there was the sterilizer and the organic bottle soap (you can’t just use normal dishwashing soap, oh nooo, that’s full of carcinogens and would make the baby grow a second head or something) and the formula, because even though Iris plans to breastfeed, she’s read that it’s best to be prepared with some kind of formula in case it takes a while for your breast milk to come in. And, oh man, in Indonesia, we have not just locally made formula but also ones imported from overseas, and you have to really studythe list of ingredients, because Nestlé from New Zealand is not the same as Nestlé from the USA is not the same as Nestlé from Spain. I kid you not, Bells, we spent twenty minutes reading through the list of ingredients of each can of formula. Did you know that one of the first ingredients in Nestlé USA is lactose, but the first ingredient in Nestlé from New Zealand is milk protein? I can’t remember what the first ingredient in Nestlé Spain is, but it wasn’t milk protein. So in the end, we went with New Zealand Nestlé. I feel good about that choice.
Then there were the clothes and the changing station and…oh, it is endless. By the time we were done, we were both exhausted, and Iris’s feet were all swollen. I asked if she wanted to rest at a café, but she said she’d had enough of people staring at her face—we’d done our best covering up the bruises with thick makeup, but there’s only so much makeup can do—so we went home, and she lay down on the bed and propped her legs up against the wall. I lay down next to her, and for a second, it felt like when we were kids, lying in the dark, staring up at the plastic glow-in-the-dark stars stuck to our ceiling.
Iris said, “Thanks for helping me with the shopping. I would’ve been lost without you.”
I kept my eyes on the ceiling so I wouldn’t get all teary. “You did the same for me when I moved to LA. And you were a lot less lost than I was today.”
Even though I wasn’t looking at Iris, I could feel her smiling. “Yeah, we kind of had no idea what we were doing, huh? But we got there in the end.”
“Yeah. We did well.”
“We did.”
I held her hand. It felt a lot smaller than I remembered. Maybe all this time, I got so used to seeing Iris as this intimidating larger-than-life figure that I completely missed how young she was underneath it all. Bellery, I’m starting to understand your continued shock and awe when you found out it was just Iris and me living in that apartment in San Gabriel. We were both just kids trying to get by in a country without our parents. Although, given how abysmal our parents’ reaction to Iris’s whole situation was, I can’t say I’m all that sad about not having them around much in LA. Who knows what harmful crap they would’ve fed us if they’d been around?
Sorry, I’ve just been babbling on and on about my stuff. Bellery, I want so much to ask you what you’re up to. But I also don’t want to know because I don’t want to hear about this amazing life you’ve been having without me. And I know that in all likelihood, you’ve forgotten about me, because that would be NORMAL and HEALTHY. I don’t think of you as often now. Out of six thousand thoughts in a day, over five thousand of them are now occupied with Iris and her baby—my soon-to-be niece/nephew! And maybe only fifty to a hundred of them are of you, and I know even then that’s fifty to a hundred way too many thoughts of you.
Love,
Tulip
