Tersumbunyi (Hidden)

Tersumbunyi (Hidden)

By Heather Ann Martinez

Candles. Big pieces of chocolate fudge. Boxes of powdered donuts sitting on a long blanket overlooking the ocean. This was how I was going to celebrate my birthday if I were alone. If I had not opened my heart, I might not be experiencing the joy that I have. I’ve learned that not all secrets are meant to stay hidden. They have a way of surfacing and setting us free even when we don’t want them to.

For years, I did not utter a single word. I knew how to form words. I watched people move their jaws and their tongues all the time. My people came from Indonesia or so I had been told. Oral language was important to them and to other island villagers. Pure family lines and treaties were essential to survival. It was not just your name that was important. It was the name of your father and his father that were also significant.

When I was not more than a few years old, I was told I would have to lie about my father’s name and his father’s name. I was told that other villagers did not trust my father. My father was not always a fair tradesman. His father had murdered a villager that did not want to buy supplies from him. I kept their names hidden by rarely moving my tongue. I did not engage with other villagers for anything more than what I needed. I observed how the fishermen tied their nets and tied nets of my own. I had one grandmother who always found a way to bring fruit to my hut without raising suspicion from the others. The elders protected me from both rumor and harm. They felt ashamed of me but would not dare speak ill of my deceased mother. They knew my mother’s father and had great respect for him and all he had done for the villagers. 

It went on this way for some twenty years until my grandmother passed away. We celebrated her life by cremating her body and placing her ashes in the ocean. It was the morning after her leave taking that he came. He was a white man that had washed up on the shore. At first, the elders thought he was dead. There was debris from a ship that carried him to shallow water all over the beaches. I tried to keep myself busy with fishing and finding food. I tried not to pay attention to what the other villagers said about the white man. They talked about his long eyelashes, his chestnut colored hair and his blue eyes that were deeper than a thousand oceans. They said he looked just like me.

While the other villagers were olive skinned, my skin was pale. The white man was placed in a hut across from mine. I would have to pass by him to get to the river and find coconuts. The white man slept for many days. His leg was broken. His eyes would open but no spirit could be seen behind them. He was as silent as I was and the others wondered where he came from and if more like him were coming. The villagers did not want to be disturbed by outsiders. They claimed this particular unnamed island in what the Westerners call Indonesia as their home for the past three generations. They were told many stories of how they lost their previous island homes and would do anything to keep this one. They had not experienced disease or drought here. They did not have to fight other tribes as they would have to on larger islands.

After five days, the white man began to stir. He moaned in pain. The villagers tried to mend his leg but their knowledge was limited as well as their resources. The white man eventually got to his feet but would limp for the rest of his life. He never regretted coming to the island. He would later tell his friends that it was the journey worth taking. There were things he was told to keep hidden to. The villagers call it tersumbunyi –the things you keep hidden in your heart. I kept myself out of the range of the white man for many days. He seemed to know some words of our tongue and the villagers laughed when he did not pronounce something correctly. The older women said he reminded them of a young white man who had come to the village over twenty years ago. That young white man stayed for a couple of years. He brought medicine and tools and taught the villagers how to hunt and how to build huts that would keep out the rain. The older women wondered what this white man’s reason was for being here. He was happy to talk with them. The elders knew he was stranded. The white man explained that no one knew he was coming to their island. No one would be following him. He was not placing any of us in danger.

The elders accepted this response. Despite having a limp, the white man was favored to play games with the children which required much limping along the beach. He told the elders stories of great ships and hunting sharks. Although the elders never asked the white man what his name was, they suspected they already knew who his parents were and the tragedy that took him away from them before. I overheard the elders talking about my mother and her love for two men. When I was born, my mother had a son with a white man. The same white man the older women had been talking about days ago. That man was called Oren and his son was called Callon. Callon fell ill shortly after I was born. Oren took him back to the West to recover from his illness. Along the way, Oren passed away. Callon was raised by his father’s brother and learned many languages. His tongue remembered the words of these villagers. The elders said that my mother married one of the villagers after Oren failed to return. The man she married was the man I was told to lie about as a child. He and his father did not have names to be proud of. The elders resolved that the white man who now has a limp was my older brother Callon.

“Callon.” One of the elders extended his hand to him and bowed his head out of respect.

My brother did likewise and smiled. He was happy to be remembered after all of these years. He explained that Oren had died and it took a long time to come back. He asked after my mother, our grandfather and about me. The elders told him I was here but I did not speak. They forced me to meet my brother. I held my tongue. When I saw his eyes, it was like looking into a mirror. He had many freckles along his nose as I did. He tried to say words but didn’t know what to say either. He grunted out of frustration and I walked away. I didn’t want to have an older brother. I didn’t want to be a younger sister to a white man. I didn’t want to know I didn’t have pure family lines. It meant certain death to acknowledge the truth. The villagers would have to shun both of us because our father was not with our village ancestors in the great beyond.

Callon tried to talk to me over the next several weeks. He drew pictures in the sand with his finger. He annunciated every syllable and tried to get me to imitate him. I knew everything he was saying but I would not let on that I did. I enjoyed watching him try to communicate with me. I laughed often privately.

One day, I was walking to the river. I felt dizzy and had a headache. Then everything went dark and my world changed.

When I awoke, I was lying on a gurney. I felt something sticking to my chest and had tubes coming out of my arms. My brother Callon was holding my hand promising that it was going to be okay. Someone told him to let go of my hand and I was rushed into an operating room. I had a stroke. Callon later told me that our father had a stroke before he passed away. Callon managed to convince the elders to help us go West to get medical attention. At first, they tried what they could. When they acknowledged their efforts were futile, they contacted the other elders and asked them to help us return to our father’s family in the West. Reluctantly, they did out of respect to our mother’s family line.

After the surgery, Callon came to see me. I finally said, “Hello.” Callon and I stayed in the West with our father’s family. Callon helped me learn our father’s words as well as three other languages. I never forgot my home in Indonesia and I often thought of the villagers that kept me alive.

Now, as I celebrate my birthday, I am not alone. I have my family and my heart is open to the joy that is filling it.

Several months later...

One day Callon came to see me. He knew I was happy but part of me missed simple island life. I retreated back into my head. I stopped speaking. I stopped trying to communicate with anyone. Callon told me my life here could be so much better. He looked at me. My head was down. He knew I wasn’t interested in the opportunities I was offered here. Then he asked me, “How could I want to go back? There was no one left alive who cared about us.” He looked at me more closely. I was rubbing my belly. “Or is there something or someone else that’s hidden?”