Chapter 6: The Nephew Nobody Wanted
The woman shifted the baby on her hip and looked at Danu for a long moment, as if checking his face against some memory.
"Pak Surya's nephew," she repeated. "From the village."
"Yes, Bu. He's my uncle's cousin. My father told me to find him. I have a letter." Danu held up the envelope, damp now from his sweaty palm.
The woman laughed, but there was no humor in it. It came out dry and bitter, like something scraped off the bottom of a pot.
"Surya," she said, loud enough that a neighbor two doors down paused her sweeping to listen. "Surya moved out four months ago. Moved out at night, no forwarding address. Owed me three months' rent. Owed the shopkeeper on the corner. Owed half this street, I think."
Danu's arm slowly lowered the envelope. "Moved out? But my father said..."
"Your father said what? That Surya was a good man?" She hoisted the baby higher, her thin arms trembling with the weight. "Everyone says that until the night they load up a rented truck at two in the morning and disappear."
The older child pressed her face into the woman's leg, peeking at Danu with wide, unblinking eyes. Somewhere down the lane a radio crackled through an open window, playing a tinny pop song.
"I'm sorry, Bu," Danu said. His voice was thin. "I came all the way from the village. I don't know anyone else here."
The woman's face softened, just slightly. She looked at his cheap bag, his wrinkled shirt, the way his sandals were caked with alley dust.
"Listen, kid. If you have money for a room, find a place far from here. This street eats boys like you." She glanced past his shoulder, down the lane, and her expression tightened. "And it looks like something already has its teeth in you."
Danu turned to follow her gaze.
A motorbike was coming up Jalan Melati, fast, engine snarling in low gear. He knew that bike. He knew the broad shoulders hunched over the tank, the dust streaming off the rear tire. Maya pulled up at the curb ten meters away and killed the engine. The silence that followed was worse than the noise.
She swung off the bike without hurrying. She pulled off her helmet and hung it on the mirror. Then she walked toward them, unhurried, boots cracking against the broken concrete, and the whole street seemed to pull in its breath. The neighbor stopped sweeping. The radio through the window got turned down.
"Ibu, I..."
Maya didn't look at him. She looked at the woman in the doorway, at the baby, at the green rusted door with its peeling number forty-seven, and then back at Danu, and her mouth curled.
"So this is what you do," she said. Her voice carried down the whole lane. "I turn my back for one hour and my boy runs off to knock on other women's doors."
"I wasn't... this is my uncle's house. I told you, I'm looking for Pak Surya. My father sent me, I have the address on paper, I can show you..."
"Quiet."
The word was quiet itself, and that was what made it land. Danu's mouth closed.
Maya stopped directly in front of him. Up close she seemed even bigger, her shoulders blocking the sun, the smell of engine oil and cigarettes and that same heavy sweetness she always carried. She reached out and took the crumpled envelope from his hand without asking. She turned it over once, looked at the faded writing, and tossed it back at his chest.
"Surya's gone. Ask anyone on this street. You found that out in thirty seconds, didn't you?" She flicked her eyes at the woman. "Didn't he?"
"Four months ago," the woman said carefully, "and with three months of my rent."
"There. Now everyone's informed." Maya hooked a finger into the collar of Danu's shirt and tugged, not hard, but with the casual certainty of someone picking up a leash. "You're coming home. I've got deliveries stacked up and you were gone before I finished my cigarette."
"But I still need to find my uncle. My father will ask, I can't just..."
"Danu."
He stopped. She had never said his name like that before. Slowly, tasting it.
"You arrived in this city yesterday. You know one street and it's the wrong one. You have no money, no place to sleep, and every guy in that dead-end alley you wandered into this morning would've stripped your bag and your sandals off you by noon." Her thumb rubbed once across his collarbone, almost gentle. "You don't have an uncle here anymore. You have me."
The neighbor had come out to her gate and was watching openly now, arms crossed over her housecoat. The woman at the door shifted the baby and said nothing.
Danu looked down at his sandals. His chest felt tight, tangled up with shame and the ghost of the liquor still in his blood and something warmer that he hated himself for feeling. "I just... I thought if I found him, I could start properly. Like my father wanted."
"And you will. Starting in my back room, with a real meal and a bed that isn't full of fleas." Maya turned to the woman in the doorway and her tone changed, brisk, almost courteous. "Sorry for the noise, Mbak. Kid got lost. Won't happen again."
The woman stared at her. At the height difference, at Danu's thin arm caught in Maya's grip, at the motorbike with its delivery crates. "He's an adult," she said finally, flatly. "He can decide where he goes."
"He can." Maya smiled, and it didn't reach her eyes. "That's what makes it nice. He comes back on his own."
She took Danu's bag off his shoulder and slung it over hers, where it looked absurdly small. Then she grabbed a fistful of his shirt at the back and steered him toward the bike, past the watching neighbor, past the shut shopfronts, while the whole lane pretended not to stare and stared anyway.
"Get on," she said, swinging onto the seat. "Hold on like I taught you."
Danu climbed up behind her. His hands settled on her thick waist, and the engine turned over under them with a rumble he felt in his teeth. Before they pulled away he looked back once. Number forty-seven's green door was already closing, the envelope with his father's careful village handwriting still crushed in his fist.
Maya pulled his arm tighter around her middle and leaned back against him, just slightly.
"Nobody runs from me, Danu," she said over the engine, low, for him alone. "And nobody runs off you, either. You're mine. Best thing that ever happened to a lost kid like you, and one day you'll even thank me for it."
The bike lurched forward, and Jalan Melati slid away behind them.
The ride back was silent except for the engine. Danu pressed his cheek against Maya's broad back, feeling the heat of her through the thin tank top, and did not let go until the bike rolled into the dead-end alley and died under the corrugated awning of the warung.
"Inside," she said. "Not the front room. Back."
She pushed the beaded curtain aside and steered him through, past the crates of bottled liquor, past the folded mattress on the floor where he'd first woken up, to a door he had never noticed before at the far end. Her bedroom. A wide bed took up most of it, a fat mattress on a low frame, a creaking ceiling fan, one window blocked with a towel for a curtain. It smelled like her. Cigarettes and that heavy sweetness.
"You ran," Maya said, closing the door behind them. "One hour. One hour I let you out of my sight, and you walk across half a city to knock on a woman's door."
"He was my uncle, Ibu. I told you why."
"And when he wasn't there, what was your plan? Sleep on the street?" She pulled her shirt off over her head in one motion and threw it on the chair. She stood in her bra, arms crossed, and looked at him until he looked down. "Take your shirt off. Shoes. Everything. You came back sweating and dirty and scared, and I'm going to fix all three."
Danu's fingers worked at his buttons, slow, half of him wanting to argue and half of him already knowing the argument was lost. She watched him undress without hurry, then pushed her own shorts down her thick thighs and stepped out of them, and then the bra, and the sight of her naked body filled the little room. Big heavy breasts, soft stomach, the hard line of her shoulders. She was twice his width.
"On the bed."
He sat. She crossed the room, took his jaw in one broad hand, and tipped his face up.
"You embarrassed me today. In front of that whole street." Her thumb dragged across his lower lip. "You know what happens to boys who embarrass me?"
"No, Ibu."
"They get put back where I can see them. Where I can feel them." She pushed him flat onto the mattress and climbed over him, her knees boxing his hips, her breasts hanging heavy above his chest. "Open your mouth."
He opened it. She lowered herself until her nipple brushed his lips, then pressed in, and his mouth filled with her, the soft weight of her breast against his face, the taste of salt and her skin.
"Suck," she ordered, quiet. "Like yesterday. Like a good boy."
He sucked. His lips sealed around her nipple and he drew, and she made a low sound in her throat, rocking her hips so the soft flesh swung against his cheek. Her hand slid down his stomach, found him already hard, and she laughed, short and satisfied.
"Look at that. Ran across the city looking for an uncle and this is what comes home to me. Hard as a rock from sucking my tit." She wrapped her fingers around him and stroked once, twice, her grip firm, rough in a way that made his hips jump. "Your body doesn't lie, Danu. Mine either."
"Ibu..." His voice came out muffled against her breast.
"Say it. Say you're mine."
His face burned. She pulled her nipple from his mouth with a wet sound and looked down at him, waiting, her hips still rolling slow against his thigh. The fan creaked overhead. Somewhere out front a bottle clinked.
"I'm yours, Ibu."
"Good boy." She reached over to the shelf above the bed, and he heard the tear of foil. "Now keep still. I'm going to ride you until you forget that street exists."
She rolled the condom down over him with two efficient strokes of her hand, then shifted her weight, reached between her own legs to guide him in, and sank down. Slow. He watched himself disappear into her, watched her thick thighs take all his length, and the heat of her closed around him inch by inch until her weight settled fully on his hips and he was buried to the base, gasping.
"Fuck," she breathed, shifting her hips, grinding. "Still the best thing I've had in this bed in ten years."
Her hands pinned his wrists down beside his head, and she started to move. Long slow strokes up, then a heavy drop back down, the mattress springs complaining under them both. Her breasts swung over his chest and he lifted his head to catch a nipple in his mouth again and she let him, groaning when he sucked.
"There you go. There's my boy." Her pace built, the slap of her hips against his filling the room, sweat running down her sternum onto his stomach. "Who owns this cock? Say it."
"You do, Ibu, you, ah, you do."
"Nobody else's. Not any uncle, not anybody." She released one wrist, hooked her arm under his knee, and pushed his leg up, changing the angle so each drop of her hips drove a broken sound out of his throat. "You felt something out there today, didn't you. Felt how the world doesn't want you. That woman couldn't wait to be rid of you."
"Ibu, I'm close, please..."
"Not yet." She stopped moving, buried deep inside her, and held him there, her weight pressing him into the mattress, his cock throbbing inside her heat. She leaned down and kissed his forehead, almost tender. "Breathe. Slow. You come when I say."
He breathed. She started again, slower this time, rolling her hips in long circles that dragged the pleasure out of him in waves instead of spikes. Her mouth found his ear.
"When I let you come, you're going to thank me. Out loud."
"Ibu..."
"Say it when it happens. Then we eat, then you help me with the evening stock." She sat back up, planted her hands on his chest for leverage, and picked up the pace until the headboard knocked the wall in rhythm. Her thighs slapped his hips, her breasts bounced heavy and free, and her face above him was flushed and fierce and focused entirely on him.
"Come," she said finally. "Come for me, boy, come inside me, now, now."
The pressure she'd been holding broke all at once. His back arched off the mattress, his hands flew up to grip her thick forearms, and he shuddered under her, crying out, pulsing inside the heat of her while she rode him through every second of it, grinding, milking, until he went limp and gasping.
"Good," she purred, staying seated on him, not letting him slip out yet. She leaned down, her breasts heavy on his chest, and kissed his jaw. "Now say it."
Danu's voice came out wrecked and small.
"Thank you, Ibu."
"That's my boy." She rolled off him at last, stretched her long body across the bed, and slapped his thigh. "Rest ten minutes. Then you're carrying crates. And Danu?"
He looked over at her. She had one arm behind her head, watching him with something almost soft in her eyes.
"Next time you want to go looking for family," she said, "you take me with you."
Danu nodded, still catching his breath, and reached for his shirt on the chair.
"Leave it." Maya caught his wrist and pulled him back down onto the mattress. "Ten minutes means ten minutes lying down. You ran all over the city in this heat, idiot."
He lay back. She shifted, and then, unexpectedly, she gathered him in. One thick arm hooked under his shoulders, the other drew his legs across her lap, and she arranged him against her body like she was stacking sacks of rice, practiced and careful. His head came to rest in the crook of her neck. Her skin was damp, warm, smelling of sweat and cigarettes.
"Ibu?"
"Shut up and rest."
But her hand started moving on his hair. Slow strokes, from his temple down past his ear, over and over. Danu lay still, afraid that any motion would stop it. The fan creaked. Out front a customer called for two bottles of beer and someone's voice answered, far away, part of another world.
"You didn't eat lunch," she said finally. It wasn't a question.
"No, Ibu. I was looking for the address all morning."
"I figured. Your stomach's been growling against my leg for five minutes." She snorted, but her arm tightened a fraction. "There's rice in the pot from this morning. Fried salted fish. Egg if you want it."
"You cooked?"
"I cook every day, you just sleep through it." Her fingers kept moving through his hair. "That woman at forty-seven. She have kids?"
"Two, I think. A baby and a little girl."
"Surya left two kids behind too. Man's a cockroach." She said it flat, but her thumb rubbed a slow circle on his shoulder. "Your father's brother's cousin, that whole line?"
"Yes. My father trusts him. Trusted him." Danu looked at the towel over the window, the light leaking around its edges. "I don't know what to tell him now. The letter's still in my fist. I crushed it."
"Give it here."
He dug the crumpled envelope out of his pocket. Maya took it, smoothed it flat against her thigh with two broad passes of her palm, and set it on the shelf above the bed, next to a tin of cigarettes and a lighter shaped like a pistol.
"You'll write your father tonight," she said. "Tell him the truth. Surya ran, the address is dead, and you found work. Stock boy at a warung. Room and board included."
"Room and board?"
"My back room. My pot of rice. You think I let just anybody sleep in my bed?" She looked down at him, and there was something in her face he hadn't seen before, something that wasn't the fierce half-smile or the flat command. It was quieter than both. "You breathe too loud and you've got the manners of a village goat. But you're honest. I can smell a liar across a room and you don't stink of it."
Danu didn't know what to say. His throat did something strange. He pressed his face a little closer to her neck, embarrassed by the heat in his own eyes, and hoped she couldn't tell.
She could tell. Her hand cupped the back of his skull, rough palm against his scalp, and held him there.
"Cry if you want. Nobody's watching."
"I'm not crying, Ibu."
"Fine. You're sweating through your eyes." She laughed, low in her chest, and he felt it under his cheek. "Idiot."
They lay like that while the fan turned and the evening came on, the light around the towel going from white to orange. At some point her hand drifted down his back, tracing the knobs of his spine, counting his ribs like beads. When her fingers reached the waistband of nothing, because he was wearing nothing, she only rested them there. She didn't take anything. It was somehow more unsettling than if she had.
"Ibu," he said, much later. "Can I ask something?"
"You just did."
"Why are you being nice to me?"
She was quiet for long enough that he thought she might throw him off the bed. Then she shifted, tipped his chin up with two fingers, and made him look at her. Up close her face was softer than it ever looked from across the warung, the hard mouth relaxed, faint lines at the corners of her eyes.
"You want the crude answer or the real one?"
"The real one."
"Because when I carried you off that mattress two nights ago, you grabbed my shoulder. Didn't push, didn't fight. Just held on." Her thumb moved along his jaw. "Men my size, we carry crates all day and nobody ever holds on. They take and they go." She let his chin go. "You held on. That's the whole answer."
"That's not the real one, Ibu. That's the nice one."
"Smartass." She pinched his ear, not gently, but her mouth twitched. "The real one is I'm forty-five and this warung gets colder every year and I got tired of sleeping alone. Take your pick, they're both true."
She rolled out of bed before he could answer, pulled her shorts on, and stood at the doorway with her hand on the frame. Her silhouette filled it completely.
"Rice. Now. You carry crates after, but you eat first." She paused. "And Danu. Tonight you sleep here. Not the mattress out front. Here."
"Yes, Ibu."
"And if you're going to kiss me goodnight later like some village boy," she said over her shoulder, walking out, "do it properly this time. Last night's was pathetic."
From the front room came the clink of plates being set down, and after a moment, the sound of the rice pot lid scraping open.