The Princess of Karangasem

She is the princess of Karangasem, once the Queen, and now she is giving me jackfruit.

She splits it for me with her hands first. When she sees I am full and happy, one and the same here, she passes me a glass plate glazed in cooking oil to rub off its stickiness. She later shows me the photo of her with half of her progeny. She is two years older than my own Opa, but she has one more generation in place to keep her here when she is gone.

She now sits on her patio, drinking sugary ginger tea in the face of volcanic mountains, rice paddies, palm trees, and the sea, as calmly if they were just her neighbors’ houses.

Her husband is now gone, she tells me.

She chats with the other women and shares sweet and sticky fruits with guests. Her day before looked a lot like this one. Her tomorrow will probably look a lot like this one too, I hope.

I do not share her ease with this life: I hope tomorrow I will not get electrocuted again at four in the morning with my own shit still on my hands, adjusting with little grace to the absence of toilet paper in Balinese culture (you wipe with your left hand, in case you were wondering, and don’t you dare use it for anything else unless you want to make a sweet Balinese grandma cringe, but she will probably smile at you anyway because they are the nicest people I have ever met. EVER).

Alone with the sound of roosters and morning calls to prayer and my own filth.

There is so much I must remember that she already knows. I do not have to leave her on the patio, but I do. I must lie down. She is happy for me to stay. She is happy for me to go. I am a passing question in her world.