Keeping Time

Chapter 2: Maoko -1944

Maoko screamed in horror and woke up. It was just a dream. Yet it was the same dream she had every night since her sister's death. She had more of these dreams after the tsunami hit Indonesia.

Her mother wore black when she found out her youngest daughter had died. What had annoyed her most was that her mother, who had never took responsibility for her youngest daughter before, acted as if she was besotted by grief after her daughter's death. Maoko's extended family had paid a lot of attention to her mother after the death had occurred and none to her. Maoko knew secretly that her mother had blamed her for Mata's death both in public and in private. What really irritated her most of all about her mother was that she put on antics so that her father's family would send a message for her father to come back.

One stormy night, when the waves were rough once-more, Maoko looked out her window. She saw a man walking from the beach. He had one single bag strapped to his back that seemed to be weighing him down and in another hand was a bottle of sake in the other hand that he would gulp down as he walked towards her house. The man quietly slipped into the door and Maoko could hear as he crept down the hallway to her mother's room.

When her mother had awoke, Maoko could hear mother's protest. Her father must have put her hand over her mother's mouth because her mother's protests became much more quiet. They talked for hours. Then they both fell asleep together.

Maoko awoke in the morning. Her mother was making breakfast. Her father was holding her mother and kissing her neck. They both looked happy together.

When he turned to face Maoko, a mixture of regret and happiness came upon his face.

"Maoko. It's been too long" he said.

They sat down together in the living room. Maoko's father told her all about going back to China to visit his family and joining the Communist Party. He told her that he had not known about Mata. Once he received correspondence from his sister informing him about his youngest daughter's death, images he had suppressed in his mind through drugs and alcohol came back to him of her and her mother. He told her, as he had told her mother, that he was sorry for avoiding his responsibilities as patriarch of the family and that he would be a much more loyal husband and father to them from there on out.

Maoko could clearly see then that her father did love her mother and her. She learned to forgave her father but she didn't easily forgive her mother. It was obvious to Maoko that her mother had not told her father the truth about Mata's life, implying to her father that she had spent more time with Mata than she ever had. Yet Maoko didn't press her mother nor did her mother antagonize Maoko. Both women grew swiftly apart and had very little communication with one another since.

Maoko snuck out of her room, putting on slippers and leaving the house. Crickets chirped as she walked through the jungle to the beach. There she could see millions of stars.

There was so much mystery in the universe. So many planets undiscovered with histories separate from Earth. Why were we here? What was our purpose? Was there life after death and would Maoko find her sister there someday?

When she wasn't grieving for her sister, she thought about that time she came to Adam to the beach. Adam and her had met before the war had began. He was an American soldier stationed there in order to serve the interest of the Dutch whom were afraid to lose Indonesia to the Japanese. They had begun as friends who had deep conversations about the universe. There was an intense physical and spiritual attraction between them. It was there on the beach where they kissed and she made love for the first time before being taken by a spaceship-city of glittering lights and was given a power she was told would save the universe. Yet she was sure it was a dream that perhaps served her brain in masking what really happened to Adam. After she had woken up on the beach, Adam was nowhere to be found. She had asked others in the village if they had seen them and they said no. Maoko was sure that something bad had happened to Adam. Perhaps he was taken by the Japanese because the next day they flew over the islands, landed on the shores and began to walk in the villages.

The stars seem to speak to her eyes. Something was going to begin.