Journal Entry 11.2.23

My mother is here. I feel her more here in this village than anywhere else in the world. If I believed in ghosts I would believe she haunts this place. Not in a malevolent way, but that this is the place she loved the most, the place she was the happiest. She came alive here, dreamed of her life here, and felt connected with her community here. She never put it into words, but I knew. I could tell. I could see her focusing in on people here, having complex conversations in their language here. She trusted the people in Borneo. I could tell.

In 1980, my mother was sitting on the floor in a house in Tangap, a resettlement village on the east of Kalimantan. She was talking to a local priest she was studying with. Suddenly, he lunged at her with a knife. It happened so quickly no one really had time to react, but she could have. He lunged at her with a knife, his thin body reaching towards her, his arm extended, knife held tightly. He lunged and stabbed a scorpion the size of my hand that was on the wall right by my mother’s head and neck. He pulled the creature off the wall and threw it to the ground. My mother made a face and we all exclaimed with excitement and horror, but my mother’s body had remained calm. I could tell, she trusted him.

At a society picnic at a boarding school my mother stood sideways to the headmistress, arms crossed across her body, looking away. I could tell she did not trust this women, did not feel safe or comfortable in this setting. My father scolded her for being “offish”. I wondered if she was dreaming of Borneo.