Sophie Ronodipuro

Extract from In the Name of My Mother 

I will never remember when I was born. Just like everyone else, that story will only be known by those who were actually there. Just like everyone else, it is as if we were never there at all.

My birth was a quiet affair. Or at least, that’s what I was told. The amount of family members that would have typically been present at a birth was cut in half, the result of an unfortunate relationship with Fathers half of the family at the time. But those who could from Mothers side were there, including her already born children. Brother was 12 years old and Sister was 13 years old. Too young to understand the gravity of the situation but old enough to sense the excitement behind it. They weren’t there during the birth itself and were probably glad for it. I’m sure I am. Mine was supposedly a messy entrance, my small form refusing to leave Mother until the clock approached dinner time. Once everyone seemed to have run out of patience, the lead doctor told Mother it was time to get me out.

A nurse soon put a mask over Mother’s mouth and when she breathed, she felt lighter and lighter but still heavy enough to feel her daughter wriggling around inside her belly. On the other side of the blue sheet placed above her abdomen, the lead doctor picks up a scalpel and begins lining the tip along Mother’s stomach.

The first cut.

Mother will never be able to remember what this moment was like, the drugs and blue sheet made sure of that. The most she will ever recall are strange sensations like a phantom ladder being pulled out of her. The doctor wished it was that easy. Because of my stubbornness, which it appears I was born with, the doctor went to work on Mother as if she was an old house that had been wallpapered ten times over. With the scalpel he carefully peeled back layers and layers of thick and slippery flesh. 

At last, the final layer is cut open and a small head with a light dusting of dark hair reveals itself. With as much gentleness as a mildly annoyed teacher trying to wrangle their student, the doctor takes hold of that head and begins pulling me out of Mother. All the while Mother is laying on the bed with her eyes towards the ceiling. Mother prays.

Let my child be healthy.

Let my child be smart.

Let my child be kind.

Let my child be go-

A child screams. The cries that burst out of me are sharp and deafening but nobody complains. Instead, the doctor and nurses let out sighs of relief and Father’s face erupts with a smile. The doctor cradles me, careful to support my soft head while one of the nurses approaches with a pair of scissors.

Snip.

That rope which once connected me and Mother drops to the bed with a light thunk. It will lay there forgotten for maybe a few moments more than necessary. The doctor gently transfers me to Mother’s arms. They are shaky, and after such an assault on her body that is to be expected. But as soon as I am rested against her she holds me with the steadiness and determination of a Mother. She looks to Father.

‘So we’ll name her that?’ She asks with a smile. Father nods. My name will be the only thing they will ever agree on.

I am not her first child; I am her last. Father is her second husband. She already had a life, a family, before she had even thought of the idea of me. This was when Brother and Sister were born. Mother was the one who chose all of our names.

Part of Sister’s name serves as a reminder of where she was born.

I do not know the story behind Brother’s name.

As for myself, they decided to name me after Mother. She has forever labelled me as her daughter. When I was younger I used to be resentful of this. Do not ask me what I feel now as I write this.

Even after her body hangs amongst the ancient cliffs in a rotting coffin, she will follow me to my own grave.

Part of my family is Torajan. We came from the mountainous regions of South Sulawesi and have been there since God first spoke our bodies. Torajan culture is unique, we have traditions and culture that you will never find anywhere else in Indonesia let alone the rest of the world. One of these traditions include elaborate and magnificent funeral rites. They involve singing, dancing, the sacrifice of at least 20 water buffalo and pigs, cock fighting, and enough food to feed five villages. And of course, they will invite at least five villages worth of people. But this is still a funeral, and there would be much wailing and crying. After the elaborate, hours long ceremonies, the bodies will be buried. Depending on the families social and financial status there are several methods: the coffin can be placed in a cave, a carved stone grave, or hung against a cliff.

But the death rites do not stop there. Every August we Torajans carry out a ritual we call Ma’Nene. During this time the families gather from far and wide, even those who had moved to other corners of the world. They reconvene and un-bury their dead. The bodies are exhumed and their rotting forms are revealed. Instead of cowering in fear and revulsion we smile and laugh. The dead are here with us and for moments they are no longer dead, just family. The tombs are cleaned while the bodies are taken for a turn around the sun and their clothes changed. They are offered snacks and cigarettes. These will never be touched but that does not matter. If they see that an old, long deceased, grandfather’s beard has grown longer it is a sign that their family will prosper. 

A journalist named Lisa Carraway Oliver travelled to Toraja herself to observe the process of our death-making. She sees the slaughter of buffalo amongst laughter, the smiling against the spurting of blood, the bodies rising from the grave and being fed food they will never eat. But even after experiencing the rituals herself a question remains unanswered for her: Why? For the answer, everyone points her to the direction of a man called Petrus Kambuno. At 90 years old he is the last of us to remember the stories of Aluk To Dolo, the Way of the Ancestors.

He welcomes her into his home. Weaves a story of God’s creation involving bamboo, bananas, betel leaves, and lime. How it all started here in the mountains of our forefathers. Towards the end, Oliver writes, 

Kambuno gestures at his family crypt, which he says holds more than ten relatives. “My father is in here,” he says. “But I am here, so he is not really dead. My mother is in here, but I have daughters, so she is not really dead. My daughters have been exchanged for my mother. I have been exchanged for my father.”

I was born with two languages already tucked under my tongue. Both Mother and Father wanted me to be able to speak English and Indonesian. Better opportunities, they said. And if we were lucky, more opportunities than they had in their own lives.

Speaking came unnaturally to me at a young age. When I was a little girl I would avoid eye contact with just about anyone who ever wanted to talk to me directly, both old and young. The young ones just thought I was weird and would avoid me like a plague, their sharp laughter’s knocking through my skull. The old ones would look at me with pitying eyes, as if they knew something I didn’t. I know what they knew now, but I’ll save that for later.

We always said that Indonesian was the first language I learnt to speak but also the first language I forgot. I don’t know when it happened, it was probably a slow moving thing. When they started putting me through school it was always where the main language spoken was English. At one point I began studying Indonesian as a second language, which would very soon become a source of many jokes within the family. The English language slowly invaded the crevices between my teeth before their ships sailed against the waves of my tongue. 

One of the many Indonesian words for Mother is Ibu. But soon that word would turn into Mama, and much sooner into Mum and Mother. Mother never really blinked an eye at it, she probably suspected that it would happen. After all, every time she would speak to me in Indonesian I would always reply in English. This would continue on for many years past my childhood. It seems our relationship was always lost in translation.

One of the first words I ever spoke was in English. Or at least, a crooked kind of English. It was when I was out with my parents in the park outside of our apartment. It was one of the first places I remember living in, one of the many places I would call home between birth and my seventh year. I was running around the damp grass when I spotted a small fluttery thing. It bobbed up and down and side to side through the sky.

‘Look,’ Father said, ‘A butterfly!’

My young tongue was still all knotted up so I couldn’t say that exact word. Instead, I pointed at the little thing and shouted, ‘Puppawy!’

My parents laughed. So did I. Every time I saw a butterfly after that I would shout Puppawy! Puppawy! Puppawy! And they never stop laughing.

I call them butterflies now. Times have changed.

I was not a stupid child. I knew, and have always known, that I was given opportunities that many other children would kill for. My parents were fortunately able to send me to good schools, and the houses we lived in were perfectly comfortable. I was well fed and well looked after. But for some reason, anger followed me throughout my whole childhood. 

I can’t recall many of these incidents that well, and maybe that’s a blessing. But one of these happenings will always stick to the back of my brain. It was an argument with Mother. I would have been around four or five years old. I couldn’t tell you how it even started, but back in those days anything could have set off my temper. It most likely happened because I couldn’t find my favourite book. I probably kept hassling Mother to help me find it, all the while she’s sat on the dining room table trying to do some kind of non-descript work on her laptop. The asking turns into whining. The whining turns into crying. The crying turns into screaming. I scream and scream and scream to the tops of my tiny lungs. I am young so I do not notice Mothers fists clenching, her eyes closing, and her breathing growing deeper and deeper. 

Finally I screech to the heavens, but I can barely hear that over the sound of Mother slamming her laptop closed. I stop, my breaths turn light. I watch Mother push herself out of her chair and walk as quick as she can to the kitchen. She promptly stops in front of the small hook by the kitchen door where we hang the car keys. She picks up the car keys and leaves. I don’t believe she will leave until I see her enter the car and hear the sound of the engine roar. I scream through the doorway.

‘Ibu!’

‘Ibu please!’

‘Ibu, don’t leave!’

The car revs and moves forward off the driveway. I watch it turn onto the road until I can’t see it. I don’t stop screaming and crying. Father will come out of his study and see me wail on and on. He will try and hug me, tell me everything is alright and use the same words you would on someone who were grieving. These words turn to dust before they reach my ears. There is no comfort, it is as if he isn’t there at all. Eventually I tire and fall asleep on the cold floor next to the chair where Mother was sat. I do not remember who carried me to bed.

When I’m older Mother will tell me that she went back to the office that night to continue working. She said she would have rather been with her colleagues than with her family that night. This sentiment will continue for several more years. While she tells me this she laughs. To this day I still haven’t forgotten. I don’t know if I ever will.

There is a linguistic theory called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Those who study and adopt this hypothesis believe that the language a person speaks can directly affect how they perceive the world around them. This is also known as linguistic relativity. A weaker version of the theory has been more widely accepted by modern linguists, who believe that language only influences thought and decisions.

An example of this is how in the English language the concept of time is usually associated with money and currency. We would say ‘You can invest time in this project’ or ‘Don’t waste your time on that’. In English we give time a sense of both value and materiality. We also give time degree of spatiality in that one would say a person has moved forwards or backwards in time.

This is not the same in some other languages. In Mandarin, for instance, they perceive time in a different spatial sense. Mandarin-speakers view time as something that moves not only horizontally but vertically as well. The word xià meaning ‘down’ is used to talk about the future while the word shàng meaning ‘up’ is used for the past. For speakers of Aymara, an indigenous language from Peru, the axis is reversed. The word for future, qhipuru, means ‘behind time’. They use this as if to say we can’t look into the future the same way we can’t look behind us.

I have been thinking in two languages my entire life. I have and will never know another way of living in this world. Some of my family only speak one language while the others know much more than me. We all move differently through this strange life just because of the way we’ve learnt to see it. So many eyes, all shapes and sizes.

Before Mother was Mother, she was also a daughter. 

She was born in February, a month that you may associate with a strong wind, perhaps a slight dusting of snow, but always with a shiver. That association doesn’t exist where we come from. In our country February is wet. The rain slams against the dirt, it’s as if the sound of that slamming is trying to compete with the thundering in the skies. 

She wasn’t born where I was. Mother was born near the ocean. Neither of her parents are from this place. Her father, who I can call Grandfather, was from somewhere near the ocean as well. He was a man who carried laughter in his belly wherever he went. He was a good Catholic man, and Grandmother is a good Catholic woman. But they were never God-fearing, instead their path to faith is paved with love. 

I will never meet this Grandfather, neither will any of my siblings and cousins. But we will get to that story soon.

Because of the nature of Grandfathers job, the family had to move to a new town every three years. This meant plenty of adventure for Mother, but not a lot of stability. She can’t recall ever having a true childhood best friend. But she was never lonely. Between her, her parents, and her seven siblings, there was plenty of love to be felt. One of the ways this love was shown was through food. Grandmother’s cooking was known far and wide, the fragrance of her freshly baked nastaar and kaastengel cookies folding over every town they moved to. Mother remembers Grandfathers friends always getting caught in their homes orbit due to the sheer deliciousness of Grandmothers cuisine.

And the music. Nobody could ever forget the music. The family were fortunate in that they typically lived in very big houses, sometimes even the biggest house in their little town. The living room’s in these houses were often large enough to hold 20 people, which it usually did. With half of that 20 easily consisting of family anyway, the rest were usually made up of Grandfathers friends, colleagues, and other esteemed figures who were on the same government council as him. Enticed by the scrumptious food and almost blinding joy amongst the family. Like moths drifting to the light. But light can flicker too, and Mothers family is no exception.

***

If you ask someone, anyone, whether they have a black sheep in their family there is a high chance that they’ll say yes. If you ask Mother she will say yes. One of her older brothers was always considered to be a trouble maker. An economics student who spent most of his time far away from the lecture halls, gambling and playing chess. Nothing but a trouble maker, that is what most people will think but never say out loud.

There is a day when this brother takes it too far. To disrespect your friends, family, and your education is to indirectly disrespect your parents for they are the ones who raised you and gave you all these things. Where we come from, this in itself would be considered good enough reason to be cast out of a family. This brother does all of that but it seems he had no limit.

It begins with an argument, and memory has mostly erased what it was even about. All Mother remembers, or at least all she will tell me, is that the whole family was home to witness it. She is in her bedroom when she begins to hear shouting bleed under her door. She opens the door and is greeted by the sight of her siblings similarly popping out of their rooms in a similar fashion, their faces wearing the same look of confusion she’s sure she is as well. The all make their way to the living room only to find this brother and Grandfather screaming to the heavens, and at each other. Grandmother stands in the back of the room but tries to calm them both down while tears rush down her cheeks.

Their screams are indecipherable, nobody else really knows what is happening. Nobody could have predicted what would happen next either. This brother turns around and grabs a bible that rested on the dining table before facing Grandfather again.

 Bang!

When the bible lands on the floor it feels like the earth trembles. The good Catholic family watches this and it is as if their bodies are frozen with fear. Fear of this brother or fear of God they do not know. Until this brother does the unforgiveable. He steps on the holy book with his bare feet and looks to Grandfather with his eyes like fire.

‘Kiss my feet.’ He says to Grandfather. Grandmother begins to break into sobs and all the children are shocked into silence. Grandfather shakes his head, not because he fears God but because he loves Him. It does not satisfy this brother. He stomps his foot on the bible again while his face begins to warp into sort of monstrous being.

‘Kiss my feet!’

Grandfather is ready to shake his head and refuse again when he feels a warm hand on his right shoulder. He looks back and sees Grandmother, whose eyes look so drained they may as well have turned into raisins. These raisin-eyes look into Grandfathers own and there is a sense of dread swimming behind them.

‘Just do it,’ She says, ‘Do what he wants.’

The children do not believe what is happening. Grandmother is God-loving, not God-fearing. But it appears that love does not matter when you are able to fear your own son. This brothers face is covered in a thick smugness when he hears this, and he lifts his chin as if in expectation.

‘Ayo.’ He says. Come on.

Before the children can grab Grandfather and pull him away, his knees lower to the floor. His spine curves down onto where the bible rests under this brothers feet. From where the children stand they cannot see whether Grandfather kisses the bible or his feet. But they are able to see his back tremble lightly as he does so. They have never seen Grandfather cry, and even now they do not see it. Grandfather wipes his face before pushing his form off the floor. When he is almost fully upright his body shakes and stumbles, and the children rush towards to steady him. His face hardly reveals anything, no hurt, no anger, no sorrow. Instead, he just looks like a tired old man.

Mother will tell me this story several times when I am older, and every time her voice will be drenched in anger. This is what changed everything, she will say, this is what ruined everything. During every family reunion she will make civil conversation with this brother, but her eyes always stay sharp. Mother will carry this resentment with her for years. This baggage must be heavy. I don’t know if she will ever learn to put it down.