Chapter One - Richard Lewis

The brass iron resembled a stately ship with a high sharp bow. With Arini
supervising, Tina filled the vented chamber with hardwood charcoal and squirted alcohol.
Blue flame whooshed at the touch of a match. On the porch was a rattan basket of sundried
laundry.
As they waited for the iron to heat, Tina remarked, "It looks like it has a long
history."
"My mother's," Arini said. "I stole it from home when I married."
"Where was home?"
"Here. Batu Gede. I was from a northern hamlet, up by the hill. We went to
school together from first grade."
"Really? You knew him your whole life, then."
"No," Arini said softly, "I knew him his whole life."
Tina winced. "I'm sorry. That was a careless way to put it. I was at the meeting
they had about those skeletons, and your brother-in-law Dharma told me about your
husband."
"You see that dent on the side of the iron?" Arini said. "My mother told me that
one wind-blown night during the monsoon storms, the Demon King from Nusa Penida
roared through our yard and flung the iron against the well. But I'd seen my clumsy father
knocking it off the ledge."
Tina held back a sigh. Had Teflon been invented in 1965? Because Arini was
coated in it, impervious to Tina's questions, no matter how subtle or discreet. Maybe a
more direct approach would work.
"I've heard stories about Communist leyak called Luhde Srikandi," she said.
"Who was she? Was she a real person?"
"I think the iron is ready."
Tina stifled another sigh. From the basket she picked out one of Arini's dresses, a
cotton print with yards of pleated skirt and balloon sleeves, a style fashionable half a
century previously.
"A Chinese dressmaker in Denpasar made that for me," Arini said. "He had the
latest fashion catalogs shipped over from Europe. Every day I got on a Lambretta scooter
to go to work at the Bali Hotel. I always liked to look nice for our guests."
Tina began ironing, working the nose of the iron into the tops of the pleats. The
brass clinked and clanked. "It must have been hard on you, raising your children on your
own."
"You been in Bali long enough to know better." Arini's tone was gently scolding.
"A child is raised by the whole family."
"You were still a mother."
"Careful, you're going to scorch the fabric. Let me finish that."
They exchanged places, and after a long silence, Tina said, "When I was fifteen,
my younger sister Nancy snuck out one night to a shopping center near our house. She
took a shortcut through the woods and she wasn't ever seen again. The police investigated
for months. Not a single clue. Her picture was put on milk cartons all around the country.
Nothing. My parents were devastated. My mother didn't get out of bed for year. Nancy
and I shared a bedroom, and to this day my mother blames me for not keeping an eye on
her."
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