Story 14: my friend

What my mother told me:

I was the youngest. Your uncle was my closest sibling but he was 4 years older which is still a big gap and he was a boy. I had a little maid who was about the same age as me and we were very close. We played together and every night she would sleep in my room but on the floor. I hated that there was a difference between us. I always asked her to come and sleep with me in my bed but she never would saying, “no no, Miss I’m too dirty.”

When it was decided that I was moving to Australia, we cried lots but I promised her that I’d come back for her and bring her to Australia where we would grow up, have our own children and always be friends.  

One day she was walking down the street carrying a jar of oil, she tripped and fell forward. The glass jar broke and she cut herself badly. They got her to hospital but you can't get any treatment unless you pay upfront. The servants didn’t have any money to pay for a blood transfusion so she died.

I came home to Indonesia for the holidays and couldn’t find my friend. When they told me what had happened, I couldn’t cry. I sat, staring out of the window, silent. There’s this bird that makes a wailing sound. It wailed and it wailed all day and the servants kept saying, “that’s your little maid, Miss – she’s crying to say that she’s sorry she’s not here.”

I'm jotting down a family story every day over the month of March for #b03, click here to catch up on the stories I've shared so far.