Nabila Wirakusumah

Ocean Debris

Excerpt

From my bed I can see the television screen in our living room, crackling between static and blue. The signal finally catches, and Lombok Beach floats in the blackness, its sands swarming with flocks of Australian tourists and local families slathered in sunscreen. Cut  to an aerial view of the ocean’s strange undulations that day, unobservable from the shore. An invisible warning sign. My gaze wanders. I won’t watch what unfolds on screen because I already know. Instead, I watch as the blue, flickering light from the television unearths, from the darkness, the silhouette of my ayah sitting in his chair. His clenched jaw, his tired but determined eyes, his fingers clasped tightly around something that glints as he brings it to his lips. Some kind of disk. For a moment I think it’s one of the large chocolate coins left over from the Lunar New Year. I catch sight of the tethered ribbon spilling over his wrist. The object clicks into place in my memory: it’s Dinah’s bronze medal for breaststroke—she’d won it a week before our vacation in Lombok.

O

I open my eyes to blue. A cold light shines and shifts across my face. I’m alone. Occasionally a blurred silhouette floats across the sky, but still, I’m alone. Sediment slips over me, pulled by a breeze. It swirls in through the cracks between my lips, into the crevices of my ears, sinking down my nostrils toward the back of my throat. It’s happening gradually. The sand drifts languidly in and out of these corners with the wind. Slowly but surely, I can feel myself dissolving.

I want to yell, but I can’t open my mouth. It’s like I’m dreaming, my body no longer responding to my demands. My eyelids lift and lower of their own accord, bobbing up and down like paper boats on a stream. All I can do now is listen as I’m milled into tiny particles of debris, carried off in the wind.

O

Just when I think it’s over it swells again, flooding over me: those pained gasps of iridescent fish slapping against the sand where the water receded, the roar of rushing water and the groan of twisting metal. Massive concrete buildings dissolving like sandcastles, and then another wave lurches, this time from my belly, up through my throat. I reach for the wastebasket next to my bed, liquid pours from my mouth, nose and eyes. The sea is still in me, and my body is desperate to purge it. 

“Elsya? Are you alright?” Ayah is suddenly standing in the doorway, his voice rough. With his back to the blue light, I can’t see the expression on his face. We both lost half of ourselves that day. His wife, my mother; and Dinah, his eldest. My big sister. I wonder if he’s crying too. But I don’t think he is. I haven’t seen it yet. All I’ve seen are contorted grimaces, but his cheeks have stayed dry while mine still sting red from rivers of brackish tears. I wonder if he’s angry with me. Or maybe he blames himself too. 

“I threw up again,” I tell him, though the pungency negates any need for explanation. He leaves without saying a word and returns with a glass of water. I crawl back in bed and he sits down next to me, stroking my hair. I reach into his shirt pocket and extract the medal, turning it over in my hands and letting the ribbon fall onto my sheets in a small puddle. 

“She’s a strong swimmer, Elsya. Maybe not as strong as you, but still strong. Who knows…maybe…” But he cannot bring himself to form the end of his thought. I’ve never known Ayah to be a liar.

O

The grains of sand that settle into my ears carry whispers from the outside world. The rudder of a boat carrying a search party. Rolls of muslin unraveling. A broken chorus of people wailing, echoing through the walls of a school gymnasium. The last one disturbs me most, settling into the deepest crevice against my eardrums, sending a vibration through me that makes my chest tight. I want to cry out and join their sobbing, but there’s no longer any breath left in me. My chest tightens even more. 

Then, like a miracle, I feel my lips parting, releasing a bubble that rushes away towards the sky. I search for my tongue, for control to return to my mouth. I have the urge to lick my teeth, count each one by tapping them with the tip of my tongue. I want to press my lips together. Purse them. Release the grains of sand that have collected in their corners. Maybe smile. Maybe cry. 

But control does not return. Instead I feel a tickle. A small crab crawls out from the inside of my cheek, picking at the soft tissue.

O

The grating sounds that once accompanied my grief are muted. The whole world feels like it’s been muted too. They found your mother, someone tells me, we will have a burial for her tomorrow. The voice sounds far away. It feels like I’m underwater. Our house swarms with aunts, uncles, imams and other mourners. I close my door but they still come to sit on my bed, praying and bearing useless pieces of information packaged as news—still no sign of your sister at any of the hospitals or from the rescue parties. Under my duvet I can’t tell who’s speaking to me and I don’t care to respond. My cheeks have been dry for a week, no longer stinging with tears. In their place is a numbness, a feeling that I’m turning translucent. The molecules that make up my matter feel like they’ve given up on their bonds; they drift away silently. 

When Ayah lets out a guttural wail it cuts through the fog, clear as day. Finally, after all this time, he’s crying, and I’m lucid once again. It hurts. We stand side by side over Ibu’s burial plot. Her body is wrapped in white cotton. Ayah’s crying softens to a whimper that escapes between the pauses in his prayer. He catches me staring. “Elsya, please. Pray with me for your mother.” I bow my head. When we finish he places a firm hand on my shoulder, “We are going to the beach to pray for Dinah.” 

I swallow a lump in my throat and look at the floor. The silence returns.

O

There’s not much left of me now. It’s nice. I still see the sky through a shifting, mirrored curtain. I still can’t count my teeth or purse my lips. Do I still have lips? 

But it feels like, in some way, I’m being released from this dark place. Slowly but surely. Tiny shreds and slivers of me drift and tumble with the breeze, which I now understand is a current. It’s easier this way to catch the whispers and piece the story together. My memories took a while to access. It really is like being in a deep sleep. Like you’ve emerged in a dream. It wasn’t until a storm caused the ocean floor to stir and the sediment to swirl that the water became hazy enough for me to make out the yellow disk of the sun. At that moment a bronze medal sunk through muddy waters and landed with perfect clarity on the barren banks of my memory. With it came the strong smell of chlorine, and the image of Ayah cheering so hard that the veins in his neck bulged. He shook his fists in the air and I glanced at the timer. A personal record. 

The more of me that dissolved, the further my reach and understanding became. My skin lifted off in flakes, calluses and old scars eroded into dust that floated away and swirled through hovering masses of garbage. I saw crushed cans of Bintang, a broken orange flip-flop, and a soiled baby’s blanket with little ducks on it. It reminded me of Mangsit Beach, on an afternoon in December. I teased Elsya, riled her up like I always did. She turned on her heel and walked away angrily. I laughed when I saw the first wave in the distance. I wanted to tell Elsya that her anger was stirring the ocean.

O

I smell it first. The saltwater, the brine. Then I hear it. Waves lapping at the shore under a guise of calmness. But I know better. Don’t we all know by now? The car turns the corner and the beach rolls into view. Beautiful and terrible. Ayah squeezes my hand. Our caravan of mourners pour out of the cars. They flock to our sides, guide us gently out of the car. I stare down at the sand. Then someone sings a prayer. 

Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji’un. How can she be returned to Him when she has not been returned to us first? I tear my eyes from the sand and look up to see the ocean opening wide in front of me. The horizon expands, cruel and ceaseless. It fills me with rage. I run towards it.

O

I hear the prayer. There is nothing left of me, and yet I ache. I am here. I am everywhere in this water. And I’ve been waiting since December for her return.

About the Author

Nabila Wirakusumah is a writer and artist currently based in New York. Her work involves ectoplasmic and nomadic characters in the incorporeal realms of Indonesia and Hong Kong as a means of inhabiting the former homes she left behind. She lives with her dog, Kumo, and her snake, Kaldur.