We walk home as it grows dark. My body, still the reverberation of drastic time differences, feels like its floating through the day, ready to drop asleep at any moment, then wide awake the next. I am ready to sleep, but instead, Annie dresses me, wrapping the sarong tightly around my body, securing it with a knot and an elastic band. She then motions me to take my tank top off. You not wear that. It is funny.
I look at the green kaballah, with all its intricate embroidery – and strategically placed, lacy but massive holes up the bodice and along the chest. Without a tank top, my bra is in plain, naked, ridiculous sight. After so many warnings about the Indonesia’s Muslim conservative tendencies, and the fact that I’m going to a religious ceremony in a temple--though Hindu and not Muslim, still: I can’t go showing my entire bra to the world. I think about trying...then think of seeing kind babak Oka (father Oka) or the other men in my bra. Ick. Despite what she tells me, it doesn’t feel respectful or right, at all to me.
[Though Annie is right - at each gathering I attend, on the jalan or at home, I see more women dressed only in an everyday-no-frills-kind-of-bra topped in see-through lace kaballahs. Fashionable in Bali, yes! But I still won't do it because I still feel like I'm sitting around in my underwear with family, of course!]
Annie insists, all the women do it. Some have covers, others just wear their bras, lacy top. That’s it. I imagine walking in with just my bra and a perfectly see-through covering in the US. Really?! Another tactic: I point to the rain--I don’t want to get cold.
She gives in. I walk carefully down the stairs, in the tight sarong. Oka appears at the gate, nods and smiles in approval. He takes hold of my arm and grips it high, to steady my step as we walk the muddy path past padis, sleeping ducks and the talking frogs. I see my first fireflies (cunung cunung), flitting through the dark. Like magic.
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