Birth Canal by Dias Novita Wuri

Author:Dias Novita Wuri
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC044000, FIC086000, FIC071000, FIC014050
Publisher: Scribe Publications Pty Ltd
Published: 2023-07-04T00:00:00+00:00

Even after all that, she survived, my mother. It was pancreatic cancer that finally took her life, at the age of seventy-three, two years after the turn of the millennium. She spent a week in intensive care, and she breathed her last with her daughter by her side.

At the age of seventeen, she took the life of her baby son.

Indonesia, October 18, 1945. Someone saved her. A pribumi, but not somebody from the nationalist youth group. She was just a widowed woman named Minah, who happened to be passing by the former home of the de Witte family, on her way to somewhere. There she saw a young girl in men’s clothes lying on the ground, so she rushed over to the girl to check whether she was alive or dead. A white or indo girl, she thought, still breathing, though rather weakly. Minah used to work as a bediende in a Dutch house nearby, and her master’s family also had a very beautiful girl, like this child. The woman was feeling my mother’s body, touching here and there to wake her up. She found that my mother’s lower belly was swollen. Pregnant, she thought, about two to three months along. She hurried back home to ask for help. That day the widowed woman saved my mother’s life.

October 20. In and out of consciousness for two days, kept alive by drinking starch water and eating pieces of steamed cassava, my mother woke up on a strange bed in a strange house. A voice speaking Javanese — ndak apa-apa, Ndok, cah ayu. It’s alright, little miss, you beautiful miss. After a few more days, my mother learned to fully trust the pribumi woman who had accommodated her, and when she became strong enough, she tried to help out any way she could as an expression of gratitude. Early the following week, a young man, who turned out to be Minah’s nephew, appeared at the house to inform them of the arrival of British troops on Java. That man would later become my father.

October crept into November. The chaos died down, then there were other flare-ups here and there, then they too died down, and no one could predict what the next day would bring. But time seemed to go faster; strange, wasn’t it? Mid-November, and my mother was too afraid to leave the house. My future father, who knew someone from the nationalist youth group, was reporting regularly about ongoing incidents. Extensive fighting broke out in Surabaya. More and more white nations’ military troops came to extort independence from the hands of the people. My mother huddled in her safe little room for days, shivering.

She knew that she was pregnant with the Commander’s child. Time passed, and her belly was getting bigger and bigger.

Your father knew about the baby? your voice floats from the depth of my subconsciousness. Yes, I reply. My mother told him honestly about the fate that had befallen her. How lucky she was that he still loved her, loved her half to death.

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