Kitchen Curse by Eka Kurniawan

Author:Eka Kurniawan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Verso Books

THE OTTER AMULET

“Do you still get beaten up a lot?” asked an old friend when we ran into each other at my grandmother’s house during Lebaran.

“Well, no, not anymore,” I answered, grinning.

He made me think back to when I was still a little kid. My mother had just given birth to my younger brother, so Father parked me at Grandma’s house in the village. In my new school, I was the only one who wore shoes and the only one who had a pencil sharpener. Naturally, this was bad news. With my undersized, frail body, nose full of snot, and often suffering from a cold, I was an easy target for my classmates. Every day they robbed me of my pocket money.

On one occasion three of them beat me up for purposely not bringing any pocket money to school. Grandma got wind of what was happening. You might think she would call on the school principal and lodge a complaint about the bullies; or send me back to be with my mother, which is what I wanted.

But it turned out Grandma had her own way of handling things. That afternoon she took me to a hut near a spring. Later on, I learned the owner’s job was, of course, guarding the spring. The hut was tiny, with smoke curling up from a hole in its wooden roof. Maybe the people inside were cooking over a charcoal fire. Grandma knocked, and a few moments later the door opened.

Before us stood an old man who immediately invited Grandma to come in and sit down. “No need! I’m just dropping by,” said Grandma, looking at something behind the old man’s back. A boy was standing there, older than I was and looking at us as if we irritated him.

“What grade is your boy Rohman in?” Grandma asked.

“Fourth grade,” said the old man, turning to face his son. “Go ask your mother to bring us some tea.”

But Grandma signaled to the boy to stay and ordered him to come close.

When he approached, she said to Rohman, ignoring the old man, “Listen, starting tomorrow you’ll move to grade two and share a bench with my grandson. If anyone gives him a bad time, you can beat the boy as hard as you like.”

Confused, Rohman turned to his father, but the old man merely smiled. Then he said, “Don’t worry! Tomorrow he’ll be in second grade.”

Such was Grandma’s way of solving my problem. From that day on, Rohman was two grades lower than he should have been. He was really something else. From the moment we shared a bench, nobody dared give me a hard time. My shoes were now spared the trampling of dirty feet. To be sure, sometimes, outside school, a kid who didn’t understand the situation would harass me, but the next day Rohman would beat him black and blue.

Not long afterwards, Father took me back to my mother’s place. I didn’t understand what was happening. Mother once told me I cried for days on end, begging to go back to Grandma.

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