Dada 26

All I had to do was turn around and walk away. But those brightened faces  within the dark shadows pressed against me and made me continue forward. I took a few steps towards the floor. The boys carried on their argument and were moving and jerking like puppets at their table. They seemed   still quite far away although it could have been my eyes and I could feel drops of sweat gathering above my eyebrows. It was the same relentless sun and pouring rain inside me as the day Dada was buried; the day my head hurt in the haze of cigarette smoke and the bitterness in my mouth of my absent  mother and father.

I could feel every vein throbbing beneath my skin. I was being burned alive. I could hardly stand it. I took another step . I knew it was stupid. I knew I couldn’t shake off the whole of this day or that woman by putting one foot in front of another. But I took it, one single step forward. And this time it wasn’t a Kalimantan but a white boy who stood up.

He opened his hand like a shovel. He balled his fingers  into a fist and raised the threat towards me, piercing deep into what had been searching for me all day. His fist followed my every movement. At that moment, the sweat that had gathered on my eyebrows suddenly rushed down into my eyes, blinding me with a warm, heavy veil of salt and tears. All I could feel were the club lights crashing like cymbals against my forehead, and the ring on the boy’s last finger , a burning disco mirror ball twirling towards me like a dragon fly its legs furious and clawing as a machine .