Sulastri

Sulastri(Heather Margaret Jephcott) Sulastri

Sulastri is my name. Maybe I was born on a Tuesday (Selasa). I’m average height but nice and plump. Actually I’m overweight and especially so my wide backside. This weight has gradually accummulated over a period of 22 years, the years spent working for one family of foreigners. I have enjoyed this work and it has enabled me to evolve into a garrulous creature, enjoying conversation with anyone and everyone.

My life was comparatively harmonious and peaceful up until the age of eleven or twelve. I can never be sure how old I was as I never knew my exact age. I was a simple country girl living in a moderately sized village in a large, old, wooden house thirty-two kilometers from the capital of East Java, Surabaya, Indonesia. Not that I ever had cause to visit the city as a child for that was a very long journey by foot, bicycle or public transportation. My father was the leader of our village so we enjoyed a respected status but this did not make us wealthy at all. In fact times were often plain hard – with very little food available we would go out into the forest and into the fields to find any leaves to eat while finding grass for the goats to eat. As a child I worked hard physically as well as played. My father gave me a lot of love. I was far closer to him than to my mother who was closer to my younger sister.

But my life really changed big time when I was in the fifth grade – about eleven or twelve. A new man appeared in our village, a trader from West Java. I wasn’t particularly interested in him at all but it seems that he was in me and my parents were in him. So they arranged for us to marry. I don’t ever remember agreeing to this. At this time I was still a girl, enjoying play with my friends my age both male and female. After the knot was tied my mother had the audacity to throw me out of her bed at night. Up until then, I’d always had the pleasure of being among family, able to snuggle up to my mum whenever I felt like it on our giant bamboo slat bed. So I was enraged and upset, heartbroken at having to leave this comfortable place and atmosphere and visit this strange older man in another room. He was over 10 years my senior and he still is. He has and had far more in common with my mother who is much the same age. Although I had dropped out of school, I was still allowed to play at nightime with my friends outside, sometimes even till midnight.

During our first years together my husband made some attempts to win my heart, or at least tried to encourage me to be less testy. He did this through buying and giving me pretty clothes and things. It worked a little. I liked pretty things and up to this time had never had any. I did become more amenable to his advances. But in the early days of our marriage, what we had together was not enough for him and he strayed. Now that really made me agry. I may have been still a young girl but I was neither blind nor senseless. I wonder now how much he was to blame? His father had been like that (much worse really) as he had had two wives and many other women in his various posts throughout the country. His children were numerous. For me though it was not something I could shut my eyes to. I could not tolerate it and have never been willing to. So we fought like a cat and a dog. I’m not sure why I never left him. I know I’ve threatened to enough. I still wonder about that.

Two to three years of perilous marriage brought us to our first child, a daughter. Why did it take me so long to get pregnant? Maybe it was a very good thing. Maybe my body wasn’t ready to bear a child before this or I ready to raise one. But when my first child was born I was still young, just fourteen.

Since that time I’ve had two more children and added six grandchildren with one on the way. We have given our children a very poor example of a marriage to follow. I have not loved my husband in many of the ways a husband likes to be loved. I have never really respected him. We still fight like a cat and a dog although I keep trying to put a lid on my lips. Yes we annoy each other. Was there any affection anywhere in this marriage? If there was I hardly remember it. My mother is sorry at times for giving me to this man but we cannot replace the past. We still live together. I sleep on the bed and he sleeps on the floor. I help him do his work where I can, have my own job and do all the housework. He is already old and I’m not there yet.