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How to leave a home

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Audrey Silalahi

This one time, someone that I considered a friend, someone who was

tall, blonde, pretty, white,

Someone who once told me that she wanted to visit Bali, had asked me, “So, wait, what passport do you have again? Like a European one or something?”

I had ordered Indonesian food for us to share only a couple weeks prior. A month before that, I had written a piece about the complexities of my Indonesian, Asian, and Asian American identity and she had shared it on her Instagram, adding two heart emojis.

Indonesian. Asian. Asian American. I thought, “Does this mean nothing?”

Grandpa, born four years after the Japanese colony left Indonesia went to college to become a doctor but is not a doctor. Grandpa, who never yells or raises his voice, would always come rushing to my room when he would hear that I was crying. Grandpa, who doesn’t know how to rest is always told to stay home, get some rest, you’re not young anymore, it’s okay if you’re not working. But he’s always out, keeping himself busy, doing some work

somewhere. Making sure his kids are doing okay, asking if his grandkids are healthy, if we already ate, if there’s anything we need, if, if, if.

Once, I asked Mom why Grandpa never talks about his family. She says, “He doesn’t want to talk to you about anything sad.”

But how do I tell him that it is a brave thing that after all of the chaos and the screams he endured growing up, he is still continually healing?

Dad still doesn’t know how to say goodbye. Instead, he says: you should stay out of trouble, make sure to call your grandparents, okay? And don’t skip classes. Do you know how privileged you are?

Do you know how privileged you are? Do you know how privileged you are?

Our relationship is complex but this is what he usually says when he calls:

Take up space, okay? Speak up

What he doesn’t tell me is this:

Take up space, okay? Speak up because I can’t. Because I couldn’t.

Grandma always stands up for her grandkids. She’s not afraid to raise her voice at anyone.

Once, in an airport in Chicago, TSA shouted at her because she had forgotten to remove one small bottle of water she had buried under her bag. He said, “There’s water in there. Do you understand? Do you know English?”

My grandma, who’s never afraid to raise her voice at her daughter’s husband for his malignant anger; my grandma, who once, when I was nine, while I was crying over my parents fighting, hugged tightly and whispered to me: you have to tell me when you’re hurting, okay? You can’t keep things bottled up; My grandma, who has never swallowed any lump in her throat but always makes sure to release them, only stayed quiet this time.

“We do speak English. She didn’t know there was one more bottle of water in her bag. Don’t scream at her,” I said this time, making sure to raise my voice. I make sure to take up space only because my grandma taught me to. The immigration officer asked me where home is and I couldn’t answer.

What were you doing in Indonesia over the summer? Where do you live? Where is home? How do I tell him that home to me is not made up of

walls and a bed but of a person? How do I tell him that home is the way my mom always makes sure I bring frozen Indonesian home cooked meals here because there is none in Boston? How do I tell him that home is my grandpa keeping me company while I cook his favorite dinner? How do I tell him that home, despite my father’s anger, stemming from frustration and years of generational trauma, speaks only so tenderly to me over the phone? How do I tell him that home is not a place but a feeling?

In Indonesia, the Indonesian language is often just called ‘Bahasa’, cutting down ‘Indonesia’ from the term, an assumption that you are speaking our mother tongue. But if translated directly to English, ‘Bahasa’ means ‘Language’.

Does this mean that my mother tongue is not a singular language but a universal one? I’d like to think that Bahasa will never be extinct in my semantics; only constantly evolving, an indication that home is not so far away but is right there in soliloquy; it is the words I speak and write and the food I cook and eat and the stories I’m going to preserve forever.

So, when my mom asked me last night if I missed home, I told her: I want home cooked meals but I don’t wish I was somewhere else anymore.

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