Over Coffee and Chocolate Cake

Audrey Silalahi

Today, coffee and bagels will be painful. I’ve circled the block twice since arriving, but my mind keeps on wandering back and forth between the smell of freshly baked bagels and overpriced coffee. I dread the thought of having to face you again. I’m slowing down my steps, reloading emails on my phone, opening then closing my journal, making sure there isn’t anything else I could be doing instead of hovering awkwardly in front of the clear glass door of this cafe.

I wonder, if I walk in there and remind you that you used to tell me that we could plant coffee beans in the middle of Jakarta, will you remember? Or, if I bring up the time you drove us 45 minutes to our favorite bagel place in South Jakarta that was closing only for us to miss its last order, will you even let me finish? I’ve finally built up the courage to walk in. I tug on the scarf around my neck. The bell hits the door signaling my arrival but your head’s still looking down, probably way too focused reading something on WhatsApp to notice that I’m here, walking past you and ordering my coffee. I stand close to the window as I wait for my order, taking my time to really look at you from the short distance between us. I expected you to look aged, and you do. Your usual black polo shirt is replaced with a brown button up, those jeans that you used to spend way too much money on are now black slacks and your hair, while still in a buzzcut precision, have gone a little bit gray. I know what you’re having, too — iced passion fruit tea

with less sugar and a slice of chocolate cake. That order is more you than you will ever understand; the overcompensating nature of all your less-sugar orders only to enable your love for something much sweeter, less healthy. Aren’t I right, Pa? That’s why you haven’t stopped chain-smoking cigarettes but run at least twice a week and have five air purifier machines at home. I walk over to you, slow in my approach as I take a sip of my iced chai latte, no sugar, with only a little bit of milk, stripped as naked as it can be. This is me telling you that this is me, look at me. You finally look up with that gentle smile, an unfamiliar trigger to moments of instant regret while second guessing whether I’ve talked back to you or if I’ve gone home too late. My bagels are still warm, bits of lox peek out through the sides and I can tell that you wish that, that’s what you’re having instead of that overly manufactured chocolate cake on your plate. You then tell me to sit and ask me how I’ve been — if I love Boston or if I want to come home, if I need money or … wait, didn’t I just get paid? That you finally made the move to Bali and that everyone misses me. But, Pa, when you say everyone, who are you speaking for? You don’t call me by my name, replacing Katrina with ‘Kak’. In Indonesia, the eldest children with younger siblings are sometimes just called ‘Kak’ by their parents. My disposition among my siblings has always been an identity embedded in me. To you, I am a sister first before I am a person; you’re always expecting me to give up my space for my sisters and then celebrating my loss for it. You’re always kinder to me after.

I’m now telling you things that I think are safe for you to know — I tell you that I’m seeing someone but that it isn’t serious

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and he’s out of town for some work thing so we he won’t be able to see you anytime soon but don’t worry, he’s a good guy and you and Mama will meet him one day. I tell you that I finally got a new job that pays better so I think I might move to a nicer apartment soon, wish me luck. And I tell you that I drink way too much coffee because of you. But there are things I don’t tell you that I think maybe one day I will: I’m seeing someone and it’s serious. He’s not out of town, he’s 10 minutes away from where we are. I think he’s a good person and he treats me well but you won’t like him and that won’t change anything. I finally have a new job at the production house I told Mama about and it does pay better and all of my bosses suck and my coworkers are assholes. I need to get a new apartment because I had a falling out with my roommate and I want to live better. I drink too much coffee, it’s a problem, and it is because of you--so many of my bad habits are because of you. You nod, not knowing what to say, awkwardly telling me about work or some other thing you have going on with your golf friends. We sit in uncomfortable silence until one of us brings up the weather or work or my sister or Mama like we usually do. Between us, it is only you that still lives with Mama but I think I still know more about her than you do. What’s up with that, Pa? I used to think that the moment I finally move out of Jakarta on my own, I’ll be able to leave the mess that is the two of you. But the residue of your malignant anger still lingers like a stain I can’t get rid of. We continue to sit for a while exchanging harmless information until you tell me that you need to head back for another work thing at nine.

“Kak, can you get me iced coffee and that bagel you’re having for to-go? Here, take my card. Order something for yourself too.”

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You ask for a favor like it’s a command, handing me your credit card like it’s a way to blur out the reason why you always make me order whenever you’re visiting. Pa, your fear for them not understanding you is nothing but years and years of cultivated internalized disdain of your un-American-ness. But I get up anyway, aware of where I’m standing in this space we are both sharing: I am your daughter — a position so immortal that not even death can obliterate it. A position so potent that I am now still trying to learn how to say No to people. The cafe is quiet now. Almost everybody else is gone. And the silence is now as loud as every lawnmower in this city combined. But I know that we axre here. And I know that the ghosts of old tragedies are still looming ahead of us. And I know, too, that soon, you’ll fly back home to the city you’ve built so much of yourself around, but if you ask me if I want to see you again before you leave this Sunday, I’ll say — there’s this other cafe, 30 minutes from here, it’s nice and quiet, and I think it’ll remind you of grandma’s old cafe in Jakarta— do you want to come with me?