For Real(34)

We manage to flag down a taxi, and the driver smiles and nods when we tell him where we’re going. Will tries asking him what a srikaya is, but he just repeats the word and nods again, which isn’t very helpful. A little while later, he drops us off in a small square in front of the market and extracts a few more rupiahs from the stack I hold out. We’re getting low on cash—our hour-long ride to the hotel cost a lot, and it was impossible to haggle. I pray a bakpao isn’t something expensive, like a television or a live cow.

The square is crowded with people carrying heaping shopping baskets and riding bicycles and mopeds, but the pink Around the World flag is easy to spot. A middle-aged woman in a long print skirt is waiting for us with a stack of pans and a bucket of water. Though there are no other teams in sight, some of them are probably inside the market already. I peer through the doorway, but it’s too dark in there to make out anything but general chaos.

“Okay, let’s strategize,” Will says. “We should find someone who speaks English and ask them what this stuff is that we’re supposed to buy.”

There’s a group of teenage boys loitering and smoking near the front of the market, and I point them out. “Maybe those guys?”

“Sure. Go for it.”

I look down at my feet. “Um, maybe you could do it?”

“They’d probably be more likely to help a cute girl than some random white dude, don’t you think?”

As much as I love that Will just called me cute, I feel anything but attractive right now. My butt is damp from the swimming pool, my hair is a bedraggled mess, and I have wet spots on the front of my shirt that make me look like I’m lactating. I don’t even like to ask for help at the grocery store at home, where everyone speaks English and I look relatively normal. But I’ve wasted enough of our time already today. If I can strip on camera, surely I can ask a stranger what an Indonesian word means. “Fine,” I say. “I’ll be right back.”

My palms start sweating as I approach the guys, and I wipe them on my jeans. At first nobody even notices me, but when the boys spot Greg and his giant camera, they all fall silent and look at me. I have no idea what to say, so I try “English?”

“Yes,” says one of the guys. He’s wearing a red baseball cap and looks about my age. When he smiles into the camera, he reveals a gap between his front teeth.

“Can you tell me what srikaya is?”

His eyebrows furrow. I hold out the card and point to the word. “Srikaya?” I say again.

Comprehension dawns on his face. “Fruit,” he says.

“What kind? What does it look like?”

He struggles for descriptive English words. “Bump … green?”

That doesn’t sound like anything I’ve ever eaten, and there’s no way I’m going to be able to find it based on that description. “Can you show me? Inside?” I point at the market.

He looks at his friends. One of them shrugs and says something in Indonesian, and the rest of them laugh. I wonder if they’re talking about the wet spots on my boobs, and I cross my arms over my chest. Finally, the guy in the baseball cap says, “America? TV?”

“Yes,” I say, hoping that’s a good thing.

He nods. “Okay. We go.”

“You know what these other two things are, too?” I point to bakpao and ikan asin, and he nods again. I breathe a sigh of relief. I did it.

I gesture for him to follow me. “What’s your name?” I ask as we walk, hoping it won’t be something impossible to pronounce.

“Taufik.”

“Nice to meet you, Taufik. I’m Claire.” I can’t believe I’m having a more normal conversation with a random Javanese stranger than I managed to have with a bunch of Middlebury students a few weeks ago. Am I getting braver? Or is it just that I know Taufik won’t understand a word I say if I start spouting media theory?

Will is standing over by the pink flag, and I bring Taufik over and introduce him. “He’s going to come in with us and show us what we need.”

“Nicely done, Claire.” Will grins at me, and a warm feeling spreads through my whole body. Maybe I’d be more willing to talk to strangers if I got positive reinforcement every time. I’m like a puppy, and Will’s smile is my liver treat.

While Greg presents a waiver to Taufik, I secure the instructions to my forearm with a hair band so I can read them hands-free. Then Will and I hold a water pan level between us while the woman in the print skirt fills it. It’s only a little deeper than a cookie sheet, and as soon as we take a step toward the market, it jostles and splashes all over my chest. Now I look like I’m participating in a wet T-shirt contest.

“Oh God, I’m so sorry,” Will says. But he doesn’t sound that sorry, and I wonder for a second if he dumped the water on me on purpose. A tiny part of me hopes he did.

Taufik looks confused as we hold out our pan to be refilled. “We go to market?” he asks.

“Yes,” Will says. “We have to bring this water.”

“It’s for a game,” I try to explain, but I’m pretty sure he still doesn’t understand.

Will and I carefully coordinate our steps this time, and we make it to the door without spilling. But once Taufik leads us inside, I lose hope that we’ll ever be able to complete this challenge. The market is a dark, confusing rabbit warren of passageways, packed to the brim with shoppers. The roof is translucent, but it’s so dirty that hardly any daylight gets through. Fluorescent lights hover here and there like UFOs, reflecting the red paint of the stalls and casting a ruddy glow over everything. A man carrying a massive basket of chili peppers comes barreling out of nowhere and nearly tramples us, and we struggle to keep the water pan level. Taufik disappears into the crowd, his red baseball cap bobbing farther and farther away, and I have to shout his name five times before he hears us and fights his way back.