The end of July came, and my thirty-fifth birthday with it. Wayan threw a birthday party for me in her shop, quite unlike any I have ever experienced before. Wayan had dressed me in a traditional Balinese birthday suit--a bright purple sarong, a strapless bustier and a long length of golden fabric1 that she wrapped tightly around my torso, forming a sheath so snug2 I could barely take a breath or eat my own birthday cake. As she was mummifying me into this exquisite3 costume in her tiny, dark bedroom (crowded with the belongings4 of the three other little human beings who live there with her), she asked, not quite looking at me, but doing some fancy tucking and pinning of material around my ribs5, "You have prospect6 to marrying Felipe?"
"No," I said. "We have no prospects7 for marrying. I don't want any more husbands, Wayan. And I don't think Felipe wants any more wives. But I like being with him."
"Handsome on the outside is easy to find, but handsome on the outside and handsome on the inside--this not easy. Felipe has this."
I agreed.
She smiled. "And who bring this good man to you, Liz? Who prayed every day for this man?"
I kissed her. "Thank you, Wayan. You did a good job."
We commenced to the birthday party. Wayan and the kids had decorated the whole place with balloons and palm fronds8 and handwritten signs with complex, run-on messages like, "Happy birthday to a nice and sweet heart, to you, our dearest sister, to our beloved Lady Elizabeth, Happy Birthday to you, always peace to you and Happy Birthday." Wayan has a brother whose young children are gifted dancers in temple ceremonies, and so the nieces and nephews came and danced for me right there in the restaurant, staging a haunting, gorgeous performance usually offered only to priests. All the children were decked out in gold and massive headdresses, decorated in fierce drag queen makeup9, with powerful stamping feet and graceful10, feminine fingers.
Balinese parties as a whole are generally organized around the principle of people getting dressed up in their finest clothes, then sitting around and staring at each other. It's a lot like magazine parties in New York, actually.("My God, darling," moaned Felipe, when I told him that Wayan was throwing me a Balinese birthday party, "it's going to be so boring . . .") It wasn't boring, though--just quiet. And different. There was the whole dressing-up part, and then there was the whole dance performance part, and then there was the whole sitting around and staring at each other part, which wasn't so bad. Everyone did look lovely. Wayan's whole family had come, and they kept smiling and waving at me from four feet away, and I kept smiling at them and waving back at them.
I blew out the candles of the birthday cake along with Little Ketut, the smallest orphan11, whose birthday, I had decided12 a few weeks ago, would also be on July 18 from now on, shared with my own, since she'd never had a birthday or a birthday party before. After we blew out the candles, Felipe presented Little Ketut with a Barbie doll, which she unwrapped in stunned13 wonder and then regarded as though it were a ticket for a rocket ship to Jupiter--something she never, ever in seven billion light-years could've imagined receiving.
Everything about this party was kind of funny. It was an oddball international and intergenerational mix of a handful of my friends, Wayan's family and some of her Western clients and patients whom I'd never met before. My friend Yudhi brought me a six-pack of beer to wish me happy birthday, and also this cool young hipster screenwriter from L.A. named Adam came by. Felipe and I had met Adam in a bar the other night and had invited him. Adam and Yudhi passed their time at the party talking to a little boy named John, whose mother is a patient of Wayan's, a German clothing designer married to an American who lives in Bali. Little John--who is seven years old and who is kind of American, he says, because of his American dad (even though he himself has never been there), but who speaks German with his mother and speaks Indonesian with Wayan's children--was smitten14 with Adam because he'd found out that the guy was from California and could surf.
"What's a pelican15?" the little boy asked, and Yudhi jumped in and said, "Dude, you don't know what a pelican is? Dude, you gotta go home and ask your dad about that. Pelicans rock, dude."
Then John, the kind-of-American boy, turned to say something in Indonesian to little Tutti (probably to ask her what a pelican was) as Tutti sat in Felipe's lap trying to read my birthday cards, while Felipe was speaking beautiful French to a retired17 gentleman from Paris who comes to Wayan for kidney treatments. Meanwhile, Wayan had turned on the radio and Kenny Rogers was singing "Coward of the County," while three Japanese girls wandered randomly18 into the shop to see if they could get medicinal massages19. As I tried to talk the Japanese girls into eating some of my birthday cake, the two orphans--Big Ketut and Little Ketut--were decorating my hair with the giant spangled barrettes they'd saved up all their money to buy me as a gift. Wayan's nieces and nephews, the child temple dancers, the children of rice farmers, sat very still, tentatively staring at the floor, dressed in gold like miniature deities20; they imbued21 the room with a strange and otherworldly godliness. Outside, the roosters started crowing, even though it was not yet evening, not yet dusk. My traditional Balinese clothing was squeezing me like an ardent22 hug, and I was feeling like this was definitely the strangest--but maybe the happiest--birthday party I'd ever experienced in my whole life.
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1
fabric
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| n.织物，织品，布；构造，结构，组织 | |
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snug
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| adj.温暖舒适的，合身的，安全的；v.使整洁干净，舒适地依靠，紧贴；n.（英）酒吧里的私房 | |
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3
exquisite
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| adj.精美的；敏锐的；剧烈的，感觉强烈的 | |
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belongings
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| n.私人物品，私人财物 | |
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ribs
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| n.肋骨( rib的名词复数 )；（船或屋顶等的）肋拱；肋骨状的东西；（织物的）凸条花纹 | |
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prospect
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| n.前景，前途；景色，视野 | |
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prospects
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| n.希望，前途(恒为复数) | |
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fronds
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| n.蕨类或棕榈类植物的叶子( frond的名词复数 ) | |
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9
makeup
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| n.组织；性格；化装品 | |
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10
graceful
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| adj.优美的，优雅的；得体的 | |
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orphan
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| n.孤儿；adj.无父母的 | |
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12
decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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stunned
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| adj. 震惊的，惊讶的 动词stun的过去式和过去分词 | |
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smitten
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| 猛打，重击，打击( smite的过去分词 ) | |
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pelican
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| n.鹈鹕，伽蓝鸟 | |
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pelicans
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| n.鹈鹕( pelican的名词复数 ) | |
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retired
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| adj.隐退的，退休的，退役的 | |
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randomly
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| adv.随便地，未加计划地 | |
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massages
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| 按摩，推拿( massage的名词复数 ) | |
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deities
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| n.神，女神( deity的名词复数 )；神祗；神灵；神明 | |
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21
imbued
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| v.使（某人/某事）充满或激起（感情等）( imbue的过去式和过去分词 )；使充满；灌输；激发（强烈感情或品质等） | |
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ardent
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，强烈的，烈性的 | |
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