Balinese Dream

It’s not a phone call one hopes to make. Two hours in line at an Internet café, stained Styrofoam cups at calf-height on all sides, T-shirt shellacked from the 10 a.m. heat as a single fan fling fling flings in tired circles overhead. A tinny voice clicks across the Pacific, telling me to please leave a message. “Hi Mom,” I croak, ignoring the dog that has draped itself over my feet, shifting my weight as it nibbles away at a cluster of scabs. “I don’t want to worry you, but…”
But what? I’m thousands of miles away, ten dollars in my pocket; three-fifty of which was just spent on fish heads, when I thought I was ordering oatmeal? I haven’t slept in weeks because the thick air of brick-making wafts off the rice fields, choking in through the window slats; and my roommate, a gecko the size of a toaster, chirps for six hours each night—but on the bright side, my bangs have grown out rather well?
“I don’t want to worry you, but I just got hit by a motorbike.”
Let me explain.

~

From the moment I began asking expats why they came to Bali, one thing was clear: they had no idea. “I don’t know,” they’d reply. “I just had to.” As for me, I chose Bali for the sound it sang inside my head. Ba-li. By the time my plane thunked down, I expected a magazine world: swaying palms, and a quaint studio overlooking the wild Bali Sea. However, my room consisted of a lawn chair. While my movie-self deemed this a moment to heal, at the time, I could only eat Clif bars and cry.
Then, three weeks deep, I was hit.
True, the motorist was going too fast. True, he was going the wrong way. However, I was the reckless one: homesickness had nailed my gaze to the ground, and reality finally ran into me. Hard. From the street, body littered in glass—elbow and ego alarmingly skewed—I realized how long it had been since I’d looked before crossing.
Stumbling into the closest building, I sat down next to a crinkly man. I had just begun a one-armed pantomime when he placed his thin hands on my elbow. “Too much L.A.," he said.
What?
“Too much L.A. attitude. You not awake in your country, this Bali tell you to wake up. WAKE UP!”
So I did. I took two aspirin and called him in the morning; and seven weeks later, was healed. One smash, and I bled into someone who’s free. Seven months from that day, I’m still here.

~
“It’s okay,” I explain to an answering machine, sound waves prickling out of my smile. “I’m going to stay. I don’t know.”

"I just have to."