The Paradise Guest House Read Free Page A

basin. Lotus lilies float at its feet.
    A teenage girl walks up to Jamie, carrying a plate of food. She wears a black miniskirt and a torn T-shirt with the words CAN ’ T GET NO LOVE on it. She’s got long shaggy hair, bleached blond, and thick black eyeliner; she wouldn’t look out of place in San Francisco. Jamie’s pretty sure this isn’t the Balinese way.
    The girl puts a plate of rice and vegetables on the table and turns to leave.
    “Thanks,” Jamie says. “Are you related to Nyoman?”
    “Niece,” the girl says. She stands for a moment, looking wary.
    “I’m Jamie.”
    “Dewi.”
    “Pretty name.”
    “Where you from?”
    “The United States.”
    The girl’s eyes open wide. Her disgust and boredom evaporate. “I love America music!” she says with girlish enthusiasm.
    “Yeah, what kind?”
    “Heavy metal. America very cool.”
    “How old are you?”
    The question seems to upset the girl. She says, “Sixteen,” under her breath and then marches off toward the kitchen.
    Nyoman walks toward Jamie from his cottage. He’s combed his hair and changed his clothes, but his glasses still sit awry on his nose.
    “My niece is rebellious girl,” Nyoman mutters.
    “I like her.”
    “In Bali, when a baby is born,” he says, “the umbilical cord is buried in the ground in the courtyard of the family compound.As the child grows up, she might wander far from home. But in the end the umbilical cord draws her home. Dewi might wander, but she will come home.”
    Jamie feels a yearning for such a place.
    “You like food?” he asks, smiling.
    “I was hoping I could eat with the family,” she says.
    Nyoman laughs heartily, as if she has told a joke. “Bali family does not have dinner like on American television. We take food and eat by ourselves. No big deal like in your country.”
    “Are there other guest rooms here?”
    “Just one. We rent out to tourist. Mostly empty now.”
    “Does Dewi live here?”
    “Dewi is the daughter of my sister. She lives in the compound of her father, not far from here. In this compound lives my grandmother, my mother and father, my brother and his wife, and my nephews.”
    “And this is how Balinese families live? All together?”
    “You do not live with your family?” Nyoman asks.
    Jamie shakes her head. “I share a house with a bunch of friends. My mother lives about an hour away from me.”
    “All alone?”
    “For the past eighteen years,” Jamie says. “But now she’s got a boyfriend. They’ll get married soon.”
    “You have no father?” Nyoman asks. He looks bewildered.
    “I’ve got one, all right. He ditched my mom and me and moved across the country with a pretty young thing. Now he’s got a brand-spanking-new family, all little kids running around the farm.” Her dad’s place in Connecticut is more country manor than farm, and the little kids are now teenagers. But Jamie has been telling her father’s story this way for so long that she hasn’t learned how to tell the new version.
    Hard to put all those people in a family compound, she thinks.
    “You don’t have to eat it,” Dewi says. She’s back at the table, and Jamie picks up her fork.
    “I like it,” Jamie tells her.
    “Miss Jamie,” Nyoman says, his voice loud.
    She looks up at him. He squints at her as if he can’t see her clearly. “You come alone to Bali. Do you have husband?”
    Dewi giggles.
    “No,” Jamie says. “I’m single.”
    Nyoman rubs the bridge of his nose, pushing his glasses further askew. He looks baffled.
    “In the States it’s not so unusual for a thirty-two-year-old to be single.”
    “But you will have children?”
    “I think so. Did my mother tell you to give me a hard time?” She smiles, but Nyoman just stares at her. “Only kidding,” she says.
    “I have many clients from the West. I know that the ways of the world are very different.”
    “What do you do?” Jamie asks.
    “I am tourism guide. I take tourists to all the parts of Bali and