The Widow’s Keepsake

Before my first breath, my mother carried me into a world of green and shadow, where the air was thick with the smell of damp earth and the distant call of unseen things. The year was 1971, and my father’s work had brought us to a timber camp carved into the heart of Borneo, near a river that wound like a dark serpent through the jungle. Our new home was a longhouse on stilts, raised high above the mud and the creatures that crept below. It was divided into two apartments, and the other half was occupied by a widow named Mrs. Ani and her young son, Joko.

Mrs. Ani was a quiet woman with eyes that seemed to hold a deep, unspoken sorrow. She rarely spoke, and when she did, her voice was barely a whisper. Her son Joko was a pale, thin boy of about six, with a strange habit of staring at the wall for hours, tracing patterns in the wood with his small fingers. My mother, new to the place and heavy with child, found comfort in Mrs. Ani’s presence, though there was something about her that made my mother uneasy. It was the way Mrs. Ani would sometimes look at my mother’s belly with a longing that bordered on hunger.

One evening, as the sun bled into the river and the frogs began their nightly chorus, my mother accidentally saw into Mrs. Ani’s room through a gap in the wall. Mrs. Ani was kneeling on the floor, and in front of her was a small wooden box, carved with intricate patterns that seemed to writhe in the dim light. She was whispering to the box, her voice too low to make out the words. Then, she opened the box and took out a lock of hair, tied with a red thread. She pressed it to her lips and closed her eyes, and for a moment, my mother swore she saw the shadow of a man standing behind Mrs. Ani, his hands on her shoulders.

My mother told my father about it, but he dismissed it as a superstition. ‘These people have their ways,’ he said. ‘She’s a widow. She’s mourning.’ But my mother couldn’t shake the feeling that the shadow was not a ghost, but something else. Her unease grew when she noticed that Joko had started to visit the wall that separated our two homes, pressing his ear against it, as if listening to something on the other side. Sometimes, he would hum a tune that made my mother’s skin crawl, for it was the same tune she had heard Mrs. Ani whisper to the box.

At night, the jungle came alive with sounds, but there was one sound that was not of the jungle. It was a rhythmic tapping, like a finger on wood, coming from the other side of the wall. My mother would lie awake, her hand on her belly, feeling the baby kick, and the tapping would go on for hours. She tried to ignore it, but one night, curiosity got the better of her. She pressed her ear to the wall and heard Mrs. Ani’s voice, low and urgent: ‘Not yet. The time is not yet. The child is not born.’ There was a pause, then a voice that was not Mrs. Ani’s, a masculine voice, deep and rough: ‘I have waited long enough. I will have my due.’

Terrified, my mother woke my father, but when they went to check on Mrs. Ani, they found her sitting calmly in her kitchen, drinking tea. Joko was asleep in his bed. There was no sign of anyone else. My father thought my mother was just having pregnancy dreams, but my mother saw the red thread tied around Mrs. Ani’s wrist, and she knew she had not imagined it.

The next day, my mother decided to confront Mrs. Ani. She knocked on the door, and Mrs. Ani opened it with a smile that did not reach her eyes. ‘Ah, you heard us last night,’ she said, before my mother could speak. ‘I am sorry. Joko sometimes talks in his sleep.’ But my mother was not fooled. She demanded to know who the man was, but Mrs. Ani’s smile vanished, and her face became a mask of cold fury. ‘You are too curious,’ she said. ‘It is not good to meddle in things you do not understand. Especially in your condition.’ She looked pointedly at my mother’s swollen belly, and my mother felt a chill run down her spine.

From that day, my mother avoided Mrs. Ani as much as possible. But the strange occurrences did not stop. She would find red threads on the threshold of her door, and once, she found a small carving of a baby made of wood, left on the doorstep. She threw it into the river, but the next day, it was back, waterlogged and dripping. She burned it, and the smoke smelled like rotten meat. My father, now worried, made inquiries about Mrs. Ani. The local villagers grew silent and uneasy. They said Mrs. Ani had been married to a man who died in the jungle, but they refused to say more. They warned my father to never accept any food or drink from her, and to keep his wife away from her at all costs.

As my mother’s due date drew near, the tension in the camp became unbearable. The tapping on the wall grew louder and more insistent, and Joko’s humming became a constant dirge. My mother could no longer sleep, and my father talked of leaving, but the river was rising, and the boats could not pass. They were trapped.

One night, my mother woke to find Mrs. Ani standing over her, holding the wooden box. ‘It is time,’ she said, her voice hollow. My mother screamed, but my father was not there. He had been called away to a logging site. Mrs. Ani knelt beside the bed, and my mother felt a cold hand on her belly. ‘The child will be fine,’ Mrs. Ani whispered. ‘It is strong. But you must promise me something.’ My mother, paralyzed with fear, could only nod. ‘You must give me a lock of your child’s hair, as soon as it is born. And you must never, ever enter the jungle at night.’

Something in my mother broke. She found the strength to push Mrs. Ani away, screaming for help. The door burst open, and the camp foreman ran in, followed by other men. Mrs. Ani stood there, unmoved, a sad smile on her face. ‘You have broken the agreement,’ she said to my mother, and then she turned and walked away, taking the box with her.

The next morning, Mrs. Ani and Joko were gone, as if they had never existed. Their half of the house was empty, save for a few sticks of furniture and a lingering scent of burning incense. My mother gave birth to me a week later, in the hospital in Rengat. She was exhausted, but I was healthy. When she returned to the longhouse, she found a small parcel on her doorstep, wrapped in red cloth. Inside was a lock of my hair, tied with a red thread, and a note that read: ‘Now we are bound. When the time is right, I will return for what is mine.’

My mother kept that lock of hair in a drawer, wrapped in the red cloth, but she never told my father. She hoped it was the last of it. For years, nothing happened. I grew up, and we moved away from Borneo when I was five. But sometimes, in the dead of night, I wake from a dream of a dark jungle and a whispering voice, and I feel a cold spot on the back of my skull, right where a lock of hair might be missing. And I know that Mrs. Ani is still out there, waiting. And that as long as she has that keepsake, I will never truly be free.