Beauty Is a Wound by Eka Kurniawan, Annie Tucker

a kind demeanor, and gave thanks that she wouldn’t have to do much business with the Japanese ever again. She brought him to the cell where the van Rijk family was staying and in the doorway she met Ola who immediately asked her, “You did it?”
    “Yes.”
    “Oh my God!” screamed the girl, crying uncontrollably. As the doctor rushed to the sick woman, Dewi Ayu tried to comfort her. “It was nothing. Just think of it like I took a shit through the front hole.”
    Looking up the doctor pronounced, “This woman is already dead.”
    Ever since that they lived as a trio, like a little family: Dewi Ayu, Ola, and the young Gerda, who was just nine years old. Ola and Gerda’s father had been drafted and had gone to war just like Ted, but they had not yet heard news as to whether he was still alive, captured, or dead. Their first Easter and Christmas in the camp passed, without eggs or a Christmas tree and without any candles, which had all been used up already. They tried to survive together, comforting one another and facing sickness and death. Dewi Ayu forbid little Gerda to steal anything from anybody, as the other children were doing. She wracked her brains trying to figure out what they were going to eat every day. The cows no longer grazed around the delta and the leeches were already gone.
    One day Dewi Ayu saw a baby crocodile at the edge of the delta, and knowing that the only thing you really need to avoid with a crocodile on shore is its tail, she bludgeoned its head with a large stone. The unfortunate beast was wounded but it wasn’t dead. It flicked its tail back and forth, and began moving toward the river. Taking a sharpened bamboo spike that was usually used to tether the ferryboat’s ropes, with one reckless jab that she herself didn’t imagine would be powerful enough, Dewi Ayu pierced the baby crocodile’s eye and then its stomach. The creature died an agonizing death. Before its mother and friends could come for it, Dewi Ayu dragged the baby crocodile into the camp by its tail. Now they could really celebrate, with crocodile meat soup! Many people praised her bravery and shared their thanks.
    “There are still lots of them in the river,” she said casually, “if you guys want more.”
    Ever since she was little she had been taught to fear nothing. Her grandfather had taken her boar hunting with the tough guys a few times. She had even been at Mr. Willie’s side when he was rammed by the wild boar that crippled him for life. She knew how to deal with a boar: zigzag, don’t run in a straight line, because a boar doesn’t know how to turn. The tough guys had taught her that, just as they had taught her how to face a crocodile, what to do if a python suddenly coiled around her or if a viper bit her, how to face down an ajak , and what to do if a leech was sucking her blood. She had never actually been threatened by any of those creatures until she had come to Bloedenkamp, but the lessons she learned from the tough guys were always in the back of her mind.
    They also taught her mantras to get rid of evil spirits and to guard her safety. She never used them, but it made her happy to know that she could. She knew a Javanese merchant who came on foot from a mountain more than one hundred kilometers away just to sell the Dutch fruit from her garden. It took her four days to get there. She usually spent a night in the warehouse, and Dewi Ayu’s grandmother would give her dinner and a cup of hot coffee, and the next day she would depart on another four-day journey home. In addition to money, sometimes she brought back some hand-me-down clothing. She was never afraid of any kind of jungle beast and Dewi Ayu knew why, it was because she recited mantras.
    But Dewi Ayu also didn’t really believe in them, just as she was always confused about the point of praying. Still, while she didn’t believe in prayer, and never did it herself, she’d say to Gerda, “Pray that America wins the war.”
    The gossip