A Singular Woman - Janny Scott [106]
Ann’s closest female friend was Julia Suryakusuma, the “feminist and femme fatale.” On the surface, the two women made an unlikely pair. A diplomat’s daughter born in India and educated at the American high school in Rome, Suryakusuma was tall and beautiful, and twelve years younger than Ann. Colorful and outspoken, she prided herself on being, as she put it, “naughty and rebellious.” She had married Ami Priyono, an Indonesian film director who was fifteen years older, when she was barely twenty. James Fox considered her “some of the best company in Jakarta,” and Rens Heringa described her to me as “a person one gets into trouble with.” Ann was calm and measured. Julia was volatile. “The ideas were squirting out of her imagination,” Timothy Jessup said. “It was interesting to see them talk, because Julia would be waving her hands around. Ann would be calm, and Julia would be getting very excited. She liked to make an impression and shock people. Ann liked to make an impression in a different way.” Yet they were both bright and unconventional, and not terribly interested in conforming. “Ann used to say that I was from another planet,” Suryakusuma told me. “Well, it takes one to know one.” They shared a scholarly and personal interest in the condition of Indonesian women. They occasionally fought over handicrafts. They went to parties together, hung out, critiqued each other’s relationships with men. (“You know, Julia, you’re overqualified for him,” Ann once told her.) “We shared our innermost secrets, our fears and desires,” Suryakusuma told me. The friendship was intimate and turbulent. “She put up with a lot of shit from me,” Suryakusuma said. There were periods when they did not speak.
During one of those periods some years later, Ann sent Suryakusuma a letter that, at least at this distance, seems remarkable in its blend of frankness, respect, and bruised affection.
Friends often ask me about you, Julia. . . . Frankly, I don’t know what to say to them. The situation is made more mysterious because I am not even sure what you were angry about. I THINK you were angry because I suggested you patch up your quarrels with Garrett and Rens, but I am not even sure about that. If that is the case, I can only say that, as an old friend, I felt I had the right to give you an honest opinion.
It has been more than 7 months since we last talked, Julia. I haven’t called you because I felt I should respect your wish to break things off. Also, I don’t like you in your arrogant bitch mode, and I did not want to run the risk of encountering you in that mode again. (Who in the hell did you think you were talking to, anyway, Julia?).
That said, I do of course miss you, and I miss the whole family as well. After all, we were best friends for almost 10 years. I hope things are going well for all of you. Will you be moving into your new house soon? . . .
Have a good holiday. Regards to Ami. Love, Ann.
Yet on another occasion, Ann wrote, “Wanted to write and let you know how much I enjoyed our time together in London. . . . I realized when we were there how much you actually mean to me. In a world where most people are such bloody hypocrites, your spirit shines like a beautiful star! I never have to go through a lot of crap with you, so to speak. Sounds corny, but I mean it. I love you a lot, kiddo.”
With many of her friends, Ann kept the details of her private life private. Even with some who knew her well, she revealed little about her childhood, her parents, even her marriages. On the subject of her sex life, she was discreet even with close friends—or so they led me to believe. But opportunities for romance did not end with her second divorce. Carol Colfer, who was also a single American woman in her thirties working in Indonesia, said she and Ann used to talk about people hitting on them. “It was very common,” she said. “A lot of Indonesians like white skin. And, of course, she had quite white skin. We would joke about people