Baby Pocket
“Josh, my sister just gave birth this morning!”
“Congratulations on becoming an auntie, Neng!”
“Iya, thank you. Unfortunately, we [pointing to her fiance] have to leave by 5.”
“Oh! You haven’t gone to the hospital to visit your sister yet?”
“No, we’ve seen her. We have to go to a burial.”
“I’m sorry to hear… Who died?”
“No, we are going to bury the ari-ari.”
“Kenapa?” [“kenapa” is usually used to ask speakers to repeat themselves. However, it can also be translated as “Why” or “What happened?” In this case, my unintentional ambiguity caused Neng to misunderstand.]
“It’s just Sunda tradition. We do it when a baby is born.”
“No, I mean, what is an ari-ari?”
“It’s… mm…. gimana ya?…. kantong bayi?” I appreciated that Neng took the time to try to pick words that I would know. This essentially translates to “baby bag” or “baby pocket”.
“You mean the placenta?”
A triumphant smile broke onto Neng’s face. She exclaimed with relief, “Iya! Plasenta!”
I was nonplussed. I had no idea people ever did anything with placentas. The only exception to this rule were Biblical accounts of starving Israelites eating “the afterbirth”.
“And what do you do at the burial?”
“We wrap it in a cloth, put it in a pot, drop in other things with it, and then bury it.”
“What other things do you drop in?”
“Maybe a coin so the baby will have a good income, a pen or paper so it grows up smart and clever, and some verses from the Qu’ran to become a devout Muslim.”
“If you’re Christian (my friends in this story are Christian), do you drop in a Bible verse instead?”
They laughed. “Maybe. But my sister is Muslim, the verses will be from the Qu’ran.”
It was an interesting concept. Would co-mingling Bible and Qu’ranic verses make for highly religious but theologically confused baby? How much influence does the placenta have to nudge one’s life trajectory?
Nudging Takdir
Placenta burial is a long-standing Sundanese tradition (and in myriad other cultures, but this story is from her cultural point of reference). The Sunda view the placenta as a “twin” to the baby, nurturing and protecting the baby till birth. This twin will be wrapped in a tamarind-water soaked cloth, put into a clay pot, then buried as a sign of gratitude and respect. Flowers or aromatics such as lemongrass and tumeric might be included to help ensure the placenta stays comfortable in its new home under the soil. There will always be a light for some length of time, though no one seems to agree on its reason nor its duration. The most important takeaway is that the placenta’s retirement is momentary.
The placenta is expected to carry out three duties post-interment. First, the placenta will continue to give its remaining strength to nurture the newborn (a bit gruesome, being buried before its time). Second, the placenta will instill characteristics in the newborn based on the equipment given. Other than the aforementioned coin, pen / pencil paper, and religious verses, one may drop in rice for good luck or wealth, or a needle for good health and long life. Allah will shape the newborn’s destiny (takdir), but the placenta will shape the newborn. Hopefully.
Third, the placenta will anchor the child to the land. This may perhaps explain why Indonesia’s Sunda population has a strong reputation of never leaving their provincial homeland. They do freely move from place to place within their homeland. Sunda are traditionally obliged to bring a handful of their home’s soil with them (but not the placenta jar) if they move. This begs the question: Are there houses with multiple layers of placenta jars around and underneath said house? Does a collection of shallowly buried placenta jars count as a graveyard? Most importantly for the prospective Sundanese buyer, would they be haunted?
Bite
“Will you bury the placenta when you have your child?”
“Maybe not. We don’t really believe these things, but it depends on our parents, right?”
“Fair enough. Does your sister think it’s all true?”
“I dunno. Neng shrugged carelessly. It’s just tradition.”
“So what supposedly happens if you don’t bury it?”
“I’m not sure. I think a ghost, like a Kuntilanak, comes and eats the placenta. That’s not good, because it’s like kuntilanak takes a bite of the baby’s soul.”
“Is that a guess?”
Neng shrugged again. “We’ve never not buried it before.”
The kuntilanak (koon-teel’-ah-nahk) was an interesting divergent line of questioning, one that nestled in the syncretic intersection between animistic roots, old world religions, and modernity. The average Indonesian believes the spirit world spatially and invisibly overlays ours. They are all around us, invisible but separate - until they are not. Spirits primarily interact with those sensitive enough to perceive them or desirous enough to deal with them. Guardian spirits might be passed down from ancestor to descendant.
More malicious ones stalk humans like prey. Kuntilanak is the vengeful revenant made from a woman who was raped and/or murdered before/while giving birth. She haunts towering, gnarly, ominous trees and empty streets full of fragrant laundry. She kills people by consuming their vital organs. Or unburied placentas.
I was amused that Neng would disbelieve in the burial for one purpose yet promote it for an entirely different purpose. It made a certain amount of sense as to why Neng might not hold to placenta burials in situ. Both Muslims and Christians are trained in the idea that Allah controls everyone’s takdir (destinies). Why should Allah cede control to a placenta? Then again, why should burial protect the placenta against angry ghosts?
“Kuntilanak has hands, right? Surely it can dig.”
Neng shrugged. “Maybe it’s not allowed to dig because it can’t violate Allah’s code of ethics.”
“Allah has a code of ethics for ghosts and spirits?”
“Of course! Like Allah created them invisible, right? So they shouldn’t be seen. If they ever revealed themselves to a human, like ‘Boop!’, it’d be punished.”
“But the kuntilanak kills people, no? It’s already broken Allah’s code of ethics. In which case, there’s no reason that it can’t dig as well.”
Neng shrugged. “Maybe Allah allows one but not the other. Everything is in Allah’s hands.”
Clean catchall, that. Neng and her fiance left for the burial to ensure her niece’s survival and eventual well-being as a wealthy scholar (or whatever else depending on what gets thrown in). I sat and pondered on Allah’s Code of Ethics for Spirits. According to the Christian tradition, God constrained Satan such that he could scorch everything but Job himself. Islam believes all created things are subject to Allah. Some precedent clearly exists for divine constraint in the spiritual realms. But why should a constraint system allow for murder yet prohibit digging (especially if for the purpose of murder)? I supposed the alleged divine mandate would be to give the newborn a chance at life.
My purist western brain struggles to reconcile Neng’s syncretic mixture of animism (placental burial and vengeful spirits), Islam (Allah’s code of spirit ethics), and Christianity (the supremacy of Jesus, especially over spirits). Neng is not alone. Her beliefs as well as her sister’s, are as commonplace as they are varied and wide-ranging. Most accept all logical contradictions with little difficulty. To be fair, they have also seen or experienced much more of the spirit world than I have [see: Night: Transparency (Part 1 of 2)]. Part of me wants to share in the experience. The other part of me prefers to keep my organs rather than know if Kuntilanak is allowed to dig.
I pondered these deeper and unknowable things till I relegated them to the mental Squirrel Drawer labelled “Mysteries”. They will sit with all the other messy topics that simply “are”. The entire concept of placenta burial is alien to me. Yet underneath the veneer of mysticism and spiritual appeasement is the simple truth that parents will do what they must to secure their childrens’ health and futures. Americans have Little Einstein. Indonesians have the placenta. Americans baby-proof their furniture. Indonesians ghost-proof their babies.