Indonesian Black Magic

I was reading another story here about black magic, which reminds me of an incident occurred almost 20 years ago. It's probably not as scary as other stories on here, but it's definitely odd.

My family immigrated to Canada when I was 9. Years later, I was living with my mom, brother, grandma, cousin and an Indonesian house worker. My maternal relatives are all Chinese Indonesians.

At that time, my mom was too busy to take care of us, so our aunt found a house worker/cleaner/caretaker from Indonesia to help around. I can't remember her name (we always changed house workers) but let's call her Mia. She is quite an easy-going person. I was probably the only one who casually talked and joked with her the most regardless of our status.

One day when I returned home from school, I didn't see Mia. She was usually in the kitchen or somewhere on the first floor at this hour. So I asked my grandma about it. She told me Mia was in the basement resting in her room.

Then she said in the early afternoon, Mia suddenly came up from basement crying uncontrollably and trying to hug my grandma for comfort. Her hair was cut short... Like really short to the point some parts of her scalp were almost exposed. It was not nicely cut neither, as if someone had randomly snipped her hair strand by strand. She looked a mess! I remember my grandma saying that Mia got the snipped hair all over my grandma's clothes when Mia was hugging her. A while later Mia calmed down and went back down to basement for a sleep. I should note that my grandma doesn't speak Indonesian or English so she couldn't communicate or ask what was going on. One thing for sure is no one else was in the house except Mia and my grandma.

For the next few days, Mia still cleaned around the house, but she looked really down and emotionless. I was a bit scared to talk to her. My cousin bought her a wig and that was what she wore every day. No one else told me what really happened that day.

Slowly, things went back to normal and Mia was also returning to her usual self. I forgot how the conversation started, but she opened up the details to me about that weird incident.

She was just resting in her room, and then the next thing she remembered was her hair was cut and her hair was everywhere. To her surprise, she was the one holding the scissors! By the time she realized it, she broke down and rushed upstairs. The rest was what my grandma told me.

Then she was telling me about her life back in Indonesia. She had a boyfriend back home and had often dream about him, always telling her to come back to Indonesia. Her parents hate him though, and instead wanted her to marry another rich man. She doesn't like him at all, which was why she left home to work in Canada so she could avoid him. She suspected that man probably hired someone to cast a spell on her and made her cut her own hair as a punishment for running away from him. At that time I didn't know much about black magic or voodoo (actually even now I still don't know much about it). I just had an idea that it's something similar to cursing someone and causing them to have bad luck.

Weeks after the incident, my mom said Mia had to return to Indonesia. I asked her why. All she said was because her contract terms had ended with us, although I didn't really believe that. My mom was probably afraid more unusual events might somehow get us all involved.