Corridor

by Alfian Sa'at

  It was enamel white, the sandwich maker, and there was a yellow light that blinked when the bread was done. The sandwiches it made were triangles with crispy sides and soft insides, which Rosminah fills with Kraft cheese or Ayam Brand sardines. Her husband brings the sandwiches to work, which Rosminah packs, in aluminium foil.

  “I’ll pay it back by the end of the month,” says her husband as Rosminah places the money by his side. She is used to his lying. Or forgetting, which to Rosminah was no different. She is also used to his anger when she places the money directly into his hand, with her eyes looking into his face such that he has to turn away. At one such instance, his face had crumpled and he flew into a rage, asking Rosminah if she really thought that he was poor, that he really needed her money that badly.

  Before the wind could blow it off the bed, her husband picks up the note and slips it into his shirt pocket.

  “How are the children?” he asks next, cocky and unable to stay silent. Rosminah clasps the button on her purse with a click which she will remember days later. With patience she replies, talking to the reflection of her husband in the bedroom mirror.

  “They are all right.”

  “Any problems in school?”

  “No.”

  “Anything for me to sign?”

  “No. Nothing.”

  “I don’t sign if I see red marks.”

  “Our children don’t get red marks.”

  “I know. I just don’t sign if I see that they have been lazy.”

  “Our children aren’t lazy.”

  “I know.” Her husband pauses to compose himself. “I know all that, you don’t have to tell me.” Her husband then starts to yawn. It could have been a real yawn or he could have made it up. Whatever it was, he tells Rosminah that he is sleepy and tells her to switch off the lights. Rosminah walks to the light switch and wonders why all her fingers can do tonight is obey. In the dark, she hears her husband’s voice, familiar yet distant at the same time.

  “You’re not sleeping?”

  “I don’t feel like it’s time yet to sleep.”

  “What time is it now?”

  “I think it’s already twelve. But I don’t feel like sleeping.”

  “You just lie down and close your eyes. When you open them it will be morning.”

  “Maybe I will go take a look at the children.”

  “They are all sleeping. What is there to look at?”

  “Maybe I will light the mosquito coil in their room. Tonight there are many mosquitoes.”

  “I don’t feel any mosquitoes. But if there are, you light one for this room too. And then you come and sleep.”

  “I know, after I light the mosquito coils.”

  “Tomorrow you must wake up.”

  “You have to wake up also. You have to wake up earlier than me. I will sleep later.”

  Rosminah’s husband keeps quiet for a long time and drifts off to sleep. He sleeps with a 50-dollar note in his shirt pocket. He might or might not crumple it, but in the morning it will still be there. For a moment, Rosminah wants to march back to her husband, demand her money back, insist that she had saved it up for someone else. But the thought of having nothing to say when he turns and grumbles, except a half-spoken apology, angers her. She turns to walk into the children’s room.

  The room is half-lit by orange streetlamps outside the window. A gentle wind rhythmically pushes the curtains into the room. The children are sleeping on a mattress side by side; Mohd Rosli with his head buried under his pillow, and Siti Nuraini’s half-open mouth facing the sole-smeared wall. There is a study desk beside the mattress with a blackened fluorescent tube that flickers when it is switched on and marker scrawlings of both the children’s names on the mock pine finish. Attached to the desktop are shelves that hold dog-eared school textbooks and Happy Meal toys (a Dalmatian popping from a box, a bear grinning on a scooter), as well as some Games Day trophies for beanbag races and individual sprinting.

  On the sides of the desks are stickers: kittens, football players and even a Neighbourhood Watch one that was meant for the front door. Some of the stickers are half-peeled, as if at one time there was an attempt to scrape them all off. They have left fibrous stains on the wood and fingernail scars where the pine grains show through.

  The children seem to be breathing in unison, just like brothers and sisters should. When Siti Nuraini was still two years old, Rosminah had taught her four-year-old brother how not to be envious and to pat his sister’s backside as she cradled a bolster so she would fall asleep. Mohd Rosli even cried when Siti Nuraini had chickenpox, when he watched purple iodine lotion speckling her body. But ever since they started going to school, they would often shout at each other. Two nights ago, Mohd Rosli even went as far as to kick his sister’s shin. Rosminah bends to check if the bruise is still there and touches Siti Nuraini’s calf. Siti Nuraini stirs and frowns, then her face relaxes again.

  In the morning, she had brought Rosminah’s brooch to school and had lost it. She had come home crying, and Rosminah had beaten her on her back and shoulders. Mohd Rosli had asked her what ECA˚ he should join. He was thinking of the Cadet Scouts since his best friend Azmi was joining it. When Rosminah found out that a complete uniform set would cost 40 dollars, she told him flatly: “No.” Watching them sleeping as the shadow of window grilles falls across their frail bodies, Rosminah wonders how anyone can actually beat or refuse such children. She had done both.

  * * *

  Rosminah thinks about the four people in her life: her husband, the two children, and Kala. Kala she had met on the first day at the factory where they made semiconductor parts. At that time, Rosminah was five months pregnant with Siti Nuraini. It was the night shift, and Rosminah was wondering whether Mohd Rosli had gone to sleep. She felt strange wearing her black apron over her large belly. The women around her all had rough faces and some of them laughed too loudly, showing off gold fillings. Kala herself was a large woman, with bulging eyes and messy hair. When she smiled, her dark gums showed. When Rosminah first sat down, a Malay woman opposite started talking to her.

  “You’re new here right? I never see your face before.”

  Rosminah nodded. She was trying to remember what her supervisor had told her about the resistors. Her hands were cold.

  “You know what we are making?” asked the woman. She had a scarf on and kohl-rimmed eyes.

  “Not sure,” Rosminah replied.

  “All this, is part of a rocket. We are all here making rocket parts. All this they will later send to USA.”

  “Really?”

  “Yah. You know, rocket, to fly to the moon? People don’t know some parts they make here in Bedok.” The woman was smiling. “So must do your work properly, don’t daydream a lot, later something explode in outer space.”

  “Ju!“ A voice rang out from behind Rosminah. “Ju, what are you telling her? Hey, whoever that is, don’t listen to Ju. She only like to disturb people. She’s making fun of you only. Don’t listen to her.”

  “What lah, Shida! I was just enjoying myself, have fun with this new girl, you must disturb! As if the work here isn’t boring enough. People want to have some fun also you must interfere.” The woman with the scarf then got back to her work after shouting at her friend and then smiling one more time at Rosminah.

  After an hour Rosminah felt tired. The rest were drinking coffee to stay awake, but Rosminah didn’t take coffee. Again she wondered whether Mohd Rosli had gone to sleep. Rosminah felt like crying. She then forced a smile, as if it would blunt her sadness, but it managed only to sharpen it. She held on to a smile for a few seconds and then let go, and her face was washed again in self-pity. She did this exercise several times, convinced that it would do her some good.

  “Oi,” a voice came from her left.

  Rosminah froze. The Indian woman was talking to her.

  “You eating what?” the Indian woman asked.

  Rosminah could not help but smile. “Nothing.”

&nb
sp; “Sotong ah?˚ If got some sotong share lah. I also like sotong.”

  “No, not sotong.”

  “Then what?”

  “Nothing.”

  “My name is Kala. What’s your name?”

  “Rosminah.”

  “You like working here so far?”

  “Okay lah. Can.”

  “I work here three months already. Still cannot get used. Very sleepy lah.”

  “Yah.”

  “You talk to me, then won’t fall asleep. I can talk Malay. Last time my neighbour Malay. So I learn.”

  “It’s okay. Last time I go to English school.”

  Kala pointed at Rosminah’s round belly.

  “How many months, that one?”

  “Five.”

  “Got name already? Boy or girl? Got buy the bed already or not? I know where can get cheap. My cousin got furniture shop.”

  Rosminah did not know which of Kala’s questions to answer, and in which order. She simply smiled, not knowing what else she could do. Suddenly, she felt a kick in her belly. Rosminah turned to look at Kala.

  “She knows we are talking about her,” said Rosminah.

  “It’s a girl?”

  “Yah. I got one boy already. So this one, one sister for him. I always want girl, because boys are lazy.”

  Kala laughed loudly, and her gums showed.

  “Girls are good,” said Kala, showing Rosminah her thumb. “Can stay with you in the kitchen, can learn to cook, then you can tie their hair before they go to school.”

  “Yah. You got girls?”

  “I’m not married. Who want to marry me? Eyes so big, laugh like man. Who want to have children with me? Later come out eyes big-big. Scare everybody.”

  When she heard Kala say those words, Rosminah would have been silent if not for the fact that Kala was laughing loudly, like a man. Rosminah learnt that Kala was quick to laughter because she had grown up in an orphanage. By the week after, Rosminah and Kala became good friends. In the canteen they sat next to each other, and Rosminah thought of the times she had spent in primary school. She had stopped schooling in primary four because her father, a sailor, had gone missing. She had then gone on to help her mother sell food at the railway station; they made lontong˚ and mee rebus,˚ and the people there called Rosminah adik.˚

  While sitting in the factory canteen waiting for her food, Rosminah would wonder what had happened to all her primary school friends, whether any of them would remember her, the girl who had left too soon. But when Kala walked towards her table balancing a tray with sugarcane drinks and some hawker food, biting her tongue (Kala’s habit, as Rosminah had found out within minutes of their first meeting), Rosminah knew that it was possible to make up for lost time.

  * * *

  For the past three nights, Rosminah had not slept. After her husband started snoring, she would creep out of the room and walk into the kitchen. Kala’s birthday was just the week after, and Rosminah would open up the newspapers to see which of the department stores had sales. She saw a fruit juice maker from the Oriental Emporium that caught her eye. There was also a steam iron that came at a bargain, but it was only sold at Sogo, which was somewhere far away in town. She could not put down the reasons for her excitement. In her wallet was 50 dollars, something she had painstakingly saved up for the past six months. She had skipped late night supper breaks at work, always telling Kala that she was full, sometimes bringing food to work: a packet of chickpeas or some melon seeds. Maybe her eagerness had something to do with the thrill of having been able to save up so much money and then the scandalous thought of spending it not on herself but on someone else. What would her husband think?

  Or maybe it was because she had never bought anyone a gift before. She had bought toys for her children, but always in their presence, always because they had pointed at something dangling from a raffia string tied in front of a provision shop, some action figurine or doll (Siti Nuraini had one whose eyelashes could flick open and close depending on whether it was standing or horizontal). And Rosminah had bought the toys to silence them, sometimes suspecting that they had asked for the toys purely out of boredom, and feeling annoyed that all she had bought were some kitchen towels or wooden pegs that cost only about a tenth of the toy’s price.

  But this gift for Kala was something different. It was to be done in secret; Rosminah would have to make sure that it would be a surprise. Was that what Rosminah wanted? Surprise? Kala’s eyes growing wider than it already was, the painted finger nails caressing the gift, shaking it perhaps, bringing it close to the ear; Rosminah had recreated the scene a hundred times in her head. It was morning, the end of their shift, and at the lockers Rosminah would tell Kala to wait awhile, there seemed to be something stuck in her own locker. She would ask Kala to take a look, and Kala would see the thing wrapped in a flower-patterned wrapping paper with a bow on it. Kala would take it out and then the stage would be set. Kala’s characteristic “Aiyoo” rang sharp in Rosminah’s ears, the blabber of “For me ah? You sure or not? Hah? Why you never tell me... why... you never... aiyoo... how much?” It was a form of revenge, of course. On many other occasions, Kala had been the one to surprise Rosminah.

  * * *

  Rosminah walks to the kitchen and sits down. The house is in complete darkness, but she can find her way around because she has lived in their three-room flat for 11 years, and also because there is not much furniture around. While walking from the children’s bedroom to the kitchen, a few things had caught Rosminah’s eye: the glowing digits on the VCR,˚ the orange feline eye of the Airpot set to “warm”, the red squares that pulse on the plugs that keep the refrigerator and water heater alive. Rosminah knows that some of her appliances were wedding presents, but to her, that seemed such a long time ago; she and her husband unearthing crystalware, Queen Anne’s silver, and counting out money, so much money that they uncreased and sorted into bundles. It seemed then that everything they would ever need was in that room. They had money, they had a bed with coiled springs, they were the first ones from their families who had a table lamp, they had a new white satin bedsheet they might just use that night and store away forever, they had each other. Of course, the bedsheet stayed for one week, another, and after a while the pristine whiteness was gone, and it acquired a smell.

  In the quiet of the kitchen, the refrigerator hums soothingly. Rosminah fixes herself some orange squash and settles into one of the kitchen stools. Those lights still going on during the night, still blinking. Wedding gifts, the VCR and Airpot, and the rice cooker and electric kettle, which are not turned on at the moment. Rosminah wonders; if she had a hundred electrical appliances and set them running all at the same time, would their small function lights flood her kitchen like an entire constellation? Maybe they could form a shape, like neon letters in the dark, a sign, lucid answers. Her question: did she love the man she married? Or should the question be: did she marry the man she loved? All she remembered of the wedding was her husband sitting cross-legged, in front of the kadi,˚ having to say “I, Awang Bin Razali, receive Rosminah Binte Abdullah, with a dowry of 50 dollars, cash down.” He had stuttered a few times before he finally got it right, even at one time saying Awang Bin Abdullah and Rosminah Binte Razali, to much laughter. When he finally got it right, the witnesses had chuckled heartily and shouted “Sah!”˚ and then patted him on his back. Rosminah takes another sip from her glass. She had cost her husband 50 dollars.

  * * *

  “You ever come here before?” was what Kala had asked her.

  Rosminah shook her head. In the distance, she could see shophouses scarred with strips of neon. There was an unearthly pink glow that came from them. When she looked over the railings she saw the river, with its slimy muscles dragging a bumboat towards them. There was a red light in the bumboat, and Rosminah could spot an old Chinese man smoking. He didn’t look up at her. Near the banks the white lamps stitched wrinkles of light on the water.

  “Last time he take me here,” Ka
la said.

  “Your boyfriend?” Rosminah asked.

  “Don’t call him that. I don’t know where he is now. Nobody pick up the phone anymore. Except three nights ago. That time was the last time.”

  “Why you bring me here?”

  “He bring me here last time,” Kala said. “We sit here.”

  Rosminah tried to lean forward to peer into the water, but a sudden burst of light momentarily blinded her. She realised that the light came from the fluorescent tubes that lit up the bridge at night, such that from afar it seemed to possess a cold ivory glow.

  “He put his hand on my leg,” Kala said, and Rosminah wondered if it was the river or herself that was pulling out words from Kala’s lips. “I push his hand away, I laugh. He said I laugh like a little girl.”

  “What did he say?” Rosminah asked. “What did he tell you over the phone?”

  Kala was about to sigh, but turned it into a smile. “He said he already has a wife. In India.”

  “Oh.”

  “He didn’t want to tell me her name. He said, not important. I asked if I was important. He said, yes, of course. If not why I buy you things?”

  Kala showed her ring to Rosminah. It was on her ring finger, a simple band, with a dull gleam.

  “I ask him if he want the ring back. He said no, you keep it. He said, I’m not that sort of person. I want you to keep the ring.”

  “Kala.”

  “I’m a dirty woman, Rosminah. I feel like a dirty woman. In all my life, I never let someone get so close to me. This kind of things only girls do. I’m a woman.”

  “Kala. Men are like that.”

  “Last time at the Home, the Ma’am always said, this Kala here, eyes so big, very hard to close. That’s why so hard to cry. You can do anything to Kala, but very hard for this girl to cry. But when someone do this kind of thing to you, how to hold everything inside?”