A Yellow House

by Karien van Ditzhuijzen

  I hoped she wasn’t just saying that. I did worry though, lying awake at night, not just about Aunty M and all the others, but also about Mama and Dad, and sometimes Nurul. Was this growing up? If so, I wanted to stay a child, but only at Cat’s place in the jungle. There we’d run around chasing monkeys and Ollie with sticks, build huts and splatter in mud pools. We were never bored there like I was in our condo, with its playground, pool, tennis and squash courts. There was always something happening, and if it not, we made it happen. Most kids at school and in the condo barely played outside anymore at our age. They played computer games or watched TV. Those things left you the wrong kind of tired. In Cat’s jungle, PoPo’s kampong came alive, with all its games and adventures, and I got a glimpse of what life had been like before concrete took over. Inspiring and energising instead of numbing. I had slowly learned to be rebellious, and inside me bubbled a need to shake things up – in my own life, or better, the whole city state, with MOM on top. Perhaps I’d been wrong about Singapore, and there was a fire mountain hiding underneath the surface of polite society. Could little girls make it erupt?

  A week later, on a dull afternoon when I was so bored I’d watched TV all afternoon, there was a sharp rapping on the door. It was Maricel.

  ‘Come, please, something is wrong with Nee Nee. She can’t stop crying, for two days now. She does not look hurt, I can’t see any injuries, but I’m not sure. I messaged Win, but no answer. I tried her door yesterday already, but no answer too.’

  Aunty M put Chloe in the stroller and we took off. We tried Win again, and this time the door opened seconds after we knocked. A stout Filipina opened.

  Taken aback, Maricel stumbled over her words. ‘Sorry. Is Win home?’

  The woman stared blankly. ‘Win? Who? Don’t know her.’

  Aunty M cut in. ‘She works here. Win, from Myanmar.’

  The Filipina shook her head. ‘Never heard of her. I work here. They told me not to talk to people. No visitors. So don’t make noise, don’t give me trouble.’

  She started closing the door.

  ‘Wait,’ said Maricel, and rattled on in Tagalog. The other woman gave curt replies, then closed the door completely.

  ‘She knows nothing about Win,’ Maricel said. ‘She just started working there, and is not allowed visitors when the ma’am is out. They must have fired Win, sent her back to Myanmar. No-one has seen her in over a week.’

  ‘But she didn’t even say goodbye,’ I protested. ‘They can’t do that!’

  ‘Looks like they just did,’ said Maricel.

  ‘They can,’ said Aunty M. ‘MOM says employers have to give reasonable notice when they send someone home. Some employers say half an hour to pack your bag is reasonable.’

  ‘Maybe they found out that she was starting to have a social life and they did not like us visiting?’ Maricel pondered. ‘That’s why they told this one, no visitors?’

  Us visiting? Or me visiting? Was it my fault Win was gone? The thought pricked the lining of my stomach.

  ‘Who knows what employers think,’ said Aunty M. ‘Let’s think of Nee Nee now.’

  We went over to Maricel’s place, where Nee Nee sat with her back to the wall, sniffing. We tried to ask her what the problem was, but she just cried and mumbled words we didn’t understand through her tears.

  ‘We can ask Cat,’ I suggested. She’d kill me if she missed being part of whatever this was, and she did know some Burmese.

  Cat arrived half an hour later, having begged her mother for taxi money and claiming a life or death emergency. She climbed on the table and spoke to Nee Nee in a soft voice for a few minutes. Then she climbed down and shook her head. ‘I have no idea what she’s saying.’

  ‘I thought you spoke Burmese,’ I cried out.

  Cat looked busted. ‘Not really. Just a few words. Yes, no, hello, that sort of thing. We mostly use sign language. Miming eating dog food is easy. But this? No clue. Sorry.’

  We all sat down on the kitchen chairs.

  ‘Now what?’

  Maricel got up. ‘Let’s get Moe Moe. Her English is good, and at least Nee Nee has someone to talk to, even if Moe Moe cannot translate. She needs a friend.’

  I sprung up. ‘No. You can’t!’

  Maricel glared at me. ‘Why not?’

  Aunty M looked at me sympathetically, and I wondered how much she knew.

  Enough, it seemed, when she said, ‘I think Maya does not like it that she might bring Jenny.’

  Cat jumped up too. ‘Oh, grow up already, Maya. This isn’t about you.’

  She was about to storm out, but Aunty M stopped her. ‘You girls wait here with Chloe and Maricel. I’ll go.’

  I’d seen Jenny that morning, and I’d got used to coping with her on the bus, as well as the twinge in my tummy I experienced in the hallways, always fearing that I might run into her. The thing that had got me through all those months, especially those before Cat, was my secret life: the helping of the helpers. It made me feel I was special, and being special made me strong. I didn’t want Jenny to know about it and ruin that too. It was too important.

  The cockroach inside me grew bigger, and I opened my mouth to say something to make it stop, but then Cat grabbed my hand. The cockroach shrunk back, still there, like a ball in my belly, but manageable. She squeezed. ‘Don’t worry. I’m here.’

  When Aunty M came back, she’d brought Moe Moe but not Jenny. ‘She stayed at home with her little brother,’ she whispered to me.

  The cockroach shrunk smaller until it was just the nauseating wriggle I’d become accustomed to when I was getting ready for the bus. I was able to focus again on Nee Nee.

  Moe Moe spoke with her a long time. When she finally came down off the table, we all sat down again.

  ‘Nee Nee mother very sick,’ Moe Moe said. ‘He die soon.’

  ‘He? Do you mean her father?’ I asked.

  ‘She, I say, Nee Nee mother,’ Moe Moe repeated. Like Win, she mixed up her pronouns.

  ‘That’s bad,’ Aunty M said. ‘Will she go see her?’

  Moe Moe shook her head. ‘No go home. Employer says no possible. Need Nee Nee to work.’

  ‘No wonder she is crying. They won’t let her go,’ Maricel said. ‘Is there anything we can do?’

  Cat added, ‘Does she need anything? Money?’

  Moe Moe shook her head again. ‘No need. Employer offer send money already. Employer nice. No need. Mother die anyway, doctor say.’

  I felt surprised. Employer nice? Why would they offer to pay for treatment, if that were true, but not let her go? They barely fed her.

  ‘They offered her money?’ Aunty M said, who must have thought the same.

  ‘Yes. Money, her salary, next month. They take it out again.’

  ‘So they offered her a loan, to pay a doctor,’ Maricel said.

  ‘She no want loan,’ Moe Moe said. ‘She want go home. Say goodbye mother.’

  ‘So there’s nothing we can do?’ Maricel asked again.

  Aunty M looked solemn. ‘We can ask MOM if she can go home. They will probably let her, but it means she will lose the job. And it might take a week or so. It will likely be too late.’

  ‘No. She need job. She stay. Tomorrow, I come back?’ Moe Moe asked. ‘Is ok? I talk her.’

  ‘Yes, please do. My employers are out all day. Come when you like,’ Maricel said.

  Moe Moe went to say goodbye to Nee Nee across the wall. The sobbing had abated.

  ‘At least she has been able to talk to someone. She looks a bit better,’ Aunty M said. We all slunk out, following Moe Moe down the hall.

  When we came to the elevator, my heart stopped.

  ‘Look who’s here,’ Jenny grimaced. ‘If it isn’t little Cockroach, with her monkey friend. And her other mates, the maids. You always did like to mingle with your own kind, didn’t you?’

  Aunty M looked at Moe Moe, like it had been her talking. But Moe Moe just stood there.

  ‘Why were you away so long?�
� Jenny’s brother Harry bawled.

  ‘I had to bring him to look for you, he was becoming such a nuisance. You can’t just take off like this,’ Jenny scolded Moe Moe. ‘You need to watch him. I have homework. Come now, or I’ll tell Mum.’

  Moe Moe hung her head and trudged towards Harry.

  Cat pushed me towards the elevator. ‘Ignore her,’ she hissed.

  ‘See you tomorrow in the bus,’ Jenny sing-sang after me, in a sugary tone.

  The door pinged shut behind us. ‘Jenny doesn’t let herself be ignored,’ I murmured, but I didn’t think Cat heard me.

  I didn’t sleep that night. The best thing in my life was now tainted by the worst. My bed had turned itself into a giant cockroach and I lay there in the middle of it, waiting. Waiting for the bus.

  37

  The bus ride wasn’t worse than anything I’d expected, but that was bad enough. It was the usual stuff: that I was a cockroach, that a monkey and a bunch of maids were just the right friends for me. Jenny and Meena had cornered me in the back row, each sitting on one side of me. Luckily no-one else sat near us, so no-one had to witness my plight. Jenny had interrogated Moe Moe to find out exactly what my role had been in Operation Rescue Nee Nee. Moe Moe might not have been articulate enough to convey all the details, but Jenny knew enough.

  ‘Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s super cockroach! Superroach to the rescue! And Supermaid. Any scum, rat, lowlife or maid needs help? Superroach and Supermaid will come! We should get you a cape and mask. A brown one, with antennae.’ They giggled quite a while after that one.

  Then Jenny dealt her final blow. ‘Does your mother know you’re Superroach? And that your Aunty is a Supermaid? Your mother seems fairly respectable. I can’t imagine she’d agree to these Supermaid activities during work time. She’d kick that maid back to Indonesia before you could say super. ’

  I wanted to say yes, of course, she knew. But my red face said it all.

  ‘Well, what do you think?’ Jenny said over me to Meena. ‘Maybe we should tell Superroach’s mummy a little tale about her daughter and her maid.’

  ‘No, you can’t do that!’ I yelped.

  Jenny and Meena laughed. ‘Of course we can. Let’s see if you can rescue yourself, Superroach, and that stinking aunty of yours.’

  I felt like a giant shoe had stomped on me when I realised Jenny was right. Aunty M would lose her job, like Win had. Helping others during work hours, and dragging ten-year-old me into it too. Would Mama find it reasonable to give her at least enough time to say goodbye? Nurul, the one I’d despised, would have to leave school when her mother was unemployed, the shiny new school uniform sold for hard cash. The guilt folded in so many layers, from my foul jealousy, to the fact that I’d taken her mother away, to finally making her mother lose her job. It was too much to bear. I had already cost Win her livelihood.

  The feeling of being eaten by a cockroach had gone. I’d been swallowed and digested, my flesh absorbed in its body full of bile. Jenny was right. I felt tiny. A real life insect, hiding in a corner of the sewer.

  That day, of all days, Cat was home sick with a fever. I didn’t sleep that night, nor the one following. I just waited. Waited for the bomb to drop, hoping for it to be over, for the plaster to be ripped off in one painful, spiteful pull.

  But nothing happened. The next morning in the bus, Jenny and Meena were preoccupied with some new boy that was sitting in the front, and was, admittedly, very cute (not that I would have noticed if it hadn’t been for them). Nothing happening was the worst.

  In the afternoon, I phoned Cat. She sounded far-off, her voice weak and floating. She sounded so sick I couldn’t tell her what had happened. She told me that she had a disease called chikungunya.

  ‘Chicken-what?’ I said.

  ‘Chikungunya,’ Cat repeated. ‘It’s a virus, like dengue. A lot like dengue. I have this rash, red nasty spots all over, and it itches like crazy. I can’t sleep from scratching. My mother wound towels around my hands to stop me. My knees hurt so much I can’t walk. And I have a fever. I had to go to the doctor to have a blood test. Dad has it too, it’s mosquitoes that spread it.’

  ‘That sounds terrible. Shall I come over?’

  ‘No. You can’t. There are mosquitoes here that are infected. You could get it too.’

  ‘I’ll slather on the DEET. I’ll be ok.’ I really needed her right now.

  ‘Sorry. Not allowed. My mum says no way.’

  Cat sounded so jaded I wished her well, and rung off.

  The next week lasted a year without Cat to support me. I buried myself in my room, shielded by the IPad, library books, in a sheet-tent that must have made the worst bomb shelter ever. But still nothing happened. Had Jenny not found an opportune moment yet? Or did she prefer to torture me slowly, keeping the can of insecticide spray hovering above me for as long as she could?

  Aunty M was withdrawn that week, still brooding over Nurul. How could I burden her with what Jenny had threatened when she had more pressing things to worry about?

  The only time we spoke was after she’d received a phone call. There was a woman on the other end of the line, and it sounded like she was in hysterics. Aunty M spoke to her in soft, consoling tones.

  ‘Where are you? Which terminal?’ Aunty M scribbled some notes on a scrap of paper. ‘Did they say why they are sending you back?’

  I couldn’t hear much, despite leaning in – just sobbing, and more hysterics.

  ‘No? Are you sure? And when was this?’ She tapped the pen on the scrap of paper. ‘Listen, ate, this is important. Did they give you all your salary?’

  She jotted down a few figures, then looked up again. ‘Don’t worry. Tell me exactly, which terminal, which desk you are. I will call someone. What are you wearing?

  ‘Ok. Now stay there, don’t move. Someone will come for you. If they want to take you through customs, don’t go.

  ‘Let them threaten with the police. Don’t worry about police, just tell them you have the right to go to MOM. And that someone will come to help you.’

  Aunty M hung up, and looked at me. I had understood enough. It was about the reasonable notice.

  ‘What happened,’ I asked Aunty M. ‘Do they want to send her home?’

  ‘Wait, sayang,’ Aunty M said. ‘I need to make a phone call first.’

  ‘Sister, it’s Merpati, I need your help. Someone is at the airport. Her employer wants to send her to the Philippines, just told her pack your bag, let’s go now. But she did not have her last month of the salary. They say they used it to pay for the ticket. It’s wrong, right? Can you go?’

  Aunty M shared the details of her notes, the terminal, flight number, amounts of salary owed. She hung up.

  I looked at her, expectantly. ‘What will happen?’

  ‘I don’t know, but sister will try. They will demand to go to MOM. Make a scene at the airport. It’s not allowed to send her home without her salary.’

  ‘But can they send her home at all? Is this reasonable notice?’

  Aunty M grinned. ‘Reasonable? What do you think? Reason has nothing to do with it.’

  If only I hadn’t neglected Win because I had a new friend, we might have been able to help her too. It was my fault she was gone, and Aunty M would be next.

  A week later, Cat was back, and things went back to normal – normal being that Jenny and Meena restarted their jeering at me in the bus with new vigour. I felt as if I was permanently submerged in cockroach bile. Jenny would wink at me, whispering through the bus, ‘Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s…’ and then she’d cackle.

  For some reason it hurt more than before, like something important was at stake. I felt stranded above an abyss, on a rope bridge that could break at any minute. Could roaches fly? They had wings, but I’d never seen one take off. Even if they could, Jenny had her string tied to my leg. If I tried to fly away, she’d pull me back like the green beetle PoPo’s brothers had kept.

  In class there was Cat, and w
hen I was with her I felt safer. I wanted to tell her what was happening but I didn’t. Maybe if I didn’t talk about it I could pretend it wasn’t real. But the wanting to tell her still burned in my wriggling stomach.

  Aunty M had spoken on the phone to Nurul, which had dramatically improved her mood. One Saturday, she offered to take Cat and me to a park near the shelter to meet up with Sri.

  Sri was agitated. Her investigating officer at the police had finally made a decision: they would charge both Ah Mah and her former employers with abuse. The case would now be handed over to the prosecutors and the courts. Aunty M called it good news, but she also admitted it was far from over. The court case could take years. Sri seemed more pre-occupied with something else.

  ‘We have this girl in shelter, Anissa, I met her Sunday. She stole from her employer.’

  ‘Why did she steal?’ I asked.

  ‘How matter, sayang? Is it ok to steal, for a hospital bill for child? Or because your employer not pay you?’

  I pondered that. It seemed quite understandable.

  ‘Will she go to jail?’ Cat asked.

  Sri nodded. ‘Yes, tomorrow she go to police station. But my employers not in jail yet. And me? I’m stuck in shelter.’

  I wondered what jail was like. Would rats nibble your toes? Or was that just in poor countries like Indonesia?

  Sri went on. ‘You know, the employer good to her. When they suspected her, they want to be sure, they put a trap.’

  ‘A trap? How?’ I wondered.

  Sri said, ‘When they went away, they put money in a bag. That same bag, money gone from before. When the money was gone, they called the police, and Anissa admitted.’

  I nodded. Cat looked excited and I nudged her to stay quiet.

  Sri grumbled some more. ‘Some people so bad, they don’t deserve the good employer. Why I get the bad one?’

  Cat, who had only just met Sri but acted like she’d known her forever, said: ‘It’s just bad luck, right?’