by Yangsze Choo
“So, Ji Lin,” he shouted, over the din of someone honking at us, “will you be around all summer?”
As if I had anywhere else to go. I said politely, “I’ll be here,” through gritted teeth. And then finally, in a cloud of exhaust fumes, we were at Mrs. Tham’s shophouse.
“Oh, this place,” said Robert. “I had to pick up my sister’s dress here once.”
My legs were weak and rubbery, and I was forced to take Robert’s hand as he helped me out. Perhaps this was his routine with women, terrorizing them in his car so that they fell—literally—into his arms.
Mrs. Tham was out of her shophouse in a flash. It was clear she’d been watching for me.
“Ji Lin, I’m so glad you’re back.” She glanced at Robert. “Who’s this?”
“I’m an old friend of her brother’s,” said Robert, though he and Shin had never particularly got along.
“Oh!” Mrs. Tham’s curiosity struggled with her desire to impart news. The latter won. “Ji Lin, we just got a message that your mother’s ill.”
This was the news that I’d been dreading, ever since my mother had remarried. That she was “ill” could have meant anything, despite the fact that so far, her injuries had been confined to a twisted elbow or fingermarks on her wrist. The image of Shin’s broken, dangling arm was always in the back of my mind.
“She had a miscarriage.”
A miscarriage? By Chinese counting, which added a year, my mother was forty-two and approaching the most dangerous age in life, since the homophone for forty-two sounded like “you die.” My heart plummeted.
“Will you go home tomorrow morning?” said Mrs. Tham.
“Yes, I’ll take the bus.” It occurred to me that just this afternoon I’d asked Hui to tell the Mama I wouldn’t be in for the rest of the week because my mother was sick. How flippant I’d been! And now, like a curse, my words had come home to roost. I thought about the blackness in the river of my dreams, that ominous shape that stirred underwater.
“I’ll take you. Right now if you want,” said Robert. I’d completely forgotten about him. “It’s not far by car.”
“Would you really?” Mrs. Tham said. “That would be so kind.”
Sick with dread, I ran upstairs to pack, leaving her to ply him with questions. Once in the car, we sat silent. The one consolation was that Robert’s driving improved when he wasn’t talking.
After a while, he said, “If it’s very bad, we can send her to hospital. The district hospital in Batu Gajah is a bit farther than the Ipoh General Hospital, but she might get better treatment.”
“Why?”
“Because my father’s on the board of the Batu Gajah District Hospital.”
I hadn’t known that. Rich people lived in a different world, one where jobs and recommendations came easily. If I were cleverer about things I might be able to get better care for my mother, but I could hardly think. In the past few weeks, the people around me had been struck by a death, a horrible accident, and now a miscarriage.
Shin would say it was ridiculous and besides, who knew how many other incidents had occurred in this area in the same time frame? That poor woman I’d read about in the newspaper who’d been killed by a tiger, for example. Not everything could be attributed to fate, though there were others who would surely tell me to buy a charm against evil spirits. I sat in Robert’s big car, twisting my hands in my lap and trying not to cry as we rushed on into the darkness.
23
Batu Gajah
Friday night, June 19th
It’s cold. So terribly cold that Ren thinks his heart will stop. The bones of his skull ache. The water feels thick, like runny gelatin or clotted blood. Shaking his head like a dog, Ren peers at the far shore. Yi is running up and down frantically, pure terror on his face as he mouths: Get out of the water!
He starts paddling in earnest. It’s not so cold if he swims, or perhaps his arms and legs are simply becoming numb. The farther he goes, the more the pain recedes and Ren has the funny feeling that he’s shedding his body. Something scrapes his leg. Gulping water, Ren looks down to see a row of gaping teeth and a glazed eye that floats past under his foot. A dead crocodile. It rolls, drifting deep in the river current, white belly showing for an instant, then drops away into the darkness. There are other things, too, deep in the river. Dead fish, dead worms, dead leaves. Ren gives a cry of disgust.
Panicking now, arms and legs flailing. The current drags at him. His head goes under again and he sees more shapes. A Chinese man drifts by, neck hanging at an awkward angle as though it’s been broken. A young Tamil woman, mouth open but eyes mercifully closed. No body, only her serene, decapitated head. Ren is crying, struggling. Bursting with terror, water searing his lungs.
A chunk of wood hits him. Gasping, Ren surfaces and makes an empty grab at it. As it floats out of reach he sees that Yi has launched it. Another log drifts towards Ren. This one is bigger and as it smashes into him, he sees Yi’s despairing face. Go back!
* * *
And he does. He does.
Ren is lying facedown on the floor of his room. His hands flatten out like a gecko on a ceiling only there’s nowhere to fall, he’s already at the bottom. After a while, he starts to cry.
The door opens. It’s Ah Long, his face creased with worry.
“Aiya! Are you hurt?”
Dizzy, Ren sits up. Ah Long feels his forehead. “I checked on you earlier—you had a high fever.”
“What time is it?” Ren’s voice is a dry croak. Ah Long wipes his face with a warm towel.
“About five in the morning.”
“It was so cold.” The memory of the freezing water makes the hairs on his arms stand up.
“That was the fever.”
Ren realizes that he feels fine. No chills, no burning weakness. He swings his legs experimentally. The dream recedes, like water flowing backwards, and most wonderful of all, his cat sense, that invisible, electric pulse which tells him about the world, is back, humming quietly in the background.
Ah Long wrinkles his brow, studying him. He looks like a grizzled old monkey. “You were shouting a lot. Who were you talking to?”
“My brother. My twin brother who died.”
Ah Long squats on his haunches so that his face is almost level with Ren’s.
“Do you often dream about him?”
“Not often. But it feels so real.” Ren explains about the train and the river, and how if he’d tried just a little harder he might have made it over to the other side.
“Has your brother ever asked you to come to him?”
“Why?”
Ah Long sighs and looks up at the ceiling. It’s quiet. So quiet in that dark and empty hour before dawn, when not even the birds are stirring. Malaya is situated near the equator; the sun doesn’t rise until seven in the morning, and the days are almost exactly twelve hours long.
“Do you believe in ghosts?” asks Ah Long.
Ren is surprised. Ah Long treats religion with the same suspicious necessity with which he regards electricity, radios, and motorcars.
“I don’t know,” says Ren. But the dreams aren’t the same as those stories he’s heard of pale apparitions that haunt banana trees, or women with long black hair and backward-pointing feet.
“I had an uncle who could see them,” says Ah Long. “He was a cook in a household in Malacca. A lot of peculiar things happened in that house, he said. They had a beautiful daughter who was supposed to marry a dead man.”
“Did she really?” Ren is so interested that he sits up straight.
“No, though he was from a very wealthy family. They wanted her to become a ghost bride.”
“What happened to her?”
“She ran away with someone else. But years later when my uncle was a very old man, he said she came back to visit him. And strangely enough, she looked exactly the same as when she left home at eighteen. Though that’s another story.
“My uncle saw ghosts all the time. It was very
disturbing. Unlike the living, they were always in the same place. For example, there was one particular rickshaw that he said always had a passenger in it: a little boy who’d try to sit on people’s laps. And another time a woman sat next to his bed all night, combing her hair and crying. But he gave me some advice that I’m going to tell you right now, because I think you need it.”
“And what’s that?”
“Don’t talk to the dead.”
Ren is silent for a moment. Nobody has ever given him any advice on this. “Why not?”
Ah Long scratches his head. He looks tired and old. “Because the dead don’t belong in this world. Their story has ended—they have to move on. You can’t be obeying them from beyond the grave.”
Ren’s thoughts fly instantly to Dr. MacFarlane. “Won’t honoring their wishes make them happy?”
“Cheh, happy or not, that’s their business, not yours.” Ah Long gets up creakily. “If you’re feeling better, go back to bed.”
“But today is the party,” Ren suddenly remembers.
“I’ve been cooking for more years than you’ve been alive. As if I couldn’t manage without you!”
Ah Long sets a tin mug of warm Horlicks next to Ren and turns to go. He puts one hand briefly on Ren’s head. “Remember what I said,” he says gruffly.
After drinking the hot malted-milk drink, Ren lies down, pulling the thin cotton blanket over himself. Ah Long doesn’t understand, he thinks. There’s just a little more to be done, and then it will all be over.
24
Falim
Tuesday, June 16th
By the time Robert’s car stopped with a screech of brakes outside my stepfather’s shop, it was almost eight in the evening and quite dark. Robert jumped out but I was already at the front door, fumbling for my keys. All was dim behind the shutters; were things so bad that they’d taken my mother away? Wind stirred in the shadowy overhang, the ghosts of siblings waiting to be born. Or maybe they were already wandering this world somewhere.
The door opened with its familiar creak. My stepfather’s face peered out. Deep fissures between his mouth and nose underscored his resemblance to a stone carving. To my surprise, he looked relieved, even pleased to see me.
“Where’s my mother?” I asked, my heart in my mouth.
“Resting. She’s all right.”
He stared at Robert, then at the car that was beached on the curb like a gleaming whale. Robert offered his hand, introducing himself, as I ducked past anxiously. A shadow appeared behind my stepfather. Shin.
I’d always told myself that Shin didn’t look like his father, but from certain angles, there was an eerie similarity. The flickering oil lamp my stepfather carried made their features swim, so that for a nightmarish instant, they looked like the past and future of the same person. I mumbled something about wanting to see my mother, but couldn’t disguise my brief recoil.
Shin must have noticed because he turned away. “She’s resting in the downstairs office—it’s best if she doesn’t climb stairs right now.”
My stepfather’s office was a narrow, gloomy room halfway through the long shophouse. He kept his accounts there along with a metal filing cabinet and a large black abacus. As we hurried through the dark shophouse, I said, “Why didn’t you light more lamps?”
“After the doctor and Auntie Wong left, my father put the lights out. You know how he is.”
I did know. My stepfather had a propensity for sitting in the dark, especially when he was troubled. I remembered again that terrible night when he’d broken Shin’s arm. Then, too, the house had been dark and silent.
“What did Auntie Wong say?”
Auntie Wong wasn’t related to any of us but had lived next door since before my mother and I had moved in. She was the neighborhood busybody, but she was fond of my mother.
“Apparently there was a lot of bleeding. She called the doctor. He was gone before I arrived, but it sounded like an early-term miscarriage.” Shin spoke deliberately, in a tone that reminded me that he was partway through his medical training. But this was my mother, not some stranger, and I ran the last few yards to the room and opened the door.
A single lamp burned on the desk, illuminating a makeshift pallet on the floor. My mother’s face looked paler than usual, her forehead high and bare, as though her skull was pushing its way through the thin veil of flesh.
Her hand was dry and cold, but she forced a weak smile. “Ji Lin, I told them not to worry you. I just felt a bit faint so Auntie Wong called the doctor.”
I squeezed her hand. “Did you know that you were pregnant?”
She glanced at Shin, embarrassed. Taking his cue, he quietly left.
“I didn’t think so. I’ve always been irregular, you know. Besides, I’m too old to have a baby.” She was forty-two. It was still possible; some of my friends had siblings who were decades younger.
“You need to keep him away from you.” Why couldn’t my stepfather leave her alone? I could barely speak, I was so angry. My mouth was filled with bitterness.
“Don’t say that. It’s his right. I’m the one who’s failed, not giving him more children.”
I bit my lip hard. There was no point berating her in this frail state. I’d have to find another way, and I thought again about how I’d wanted to poison my stepfather.
* * *
Later that evening, when my mother was resting and my stepfather had gone up to his room, Shin and I went out to eat. It was suffocatingly hot. Most places were closed already, but Shin took me to a roadside stall that served hor fun, wide flat rice noodles, in soup. We sat down at a rickety folding table, one corner of which was propped up on a brick, next to three men who were taking a break from an all-night mahjong party.
As Shin went to order, I listened with half an ear to the men discussing their mahjong debts. My mother, too, must have joined such parties to run up a debt of forty Malayan dollars. Thinking of the money made my stomach turn, and when Shin set a bowl of steaming sar hor fun in front of me, I could only stir it listlessly with my chopsticks.
He sat down opposite and began to wolf his noodles. Under the hissing carbide lamp, with its fluttering circle of moths, he looked nothing like my stepfather and I felt a surge of relief. I pushed my untouched bowl across to him.
“I need you to talk to your father.”
“About what?”
It didn’t seem right to discuss our parents like this, but I had to say it. “He has to leave my mother alone. She can’t get pregnant again.”
Shin’s face was pale under the bright white carbide lamp. “I already told him so when I got in this evening.”
“Will he listen to you?”
He shrugged. This conversation was just as awkward for him as for me. “I did tell him there were other options.”
“Like what? Visiting prostitutes or becoming a monk?” I stabbed a fish ball viciously out of Shin’s bowl. I didn’t care what my stepfather did as long as it kept him away from my mother.
“Like contraception.” He scowled to hide his embarrassment. “Anyway, you needn’t worry about things like that.”
“Even I know about French letters.” Or what they called the “male shield”—as though it were something valiant. “I’m sure he won’t do it, the old bastard.”
That was usually Shin’s line, not mine. Generally I avoided calling his father names. By doing so now, I’d crossed an invisible boundary.
I was never quite sure how Shin felt about his father. After all, my mother often made foolish decisions that made me feel like shaking her, but I still loved her. I suspected it might be the same way for Shin, no matter what his father did. Perhaps that was what it meant to be family—you were shackled together by obligations that you could never escape.
But instead of getting annoyed, he gave me that thoughtful stare again. “How do you know so much about things like this?”
All I really knew came from listening to the girls at work. They said that the best thing was F
rench letters, or condoms, widely distributed since the Great War. But I couldn’t explain how I’d learned that to him.
“It comes from not having any feminine delicacy,” I said crossly.
Shin said, “If I can get him to agree, he’ll probably keep his promise.”
Yes, that stiff-necked, cold man would keep a promise. Just as he would never forgive a debt. Shin’s words set off a faint click in my head. Suddenly, I understood.
“You made a deal with him.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“I’m not talking about today. I meant two years ago. When he broke your arm.”
I’d caught Shin by surprise; I could see it in his frown and how he dropped his head, staring at the soup.
“You did, didn’t you? What was it about?”
But Shin’s mouth tightened. He never would explain to me what had happened that night.
“Well, I can make a deal with him, too.”
“Don’t.” Shin caught my wrist, a swift hard movement. I flinched. Realizing himself, he slowly unpeeled his fingers. “You must never make a deal with my father. Promise me, Ji Lin.”
I didn’t say anything. There was a way to get what I wanted from my stepfather. The question was, what would he want in return?
* * *
It was very dark on the way home. The shapes of the houses as they leaned against each other, windows shuttered against the night, looked all wrong to me. When Shin returned to Singapore, I’d have no one to confide in about family troubles. It was different for him. He had someone else.
“The ring,” I said, remembering. “I need to give it back to you.”
“Keep it for now,” said Shin. He’d been very quiet since dinner; a dangerous sign because it meant he was thinking about something. “What were you doing with Robert earlier?”
