by Yangsze Choo
I hadn’t given her quite enough money to cover the loan, but to my surprise, she said, “You mustn’t worry about that anymore. Your stepfather paid it.”
“All of it?”
She hesitated. “No. Shin gave me some money to help pay it down.” I understood, without her saying a word, that it must have been terrifying to confess even that reduced amount to my stepfather.
“Was he furious?” I stared at her arms, her narrow wrists. She was wearing loose sleeves; I couldn’t tell if there was anything amiss.
“He had a right to be.”
“And? Did he do anything else?” Fury and despair were rising in me, choking my throat.
My mother looked down at the floor. I realized this was deeply humiliating for her. “I begged him. I cried so hard that I fainted.” At my look of horror, she said quickly, “It was actually a good thing. It worried him, coming after the miscarriage. I suppose he realized it wasn’t worth it. And I’m fine.” A grimace. “He made me swear not to touch a mahjong tile again.”
Catching my anxious eye, my mother gave me a warning look. This time, it was none of my business. I supposed that the scare over my mother’s miscarriage might have softened my stepfather up. Made him realize that he might be widowed again. Still, it was a tremendous relief. That debt had been hanging like an anvil over our heads. My mother smiled weakly. “Perhaps I should have told him from the start. I’m sure Robert would be milder about things like that.”
“Mother, does it have to be Robert?”
She must have heard the sadness in my voice, because she stopped fiddling with my bandages and hugged me. “No, it doesn’t. As long as he makes you happy.”
“Really?” My spirits rose. Why had I ever doubted her?
“Does Shin approve?”
“Of who?”
“Of whomever it is you like.”
I couldn’t stop smiling. “Yes, he does.”
51
Batu Gajah
Thursday, July 2nd
Ren watches his master closely after Lydia’s departure. Does his stomach feel better after drinking the medicine? But William goes out to the veranda, tearing at his stiff collar as though he can’t breathe. He sits there, motionless, head in his hands as somewhere out in the dense jungle canopy, a bird sings. It’s a merbuk, a zebra dove whose soft haunting call echoes through the vast green space.
“Tuan, are you sick?”
William turns, face pale and beaded with sweat. He doesn’t look well, but he smiles briefly. “You’re a good boy, Ren. I’ve been thinking: would you like to go to school?”
Surprised by this good fortune, Ren can only blink and stammer. “Yes. But the housework—”
“You needn’t worry about that. We’ll be getting new servants anyway.”
Does this mean that Ren has lost his job? “Of course not,” says William, reading his worried look. “There’ll be some changes; it can’t be helped. But I’ll make sure you go to school. It’s the least I can do.” He makes a wry face.
Ren understands about guilt and bewilderment. Yi hasn’t come to his dreams anymore, not since the last time by the river. In fact, he can find no trace of his twin at all. That faint radio signal has ceased transmitting, or is it tuned to another station now, one that he can’t hear? Whatever it is, he thinks of Yi with love and sadness. One day, they will be together again.
* * *
Dismissed, Ren starts back to the kitchen. Then he turns. It’s not his place to ask, but he gathers up all his courage. “Tuan, are you marrying Miss Lydia?”
A tilt of the head. It’s hard to read his master’s expression. “You don’t like that idea?”
“She said her Chinese name was Li. Like yours.”
“Does it make us a good match, then?” There’s bitterness in William’s voice. Ren wonders what the rest of that long conversation was about, the one that ended with Lydia looking so pleased and his master so ashen.
“I don’t know,” says Ren honestly. He’s confused. Which one of them is the mysterious Li then? Or perhaps he’s been mistaken and neither of them is. Pressing his fingers into the numb white mark on his elbow only makes him dizzy, the air grows heavy and dark. He remembers the filmy cobwebs clinging to Lydia that made him recoil. “She’ll make things difficult for you, that lady.”
William smiles humorlessly and says something about out of the mouths of babes. Then he announces he’s tired and is going to bed. No need for dinner tonight. His feet drag on the stairs, like a man sentenced to death.
* * *
The next morning, William doesn’t come down. Ah Long, frowning at the untouched breakfast, cocks his head at Ren. “Go and see what’s happened.”
Ren climbs the stairs, feeling the smooth, cool wood beneath his bare feet. All the way up, like a cabin boy climbing the lookout mast. At the window at the top, he remembers how he’d thought of the white bungalow as a ship in a storm, the deep green jungle a rolling ocean. In it were all manner of strange beasts, including Dr. MacFarlane, roaming around in the form of a tiger.
Ren shakes his head; the image vanishes. Already it’s receding, that dim fearfulness about his old master: the dark loneliness, the promises about severed fingers and digging up graves. Even his worries about forty-nine days have subsided, a calamity averted though if you asked Ren, he couldn’t tell you what or why. Only that he’s certain, down to his bones, that the finger has returned to Dr. MacFarlane. He has an odd vision—small and bright, like a fever dream—of Ji Lin on her knees, digging hastily with a spade. Dropping something in, then sealing it under the damp red earth. Whatever happened, he has faith that she wouldn’t let him down. Though since he woke up in the hospital after Nandani’s death, he can no longer recall these things well, as though the long night has ended and day has begun. A day that beckons with the promise of school. Excited, Ren quickens his steps. Dr. MacFarlane would have been pleased; he always meant to send Ren to school.
The door to William’s room is closed. Ren knocks, then tries the handle softly. It’s locked. Puzzled and a little frightened, Ren reports to Ah Long.
“Is he sick?”
“Might be.”
Ah Long gets up. He rummages in the kitchen drawer, then together they ascend the stairs. The house is so quiet that Ren imagines that everything—the walls and the ceiling, the grass outside and the bowl-shaped whiteness of the sky—is holding its breath. No sound but the quiet padding of their feet and the thudding of Ren’s heart. At the locked door, Ah Long stops and bends his ear to the keyhole. Nothing.
With a sigh, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out the enormous bunch of keys that he keeps in the kitchen drawer. He searches through them, counting under his breath. Takes one out and fits it to the lock. As the door swings open, he says sharply, “Don’t come in!”
Frightened, Ren waits outside. He doesn’t need to listen to Ah Long’s hasty movements. Walking over to the bed, drawing back the curtains. That stillness is familiar to him—the one that tells him that the occupant of the room has gone away forever. And Ren, leaning back against the wall, feels hot tears stream silently down his face.
52
Falim/Ipoh
Wednesday, July 1st
And so we were back where we started. In that long, dim shophouse filled with the metallic scent of tin ore and the dampness that seeped from the lower floor. Discharged from the hospital, his broken arm in a neat white cast, Shin had come home.
My mother was happy that we were both back, though I was due to return to Mrs. Tham’s in a few days. I should visit Hui, too. Tell her that I’d quit the May Flower, though she’d probably figured it out by now. There were so many matters I wanted to discuss with Shin, but we had no opportunity. My stepfather’s silent presence filled the front of the shophouse where he conducted business, and my mother twittered about, cooking our favorite childhood dishes, though I begged her not to strain herself.
“It’s good that you’re home,” she said, fussing over Shin�
�s arm.
That was one thing I was glad about at least, that she was so fond of him. Perhaps it would all come out right for us. After all, Ren had been discharged after making a remarkable recovery. And neither Shin nor I had died yet. I kept my thoughts about Yi to myself, hugging them like a sad secret. If the dead lived on in people’s memories, then I’d keep him safe forever.
* * *
That night I sat at the kitchen table in the warm pool of lamplight, rereading The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. I’d loved it enough to buy my own copy from the secondhand bookstore, though Koh Beng and his string of murders had dampened my enthusiasm for detective work. Still, it was better than being left to my own thoughts. My mother and stepfather had gone up to bed, and Shin was out with Ming.
The reality of what Shin and I were doing weighed on me. What sort of future would we have? Perhaps in this life, Shin and I could only be siblings, false twins destined to be together, yet apart. It was so still that I could hear the clock ticking far in the front of the shophouse. A hollow chiming. Ten o’clock. The rattle of the front door. And now Shin was back, his quick familiar step walking down the long dark passageway, past the heavy weighing scales, past the first open courtyard with its piles of drying tin ore.
“Shin,” I called softly, getting up.
It was dim in the corridor, where the yellow lamplight spilled from the kitchen. All my thoughts, my good intentions flew out of my head when I saw him. Wordlessly, I tugged him over to the table. He gave a sharp glance upstairs.
“They’re asleep,” I said.
We sat next to each other, demurely. I felt oddly shy, my pulse racing. How strange it was, to be sitting like this in my stepfather’s house. As though everything and nothing had changed between us. If I closed my eyes, we could have been ten years old again.
“What shall we do, Shin?”
He curled his fingers around mine. The slant of his eyebrows looked oddly vulnerable. “First, we’ll get a copy of your birth certificate. I’ve already got mine. Then we’ll go and register our marriage.”
“What?” I straightened up.
“My father said so, didn’t he? When you’re married, you’re not his responsibility anymore.”
“He’ll kill us!”
“He won’t. He set the conditions himself. It didn’t matter who it was, as long as he had a decent job. Of course, he was thinking of Robert.” Shin scowled. “Anyway, you and I aren’t related, not even on paper. My father never adopted you—I checked.”
I didn’t know whether to laugh or quail at Shin’s brazenness. “Are you sure you want to marry me? Aren’t you still a scholarship student?”
“I’ve been planning this for years.” He was utterly serious.
“What if I don’t want to marry you?”
“You will.”
His lips brushed mine. Lightly, but my legs went weak and a dizziness took hold of me. It was like a spell, a conjurer’s trick that pressed the air out of my lungs. Shin looked at me triumphantly. I had that feeling again, of love and longing and wanting to smack him all at once.
“People will talk.”
“Let them.”
Soft, urgent kisses. The moist heat of his mouth, the delicate probing of his tongue. That fluttering in my chest again, like a bird that yearned to fly. Shin’s good arm encircled my waist; I shivered as he pressed me, hard, against the chair. My breath came in faint gasps. Using his teeth and his good left hand, he started to unbutton my thin cotton blouse. I should stop him, I knew it, but my fingers slid through his hair instead.
“Don’t laugh,” said Shin in mock indignation. “You’re the reason my arm is broken.”
In answer, I pressed my mouth against his. We were so absorbed in each other that we didn’t notice the creak of the stairs, and then my mother’s horrified whisper.
“What are you doing?”
Shin’s hand froze on my half-unbuttoned blouse. We sprang to our feet, a dull roaring in my ears. His face was crimson.
“Mother,” I said.
But she wasn’t looking at me. “How dare you touch my daughter!” Even then, I noticed she kept her voice down, hissing the words out.
“It’s not his fault, it’s mine!”
It was then that she slapped me. My mother had never hit me across the face before. Disciplined, yes, with a weak switch when I was smaller, though she was easily talked out of punishing me. But never like this: a blow that made me gasp. The strange and terrible thing was that all this took place in near silence. None of us dared to raise our voices in that hushed dark house. We knew what would happen if my stepfather woke up.
I gripped my mother’s frail shoulders, then let go. If I wanted to, I could easily have shoved her back. On the rooftop with Koh Beng, I’d fought desperately, kicking and scratching. But I couldn’t raise a hand to my mother. Neither could Shin. The two of us stood with bowed and guilty heads as she slumped suddenly, as if the life had gone out of her. “Didn’t I raise you properly?” she muttered. “Why are you doing this?”
“I love him,” I said.
“Love?” my mother said. “What were you thinking?”
She wept, then, in that dreadful, silent way that unnerved me. The way all of us had learned to cry in this house, without making a sound. Stricken, I found myself helplessly consoling her. It was always like this. No matter what happened, I’d try to save her. I glanced at Shin, signaling him to leave the kitchen.
But instead of heeding me, he knelt before her. I’d never seen Shin get on his knees to anyone, he was too proud, but now here he was lowering his head.
“Mother,” he said. “I’m serious about Ji Lin. Please let me marry her.”
At the word marriage, my mother’s body arched in a rictus, as though she was having a spasm. Alarmed, I caught her in my arms.
“You can’t get married,” she said faintly. “You’re family now. I absolutely forbid it.”
* * *
One of the appalling yet convenient things about being family is that you can trade dreadful accusations at night, then pretend next morning that nothing has happened. Because that’s exactly what we did at breakfast. We all came down, quiet and somber, and my mother dished out limp, steaming hanks of noodles. The noodles were bland, as though she’d forgotten how to cook. Her eyes were swollen, but she told my stepfather that she hadn’t slept because of a headache.
He grunted, and I hoped that he hadn’t noticed anything. After all, he was a heavy sleeper. Shin and I sat, unnaturally still, like two cardboard siblings in a perfect cardboard family.
“I’m going back to Singapore at the end of the week,” Shin announced.
My mother nodded. She bent over her tasteless noodles, just as my stepfather did.
“Ji Lin is coming with me,” said Shin. “She can get a job there.”
Now both heads went up.
My stepfather’s eyes narrowed. “Why her?”
“The truth is, there was a murder at the Batu Gajah hospital on Monday. Another orderly was killed by the same man who tried to shove Ji Lin off the roof. The police asked us not to talk about it, but there’s a scandal brewing. Why do you think the hospital is paying me for not working? In return, they’ve asked us both to leave the area.”
“Is that right?” his father said.
I glanced at Shin. He was an inspired liar, mixing half-truths and facts. “Yes. It will be in the newspaper soon.”
My mother let out an exclamation of horror, though her eyes filled with suspicion. I squeezed Shin’s hand under the table.
“You can ask Robert—his father’s on the Board,” I said.
It irked me how anything connected with Robert and his family carried weight with my mother. I could see the confusion on her face.
“They’ve arranged a position for me at a hospital in Singapore, as a trainee nurse. I’ll live in a dormitory.” This was pure fiction now, but nobody was stopping me. “Shin can take me down, because Robert doesn’t have the time.”
>
Robert again. But my mother wasn’t fooled, shaking her head vehemently. “No, you can’t go!”
My stepfather said, “What does Robert think about this plan of going to Singapore?”
“He wants me to study and get proper qualifications. And less scandal is better for his family.” Amazing how easy it was to lie when I really wanted something. I apologized to poor Robert in my head.
“If Robert thinks it’s a good idea, then it’s fine by me,” my stepfather said. And at that moment I was glad, so glad that he was hard and unyielding, only valuing the opinions of men. My mother’s protests were overruled; after all, she dared give no reason other than Singapore was too far away.
“Shin will take her down,” said my stepfather. “And she won’t be our responsibility for too long.”
“But Robert’s family is in Ipoh,” my mother said. She glanced from Shin to me in anguish, and I wondered if she would betray us. If so, we’d all suffer. My pulse raced unevenly. Shin had his most wooden look on, though a muscle twitched in his cheek.
“They have a house in Singapore,” he said, examining his noodles as though he couldn’t care less whether he took me along or not. “I’m sure he goes there all the time.”
My stepfather nodded. And so it was settled.
* * *
I should have been happy. Goodness knows, Shin was. He could hardly stop grinning as the days dwindled before our departure, though by unspoken agreement, we avoided each other completely. He bought railway tickets for us, and I went to see Mrs. Tham and clear out my room over her dress shop.
“Are you getting married?” she asked, as I folded the last of my meager possessions. No beating around the bush with her.
“No, I’m going to study nursing.” I’d repeated this lie so many times that it almost felt real to me, though I had to remind myself that I had no job prospects and nowhere to live. Still, I was buoyed by a simmering excitement.
