by Jeremy Tiang
•
“Can I have my glasses, please?” said Stella. A ripple around the room that felt a little like laughter. “Why did you bring me here? Can someone tell me what this is about?”
A man’s voice, high-pitched and thin, cut in. “You don’t ask us questions, we ask you questions. That’s how this works.”
“What do you want?” She tried to keep her voice neutral, but it shook.
The same voice, amused. “Another question. You don’t understand, is it? Clever girl like you. Teacher some more. How come you don’t understand simple English?”
She tried to place his voice, then she realised why it seemed familiar: he was a stranger, but his voice was the same as the school bully, as the sadistic student leaders at her university orientation who’d made them crawl through mud. The voice of someone with power but not authority.
She stayed silent. Best to let him do the talking.
“Stella.” The same voice. “You know why you are here?”
“No.”
“Are you sure? Reflect on what you’ve done.”
It was disorientating not to be able to see them, or even how many of them there were. Apart from the spokesman, she could see blurs of movement just beyond the circle of lamplight. The room was not large, and sparsely furnished.
“Do you know who we are?”
“No.” She was getting tired of this, but the voice wanted to play games.
“Guess.” The hint of laughter, again.
“The police?” She knew that couldn’t be, but she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
“Stella, you’re in the Internal Security Department. Do you know what that means?”
“I haven’t done anything.”
“Then why are you here? Stella, we can detain you for as long as we like, you know. You’d better think about why we’ve brought you in.”
“I don’t know.”
“Better think harder. Or are you saying the government makes mistakes?”
“Why don’t you tell me what you want?” She ground her teeth in an effort to calm down. Anger would be the worst thing. She had to stay in control.
“Tell you? Of course we can tell you. But it’s better that it comes from you, don’t you think so, Stella?”
“What’s your name?”
“Why do you want to know my name? You want to marry me, is it? Forget it, I know you’re desperate, teachers like you can never get married, too strict, frighten all the men away. All your life you’ve never had a boyfriend. You see, Stella, we know more about you than you think. We know everything.”
“Ask me anything you like. I have nothing to hide.”
“That’s better, Stella. You see? Things will go easy for you if you co-operate with us.”
One of the shadows came forward and resolved itself into the shape of a short Malay woman. She took the lid off a bottle of water and tipped it into Stella’s mouth. Half of it went down her shirt, but even that was refreshing. There were no windows here.
“Stella, are you ready?”
She nodded.
“Who is Jackson Cheng?”
She stared. “I don’t know.”
“Are you saying you don’t know who Jackson Cheng is?”
“I don’t know who he is.”
“Are you saying you’ve never met him?”
“I don’t remember anyone of that name. Who is he?”
“Stella, I’m very disappointed in you. I thought you were going to co-operate with us.”
“I’m telling the truth.”
“Aren’t you a good Catholic girl? Don’t you go to church every Sunday, every week praying, praying for what? And you say you don’t know Jackson Cheng.”
“Is he something to do with the Catholic church? I don’t know everyone in the church.”
“Think harder. You surely know this man.”
She bit her tongue, trying to stay calm and think. “Maybe if you tell me who he is, I might be able to remember.”
“Stella.” The voice was scolding now. “You can’t bargain with us like that. Either you’ve met him or you haven’t. Surely you should know? A handsome man like Jackson Cheng, you will surely remember, right? I know you Catholic girls, pretend to be so pure, but actually you’re all hot stuff.”
She refused to rise to the bait. “I don’t remember meeting anyone by that name.”
“Who is Low Woon Leng?”
“Woon Leng? She’s in my church, we’ve volunteered together a few times.”
“Volunteered doing what?”
“A counselling service for domestic workers.”
“What for? What counselling?”
“Just, you know, giving them advice.”
“What kind of advice can someone like you give them? What do you know?”
“Some of them are scared and lonely. Actually, most of them are. They’re far from home, and some of them are very young. We tell them what their rights are. Where to go if they need help. Sometimes they just need someone to talk to.”
“So they come to you?”
“A lot of them are Catholics, especially from the Philippines. It’s natural for them to turn to the church if they’re lonely.”
“Lonely.” A snort. Laughter? “You think Singapore is a holiday camp? The Pinoys come here to work. Why don’t you leave them alone to get on with their jobs?”
“We see them on their days off. We’re only trying to help.”
“So noble. You and Low Woon Leng help them together?”
“We both volunteer with the group, sometimes we’re on the same shift. Has she done something wrong?”
“So quickly you try to push the blame to your comrade? Stella, all of you are in trouble now. You better tell me all about it.”
“I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“We have Woon Leng next door now. If she confesses first, then we’ll let her go, and we’ll keep you here forever. Do you want that?”
“What do you mean? What have we done that we
should confess?”
The voice became grim. “If you’re so determined to play dumb, then we can do this the hard way. I thought you Catholics would know how to confess.”
Unseen hands behind her lifted her from her chair, began to drag her towards the door. She tried to walk, but they were going too fast for her to find her feet. She had to fight the urge to vomit. “Wait,” she cried, aware she sounded pathetic.
Faintly, behind her: “It’s too late, Stella. You’ve had your chance. We’ll have to do things the hard way now.”
•
First they made her take a shower. She was glad to feel clean again. There was only cold water, but that didn’t matter in such warm weather. The hard bar of soap they chucked at her didn’t smell unpleasant. When she got out, there was only a prison uniform, light blue, on a chair. “Can I get my suitcase, please?” she called.
A plump face appeared in the grille. She held the towel in front of herself. “What you want?” demanded the face.
“I’d like to take some clothes from my suitcase, please.” She smiled as ingratiatingly as she felt able, pushing her wet hair out of her eyes.
“Your uniform is there. No outside clothes allowed.”
“I meant—underwear.” She felt herself blush.
“No outside clothes allowed,” repeated the face, and banged the grille shut. She got dressed as quickly as she could, pulling the uniform over naked skin. It was made of cheap, shiny material. There were no fastenings, she noticed, only elastic around the waist. The wardress banged on the door. She shuffled out in flimsy plastic slippers, still damp, and they took her to her cell.
It was smaller than she had imagined, a cement cubbyhole with a mattress on the floor and not much else. A toilet with no seat behind a thin partition. It was clean but stained the colour of rust. Tiny slits in the wall let in sunlight—she was silently cheered. A room like the other one, with no natural light, would have been death.
; She walked in and heard the door clang shut. A series of grinding sounds told her how many locks there were—as if she could have thought of escaping. She lay down on the floor, letting the tension from her body leach into the cool concrete. The floor was far from clean, but she was too tired to care. Her head ached. She tried to elongate her neck to ease it, and reached her arms and legs out as far as they would go.
Something stirred in a corner of the room. It was her aunt Siew Li, the one she’d never met, arms folded and in school uniform, like she was in the only photo they had of her; Uncle Jason had destroyed the rest, but Henry had clung on to this one. “They’re going to break you,” said Siew Li, and faded into the wall. Stella rubbed her forehead. What was happening?
There had to be some misunderstanding. Had Woon Leng done something wrong? Had she been accused? She understood that detention without trial worked differently from normal arrest, but there were still some limitations, surely. Eventually they would have to tell her why she was here, and she’d be able to see a lawyer. She didn’t like the way they were talking to her, but they were used to dealing with all kinds of hard nuts here, it wasn’t their fault she was so sensitive.
When the wardress brought her dinner, an armed guard stood outside the door. She wondered if anyone had ever tried to escape from here, for there to be so much security. She thanked the woman politely, as her plate was slapped down on a stool. “What will happen to me?” she asked.
“You should have thought about that before.”
“I only meant, what’s next? Are they going to ask me
more questions?”
“That’s up to them. Don’t try to be so clever.”
“Do you think—I know, sorry, it’s probably not up to you, but do you think I could ask someone for my glasses? I can’t see at all without them.”
“I don’t know anything about that.”
“Maybe there’s someone I could ask? If it’s no trouble. My glasses, and I’d really like one of the books from my suitcase, just if—”
“You’d better stop asking for special treatment.” The woman’s face settled into a snarl. “I know people like you, think you’re educated so there are special rules for you. When will you learn that you have to follow the law like everyone else? Trying to be so clever, now look, you’re going to be here for a long time unless you stop trying to be different. Why can’t you think? It’s your parents who will suffer.” That delivered, she waddled out of the cell, and once again the locks ground shut.
Stella was still for a very long time, before she had calmed down enough to look at the food. She should eat to keep her strength up. How often would she be fed? Bringing her face close, she smelt over-boiled meat and old, dry rice. The green vegetables were swimming limply in grease. She choked down as much as she could, then went back to lying on the floor. The only other place was the bed, and if she lay down there, where would she go at bedtime? She tried to work out if that was logical, or if she was already losing her grip.
When the woman came to take the plate away, she turned her face to the wall and pretended to be asleep. She thought about crying, but decided to pray instead. She said some Hail Marys, just for reassurance, then asked for patience, and strength, and understanding. These people were just doing their jobs. It was wrong of her to be thinking of things she would like to say to the wardress, to the man with high-pitched voice. It wasn’t their fault. This was the system. She had implicitly signed up by accepting the security of Singapore, the safe, clean streets.
She could tell when the sun set by the long shadows on the wall. Before the light faded altogether, the guard came in and flicked on the light in her cell.
“Thank you. But you needn’t bother, I was just going to sleep,” she said.
“Lights on at all times.” And then he was gone. She lay on the mattress and stared at the ceiling until the light left burnt orange squiggles in her retina. What would happen to her? She folded a corner of the blanket over her eyes and tried to sleep.
•
The interrogation room was freezing cold the next time they brought her in. The people behind the light looked bulkier, and she realised they were wearing jackets. It reminded her of her staffroom, where teachers would leave cardigans and sweaters over their chairs, for days when the air-conditioning was especially fierce.
“How are you today, Stella?” A different man, taller, dark-skinned. His voice was deep and hoarse around the edges.
“Good, thank you.” She was determined to start again, give the right answers, and secure her release as quickly as she could.
“Did you sleep well? Was your bed comfortable?”
Was he making fun of her? She quashed a flicker of anger. “I slept very well, thank you.”
“So you’re not feeling guilty?” He chuckled, to show it was a joke, and she smiled too.
“Could you turn the temperature up a bit?” she asked bravely, and held out her arm to show the gooseflesh.
He laughed again. “So sensitive, Stella. Didn’t you just come from England? You should be used to the cold by now.”
“I was only there for a week.”
“Why did you go to England?”
“I was visiting my cousin. Henry.”
“Did you ask your cousin why he doesn’t want to study here? Our university not good enough for him, is it?”
“There are just more opportunities over there.”
“So you’re saying Singapore has no opportunities? Then why are you still here?”
She was silent. Anything she said could be twisted round.
“And you, Stella? Do you like your country?”
Surely this, at least, was safe to answer? “Of course I do. It’s my home.”
“Are you sure?” Two of the figures were conferring, and another was taking notes. She was becoming used to the half-blind twilight world, and found that by squinting she could almost make things out. She was still disorientated, unable to read the facial expressions of the speaker.
“Stella, I’ll ask you again. Do you know why you’re here?”
A sudden paranoid spasm. She voted for the Workers’ Party three years ago, in 1984—her very first election. Her vote had helped JB Jeyaretnam win his seat at Anson. Letting in the opposition. Did they know that? The ballot papers had serial numbers which they said couldn’t be traced, but what if—she shook her head, snapping the thread. Of course that wasn’t it, they couldn’t go after everyone who hadn’t voted their way, that would be thousands of people. Why would they care, anyway? There were only two opposition MPs in Parliament.
“Well, Stella? Have you had enough time to reflect?”
She thought about the previous day. “You said something about my outreach work for the church. Is that it? Have we done something wrong?”
“Who said anything about ‘we’? Don’t worry about ‘we’, just think about your own actions. What have you done?”
“We help them,” she answered, deciding to take the question at face value. “There are thousands of maids in Singapore, and we give them information. Sometimes we pay for treatment if their employers don’t want to. Just last month there was this one, Sri Lankan, she’d had bad toothache for weeks. Her boss didn’t want to take her to the dentist, so we did. She had three teeth extracted. They were rotten all the way down. Some people just don’t care, they think they can treat their maids like—” She realised she was making a speech, and shut up. It had felt good to speak without constraints, just for a minute, but she needed to be more careful. She pressed her thumbnails into the flesh of her palm, to remind herself.
“So sympathetic.”
“God tells us to help the poor. We’re just trying to do that.”
“Why don’t you help your own countrymen? Where is your patriotism? Do you think there are no poor people in Singapore? Why are you so concerned about foreigners?”
She judged it better not to speak. It had been a mistake to say so much. The automatic reaction, from years of havi
ng to explain her work to others, had taken over. Better give them nothing to get hold of.
“These people come over here to exploit our system. Do you know how small their money is, how little they will earn at home? The salary here is like a fortune to them, and still you want to talk about welfare.”
She could have said a number of things then, about domestic workers burnt with hot irons, fed nothing but biscuits, made to sleep with the bins. She could have told him about forced abortions and the scars she’d seen, but somehow she knew that none of this would help her case.
“Maybe you’re right,” she forced herself to say. “We should never forget that charity begins at home. When I see my group again, I’ll tell them that. We should do more outreach work for local families.”
There was a thin hush, and she realised it couldn’t be that easy, there must be more to the story that she wasn’t seeing. What did they want? The room seemed to draw in its breath, a cessation of air broken by the tall man’s voice, now a lash.
“You think we’re stupid? You just tell us what we want to hear and we’ll let you go? You better be more sincere, okay? We’re not your little schoolgirls. This is the real world.”
She had been idiotic, she thought in despair, to think that would work. But if the truth was twisted round and lies were too transparent, what was left but silence? She looked around the room, hoping for a clue, but the figures grew blurry as tears came, even as she tried to resist them. She tried to see the walls but couldn’t. She no longer had any idea what size the room was.
•
The first bucket of water almost seemed to burn, even though it was icy cold. How odd, said a detached part of her mind, that the two sensations should be so similar. They flung a second bucket that left her gasping stupidly for a few moments, before she regained control and pushed her sodden hair back. There seemed to be no more for the moment. Everyone else in the room had moved well away, so as not to be splashed.
“Why did you do that?” she demanded, forgetting not to be provoked.
