Impractical Uses of Cake

by Yeoh Jo-Ann

  He picks up a carrot and examines it. It’s a rather ugly specimen— twisted and gnarled, not something he’d choose at a supermarket—but otherwise undamaged. He puts it carefully into his sack, along with two other ugly carrots and an evil-looking potato. Some of the stack he’s sifting through is damaged beyond redemption, but a lot of it is just puny or ugly, thrown out because a kinked cucumber or a carrot with a forked tail just isn’t sexy.

  Jinn and the others are quicker than he is. They work for over two hours, making sure they don’t miss anything. A few vendors begin to hand over their discards directly, bypassing the bin. Passers-by stare openly. Some are rude. (“Wah! Like that can eat meh?” “You all got no other work ah?”) Others stop to ask what they’re doing, and one of them—a tall, lanky man who appears perfectly at home sifting through refuse piles—explains that they’re trying to reduce waste. His tone is measured, polite and unapologetic. He shows off some of the bounty, opening a sack for the benefit of the curious onlookers. The others work in silence. Watching Jinn, Sukhin can see that she is an old hand at this—she’s developed an instinct for which vegetables to check, which to ignore, which parts to check for damage, how much damage is acceptable—and he realises that this must be how she gets some of her food. Well, one mystery solved. Progress. But the thought of her picking through rubbish for food makes him feels angry and uncomfortable—and guilty. Sukhin manages to convert all this rather quickly and efficiently into missionary zeal, falling onto the next pile with a dogged determination to rescue as much fruit and veg as possible from ignominious, stinking death. “Ulysses” by Tennyson bubbles up in his mind:

  Death closes all: but something ere the end,

  Some work of noble note, may yet be done…

  In the afternoon heat, on the steaming asphalt pavement, he subjects countless carrots and potatoes and brinjals and pineapples and persimmons to careful, pedantic scrutiny. It’s very much like marking student assignments, Sukhin realises—scrutinising specimen after specimen, desperately trying to keep an open mind, desperately wanting to see promise, all while fighting rising waves of nausea.

  “Is that your Lit teacher?”

  “No, Mum. And it’s tutor—I’m in JC.” Her daughter is texting a classmate and doesn’t bother to look up.

  “I’m telling you, Prema, it’s him—look!”

  Prema looks—and stops regretting that she let her mother talk her into going shopping for Punjabi suits after school. It really is Mr Dhillon, squatting beside a rubbish bin at Tekka Market, rummaging through a pile of veggies someone has thrown away. Mr Dhillon, a dumpster diver!

  “Is he actually going to eat that stuff?” She makes a face. “And he didn’t even bother to change. Wow—dumpster-diving in this heat, in shirt and trousers.” Prema, torn between admiration and disgust, takes a picture.

  “Stop that!” Her mother swats at her phone.

  “Damn.” The photo is a out of focus; it looks like Mr Dhillon, but it’s hard to be certain. “Dammit.”

  “None of that language, please, Prema. Come, let’s go. Don’t let the poor man see you.” She shakes her head. Goodness, are teachers so badly paid? Back in her day, teachers were pillars of the community. No teacher would have ever picked through rubbish for food; no community would have allowed it. She sighed. Does his mother know?

  They are in a stranger’s kitchen and Jinn is giving orders. Cool and calm, with a quiet authority that invites everyone to assume she’s grown up running a kitchen, though Sukhin knows her family had a helper and she was never even allowed to boil water. In low and measured tones, she tells a man who’s just arrived to chop up carrots and another to dice peppers. Sukhin, tasked by Jinn with cleaning and slicing up lotus root, is just one of her seven kitchen minions. The woman next to him is busy removing the outer layers of about thirty onions.

  The man who spoke to the passers-by at the market bursts into the kitchen, bearing a large basket. “X, the supermarket workers just dropped this off.” He beams at Jinn, offering up the basket for her inspection.

  She removes a stalk of leek from it. It’s beginning to yellow, but otherwise there doesn’t seem to be much wrong with it. There are more weary-looking leeks in the basket, all in various stages of depression. Jinn sets them reverently on the kitchen counter. She is smiling like she does when she’s about to eat cake—a tiny, private smile of anticipation. “Wonderful, Kim Seng. When you return the basket, tell Yasin we’re very grateful.”

  She extends a long thin arm towards the man chopping peppers. He turns. “Gopal, when you’re done, can you slice the leeks? Thin, not too fine.”

  Gopal nods vigorously. “Okay, X, no problem.”

  Jinn comes over to check on Sukhin’s progress. “Are they calling you X?” he asks, careful to speak in an undertone. “Or is it Ex? E-X.”

  She raises an eyebrow. “As in the prefix? Or the former lover? You can call me Ex if you like.”

  “Fine. So it’s X. The letter. Not very original.”

  “No one’s trying to be original, Sukhin.”

  Chastised, he returns to his task while she finishes her round of the kitchen, talking to the other volunteers, making minor adjustments. No empress in silk and indigo ever had more willing, adoring subjects—Sukhin notices how they all defer to her, how they’re immediately alert when she’s looking their way, how they lap up her faint praise. Incredible. The girl who once hid his books all over school in a spiteful fit of rage is now the serene godmother of this covert soup kitchen operation.

  Well, seemingly covert soup kitchen operation. To be fair (and to protect himself from unnecessary knowledge), Sukhin hasn’t asked any questions. All he knows so far is that they brought the vegetables they salvaged from Tekka Market to this shophouse on Rowell Road, right next to what appears to be a brothel—or some other enterprise involving women and hourly rates. They entered from the back alley into a large, surprisingly well-equipped kitchen and have been joined by others also bearing rescued fruit, vegetables and canned food from supermarkets and sundry shops in the neighbourhood. Jinn hasn’t introduced him to anyone, but she greets them all by name.

  “X. All done.”

  Finally, the vegetables are all chopped, waiting for her. The kitchen goes quiet as she takes final stock of the ingredients. She counts the onions, checks the leeks, peers at the tomatoes, considers the canned goods. She picks up a piece of blue ginger that has had its dry bits lopped off. “Let’s do something cool with this—we don’t usually get lengkuas.”

  She looks like she’s trying to remember something. No one rushes her.

  A smile. She nods at everyone. “Okay—I know what we’ll make. Lina, can you pound these?” She hands a woman all the pieces of salvaged blue ginger. “With these.” She gives her some salvaged turmeric root and garlic.

  She turns to Kim Seng. “Let’s grill these leeks. First, you’ll need to blanch them. Do you know how?”

  One by one, the dishes are decided, the tasks portioned out. Sukhin has no idea where or when she’s learnt to cook, or whether this is all some great pretence and no one has called her bluff. No time for conjecture—he has to help Gopal make garlic rice.

  As Kim Seng grills the leeks over the bare-bones grill that a retired satay hawker donated to the cause, he watches X teach Lina and Weixiong how to make vegetarian soto, with canned mushrooms, potatoes, carrots and celery instead of chicken. He feels at once proud and awed. So graceful, so soft-spoken, but she makes it clear she’s in charge. A real woman, just like his late mother. And I found her; it was me!

  He is fond of telling the story; he tells it to every new volunteer and never misses a chance to repeat it to the rest of the team. How he found her looking through the dustbin of that bakery on Keong Saik Road for leftover bread, how he knew there wasn’t any—he’d already looked. How he offered her some of the fruit he had taken from Tekka earlier, how he told her about the group of food salvagers he had started, how she had shown up two days later at Tek
ka, on time, to help the group with their hunt. How she’d had the idea to cook the food nearby, so that even the larger items and the more badly damaged or too-ripe produce could be saved. Which meant more food could be shared with more people—there was often more than the salvagers could consume themselves.

  It had all come together after that.

  Gopal’s brother offered up the shophouse on Rowell Road—perfect; just ten minutes’ walk from the market. He had taken over what used to be a café, and was using the three floors of shophouse space to grow dainty organic vegetables that he sold for outlandish sums to fine-dining establishments that wanted to be able to say they were supporting local growers (but didn’t want to stoop to incorporating actual local vegetables into their dishes). Gopal’s very smart brother Raj supplies them with the elegant solution of edible flowers and micro-greens grown in carefully controlled micro-climates under artificial UV light, right in the heart of Singapore. (Kim Seng understands that these micro-greens are in fact very small turnips, leeks, pea shoots and carrots, and Raj has explained that “rich people are extreme; they like their cars as big as possible, their vegetables as small as possible.”) But the more important point was that Raj wanted to support his little brother’s efforts at social work, so Free Kitchen was born. “Let the rich people pay for it,” he said, offering to waive all the costs of electricity and water. Raj is the group’s other hero, next to X.

  X, who from day one has run the kitchen, teaching every volunteer how to prepare and cook the food that they rescue and how to store it and reheat it the next day, adding new ingredients if there are any.

  X, who makes sure everything they cook is delicious and dignified, not just ingredients slapped together over a stove. It was also X who insisted on using proper cutlery and plates. “No plastic shit,” she snarled, losing her composure that one time.

  X, who is now beside him, telling him the leeks smell amazing. They do—who knew that just olive oil, garlic, salt and pepper could make something magical out of leeks?

  X, who is herself magical. Whose name no one knows, but maybe that’s part of the magic?

  “Who’s that?”

  “The new fella? Came with X. He was with us at Tekka too.”

  Lina still isn’t sure what to make of X, even after a year. X looks like she could be Lina’s daughter’s age, which makes Lina a little more sensitive than she should be—but she isn’t aware of this. Yes, X is a good cook. Yes, she’s very organised. Yes, she’s creative. But why does she do all this? She’s clearly had an education—her voice has that telltale “good school” ring to it; her English is excellent—so what is she doing here, when she could be out there working, or getting a job? And doesn’t anyone else think that it’s strange she won’t tell them her name? And why do all these grown men behave like children around her, so eager to please? So stupid. The woman isn’t even pretty—look at her hair! It’s like someone threw a hedge clipper at her.

  What kind of mother would let her daughter run around like this, looking like this?

  It makes Lina angry but she doesn’t let it show, and she never speaks against X. Why waste energy? She adds tomatoes and carrots to the soup and, while watching the pot, looks out of the corner of her eye at the stranger, now busy cutting up a watermelon. Aiyoh, so bad with a knife. She winces as he slips and nearly cuts himself. Honestly, some men in the kitchen are just accidents waiting to happen.

  He puts down the knife and rolls up his sleeves, getting watermelon juice on his cuffs.

  She shakes her head. Back to the pot. She gives it a stir—it does smell good, this soto.

  A clatter to her left—the man has managed to drop the knife. As he bends over to pick it up, Lina notices his shoes—black leather, polished— and his trousers—pleated, carefully ironed. His hair is short, neat but not styled. Maybe some sort of salesman? Well, definitely not a cook.

  More people arrive. At first, Sukhin assumes they’ve come to eat, but soon he realises that they’re also here to help, and most of them have brought foldable chairs and tables. Some leave these behind, heading off after saying hello to the group in the kitchen; others stay to help set up. He puts the container he has filled with watermelon slices into the fridge and goes out into the alley to watch them.

  Very quickly, in a practised rhythm, the tables and chairs—all varying in size, colour, style—are laid out next to each other in a row that stretches over half the alleyway. Sukhin counts fifteen tables, about sixty chairs. Tea lights and candles are placed on the tables and lit, casting a warm glow over everything, and suddenly it’s possible to ignore the mismatched cutlery, the mismatched tables, the mismatched everything. The kitchen team begins to bring out the food, and Sukhin rushes to help. Some of the later arrivals have brought food that they’ve prepared themselves—among the hodge-podge of offerings, Sukhin spies kueh, a dish of lasagna, some sort of cake.

  Doris Day’s “Perhaps Perhaps Perhaps” starts to play on portable speakers.

  This must be their version of the dinner gong. People begin to arrive, walking in from both sides of the alley, to take their places at the table. Most of them are older, shabbily dressed, tired-looking. They come alone, but some of them greet each other. Some are construction workers, probably from Bangladesh and China. Others are harder to pigeonhole—middle-aged, not quite dishevelled, listless rather than tired. After everyone is served, a few of the salvager-cooks sit among them to share the meal, while the others eat in the kitchen. No one speaks, but it is a relaxed, companionable silence. The music—now Nat King Cole’s “Mona Lisa”—romanticises it all somewhat, but nobody seems to mind.

  Sukhin and Jinn eat in the kitchen, standing side by side. She looks tired. He wants to ask her so many questions, but holds off. He’ll be fine in the dark for one more day.

  “Thanks, Sukhin. You know, you don’t have to.”

  He takes the bag from her. “It’s fine. I told you, I don’t mind.”

  She sighs. “Fine. But I can do this myself.”

  Sukhin fights the urge to roll his eyes and succeeds. “Yes, of course. But let me, okay?”

  The anti-princess goes into her cardboard castle. The man who is not her prince walks away, feeling like he’s been entrusted with the crown jewels of a kingdom instead of a crummy bag of dirty clothes.

  Is this love? He hopes not. But he’s become thankful for the gentle setting on his washing machine—and he’s bought fabric softener.

  The woman stands outside a shop she doesn’t recognise any more. She can’t see inside—a display window now takes up the entire shopfront. It is all glass shelves with rows and rows of cakes and pastries, with a panel of gleaming wood behind them. The door is smoky glass, impossible to see through, with a polite sign asking customers to ring the bell for service.

  The cakes—they are so much grander than she remembers. So beautiful too, but she cannot imagine eating any of these.

  The woman stands outside the shop for a very long time, then she leaves and never returns.

  VIII

  HE’S GOING TO do it.

  He’s poured himself a gin and tonic, even though it’s barely two in the afternoon. Outside, it’s sunny and cloudless, and everyone is indoors, escaping the heat. His clothes are drying on the balcony—whites today. Inside, the air conditioning is on, he’s put on a Radiohead album and through the wall comes the faint sound of the neighbour’s vacuum cleaner. It’s like any other Sunday, except it isn’t—it’s The Day He Googles Her.

  He’s thought about doing this before, of course. Too many times. Each time, he’s managed to either put it off (this comes quite easily) or reason it into something vaguely sinister (not so easy; Sukhin isn’t really the moralising kind, least of all with himself). He knows the truth, of course—he’s petrified of what he might find out. But it’s been six months since she dropped back into his life, six months of wondering whywhatwhowhenwherehow, six months of waiting for her to tell him. So far, all he’s found out, beyond what he lea
rnt in the first month or so, is that she sleeps in the multi-storey car park if the rain is too heavy, joins the food-salvager folks (he still doesn’t know what they call themselves) at least twice a week and is now reading a copy of Paradise Lost that she found in a recycling heap. Not a crumb on what her life was like before, nothing whatsoever about what combination of circumstances could have brought her to this.

  His first thought had been that she was a fugitive. Had she killed someone? Embezzled millions? Had she been part of some sort of complex terrorist plot? Dramatic, ludicrous, but perfectly possible.

  Then it struck him that she might be running from some sort of domestic horror—an abusive husband? Unlikely—he’d have an easier time believing she’d been part of a terrorist plot. So mass murder for a higher cause, yes; victim of abuse, no. But wasn’t that part of the problem, though, that you could never tell who could or would be a victim? Or who could or would be an abusive psycho, for that matter. He remembered his Aunty Malkit telling his parents about an old friend of hers from dentistry college (“Such a good girl she was, always studying, no discos, volunteered at the orphanage on weekends”) whose husband had filed a suit against her after fifteen years of marriage for physical and mental abuse. “She beat him with a garden hose, can you imagine?” Aunty Malkit sounded deeply horrified, but something in her voice, an undertone of an undertone, seemed to ring closer to schadenfreude than sympathy. It made Sukhin wonder if hers was a horror of the beating or the garden hose.