Impractical Uses of Cake

by Yeoh Jo-Ann

  Absolutely baffling. How much fun can it be to camp in a park like this, a hundred metres from a giant parking lot, with McDonald’s just a half-hour walk away?

  “Hallo! You want water?”

  He jumps. The offer comes from a man who appears about his father’s age, who’s looking at him with concern. Sukhin realises he’s still heaving from his run, and he must look a pitiful wreck. He nods, more out of curiosity than thirst, and follows the stranger to one of the tents.

  The man hands him a cup of water. “You sit down lah. Rest a bit.”

  The plastic sheet spread in front of the man’s tent looks clean and Sukhin doesn’t want to track dirt all over it. But neither does he want to remove his shoes—it just isn’t wise to take off your shoes until you are absolutely certain of not being in danger.

  “Eh, don’t worry lah. Just sit down.”

  If he refuses, he will probably come off as either a snob or an asshole. So he sits down awkwardly near the edge of the sheet, his feet planted on the grass.

  “Just now, I check because somebody say maybe you police,” the man says. His tone is friendly, conversational. He watches Sukhin gulp down the water. “Running must bring water, you know.”

  “I know. Sorry.”

  “No need sorry. Water free, you just drink.” The man smiles. “Funny, right? Last time got house, must pay for water. Now no house, water free. Like that lah, yah?”

  Yup. Like that lah.

  “Police ah?”

  “No lah. He say he teacher.”

  “Then you give him your name and handphone number for what?”

  “He say got project, got people cook free dinner, anyone can go. He say he ask if they can bring food here.”

  “Hah. Don’t have lah. Keong, where got people so free one?”

  “Aiyah. He say got. If got, got lah. If don’t have, same what.”

  Sukhin almost loses his way, but he gets there with five minutes to spare.

  The place she has chosen is tucked away from the busier streets, away from the trendy establishments and the ladies who lunch then drink. The façade is an exposed-brick wall with a glass door. A small engraved metal plate hangs above it. Sad Cypress. Odd name for a café.

  He goes in. The door is much heavier than it looks; he almost stumbles backwards.

  A waiter walks briskly towards him, apologising for the door. Sukhin looks around quickly. Only two tables are occupied and he doesn’t see her.

  “Mr Dhillon?”

  How unnerving. “Yes.”

  He follows the waiter upstairs, through a short, dark corridor and into a room filled with massive earthen pots of fine-leafed bamboo. Overhead, small windows puncture the roof, letting in shafts of sunlight. In the centre of the room, at a table for two, she sips tea from a glass teacup. She stands up as he walks towards her. Her dress is plain and grey, falling in a straight line from her shoulders to her ankles.

  “Sukhin.” Her tone is warmer than he expects.

  She hasn’t aged much since he last saw her—ten, maybe eleven, years ago. He wonders if she thinks he has.

  “Hey Ping, thanks for meeting me.”

  They sit down. There isn’t anything as pedestrian as “just black tea” on the menu, so Sukhin ends up with an indecently priced concoction of pine needles, basil seeds and other un-tea-like things. Ping tells him how nice it is to see him again, after all these years, sounding like she means it. He tells her he’s teaching at their old school, wishing he could think of something more interesting to say. They then spend what seems to Sukhin to be an interminably long time talking of random things, both circling the only topic that brings them here.

  Sukhin is the first to give up. He had no idea Jinn went missing, he tells Ping.

  “You didn’t? It was in the papers, all over Facebook. We told everyone.”

  “I don’t read the papers,” he admits, feeling stupid. Everyone expects teachers to read the newspapers—why? They’re so tiring. “And I’m not on social media.”

  She doesn’t show any surprise. He feels a new respect for lawyers. Anyone else would have at least raised an eyebrow.

  “Have you heard from her?” She looks him straight in the eye.

  “No.”

  She takes another sip of tea. “I thought you had. Your email came out of the blue.” A pause. “I thought you might have news to share.”

  No, he tells her, he doesn’t. But while trying to hunt Jinn down for a reunion dinner with their old friends from school, he learnt that she was missing. He wasn’t sure who to call or ask, but he thought of Ping.

  “How did you find me?”

  “Oh, I didn’t. Someone said you had set up a bakery and Google did the rest.”

  They sit in silence for a while. Sukhin prods at the pine needles at the bottom of his teapot with his teaspoon. Ping taps a finger soundlessly against the edge of her saucer.

  “Congratulations on the bakery—I hear only good things about it.”

  Ping smiles and looks pleased. “Thank you.”

  He wonders if she’s thinking of her sister—can it be that, like him, Ping can’t think of cake without thinking of Jinn? Running a bakery must be a constant reminder of her sister—does she do it on purpose?

  “My colleagues got me one of your cakes for my birthday. Very good.” Why is he saying all this? He needs to stop talking.

  “That’s lovely.” She sighs, suddenly looking tired. “You know, I was really hoping you had news.”

  “She wouldn’t have looked me up.” She didn’t.

  It’s probably why Ping hadn’t bothered to try to reach him when Jinn went missing. She would know all about the circumstances of their split— she probably knew more than he did. Jinn always told her everything.

  “My sister says it’s weird to keep your eyes open while you’re kissing someone,” Jinn said once, out of nowhere. They were in her room on campus. She was studying for a test; he was fighting the urge to tidy up.

  Sukhin was mortified. “You told her that?”

  “Kiss me—and try doing it with your eyes closed.”

  “You’re nuts.”

  “Ping says you might be. Come on, try closing your eyes.”

  He felt himself go red. He began to rearrange Jinn’s bookshelf. He would never be able to look her sister in the eye again.

  And yet here he is, drinking tea in this poncy café, looking her in the eye. Lying to her face. Our wills and fates do so contrary run.

  One of the otter pups has caught a fish. Grabbing it with his two front paws, he takes its head off with his little otter teeth. The crowd goes wild— and every amateur photographer within zooming distance has a go at Fish Caught at Four Thirty-Seven.

  The pup looks straight at Sukhin as he gnaws on his victim’s guts.

  “I don’t know where she is,” he tells it, leaning a little over the guardrail separating the path from the riverbank. “Sorry.”

  It’s the third day in a row that he hasn’t been able to find her. Last week, he only saw her twice. The week before, not at all. He misses the cardboard house, that alley—simpler times. Now that Kim Seng’s bicycle has made Jinn a moving target, Sukhin never knows when he’ll see her next, or where—last Saturday, he walked four kilometres before he finally found her lurking below a bridge, watching a couple of birds make a nest on an islet in the middle of the river.

  “Shhh,” she whispered as he approached. “Architects at work.”

  Half the time, he doesn’t find her. She doesn’t have a favourite spot in the park, so all he can do is keep walking and hope he encounters her before it’s time to turn back—he’s set the U-turn time at one hour on weekdays and two hours on weekends.

  Maybe she doesn’t want to see him. Maybe this is why she insisted on moving here. She always looks pleased to see him, when she sees him. But he gets the feeling that he isn’t ever missed—does he want to be missed?— and that his coming and going doesn’t quite matter.

  What does? Or rath
er, what did? Something mattered enough once to set all of this in motion. Some life-event equivalent of a star collapsing into itself, sucking in everything that is or comes close, even light, even time.

  “Ping, what happened?” He asked the question before losing the courage to lob it across the table.

  She was silent for a few minutes, staring into her teacup. “She never said anything to me. But I’m sure there was something.”

  “I’m sorry.” He was. Ping was lying. Jinn’s note was meant for her—so while Sukhin only knew the contents of the note but not the context, she had to know.

  Ping waved the apology aside. “It’s fine. I’d be curious too.” She looked up at him. “I know you loved her.”

  Was that meant to throw him off balance? It did.

  “That was so long ago.” He tried to sound casual—but why? They were talking about a missing woman, not a missing pen. “I hope she’s all right.”

  She didn’t take the bait. No echo of his sentiments, no indication of her own.

  Did he do the right thing, reaching out to Ping? He doesn’t even know how much Ping knows. Does she know that the missing Jinn is vagabonding? Is she even looking for her sister? Or does she assume she’s dead, rotting somewhere no one will ever look? And what the hell happened? Of course, if Jinn wanted him to know more, he would. But she doesn’t. Why? What difference will it make, to her or him? None to him—if she turns out to be a mass murderer, he will still prowl the park for her and bring her cake.

  He’s past the wetlands now, a long way from where he parked his car. He hasn’t been this far out since the day he cycled over to Punggol Park from the east coast, but there’s still no sign of her.

  Fine—he doesn’t need to see her today. He was relieved when he didn’t find her yesterday or the day before. He knows she won’t ask if he’s feeling better or if he wants to talk or anything banal like that, but every now and then he gets a flashback of standing rigid in her arms the last time they met, hungover and weeping, and he wants to throw himself into the river. He blames the rum. He blames Dennis’ glib tongue and the bartender’s susceptibility to glib tongues. He also blames Jinn—why, she practically coaxed him into tears. What does she think of him now? What will he say to her?

  Crying is such a hassle. Especially when the witness to your meltdown— and its palliative—is the girl who once horrified you by crying at everything, everything. The girl whose tendency to cry you treated like an inconvenient, ever-present affliction, like a damaged kidney or malformed lung.

  “Sukhin! I can’t go in, Sukhin.”

  He could hear her voice but he couldn’t see her. A hand emerged from behind the bushes nearby. It waved. “Over here.”

  Sukhin hurried over. Crouched behind the bougainvillaea was Jinn, her face a mess of tears, black streaks and smudged red blotches. She was still crying, but no sobbing—thank goodness.

  “The service starts in fifteen minutes. We’ve got to go in. Grace is getting married, Jinn.” He stopped. Should he put his arms around her? Would that help? “It’s a good thing. Grace wants to get married.” He wondered what else would help. “Twenty-four is a bit young, but she knows what she’s doing.”

  A few minutes passed. The crying stopped, but she still looked like a professional mourner.

  “Are you going to be okay? Do you want to go home?”

  “No, no. I’m okay, I’m okay. I’m super happy for Grace.” She took a deep breath and began tearing up again. “It’s just such a big thing, you know, one of us getting married.”

  “Yes, and you’re about to miss it.” He looked at her in her inglorious snivelling, wiping her face with the backs of her hands, and loved her a little bit less.

  In the end, just minutes before the service began, he put his jacket over her head and led her into the church and safely into a pew.

  “Sudden attack of photophobia,” he told the usher.

  There she is suddenly, just over a metre away. He stares at her in sudden wonder. How did she go from that snivelling mess to this mad, marvellous creature who will sleep anywhere and eat discards and still smile like that? What a marvel you are.

  She’s beaming, sweaty—did she run to him? Did he miss that? Yes—the bicycle is way over there, next to that bench. He hopes she locked it.

  “Sukhin. You’re here.”

  I am. I am I am I am.

  “Brought you a bit of cake.” He hesitates, then adds: “Made it myself.”

  “You clever thing.”

  Our wills and fates do so contrary run.

  “Oh, are you taking those boxes away?”

  “Pa, we’ve talked about this, remember? They’re for my friend.”

  “Jaswant!”

  “What? Darling, it’s been weeks and weeks. I just thought Sukhin changed his mind.”

  Sukhin’s living room is a mess, strewn with cardboard. Sheets and strips and bits and flaps everywhere. In a box, in a haphazard, well-meaning attempt at organisation: craft knives, scalpels, glue and stapler guns, thumb tacks, brushes, wire, pliers, plastic tubing, an assortment of nuts and rivets, a handsaw.

  Paper all over the study—old newspapers and magazines taken from the staff lounge, stacks of drawings, both technical and schematic.

  The bedroom plays host to all the objects banished for their own good from the living room and the study—document files, favourite books, the hemi-demi-semi-done Guggenheim puzzle.

  The kitchen alone is unscathed.

  “I tried that route to East Coast Park. Long.” They’re watching the sunset from one of the bridges in the park.

  “Told you.”

  But it was worth the ride, she tells him. “I took off my shoes and walked in the water for a bit at Changi.”

  He can easily picture it—she’s been doing this at beaches since they were young. Once, she lost her shoes and he had to give up his. The blisters—he can still remember how much they smarted.

  “Is Changi one of the fake beaches?”

  “No. Well, maybe some parts.” Sukhin stretches out his legs. The sun has completely disappeared, but there’s a bright orange band across the sky where it was. “But there’s a proper bit—the Japanese took a bunch of people there, lined them up along the sea and shot them. There was that guy who found a skull while digging for worms, remember? They say the sea was red, you know, that morning. All day.”

  “Who’s they?”

  “My grandmother.”

  The sky is now a startlingly deep red. Sukhin wishes he hadn’t brought up the Changi Beach massacre.

  “I remember her. How is she?”

  “Stronger than her daughters. Far more stubborn.” He tells Jinn about his grandmother telling off his Aunt Lillian for buying less-than-great belacan for the nasi lemak sambal at Sunday lunch, just the day before.

  She tells him about helping a group of schoolchildren fish out frog spawn from the river for a project.

  “But it’s the school holidays.”

  “Maybe they’re supposed to have the frogs ready by the time school starts again.”

  Sukhin sighs. He hates school holidays, even if it means he’s off work as well. Children everywhere. Noise levels at a constant high. Punggol Park isn’t immune—the weekend crowds have become thicker with the sound of yelling, energetic children and frustrated, yelling parents desperate to tire them out.

  Jinn isn’t happy with the heavier traffic either, but “it’s still better than Chinatown”. She says this matter-of-factly.

  Months ago, back when the cardboard castle was still standing, he asked her why Chinatown. Noisy, cramped, full of people—how did she stand it? How did she even end up there?

  “I thought I’d like being lost in a crowd. And sometimes I do.”

  Is oblivion some sort of fantasy of hers? Or just anonymity? The idea of Jinn blending in unnoticed, anywhere, is still somewhat amusing— he remembers when she was so bloody loud. And not just because she insisted on half-yelling most of the time, protesting wh
en he begged her to keep her voice down, that Loud Enough to Cross a Football Pitch was her natural volume.

  Was it a Maths lecture? Yes, it was. He remembers the tap on his shoulder, his classmate Leonard pointing backwards with his thumb. Sukhin looked up and up. The lecture theatre had seats arranged in steep terraced rows circling the projector screen and lecture podium. He was at the bottom, right in front, with his class. Jinn’s class was near the back, about twenty rows up.

  He couldn’t see her but he could see: SUKHIN IM HUNGRY. Each letter in black marker on a piece of foolscap paper, all held up by her classmates, complete with blank spaces between each word.

  Mr Chua laughed in the middle of explaining linear regression.

  Sukhin wondered if she would be upset if he told her never ever to do this again. He didn’t. When the lecture ended, he rushed her straight to the canteen and fed her tea and biscuits.

  “There. That should do until five.”

  “Maybe.”

  When he offered to get more tea, she said he spoilt her. But she seemed very, very pleased about it. And even more pleased with the tea.

  A poke on his shoulder.

  “So, Sukhin, when am I getting nasi lemak? I’ll help you pound the chilli.”

  The man walks into the garden of walls. He has never been here. Until recently, he never knew the garden existed.

  It takes him half an hour to find her family wall. He looks at her tile, wondering what they put behind it instead of ashes. Some of her old things? Photographs?

  From behind him, a voice calls his name.

  He wouldn’t have come if he knew he wouldn’t be alone. The other visitor steps up and links her arm through his. It’s as if she expected him, though he knows this is impossible.

  “Did you see the obituary? Did you like the photo? I think she would have approved.” She speaks lightly, smiling.

  He doesn’t reply. Frowning, he rereads the inscription on the tile just below the pair of dates: You will be remembered, Jinn Hwa, by the sorrow you caused by your loss.