by S. L. Lim
It is such an unprecedented outburst, Yannie and her mother turn around and stare at him. Her father is breathing hard, sucking the air against his teeth. ‘Oh, you are very clever now, very clever!’ he keeps on saying, not quite meeting her brother’s eye. ‘Such a big man! You don’t need any of my money now!’
‘Well, excuse me.’ Theatrically her brother lays down his chopsticks. ‘May I at least finish my food sans these overt hostilities? Coming back to my hometown, to be greeted by my family like this … I am going to do some reading.’ He rises from his chair and thumps off, the dreaded footfall Yannie remembers from her childhood. Thump, thump, thump: I own you all.
Her mother almost runs after him, practically chasing him into the bedroom. Then, as he slams the door, she rounds on Yannie’s father.
‘You couldn’t keep your mouth shut, could you? This was supposed to be a happy day for our family.’
It’s different while her brother’s in the house: there’s a new thickness in the air. She feels like a child again, young and stupid, all emotion and no self-control. She realises that in his absence she has become, if not an adult, then at least something approximating one. She cooks meals twice a week, reads the English instructions on the medicines that her father is now taking. When the landlord comes calling, she answers the door and negotiates some further delay in the repayment of the loan her father has taken. In return, her parents have begun to treat her thoughts as if they have some value. She can remark on the news or on politics without being dismissed as ignorant, naive or starry-eyed. She will mention a food she dislikes, and her mother will quietly excise it from the table. All of a sudden, her preferences have weight within the household.
But all of this evaporates when her brother comes back. It amazes her, the speed with which their recent life falls away. They slip back into their pre-appointed roles: the household bully, the doting mother, ineffectual paterfamilias. Still, some good does come out of his visit: definitive proof there is a world outside her hometown. Money aside, she could go there one day. She could study overseas, even travel there just for the hell of it. One day. One day. Next time.
But what should she study? There are so many ideas crowding for space inside her head. Words are one thing, but then there are the mysteries of the body. She could be a surgeon, she thinks, slicing people up like so much uncooked meat. That doesn’t appeal … But then there are other occupations: a scientist, a businesswoman, a lawyer. Each possibility conjures up a fresh series of images, all of them ego-boosting and desirable. Yannie in a white lab coat, wearing safety glasses, titrating two brightly coloured substances that give off steam when they come into contact. Or in a courtroom in a suit, stabbing her finger in the air as she demolishes the arguments of the opposing counsel while the jury nods and smiles. Or …
Stop dreaming, she tells herself, don’t be such a dilettante. Pick one ambition and commit to it. You have to be practical, you don’t have infinite time and money to pursue all these daydreams – but why not? she wants to ask. Why should the children of the wealthy be the only ones who get to test things out? Letting their minds roam joyfully and pointlessly around while they search for their true calling.
The thought occurs: Those books that I read, those films on TV that I watch, they are produced by someone. Someone is making a living out of all of this: from dreaming other people, other worlds, into being. And then people like me enter into those worlds and pay them for the pleasure.
Immediately as she lands on this thought, she knows it is the right one. She also knows acutely this ambition is embarrassing, humiliating even. It must at all costs be hidden away from public view. It’s not just about the money, although that’s certainly a part of it. ‘Oh, he wants to be a writer? Prepare to starve in your old age!’ her mother said once, not entirely in jest, to the father of Yannie’s five-year-old cousin.
Still, there’s a separate shame beneath the financial, a voice from the lower strata of her consciousness that asks, Who do you think you are? It’s like catching someone masturbating in public, voluntarily exposing the fluids and emissions of their private self – no secret more humiliating to divulge. And yet. There is nothing else she knows how to want. For Yannie, no other work deserves the name. Everything else is just rearrangement.
She tries to drop the notion tentatively, casually, in conversation with her mother. ‘You know, it might be fun to write for a newspaper,’ she says while they mince garlic chives in the kitchen. ‘Or just to write in general. Maybe it’s a bit attention-seeking, but I think it would be nice to put down bits of your mind for other people to read later. Even if they didn’t agree with you. Even if they didn’t fully understand what you were trying to say.’
Her mother stays quiet for so long that Yannie starts to feel nervous. It’s better than the expected hilarity and scorn, but it’s also rather nerve-racking. The cracks across the face have got rarer, lately: these days, her mother interacts with her mostly through a series of two- or three-syllable commands. Fetch this! Rinse that! Go study! It’s a welcome relief, but Yannie isn’t used to this much silence. ‘Well,’ her mother says at last, ‘you can’t just write down anything that comes into your head. Professional writers, they have to research very carefully. People want to read books that were written by serious people, not silly things like you are always thinking about.’
‘I’m a serious person,’ Yannie says. The fact of saying it out loud makes it seem like a trivial statement. Like if you have to assert it, it’s automatically untrue.
Her mother waves a hand as if to swat away that errant thought. ‘Anyway, you know, it is not so easy to become a writer. Who would want to publish a book by you? You need to learn to do it properly, the way they want you to, so you can understand how the business works.’ She reaches across the kitchen bench for a bowl of soaked mushrooms, black fungus in cold water. ‘Yannie, I know that you are different. I’ve noticed from when you were very small. When you were a baby, you used to cry all the time. Looking after you was a living hell.’
‘Sorry,’ Yannie says, not overtly sarcastically.
‘That’s what it’s like when you have babies, just you wait. It is different when they are your own. Anyway, sometimes I think that you were born a generation too soon. These things must go in stages. Your father and I don’t have much schooling, so we lay the foundations. We set up a business and just a little money for you and your brother. Both of you must build on that, you must get good jobs, take care of the business, and make some savings. Then your children will have time to daydream. They will be the ones who go and do whatever they want.’
‘I’ll be dead by then,’ says Yannie, as neutrally as she can manage.
‘Oh, take away that black face!’ Seeing Yannie’s expression, her mother relents. ‘Oh, Yannie, remember, it’s not so bad. But I’ve learned, you see. If you don’t get your hopes up, then there’s no need to be disappointed. Anyway, you can’t go gallivanting off. I need you to help me here, to look after our family. Otherwise I won’t be able to cope.’
I need you. Words like a heat pack on Yannie’s cold hands. This is the first time Yannie’s mother has confessed that she needs her, that her daughter is not only a burden. Although she’s conveyed appreciation and love through other means. A special meal, an oblique compliment. Elephants and cars, cars and elephants.
Yannie feels her body stiffen all over, suffused with an emotion she doesn’t want. Her mother touches her gently. ‘Careful, now. Don’t talk while you’re working in the kitchen. You’ll cut yourself.’
But when her mother goes, the facts of life press in on her like the four walls of a metal cube. Yannie has talent, yes, and a hefty dose of self-belief – but she is also female, provincial and poor. Any chance of a life beyond the menial seems vanishingly remote. The anger draws a band around her body, constricting her chest. The worst part of it is that no-one, individually speaking, is to blame. There is no villain, no evil monster who has deliberately and personally
set out to quell her talents. It’s just the lottery of circumstances, a game she lost before she even was born. Lay down your arms, woman: this isn’t a battle, it’s a rout. And yet. And yet.
*
She dreams of Shuying. Quite unbidden, the thought will break across her consciousness like a wave across the beach. Shuying’s pale flesh, the squarish, ugly-lovely mouth, the muted living glow of human warmth which emanates from beneath her plain school tunic. The slow droop of her eyelids, that innocent smile. There is no time, place or sanctuary where these thoughts cease to pursue her. Sometimes, walking home in the evenings, she will look at the sunset and see Shuying’s face burning in the sky. During a maths exam, she actually has to pinch her own arm to wrench her thoughts away from Shuying’s body.
In the cold oxygen of logic, Yannie knows it’s impossible. She can never bring herself to declare her love out loud. It would be like death for her secret to be exposed to any living person, and to Shuying worst of all. In a few short years they will both have finished high school; and what then? She knows instinctively that their friendship is situational, not permanent. She’s not a sister, not even a close friend, let alone (don’t even think of it!) a lover. Just a witty acquaintance, useful for occasional amusement. An older girl who Shuying looks up to, nothing more. Nothing will happen between them. Not in this universe, or any other.
She can’t even say the name out loud. Shuying, Shuying – even the sound of it is made from something other than the ordinary substance of words. She watches her friend’s body swelling and softening, expressing its yearning for adult form. Her preoccupations are evolving, too. Where Shuying once talked about schoolwork, high-jump training and music, she now talks about boys. There is one from the nearby St Peter’s School who she is pining for. His name is Mark. Shuying confides this and other secrets to Yannie, who she seems to regard as a benevolent older sister.
‘The thing I like best about Mark is his arms,’ she says, dropping her eyes bashfully. ‘They’re so muscly. Sometimes I just want to knead them in my hands like dough.’
‘Really?’ says Yannie. ‘Well, dough-n’t do it without asking him first!’
Shuying makes a sound like ‘Hsssscht!’, a polite half-giggle. It means something, doesn’t it, that she would go out of her way to spare Yannie’s feelings?
She can’t help noticing, though, that Shuying has begun to go out of her way to spend time with her. At first she thinks it must be her imagination, but after years of careful study, she has become an expert in Shuying’s movements, primed to notice the slightest change in behaviour. She used to play cards with her friends on Thursdays, but now she hovers with Yannie in the canteen line and they buy lunch together. When Yannie is kept back for extra calculus practice, Shuying waits so they can walk home together from school.
One day Yannie leaves choir practice early, pretending that she’s nauseous though she’s really just bored, and Shuying follows. The ground is dry but the air is humid: a storm is coming on. It’s a joy to be outside after the cramped, stuffy classrooms. They walk hand in hand, chatting and laughing, enjoying the smell of rain that is about to come. Shuying’s hair, recently cut, floats in a bob above her shoulders. Every now and then Yannie steals a glance at her expression. The half-smile playing round Shuying’s lips goes straight to her head, like potent alcoholic vapours.
They cross the park, past the athletics track where they hold school races. Shuying says: ‘I don’t know what to do with myself.’
Yannie waits for her to continue. ‘What do you mean?’ she says at last. ‘Is there something the matter?’
‘No,’ says Shuying. They continue on in silence for a moment, and then abruptly Shuying stops.
‘Sorry …’ she says. Impossibly, there are tears glowing at the base of her pupils, making her eyes seem enormous. ‘Noone …’ she says with effort, and then stops. ‘No-one is going to like me now, are they?’
Yannie reaches out a hand to touch Shuying’s elbow. Touches the angles of it: warm, hard, alive.
There is no before and after: in a second they are giggling, rolling on the grass. There is too much to feel and no time to experience it all. The weight and warmth of Shuying’s body, warmth of flesh and form and life. She has a sense, neither joyful nor frightening, that her individual self has been obliterated: she is not a conscious being at all, only sensations detached from any central self, and no gap between sensations and other phenomena in the world. Time stops – there’s no point to it anymore. Everything in the universe has always been leading to this moment: Shuying’s panting breath, as if she is fighting to control her amusement; the slightly rancid smell of sweat beneath her collar. A touch of curry on her mouth. Sweet red clusters of ixora flowers at the gate. There’s a soft swell at the top of her chest; Yannie explores it left-handed. Shuying fumbles back, locating the gap between Yannie’s collar and neck, undoing the top button. Both of them are panting with suppressed laughter; they suck it back, great gobs of hilarity choked into the body. Her hand on Shuying’s hand, mouth on Shuying’s mouth. Hands creeping downwards, without having to talk about it at all. If you asked what she is feeling, she wouldn’t call it love. It’s much bigger than that, so large it can’t be described in our words at all.
‘I have to go.’
Yannie opens her eyes, squinting at the sunlight. Shuying’s face, still richly flushed, leans over hers. It looks enormous, large enough to blot out the sky. They kiss once more, fully across the lips. Avoiding Yannie’s gaze, Shuying does up her shirt, using her palms to ineffectually smooth away the rumples. She reaches over to grab her bag, and Yannie sees her knees are red from kneeling on the grass. Then, without looking back, she stands and walks briskly towards the road, towards other people. As she nears the gate at the perimeter of the field, she breaks into a run. She fumbles with the latch, and then the gate clicks behind her. She’s out of sight.
Yannie turns her face towards the sky and falls asleep.
*
The next day at school they avoid each other’s eyes. Without discussion, it is determined they will no longer eat lunch together. Nor will they walk home together after school. They are so scrupulous in avoiding each other’s company that Yannie’s other schoolfriend asks if they have had a fight. Yannie’s heart speeds up. ‘Oh, no,’ she says airily, waving her hand to show how trivial it all is. ‘It’s just a coincidence. It’s not like we’re best friends, anyway. We’re not even in the same year group.’
The following day the strategy of avoidance continues. The day after, however, post-choir practice, she sees Shuying pick up her schoolbag and walk furtively onto the street. She trails behind, trying not to let Shuying outpace her. She’s in a hurry today, almost jogging, the strong calf muscles stretching and distending. Yannie has to break into a run just to keep up. Shuying rounds a corner; Yannie’s canvas shoes skid on the pavement, and they almost collide. It’s like a joke, she thinks, slapstick humour. Something this stupid could only happen in real life.
She sees them standing together. Shuying and a boy of about fifteen wearing a white collared shirt. They are standing side by side, not touching, but with an unmistakable air of collusion.
‘Hello,’ she says, discovering that she’s out of breath.
There is a pause. Shuying’s eyes are bright with nervousness. ‘We’re going to get something to eat,’ she says, and then trails off. It’s not clear if Yannie is included in the invitation. ‘Oh, this is Mark, by the way.’
Mark smiles at her, affably enough. Yannie notices his powerful shoulders, the scale of him, and remembers Shuying’s words: ‘The thing I like best about Mark is his arms, they’re so muscly.’ She doesn’t feel anything. She doesn’t have time to feel anything yet.
‘You must be from St Peter’s School,’ she says at last. ‘How do you know each other?’
Mark nods. ‘Yes, that’s where I’m studying. I don’t mind school,’ he adds irrelevantly. ‘That’s not where I met Shuying, though. We met thro
ugh church.’ We. Yannie didn’t even know Shuying was Christian.
‘That’s nice,’ she says lamely. The three of them look at each other. ‘Well, see you later, then.’
Shuying’s eyes fly towards her, just for a moment, a fraction of a second, as she turns to walk away with Mark. She looks frightened, exposed. With that expression on her face, she looks like she’s about eleven years old. Then she walks away, arm hooked pointedly around Mark’s elbow, strong calf muscles propelling her down the street. Yannie listens to the diminishing volume of their voices. From a distance, you can’t hear the awkwardness at all.
Her sadness is absolute and not entirely for herself. It feels like everything is finished, not just with Shuying but forever: settled with a certainty that feels like death. The self that Shuying was, the exuberant small person who sang deliberately off-key in choir practice, has now taken her first steps towards disappearance – becoming a grown-up, one of Them. She can see it already: Shuying and Mark laughing together, Shuying wearing lipstick, in the midst of those conversations couples have, fascinating to the individuals within them and impossibly tedious for everybody else. (‘Yes, you did!’ ‘No, I didn’t!’ ‘Yes, you did!’ A playful slap on the arm, more excuses to touch one another.) They’ll finish school, maybe stay together afterwards, maybe not. Eventually, Shuying will find someone who’s ‘husband material’, as Yannie’s mother says. Someone serious, a provider, even-tempered; a little lacking in imagination, perhaps, but there’s nothing wrong with that. She and Yannie will see each other now and then; they’ll be friendly but the walls will come down, the way they do around married people. A hermetically sealed-off world. She thinks of her mother and her friends. Laughing, stabbing their fingers in the air, as they gesticulate with increasing animation. Watching the way they interact, you would think they are infinitely happier spending time with each other than with their husbands. Yet they nonetheless go home every evening to said husbands, drawn back by some mysterious force in spite of their dislike.
