by S. L. Lim
After her mother’s funeral, she walks around in a daze for a while. She feels light-headed, light all over, massless. If she stops concentrating, she fears, she will levitate, nothing left to anchor her to earth. Looking back, she sees this was stupid, her own idiot fault. I allowed myself to indulge in grief, wrapped my eyes in self-regarding mourning. Just another form of self-pity, really.
Because by the time she thinks to ask for documents and lawyers, it’s too late: her brother takes it all. Before the year is out, all of her parents’ remaining assets have been transferred into his name: the shop, the house, all that’s left in the bank after the mugging by the hospital. The chair where she sat to hold her mother’s hand, the tiles from which she wiped her father’s shit. It doesn’t matter how many times you wipe your parents’ arses. How many hours you stand behind the counter, the books you could have read in the time you spent calculating margins in order to keep the whole rotten edifice going – in legal terms, nothing belongs to her. She has no claim on it.
Her brother doesn’t even look her in the face as he explains. It isn’t guilt – she knows his conscience is well and truly spotless. He just can’t be bothered looking, that’s all. Yannie finds she has no energy left for a fight, legal or otherwise. It’s all she can do to refrain from throwing up. Kindly, he explains that he’s not planning on selling the house immediately: she can continue to stay on the premises while he and his family are overseas. ‘When we come back, maybe we can come to an arrangement.’
‘I’ll find a place of my own,’ she flashes back, then immediately regrets it. Dignity is for the rich. She’s not in a position for things like pride.
As she always does when caught on the updrafts of extreme emotion, she goes to see Shuying. Or rather, the outside of Shuying’s house: pausing on the threshold, she is struck by a shame so deep that she can’t bear to go in, can’t even knock. She is ashamed by how often she calls on her friend and how infrequently Shuying contacts her in return. It’s a compulsion, really, and one she knows in advance won’t make her feel any better. Actually seeing Shuying makes her even sadder, the face she used to love irreparably diminished by age and time and life, which is not beautiful. Are these the features she once saw burning in the sky? A thoroughly ordinary middle-aged woman, a boring housewife, and all she talks about is my husband, my husband, my husband. Love reversed into revulsion: a wet glove turned inside out.
But still as sleep advances, Shuying comes to her. She makes her home in Yannie’s hollows, chin fitting snugly in the space between neck and collarbone. Her smell mingling with Yannie’s smell, her warmth with Yannie’s warmth. Her dream lover’s arms round her shoulders, more real than the drape of her own arms around the pillow. It can’t be possible to yearn for somebody this much and still not have them. But the bed remains empty.
I suppose, she thinks, it’s my destiny to be unloved because I’m unlovable.
On the occasions she does get a chance to see the actual, physical Shuying, Yannie can’t help buying her presents. It starts out with small treats: coconut cakes, useful kitchen gadgets. Then, as she senses Shuying’s attention beginning to wane, she escalates: pricey jewellery, electronics, things Yannie shouldn’t be able to afford. ‘You must be careful – people will talk,’ her mother warned her once, while she was still alive. Yannie paid little attention at the time, putting it down to dementia; looking back, she wonders how much her mother really knew. It’s true, people do talk. She hasn’t heard them directly, but she’s seen them smile and cover their mouths when she walks into a room. She tries not to take it personally. All those knowing looks, those little sniggers – they’ve all been humiliated before, these people. Everybody has, at least once in their life – that’s why they need to expiate, pass it on to someone else.
I should count myself lucky, Yannie thinks. All I have to do is absorb the embarrassment on their behalf. In the Middle Ages, I’d probably have been burned alive.
Jun gets married. She attends the wedding banquet. ‘Congratulations,’ she says, while Jun gazes at her with hangdog eyes. The bride looks at her with hatred. ‘Sorry,’ she adds, and goes to pile her plate at the buffet.
She finds an apartment which she rents out of her savings, such as they are. There’s a metal security door – ‘Good safety!’ says the landlord – made of stainless steel, with the bars painted a maximally depressing black. Crime is up, everybody says – someone was dragged by the strap of her bag from a motorcycle – you can’t be too careful these days. Everything about the flat is little, modest, sparse: apologetic even in its dimensions, as if afraid to assert its own right to occupy the space. The single burner in the kitchen. The sad little study table with the pale halogen light. The bed as narrow as a tomb, and not one of those fancy rich-person mausoleums, either. And blinking in the corner, the TV, the machine she loves more than most of her relatives.
‘Do you like sitcoms? I Dream of Jeannie!’ says her aunt, chortling happily. But Yannie still prefers stories from outer space. Even as we speak, a travelling box cruises among the stars. Several episodes later, she is partially convinced that her rescuer is truly on his way. It’s only a matter of time – the long-delayed but still-expected something that you live for. Take me away, blue box, I’ve had enough of this earth, I’ll go wherever you want to take me.
She’s out of work for a while. She picks up odd jobs: secretarial, typing. For a while she works four days a week in the office of two middle-aged lawyers, who go out of their way to be kind to her. Even as they smile and wish her a good morning, she can see how they are mentally patting themselves on the back for their own politeness and generosity.
One day she meets her uncle for dinner, and out of nowhere he declares, ‘You know where the real goldmine is? Private tuition! Lots of stressed-out parents, lazy kids. They won’t listen to their mother and father. So a stranger must come in to kick them in the backside.’ He laughs. ‘What do you think? You’re a quiet girl, Yannie. But sometimes, I think you want to kick people up their backsides more than anybody.’
It begins with her aunt’s son’s friend, and then it grows. Before long, her reputation as a tutor has spread. She has a natural gift for teaching: competent and tough, fair but likeable. Soon she has over a dozen students, and even jacks up the price without losing more than one or two of them. Her students’ skin is plump and dewy; their youthful hair is black and bright. They start off studious and dutiful and get bored very, very quickly. They laugh easily at jokes which go over her head, but that’s OK, the jokes weren’t aimed at her in the first place. Their gaze slides, uninterested, across her faded and increasingly myopic eyes, skin starting to droop around her neck. It probably never occurs to them that she and they belong to the same species. ‘What am I going to be when I grow up?’ they wonder out loud, as if it’s up to them, and she feels like screaming, Don’t be so sure you have a choice! They are like projectiles launched on the trajectory she once imagined for herself, and she wishes them godspeed.
But it’s never enough – or rather, it’s enough to live on but not much beyond. There’s always another question to which the answer must be no. Can I afford a new jacket? No, I will just patch up this tear near the elbow and it will be almost as good as new. Will I be able to pay the rent, water and electricity all on time, thus avoiding late fees? Yes, I can, if I am willing to run my withdrawals account right down to the very bone. But having accomplished that, will I be able to bring red letters for my cousin’s young daughters at the New Year’s celebration? No? Best to avoid the family gathering altogether. And then it all turns out OK, because one of the parents decides to give you a bonus cheque as a reward for little Wei Min acing the exam (good on you, Wei Min!), but by this time you’re exhausted, tired from all of these crises, drained by the constant nervous effort of being poor. And you slump down and watch TV for a full two hours and then sleep, and then wake up, and are ashamed of your failure to make something of yourself, the limited time you’ve been allotted on
this earth. And so it goes: drained by the day-to-day business of being alive, so that thinking, feeling and creating are the last of your worries. Except now and then you sit with a pencil in your hand, and nothing comes, and you dream about the lives you might have had.
Jun comes over to visit. His wife has just died. Mid-forties, pancreatic cancer. They had no children.
‘I’m sorry, Jun,’ she says. ‘It’s not your fault,’ Jun says logically. ‘Actually, she wasn’t exactly faithful to me. It doesn’t matter now.’
‘No, it doesn’t.’ She is not altogether surprised to find that she feels no sympathy – she just doesn’t have the time. Tragedy is when I cut my finger, comedy is when you get decapitated in an unfortunate industrial accident. ‘Anyway, if there’s anything I can do, please let me know.’
After a number of years, she has saved enough to buy the apartment she’s been living in. ‘Oh, good,’ Jun says. ‘Now you are safe! You can stay there forever!’
Meanwhile, she hears her brother is moving up in the world. Apparently his firm has pioneered some brand-new method of corporate recruitment which some companies – banks and law firms and consultants – are excited about. ‘It’s human resources, not that wishy-washy stuff– it’s very scientific!’ says her uncle. She thought she’d be spared these remarks after her parents died, but apparently not. People like to be associated with her brother, the local boy made good. There’s a piece about him in the local paper. Her remaining relatives assiduously clip it out, circling his name and face in ballpoint, a level of diligence in inverse proportion to how well they actually know him.
Even Shuying hears about it. ‘You must be very proud of him,’ she says in her unlistening way. Yannie feels like her heart is about to inflate. She hardly ever sees Shuying now, and when she does, her friend goes out of her way to make it clear their relationship is only casual. They’re not even friends. They are ‘Just Friends’, a category even lower than ordinary acquaintances.
She says, ‘No, I’m not, actually. I’m not proud of him at all. We weren’t ever very close. It’s just a coincidence that we were related, that we had the same parents. There’s no reason why I should like him, since I didn’t choose to be connected to him at all.’
‘Really? I wish I had an older brother. Someone to look after me when my husband doesn’t.’ Shuying laughs, her married-woman laugh, which isn’t an expression of humour so much as a statement of position. ‘A nice big man, who has my genes, who will tell him no when he tries to bully me. You know, Yannie, you should count your blessings.’
It’s possible for love to coexist with annoyance. At this moment Yannie loves Shuying no less than she ever has, but is forced to admit she can be frustratingly obtuse. Yannie has told her on several occasions before how it was when they were children, but somehow her friend contrives never to absorb the information, despite giving every appearance of listening. The image in Shuying’s head is so strong that it overrides reality: sisters and brothers should love each other, therefore they do.
She tries again. ‘Really, Shuying, I’m not proud of him. I didn’t choose him, I didn’t choose for him to be my brother. It’s not my fault that we had the same parents. If I had my way, I would never need to hear from him again.’
‘Gosh,’ says Shuying with another little laugh. ‘I never knew that you were such a hateful person.’
An image of her father flashes before her eyes. Lately, Yannie has been worried she’ll forget her parents: the sound of their voices, what they liked to eat, the way they used to talk about their lives. This thought seems to frighten her more than it should. They’re already dead, after all. It’s not like forgetting will hurt their feelings. But it feels like murder, or at least a final stage of death: her memory is the only place where their lives can have meaning now; they no longer exist in time and space. Yannie finds herself speculating – longing to believe, even – that there is some way for the past to continue to be after it has gone away from you. Even if you can’t reach it. Even if you can’t interact with it at all.
On a blank piece of paper she writes some lines. It’s a weird sensation, ‘putting things down’ as if anybody will ever be interested in reading them, but she applies herself anyway, with many revisions and crossings-out. Once she’s finished she has a strange feeling, halfway between satisfaction and nausea. She’s not sure if she’s captured something true or made a feint, a misdirection leading further and further away from the truth, wherever that may be.
I’ve heard it said
that the human body can survive
for up to six weeks
on just air and water
and that there are animals
nourished by their winter fat
up to six freezing months
in the sub-zero winter
which brings me to the question
of how long I
can feed
off a single memory
before consuming it
or being consumed
and what it will look like
when these echoes
finally
renounce me
and I emerge, blinking
into the barely unimagined day.
*
Life goes on, and then you blink and wonder where your consciousness went. Whether you can even be said to have ever been conscious at all.
She watches TV. She reads a lot. She continues tutoring English to children who don’t care the smallest part about English novels, who only care about their A levels, grades to propel them to a glittering future. She reads novels about the dead, nineteenth-century stories of women in cloistered, sexless marriages, and poor but determined governesses. She tells herself: Before I was a bottom-wiper, I was an educated person once.
Jun comes by to visit more and more often. She doesn’t encourage him, but she does nothing to discourage him either. There comes a time when you need to have a body in the house, any body – any warm and conscious person will have to do. He never speaks of it overtly but hints in various ways at his loneliness, his need for feminine companionship. It occurs to her that if she wanted, she could have sex with him. The thought is excruciating. She can’t bear to think of Jun aroused, or even undressed.
‘Your friendship has been special to me,’ he says to her once, and she has to pretend to be extremely obtuse not to know what he is talking about. She cooks him various meals which he pronounces delicious despite their obvious mediocrity.
Seemingly oblivious to her distaste, he updates her with tales of her brother’s activities. ‘You know, he’s doing very well for himself. Always so clever – I couldn’t keep up with him at school. He’s built himself quite a following. Last time I got an email from him, I didn’t understand half the words he used! It’s too much for simple people like you and me to understand. I even saw an interview with him, it’s on YouTube. If you like, I can show you on the computer.’
He sits down before the screen, glasses sliding forward on his nose. She watches him spell the words out, index finger hovering in midair; he types a little too fast, and hits backspace often. But there is her brother’s face on the screen: all the flesh and blood and hatred of him. Exactly the same as he was, and yet still different: the facial features are the same, only sharper, the cheekbones more prominent and the colour going out. Eyes still sharp but beginning to dim with middle age. His body has fared somewhat better, encased in a suit so well fitted it might have been constructed especially for his body, its angles controlling the drape and droop of ageing flesh. The tie bright blue, like an artificial sky. She wants to giggle incredulously: who gave him these stupid clothes? What is this jealous child doing all dressed up like an adult?
‘Responsibility,’ he is saying, ‘that’s the magic word. Taking responsibility for your fate, your own achievements, your own failures. Either you sit around waiting for the world to give you a hand, or you get up by yourself. I hear so many people who want to cry poor, who complain about how they
missed out on advantages. Well, take a look at my story. I was born to a poor family in what was then the developing world. No iPads or iPods for me! But I refused to play the game: passing the buck, not taking responsibility for what happened. All the time, you hear people moaning on – it was all so unfair, my parents this, my society that. Let me be honest – I can’t stand this type of nonsense. What I say to the complainers is: stop talking this gibberish around me. Go and write your poorly reasoned and badly spelled complaints all over the internet. You hear it every day, on university campuses, in certain parts of the media: it’s all your parents’ fault, the government, the patriarchy, all of that self-indulgent crap.
‘Well, what I want to ask the complainers is: what’s stopping you? If you’ve got even a little bit of talent, a little bit of determination, then how come you haven’t made it? I don’t have a lot of patience for those excuses. Because, you see, I did it, and I’m not ashamed to say it out loud. I went out there and got an education for myself. I didn’t ask for help from anyone. I made something of myself, and these days, any person who really wants to can do the same. Anyone – and I know it’s not fashionable to use these words – anyone of calibre. Any person of quality, that is.’
Jun is perched on the edge of the couch, nodding away – utterly gormlessly, it seems. His mouth isn’t actually open, but she feels like it ought to be. Good, patient Jun, her brother’s high school friend, ever faithful despite the fact that her brother has never made the slightest bit of effort to help him, to keep in touch. Doesn’t even notice how the words which spool out of her brother’s mouth insult the entire history of his existence. A life much like her own: long years of steady kindness, looking after ageing parents (well, someone had to do it). Working in low-end real estate, the most boring job imaginable (it was the family business, and somebody had to do it). Caring for the young wife who was only his second choice, who turned yellow and swollen around the middle before her time. (Did he really love her? Did she love him? Who can tell at this distance?)
