The Hungry Ghost

by H. S. Norup

  Without a word, I comply. “I don’t want you to drag dirt all over the house.” That’s exactly what Mum used to say. Although I can’t remember when she last said it. Lately, she didn’t care much if the floor was a bit mucky, and I’d been doing most of the hoovering.

  After folding the front of my T-shirt up, I use it to carry the stuff from my pockets upstairs.

  When I close the door to my room, I hiss, “You’re not my mother.”

  —29—

  “My brother used to have a stepmother, too,” Ling says. She’s standing on my desk, glowing faintly in the unlit room. “She was kind to him, but not to me.”

  “What d’you mean?” I unfurl the T-shirt and unload my stuff on the bed. “Wasn’t your mum his stepmother?”

  “No.”

  There’s a series of quiet knocks on my door, and Maya enters.

  “Ma’am said for you to shower before you eat.” She places a tray with sandwiches and a glass of milk on the desk where Ling stood a moment ago. Then she takes a chocolate bar from the pocket of her wide trousers, puts it next to the plate and winks at me.

  After I’ve thanked Maya, and she’s gone, Ling floats back inside, through the wall, although the window’s open. I swallow one of the tuna-salad triangles—I’m starving—before I step into the shower. Ling sits in the sink, while I’m scrubbing my dirty nails and shampooing my hair.

  I’m trying to detangle the strands, with Ling gazing over my shoulder into the mirror, when I notice three thin lines on my cheek. They’re deeper than the scratches on my hands, and perfect, parallel lines. I must’ve run right through a bush with long thorns.

  “I don’t understand…” I pull on my pyjamas before I’m completely dry, wrap my hair in a towel and grab another sandwich. “How could this William be your half-brother if your mum wasn’t his stepmother?”

  “Ma was William’s nursemaid. His mother died when he was born. Ma said Sir was grief-stricken afterwards.”

  I push the food away. In my notebook, I begin to make a list of everything we’ve discovered, starting with Ling’s brother and his blue eyes.

  Ling hugs her knees and leans back into the pillows on the window seat. When I stop writing, she goes on talking. “Ma took care of William and tried to console Sir. She said that once, only once, on William’s third birthday, Sir drank too much, and she consoled him too much. She said he did not remember it afterwards. She never told him he was my father.”

  “But that’s awful. Your poor mum. Wouldn’t your dad have been happy to know he had a daughter?”

  “I have been watching your father and your stepmother… but it was different in my time. A taboo. Ma was already shunned because she was pregnant. She did not want anyone to suspect the father was a Westerner, so she made up a story about a secret engagement to a recently dead Chinese servant in a neighbouring household. We all believed her—I looked like Ma not like Sir.”

  “So how did you find out?”

  “Ma was crying. Someone was screaming at her.” Ling closes her eyes. “I do not quite remember.”

  “William must have known too, if he called you… beloved sister.” I stumble over the words. They sound too formal, like something you’d write on a gravestone, not say out loud. But I guess they spoke differently in the past.

  Ling smiles, but like a flash of lightning it’s followed by thunder. “He cannot have meant it. He forgot about me. I hoped and hoped; it was all I had, after Ma died…”

  “Were you still in the black-and-white house?” I ask, to stop her from crying.

  “No. Ma and I shared a dark room with six other women, in the Pagoda Street block. Ma was ill and coughed constantly. They all did. On her good days, she talked about William and his father. She loved them both. ‘William is a good boy,’ she said. She was certain he would find me and take care of me. She was wrong.

  “The coffin-makers and tombstone-carvers in Macao Street gave me coins to help them with English spelling. After Ma died, when I began coughing up blood myself, they did not want me near their shops. Until I stopped going outside, I looked for William everywhere, but I never saw him. He never came back. He forgot he ever had a sister.”

  “I’m sure he didn’t.”

  A breeze rattles the flaps on my memory loft, as if Ling’s newfound memories should make me want to peek in the hidden box.

  “Your last memories are so concrete… street names and everything. Perhaps the dragon has the fire under control and it’s all coming back. Do you remember the surname now? Or the street from when you lived with William?”

  She shakes her head, then hides her face in her palms. I can see her tears through her hands.

  “I have an idea. You remember the house itself, right?”

  We try to draw the house.

  I’m drawing, as Ling’s describing windows, the veranda, the roof and the striped blinds. The result looks like something I could’ve drawn when I was six. But it’s clearly a black-and-white bungalow.

  “Clementine told me the black-and-whites are listed, so the one you lived in might still be here. Can you search for it during the night? If we have an address, we might be able to find out who lived in the house. And perhaps seeing it will make more of your memories come back.”

  At a hard knock, Ling ducks under the bed. Dad swings my door open.

  “Why are you sitting in the dark?” he says and turns on the ceiling lamp.

  He gives me a hug, moves my food tray to the window seat and leans against the desk across from me. Lizzie hangs from the ceiling above his head. I’m about to show her to him, when he begins speaking.

  “Freja,” he says. “I understand it’s difficult for you… coming here… not knowing how Mum’s doing… starting a new school… me travelling…”

  And I know what’s coming. He’s going to tell me off for going to the cemetery and carrying my knife.

  “… But I must say, I’m a bit disappointed,” he continues, in a voice that clearly means it’s more than a bit. “Clementine’s making such an effort, and you’re not even trying. She says you mope in your room every afternoon—”

  “I have homework.”

  “And evening. I doubt you have that much homework.” He takes my hand. “You’re part of this family. We want you to be part of this family. Please try.”

  I’m staring down at our hands. My right thumb still has a tinge of green-brown from the root-rope. It makes me think of the hidden box. Does Dad know what it contains?

  “She also says the mum of one of your new friends called to invite you over, but you don’t want to go—”

  “I just didn’t want to go that day!”

  Kiera, Sunitha and Cheryl Yi have plans to browse around Chinatown tomorrow. I said I wasn’t sure I could come, because Dad wasn’t arriving home until tonight. But now that I know Ling used to live in Chinatown… Perhaps I can uncover something helpful. And it’s the perfect excuse to get out of Clementine’s family-time.

  “Is it okay if I hang out with some girls from school tomorrow?” I ask.

  “Of course it is.” Dad smiles. “I’m glad you’ve found friends already.” He gives me another hug and leaves, without mentioning my knife or Bukit Brown.

  “Why are you not trying to be part of the family?” Ling asks from under the bed. She floats up through the mattress to lie on the pink bedspread. “Is your stepmother evil?”

  “No.” I say, “That’s the problem. Clementine’s nice. Most of the time. Too nice. But she already has Dad and the twins.”

  “She is lucky,” Ling says.

  I nod. “Mum only has me. If I end up really liking Clementine… If I become part of her happy family… then my mum would be all alone.”

  “Why? Would you not still love her?”

  “Of course. But…” I don’t k
now if I can explain to Ling why it would feel like a betrayal. “The day I realized that we wouldn’t ever be a family again, I was eight, almost nine. Mum said Dad wanted me to meet someone and that her name was Clementine. I remember the first thought that went through my head was that if I ever wanted to name a girl after a fruit, then I’d prefer ‘Apple’ because apples grow in Denmark.”

  “But mandarin oranges are auspicious,” Ling says.

  “She’s not called ‘Mandarin’, though, is she?”

  Ling shrugs.

  “I said I didn’t want to meet his stupid girlfriend… and that’s when Mum told me Clementine was pregnant and they were getting married. Dad was starting a new family. As if it was as easy as starting a new drawing!” I rip my sketch of the black-and-white house from the notebook, crumple it up and throw it in the bin.

  “Mum said it wouldn’t be easy to see Dad with a new baby, but that I would always be their number-one girl. I remember the black smudges from her mascara on the sleeves of her dressing gown after she wiped her eyes. I promised her that she’d always be my number one and that I’d never ever so much as like Clementine.”

  I pull the towel from my hair and burrow my face in it, willing it to have the same scent as Mum’s dressing gown. But it smells of foreign detergent and my apple shampoo. I have no problem recalling Mum’s convulsive sobs while I hugged her so tight I almost couldn’t breathe. Even then, I didn’t cry.

  After the twins were born, it became much harder for Mum to see the stars.

  —30—

  On Saturday morning, Dad isn’t feeling well. He comes staggering down the stairs, while I’m eating breakfast. His face is a greyish-yellow.

  Eddie runs over to hug his legs, shouting, “Daddy, Daddy!”

  Dad ruffles his hair.

  Clementine appears from the office in a purple leotard, saying, “Are you feeling better?” Then she sees him, and her tone changes. “Oh, Will. You need to get back to bed. I’ll get Maya to bring you a lemon-ginger tea before I go to my yoga class.”

  A little after ten, I meet Sunitha and Kiera outside Botanic Gardens station. I’m wearing the shorts Clementine bought me. When I left, she was staring at the embroidered pockets, as if she had X-ray vision. But I didn’t bring my Swiss Army knife, although I feel unprepared without it.

  At the bottom of an extremely long escalator, Cheryl Yi’s waiting for us, because she’s come from another line. She’s sitting on the floor. It’s so squeaky clean you could eat off it, if there weren’t signs everywhere with crossed-out food, stating fines of up to five hundred dollars for doing so.

  The train’s full and we have to stand.

  “Gosh, this place is packed like anchovies. I can’t believe you haven’t been to Chinatown yet. We’ll show you everything!” Kiera squeals. “It’ll be sooo much fun! My mum has this route she always walks with our visitors. I’ve been on it like a million times.”

  “My grandparents used to live in Chinatown,” Cheryl Yi says, but Kiera goes on, telling me about temples and chopstick shops and a wet market with fish. I don’t ask, but I wonder if it’s some kind of water tank where you can catch your own fish, which would be really cool.

  Every time the train approaches a station, a voice says “Please mind the gap” and something like “Be happy happy”. I listen for a couple of stations before I ask Cheryl Yi why they’re telling us to be happy happy. She giggles and tells me they’re saying, “Berhati-hati di ruang platform,” which means “Mind the gap” in Malay.

  Another escalator packed with people delivers us above ground in a futuristic glass station building. It’s squeezed in between old shophouses in primary colours. Cheryl Yi leads us through the hordes, because Kiera can’t remember the way.

  In the market, it’s mainly the floor that’s wet, because it’s being washed down with hoses. The stallholders wear wellies. They sell all kinds of fish—even a three-metre-long shark. In a corner, there’s a stall with frogs and small turtles in cages. And it isn’t a pet shop. While we’re watching, the Chinese stallholder kills a frog with the blow of a mallet. Kiera and Sunitha gasp and hide behind their hands. Cheryl Yi shrugs.

  I stare in fascination. But Sunitha is pulling us away and outside, saying, “Let’s wait a while before we go to the hawker centre to eat.”

  “Come, Freja, you have to see this.” Kiera drags me towards a monumental temple. Before we enter, Sunitha helps me tie a borrowed shawl around my bare legs. Inside, everything is red and orange and gold. Upstairs, one of Buddha’s teeth is exhibited in a golden cage behind glass. On a raised platform, a man in a suit is sitting cross-legged, with closed eyes.

  Kiera sighs. “Just imagine—in here, all that glitters really is gold!”

  “Do you know where Pagoda Street is?” I ask Cheryl Yi.

  “Of course. That’s where we came out of the MRT.”

  The meditating man opens his eyes and shushes us.

  “And Macao Street?” I whisper.

  Cheryl Yi shrugs and shakes her head. I search the map on my phone, but the only Macao Streets I find are in China or even further away. Ling must’ve misremembered the street name, which makes me wonder if I can trust any of her memories.

  As soon as we’ve taken off the scratchy shawls and are outside the temple, I ask about hungry ghosts. Cheryl Yi shows me an old oil drum where people are allowed to burn offerings.

  “So, what exactly are they burning?” I ask her. Half-rotten pumpkin must be difficult to ignite. And there are shapes in the oil drum that are much bigger than the hell banknotes.

  “Joss paper,” she says. “Banknotes or paper effigies. There’s a kimzua shop around the corner where my ah ma goes.”

  She leads us to a shop bursting with colour. Even Kiera goes quiet, while we look at everything from life-size dogs, toiletries and Smsung phones, to canned Ice Tee and Caca Cola, McDnalds fast-food and whole meals with desserts. Every item’s made of paper or thin carton and meant to be burnt for the hungry ghosts.

  “Why is everything spelt wrong?” Sunitha asks.

  “The spelling mistakes are on purpose,” Cheryl Yi explains, “because nothing in the underworld is supposed to be the same as here.”

  Kiera opens a pink cardboard laptop with a white apple logo and McBook written on the outside. “I wish I had a new computer instead of a hand-me-down,” she says and strokes the paper keyboard.

  I wonder what Ling might like. Perhaps a red school bag, with a matching pencil case and notebooks. It only costs four dollars.

  “So how does it work?” Sunitha asks. “You burn these, and then what? Your ancestors can use them in the afterlife?”

  “Or the smoke might appease wandering ghosts. You want them happy, so they don’t hang around after the seventh month.”

  “Can they do that?” I ask.

  “Unless the Hell Guards find them and bring them back.”

  “The Hell Guards?” Sunitha asks.

  Cheryl Yi rolls her eyes. “You must’ve seen them, Kiera?”

  “Mmm… There’s a cow and a horse, right?” Kiera’s holding cardboard computers in four colours, saying she wants to buy one to send a signal to her parents. I’m glad, because then it’ll look less strange if I buy a gift for Ling.

  “I have an idea,” Cheryl Yi says. “We should go to Haw Par Villa to see the underworld and the Hell Guards. It’s weird and haunted and only like five or six stops on the Circle Line.”

  While Kiera’s paying, the shopkeeper hands me the paper school bag.

  “Can we do some living-people shopping, first?” Sunitha starts talking about what she wants to buy, but I’m not listening.

  Next to the counter is a stand with paper effigies I hadn’t noticed earlier. A baby care set contains nappies, dummies, milk bottles and silent rattles. Paper playsets for little boys an
d girls are filled with cars and building blocks or dolls with extra clothes. Toys to keep babies and toddlers occupied in the afterlife. Dead babies and toddlers.

  All the colours become a swirling blur.

  —31—

  Kiera and Sunitha drag me out of the shop and across a road with streaks of yellow and blue taxis. Although they’re talking to me, all I hear is the buzzing noise of a thousand bees. They sit me down somewhere crowded, and then Cheryl Yi is by my side.

  “Drink this!” She shoves a sweating plastic cup with a straw into my hand. Her voice is muffled.

  I take a long slurp. Gradually, the colours around me settle into people and objects. I’m sitting on a plastic stool at a round plastic table. Next to Cheryl Yi, two Kleenex packets lie on the table above empty stools, but the other four places are occupied by strangers. Between quick chopstick movements, they’re peeking at me. I have no idea where I am, and I’m unsure how I got here.

  “Nice lemonade,” I say after another sip.

  “Lime juice. Same same, but different.” Cheryl Yi’s words are clear now, but she’s almost drowned out by the noise of stools scraping against the floor and clattering trays and plates and chopsticks. There are people everywhere, talking and shouting. “The others are getting food. Will you be okay here for a short while? I’ll be right back.”

  I nod and watch her make her way through the crowds along the endless row of food stalls. Unfamiliar smells waft towards me from sizzling frying pans and woks. Above the stalls, photos display the food they serve and prices between two and five dollars. I stare at the picture of a fish-head with milky eyes that’s swimming in a bowl of soup with veggies, until Sunitha and Cheryl Yi return.

  “I didn’t like the look of the dosa, so I got popiah and kueh pie tee instead.” Sunitha places a tray with plates of fresh spring rolls and tiny stuffed tart-shells on the table.