by H. S. Norup
“Ling isn’t like that.”
“Maybe not, but are you absolutely sure she’s telling the truth?”
“There’s no way she could’ve faked those memories. I was there. I saw how they affected her.”
“But isn’t it odd she only remembered everything now?”
I shake my head. I can’t tell him about the dragon who’s putting out the fire in the north-west. He would want proof. And I don’t want to go back to that world ever again.
When he spots the pathway, Jason jogs onto the cracked asphalt. Here, he exhales, as if he has reached a safe harbour.
“Even if her story’s true,” he says, “you still might not be related. I mean, this place is full of wandering spirits. Perhaps she latched onto your dad because he’s called William and has yellow hair and blue eyes.”
I’m quiet while we walk towards the cemetery exit. I don’t want to believe Jason, but the thousands of Williams in the old newspapers make me uncertain. Ling has always been so focused on our hair and eye colours. What else links us to her memories?
“The enormous banyan tree is up there.” I point at the natural tunnel through the elephant-ear-like leaves. It’s right behind a massive grave with golden inscriptions on the shining reddish marble. Although I don’t want to go inside the root cage, I’m tempted to show him the tree.
“Aiyoh! Look at the state of this food.” Jason steps around the blackened, burnt paper on the ground in front of the grave. A whole meal with rice and soya sauce has been served for the ancestor. Now, a highway of ants covers the plate like a black undulating carpet draped over the food.
“Is that really what your ghosts want? I know some restaurants serve ants, and I guess I’d eat them in a survival situation, but this is disgusting.”
“I told you already, what they want is to be honoured and remembered.”
“And now that I know Ling’s story, I can remember her. Isn’t that enough? And I can see her. That must be proof we’re related.”
“Not necessarily…” Jason pushes his fringe back and squints at me sideways. “You could be a medium. Have you seen any other ghosts?” The gate’s in sight, and he stuffs the keys back in his jeans pocket.
“No, I haven’t, and I’ve been spending a lot of time in this graveyard.”
“Well, if I was a ghost and had one month’s holiday from a horrible place, I wouldn’t hang around in an old graveyard. I’d go out and have fun.”
I roll my eyes. “Like in a theme park? You’d go to Sentosa?”
“Nope. I’d go to a getai.”
Before I can ask what he’s talking about, Ling floats out from behind a normal-sized banyan tree, saying, “Can I come too? I love getai.”
—36—
“Hi Ling,” I say.
“What? Is she here?” The keys are out again, and Jason’s jangling them furiously.
I nod. “She’s standing right in front of you. Can you stop that noise?”
Ling’s holding her hands over her ears. I want to do the same. When he puts the keys away, with a sheepish look, I go on. “This is Jason, Ling. He’s helping us.”
Ling waves at Jason, who obviously can’t see her, because he’s gazing in a slightly different direction.
“What’s a getai?” I ask.
They both start speaking at the same time. Ling’s whole face lights up. From what I can understand, it’s some kind of show.
“Ah Ma’s helping at one tonight,” Jason says. He checks his watch. “It begins at half-past seven. We can take a bus from Lornie Road.”
I ought to let Clementine know where I’m going, but what if she wants me to come home? I’ve told her I’m at Jason’s, so she won’t worry, I think, before I turn off my phone.
On the way to the getai, I sit behind Jason. I hope the bus won’t be so full someone will want the apparently empty seat next to me, where Ling is floating. She says she has to concentrate to avoid gliding backwards through the seat or landing next to Jason whenever the driver hits the brakes.
I lean forward. “Where are your parents?” I ask so quietly Jason can ignore my question. If he’s an orphan, he might not want to talk about it, and Dad says my Danish bluntness can be more of a curse than a blessing.
“Somewhere in the Indian Ocean,” he answers.
For a moment I fear I was right, that they’re dead. Drowned.
Then he swings round to face me and says, “They’re marine biologists. They met when Dad studied in Germany—my mum’s German—and they’ve wanted to save the oceans ever since. That’s why I live with Ah Ma. During the school holidays, I usually get to fly out to wherever they are and stay on the boat. This summer they picked me up in Tasmania. It was fantastic, but freezing cold.”
I’m speechless. It sounds like it’s actually fine for him not to live with his parents—both of them—for months. “Do you talk to them every day?”
“Nah. Depends where they are. At the moment, once a week over their satellite phone. But I hear their voices every day. They’re doing this podcast, called Post from a Plastic Ocean every Wednesday. I always listen to it on the school bus.”
So that’s what he was listening to when I thought he was being rude. “And it’s okay, living with your grandmother?”
“It’s great. Mostly, it’s great. She worries a lot more than my parents. And she treats me like I’m still five years old. And she buys me the ugliest T-shirts, which I only wear inside the house. But she’s doing her best.”
I nod. I know what it’s like to be treated like a five-year-old.
We get off amid a cluster of identical high-rise blocks of flats with two-storey-high numbers on their sides. Long metal bars, with laundry hanging on them, stick out of some of the windows, like lonely hairs on a bald man’s head. Jason leads the way between the buildings and through the grounds of a temple. An old man is lighting candles around its perimeter. He glances up when Ling passes close to him. Behind the temple, a party tent has been erected, and people—mostly elderly Chinese—stream in through the opening.
Inside, row after row of plastic chairs are lined up in front of a stage, and they fill up fast. It’s so full, we can’t find Jason’s grandmother.
“Come on.” Jason pushes me forward through the bustle. “Look!” He points at the first row of chairs, right in front of the stage. “What d’you see?”
“Er…” The front row must be reserved for VIPs, because it’s empty, despite the fact that the seats on the many rows behind are fully occupied.
A man with a bowler hat and a glittering jacket enters the stage. A woman wearing a draped yellow dress and a matching, outlandish hat follows him. They start speaking into their microphones in rapid Chinese, constantly interrupting each other. Whatever they’re saying must be funny, because many of the aunties and uncles laugh and clap.
“Look closely,” Jason says, when the crowd quiets down. “Can you see anyone there?”
“Only Ling,” I say. She’s sitting alone in the very best seat, right in the middle of the empty front row. “What’s she doing up there? Aren’t those seats reserved?”
“Yep! They’re reserved for the hungry ghosts.”
“Twenty seats for ghosts or something happens,” an auntie next to me says. “Last time, forget one chair and middle of performance something off the lights. Another time, some ang mo sit in front row and loudspeaker fall down.”
A dancing troop with a sparkling singer have taken over the stage. The deafening sound makes the loudspeakers crackle. All the aunties sing along.
Jason starts pulling me towards the exit, shouting in my ear, “If you can’t see any ghosts, then I doubt you’re a medium.”
“Wait. What about Ling?” I make my way to the side of the front row and try to catch her attention. She’s busy clapping and singing. When
she finally sees me, she waves me away. It looks like she doesn’t want to give up her seat.
The pulse in my head pounds. The music is giving me a headache. My ears are still ringing when we’re outside the tent.
“There’s one more place we can try,” Jason says, and he leads me to the MRT station instead of the bus. “The ghost station.”
We stand on one of the long escalators down to the underground trains, while he explains.
“It’s underneath Bukit Brown Cemetery. Above ground, you can only see the ventilation, but below, the platforms are ready for when the rainforest has been chopped down and replaced by housing.”
As the train whooshes past a space that’s slightly less dark than the rest of the tunnel, he shouts, “There! Did you see any ghosts?”
I shake my head.
We don’t talk on the short walk home from Botanic Gardens station.
“Maybe it wasn’t a good getai,” Jason says outside our gate. “Maybe the ghosts couldn’t be bothered turning up.”
“Ling was having fun.”
We’ve both stopped believing that I might be a medium. And I’m not sure if it should make me happy—because that means I really have a family connection with Ling—or sad because we’re no closer to finding out how we’re related. I still haven’t heard from Granny.
Before going into the house, I turn on my phone, hoping Granny’s left me a message. She hasn’t. But my phone pings and pings with missed calls and texts from both Clementine and Dad, so I know I’m in trouble.
—37—
The texts are all variations of Where are you?, so I send Clementine an I’m home message, before I untie my hiking boots. She doesn’t answer.
It’s almost nine o’clock. I don’t even try to go through the garden and my window but leave my boots outside the front door and open it warily, expecting a screeched telling-off like the other day. Instead, the house is deadly quiet.
“Hello,” I call. The only answer is the hum of the air con. I head to the kitchen, but even Maya’s gone.
The lounge seems huge, without anyone home. Like black mirrors, the windows take turns reflecting me, as I pace the room. At creaks from the gate, I feel both relief and dread.
Maya enters first, with the twins. She’s jostling the double pushchair with the sleeping boys into the lounge. While she carries Billy upstairs, she sends me a small smile. Seconds later, after she’s returned for Eddie, Clementine opens the front door.
She’s not wearing a happy lipstick smile, but hiking boots, trekking pants and a long-sleeved top.
“Sorry,” I hurry to say. “I turned my phone off to save battery. I’m sorry.”
She doesn’t say anything while she takes off her boots, then strides past me through the swing door to the kitchen. When she emerges a moment later, she sinks down on a dining chair and places her half-full glass of water directly on the table, breaking her own placemat or coaster rule.
“Where were you?” she says quietly, swirling the water glass. Behind her, Maya tiptoes into the kitchen.
“With Jason. We—”
“Do you know where Maya and the twins have been?” she asks, not even glancing at me.
I shrug.
“Out searching for you. Do you know where I have been?”
“Out searching for me,” I say in the smallest possible voice, staring at the vortex in her glass, wishing it could carry me far away.
“Yes. In Bukit Brown Cemetery.”
A twig is stuck in her hair, which hangs limply over her sweaty top.
“And do you know why?” Her eyes catch mine. “Because that was the last location of your phone.”
I flinch at the sight of her glare. “You’re spying on me?”
“Yes. I am. After I went over to Auntie Lim’s to get her recipe for salted egg-yolk moon cakes and found the house empty. And after I tried both calling and texting you without any answer. And after I got Will out of an important meeting in London to ask if he knew where you were. Then, yes, I did check the location of your phone.”
She’s still speaking slowly in a normal tone, and it’s much worse than if she was screeching.
“And your phone was in the one place I told you not to go… That cemetery isn’t a playground. You could fall down somewhere. Break your leg. And how would we find you if your phone’s turned off?”
She doesn’t talk to me like I’m five years old, now, but she treats me like I am. Doesn’t she understand that if I can survive in the Swedish wilderness, I’ll be fine in a small patch of Singapore nature? I’m always careful when I go to the graveyard.
“I said I’m sorry.” What does she want me to do? Fall on my knees? Why does she make such a big deal out of me being a bit late? Mum wouldn’t worry after a couple of hours.
A tiny voice in my head whispers: she might not even have noticed you were gone.
But Clementine isn’t Mum. She isn’t my mum.
Everything that’s wrong is her fault. Mum was almost fine until She married Dad. Dad was fine until She got him so obsessed with work and money. She probably forced him to accept the job in Singapore, just to take him far away from me.
“So, tell me again—where were you? And no lies.”
“I’m. Not. Lying!” The surge of anger makes it difficult to speak. My voice shakes. “You told me not to go to the cemetery alone, and I didn’t. I was with Jason. Afterwards, we went to a getai. I forgot to message you. So. What?”
“And you turned your phone off. Since you don’t use it anyway, you can give it to me.” She’s standing now, holding a hand out until I place the phone in her palm. “And I’m sure you took that knife of yours. Hand it over! Don’t think I won’t search your pockets, young lady.”
I pull my Swiss Army knife out and drop it on the dining table.
Her eyes are flashing. “I’m keeping these. And until Will gets back, you will stay in this house when you’re not in school. You have to understand, when Will isn’t here, I’m responsible for you.”
“You’re not my mother!” I yell right into her face.
“I know,” she says.
And I wish it was Mum in front of me, so I could apologize and get a big hug. I can feel pressure behind my eyes. Like they’re one of those canal dams I saw in Sweden. But I won’t cry. Crying is useless. Instead, the pent-up water starts boiling.
“I wish I’d never come!” I scream.
“So do I!”
I turn and run up the stairs, yelling, “I’m glad I never came to your rotten wedding!”
“Wait, Freja. I didn’t mean that,” she calls, pursuing me upstairs.
I slam my door and lock it from the inside.
“Freja, please.” She’s banging on the door. “I didn’t mean that. I was just so worried. I’m sorry, I snapped.”
One twin begins crying, and then the other.
“Please open the door. I shouldn’t have said that. I’m glad you’re here.”
I put my earphones in, but without the phone to play music, they don’t mute the sound.
My pillow does. The knocking will stop soon. She’ll go to the twins and calm them down. They’re her children.
I can’t help remembering what I overheard the other day. She’s worried about Billy and Eddie, because I’m here. I don’t belong in her happy family.
—38—
Clementine returned to knock on my door after the twins were quiet.
Deep down, I knew she wouldn’t have called Dad unless she was extremely worried, so, in the end, I unlocked the door. While I stood in the half-open doorway, holding the handle and the door frame, we both said we were sorry. We didn’t hug. She didn’t give me my things back or un-ground me. I didn’t tell her I have a way of leaving the house without her permission.
Ling was here during the night. I vaguely recall her telling me about the getai, and how she’d had to share her seat because the front row was packed with ghosts.
In the morning, I stay in my room until five minutes before the school bus stops outside our gate. Clementine isn’t downstairs, but she knocked on my door earlier and offered to drive me to school so we could talk.
“What’s wrong, Freja?” Sunitha asks during lunch break. “You haven’t said a word all morning. And you keep slamming your books down and grinding your teeth.”
“Yeah, it looks like you only keep your hair on because it’s tied back,” Kiera jokes.
“My stepmum’s grounded me and taken my Swiss Army knife. And my phone.”
“What? Why?” Cheryl Yi asks.
Kiera puts her half-eaten roti prata down. “Does that mean you can’t come to my pyjama party tomorrow? Oh, you have to talk to her. I’ll get my mum to call her.”
I’d forgotten about the sleepover, and I’m suddenly glad I’m grounded. Tomorrow night might be my last night with Ling. “Please don’t. That would make things worse.”
“I didn’t take her for a wicked stepmother.” Sunitha slurps the rest of her lime juice.
“Me neither,” Kiera says. “How can someone sooo pretty be sooo evil?”
“She isn’t evil…” I think about Ling’s memory of a real wicked stepmother. Clementine isn’t like that. “I just don’t want her to act as if she’s my mum.”
“But why did she ground you and confiscate your things?” Cheryl Yi asks again, pointing at me with the skewer from her satay. “What did you do?”
I try to explain that Jason was helping me find out how someone who’s buried at Bukit Brown is related to me. Obviously, without mentioning that that someone has become my best friend.
Cheryl Yi says I’m crazy for running around a cemetery during the Hungry Ghost Festival. Sunitha wants to know if I like Jason and whether he talks more outside school. Kiera’s mainly annoyed I’ll miss her sleepover and can’t even chat with them on my phone. And they’re all shocked that I’ve been carrying a knife around Singapore.
