Maid In Singapore

by Kishore Modak

  ‘You are not in a state to speak right now. We will talk about it later,’ he picked up his bag and left for a Saturday at work.

  I went down to the pool, changed Jay and took him out for lunch; he sensed my disturbance and was quiet through lunch, a bit tired, too, after the thirty laps.

  ‘Will be late getting home, go to bed, will speak later,’ his sms read. I did not reply, simply imagining myself sending him an mms of me being defiled by the guard or the gardener or the barber. Would that make him drop what he was doing and rush home? All the while, our son ate the ham sandwich with soft powerless child bites.

  In the morning, I delivered my caveat, ‘I am leaving, with Jay, heading back to my mum’s place.’ My mum was almost eighty, but clear-minded, a problem, since I would have to share my shame with eighty years of calm, calculated reason. Of course, she would ponder over it, talking to me about it before laughing it off.

  ‘You can’t leave me now; I need your support and help. What if the maid files a complaint against me? I will need you next to me. I am not saying that she will, but what if she does?’ Self-preservation—that is a banker ’s build, even at the cost of a global recession or a family meltdown.

  What should have been screaming matches with my husband became whispers, since we did not want Mary to hear us. What should have been wails of sorrow were muted sniffs and sobs.

  Was David actually raping the maid, living out his dark fantasies, finally? Was my compliance not enough to quench his sexual deviance—pleasurably I confess, but pliable where another may have grown frigid? Maybe they had simple sex . . . I was away and the maid got frisky seeing sir’s early morning erection when delivering the tea. A few hints dropped like sugar cubes

  . . . maybe a stir and the game would have begun.

  Simple sex, what is that? A myth or a missionary mantra all covered in sheets, with only the feet sticking out?

  ‘Did you rape her?’ I asked.

  ‘Look, I don’t know. All I know is that it was a genuine mistake, one that I am paying for. She has already started the blackmails. I have already given her a thousand dollars.’

  Already, a new word, learnt recently in a new place

  . . . already trite and jarring.

  I was stunned, like when emotions and logic coexist. They don’t coexist; they simply collide, stunning us as they sandwich us. Yes, I was angry, but I had to get the woman out of our lives without ruining us. Wait a minute . . . if he was wrong, why was he not facing up to his responsibilities? Or was he, by paying her off?

  ‘Please, we can do whatever you like, but only after this episode is behind us. I need you,’ he was almost pleading.

  I imagined myself in the papers, like Hillary, or all the other wives who accompany their cheating-celeb- husbands in what gets depicted as a pillar of strength, trussing up familial piety.

  The maid would simply appear well dressed, alone with her lawyers, or with her Bangladeshi boyfriend, right alongside.

  The boyfriend wouldn’t bother; he would find another girl, with lesser complications, making this mess a threesome of two women tied to one white man.

  ‘Are there others, apart from her whom you have been with?’ I asked. Was it not logical that there would be others, like a habit, acceptable and repeatable after the first few times one had done it?

  ‘Look, it is not how you think it is. It was a genuine mistake, you have to understand,’ he spoke, acting genuinely distraught.

  Yes, there were others . . . in massage parlours and in the upstairs shacks of seedy bars. There had to be. How else can a man embolden himself for enacting rape on his employee, in her workplace?

  I was full of questions filled with angst. ‘Who hinted it, she or you? How can you say this is a mistake, so casually? Where did it begin? In our bedroom, in the kitchen or in her room?’

  I dreaded option c, since that meant he went to her.

  A mistake is a loss of judgment like forgetting to slam the brakes before a quick-turning traffic signal, or the errant swing on the squash court. How can it include kneeling as if in front of God and gyrating inside another person, strokes laid out in timely beats of audible slaps?

  It is good that I saw it, and heard the slaps of their hips; else, I would have unanswered visions of imagination all my life.

  As regards my questions, he deflected them well, underplaying the whole episode.

  Infidelity, one way or the other, eventually surfaces. Or would his have gone unnoticed had I not walked in on them? Were they going to continue having sex, fantasies evolving, convoluting with time, behind my back?

  Me at the gym, is that all that their planning demanded? Or, was it spontaneous lust, one that does not need planning at all?

  Most cheating partners have a common theme of self-justification: it is only a natural act. Isn’t nature the final explanation that all unacceptable events in our life settle for, from a cancer-stricken patient to a whoring man? Both their diseases are natural, aren’t they?

  At the agent’s office, things fell apart.

  ‘Why do you want to let Mary go? She has been with you for a few months now and you liked her work,’ Ms Goh asked a valid question.

  She saw me shifting, answering in meaningless drivel. She could probably sense the prick that I felt behind my eyes. I was near tears.

  ‘Come, let us get some coffee.’ She got up and I followed her. She left a soapy, comforting trail in her wake.

  I made a sketchy confession, leaving out the bits about the gun and the kneeling . . . those were too debased to narrate, unnecessary. I was glad to share and lightened up, even if it was only with the agent and even if it was only in small part.

  ‘Ms Goh, you have to help us get rid of her. Please can you send her back to her home country immediately?’ I finally concluded, in tears.

  ‘Aiya, another one of those cases. I am really sorry to hear that.’ Ms Goh sipped her coffee. I simply stared down at mine. ‘My advice is for you to transfer her to another house in this city. Don’t deport her. She may turn vindictive and concoct all sorts of stories for the police,’ she continued.

  ‘What sort of stories? What do you mean, police?’ I asked her.

  ‘Well, if she makes claims of assault, or harassment or, worse still, rape, then things will turn very ugly, very quickly. On the other hand, if she simply wants to continue in another household and keep sending money home, then the whole matter will get buried.’ Ms Goh reached out and kept her hand on mine. ‘Let us be tactful and simply transfer her within the city. She needs the money and I am quite certain she will keep quiet as long as her livelihood is not disrupted.’

  I teared freely, tissue in hand.

  So I was to stay behind, while she left for greener pastures. Wah, I thought in Hindi! We would stay back, picking up the pieces, while she built a new life. Why could I not leave, making a new life? It was because I did not earn, and depended on a judge to grant me the custody of my son and my rightful share of our savings, which was of course all the money.

  ‘Her mandatory medical test was okay when she came in.’ Ms Goh looked up, knowing she had brought up a topic that had not yet crossed my mind

  . . . sex and disease.

  Did he bother using any protection when he ventured in? I had caught him, but it had been too sudden for me to note any rational details. Forgive me, I was already too distracted.

  ‘Her next medical exam is only a few weeks down the road. Please be careful till then,’ she added.

  Careful . . . did she mean me and David? The question did not arise since we were sleeping apart.

  ‘I think she will come to see me this Sunday when she gets her weekly day off. I will not speak of our conversation. I will call you and let you know what she has to say.’ Ms Goh wanted to defuse the situation and to move on with what she did, supplying girls.

  I stood up, mumbling thanks, crying as I left.

  At home, Mary was doing household work while Jay and David were away. Now tha
t we were alone, she came to me.

  ‘Mum, please don’t send me away to Manila, my family needs the money, please mum, let me be here in Singapore. I will swear upon Jesus that I will not tell anyone, mum?’ She broached the topic, not me.

  Tell anyone . . . did the cluster of maids at the kid’s play area already know? Was there a maid’s fraternity, keepers of sexual secrets, to be discussed and detailed while they were away from their homes and husbands?

  I tried to be calm, mostly failing.

  ‘You should have thought of the consequences earlier, now be ready to face what comes your way,’ I delivered my threat.

  ‘But, mum, it was not my fault alone, sir was also to blame, what could I have done, he is my owner.’ She knew, in this situation she had the upper hand, legally at least. ‘Please, mum, just transfer me to another house, I will forget the whole thing, please mum,’ she added.

  ‘Let us see, I will speak to Ms Goh,’ I dismissed her.

  That Sunday while Mary was away, Ms Goh called around noon. Hearing me speak to the agent, David entered the second bedroom, which I had occupied these past few days. He shut the door gently, so that Jay could not hear our conversation, or so we thought.

  ‘It is exactly as I had thought. Mary came and asked for a change of employer,’ Ms Goh seemed relieved.

  ‘Did you ask her why?’

  ‘Yes, of course. She said she was not happy with you and that the housework was far too much for her to mange, she did not directly mention what had happened, she just hinted that she felt uncomfortable in the presence of sir,’ Ms Goh clarified.

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I am going to start hunting for a replacement for you and send this one away to another house, okay?’ she asked, hoping to resolve this issue.

  David was listening to our conversation, watching me like a hawk. How could I agree to a compromise when I was the affected party? If I did agree, it meant that I accepted David’s behaviour and was ready to move on. It would be a defeat.

  David grabbed the phone from my hand. ‘Ms Goh, please get rid of her without creating any further problems. Just get her transferred and that will be the end of this,’ he said. ‘I will speak to my wife and tackle her. Thanks.’ He cut the line.

  A defeat is when you lose, but what was I fighting for, or fighting against? I was fighting for my dignity and I was fighting against being treated as a problem that could be tackled.

  ‘Tackle, what do you mean tackle?’ I looked up at him; we were by ourselves with the door still shut.

  ‘Not a single minute passes when I wish I had not done what I did. I know I cannot undo the past, but in the present, I live each moment in repentance,’ his head was in his hands, would he cry?

  ‘Please have me back, I cannot have you away from me,’ he was crying. ‘I am ready to go to the church or the temple with you right now and ask for forgiveness, please let us be happy again.’ He came up to me, sitting alongside, almost touching me.

  ‘The only reason why I am still in this house is our son. I cannot ruin his childhood, seeing him grow in the shadow of a broken family, scarred for the rest of his adult life.’ This was a lie from my side. Deep inside, I knew—children are resilient, they would grow up just fine, stronger through tougher childhoods. It was me who would be left limp and wandering through life. Even with all his money in my hands, I would be the one who would need to rebuild my life; David’s single life would be just fine too, full of legitimate women; but his single wife would wilt all by herself. This is what I was fighting against, the power that men wield in defining the structure of our broken society.

  I reached for the phone, scrolled to the list of recent calls and spoke again to the agent. ‘Ms Goh, it is your moral responsibility to protect your girls. If you don’t, I will have to report to the police, and if the need arises, I will also act as the main witness.’ From the corner of my eye, I caught David sighing as he shook his head.

  Mrs Goh spoke after a pause. ‘It is your choice, but I would urge you to think it over before you do anything. Mary is quite disturbed at the thought of being deported, she seems unstable, but if that is what we have to do then I can make all the arrangements. I will call you mid-week and then you can let me know your final decision,’ she was hoping I would change my mind.

  Truth was, my threats were empty, simply meant for David to understand that I was not yet defeated inside, though I knew I was on the mat.

  He opened the door and went into the living room, switched on the tele with the familiar pop of a beer can, a cold one to drown his afternoon of misery.

  Later that afternoon, visitors announced themselves, on the phone first with very real threats of an actual visit. They were close friends and were visiting on the weekend; it was David who answered their call.

  ‘Let us not have them over at this point,’ I told him, knowing well that it was too awkward to say no, especially to them; after all, we had known them for many years and they had done a lot for us in the past.

  ‘How can we say no? In any case, they will be with us for only two days.’ David was right.

  On the following weekend, David and I were forced to share a bed, since I had to decamp from the second bedroom, making room for our guests, moving back into the master bedroom for reasons of perceived normalcy.

  Our friends, Raj and Alice, hit it off with Mary immediately. They had to, after all Mary was to carry the additional burden of two dining guests for the next couple of days.

  Jay was happy with all the gifts that aunty and

  uncle had got for him.

  We kept up pretences through the day; they could not tell things were amiss. At night, I slipped into bed next to David, thinking of sneaking a knife under my pillow in case he made any moves at night.

  He did, first stroking my head gently, apologizing all the time before pulling me close to him. I was being petted to sleep, within minutes being patted all over the body, all the while whispering, ‘No no, why did you do it? No, Why did you do it?’ almost crying, in protest. Untouched for days I came quickly, he did not demand anything in return. We simply spoke.

  ‘Darling, please, you have to leave it behind, let us please move on, I love you and the wounding guilt of having cheated will never disappear. But please forgive me and let us rebuild from here,’ he spoke in a genuine manner. We spoke for quite a while.

  ‘David, I can accept that you made a mistake this once, but what prevents it from happening again, I am not sure. All I know is that if it happens again, it will be end of your happy days,’ again a threat delivered, again an empty one.

  Mistake, in our case was fucking the maid, behind my back, but a mistake all the same, like jumping a traffic signal as the lights turn. It is a convenient word sweeping away our conscious-erroneous-past-actions as if they were unreal, like our dreams, which we leave behind before waking up and moving on into the future.

  Intimacy, an essential component in any relationship, because it disarms you into physical submission . . . isn’t submission the path to acceptance? Think back to shame-anger-hatred, acceptance and some pondering before you laugh things off. It took houseguests and an orgasm without penetration to catalyse my anger into acceptance, but I could never come to laugh about it.

  Wrong again, eventually I would laugh about it.

  In the morning after, the tension that David and I had felt these past few days had eased. It helped that Mary was away on her day off; we simply took our guests and headed to the zoo, to see animals and maybe learn something. David and Raj were at their back-slapping best.

  Raj threaded away for a smoke, ‘Hey David, I know you have stopped smoking, but a few drags will not hurt. Come on for old times.’

  ‘Sure, you know me well, I don’t quit anything in totality,’ David was laughing, relieved with the light air of normalcy, finally off-guard after many days.

  ‘You mean you have not left her completely?’ I asked in an even toned voice.

  ‘No, no, I meant,�
�� David, stuttered mid-sentence.

  Raj burst out laughing ‘Come on we had an agreement, no bringing college girlfriends up again, now you are breaking that.’

  I looked at Raj, smiling ‘Sorry, I forgot.’ Yes, I had smiled.

  In the evening, we drove to the airport, seeing Raj and Alice off. David hung around the bar, swigging a few beers before we headed home. I could sense what was coming at night, when we got home. It did and I enjoyed it, just like old times, we were back in the saddle.

  As regards Mary, she would leave as soon as the agency found us a replacement. Till then I had to live in the same house with my husband’s sex-fling, a shame from which I had moved on mentally, making the physical confinement a bit easier.

  ‘Ms Goh, I thought about it, just find her another home in this city and let us be done with it,’ I called the agent, throwing away obstinacy and the false sense of victory it holds, finally defeated, even in the agent’s eyes. Mary and I would continue living in the same city, with suspicion always lurking in my mind, like a shadow that never leaves, except when it is completely dark. Why did my suspicion linger, did I not trust David’s promises? Of course I did, just that there were two people involved in this situation.

  ‘I am sorry, that cannot happen now,’ Ms Goh replied, interrupting my train of thought.

  ‘Why not?’ I asked.

  ‘I have just received a letter from the Ministry of Manpower asking us to deport her within the next one week,’ she added.

  ‘Why, what happened?’ more undulations, when all I wanted was a colourless day.

  ‘Remember, I had mentioned her medical tests, mandatory every six months? Apparently she failed the most recent one.’

  ‘Why, what does she have?’ is it not logical that you need to have something to fail a medical test.

  ‘That, they don’t say, it is confidential. What they do say is that she failed the test and needs to be deported within the week,’ Ms Goh spoke professionally.

  ‘But, you have been running the agency for years, I am sure you can guess what she has, can’t you?’

  ‘Aiya, yes, I can only guess, I can’t be certain,’ she paused before delivering a blow. ‘She could either be pregnant or she could have contracted an infectious disease,’ she tried delivering the shock softly. It landed with an iron punch.