Sugarbread

by Balli Kaur Jaswal

  “Okay. We’re ready. Are you ready, Ga-ya-thi-ri?” Abigail asked. She stretched out the syllables unsurely like it was the title of a newly discovered species.

  “Yeah, ready,” Gayathiri said.

  Abigail asked the question. Nobody laughed but everybody seemed to be holding their breaths. I only knew one word in the question because in kindergarten I had to learn all of the nursery rhymes in English and Chinese. I had heard this word before in “Baa Baa Black Sheep”. At first, I thought they might be asking her if she was a sheep because of her curly hair. But then Abigail said it again. “Are you black?” she was asking.

  Maggie rushed at Abigail and stuck her chin really close to hers. “My mother says people like you are a disgrace,” she reprimanded.

  Abigail did not budge. She gave Maggie a steely stare and said, “Go back to Canada then, Maggie Mee.” Some girls began to giggle while exchanging uncertain glances.

  Gayathiri did not understand. I wanted to warn her, but I was frozen with shame. If I said something, would the other girls call me black too? She watched the two girls stare each other down, then she said, “I choose Yes! No…no…yes! Okay, yes.” My heart sank. Some girls looked down into their laps while others separated themselves from Maggie and Abigail, starting their own quiet hand-slap games. The Malay and Tamil girls looked confused; they asked their Chinese friends what Abigail had asked, but nobody would say it because Gayathiri was still giving her answer. “Yes! Yes!” she said excitedly.

  I hated her then. I wanted to push her back into her seat and tell her to shut her mouth; she was only making things worse. But she just kept repeating her dumb answer, grinning like she had won a prize.

  A loud cry interrupted my memories. Two of the boys I didn’t know lay crumpled on the void deck concrete, their ankles knotted together like pretzels. The rest of the boys ran over to them, laughing at first, but their expressions quickly changed when they noticed that one of them could not get up.

  “Oh shit,” said Roadside, bending to help his friend. I walked over to them and watched from a distance. I didn’t want anybody to be hurt but if he was out, I’d be allowed to play football.

  The boy winced. He tried to get up, then collapsed again. Tears glistened in his eyes, but he looked away when he noticed me. “Look at what?” he muttered, and I quickly turned away. The boys were reluctant to bring him back to his block, knowing that whoever brought him home would be given a scolding by his mother. They pushed the task to each other for a while and finally decided to settle the matter over a three rounds of scissors-paper-stone. Malik lost and grudgingly told the boy to put his arm around his shoulder as he dragged him off. I stayed around while they decided what to do without the boy. Finally, Roadside turned to me. “You be the goalie, Pin. You can catch, right?”

  “Yeah,” I said, trying to sound casual, but I was really excited.

  “Okay. Wei Hao, you take over Azmi’s place.”

  Wei Hao pointed me towards one of the goal posts. I ran over, forgetting to maintain my poise. I wanted Daddy to come back from his shift right now and see me at the void deck, saving the day.

  “Oi, goalie! You ready?” Wei Hao called.

  “Yeah!” I called, waving my arms. Wei Hao’s face changed and he turned to Roadside to point something out. Then Kaypoh said something, and they all turned to look at me.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You’ll have to take off your bangle,” Roadside said.

  I touched the kara on my wrist. Most of the time I forgot it was there because I had worn it since I was a baby. “I can’t take it off,” I called back.

  “Why not?”

  “It’s too small,” I said. “And it’s for religion.” This was something I had had to explain to the prefects at school who always booked me and tried to give me demerit points for wearing jewellery.

  “What religion?” Kaypoh shot back, but I ignored him.

  “If you wear that, you’ll injure somebody,” said Roadside. “We all take off our watches and put down our keys. Take off the bangle or you can’t play.”

  “But I can’t,” I insisted and demonstrated my point by trying to pull off the bangle. It couldn’t slide past the bone where my wrist widened into my hand.

  “Try soap,” one of the boys suggested. There were faded grass stains on his white shorts and track of dirt on his legs.

  “You should try soap,” I muttered.

  “Sorry, Pin,” Roadside whispered as I walked past him on the way back to the mahjong table. I tried to push the bangle off my wrist again. I got it a bit further along this time but it left long red marks that Ma would surely notice. Maybe I could convince her to buy me a new kara at the temple, something I could easily slip off when she wasn’t looking. She insisted I wear the kara all the time. “It’s bad enough that you’re singing Christian songs,” she frowned. “And it’s not like we go to the temple or keep our hair long or eat Punjabi food all the time. It’s the least you can do to show some respect to God.”

  Strokes of orange and red painted the sky as the late afternoon sun sank through the trees. The boys played for the final goal, their shouts becoming louder as the sky slowly darkened. I was so focused on their game that I didn’t notice the two women passing through the void deck until Roadside hollered, “Stop! Two aunties passing!” The ball escaped them and rolled into a nearby drain.

  I recognised the first woman by her size. It was Fat Auntie. She was huffing and puffing from carrying a duffel bag that added to her own weight. Her salwaar-kameez was pale blue, making her thick stomach and her trunk thighs look even wider. As she struggled along, one of the boys turned around and nodded in her direction. Do you know her? he seemed to be asking. I gave him a stern look—eyebrows raised, eyes narrowed—that said, No!

  The woman behind her was shrouded in white. At first I thought I recognised her because of her outfit, but she was skinner than my grandmother and slower in her movements. She looked at the ground as she walked, as if she dreaded each step. Her shoes made a scraping sound as they dragged against the concrete. The boys backed against the wall and their gazes shifted from Fat Auntie to the old woman. Fat Auntie disappeared into the lift lobby. The woman opened her mouth to tell her to wait and it was the scratchy voice that I recognised. It was Nani-ji. I had never seen her move so slowly. In fact, when she walked, she usually had the appearance of somebody escaping—eyes darting around to survey the area, legs moving faster than the hips. I got off the table and ran up the stairs to beat them to our flat.

  “Ma! Nani-ji is coming!” I called through the gate between gasps. Then I stopped. Something was different in our flat, and it wasn’t just God staring from the wall. The smell of smoke and charred dough drifted out the door. Panicking, I rattled the padlock, thinking that there had been a fire in our flat. But Ma was very calm. She seemed to float towards the gate.

  “I know, Pin,” she said. “She’s here already?”

  “No, I saw her downstairs with Fat Auntie. Why is Fat Auntie here?”

  “She had to help Nani-ji carry her things.”

  Her things. The duffel bag and the two large shopping bags Nani-ji had hanging from her limp arms. She was moving in with us now and she was going to stay for a while. Nani-ji living with us meant that two kinds of food had to be cooked. The smoky smell came from the roti. I peeked into the kitchen to see that the deep woks and frying pans had been replaced with a single iron plate for heating the flat dough.

  “How long will she be here?” I demanded to know as I stepped into the house.

  “Pin, you’re sweaty. Go take a shower,” Ma replied. I repeated my question but walked into my room as I did it so Ma would think that I was obeying her. As I walked towards the closet to take out a fresh pair of shorts and a T-shirt, I noticed that my room was different from before I had left to go downstairs. New sheets covered my bed and a thin mattress lay on the floor next to it. My school bag, which I usually tossed on the bed when I got home, was neatly prop
ped in the corner. The scattered school books and folders on my desk had been organised in a neat stack. Ma walked in after me. “Well, where else is your grandmother supposed to sleep?” she asked, as though we were already arguing. I could think of plenty of places other than my room—the living room, the toilet floor, the corridor outside.

  “How long will she be here?” I asked. Ma ignored me. I opened my mouth to ask again, louder this time, but somebody was rattling the padlock again. “Coming,” Ma called, then she turned to me.

  “Pin, your grandmother is very ill. She needs somebody to take care of her. This is what we do for people we love. If I don’t have Nani-ji here, what kind of daughter would I be? I certainly expect that when I grow old, you’ll open your doors to me as well.”

  “Why can’t she stay with Fat Auntie?”

  “You know your Auntie works and she’s got two boys. And I want Nani-ji to stay with us.” I remembered the conversation from the previous night, how Ma and Daddy had argued about Nani-ji’s reasons for moving in.

  Ma left the room, and went to greet Nani-ji and Fat Auntie. I stayed in my room and sat on the edge of my bed because it didn’t seem to belong to me any more. I knew I’d have to sleep on the floor because Nani-ji had a bad back. I was furious with Ma for agreeing to have Nani-ji move in so early. I thought I had at least a week. In that time, I could have tried to get on God’s good side. I could have done a few good deeds, like extra floor sweeping duty after school and not making fun of Bus Uncle. Surely God would have seen my efforts and granted Nani-ji better health so she wouldn’t have to live with us.

  I wondered if Daddy had known that Nani-ji was coming over so soon. He probably hadn’t; he would have told me. Then again, I knew that he kept some things to himself. He said I was too young to know about them or that they were Ma’s stories to tell when she was ready. Daddy spoke about his childhood freely, like it was just yesterday that he was climbing fences and sneaking off to the rivers on the edge of the island with his buddies. But Ma’s stories were closely guarded.

  The smell of smoke, musky and dull, wafted through the flat. It swallowed the light, tangy scent of sesame oil that usually remained after Ma made Chinese food or the slightly sour smell that followed a spicy Malay dish. I shut the door to my room but I could not block out the smoke smell. I heard the doorbell ringing twice and saw the shadow of Ma’s feet flitting by under the door. Our flat was about to become crowded. Nani-ji would take up too much space with her raspy voice, and her moth-ball-scented clothes and her grumbling about everything. In a moment, I would have to face Nani-ji and I pleaded with God to stretch this moment for as long as possible. It was the first true prayer I had ever uttered.

  3

  THE FLAG FLUTTERED and waved across the television screen above a background of tall buildings that lined the glittering Singapore River. A familiar tune began faintly in the background. I was on the living room floor doing my maths homework. I timed myself on each one—whichever answer I worked out in under 30 seconds, I wrote out on a separate piece of paper. I considered these numbers lucky because I was terrible at problem sums. These would be my lottery number suggestions for the week.

  The flag waved again and the buildings faded into old shophouses, tinged brown on the edges like toast. The Singapore River was suddenly filled with debris. A shrill violin note began the slow song, “We Are One”. I had to learn it in school for the National Day celebrations, and could sing it without having to read the lyrics that marched across the screen. The shophouses faded from the screen, which was then filled with still photos from the war. Japanese soldiers, their teeth bared as they pointed their bayonets at a group of huddled women. Hungry children who held out their cupped palms for rationed food. Rickshaws caught in mid-stumble past a mess of shops and houses with dented tin roofs.

  God observed from the wall. I hid the paper from His view because I didn’t want Him to know that I was helping Daddy to gamble. I didn’t even know there was anything wrong with it until Nani-ji pointed it out last week. “Gambling is sinful,” she’d told Daddy.

  “It’s just a hobby,” Ma had said. She gave Daddy a hard look.

  “When I win, I’ll buy you a gold jewellery set and we’ll see if you complain then,” Daddy joked with Nani-ji, who did not look amused.

  The violin music swelled and was accompanied by a harmonious chorus. We are one island, we are one nation, we are one people! The photographs of different sections of old Singapore faded into modern video clips. Serangoon Road, once an unpaved and chaotic market, suddenly transformed into Little India with bright garland and sari shops. China-town, red and fantastic with sequined dragons and paper lanterns and frail samsui women in their red headgear, became tidier. The dragons came out only for festivals and the samsui women were no more. Housing estates lengthened, filling a vast sky with concrete and glass. I thought I caught a glimpse of our neighbourhood, but it could have been any housing estate in Hougang or Jurong or anywhere else in Singapore.

  Most National Day song lyrics were about change—“A fishing village, a bustling city. A home of beginnings, a home of progress. An uncharted island, a bustling seaport. O Singapore, together as one nation. O Singapore, together as one island! O Singapore, together as one people!”

  I did not see what was so great about change. It only seemed to bring more trouble. Everything in our flat had changed since Nani-ji had moved in and it had only been a few weeks. She had a lot of rules, and within those rules, there were more rules. I wanted to ask her whose house she thought she was in, but if I ever talked back to my grandmother, Ma would kill me. She had already threatened to rub chilli on my lips because I had called Nani-ji for dinner one day by shouting, “Oi, Nani-ji! Come and eat!” Ma was furious. “You don’t ‘oi’ your grandmother, you idiot!” she scolded.

  One rule was that we had to pray before dinnertime. The prayers were long, not like the quick blinking grace the Christian girls said before eating their meals at recess. These prayers lasted 30 minutes, which was a lifetime when I was already starving. And I was always hungry nowadays because Ma cooked less for lunch. She did not have much energy. She cared less about which spices went together and how the onions should simmer before sauces turned bitter and how ginger could sting if she was not careful. This was also Nani-ji’s fault. She made Ma uncomfortable, and said things that made Ma grow quiet.

  Nani-ji thought Singaporean food was vulgar and disgusting. She told Ma to stop showing off when she cooked. “You grew up eating simple Punjabi food. You can’t afford to spend so much money on groceries. Why do you bother?” she asked one day. Ma kept quiet. Nani-ji continued. “It’s a waste of money. And you’re not even working. You chose this life. Accept it and stop trying to be a fancy chef over here.” I readied myself for an argument. Ma was aware of what we could and could not afford. She didn’t need anybody telling her. But Ma did not come up with any clever retorts. To my surprise, she mumbled something into her food that sounded like an apology.

  One day, before Daddy left the flat to go for his night shift, I tiptoed out of my room and asked him why Nani-ji was so mean. I could only see his shadow and a small strip of light from outside on one side of his face but I could tell that he was thinking very hard about how to answer. “Your grandmother grew up one way. She expected life to remain that way. But so much changed when she came over from India. Some people like things to be different after some time, but Nani-ji is not one of those people. Too much happened too quickly. Your Nana-ji left, your uncle had to get married, her…” This was where he abruptly stopped talking and muttered an excuse about running late. He would not tell me anything else. He became curt when I pestered him. “I’ve said it before, Pin. Your Ma’s stories are not for me to tell.”

  The song faded along with the images. National Day was on Tuesday. Some of our neighbours had hung flags from their windows, but we did not do that. Ma said it was not necessary to show how much you loved something just by displaying its picture. She had
said this loudly yesterday in the living room, in front of God and Nani-ji.

  Nani-ji shuffled out of my room. I heard the door opening first so I turned up the volume on the television. Then I heard her feet brushing against the floor. She walked over to the television and shut it off.

  “It’s too loud and you’re sitting too close. You’ll go deaf and blind,” she said.

  “I wasn’t watching,” I told her.

  “Then why did you have it on?” she asked.

  I made a face. Nani-ji’s back had turned by then but God could still see me from the wall. He was keeping a very close eye on me nowadays and He showed his disapproval often. Daddy didn’t believe me when I told him that God moved in the frame, but I had witnessed it a few times. “That’s just a painting of God, Pin,” Daddy said. “Use your good sense before you let your imagination take over like that.” This was what Daddy said sometimes before we started drawing as well because I liked to add details that weren’t in the pictures. He said it was important to be precise.

  But I knew better. God was living in our flat; He had moved in along with Nani-ji. His expressions changed with His moods. The corners of His mouth curled slightly when He was amused or pleased. His eyes narrowed when He knew I was lying. I was most aware of His open palm. When I left the flat in the mornings for school, He seemed to be waving or telling me to be careful. But if I disrespected Ma or Nani-ji, His palm was steadily raised as if to slap me. Daddy said I had a strange imagination. He wasn’t afraid of God. He said that he worked hard and did good things so what did he have to worry about? Ma was anxious around God. She pulled her sleeves over her hands when she passed Him in the hallway.

  This was another one of Nani-ji’s rules—Ma and I were not allowed to wear shorts at home. “Shorts are not decent,” Nani-ji said, giving my bare skin such a hard look that I instantly felt ashamed. Ma’s skin had gotten worse since Nani-ji moved in. I inspected my own arms and legs to make sure I was still okay and so far I was, but Ma’s skin had started to erupt when she was a bit older than I was. I searched my skin every day. The smallest scrape or cut made me nervous and I only calmed down when I remembered how it got there—a nail sticking out from a desk had grazed my leg or a piece of paper had put a thin slice into my hand while I was helping Miss Yoon distribute worksheets.