Ministry of Moral Panic

by Amanda Lee Koe

  Over dinner, I ask my parents for the land area of our flat. Land area, of our tenth floor flat, the same strange rhythm as “an altitude of 163.63 metres”. It makes me feel, all of a sudden, that all these years I have been walking on air, that each block of flats is a soufflé of sorts. All the air that passes through windows, balconies, open doors: we’re layered atop one another, whipped into a social dough. The Cantopop karaoke beat from not one, but three floors down, the smell of rendang curry from the adjacent kitchen window of a Malay family.

  About seven hundred square feet, my mother says. Why?

  I don’t answer her. I do an online conversion. 700 square feet = 0.0160697888 acres.

  Singapore Zoological Gardens

  My parents like to tell this story, of me crying over bears when I was a kid.

  Bears had been my favourite animal. I had books with big brown bears, who had little potbellies and ate honey out of jars, who stood upright. I had a stuffed teddy bear I slept next to at night.

  When we went to the zoo for the first time, I was beside myself with excitement. I ignored everything else we passed—flamingos, golden tamarins, zebras, lions. We got to the sun bear enclosure and my father lifted me up under the arms for a better look.

  It was not large, nor brown, nor furry. It reminded me of the dark spots on the skin of an overripe banana, and I began to cry.

  When I first saw the Bear, I went right up behind him. He was standing by the vending machine outside a lecture theatre on campus, frowning. He was very tall; big-boned and pudgy, with a paunch showing slightly under his black t-shirt, and soft, wavy honey brown hair just past his shoulders.

  I couldn’t figure out what it was about him—there were better looking white boys on the exchange programme and local boys around that I’d never stopped to stare at—but there I was right behind him, and then I realised I’d found my picture-book bear.

  He turned around. Tough luck, he muttered, shrugging. The vending machine had eaten his coins without dispensing his item. He was walking away.

  I kicked the vending machine—perhaps that was the first time I’d kicked anything my whole life. The packet of M&Ms fell into the dispenser gutter. He turned back and I was ready to hand it over to him. I could feel my face shining.

  Thanks, he said. He didn’t look impressed. For a moment he looked as if he was going to walk away again, then he told me his name. I won’t say it, because to me he will forever simply be the Bear.

  I told him my name back, a Chinese name, and he said right away, I’m going to have to give you a new name, girl.

  I stared dumbly back at him.

  The Bear said: Besides the fact that I’ll never be able to pronounce it, it’s soft and . . . gospel. You need something more hard-hitting if you don’t want to blend in with the wallpaper.

  He turned to me, checking—You don’t, right? I knew I had always been a wallpaper type of girl, I was quiet and if I stood out it was only because the other girls thought I was weird in my vintage dresses and shoes and my significant (if useless) knowledge of Pre-Code Hollywood—I might be wrong but maybe only certain types of girls can pull off vintage, one of them had said to her posse as I walked past them once.

  The Bear was snapping his fingers.

  Sledgehammer, he said.

  I loved it. It was time for me to say something, and I thought it through, and pushed my spectacles up my nose bridge and inhaled before I said it: You talk like the movies.

  The Bear grinned wildly at me, with large white teeth. He opened the packet of M&Ms and gave me a red one, himself a blue.

  Telok Blangah Hill Park

  Is everything they say about New York City true?

  What’s everything?

  I don’t know, but everyone wants to go to New York, don’t they?

  I’ll have you know I hail west of the Appalachians and I don’t know anything east of it.

  So you’ve never been to New York?

  Just once, and to be honest it’s not unlike Singapore, in a way.

  What? That can’t be true.

  Well, what I mean is—where I’m from, there aren’t any skyscrapers or subway systems. Cities are cities. They’re exciting in their own ways. You just don’t know it ’cause you grew up in one.

  Tell me something exciting about Singapore, then.

  It’s very walkable—from the museums to the malls—and all those city lights—and you see all kinds of people—

  Except we don’t have anything real in those museums and the malls are all alike.

  —and the Indian temples and the hawker centres and the old men drinking beer in the afternoons and laksa and fried cockles for two dollars?

  I can’t give up now, so I keep talking: How about thrift stores? Do you have thrift stores, chockfull of pleated circle skirts and tea dresses? And diners? And five-and-dimes? And peepshows?

  The Bear stops walking. He turns to me and puts his hands on my damp shoulders, and then he laughs, kindly.

  Sledge, d’you know something? There isn’t an airport in my town. To get to the nearest mall, you pretty much need to have a car, and it’ll be a half hour drive there. It’s only four storeys high, and the entire first level is a Walmart. Can you even imagine that? Nothing ever happens in your town, so you assume nothing happens in the whole wide world. I wish I could stay here forever.

  Lower Peirce Reservoir

  Tell me something about Pennsylvania.

  We’re the snack food capital of the world. That’s how I got fat.

  Really?

  Yeah. Hershey’s and Auntie Anne’s and Mars bars and all the major potato chip manufacturers all have their headquarters in Pennsylvania.

  What else?

  We’ve the second highest number of black bears in all of America.

  Bears?

  Yeah, bears. We hunt them.

  You’ve used a gun?

  A hunting rifle, yeah.

  Did you kill anything?

  Mostly turkey and grouse. We saw a bear once, my dad and I, and we took pot shots at it, but it was too fast for us.

  Don’t you feel bad?

  Aw shucks, Sledge, don’t look at me that way.

  Mount Faber

  Well I’ve always found this embarrassing.

  What, Sledge?

  The fact that this hill of 105 metres is called Mount Faber. Isn’t that really embarrassing? What would the Andes and the Alps think?

  It’s just a name.

  No, it isn’t, it’s punching above one’s weight.

  Small people need to talk more loudly to be heard.

  Well I’m small aren’t I, I’m not even 1.6 metres tall, but you don’t see me raising my voice.

  Maybe you’re okay with not being heard.

  I just want to be heard by the right people. The right person.

  Ang Mo Kio Park

  We’re walking through the park quietly and there are two people at the edge of a bougainvillea bush, making out, and when the man moans, I say, If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?

  What d’you mean?

  I mean, I want their moment to belong to them.

  The Bear teases, You mean you aren’t a voyeur?

  It’s not that, I say as we walk away. Do you know that from my room, I can hear someone sneeze from the block opposite mine? And when the kid upstairs gets caned by his father, I can hear him cry?

  Can I tell you about my gran? She was a flapper—y’know what that is?

  Of course. I would kill to be in the Roaring Twenties.

  Right. So my gran, born and bred in New York before she met my gramp, who was a trucker passing through. She fell in love and they moved to the Midwest. In the end, as my dad tells it, she never forgave my gramps for it.

  What do you mean?

  She never forgave him for taking her away from the city. She hated how quiet it got. No music, no dancehalls, no fashion, no cafés, no scuffles, no banter.

  What happe
ned then?

  What could she do? She had my dad and my uncles and became a suburban housewife. When I was a kid, she was ancient, but I remember her putting on these old jazz records on the gramophone.

  My grandmother was a samsui woman.

  What’s that?

  That means she wore a red headdress on her head and carried heavy loads off of ships that were meant for men.

  So they were both pioneers of their time, kinda. Your gran carrying heavy loads by the dock and my gran burning up the dance floor.

  Did she keep her flapper dresses? Did she have the hair of Louise Brooks?

  Everyone had the hair of Louise Brooks. When she died, I was ten. They had a small estate sale and they sold off her stuff: the dresses she’d kept, her shoes, her hats, her records. I remember this one woman with green eyes buying up all of her dresses.

  I could slap you.

  You’re so weird, Sledge.

  I’m sorry.

  No sweetie, I meant it as a compliment.

  Bishan Park

  Sledge, teach me all the bad words in Hokkien.

  But I don’t even use any of them.

  That’s not true, I’ve heard you say wa lau eh.

  Hey, that’s just like—oh my god.

  So teach me the really nasty stuff.

  Okay. Chao chee bye.

  Chao chee bye. What’s that?

  Stinking vagina.

  Good one.

  Don’t use it in front of me.

  I won’t. Next?

  Ka ni na.

  Ka ni na.

  That’s fuck your mother. And then there’s lan pa.

  Lan pa. Dickhead?

  Close—balls. Dick is lan jiao.

  Lan jiao.

  More forceful on the jiao.

  Lan jiao!

  That’s it.

  Botanic Gardens

  It’s in a gazebo in the Botanic Gardens that he puts his hand on my knee, and by the time the sun sets, it’s on my thigh. He just leaves it there, inanimate, and we go on talking.

  Is it true that you guys have drive-through weddings in Las Vegas?

  Sure—not that I’ve participated in any, though.

  What do you think of them?

  I don’t believe in marriage.

  Well neither do I, unless it’s with a 99-cent thrift store ring.

  Ha-ha.

  No, I’m serious!

  Well then you’re my kind of girl.

  You’re being cheap.

  Naw, I’m being anti-consumerist.

  It’s just I don’t think marriage should be about the flash and splash.

  You’re a gem, Sledge. A 99-cent thrift store ring, and some apple pie to go with it.

  Changi Beach Park

  We outdo ourselves on our twenty-fourth park visit: we’ve brought a little picnic mat and our own sandwiches, ham and cheese on white bread slapped with margarine. When the Bear chooses a soft patch of grass half obscured by a bush rather than the sand closer to the coastline, I know what it means, I only don’t know when to begin. He makes it easy for me by putting an arm around me before we even unwrap our sandwiches, and soon I’ve unzipped his fly.

  It’s dark, and it’s the first penis I’ve seen, the first penis I’ve touched, and I tell myself to do my best as I remove my spectacles and bend my head over.

  He’s touching me all over and I lay back as he pulls my panties down to my knees, but then he stops, and already his penis is becoming flaccid, even with my fingers still steadfastly around it, and I feel like a small animal just died in my hands because I handled it the wrong way.

  What’s wrong?

  He’s looking at me, then looking away.

  You’re a great girl, he says. I—I don’t want an easy lay.

  I shock myself by saying: What makes you think I don’t want it as much as you do?

  He puts his head back between his hands. His hair falls forward across his bulky shoulders, a curtain of golden brown.

  I don’t know how to say this, but I think I can only do it with white girls.

  Clementi Woods

  There are only twenty-six weeks in six months, and there’d always been fifty-six parks on this island. He’d a month left of his exchange programme and we had thirty-one parks to go.

  He calls me and I let it ring and die off each time. Sometimes I pick up and let him say Hello. I don’t let him get to Hello, Sledge? As it’s always been, the boys don’t look at me. The girls call me by my Chinese name, treat me like a weirdo or a wallflower, someone to ignore or to trail in their wake. I’d always been happy on my own, but now I surround myself with them, any of them who’ll have me in their little cliques so I’m never alone in school, so he never comes up to me. When the girls say Who’s that fat ang moh dude staring at us? What a creep, I laugh right along. They talk about American indie bands, school, the boys they are seeing, the best brand for nail polish that doesn’t chip. They tell me I should get contact lenses and a tan, that vintage was trendy last season but it’s so over now. Where on earth do you get your clothes from anyway? eBay, I say, I stay up late to activate my reserve bid sometimes, and they roar with laughter and send me links to Urban Outfitters and the best local blogshops.

  Every night, I replay the things he’s told me, matching it always to the parks we were in.

  Pearl’s Hill City Park: My brothers tied me to an old yule tree, and there was a hornet’s nest nearby. If I didn’t untie myself in time, I would have died.

  Toa Payoh Town Park: We went into the forest on reconnaissance missions. We would take turns to steal each others’ most valuable treasure, hide it in the thick of the woods, and create a treasure map. I got bitten by a snake whilst retrieving my nutcracker, and my brother broke a leg getting his T. rex back from a high treetop.

  Little Guilin: We’d seen a flying fox in the forest. I was thinking of the flying fox when I leapt from the top of the bunk bed. I was meant to reach the embankment of the other bunk bed. Next thing I knew, I’d hit the floor and the corner of the antique dresser was in my mouth. My mother came in, arms akimbo, and demanded, What’s going on? My brothers remained silent. I opened my mouth to say, Nothing, but blood volleyed out and five of my milk teeth plopped onto the floor like stray marbles.

  Clementi Woods

  He’s waiting under my block, by the tiled table that the old men play chess at.

  Sledge, he says, please.

  I walk past him towards the lift and he enters it with me.

  Sledge, I leave in three days.

  So?

  I don’t want things to be like that between us. Can’t we still be friends?

  Does it matter? We’ll never see each other again.

  The slightly sweet, slightly sour smell of his sweat is in the air, and I feel myself wavering, as he says, Will you go to one last park with me?

  East Coast Park

  The sea breeze is sticky on our faces and salty on our tongues. Forgiveness isn’t as difficult as we make believe, it’s the impossibility of forgetting that inspires fear. The Bear sits to my left and we’re talking like we’ve always talked; we order char kway teow, sambal stingray, oyster omelette, satay, calamansi juice and Tiger beer. It’s past midnight but the hawker centre by the beach is crowded and we’re both getting a bit tipsy.

  Can I ask you something?

  Sure.

  Are you sure you’re sure?

  Yeah.

  Were you a loser in America?

  He turns to me and I look for hurt in his face.

  I mean—I don’t think you’re a loser!—but as a kid, here, I read stuff like Sweet Valley High, I watched Dawson’s Creek. You’re not a jock, and I’m not a cheerleader. So that makes us losers, right?

  Right.

  We’re both quiet, looking out at the empty cyclist paths, and the Bear says, I used to get laughed at for always having my nose in a book; for being fat. I don’t know how bad the bullying here gets, but trust me, if you were a loser and you survived pub
lic school in America, you’ll survive anything else. It’s comforting, in a way.

  I’m sorry I asked.

  No, don’t be.

  For what it’s worth, I still think you’re a great guy.

  He looks over at me and smiles. Sledge, you’re such a softie.

  He orders us one more round of beer—One for the road! The Bear announces cheerily—and seconds of oyster omelette and char kway teow.

  I’m not going to get any more of this back in Pennsylvania, the Bear says as he picks at the lard and the bean sprouts in the greasy noodles. What do you call the oyster omelette again?

  Or luak. What do you eat back home?

  We’re famous for our cheesesteaks and hoagie, but they should get a load of or luak.

  I’m on my third beer and the Bear is on his fifth. The Bear, quite drunk now, says: I can’t believe I didn’t get laid in Singapore.

  The Bear says: Could you hook me up with that sort of girl?

  He’s pointing indiscreetly at a fair-skinned Chinese girl two plastic tables away: long, rebonded hair highlighted gold, false eyelashes and thick eyeliner over single eyelids, ample cleavage spilling out of a halter top, denim shorts so short I can see the rise of her butt cheeks, legs ending in kitten heels.

  That’s an ah lian.

  Ah lian? He says it funny, and claps me on the back. You guys are so funny. I didn’t know there was a name for girls like that. That’s neat.

  The ah lian turns and on the smooth skin of her exposed back is a large Kwan Yin tattoo. As she raises her mug of beer, her shoulder blade moves, rippling the inked skin. The Bear points again.

  What’s her tattoo of?

  It’s the Buddhist Goddess of Mercy.