• • •
Jenny, I can’t see you so much any more.
Why not?
I can’t cheat on her.
Cheat? On who?
My grandmother.
She laughs. Why do you look at it that way? I won’t deny I took a shine to you at first sight though.
It won’t do for you to tell me things like that.
Why not?
I wish you were my grandmother.
Silly girl. If I were your grandmother, things would be different. Why spoil a good thing?
• • •
We’re seated by the pier. She’s reading by the dying sunlight, and I’m sketching her in charcoal. I ask, Don’t you have to be home? We’re both wearing shades, but even so she doesn’t look at me when she answers. Her neck trembles under a silk scarf—little accoutrements for all the wrinkles she’s eager to hide from me.
I’m not ten, she says.
Yeah, but you’re not thirty either, I say.
She turns to me and smiles indulgently, as if she finds the remark charming. We’re trying to look past our dark lenses into each other’s eyes.
So it’s all downhill from here, back to curfew and responsible relationships, then on to liquid food and adult diapers?
Yes. I’ll see you home? Your husband will worry if you don’t join him for dinner.
My husband can ladle his own rice and pick from the dishes. It’s all laid out on the table. I did it before I headed out.
He’s used to being served, isn’t he?
Being used to something is such a poor excuse for prolonging anything, but it seems a national pastime, don’t you think? We let ourselves get into the habit of the grind, we let the grind wear us down.
But isn’t it cause and effect?
It is, but only if we look at things linearly—everyone does—but life isn’t so simple, is it?
You know, Jenny, I think I’m not going to marry.
Because of all the shit I’ve been telling you?
No. Because at the tail end of all the shit I would just give up. I wouldn’t be able to meet somebody like me when I was sixty-six, hold onto them like a giant lobster, and have them enjoy my grip. I’d just watch them slide right past me.
She knows this is marvel, not insult. She knows I’m complimenting her, and not myself. We look out at the lake and she reclines on me, into me, as if I’m a familiar canoe. Her shoulder blades press lightly on my breasts. She smells nothing like an old lady. I tell myself I will forever remember how important this is, to smell nothing like an old lady when I am an old lady.
The sun goes down and we rise to leave.
• • •
Alice? I think I’m a little in love with you. It isn’t your fault.
What sort of love is this?
I have no idea.
If you do this, Jenny, I can’t see you any more.
Why not?
I thought I was safe with you. You’re betraying my trust.
What?
I thought I could be myself around you, and nothing would happen.
I’m telling you my feelings, and you’re making it about yourself.
Aren’t your feelings about me?
• • •
She’s walking towards me with a Singapore Sling in each hand; she’s said to meet in the bar of Raffles Hotel. It’s late afternoon and the only people who meet in bars in the afternoons are in the movies, but it comes so naturally to her, in her nude pantyhose and cream pumps and apricot dress, salmon lipstick. She’s always about trying something new, something she’s never done before, something I’ve never done before, or best yet, something we’ve both never done before.
I’m never allowed to pay for anything, I’ve stopped trying. She adjusts herself on the bar stool, with decorum, and hands me the glass. I avoid the maraschino cherry, while she pops it into her mouth, and raises her glass. She plucks the decorative fuchsia paper umbrella from her drink and slots it behind her ear, into her hair. We clink glasses, and she withdraws from her handbag an envelope.
Will you go away with me? Nothing fancy, just a weekend in Penang. We sold the land, they’re tearing my childhood home down. I want to see it a last time, and I would love for you to come with me.
I open my mouth, but she speaks again.
If the dates don’t suit you or you don’t want to, it’s fine—I just went ahead and got tickets first, you know how I am—I don’t want you to think I was being presumptuous.
• • •
We’re in Penang and she’s holding the keys to a rented manual car, khaki-coloured with faded blue suede seats.
What’s your dialect group?
Teochew.
Ga gi nang, she exclaims, pleased.
What’s that?
She looks at me and clucks her tongue.
Now look here, can’t you speak a word of Teochew? Look at me, I speak beautiful English, but also Chinese, Teochew, Shanghainese and Cantonese.
Lucky you.
She softens: It means ‘our own people’.
That’s really old-fashioned.
How do you mean?
It cancels out other people.
It does, but I’m happy to be closer to you. It’s what we do as human beings. Cancel and see what’s left standing.
We slide into the car. Jenny adjusts the rear-view mirror and I buckle up.
When you’re at school, can I come visit? I’ll be at my niece’s anyway. We could go for tea, jam on scones and all. We could go see Rembrandts and Vermeers and what-nots.
Of course we can.
You won’t be too busy for me? She asks suddenly, putting a hand to her neck, then drawing the seatbelt across her torso.
I’ll always have time for you, Jenny.
That’s what you say now, she says, smiling as she revs the engine. Let me take you somewhere?
Anywhere, Jenny, I say. I love saying her name.
Even to the end of time? She’s smiling slyly now, her eyes bright.
Now you’re being cheesy.
She releases the clutch and I roll the windows down, her set-perm flying in the wind.
• • •
We climb the low gate, I help her over. She’s more than sprightly for an old lady; she’s limber, in the way that makes you want to touch. She’s shed her age along the way, hair unloosed from its low chignon, hands and wrists unencumbered by her rings and bracelets. Her body is in a loose-fitting shift, and she’s left her shoes in the car, she says she wants to feel the floorboards beneath her bare feet. Her bunions make me want to learn to love her more.
We’re back in her ancestral home, and she wanders in with a lilting step so light it would seem she was sixteen.
This is where my sister hid when she was sad. This is where my father caned my brother. This is where I sat by the feet of my mother as she braided my hair.
We go up the stairs with its rotting banister. I walk behind her, watching the backs of her feet, the tendons of her Achilles heels. This is my bedroom, she says. It still has a vanity desk with an old mirror on it, and a termite-bitten bed frame. I imagine her as a girl, in cotton nightclothes, lying in bed.
We return later in the afternoon, fed on assam laksa and kueh tutu, and then it is just a construction site. We let the piler come in. We watch as the ground is shot through with holes. We hear the crash of walls being pulled down. She startles as the heavy drill hits the concrete, her old lady body against me, flimsy as a kitten.
• • •
She’d picked me up in a cab on our way up to the airport, but on the leg back, after clearing immigration, as we walk out of the departure hall, she tells me her husband is picking her up, would I like a lift home? Before I can answer she’s waving to a neatly dressed old man leaning against an old, boxy Mercedes Benz. He walks towards us and she slips a hand into my skirt pocket. He relieves her of her hand luggage.
He nods to me. She says: This is the girl I’ve been talking about.
A
h, he says, my missus has told me so much about you. I hope she hasn’t been a bother? A young girl like you has surely got the world on her plate like an oyster.
Oh no, not at all. I enjoy Jenny’s company. She says the strangest things.
Then you must be a little strangelette yourself.
They begin a small domestic conversation: How was his appointment with Dr Wong? She won’t be cooking beans any more since his gout has returned. Dinner will be delayed because when they get home she needs to set the chicken out to thaw. He misses her black fungus chicken. There’s a fleck of something at the corner of her mouth and he extends his hand quite unconsciously to flick it gently away. She touches the spot. I realise there and then that I know nothing about love.
Can I offer you a lift home?
No, I’ll just take the bus home, thank you.
She doesn’t live that far from our place, Jenny says.
Don’t stand on ceremony, he says, plus you’ve got luggage.
It’s a straight bus, and this is just a duffel.
Jenny gives me a look. I avoid her gaze. Her husband says kindly, All right, you take care then. I’m sure we’ll meet again.
Jenny says: But I insist.
Jen, her husband says, let the girl do as she wants. Aside, to me, Don’t mind her, she’s used to getting her way. I’ve known her since she was sixteen and she’s never changed one bit. I let her have her way all the time but sometimes she doesn’t remember that not everyone is in love with her. He chuckles affectionately, holds out a hand to her.
Jenny is offended. She walks away. He excuses himself, catches up with her, puts his palm on the small of her back. I don’t wait to see them slip into the car.
I take the bus home. The afternoon sun blazes through the glass and burns one side of my face.
• • •
I don’t take her calls.
She appears on my doorstep, says, You haven’t been taking my calls.
Your husband, I say. I cross my arms, then realise I am crossing my arms, and uncross them.
My husband what?
Your husband is a perfect gentleman. The two of you have a good thing going on.
I never said there was anything wrong between us.
Then—
I told you I didn’t know what manner of love this was, this love I have for you. But surely you weren’t thinking of it as romance?
I choke on my own tongue, a coughing fit ensues, she pats me on the back as if our ages are reversed. As I am fighting for air, even before the cough ceases, I begin speaking in between each hack before the words leave me.
I guess I thought there was a big hole in your life, and that hole was in the shape of me.
She stops patting my back. I stop coughing.
I thought you were in need. But it was greed.
We regard each other as wary animals might, circling without once moving.
What the hell, she says finally. You’re not social services. I’m not a case file. What does it matter?
It’s sort of like the difference between love and lust.
Don’t namedrop things you know nothing about.
I never want to see you again.
Don’t say that—you don’t mean it.
I’ll buy you a rocking chair. Isn’t that enough for women your age? Knitting needles, a ball of yarn? Why do you think you’re entitled to attention and devotion? You’ve overstayed your welcome.
You can’t leave now.
Why do you think everyone is supposed to yield to you?
Because I’m old, and I’m dying.
You’re not dying.
We’re all dying.
If you die, I will be relieved.
I dare you to say that again.
If you die, I will be relieved.
I never want to see you again.
Perfect. Didn’t I say that just a minute ago?
She turns sharply and crosses the lawn, gets into her car. There is a spilt feeling inside of me, rising in my chest, as her car turns the corner.
• • •
We were on that pier when I put down my charcoal stick and asked her: Jenny, is life difficult or easy?
Life is difficult. That is the way it was designed.
Why was it designed this way?
Life is difficult because in order to progress we have to come to terms with the things we do not have.
She’d looked at me from under her shades, over her book.
But life is so easy, with you. Who needs progress?
Jenny!
What?
You can’t tell people things like that.
Says who? I just did.
• • •
In London, sometimes, I wonder if she is here too, as I ride the Tube from Waterloo to King’s Cross, as I read a book in Regent’s Park, as I encounter the golden figure kneeling by the lake in Dalí’s Metamorphosis of Narcissus at Tate Modern. I try hard to be unafraid, to know life, to give, to receive the city as it opens up to me. I go partying with my classmates. I fellate a Welsh boy in a pub alley one night, and for a few dark hours I feel worldly, smug, and then when I wake up I can’t eat for the week after without remembering the sickening mineral taste of him or the way he kept pushing on the back of my head or the fact that I can’t even remember his name. I think of Jenny, her hand on my knee, saying Alice, you must be the fulcrum of your own universe, and I feel the shame in my chest, that I can only pivot around people.
Penny for your thoughts? my date, a long-limbed boy with light freckles, asks as we gaze at Metamorphosis of Narcissus. I look at his face and see that he thinks we’re going to talk about the Surrealist Manifesto, that particular shade of blue Dalí was so partial to, or how Dalí accused Joseph Cornell of stealing his dreams.
I was just thinking of someone I used to know.
A boy back in Singapore?
No, a woman.
I didn’t know you swing both ways.
I don’t. She’s old enough to be my grandmother.
• • •
Back after half a year for Chinese New Year, I decide to go by her house after a week. I’ve been thinking about the crinkles around her eyes when she smiles. Those colourless lips and the witticisms they issue, her paper-thin skin. The veins in her temple, the white roots of her dyed hair, and that rich, rich smell.
My mother makes me take two pairs of oranges to pay my festive respects. Jenny’s not the type, I say, but she presses them into my hands.
The house is boarded up, fenced in by blue construction tarpaulin. There’s a construction notice tacked to the gate: LOT OF TWO DETACHED HOUSES WITH BASEMENT AND SWIMMING POOL. I should have called, besides that I’d cancelled my local line before I left. It’d felt good leaving no trace, she wasn’t young enough to know how to track me down on the internet.
I ring the neighbour’s bell, and a plump woman answers it. Hello, I’m a friend of Jenny’s. Do you happen to know where they moved to? She looks at me uncertainly. Well, Charles lives with his nephew now. Jennifer—surely you’ve heard about Jennifer? I’ve been abroad, I say. I feel the blood leaving my face and I bite down on my tongue, just enough for it to smart. She looks inwards at her living room, where her relatives have halted a game of cards, waiting for her to return. There goes my gambling luck, she mutters as she turns back to me. Bone cancer, she says, stage four. Frightening to see her at the end, so tiny and frail. And Charles—well, imagine the heartbreak. The funeral, just last month, and then Charles sold off the place. For a grand sum, I might add. Property market is red-hot now, and it wouldn’t do an old man any good to live alone in a house so big, would it?
• • •
I go around in my parka in London, putting my hood up, and the smallest things remind me of her. Sugar cubes. Pantyhose. Cigarette smoke. Revolving doors. Perfume with rose notes. Always, I try never to pause. Still I imagine her lowering her shades, smiling at me, just me, saying, Don’t look back into the sun, and then I find myself crying i
n a café or on a sidewalk or in a record store again, and over the speakers I hear Paul McCartney’s voice singing ‘All You Need Is Love’, and the pa-pa-rum-pa-rum flourish of trumpets.
She was singing in the hotel shower in Penang. The bathroom door was shut, but lying on the bed, I could hear her. The bed was a double. She was singing a medley of Beatles choruses, but she’d changed all the lyrics. She had the voice of a woman who’d smoked a thousand cigarettes.
She came out singing ‘All You Need Is Love’, only, she’d changed the lyrics to ‘All You Need Is Love Is A Lie’. She was smiling at me as she sang, and I at her. She sat in front of the mirror, brushing her hair out. When she went back in to the bathroom to wash up, I walked over to the dresser, placed the hairbrush to my nose, and breathed her in.
I went back to bed, reclining into the pillows. I heard her gargling, spitting, gargling, spitting. I heard the rindle of water as she washed her face, the small splashes. I heard her put the toilet seat cover down. I heard her peeing. Listening to her peeing as I lay on the hotel bed, my heart was fit to burst.
Fourteen Entries from the Diary of Maria Hertogh
30th December 1950
I am only thirteen but I would like to tell you something: there is something far worse than not being loved by anybody, and that is being loved by everybody.
28th March 1951
Have you heard of Helen of Troy, i.e. Sweet Helen/the face that launched a thousand ships?
Today, Sister Ana read me a poem about her. In Plutarchian poetry it sounds guileless enough, but these ships were warships and men died, empires fell.
My name—my secret name, my real name—is Nadra, and last year, men on a small island in Malaya rioted over me. Muslims from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia volunteered to send my Ibu money to pay for lawyers and to rally demonstrators. I am not that beautiful though I do have curly brown hair and my skin is white. I mention this because on that island, they had yellow or brown or black skin, and dark hair. Here they tell me my name is Huberdina Maria Hertogh, or Bertha. My hair was once blonde but when I was seven my Ibu—in fear that I would be taken away by the Japanese if they knew I was a European child—shaved my head and applied candlenut oil to my scalp for a year, till the roots grew out dark.
Ministry of Moral Panic Page 10