by Yangsze Choo
“Yi!” he yells. The small figure on the other bank puts his hands around his mouth and calls back, but there’s no sound.
Why is there no sound? And then Ren realizes something else. Yi is so small. Not only due to the distance, but because he’s still eight years old, the age he died. It’s Ren who’s changed. But Yi looks so delighted to see him that there’s a lump of happiness in Ren’s throat.
Now Yi is pantomiming, How are you?
He points at himself and gives a thumbs-up. “YOU?”
Yi also gives a thumbs-up. Don’t worry.
About what? He must mean about the tiger and Dr. MacFarlane and all the deaths before and the ones to come. Of course Yi would know. He always knew everything that troubled Ren.
Ren calls back that he’s fine, he has a job and has also found the finger and is keeping it in a safe place. It’s difficult to mime all of this, but Yi seems to understand. Perhaps the sound works only one way, but Ren doesn’t want to waste his time with Yi figuring it out.
Time is running out.
Even as he thinks this, water laps his bare feet. Jumping back, Ren realizes that the sandbank is getting smaller, or perhaps it’s the water that’s rising.
“There’s a tiger in the garden,” he shouts across the water. “But don’t worry, I know what to do.”
Yi looks concerned.
“I’m going back to Kamunting after the party.”
Yi shakes his head.
“It’s all right, I have permission. Then I’ll do what Dr. MacFarlane told me to.”
Yi’s arms explode, pantomiming something complicated. The small face is tight with worry.
“I’m not frightened,” Ren says.
Ask the girl.
What girl? Ren can’t think of any girls or women except Auntie Kwan and she’s gone down south to Kuala Lumpur.
The water is rising, rippling translucently over the muddy sand. There’s something odd about it. It’s viscous, a little too thick, but clear enough that he can see every pebble and floating leaf. There are no tiny fish in the shallows. No crystalline shrimp, no water skaters. Nothing living.
“I’ll swim over to where you are,” calls Ren. “Just wait!”
He puts one foot in the water. It’s surprisingly cold and a swirling current tugs at his ankle. But the other bank isn’t too far.
No! Yi doesn’t want him to get in the water. Now he’s urgently signing him to stop.
Ren isn’t a fast swimmer, but he’s confident he can dog-paddle far enough. He stands ankle-deep in the shallows. It’s freezing. He’s never felt cold like this. Dr. MacFarlane once borrowed a large, expensive-looking book of fairy tales when he was teaching Ren to read, and Ren had pored over the beautiful illustrations of snow and ice and the kind of gloomy weather that Dr. MacFarlane said was so common in Scotland. Dreich, he’d called it. There was a story about a little girl who sold matches, and the last picture showed her lying in the snow. Her eyes were closed, but she was smiling and the artist had drawn faint blue shadows at the corners of her mouth. Was this chill what she’d experienced?
He grits his teeth. Beyond the shallows of the sandbank, the water is murky. Something stirs in it, and he hesitates. On the opposite bank, Yi is signing frantically. No no no! But Ren is bigger and stronger now than when they were parted. He looks at the river with the confidence of an eleven-year-old and is sure he can make it.
Now the water is up to his waist, swirling and eddying darkly. It tugs hard. The chill is almost unbearable, eating through his spine and sucking all the heat out of his body.
Yi is kneeling on the other bank. His face is contorted, tears stream down as he gesticulates wildly. STOP!
Ren wants to tell him not to cry; he’ll be there soon. But his teeth are chattering so much that he can’t form the words. With a final rush of courage, Ren plunges his head under the icy black water.
22
Ipoh
Monday, June 15th
Morning. I stared at the ceiling again—this time the familiar one at Mrs. Tham’s house. Sitting up, I fumbled for the ring Shin had given me, still knotted in a handkerchief. I wondered what she looked like, this girl whose finger was a different size from mine. The soft metal and rich color indicated it was twenty-four-karat gold. My mother always told me to make sure to get twenty-four-karat jewelry, not eighteen or some other inferior number.
“Because you can pawn it,” she’d said matter-of-factly. “You get a better deal.”
Of course, she must have had some experience with pawnshops after my father died. In my brief time working at the May Flower, men had given me gifts: silver pendants, thin bracelets. I’d been reluctant to accept anything, but the other girls said I was foolish to turn down one of the few perks of the job. My mother had been right, however. None of those trinkets was worth anything at the pawnshop, though I’d tried a couple of times, thinking to reduce her debt faster. I wondered how much money Shin had spent. He was always the one who ended things with girls, not wanting to commit. As far as I knew, he’d never given anyone a gift like this.
* * *
Yesterday after Matron had left us, I’d tried to return it to Shin with a smile, saying, “You should keep this safe for your girlfriend.” That was nice and friendly and just what I might have said to him a few years ago.
“Hang on to it,” he said. “It’ll look suspicious if you give it back after telling everyone we’re engaged.”
That was when I ought to have followed up and asked what his girlfriend was like and when he was bringing her back home, but somehow, I couldn’t. If you’d told me a month ago that I’d feel so awkward and sad about my stepbrother getting married, I’d have laughed it off, but now there was only a strange loneliness. It was like losing him all over again, like when he’d decided to shut me out. But there was a difference: it wasn’t simply that Shin was being friendly, as though whatever had troubled him before was now resolved. He’d become more reliable, more grown-up. More attractive.
There. I’d said it.
Well, Shin had always been attractive, just not to me. Or perhaps I’d willfully looked the other way. I tried my best to conjure up Ming’s long, gentle face, the stubborn cowlick on the back of his head, but it was useless. The infatuation that had sustained me for so many years had faded, leaving a vague sense of confusion and guilt.
So instead, I made up some excuse about getting back to Ipoh right away. I still hadn’t seen Pei Ling’s parcel, but by then we were standing in front of the hospital where Matron had left us, in full view of passersby. Best for Shin to keep it safe and unopened at the hospital and return it to Pei Ling when she recovered from her fall.
When I got on the train, I took off the ring and wrapped it in my handkerchief. It didn’t seem right to wear it since it wasn’t mine. I tucked the handkerchief into my rattan basket and felt the sharp edges of the card that I’d received from the foreign doctor. William Acton, General Surgeon. Curling my fingers around it, I’d thought perhaps I would contact him after all.
* * *
On Tuesday afternoon I went to see Hui, escaping dinner with Mrs. Tham’s family. She’d hinted that I ought to be there that evening because there was a young man she wanted me to meet: her husband’s nephew, who’d been jilted by some minx and was now determined to get married before the end of the year. Just to show that he could, apparently. I didn’t think this boded well for anybody.
I took Shin’s ring with me, as Mrs. Tham was bound to snoop while I was out. The garnets sparkled like pomegranate seeds. Garnets were the bloodstone, meant for protection. When I was a little girl, an Indian peddler had come by selling necklaces of round garnet beads strung on cotton thread.
“Keep your daughter safe from harm. From evil, nightmares, and wounds. Also good for love,” he’d said to my mother, and surprisingly, she’d bought me one.
I’d kept that string of garnets for years, until one day I’d gone wading in the river with Ming and the frayed cotton string
had finally snapped. The tiny beads slipped into the running water, and were never found. Remembering this, I tucked the ring back in my pocket. It wasn’t mine to lose.
* * *
Hui was standing in front of her mirror, powdering her face with a look of determination. A good powdering was supposed to take at least ten minutes to apply, the powder puff not rubbed but slapped against the face, mouth, ears, eyelids, and neck. Slap, slap, slap, with lots of vigor. A really good application of powder should last for hours, so that your skin emerged “tinted, smooth, and lovely”—according to the magazines. I wouldn’t know, as I’d never managed to devote more than thirty seconds to my powder puff.
“Ji Lin! What are you doing here?” Hui looked pleased.
I sat on her bed. “Are you working tonight?” I’d hoped that she was free to have dinner at one of the roadside stalls that grilled stingray wrapped in banana leaves, but she was clearly getting ready for an evening out.
“No. It’s a call-out.”
Call-outs paid well, much better than dancing, and Hui had no day job like my dressmaking apprenticeship. She couldn’t bear it, she’d said. Snipping and measuring all day, though I’d pointed out that call-outs seemed worse.
“Not to me,” she’d said. She was always vague about what happened on call-outs; there was dinner and some form of physical contact though she said it was mostly kissing and being felt up. “It’s at a restaurant—there’s a limit to what they can do in public.”
I’d once asked her if she’d ever done anything else. She’d looked amused and closed her eyes in a long blink. “Of course not.” We’d both laughed uncomfortably. Sometimes I worried about her.
“You’re looking gloomy today,” said Hui.
Not wanting to explain all the details of the weekend, I simply said we’d returned the finger to the hospital. I thought she’d be glad to hear that, but she lifted her eyebrows.
“And who is ‘we’?”
“My brother and I.” I remembered Shin’s breath against the nape of my neck when he’d held me, reluctantly, under the angsana trees. The blood rose in my face, and the more I tried to will it away, the worse it got.
Hui examined me carefully. “This is your stepbrother, correct?”
“Yes. He’s getting married. Or at least, he’s serious about someone. I’m glad for him.”
I was afraid Hui would make fun of me, but instead she put her arm around me. “Oh, darling. Men are beasts, aren’t they?”
“It makes me feel lonely, that’s all. We’ve known each other since we were ten years old. I’m … I’m very fond of him.” Such inadequate words. They couldn’t even begin to explain how restless and disturbed I felt. And perhaps I was confusing simple affection with something else. “It’s ridiculous, anyway.”
Hui got up and walked over to her dressing table. “But you’re not related.” Her eyes watched me in the mirror. She was playing with the rouge pot, opening and closing the lid absently. “I’d like to meet him, this stepbrother of yours.”
“Why?”
“Because men are liars.” There was a sharpness in her tone I’d never heard before. I knew Hui had left some village to come to Ipoh and that she rarely went home, but other than that I’d tried not to pry, accepting whatever she wanted to share. She’d done the same for me, after all.
Hui glanced up. “Don’t look so worried about me, Ji Lin. You really are sweet.”
Touched, I tried to laugh it off, changing the subject. “Can you tell the Mama that I won’t be in this week?”
“Why not?”
I explained about Y. K. Wong following me after work last Friday and then almost running into him twice at the hospital this weekend. It was too many coincidences for comfort.
“Tell her my mother’s ill or something.” And I really needed to find another job, though it didn’t seem like a good time to bring that up.
“What about the private party in Batu Gajah this Saturday?”
“I’ll do that.” It would pay well.
We talked about the arrangements for the party, though my heart wasn’t really in it. It might be the last time I worked with Hui and Rose and Pearl. Perhaps it’s for the best. Especially if I wanted to become a nurse. Still, melancholy settled over me, like a personal rain cloud. Goodbyes were always like that.
Hui said, “Let’s practice drawing your mouth.” A cupid’s bow was tricky, and I never had the patience to do it properly.
“Don’t bother with me—won’t you be late?” I said, as Hui, pleased with her handiwork, brushed cake mascara on my eyelashes.
“Let him wait.”
“Who is it?”
“That bank manager who comes in on Wednesdays.”
He was in his late fifties, liver-spotted like a toad with a habit of licking his lips. “Don’t you mind?”
“Old is better,” she said carelessly. “Young men expect you to fall for them and do all sorts of things for free.”
“Hui!” I said, laughing. “You’re terrible.”
“Don’t trust men, Ji Lin,” she said sadly. “Not even that charming brother of yours.”
* * *
Hui told me not to wait for her. She wasn’t done with her toilette, though I’d hoped to walk out with her to her date, but she shook her head, “It’s getting late,” and so I went downstairs.
It wasn’t actually late at all. In fact, it was still early enough that I’d be just in time to sit down for dinner with Mrs. Tham and her husband’s nephew. Not wanting to go home, I turned up Belfield Street instead. Trishaws and bicycles rushed by, squeezing past bullock carts and the occasional motorcar. At the corner of Brewster Road and the wide green space of the Ipoh padang, a cricket field built by the local Chinese community to commemorate Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, I stopped in front of the FMS Bar and Restaurant. FMS stood for “Federated Malayan States,” and both locals and expatriates came to drink at the long bar and order Western dishes prepared by a Hainanese chef: sizzling steaks and chicken chops, washed down with icy beer. I’d never been inside, though I’d passed its gracious, colonial façade many times.
One day, I decided, I’d go in and buy myself a steak. Though I wasn’t sure if they allowed single women. As I turned to go, the wooden doors of the FMS Bar swung open. My heart jumped as someone caught me by the arm.
“Ji Lin?” It was a young man with a fashionably skinny mustache. Because of this, I almost didn’t recognize him.
“It’s me, Robert! Ming’s friend, Robert Chiu.”
Robert was the one who’d given me that unwanted sticky kiss on the bench outside the watchmaker’s shop. He was very much the young man now, and knowing what I now did about the price of things, expensively turned out. But he gave me the same eager, half-excited look he had then, which surprised me. If I’d been turned down by some skinny girl from Falim, I probably wouldn’t have been so happy to see her again, but Robert evidently had a more forgiving disposition.
“What are you doing here?” His eyes traveled up and down. I knew that look; at work I was very careful with men who stared like that, but it was just Robert, I told myself. And besides, he’d no idea about my part-time job.
“I was just passing by,” I said.
Evening had fallen, that magical blue twilight hour, and the yellow radiance from the FMS Bar shone through the door and window transoms.
“I haven’t seen you in so long,” he said. “How have you been?”
We chatted about inconsequential things. Robert was reading law in England and was back for the holidays. He talked hurriedly, the words tumbling out as though he was afraid I’d walk away. Stories about university and people I didn’t know that I listened to with only half an ear.
He’d stopped talking and was staring at me again.
“I’m sorry,” I said guiltily. Poor Robert, all that money and still so dull. “You were saying?”
“Nothing. Just that, you look nice.”
It was probably the light that spill
ed out from the bar, warm and flattering, bathing everything with a golden glow. Even Robert looked rather distinguished with his expensive clothes and neatly slicked hair. I dropped my eyes but Robert misunderstood.
Encouraged, he said, “I heard from Ming that you’re not married yet.”
I said cheerfully, “No, I’m apprenticed to a dressmaker.” Best to be brisk at times like these.
“Do you like it?”
“Yes,” I said, lying through my teeth.
“I’m surprised that you didn’t go on for higher studies. Like teacher training or nursing.”
“No money, I’m afraid.”
He gave me a quick, embarrassed glance. “Have you thought about scholarships? My family sometimes awards them to bright students—the Chiu family foundation, you know.”
“I’m not in school anymore.”
“It doesn’t matter. I can give you a personal recommendation.”
I looked at the ground, not knowing what to say. This was a great chance and any other girl would be jumping at it—and at Robert. Yet I couldn’t help thinking that everything came at a price. So I thanked him, saying it was very kind and I’d think about it. “And now I’m afraid I really ought to go.”
Robert wouldn’t hear of me walking home. “It’s not far,” I said, laughing.
He insisted though, and I soon discovered why. He led me around the corner to a gleaming new motorcar. It was cream-colored, with sweeping curves and a grille that shone silver in the last of the evening light.
“Get in,” he said, opening the door. It was lovely. The seats were camel-colored leather, soft as a baby’s cheek, and the whole thing smelled rich: of leather and lemon wax and a faint whiff of gasoline. I sat down, crossing my feet to hide the scuffed toes of my shoes, and inhaled deeply. It would be easy to get used to traveling like this. Or maybe not. Because Robert, unfortunately, was a terrible driver.
I gripped the door handle, my knuckles turning white as Robert launched the car into the street with a queasy lurch. There was a grinding sound as he pressed various levers with his foot and yanked on others with his hands. We shot through an intersection (Robert waving in a friendly way at a furious trishaw man) and barely missed a fire hydrant. The worst part was that he kept talking.