by Yangsze Choo
“We happened to run into each other. By the way, what did you do with Pei Ling’s package?”
Shin frowned. “It was silly of you to get involved with her. I think it’s going to be troublesome.”
“I just wanted to help,” I said, dismayed. “Did you open it?”
“Of course I did! You should never keep unknown packages for people. Didn’t you think it was odd that she should seize on you, a stranger, to retrieve something for her?” He said coldly, “Your name means ‘wisdom.’ Sometimes I think you’re incredibly stupid for someone who’s supposed to be clever.”
I was furious. It wasn’t through lack of brains that I wasn’t progressing in life. “Well, your name means ‘faithfulness,’ yet you switch women all the time!”
That was a low blow, and Shin set his shoulders and walked faster, leaving me behind. I followed, fuming, though I knew that his name meant more than faithfulness. Xin also stood for integrity and loyalty, just as all the Virtues had deeper and wider meanings, and I couldn’t really complain that Shin failed in those areas. In the darkness, I thought again about what the little boy had said in my dream. There’s something a bit wrong with each of us.
I’d been walking slowly, not wanting to give Shin the satisfaction of chasing after him, but when I turned the corner, he was waiting for me. Once, annoyed that I always tagged along, another boy had locked me into a disused shed. He’d run off laughing and I’d been reduced to panicked tears until Shin had come searching for me later. Recalling this, I mumbled, “I’m sorry.” He started walking again, two steps ahead. Soon he’d return to Singapore. The next time I saw him, he’d be bringing his fiancée back. I felt that painful pressure in my throat again, as though I’d swallowed a chopstick.
“I said, I’m sorry!”
Shin turned. “That’s not an apology. That’s just shouting.”
I should have known better than to accuse him of unfaithfulness. For some reason that was a sore spot with him. “Don’t be cross, Shin. I was just feeling jealous.”
“About what?” He stopped beneath the shadow of a tree, its leaves trembling in the moonlight. The darkness made it easy to say things I never would have otherwise.
“I’ve been hateful and envious about you going to medical school. And for being a boy. And getting to choose what you want.”
Shin was silent for a long moment. “Is that all?”
There was a sharp edge to his voice. I had the uneasy feeling that I’d failed some kind of test. What more should I have said? After all, he’d had one girl after another and I’d never objected before. It was too humiliating to start now.
We arrived home without exchanging another word. I felt miserable, the way I always did when Shin and I were fighting, though this time I wasn’t entirely sure what the argument was about. Within, all was dark and silent. My stepfather had gone to bed, and after checking on my sleeping mother, we made our way to the kitchen. I lit the lamp and the room filled with its warm glow. Shin still looked irritated with me, but he said, “Wait here,” and disappeared upstairs.
I had a bad feeling about this; an intuition that I might regret seeing whatever was in Pei Ling’s package. Restless, I prowled around the kitchen. As I put away the dishes, I felt the sharp prickle of being watched. Had Y. K. Wong somehow materialized inside the shophouse? Ridiculous, of course. I froze, listening to the dull thump of my pulse, the ringing silence of the house. Seizing the heavy meat cleaver, I turned to face the open doorway.
There was indeed someone standing there in the shadows. But it was only Shin. Or was it? The flickering lamplight gave him a hungry, angry look I’d never seen before. That wolflike stare, like an animal at the very edge of a campfire. For an instant, I didn’t recognize him and I was afraid.
Shin glanced at the cleaver in my hand and his mouth made a bitter twist.
“Did you think I was my father?”
It wasn’t his fault that they shared the same flesh and blood. “No … I was just startled.”
Shin walked slowly in, watching me intently.
“Has he laid a hand on you?”
“Who? Your father?” That man had barely acknowledged my existence for the past ten years.
He sat down at the kitchen table and put his head in his hands. “I was worried about you. When I was gone.”
“He couldn’t be bothered with me,” I said bitterly. My stepfather had better ways to control me. Ones that involved the foolish fondness that still lingered in my mother’s eyes, the bruises on her arms. “And anyway, if you were so concerned, you should have answered my letters.”
Shin’s eyes turned dangerously blank. “You seem to have done quite well without me.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m talking about Robert. You never said anything about being on such good terms with him.”
This was so unfair that it took my breath away. “I told you we only met by chance tonight!”
Shin’s eyes traveled up my pretty dress, taking in the lip rouge and cake mascara that Hui had added when we’d been laughing and joking in her room only a few hours ago. It was an appraising, angry stare, and it made me burn hot and cold at the same time. It was useless to explain things to him, and in any case, why did I have to?
“Robert has been very kind to me,” I snapped.
“Yes,” said Shin. “With his father’s money.”
“Why should you care? After all, you ran away from here as soon as you could.”
“I didn’t run away.”
“You never even came back for holidays. You just left me. In this house.” To my horror, tears welled up in my eyes. Tears of anger, I told myself, gritting my teeth. Shin started to say something but I cut him off. “Do you really think I want to be a dressmaker? I hate it. But it’s not like they’d waste any money letting me study further.”
“Ji Lin—”
“So don’t come back now and say you were worried about me. As far as I can guess, you made some kind of deal with him. So you wouldn’t have to work for him, and you could go and do whatever it was you wanted. You coward!”
If I wanted to, I could really hurt Shin. Hurt him in a way that was nasty and bloody, like hooking the soft guts out of prey. My heart was hammering, my breathing ragged. I almost expected to see blood all over the kitchen table.
“Is that what you think I did?” Shin’s face had gone dead white, a handsome death mask.
I braced myself for what would surely be a withering counterattack, but to my surprise, he said nothing. Just gave me that stricken look, the one that he never showed anyone else, not even when he was being beaten within an inch of his life.
I didn’t want to see Shin like this. And yet, at that moment, I hated him. I remembered how he’d looked, lying in Fong Lan’s lap, her hand sliding possessively down his bare chest. The way she’d gazed into his eyes, smiling.
Shin put a slim brown paper package on the table. “You can look at it, or not,” he said. “I’ll let you decide.”
He turned and walked out of the kitchen. Frozen, I stood waiting to hear his footsteps go upstairs again, but instead I heard him walk all the way to the front of the shophouse and pull open the front door, with its telltale creak. Then the spell broke. I ran down the hallway, that long, narrow passageway through the dark bowels of the shophouse.
“Shin!” I said, “Where are you going?”
“Back to the hospital.”
“I thought you were staying over tonight.”
“I have to work tomorrow.” The way he said this, with weary patience, broke my heart.
“There aren’t any trains or buses right now.”
“I know. I borrowed Ming’s bicycle.”
“But it’s so far.” It would take him more than an hour on dark, unpaved roads, and towards Batu Gajah, the road climbed steeply.
“Then I’d better get started.” He gave me the ghost of a smile. “Don’t worry, I’ll be fine.”
Shin wheeled the heavy bla
ck bicycle, which had been standing in the front of the shop, out into the street. I followed after him, helplessly.
“Go back inside,” he said softly, glancing up at the darkened windows of my stepfather’s room. “Please.”
“Shin—I’m sorry.” I put my arms around him from behind, burying my face in his lean back. I could feel his chest rise and fall
“Don’t cry,” he said. “Not in the street. Or Auntie Wong will come out and there’ll be even more strange rumors about our family.”
This attempt at humor only made me sob harder, though I tried to muffle the noise. Crying silently was a skill that both of us had learned in this house. Shin sighed and propped up the bicycle. After a long moment, he turned around. Even then, I wouldn’t let go. I had the feeling that something terrible would happen if I did. It was a silly thought, but it made me feel so dreadfully lonely that I hugged him tighter.
“I can’t breathe,” he said.
“Sorry.” We were talking in whispers, mindful of standing in the street though all the neighbors must have gone to bed by now. The moon shone down, sharp shadows in silver and black. Shin looked exhausted.
“Let me go with you. I’m worried about you riding on such dark roads.”
“And how?” he asked, stroking my hair. He’d never done this before and to hide my confusion, I buried my face in his shoulder. Tomorrow he would be someone else’s again, but tonight he was mine.
“I’ll ride on the back. We’ll take turns to pedal.”
“You’re too heavy. I’d fall over.”
“Idiot,” I said, jabbing him. He grabbed my wrists, pulling me closer. Breathless, I raised my face. I was almost certain he’d kiss me now, but he paused. Lowered his hands. In the moonlight, I couldn’t read the expression in his eyes.
“You should take care of your mother,” Shin said.
He was right, of course. Mortified, I tugged my wrists free. What had I been thinking, hoping that my stepbrother would actually kiss me?
“Be careful,” I said, stepping back. I watched as he struck a match and lit the kerosene bicycle lamp. Shin swung on, an easy fluid movement, and rode off into the night.
25
Falim
Tuesday, June 16th
Of course, the first thing I did was to go straight back into the kitchen and open Pei Ling’s brown paper package. Shin had mentioned that she still hadn’t regained consciousness from her fall. A shudder traveled through me. I was almost certain she’d been pushed and that Y. K. Wong had something to do with it. Never mind that I didn’t have any proof. It was just a feeling, a twitch in the air.
As I unwrapped the double layer of butcher’s paper, there was a rattling clink. I held my breath as a glass specimen bottle and a packet of papers slid out onto the kitchen table. I knew the shape and size of that bottle well by now. It contained a thumb. Not dried and withered, like the finger I’d taken from the salesman’s pocket, but preserved in a yellowish fluid like most of the other specimens from the storeroom. I stood the bottle upright next to the lamp. Strangely, it didn’t frighten me as much as the salt-cured finger with its blackened crook. Perhaps because it had an unreal air, like a scientific wax model. I was sure it came from that missing list of specimens we’d compiled.
The packet also contained some papers. Pei Ling’s girlish handwriting had addressed the envelopes to Mr. Chan Yew Cheung, the salesman. It didn’t seem right to read other people’s correspondence, but Shin’s warning about doing favors for strangers rang in my ears. A quick glance confirmed my suspicions. They were love letters—pages and pages of infatuated yearning. My eyes skipped over them, though not before picking up fragments like when will you tell your wife, and even more embarrassingly, your lips on my skin. In any case, the letters were genuine. And extremely indiscreet. No wonder she’d wanted them back. If they’d been sent anonymously to Matron, Pei Ling would have been dismissed.
At the bottom of the pile was a sheet of paper, torn from a notebook. The handwriting was different from Pei Ling’s—a more masculine hand. On the left side was a list of thirteen names, all locals. Chan Yew Cheung was the second-to-last one. There was a check mark next to it, a bold slash as though someone had marked it off. On the right side of the paper was another, shorter list. This one had only three names on it: J. MacFarlane, W. Acton, L. Rawlings.
I stared at the two lists. There was a pattern that I could almost see. Next to the name “J. MacFarlane” was a question mark and the words Taiping/Kamunting. I remembered that name, written-up in the pathology storeroom ledger as a specimen donated by W. Acton. I’d met William Acton myself when I was cleaning the room out. And surely L. Rawlings must be the same Dr. Rawlings who ran the pathology department. So the second list was British doctors associated with the Batu Gajah District Hospital.
The back of the paper contained numbers: running totals of what looked like initialed payments. Taking a fresh sheet of paper, I carefully copied the lists and wrapped the package back up, wondering if Shin had mentioned any of this to Dr. Rawlings.
It was past midnight. The roads were deserted at this hour and Shin had only the dim halo of the kerosene bicycle lamp. When I thought about him riding for miles in the dark, past silent mining dredges and lonely plantations, I felt a surge of anxiety. I could imagine, all too clearly, Shin getting run over by a lorry or dragged off by a tiger. A water buffalo had been killed recently, its half-eaten carcass recovered in a nearby plantation. Something was hunting, out there in the shadows. Hadn’t Chan Yew Cheung died on such a night, coming home late?
I checked my sleeping mother. Brushing the hair gently from her thin face, I was thankful she was all right, though a treacherous part of me thought that if she died, there’d be nothing holding me hostage to this house.
* * *
My mother recovered slowly, more so than from her miscarriages in the past. My stepfather said no more than usual, but he spent a surprising amount of time sitting with her. I wondered if, for the first time, he’d realized just how frail she’d become. She was very pale and her lips had no color, which alarmed me.
“Has the bleeding stopped?” Auntie Wong asked when she stopped by.
“Mostly,” my mother said.
Auntie Wong looked at me. “If she has a fever, you must take her to hospital. It could be an infection.”
I wanted to take her to the hospital right away, but it would have been exhausting for her to move. Astonishingly, my stepfather voiced the same concerns. He sat next to her and took her hand. “Let me know if you don’t feel well.”
I’d never heard him speak so intimately to her before, but she didn’t seem surprised, and I wondered whether this was the way he occasionally treated her in the privacy of their bedroom, when the doors were closed. Maybe that was enough to keep her foolishly hopeful. But I still hated him, I decided. Nothing would change my mind about that.
Later, Ah Kum came and sat in the kitchen as I boiled pork bone soup, to which I’d added dried red dates to build up my mother’s yang energy.
Ah Kum said, “Your father’s really worried about her. That’s so sweet.”
I nodded. Ah Kum had only moved to Falim this past year and was perhaps unaware that we weren’t related at all.
“Did your brother go back already?”
“Yes, last night.”
Ah Kum sighed and I remembered how she’d been all over Shin last time he was home. At the time I hadn’t cared much: strange how only ten days had made such a difference.
“Does he have a girlfriend?” she asked.
Shin hadn’t announced anything to our parents but that wasn’t surprising, either. “I think so,” I said, recalling Koh Beng’s well-meaning warning to me in the hospital. “Down in Singapore.”
“Oh, Singapore is far away! Perhaps he’ll change his mind and pick me.”
“Perhaps.” I admired her single-minded determination.
“We’ll have six children,” Ah Kum said jokingly. “And they’ll all b
e beautiful.”
I forced myself to smile. “What makes you think so?”
“Just look at you and your brother—such a handsome family!”
Embarrassed, I hung my head. There’d be trouble if anyone knew how my feelings had changed towards Shin. I could imagine my stepfather’s rage, my mother’s shame. The whispers from the neighbors that there must have been something improper going on in our house.
“You’ll cheer me on with your brother, won’t you?” said Ah Kum. “Especially since you’ve got a rich boyfriend. I heard he sent you home last night in a big car.”
I’d completely forgotten about Robert, but I ought to thank him. Write him a note, though I wasn’t sure how to get in touch with him. My problem was solved, however, when Robert stopped by that afternoon, and then again the next morning. The first time he brought dried Chinese herbs. The second time, he brought chicken soup in a blue-and-white porcelain tureen. It had been made, he explained, by his family cook, using the silky-feathered, black-skinned chicken that was especially good for invalids.
It was all very thoughtful of him, and I felt guilty, especially after seeing how the soup had sloshed onto the soft leather of his car seat. Robert’s atrocious driving must have contributed to it, but I didn’t mention that as I rushed to blot the stain. He spent some time chatting with my stepfather. I’d no idea what they talked about, but my mother, who had recovered enough to sit up in the family room and greet him, was pleased.
“Such a nice young man!” she said as I reheated the chicken soup for her. I kept quiet. I hadn’t been able to remove the soup stains from Robert’s car seat. It gave me an uneasy feeling. One more thing that I owed him.
* * *
It was now Friday, and I’d been back in Falim for three days. Three days in which the color had returned to my mother’s face and she’d moved back upstairs to the bedroom she shared with my stepfather. I wouldn’t let her do any housework, despite her insistence she was fine.
“What’s the point of my being here?” I said, reminding her that Mrs. Tham had given me the week off. I’d have to return to Ipoh tomorrow, however, because of the private party on Saturday.