Impractical Uses of Cake

by Yeoh Jo-Ann

  What does she eat? He can’t recall seeing any food in her house of boxes. All he can remember: a mat, a sleeping bag, a trolley suitcase and some newspaper. Not that he imagines she’d leave food strewn all over the place. Maybe she goes to soup kitchens—are there soup kitchens in Singapore? Are there places that give out free food? He should have asked her, instead of mumbling over and over again, “Let me take you somewhere,” to which she only replied, once, “I’m okay here.” And he shouldn’t have left her there, but he did. He didn’t know what else to do, after staying with her for about two hours and failing to summon enough courage to ask her why she lived how she did—tackling the elephant in the room has never been Sukhin’s strong suit. Where is the dummy’s guide for asking the woman you once loved why she’s living under a pile of boxes in an alley?

  “Only you could look good eating mee goreng, sweetie.”

  Sukhin pretends not to hear Dennis, who edges closer and passes him a paper cup full of something orange. He takes a sip and stares. “There’s vodka in this.”

  “Vera snuck in a bottle. You know, she of the lopsided head.”

  “Lopsided hair.”

  “Whatever—the one you pissed off.” Dennis makes a vague gesture at the ceiling. “Great job with the decorations.”

  The golden “Happy New Year” banner hangs across a set of cupboards. Two firecracker strands dangle from the ceiling in each of the seven corners of the odd-shaped room. Six cardboard cutouts of the chubby, grinning god of prosperity line up in a precise row on the wall right above the buffet. Above them, thirty large red carp swim in a straight line, making their way along the walls to the opposite side of the room, towards the air conditioner.

  “Inspiring. It’s like the war of the clones.” Dennis looks across the room to the coffee machine. “And that is magic.”

  Perched on the coffee machine, looking a lot bigger than Sukhin remembers it being at the store, is the yellow lion in all its furry, embroidered majesty, long-lashed glass eyes smugly surveying the chaos. It fixes its amused grin on him. Wow, Sukhin, this is your party?

  It sounds exactly like her, the Jinn he remembers. She would have found this party hilarious—the ass-kissing, the bad music, the clones, the crone. Even the new Jinn smiled when he took the decorations from the box she’d put them in and told her what they were for. But she said nothing, and because he didn’t want to talk about the party when there were clearly bigger things to talk about, he said nothing. He stood for a few minutes cradling his bags of decorations, feeling ridiculous, and then he left, telling her he’d be back.

  He hasn’t been back. I’m an asshole.

  “I see her—let’s go, let’s go.” Dennis grabs his arm and pushes him forward. Half the room away, the Tay is simpering at a stranger, probably one of the new members of the school board.

  Sukhin takes a deep breath. Showtime.

  Chinese New Year used to mean madcap days of running amok with his Ipoh cousins in the old house on Rose Lane, chasing each other up and down the stairs and round and round the garden in a never-ending game of catch they called celok duduk, while his parents and his aunts and uncles crowded around the dining table drinking cold beer and ice cream soda, playing blackjack and gin rummy.

  These days, only his Uncle Desmond and his wife make the drive down from Ipoh. Aunty Mary insists she’s far too old to travel. His cousins are all married, and he hasn’t seen them in years. Sukhin and Philippa, Aunty Lillian’s daughter, are the only two left—and he doesn’t like Philippa, who’s a year older and always considered herself too cool to join the cousins in their games. The old house is still the same, but now all he does is sit in a corner and read while everyone else drinks and plays cards and talks about food, who’s dead or dying, and whether property prices will go up this year.

  “Frankie says I should wait—but should I? Bought the condo five years ago, then prices straight away went down. And now they’re finally up, but should I wait a bit more? Am I being greedy?” Sukhin’s Aunty Lillian sighs as she deals another round of cards.

  “I’m going to be greedy—these pineapple tarts are as good as ever. Better!”

  “Jaswant! Enough! You’ve had at least fifteen.”

  “Fine—what about a slice of your sugee cake, darling?”

  “Pong!”

  “Desmond, we’re not playing mahjong.”

  “I’m just joking lah—I’m not senile, Lillian. Relax.”

  And on, and on, and on.

  Sukhin gives up trying to read and wanders over to the coffee table, where the snacks are set out. Glass jars take up every inch of the table’s highly polished surface, each filled with a different kind of cookie, tart or cake made by either his mother or his Aunty Lillian. He helps himself to a few peanut cookies, checking first that his mother isn’t looking—she would consider it betrayal that he’s choosing Aunty Lillian’s cookies over hers.

  “Someone turn up the air-con, please! I’m melting.”

  Sukhin grimaces. Turn up the air-con, indeed. He’d like to raise the temperature a couple of degrees and watch Philippa fly into a fit of rage— stupid brat. He pacifies himself with a very large slice of his mother’s sugee cake.

  He cracks open a window and quickly shuts it again. Outside, it is hellish. Blazing sun, and not the faintest whisper of wind. Nothing moves in his grandmother’s garden—it’s like looking at a photograph.

  It must be hotter in Chinatown. All that concrete, no trees, barely any shade anywhere. It must be suffocating in that alley at this time of the day. And where does she get water? He imagines there must be a toilet nearby, but how nearby is nearby? He can’t recall the last time he saw a drinking fountain anywhere in the city. For the first time in his life, this strikes him as ungenerous.

  In the kitchen, a conversation.

  “Can you go talk to Sukhin? Poor fellow.”

  Philippa glares at her mother. “What? Poor fellow? He’s just super weird lah, Mum.” She peeks through the doorway at her cousin, who is muttering to himself as he stares out the window. “See? He’s talking to himself.”

  “Aiyah. Some people never recover from a broken heart, you know.”

  “Oh my god—seriously, Mum, that was so long ago. And he’s always been weird.”

  “Pah, sayang. Kesian dia. He’s been through a lot. Don’t be mean.”

  Doris overhears all of this, unseen, as she pours herself another gin and tonic on the other side of the wall. Is that what it is—a broken heart? Across the room, her son is at the window, sullen, mumbling to himself. Then he catches her eye, points to the slice of cake he’s eating, and rolls his eyes and opens his mouth in a mime of ecstacy. She smiles and shakes her head. Nonsense. That Lillian watches far too many Korean drama serials.

  This year, as ever, his mother has spared nothing in her preparations—the reunion dinner the night before was excellent; the cookies and cakes were planned a month ago and executed last week, filling the house with the smell of caramelising sugar, brown butter, pandan, coconut and pineapple. She’s never said it, but Sukhin is sure that her determination to make every single dish, dessert and pastry that her mother (his ancient Ah Mah, who’s crushing everyone at poker now) deems right and proper for Chinese New Year has much to do with her marriage to a Punjabi man. Well, if his mother having a point to prove meant homemade sugee cake every year, the marginal social benefit of that mixed marriage was quite evident—many family rifts have been repaired (or prevented) by that very cake. And the cake itself—a point proven. Sukhin takes another bite. Definitely QED.

  He sees his mother watching him—probably wondering if her cake is up to the usual standard. Sukhin does his best impression of his father’s sugee-cake-appreciation face for her benefit. Only because it’s Chinese New Year.

  Maybe he should bring Jinn some cake. He would if he knew she’d like it—but what if she thought cake frivolous now? It strikes him that there is something incongruous about eating sugee cake and living under a pil
e of boxes. But why? Sukhin feels a stab of shame. He’s turned into one of those awful people who hold it against hawkers who drive BMWs, as if luxury cars must stay forever out of reach for them in order to have meaning for the rest of us.

  He will bring her cake—and she can decide if she wants it or not.

  Every morning, when he wakes up, so does she. But she pretends to be asleep, and she lies still as he carefully climbs out of bed, dresses and goes out for his morning run. Then she rolls over to his side of the bed and lies where his body has been, stretching out in the warmth that he has left behind.

  When he returns from his run, he will find her in the kitchen, showered and dressed, drinking tea. She will hand him a mug, strong and sugarless, the way she drinks it.

  In the bedroom, the bed is already made. Everything is folded, tucked in, smoothed out, perfectly lined up. No evidence that anyone has slept in it.

  V

  “THE MOROSITY OF the poem is made more apparent by the style of the poet, which is sad and lonely.”

  Fuck me. Sukhin throws his pen against the wall. Morosity? Morosity! Does no one own a dictionary any more? Probably not. The thought renders him, yes, morose. The style of the poet is…lonely? Did this boy—this Kevin Seah, according to the spidery scrawl at the top of the page—actually think it acceptable to describe a poet’s style as lonely, or did he mean the poet himself was lonely, which was just as ludicrous? And what, what exactly was Kevin even trying to say? It’s like he put together a bunch of words that could perhaps describe a poem and just hoped for the best. Sukhin puts his forehead down on his desk and takes a deep breath. Kill me kill me kill me.

  The gods ignore him. After a minute or so, he sits up straight and decides it’s time to call it a day. The pen lies defeated at the other end of his office. The morosity of the pen is made more apparent by the sigh of the teacher, which is sad and lonely.

  Sukhin doesn’t know that he’s been the focus of the department store security team for approximately fifteen minutes.

  It’s been years since he’s spent this long at a department store. Once every two years, always in March—specially timed to exclude any sort of local festival and avoid the Singapore-wide mid-year sale—he allocates a small part of an afternoon to replenishing his wardrobe. A list is drawn up weeks beforehand, detailing what needs replacing: shirts, T-shirts, trousers, shorts, underwear, socks, shoes, in exact sizes and quantities. That way, he can round everything up, pay and make his exit (hopefully) within an hour.

  Today, though, is different. Sukhin has decided that, along with sugee cake, he will bring Jinn practical things—socks, underwear, a windbreaker, some clothes, a towel, a thermos. The socks, the windbreaker, the towel, the thermos—easily done. The clothes—he’s picked out a couple of T-shirts and track pants, very versatile. The underwear is the hard part. He’s been in the women’s underwear section for about forty-five minutes, scrutinising the merchandise and reading labels while checking online reviews of each brand on his phone. The salespeople, all women, having offered to help and been refused, watched him peer at various bras for a while and then called security.

  The security team watches Sukhin on the surveillance camera as he methodically picks up one of every kind of bra, fingers the fabric, reads the label, then puts it back. He doesn’t know that they’re wondering if they should approach him; they don’t know that he’s looking for a bra that’s one hundred per cent cotton.

  In the end, no altercation is necessary. He settles for three ridiculously expensive organic cotton bras and two box sets of what the label mystifyingly claims to be “midi” panties and, more mystifyingly, all of it is supposed to be made of combed cotton. He has no idea if any of these will fit—but he is determined to buy underwear because everyone needs underwear. There is nothing more practical than underwear. Even organic combed cotton underwear. Groomed underwear! Sukhin imagines scores of tiny cat-like creatures running combs through tangled masses of cotton. He raises a hand to his head—when did he last comb his hair?

  She offers him tea from a thermos. She’s got a thermos. He eyes the paper bag he passed her earlier, the one she’s put aside without looking inside of.

  They are eating cake. Sukhin is relieved to find that this, at least, hasn’t changed about her—she eats one buttery slice after another with obvious relish, licking her fingers, a half-smile on her face that he’s sure has nothing to do with what he’s telling her about his job. He goes on for a bit, meandering through the mundane but determined to stay on safe territory. He tells her that he’s doing Hamlet for the fourth year in a row, and Wuthering Heights for the second. He tells her about cycling to work. He tells her that the common tests are in March, that he’s already dreading having to read and mark about seventy essays, half of which will be incoherent—if he’s lucky. Throughout, she says nothing.

  And then: “Is it weird?”

  “Is what weird?”

  “Being back at school.”

  Sukhin hasn’t thought about this in years. “No, not any more—but at the beginning, I felt like the man from that Japanese folk tale. The one about the fisherman and the turtle and the underwater kingdom. Do you know it?”

  She shakes her head, reaching for the last slice of cake.

  “A fisherman rescues a turtle—I think it gets trapped in his net by accident—and it takes him deep, deep down into the water to meet the king and queen of the sea. Everyone’s really pleased that he’s saved the turtle— can’t remember why—so they put on a performance at the palace in his honour, and he gets to dance with the princess. She convinces him to spend three days with them, and he does—better than fishing anyway, he must have thought.”

  He has her full attention now—all the cake is gone.

  He wishes he hadn’t started telling this story. He cannot tell it well enough—his words land thin and tepid; he knows he’s robbing the story of its mystique its power its beauty, and he feels stupid. But he can’t stop midway—that would need even more explaining.

  “The three days pass, he says goodbye to everyone and the turtle takes him back to shore, but now he can’t find his house in his village and there’s no sign of his family. It gets worse—he learns from some guy that a hundred years have passed, not three days, while he was gallivanting underwater. Everyone he used to know is dead, and he’s all alone in a strange place that isn’t a strange place. So he goes back to the shore and sits on the beach and waits.”

  He stops, remembering how much the ending had disturbed him as a child.

  She is looking at him expectantly. He realises his telling of it is so bad that she doesn’t know that the story has ended. Apologetically, he forces himself to continue: “And that’s how it ends. Rather mean of the turtle, I always thought. No? Some guy rescues you and you decide to take his life away— or maybe the turtle didn’t know. Do we know what time is like for turtles? Maybe theirs is a completely different concept of time. Turtles live a long time—I saw a turtle at the butterfly farm in Penang and the sign said it was three hundred years old.” Oh god, I’m babbling. Sukhin clamps his mouth shut.

  He pours himself more tea. The tea comes from the Sacred Tooth temple down the road, Jinn tells him—the monks give her as much tea as she wants. The cup is a tiny plastic thing that holds less than a third of a mug’s worth. She’s drinking from a small bowl—he doesn’t ask why; he suspects she’s given him her only cup.

  “And now you don’t feel like a fisherman out of an old Japanese tale?”

  “Not every day.”

  Even the fisherman, cheated of a hundred years, would have had to pull himself together and just get on with it. Sukhin, cheated of nothing— he knows he is his own turtle; he asked to be assigned to his old school— has long reconciled himself to spending most of his days in a strange place that isn’t a strange place. Knowing all the blocks and corridors, but getting the classrooms wrong so often because his instinctive navigation of the school remains stuck in time, even after nearly ten
years there as a teacher. Checking the largest flower pot in the foyer every time he passes it because Jinn and Melissa were always hiding his things there. Quickening his step every time he passes the gym, which even with its new equipment and air conditioning and bright white floors still reminds him of the rugby boys who once tied him and Renyi to the banana trees at the back gate.

  “I’ve never been back,” she says.

  This surprises him. But you always seemed happy there. At the tip of his tongue, but he decides not to say anything. No point, and Sukhin never likes not having a point. They sit in silence for a while, and then he asks if she would like more cake when he comes again.

  “This year, like last year, we’re focusing on Hamlet and To the Lighthouse with the first years, and Wuthering Heights and The Doll House with the second years. For the poetry option, we have Marvell, Pope and the usual sonnets.”

  No one is listening. No one is even pretending to listen. Not Natalie, his deputy head of department, who is busy drawing tiny intersecting circles in her notebook. Not even Dennis, who is attending the meeting as acting head of the Mathematics department while Alice is away on maternity leave.

  There are no windows in this room, and no pictures.

  Sukhin presses on in the monotone he has adapted specifically for these monthly inter-department update meetings. “This year, like last year, I’m leading Hamlet and Wuthering Heights, while Natalie will be in charge of To the Lighthouse and The Doll’s House. Lynnette, Ian and Hanis will all take two texts each. Natalie and I will divide the poetry.”