Impractical Uses of Cake

by Yeoh Jo-Ann

  A book. Weary, dog-eared, JINN on its cover in black marker. Her notebook from junior college, filled with random lesson notes, funny quotes, nonsense doodles and badly drawn caricatures of their teachers and friends. He flips through it, frowning and smiling, suddenly seventeen again.

  And a letter. From Ping—of course, he should have known. The letter is both warm and cold, friend-ish but not friendly, an unstructured tumble of thoughts and information in a delicate, looping script. They are finally packing up her things, Ping writes, never naming “her”, and she thought he might appreciate a memento. There’s an obituary coming out soon, she adds, to close things off properly. She wants to be the one to tell him. “You loved her too”—this, buried somewhere between a brief mention of a memorial service to which he is not invited and something trite about how it’s time everyone moved on, is the sum of their bond, and he’s suddenly moved by this strange, second-hand connection that has compelled her to reach out like this. And just as suddenly, he is struck by some nameless emotion, wedged between remorse and pity, because he can’t write back and tell her that Jinn is alive and safe.

  The last paragraph is odd.

  “This is the end, I suppose—I wish she knew there won’t be any chrysanthemums. Little one, I’m doing the flowers myself.”

  He folds up the letter and puts it in his pocket, where it remains for the rest of the school day. Patient and still, it sits there as Sukhin reads the poem about two men kissing in a car to another class, and then another. It snuggles against his thigh as he talks about the poem, after the first class, with two students keen to find out what other voices Sukhin will share with them this year. It listens as a boy comes up to Sukhin after the second class and whispers a hasty thank-you and then cries; it waits out the awkward silence that follows. It rests, safe in his pocket, as Sukhin drinks another cup of tea at three-thirty, this time carefully setting the paper cup down on his desk before turning his attention back to the letter. It allows itself to be unfolded, so he can read it again.

  He doesn’t quite understand. An obituary? A memorial service? Is this one of those faddish closure rites dreamt up for people who want to cut ties with family members? We didn’t want an alcoholic in the family, you know, so we sent him off and had a memorial service. The agency we hired to close things off even did up an “obituary” for us, to put in the papers. You know, we want everyone to know this man isn’t family any more, that kind of thing. All very tasteful and organised.

  When he shows her the letter, Jinn isn’t surprised or confused. She reads and rereads it, nodding to herself, smiling. “She knew exactly what to do.”

  She tears the letter up, scrunches up the pieces into little balls and adds them to the rain machine’s hoard.

  “In two weeks, Sukhin, I’ll be dead. Finally.” She laughs. “I hope she’ll use a nice photo for the obituary.”

  Later, over dinner, she explains, very briefly: “It’s been seven years, so now I can be declared legally dead. And that’s what they’re doing.”

  “And before?”

  “Just missing.”

  “Legally dead? You mean in all public records and all that? Can people do that?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what’s next?”

  “I die.” She ladles gravy onto her plate. “You’re the lit teacher, Sukhin. All tragedies end with death and maybe a funeral. And, in my case, the rightful division of property.” She smiles. “Tell me, what comes after death?”

  He has no idea. He looks at the smiling woman across the table, heaping mash onto her fork, talking about dying the week after as if she’s talking of cake or dinner—no, far more casually than she would talk of cake—and he wonders how this has become his life. He wants to tell her that nothing matters, really, but her being here. That when she dies, he would like this— his life, his home, everything that surrounds them now—to be her grave. He imagines her saying, God, Sukhin, how morbid.

  So instead he folds his arms and smiles ruefully. “Are we going to talk about the afterlife over Guinness stew? Really.”

  “No.” She laughs. “Though it’s really very good—you must teach me how.”

  He finds himself starting to talk about browning meat, then about caramelising onions, and in his head he is thinking,

  This is enough. For me, it is enough.

  He hopes it is enough for her. He asked her, weeks ago, if she was ever frightened, being alone, living on the streets. She was slicing apples for pies to take to the East Coast Park families; he was helping her prepare the dough.

  “Yes. At the beginning. But it didn’t last—after a while, I realised I needed very little. A bit to eat, somewhere to clean myself, something to sleep on, space to think, a couple of books. I was okay.”

  “You weren’t afraid of being robbed, or attacked?”

  “No. I didn’t have anything to steal, really.” She ate a slice of apple and reached out to feed him one. “And I stayed out of everyone’s way. No one notices us, Sukhin—people pretend that we don’t exist. No one’s supposed to be homeless here.” She didn’t sound enraged or upset.

  Sukhin felt ashamed and uncomfortable. He supposed he was “people” in this case, not “us”. He helped whenever he could, at Rowell and at East Coast Park, ferrying food and Jinn and running errands, but he couldn’t pretend he was doing it for any reason but her. He wasn’t eyebrow-deep in things, the way Jinn and Kim Seng and Gopal were—they were talking lately of buying a second-hand van and starting a mobile soup kitchen. They sat at his kitchen table and did sums and argued and laughed and drank crazy amounts of tea, and he watched them from the sofa, pretending to be lost in his books. “You guys are incredible,” he said, shaking his head.

  They understood what he was really saying. They laughed. “What to do, Sukhin? We have too much free time.” Kim Seng winked, and they all laughed again.

  By the end of that evening, battling a severe case of reverse schadenfreude, Sukhin had agreed to help hunt for the van and drive it once a week. It was so ridiculous, so haphazardly planned—and so unlikely to succeed, so why not? And he couldn’t help but be caught up in their whirlwind, even if they seemed so happy to leave so much un—that was it, though, just un. Undone, unplanned, unaccounted for. He didn’t know if he envied them more for their devil-may-care glamour or their joy in it.

  She seemed to read his thoughts. Later, after Kim Seng and Gopal left, she told him, “You’ll see. It will all work out—we’ll try, and we’ll adapt. Like animals.”

  “Like otters?”

  “Like all animals, Sukhin. God, you’ve become so fixated on otters for some reason.”

  He helped her bake six pies, and by the time they were done, it was past two in the morning and they both had shadows under their eyes. The entire apartment smelled glorious. He wondered if all of these lovely buttery things really made a difference to anyone, if it mattered to anyone that they were eating apple pie crumbed and sliced and stewed and baked by these four hands in this small kitchen instead of some frozen-thawed job made by machine in some factory who knew where. It probably didn’t, but who knew?

  “You know what your problem is, Sukhin?”

  “You’re about to tell me.”

  She patted his cheek, sighing dramatically. “You’re too much of a thinker. Relax. Your thinking face isn’t quite so handsome.”

  He must have his thinking face on again, now. What was he saying? Something about Guinness stew, but what? She’s looking at him across the table, snickering. Staring down at his plate, he realises she’s stolen about a third of his dinner.

  “Here. Out of the goodness of my dying heart.” She reaches across to feed him a chunk of carrot. He rolls his eyes and opens his mouth.

  This is enough.

  “Aren’t you worried at all?” he asks the soft shape in his bed.

  “About what?”

  “I don’t know. Everything? The future? I mean, you’re about to be officially dead.”

 
“Next week. Yes.”

  “Not worried? Not a drop?” He moves closer, closer to the soft shape.

  It turns towards him. He can feel its hair on his face as he takes it in his arms and buries his face in its neck.

  “No, Sukhin. Not a drop.”

  Dennis is waiting for him at the bottom of the back stairs.

  “I heard about the poem.”

  “Oh.”

  “I think it’s very sweet. And very brave.”

  Sukhin stares at his shoes. They stare back at him. Dennis leans across and kisses him on the cheek, then walks away.

  At assembly, the students tell each other that Mr Dhillon is looking— distant? dreamy?

  “Shocked?” Yes, maybe shocked.

  Back at his desk, the first email he sees is from the Tay. She wants to know, by the end of today, whether he’ll accept the role of Director of Academic Studies. She wants him to carefully consider his career not just at this school, but holistically—in education. She wants him to know what a great opportunity this is, how much they are all looking forward to helping him develop his leadership potential. She wants him to know that she will of course be disappointed should he decide not to accept, but—

  Sukhin pushes his chair away from the desk, stands up and looks around his office. It’s only a box—how has he never seen this? He thinks about all the boxes he hacked apart and sliced into bits and put together again to make the rain machine, and he feels the urge to take up an axe a saw a chisel and do the same to this one. Turn it into a rain machine, turn everything in it into rain, add bits of carpet for texture, throw in a couple of chairs for comfortable viewing. He will tell the Tay: Thanks for giving me and my career so much thought, but I’ve decided to go in for installation art instead.

  As he straightens his shirt and adjusts his collar, he thinks about that old Japanese tale about the fisherman led by the turtle into deep blue depths, coaxed to linger there awhile by the princess of the underwater realm, while a hundred years goes by on the surface in what seems like only three days underwater. The same chain of thoughts encircles him, the one that always—and quickly—finds him every time he recalls this story. How horrible, to go home and find it missing. How horrible, all that lost time. That turtle—what an asshole. And that princess—what a nasty piece of marine biology.

  He opens the door and steps out of his box.

  “Sukhin, is that you? Have you got a minute? Something’s wrong with my computer. Can you take a look?” Mrs Chandra, from inside hers.

  “Sorry—later? I’ve got to see Mrs Tay about something urgent.”

  He turns off the lights and closes the door behind him. He doesn’t lock it. The walk to the principal’s office takes less than five minutes, but it feels like forever. He can hear her inside, talking on the phone—or harassing some poor sod with a soliloquy. Sukhin knocks on the door anyway. It will only take a minute, after all, to tell her.

  He will say no to the princess.

  He will not stay at the bottom of the sea.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  THANK YOU, THANK YOU, AND THANK YOU AGAIN:

  Kevin Seah, who supplied me with relentless cheer, who was first to read every chapter, who fell in love with Jinn.

  My mother, Alison Loh, for allowing me to be a perfect monster, and Dhruv Doshi and Ryn Suthipradit, for keeping me on the path of least crazy, while I wrote and raged.

  James Wynn-Higgins, Abirama Thanikasalam, Jeremy Ee, Joanna Lim and Corrine Chia, for believing.

  Nishta Geetha Thevaraja, for listening, always.

  M, for that one earnest, unexpected remark in Seville, without which I would never have dared to dare to do this.

  Cyril Wong, for gracing the universe with the untitled poem in the final chapter.

  Edmund Wee and the incredible team at Epigram Books—especially Jason Erik Lundberg, Qin Yi, Chris Toh and Nicholas Chua—for the unending support, guidance and patience, in spite of my resting bitch face and my inability to refrain from argument.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  YEOH JO-ANN doesn’t eat vegetables, drinks far too much coffee and exercises far too little. Growing up, she dreamt of becoming a cat, or a rock star. Instead, she worked in publishing for eight years and ended up a features editor at SPH Magazines, then gave that up for a career in digital marketing. Her fiction has been anthologised in We R Family, In Transit and Best New Singaporean Short Stories: Volume Three. Impractical Uses of Cake is her first novel and the winning entry of the 2018 Epigram Books Fiction Prize. She still dreams of becoming a cat, but would gladly settle for some sort of bird or squirrel.

  The annual Epigram Books Fiction Prize promotes contemporary creative writing and rewards excellence in Southeast Asian literature. It is awarded to the best manuscript of a full-length, original and unpublished novel. Originally restricted to Singaporean citizens, permanent residents and Singapore-born writers, the EBFP is now open to all of ASEAN for novels written in or translated into the English language.

  For more information, please visit EBFP.EPIGRAMBOOKS.SG