Spirits Abroad (ebook)

by Zen Cho

  "So you must study hard and go to university. Now, at your age, is not the time to look at boys. Understand or not?"

  "Yes," said Ah Lee. But the mutinous thought rumbled to the surface of her mind: They're the ones who don't understand.

  When she was a child Ah Lee had often wondered whether adults could read her mind. They seemed to have an uncanny ability to tell what she was thinking at any given moment. Ah Ma evinced this telepathy now:

  "Ah, you're angry already," she said. "Don't think so much. Listen to Ah Ma and do what you're told. Now give me a kiss and go to bed."

  In the end it was not even Ah Lee's doing. Suddenly, easily, without any need for imaginary cafés or prepared lines scribbled in exercise books, Ah Lee became friends with Ridzual.

  It was because of Thursdays. Ji Ee and Aunty Girl were the only two of the aunts who could drive, so it was their job to pick Ah Lee up from school. But they had line dancing every Thursday and so they were an hour late.

  Ah Lee usually waited for them in the canteen, doing homework if she felt like it and daydreaming if she didn't. In the middle of the day there weren't many people around, and it was pleasant, even quiet. It smelled of grease, heated metal from the car park, and the freshly-washed flesh of the afternoon session kids waiting for school to start.

  The background hum of talk and the hiss of oil in frying pans made Ah Lee feel secure. She liked the feeling of being idle while others were busy, alone when others were talking.

  It was at this peaceful moment, while Ah Lee was following a drop of condensation on her glass of iced soy bean milk with a finger and thinking about nothing much, that Ridzual tapped her on the shoulder. He said,

  "Tamadun Awal, right?"

  And that was how she met him. The boy who gave her back her sense of taste.

  He dropped his schoolbag on the floor and sat on the bench next to her with an admirable lack of self-consciousness.

  "Your name is Eng Ah Lee? Don't worry, I'm not a stalker. I know 'cos I was checking out all our team members in class. I'm using this project as an exercise to get to know people. My name's Ridzual, I'm new. So what do you think of early civilizations? I don't know shit about them."

  Despite her many fantasies, Ah Lee had not seriously considered ever actually talking to Ridzual. She waited for her throat to close and her muscles to freeze. But she found herself speaking naturally, as if to a friend whom she had known forever.

  "It's OK. I like this kind of thing," she said. "Anyway, at least it's not Persatuan Penulis or whatever."

  "Hah! Don't even say that," said Ridzual. "No, that's true. At least with Tamadun Awal maybe we can dress up like Ancient Egyptians or something. I think I'd look good in eyeliner."

  "Nanti kena rotan by the discipline teacher then you know," said Ah Lee. "You know Puan Aminah doesn't even let us wear colored watches. Must be black, plain black strap." She showed him the watch she was wearing. "Metal watch also cannot. Too gaya konon."

  "Wah lau," said Ridzual. He said it in a toneless accent Ah Lee found peculiarly charming. "I think that woman is just jealous. Like when she confiscated my shoes. She couldn't stand looking at them, just got too jealous of my style."

  It would have been obnoxious if he had been serious. But Ridzual wore a perpetual embarrassed smile, an uncertainty around the eyes, that made it obvious that the hot air was just joking. Ah Lee liked vulnerability in a human, and she warmed to this.

  "She took your shoes?" she said. They both looked down at his feet, now encased in boring white canvas. "Never give back meh?"

  "I never saw them again," said Ridzual. "I think she's wearing them now. Sometimes if you look closely you can see the white flash under the hem of her baju.

  "Discipline teachers cannot stand me," he said mournfully. "I remind them of what they can never achieve. At my last school there was one teacher like that. Encik Velu. He used to chase me around the school with a rotan. He said it's because I ponteng or I made rude gestures at the teacher or I kencing in the beaker or some garbage like that. But he couldn't fool me. I knew it was because he wished he was like me when he was young, one million years ago."

  "You peed in the beaker?" said Ah Lee.

  "Only once," said Ridzual modestly. "It was for science. I wanted to titrat it but the kimia teacher stop me before I can do it."

  "International school got discipline teacher meh?" said Ah Lee.

  "What makes you think I went to international school?" said Ridzual.

  Ah Lee went pink.

  "Your slang," she said. "You talk like Mat Salleh."

  "Oh, that," said Ridzual. It was his turn to look embarrassed. "That's called a Bangsar accent. But don't hold it against me. I'm trying to be a Lubuk Udangite. A good prawn."

  "I've live in Lubuk Udang my whole life," said Ah Lee.

  "Right? What should I do to become a good Lubuk Udangite?"

  "Don't call us prawns," said Ah Lee.

  Ah Lee had not had a friend to spend break with since she'd started at that school. She did not eat during break. It had seemed simpler to avoid the crowd at the canteen, and find some out-of-the-way spot on the school grounds where she could read.

  Of course, it had been different before she was dead. But that was before, in another life — and more importantly, at a different school.

  Now that she and Ridzual were friends, Ah Lee bought a bag of keropok lekor in the canteen every day and ate them while Ridzual wolfed down a bowl of tomyam noodles.

  She had loved the chewy fried fish sticks in life. Now she was dead they tasted of nothing. She ate slowly and threw the remaining keropok away when break was over. She felt bad about the waste of it — heart-pain, the aunts would have said. Ah Lee's upbringing had trained her to a mindful parsimony, so that it did almost feel like a physical pain to see the fish sticks tumbling into the bin.

  She asked Tua Kim if she would disguise some innards for her to take to school.

  Tua Kim considered her for a moment in silence. Then she said,

  "I'll deep-fry them. They'll look like chicken nugget."

  She turned back to her washing.

  "Er, Tua Kim," said Ah Lee. "Um, don't tell the others, OK or not? Ah Chor and Ah Ma and all of them. Ah Ma will scold me for eating fried things. She'll say I'll get pimples."

  When Ah Lee saw Tua Kim's face she felt foolish for the lie.

  "This is because of your friend," Tua Kim said, in the tone of one pointing out an obvious fact to a dim person.

  Ah Lee looked down at her feet. Her smallest toes curled in embarrassment.

  "I'm shy to be the one not eating," she mumbled. "People like to eat together."

  "You need your own friends," said Tua Kim. When Ah Lee peeked up she saw that Tua Kim's face had not softened. She spoke almost sternly. It was not kindness in her face, but understanding.

  "You need your own thing," said Tua Kim. "Something that's nothing to do with your family. You feel this especially when you're young, but even for old people it's important. Some people don't understand this kind of thing. So it's better not to talk so much about it."

  She wiped her hand on a dishcloth and started putting the clean dishes back in the cupboard. "I'll put your snack in your backpack in the morning. Other people don't need to see."

  "Thank you, Tua Kim," said Ah Lee.

  She had never thanked an aunt for anything before. It was understood that they would do things for her, that that was the way the world worked. She did not need to thank them any more than trees thanked the sun for shining or the earth thanked the clouds for rain. Ah Lee was not sure the aunts would have understood or even registered any attempt on her part to express gratitude for the many ways in which they cared for her.

  It made her feel funny to say the words — stripped, somehow. Skinless and shy. To say it was to contemplate a world in which the aunts did not look after her.

  Tua Kim only inclined her head slightly to show she had heard. She made no other response. That was one thing y
ou could rely on Tua Kim for. She had a sense of the appropriateness of things.

  The next day at school Ah Lee opened her plastic container and almost felt normal, eating fried kidney nuggets as if she were any ordinary kid at school. Ridzual sneaked looks at the nuggets as he was eating his tomyam noodles. When he had finished his noodles, he said casually,

  "What's that?"

  Ah Lee had expected this. Food was for sharing. If she had been human she would have responded to his interest by offering him a nugget.

  This simple unthinking generosity had been put beyond her power after her death — one reason why she had not bothered with friends until Ridzual. Fortunately there was a simple way of avoiding awkwardness.

  "Pork," she said. She ate another nugget.

  "I've always wondered what pork tastes like," said Ridzual to the air.

  "I've always thought it's very important to respect other people's religion," said Ah Lee to the nuggets.

  "What is life if you don't taste everything that the world has to offer?" said Ridzual.

  "In this country we must accept other people's customs," said Ah Lee. "Not just tolerate, but respect. That is how to live together."

  Ridzual laughed and gave up.

  "If you don't want to share your nugget, say lah," he said. "Why so shy to admit you're greedy?"

  "Who's greedy now?" said Ah Lee. "One bowl of tomyam, how many otak-otak— tak cukup ke? Your mother and father don't feed you?"

  "I'm a man! Men need nutrition, OK," said Ridzual with dignity. Ah Lee made jeering noises through a mouthful of nugget.

  Of course perfect happiness could not be allowed to continue without an aunt stepping in to intervene. If anyone had ever dared to suggest to the aunts that children should be allowed to make their own mistakes and learn from them, it would have horrified the aunts.

  Ah Lee was doing her Chemistry homework in the kitchen one afternoon when Aunty Girl said,

  "Wah, studies so funny meh? Why are you smiling?"

  Ah Lee started. She had been thinking about her conversation with Ridzual about nuggets, but she hadn't realized she was smiling.

  "Nothing," she said.

  "Must be that small boy," said Ji Ee.

  "No!" said Ah Lee a little too loudly. "Everything is Ridzual this, Ridzual that. You think that's the only thing I think about, is it?"

  Before this outburst, the aunts had been absorbed in their usual afternoon task of preparing dinner and had only been making chat for the sake of it. They squatted over their buckets of viscera, sorting the nice bits of the human innards (the intestines, the liver, the kidneys, the heart, the lungs) from the less nice bits (the spleen, the gallbladder, the esophagus).

  Now the aunts were all interested. Aunty Girl even washed her bloody hands and came to sit at the table with Ah Lee.

  "Who's this Ridzual?" said Ah Chor.

  "She's talking about that Malay boy, Ma," said Ah Ma. "What's his name again— Ridzwan?"

  "Oh, Ridzwan," said Ah Chor. "Why, Ah Lee still likes this Ridzwan? I thought that was all finished already!"

  "Ah Lee doesn't so easily forget," Ji Ee chided.

  "That's right," said Aunty Girl. "She doesn't stop liking things so fast. Remember when she was small, she liked that English show, what was it called—" she switched to English for the title: "'My Little Horsie'. She had all those horse toys, with the long hair and the stars on the backside. She liked it for two years! From four until six."

  "It's because she has a good memory," said Ji Ee.

  "Children usually don't remember things for so long," Ah Ma agreed. "Ah Lee only. Never forgets anything!"

  "Men are not like My Little Heh Bee," said Ah Chor reprovingly. "There's no problem with liking little heh bee for a long time. But Ah Chor has already told you, so many problems come if you like a man."

  "You should use your good memory to remember what is in your textbooks, not for remembering your boyfriend," said Sa Ee Poh.

  "He is not my boyfriend," said Ah Lee. "We are just friends. Can't I have friends?"

  "Ah Lee, friends are not a problem," said Ji Ee.

  "No, you cannot have friends," said Ah Ma.

  "Ma," Ji Ee protested. "You let me have friends when I was Ah Lee's age. There's nothing wrong with boy friends — not sweethearts, not at this age, but boy friends are OK. That's normal."

  "Your time was different," said Ah Ma. "Ah Lee is not like you. Ah Lee is not normal."

  She looked up at Ah Lee.

  "Ah Lee, you are not like any of us," she said. "When we were young we could have boy friends."

  "We couldn't," said Sa Ee Poh. "Not you and me. Never mind sweethearts. Ma didn't even allow us just to be friends with boys."

  "Yes, I never let you," Ah Chor agreed. "After a certain age, it doesn't look nice for a good girl to be around boys too much."

  Ah Ma ignored them.

  "When we were older we could get married, and everybody could come to our wedding," she said. "There was nothing to hide. It's not the same for you.

  "Ah Ma wants you to get married someday. Ah Ma wants you to graduate from university. Maybe you will never have children, but you can be a good scholar and have a good job. Other people will admire you. Your husband will respect you.

  "But for this to happen, people cannot know. You must be very careful. You have to go to school so you can study, but you must make sure people don't remember you. No friends. Don't talk too much to teachers. You remember we all told you this before you started school again."

  Ah Lee remembered. She stared at her exercise book. Ridzual had written "What does any of it MEAN?" at the bottom of the page. She had whited it out with liquid eraser, but the words showed through after the white fluid had dried.

  "If you are friends with Ridzual that is even worse than if you like him," said Ah Ma tenderly. "You must not go around with him anymore."

  "Don't do it suddenly," said Ji Ee. "Slowly just become more distant. Don't drop him immediately, but don't need to talk to him so much. He will get the hint."

  "Things will change in the future," said Aunty Girl. "When you are older, at university, it'll be easier to hide. You can have friends there. But this place is too small. Everybody knows everybody's business. It's better to keep to yourself."

  "There's no need to be so sad, girl," said Sa Ee Poh. "Even if you hurt his feelings, he won't remember you after a while. Young people recover very fast."

  I will remember, thought Ah Lee. She did not want to cry because the aunts made such a fuss when you cried. She gulped and squeezed her pen and looked at Tua Kim.

  Tua Kim was sorting through the slippery organs, listening to the conversation but not part of it. She said, eyes still on the bucket,

  "Every woman has secrets."

  "Hah! Very true," said Aunty Girl. "When you get married, you won't be the only bride who knows something the groom doesn't know. Cousin Kah Hoe didn't even know his wife was pregnant until she had the baby six months after the wedding."

  "He never found out who the father was also," said Sa Ee Poh.

  "Shh! Eh, enough!" said Ah Chor, scandalized. "Shouldn't talk about such things."

  "Don't listen to your naughty aunties," Ah Ma told Ah Lee.

  How could you die and not be old enough to hear about premarital sex? How could you die and still not be allowed to fall in love or be honest? Surely not everything had to wait for university and a good job. Passion and truth had to trump even those things.

  Still, it wasn't a conscious decision on Ah Lee's part to rebel. She was not even thinking about the many-aunted lecture when the urge to candor came to her.

  It was a Thursday again, Ji Ee and Aunty Girl's line dancing day, and Ah Lee and Ridzual were hanging around waiting for their respective rides home. They had found the perfect width of concrete ledge to sit on next to the monsoon drain outside their school. From here they had an unobstructed view of the road, and a big leafy flame-of-the-forest provided dappled shade.


  It was so sunny the whole world gave off a metallic glare. Ah Lee and Ridzual sat on their ledge, squinting at the road.

  Ah Lee surprised herself when she said,

  "Ridzual, do you have any secrets?"

  Once it was out she felt a great sense of relief. She knew she wanted to tell him. She was sick of keeping everything important to herself, hidden away from the piercing gaze of the aunts.

  "Yah," said Ridzual slowly. "Yes. Funny you should say that. I've been thinking I should tell you one of them."

  Ah Lee was nonplussed.

  "Oh, but I was going to tell you—" she said. "Um, never mind."

  "Oh, if you were going to say something, then you should say first," said Ridzual.

  "No, it's OK, you go first," said Ah Lee.

  "My secret isn't very interesting," said Ridzual. "You say first lah."

  "My one is very interesting," said Ah Lee firmly. "It'll take long time to tell. You go first."

  "Cannot," said Ridzual. He got up off the ledge, fell into a squat, bent his head and put his hands in his hair.

  Ah Lee started to feel worried. She had never seen Ridzual act like this before. Something seemed really wrong. Maybe something bad had happened at home. She got up and touched his shoulder.

  "Eh, why like this? What's wrong?"

  "My life," moaned Ridzual.

  Ah Lee felt relieved. If Ridzual was in a good enough mood to whine then he was manageable.

  "Eh! Merajuk already," she said. "Don't need to sulk like that. How old are you?"

  When Ridzual lifted his head she saw his eyes were wet.

  "It's no big deal," he said. "It's nothing to you. There's nothing wrong. I just like you, that's all. That's my big secret. Probably you know already, probably it is very obvious. You want you laugh lah. But it's the first time I've ever been in l-love, so sorry if I want to make a big fuss about it."