by Balli Kaur
Father picked up a pen and began writing on the pad he always kept at the corner of his desk. Gurdev kept a respectful distance, knowing how Father hated having his privacy compromised when he was writing.
Gurdev continued. ‘While I’ve been thinking about Amrit’s future, I’ve also been thinking about my daughters. This country is getting more competitive. The girls have to do exams every six months and there’s no guarantee that they’ll get into university here, even if they work hard. Once Amrit is abroad and established, I can think about moving my family there as well.’
Father looked up. ‘I didn’t know you were considering migration.’
‘We weren’t,’ Gurdev said, ‘but everything here is so uncertain. The girls will have a wider range of opportunities abroad. Our community here is very small. Amrit’s reputation might tarnish the reputations of our girls.’ He had not actually considered moving the family abroad, but Father was sure to appreciate the pressures to leave home for the sake of his children’s futures.
‘So Amrit’s portion will be taken care of by the wedding,’ Father said slowly to himself.
‘Yes,’ Gurdev said. ‘Here is the other issue, though.’ For this, he leaned closer to Father, as he had seen Karam do, closing the gap between them. ‘Father, for the sake of my daughters’ futures, I need a bigger portion of the inheritance money.’
‘You don’t even know what I’m going to give you,’ Father argued.
‘The cost of living is rising, Father. Everything is going to get more expensive. I can’t keep promising the girls a better life if I can’t pay for it. You know my girls – they’re bright. I want to keep them from going down the wrong path.’
‘It’s unfair, Gurdev,’ Father said, with a sigh. ‘He was Karam’s grandfather, too.’ He turned back to his pad and read his scribbles.
‘Have you spoken to Karam lately?’ Gurdev asked.
Father’s eyes did not leave the pad. ‘He’s been very busy with his work. I called him about the land money. I told him I’d confirm a time to meet with him after I discussed the money with you. I wanted to speak to my own son first.’
This gave Gurdev a boost of confidence. ‘When you do have a chance to speak with Karam, don’t mention that Ministry of Health position.’
Father looked up. ‘Why?’
‘He didn’t get it,’ Gurdev said. ‘They just didn’t think he was a strong enough candidate.’
Father looked crestfallen. He stared at Gurdev for a moment, as if not believing his words. ‘Really? He was so certain,’ he said. He looked at the pad again. His brow was furrowed, as if a thought had just occurred to him. ‘This is why he has been avoiding me?’
‘Oh, I don’t know about that,’ Gurdev said. ‘I feel sorry for him, actually. He’s been taking it quite badly.’
Father threw him a suspicious look. ‘How do you know all of this?’
‘I met with him recently. He told me everything. We speak quite often about these things. I caught up with him and asked him for tips on getting the girls into Sacred Heart – connections he might have, things like that.’
‘Did he help you?’ Father asked.
Gurdev sighed. ‘I don’t know. He didn’t really have any answers.’
‘You can’t expect answers, Gurdev, but he must have had some advice,’ Father urged.
Gurdev shook his head. ‘Honestly, Father, he didn’t know. It seems as if he’s lost all of his confidence. He’s become quite shy since this rejection.’
‘Becoming shy?’ Now Father looked disturbed. ‘No wonder I haven’t heard from him. He thinks he can hide this from me?’
‘I wouldn’t blame him completely,’ Gurdev said. ‘I don’t think it’s all his fault.’ He paused, revelling in Father’s full attention. ‘It’s the girl he’s marrying. You probably haven’t had a chance to speak with her yet, but I met her the other day and I can tell you this: she’s very independent. An individual.’
Those words did not agree with Father. What, surely, flashed into his mind was Mother: her surprising fieriness; her stubborn refusal to learn English; and her ability to dismiss his most cutting words. He would attempt to stir her up by saying she was illiterate and too traditional. Simple, a venomous insult in his vocabulary. Without batting an eye, Mother would continue to do things her way. Father had no patience for that type of woman. He picked up the pad and began to scribble again. The room filled with Father’s mutterings and the sounds of frantic scratching of pen on paper. ‘All right then,’ he kept saying as Gurdev waited by his side. ‘All right, all right.’
Amrit
Every evening, he called. Father always picked up the phone, but Amrit was right by his side, expecting the call. He and Father exchanged pleasantries and then Father handed the receiver over to Amrit. Father was courteous enough to leave her alone in the living room while she spoke to her future husband.
On the first phone call, there were many awkward silences, which were then hastily filled with polite questions confirming the biographical sketches they had been provided. She knew his name was Jaspal and that he worked for an insurance company in Toronto. He had a younger brother. On weekends, he went to the movies with friends, and he was helping his family renovate their home in a suburb of Toronto. His voice was deep and gentle and his accent curled around his words like somebody from a television show.
What he knew about her: aged twenty-three; born on 18 August; completed secondary school exams; learnt some skills at secretarial school; pursued work afterwards. Even those facts were padded. She did not so much complete her exams as scrape through with two passes, which did not grant her admission into any pre-university program. Secretarial school had been the only option. On some days at secretarial school, she had felt that the world was hers; there was nothing she could learn that she didn’t already know. Thoughts shot through her mind, convincing her that she was too clever, tearing her away from dull routine. Then, when she sank, the last place she wanted to be was at a desk, learning the proper typing hand placements and how to address letters. She wanted to be in bed or trapped inside it somehow, woven into the thick linings of her sheets.
When Father had informed her of the arrangement, he made it very clear that she was to give Jaspal the best impression of herself, so she pretended that everything he knew about her was accurate. This was her only chance to change.
In their second conversation, he asked her tentatively if she liked to cook. ‘I do actually,’ she said. ‘Curries and things.’
There was a laugh of relief on the other end. ‘You never know if you can ask that question nowadays,’ Jaspal said. ‘Some girls get offended.’
‘You don’t expect me to cook for you, do you?’ she asked. A pause, and then she added, ‘I’m joking.’
He laughed again. ‘That’s cheeky of you,’ he said, and she smiled to herself, warm in that recognition. Father had not told him that she had a sense of humour. It occurred to her that Father knew little about her beyond her behaviour and failed accomplishments. During the conversation she cracked a few more jokes, noticing with triumph the laughter that tumbled down the line. The next day she spent an entire afternoon daydreaming about her new life in Canada. Jaspal featured infrequently in her fantasies but she told herself this was because she had not met him yet. She had only seen a photograph; he was pleasant-looking, with light skin and greyish-brown eyes.
‘Does it snow a lot?’ she asked, during their third conversation. ‘Is it very cold?’
‘You’ll get used to it,’ he said. ‘Driving on icy roads can be dangerous, though. Can you drive?’
‘No,’ she said.
‘You’ll have to learn. Once you have a licence, you’ll be able to go anywhere on your own.’
‘That’s nice,’ she said, picturing herself behind the wheel of a car, surrounded by white landscapes. ‘I’ve always wanted to see what snow looks like. I know it’s actually quite troublesome, but there’s a bit of novelty to seeing it for the first time. It
sounds like a nice change. It’s always so hot here.’
‘I’ll get to see it for myself soon,’ he reminded her. ‘We’ll be in Singapore on the 7th.’
‘Yes,’ she said. It’s all happening so quickly, she wanted to say, but she didn’t know if this would make her sound reluctant. She wanted to marry him. Marriage was exactly what she needed. Nobody had explained it to her; nobody had to. They wanted her to be expunged of this tendency towards recklessness. She did, too. She was tired of who she had become. Marrying Jaspal was a start to something new and she was in dire need of a change. Everywhere she looked, it seemed as though Singapore was hurtling forwards into the future, with a new order that made people more straight-backed and tight-lipped. The air was still and humid, a constant heavy breath on her skin. Yet Amrit remained unsettled, her mind overtaken by uncontrollable bursts of brilliance for days and weeks before the helplessness crept in. One morning a few months ago, she opened her eyes to realise that she had wet the bed in a drunken stupor. The stench of urine had filled the room and travelled into the hallway. Yet she could not fathom getting up and cleaning herself. It took an effort to make the smallest movement, and mysterious aches shifted and intensified in waves.
During their fourth conversation, Jaspal mentioned that she wouldn’t have trouble finding a job in Toronto. ‘You speak English pretty well,’ he said.
Amrit was indignant. ‘I was the best speaker in my class,’ she informed him. In fact, on the merits of her excellent English, Mr Lau had hired her to answer phones at the advertising agency. She had originally applied for a copywriting job but had no experience or prior employers to vouch for her. Mr Lau had told her that she could answer phones for six months; in the meantime, she could learn the inner workings of the company. Last week, when she returned to work after three consecutive sick days, she had avoided Mr Lau, the guilt burning into her.
Jaspal’s laughter was empty. ‘You’re funny,’ he said.
‘I wasn’t joking,’ Amrit replied. ‘Or boasting. My English results were the best in the school. I’d like to work in advertising.’
‘Do you want children?’ he asked.
‘Of course I do,’ Amrit said. ‘I want two. Two girls.’ She thought about Simran and Kiran, their soft hands and feet when they were babies, their gentle smiles and the way they clutched Gurdev’s pant leg and hid behind him shyly. ‘I want to work and raise children as well. I know it’s hard, but people manage.’
‘That’s nice,’ Jaspal said vaguely. ‘It’s very modern of you.’ The distance between them did not hide his disappointment at her mention of working. Amrit racked her brains to think of lighter subjects, but besides their shared future, what would they have together?
A few days later, Amrit woke to the sound of her alarm. It fell with a crash from the edge of her mattress to the floor, but it continued a jerky ringing until she pressed the button. She lay in bed, the sheets heavy and moist with sweat, and knew that she would not go to work today or tomorrow. She had taken another three days off and claimed a flu, unverified by a medical certificate. ‘I was so sick I couldn’t see a doctor,’ she’d told Mr Lau over the phone. ‘It’s my back. And my stomach. Everything is painful,’ she said, knowing that no doctor would take her seriously. It wasn’t pain or fatigue exactly. There was no precise way to talk about it. She had tried to go to the clinic several times but a succinct way to describe her symptoms eluded her and she ended up leaving.
She blamed herself. Somewhere there must be the terminology for the way thoughts sped through her mind, tricking her into thinking the world was illuminated solely by her ideas. There was a name for what would inevitably follow: a plummeting sense that she should not exist. Amrit’s regrets were endless. If she had finished school and gone on to university, she was certain she would have the words. Education was the way out of any state of uncertainty or misery. The government was always saying that Singaporeans had to compete with each other; Amrit could compete with nobody. With her limited words, all she could say was that it felt like hell.
The phone rang at 8.45 a.m. She heard a door open somewhere in the flat and, moments later, a light tap on her door. ‘Phone call for you.’ Narain’s voice was muffled through the door.
‘Come in,’ she called to Narain. She had not spoken to him in ages. He was rarely around when she got home, and in the mornings, she was still asleep when he got ready for work.
The door opened. In the doorframe, Narain looked larger than he was. He tucked in his shirt as he spoke to her, avoiding looking at the room. She assessed it through his eyes. Worn and unwashed clothes lay strewn across the floor; a pair of underpants dangled from the corner of the ironing board. The dressing table was crowded with makeup and accessories still wrapped in their packages. Glasses lined with Ribena and crusty Milo stains littered the floor next to her bed. The dust on the floor was thick and visible, even though only a tiny sliver of light entered through a space between her curtains. Before going to sleep last night, she had used clothes pegs to bind them together, but the draught through the open windows must have caused them to snap off.
‘I’m not going in today,’ Amrit said.
‘You have to work. You’re not going to get anywhere with this career that you want if you don’t put in the work.’
Amrit sat up. ‘You know what they make me do the whole day in that bloody office? Smile. Smile when clients come in, smile when I show them to the conference room, smile even when I’m on the fucking telephone.’
‘And what’s so hard about that?’ Narain asked.
Amrit stared at him. Smug, that was the word for him. Self-satisfied, just because he had a degree from America. ‘I’m smarter than that. I could write better ads than half the people in that office. Mr Lau just doesn’t want me to succeed.’
‘Grow up, Amrit,’ Narain said. He shut the door, shielding himself from the insults she would hurl if she didn’t feel so drained. She felt something low in her stomach, a plummeting sensation that was not pain – but what was it then? What doctor could cure disappointment that grew into a pile of stones within her, or elation that made her skin tingle with pleasure?
There was only one consolation today – she could still recognise the emotions stirring within her. It was better than the days to come, when she would feel nothing at all.
Two days passed. Amrit woke one evening to find the room engulfed in shadows. While she was sleeping, somebody had come inside and parted the curtains in a bid to rouse her. Weak light from the opposite block of flats only succeeded in casting her surroundings in different shades of grey. She rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand and caught a whiff of vomit on her pillow. A vague memory: she had called her office, finally, to say she could not come in, and Mr Lau had said, ‘You’re fired.’
She had hung up and walked to the coffee shop where the usual customers let her share their whiskey. ‘Promise I’ll pay you back,’ she’d said after a few drinks, and then she left with one of them. In a damp patch of wet grass, she crouched and threw up, and he rubbed her back, saying soothing things. He led her to the park, where he unzipped his pants and pushed up her skirt. They were frantic and flustered as their bodies slammed together, as if this was all that was necessary. Before placing her in a taxi, he gave her a five-dollar note and wrote down his phone number on an old supermarket receipt. ‘I can’t call you,’ she told him. ‘I’m getting married.’
‘To who?’ he asked.
‘A graduate from overseas,’ she said. She hoped this would impress him and scare him off. She placed the paper in her purse anyway. His name was Hakim.
Amrit’s bedroom door opened with a nearly inaudible creak. In the old Naval Base house, things had announced their presence, even if everybody was still. Floorboards creaked from invisible pressures, windows drilled at the slightest breeze. This flat felt like an airtight box in comparison.
Father stepped inside and flipped the light switch. It blinked, bringing flashes of diluted light into the room
before flooding it completely. Amrit groaned and sank against her mattress. Father began talking loudly, then shouting. ‘Getting married in two months and you still can’t behave like a lady. Taking advantage of my kindness. One fine day, I’ll lock you out. I’ll make sure you don’t have a way to enter my house again.’
But it isn’t your house, Amrit thought, through the haze of her hangover. It would baffle him and then incite more anger, but wasn’t it true? Sure, he had paid the mortgage and signed the paperwork, but this flat had been designed to be identical to thousands of other government properties on the island. Again, Amrit struggled with words. She wanted to reassure Father that he didn’t have to feign pride in this place. What they once had – the Naval Base bungalow with jungle vines masking the concrete – had been his house. What he had before she existed – a fertile spread of Punjab farmland passed down through generations – had been his house. Living was messy. These uniform flats, stacked on top of each other, were tidy solutions. Nothing about this square room or the sturdy cement tiles or the high-rise view of the estate from the window sufficed as a house.
‘You hear?’ Father was saying. He thrust his thumb behind his shoulder, gesturing to the unlit passageway behind him. ‘Listen, you hear it?’
Amrit shook her head and shut her eyes. The light penetrated and produced a string of dancing shapes through her skull.
‘Outside. Your mother is crying. She is sitting and crying and wondering: why, why, does my daughter behave this way? When so many other daughters are so good, why does mine shame me? When will I ever rest?’
Amrit stared at Father, amazed. It had been so long since he used Mother to evoke guilt that the moment would be nostalgic if it weren’t laced with absurdity. As a little girl, his mere mention of Mother’s disappointment made her wary of causing mischief. That first time Amrit ran away and returned, Father thought he could prevent further incidents by describing how Mother’s cries filled the room at night. He told her he could not sleep because Mother did not sleep.