by Balli Kaur
Mother
At dawn, every neighbourhood turned into a construction site. Teams of workers appeared in hard hats and khaki shirts. Their dark skin glistened in the sunlight. Like Dalveer, they were present but meant to conduct themselves as if invisible. She stood in the shade of an apartment block and watched them tend to their assigned spaces. Last month, she had witnessed the construction of a sheltered walkway that extended from one apartment block all the way to the nearest bus stop. It protected the residents from the monsoon rains so that they could go from their homes to whatever destination without feeling a single drop. How could they deny the rain, though? It would arrive again tonight, she could feel it. She anticipated the rain like it was its own festival. It threw the island off balance. People leapt over puddles and slipped on the sidewalks. Colours melted together, turning the sharp edges of the city blurry. She wished the rain would come now and send these workers scattering.
Today, the workers were mending yet another imperfection in a landscape that had already been tended to so many times that it resembled the town council’s glass-encased model. Two men wearing yellow vests and gloves crouched over the pebble garden that bordered the playground. They removed the pebbles until nothing was left but bald concrete. Dalveer stared at the patch of ground. Surely they would not leave it that way. She had never noticed any trouble with the pebbles until a few days ago when two young boys got into a heated argument. One had picked up a pebble and thrown it at the other boy, who howled dramatically when he noticed a spot of blood on his collar. Dalveer had wanted to rush to the boys and ask them who their mothers were but, of course, her words would mean nothing to them. Somebody must have made a complaint, and now the pebbles were being removed. Dalveer shook her head and looked around, wishing she had somebody to complain to. Harbeer did not like to hear her lamenting the loss of the old island: the swampy earth and twisting bark, the constant hum of mosquitoes.
Another worker arrived with a contraption nearly as tall as he was. He clicked a switch and began to roll it over the concrete. Ribbons of smoke spun from the ground and a bitter smell filled Dalveer’s nostrils. She recoiled further back as the fumes stung her eyes. The other workers paid her no attention as they began to place the pebbles back onto the concrete. Dalveer understood then. The pebbles were being cemented to the ground so that nobody could pick them up. The men were deep in concentration as they placed the pebbles at angles. Their supervisor, a Chinese man, came over and nodded, approving the spacing of the pebbles. Dalveer watched, dismayed, as a new unmoveable garden was laid before her very eyes.
Gurdev
In the dark morning hours, a major earthquake ripped through Indonesia, tearing down houses and buildings. In Singapore, the tiniest ripple effects were being reported the next morning. Gurdev had felt nothing but he turned on the car radio to listen to updates. Rani yanked open the passenger door and plopped heavily onto her seat. ‘I still don’t know why you won’t just let me take the train,’ she muttered.
Gurdev turned up the radio. On the early morning train, Rani would be jostling and bumping against the boys from the neighbourhood school. He and Banu had agreed it was best that he drive Rani to school, but that she could ride the school bus home. ‘The school bus!’ Rani had exclaimed, when they informed her of this plan. ‘The school bus is for all the children!’ Gurdev, bewildered by this outburst, had demanded to know just what she thought a twelve-year-old girl was, but Rani had huffily turned away to end the conversation.
On the radio, experts warned of aftershocks throughout East Java; in Singapore, they would not be felt. Gurdev lowered the volume and turned his attention to Rani. ‘Do you have all of your books?’ he asked.
‘Yeah.’
‘All of them? You didn’t forget anything?’
‘Everything,’ Rani said. Gurdev noticed the way she shifted and drew her bag closer to her chest. A fog of unease rolled towards him, but this was commonplace nowadays. This year, Rani would sit for national exams that would determine her secondary school placement. From Primary One, Rani’s exam results had only been average. A steady stream of tutors carved an avenue through their home to help raise her scores, but their impact was minimal. Each time Gurdev saw the exam dates marked on the calendar, he felt a familiar discomfort tying a knot at the base of his spine.
‘You have Maths tuition this afternoon so no staying back to chit-chat with your friends,’ Gurdev reminded Rani, as he pulled up to her school. He watched her shrink into her seat. ‘Go on,’ he said, firmly. She turned to him as if she might say something, but then thought better of it and grabbed her bag, exiting the car. He waited at the kerb, watching as she trudged through the gates.
At the office, Gurdev sought comfort from his worries in the columns and numbers that made up the day’s work. Predictable and unchanging, they lured him into a trance-like state that was only broken when the office girls returned from their lunch break, bracelets and earrings clattering, high-heels tapping a steady beat into the tiled floors.
Jamilah, the new receptionist, stopped by Gurdev’s cubicle. ‘For you,’ she said, handing him a pink plastic bag. Inside were three otak-otak – smoked fish wrapped in folded banana leaves, held together by toothpicks. ‘Your favourite,’ she said.
Gurdev smiled. ‘Thanks, Jamilah. So nice of you to think of me.’
‘Are these your daughters?’ Jamilah asked. She pointed at the picture frame on his desk. ‘Very pretty. And that one is so cute!’ She pointed at Rani.
‘They are big girls now,’ Gurdev said. ‘Much older. My youngest is in Primary Six already.’
‘They’re lovely,’ Jamilah said. Trotting back to her desk, she paused to check her reflection in the glass door.
Gurdev was tempted to ask Jamilah to explain what she saw in his daughters that made her so sure of anything. Gurdev had stood at the photographer’s side when the photos were taken; sometimes when he looked at the photos he could sense himself in the background, aching at their innocence as the first flashes startled them.
At the time of the picture, it had been three days since the prize ceremony. One evening, when Banu began lamenting about Amrit’s reputation, Gurdev could not bear to hear it. He made an excuse to go to the shops so that he could take a walk and think. Returning home no less confused, he checked the letterbox and found a glossy advertisement for a photographic studio. Preserve your memories, the advertisement urged. He booked an appointment for their earliest available session, which was the following afternoon.
When he and the girls had returned from the studio,
Gurdev fell into a near comatose state to gain back all the sleep he had lost from worrying. He was only in bed for a few hours before the phone rang. Still groggy, Gurdev muttered, ‘Wrong number, wrong number,’ in response to a man’s frantic tirade. Then he heard Amrit’s name and a quick shudder roused him. The voice on the other end of the line belonged to Narain. ‘Narain, what happened?’ Exhaustion dripped off his shoulders like melting wax as the story unfolded. By the time Narain told him about Amrit running out into the road, Gurdev was wide awake.
‘I told her to get out but then I saw the way she ran down the stairs. She didn’t take the lift, she just ran all eighteen floors. I didn’t know what to do. If I went after her, she’d come back to the house and I was still so angry at her. And Father, he couldn’t even look at her without crying. Finally, I decided to go after her. I took the stairs too because I was afraid she might have stopped on one of the floors and started banging on the doors, asking for a place to stay or something. When I got to the ground floor I searched around and then I saw her figure in the distance. She was going out onto the main road. I started running and calling for her and a car came straight at her but the driver changed lanes. Amrit didn’t even move, she just stood there like a statue. I screamed her name again but she didn’t hear me. Then there was a double-decker bus and she just stood there like she was going to let it hit her. I shouted her name one last time and she tu
rned around and I swear to God, Gurdev, if she had waited one more second to jump away…’
Gurdev pictured Amrit standing on that main road, the sky awash in headlights. What thoughts were running through her mind as she challenged death? He did not understand. He remembered his disbelief, and his wanting Narain to explain the whole incident again; surely there were parts left out.
‘She’s at home now. Sleeping,’ Narain said quietly. ‘I’m outside her room. Tomorrow she wants to go to see a doctor.’
‘A doctor?’ Gurdev was puzzled. ‘I thought you said she wasn’t injured.’
‘A different kind of doctor,’ Narain said. ‘She wants to get a referral to see someone at Woodbridge.’
The meaning of this slowly unravelled to Gurdev. Narain went on to tell him that Amrit thought she could be suffering from some sort of madness. Gurdev shook his head as if he could shake Narain’s words away as well. He could not believe this – his sister, a madwoman.
‘Why is she doing this to our family?’ Banu wailed when he told her. ‘The whole world knows she drinks and sleeps around. Now she wants to be a mental patient as well? What haven’t we given her?’ Gurdev wept furiously at her side.
A week later, the photographic studio called Gurdev to tell him that the portraits were ready and he made the occasion into a small family trip. Under the frosty blast of the studio’s air-conditioning, the girls chattered and giggled as they saw the glossy images of themselves. ‘You all look very nice,’ the photographer told the girls. Gurdev stared at each image until he was able to erase every similarity each girl shared with Amrit. Rani’s sharp nose. Kiran’s deep-set eyes. Simran’s grin. He noticed Banu looking at the pictures with the same intensity.
In the following weeks, news about Amrit trickled into their home from Narain. He informed them that the doctors had a possible diagnosis for Amrit, and that she had been ill since her teens. ‘She could get better. Imagine, Gurdev, there’s a name for Amrit’s behaviour and we never considered it.’
Gurdev rejected this. ‘Rubbish,’ he spat. ‘What kind of illness causes somebody to shirk their responsibilities in life, spend too much money, sleep around, and drink too much? If that’s the case then this quack doctor can explain all of our laziness. Next time I want to take a round-the-world trip and squander my life savings on alcohol, I’ll just say it’s because I’m sick in the head. What a convenient excuse.’
‘It’s not exactly like that,’ Narain said, defensively. ‘It’s very complicated, and I know how it all sounds but what if there’s a chance this might work for Amrit? The doctor explained the symptoms to her. Amrit says it makes perfect sense and she wants to be treated. She thinks she could recover from it. Isn’t that what matters?’
‘Amrit makes a lot of promises to do better in life, Narain. Haven’t you at least learned that? She’s tricking you.’
‘I really think this is different. I took the day off work today and I went to the library to read up on this thing. It’s a… wait. I wrote down some things. It’s a mood disorder. There’s nothing Amrit could have done to prevent it, like any disease.’ Narain said. He dropped his voice. ‘I also read something about how it can run in families—’
As Narain attempted to read off a list of symptoms, Gurdev made an excuse to end the conversation and hung up. ‘That Narain is too trusting,’ Banu agreed. ‘Some doctors just search and search until they can tell a patient something – of course they’d find something wrong with Amrit! As if it is so easy to fix everything.’ Gurdev had avoided telling Banu what Narain had said about this madness running in families because the mere prospect made him slightly nauseous.
Now he wanted to prompt Jamilah again. ‘Tell me about my daughters.’ If he had the courage, he would seek her advice on the conflicts that had rattled his home recently. He would ask Jamilah why Simran wanted to work as a waitress – a waitress of all things! – in some restaurant in the city during her school holidays. He would plead with Jamilah to explain why Kiran wanted to transfer to a university in England when she had been bright enough to gain entrance to the law faculty of the National University of Singapore, where she was currently in her first year. He would ask her why Rani’s school marks were not improving. These were the reasons that he left these young versions of them on display. In reality, the girls and their potential disasters had grown to proportions that he could not comprehend.
Gurdev preferred taking his lunch breaks later in the day, when crowds of office workers didn’t clog the sidewalks. He crossed two roads and took a short cut through a back lane. Tucked out of sight from the glistening high-rises was a row of dimly lit hawker centres and coffee shops. The floor was slick with both cooking oil and the soapy water that was occasionally thrown to keep the centre up to government cleanliness standards. Laminated sheets were posted up at each stall, declaring the grade given after the health inspections. Gurdev’s favourite char kway teow vendor leaped to action when he noticed him approaching.
‘Take the train today?’ the vendor asked over the hiss of oil sizzling on the wok.
‘No. I drive every day,’ Gurdev said.
‘I take the train yesterday. Nice. Better than bus. Very nice,’ he said, gliding his hand across an invisible train track. Gurdev smiled. His local station had opened a few years ago and he had taken the girls on the inaugural ride. Seeing the island pass the windows, Gurdev had seen its foreignness framed like shots on a film reel. Vulgar pink bougainvilleas used to burst across the land; now they were draped across the overhead bridges to make the concrete look more welcoming. The Cinema-On-Wheels man used to push his rickety cart along the side streets and charge just 5¢ for a peek at still shots of cartoons; now cineplexes advertised Hollywood movies on flashy billboards. Memories arrived as quickly as the new island rushed below, tightening Gurdev’s chest with a palpable sense of loss.
The noodles arrived. A rotating fan creaked on the wall behind him, sending a feeble breath of air across the back of his neck. ‘Wah,’ the hawker said, admiringly. He nodded into the distance. ‘Pretty girl.’ He grinned and walked away.
Gurdev turned to see Jamilah running towards the hawker centre, her knees bent awkwardly as she ran in her high-heeled shoes. When Gurdev saw the panic on her face, he knew. It’s the girls, he thought. It has finally happened.
The few facts that Banu was able to provide over the phone through her sobs turned in Gurdev’s mind repeatedly on his drive home. Rani had not taken the afternoon bus home. A girl from her class claimed she had not been in school since recess and the busy class teacher assumed she had received permission to leave early from the school office. Banu had gone out to the neighbourhood police post to make a report before calling Gurdev’s office.
Tears were pouring down Banu’s face as she fumbled with the lock. Her hands trembled. ‘The police say it’s too soon to make a report.’ The police. Gurdev suddenly remembered his argument with Father and Karam over notifying the police when teenage Amrit first went missing. This is not a matter for the police, Father had said. Now the same retort ran through Gurdev’s mind but he avoided saying it. Banu was upset enough.
‘We’ll find her,’ Gurdev said, taking Banu into his arms. ‘Did you call her friends’ houses?’
‘All of them,’ Banu said between sobs. ‘I called almost the entire class. Spoke to all their mothers – so embarrassing. Asking them if they’ve seen my daughter. Nobody… nobody knows where she is.’ She buried her head in his chest.
‘Shh,’ Gurdev said. He searched for more consoling words but found none. ‘Where are Simran and Kiran?’
‘Simran’s studying at the library. Kiran should be back soon.’
The entire flat had become cluttered with the business of educating Rani. Eraser shavings and bits of pencil lead littered the floor, and loose sheets of paper caught the breeze and floated through the living room like leaves. They went into the room Rani shared with Simran, to search through Rani’s things. Books were piled everywhere and her scho
ol diary gave no clues.
‘What haven’t we given them?’ Banu asked, sitting on the edge of Rani’s bed. Gurdev went to the window. Below him was an island that had been split open, thoroughly cleaned and re-designed. Imperfections were now highly visible. There were fewer of those dark crevices that he had often pictured Amrit falling into, but knowing this did surprisingly little to reassure him.
‘You think she ran off with somebody?’ Banu asked quietly.
‘With who?’ Gurdev asked.
‘Somebody,’ Banu said. ‘I see these girls nowadays hanging around the bus interchange, tightening their pinafore belts and talking to boys. Young girls, not much older than Rani.’
‘She’s too young to be interested in boys. If she’s with a boy, he’s lured her somewhere.’ At his own suggestion, Gurdev became aware of the quickening beat of his pulse.
The gate rattled. Banu sprang from the sofa and ran for the door. Gurdev followed her. She pulled away from the peephole. ‘It’s the other two,’ she announced.
‘Both of them?’ Gurdev asked. ‘That’s strange. They came from different places.’
‘Quickly come in,’ Banu told them as they entered the flat and kicked off their shoes.
‘Do either of you know where Rani is? She’s missing,’ Gurdev said, once the door was shut. ‘She left school some time this morning, and nobody knows where she is.’
The girls looked calm. A look passed between them but they did not seem surprised or upset. ‘We know,’ Kiran said.
Banu looked as if she might faint. ‘You know?’ Gurdev asked.
‘You did this? You two plotted with her to run away? Are you crazy? You know how worried we’ve been? I called all her school friends.’ Tears were streaming down Banu’s face now. ‘Where the hell is Rani?’
‘She’s at Kavita’s house,’ Kiran said. ‘She’s fine. I took her there myself after my morning lecture. She’s playing with Kavita’s cats.’