Shadow Theatre

by Fiona Cheong

  Her stillness was also what aroused Malika's suspicion, because since when did a child ever stay still of her own accord? Having been with Madam since the birth of the second one, Caroline, Malika knew how little girls were if they were left free, if they weren't boxed away into sugar and spice and everything nice.

  But the kettle was whistling (Malika hadn't known it was that sort of kettle, since Madam had just taken it out of the shopping hag yesterday when they had heard the doorbell ring, and in her excitement over seeing her friend, Madam had forgotten to tell Malika, and as usual, Malika had thrown away the box without reading it).

  By the time she had turned off the stove and returned to the living room to look out of the windows again, the girl was gone.

  I I WAS ON Wednesday that Malika saw the girl, and Friday when she told us, so Sali and I believed the gist of her story and wondered only what Malika might have embellished, not what she might have forgotten (as would happen at times with her other stories, the ones involving Madam's daughters, for instance, or stories about Madam and her husband, which Malika could never tell the same way twice). I had every Friday afternoon off and Sali had it every other week, so we had gone over to Madam's house as usual, taking the eight o'clock bus to Bukit Timah from Changi Road. (That bus didn't turn onto River Road. Sali wished it did but I didn't mind, as it was only a twenty-five-minute walk for us to the Changi Road bus stop, and then less than an hour's ride almost directly to Madam's house). Malika wasn't off on Fridays, but it was just as if she were, since Madam was at school until six o'clock, leaving us the whole house to ourselves. (Other days, Madam would come home between half-past three and four o'clock, but on Fridays the school choir met for practice and Madam was in charge of the choir, as she had been ever since she had started teaching thirty-three years ago. In fact, the choir was what had kept her going after Michelle got married and left, the last one.)

  She probably saw you and ran off before you could catch her," suggested Sali, as she lifted the lid on one of Madam's jewelry boxes to find her favorite brooch of Madam's, a small diamond peacock about to spread its feathers. (Madam kept it in the red lacquered box that sat on the left side of the dressing table, behind the photograph of her grandsons, Francesca's and Caroline's children, which had been taken during Michelle's wedding in 1981, two years before Madam's husband started complaining about his headaches. Sali always went for the peacock, sooner or later, when we were at the house. We saw no harm in it, since Madam herself had worn the brooch only once, perhaps because it was the last thing her husband had bought for her on his own. Madam's husband had given her the peacock for their silver wedding anniversary. After that, everything had gone downhill, his health plummeting like a pebble kicked off a precipice, although as Malika remembered, the signs were there even before the first diagnosis, before anyone was willing to see them).

  "How could she have run off so fast? I didn't even hear the gate opening or closing," she said, responding to Sali's implication that perhaps the girl was just a neighbor's unruly child. "Don't tell me she just slipped out between the bars. As thin as she was, no child is that thin."

  "You go and look at the gate," said Sali, even though she knew how long Malika had been with Madam, and how many times she had opened and closed the gate for Madam's husband if it was raining when he came home from work.

  "You go and look yourself," said Malika, and she picked up one of Madam's hairbrushes and tapped Sali on the back of the head with it. (She was sitting on a square stool near the dressing table, while I was on Madam's bed, away from the dressing table and the jewelry, remaining as uninvolved as possible in all of this.) Sali laughed, with the peacock glittering on her blouse like an extra giggle, pinned just above her breast. She looked at Malika in the mirror, and then they both looked at me.

  Malika put down the hairbrush and reached for Madam's diamond bracelet, which was lying on top of another red lacquered box (they were a set of three, brought back long ago from a vacation in Hong Kong). She held the bracelet up to the dusty sunrays coming through Madam's bedroom window to her right, and Safi turned her head and stared at the circle of diamonds dangling from Malika's finger as if she had never seen them before, as if we didn't do this every few months (she and Malika going through Madam's jewelry to see if anything new had shown up, while I kept my ears open for the sound of Madam's car, in case she came home unexpectedly, which had happened twice so far).

  "What do you think, Lu?" asked Malika, as she slipped the bracelet over Sali's right wrist and locked the tiny gold clasp.

  "You mean, about the girl?" I asked, although of course that was what she meant.

  "Yes, the girl." Malika turned her head towards me as Safi lifted her hand and pretended to brush her hair back with her fingers, the bracelet sliding like a ring of stars against her skin in the mirror.

  "I don't know what to think," I said. If it wasn't a real girl, why would she be appearing now? And why here?"

  "Ya-lah, if this were a haunted house, you would have found out long before this," said Sali, taking a few steps back from the dressing table. She nodded and smiled at her reflection in the mirror. Then, slowly, she stretched out her hand, as if someone else had reached for it and was lifting it to his lips to kiss her fingers, Western style, probably the Hollywood film director Sali believed she was destined to meet one day, who would fall in love with her and whisk her away to California, where she would become the next Marilyn Monroe. (I'm not saying Sali had a plan. But she was still young enough to believe in her hopes and dreams.) I watched as she touched the diamonds on her wrist, her lips moving as if she were explaining to the film director, the fellow who had kissed her fingers, how the bracelet had once belonged to her grandmother and how she, Sali, would wear it now and then to draw her grandmother's spirit near. (Sali had heard from Madam Albuquerque's daughter that Westerners were gullible about stories like that.) She was only twenty-three on this afternoon, five years younger than I, without a serious boyfriend in sight but several hopeful ones in tow.

  Both of us were younger than Malika, who was closer to Madam's age, and Madam, I remember, would celebrate her fifty-sixth birthday that November. Malika was eleven years younger, although neither of them showed it. (Now that Madam's husband, who had married her when she was nineteen, was gone, Madam was starting to gather her share of broken hearts, even at her age. Malika couldn't believe how persistent some old men could be, including those who didn't have much to offer Madam, not even their own real teeth.)

  She would have been forty-five on the morning she saw the girl. Forty-five and unmarried, a fact as plain and simple as the single bead Malika wore on a thin gold chain around her neck, the oval red bead holding for her a sentimental value, as she put it, and since it was obvious she didn't want to say more, we had left it at that. What I remember is that Malika had never worried openly about whether she was ever going to have the chance to have her own baby. Caroline and Michelle were like her own children, she would say, and even when we didn't ask her about it, from time to time Malika would remind us out of the blue that Francesca, too, always brought something back for her when she visited, and so what was there to regret? Yet, the fact that she was forty-five and unmarried may have been why the girl had chosen her.

  Malika had turned her attention back to Sali, who was continuing to woo the film director after he had kissed her fingers.

  A wind blew into the room as Sali tilted back her head and laughed into the mirror. Outside, some branches in Madam's garden creaked, probably those in the two banyan trees, which were the trees nearest that part of the house.

  I felt a bird fly past the window. Or rather, I saw out of the corner of my eye what I thought could only be a bird's body, flying across the sun in the window. Malika must have felt it, too. She turned her head at once, but the bird was already gone.

  Sali, from the looks of it, was too busy seducing her film director to notice anything. She was still talking, her lips still moving in the mirror as she
invented for the fellow more stories about how her grandmother's ghost was always around to protect her (when in truth, Sali had been given away to an aunt shortly after she was born because of a fortuneteller's warning that her moon and her mother's moon would collide otherwise, and when this aunt, whom Sali had grown up calling her mother, had followed her husband, whom Sali had called her father, from Malacca to Singapore, Sali was only three years old, and that was the last time she had seen her grandmother). Malika and I watched as her right hand fluttered up to Madam's peacock. She caressed the diamond feathers, and then, as if she were innocently unaware of the blunt bulge straining in the fellow's pants, she let her fingers drop, coyly down her blouse, touching her nipple underneath in passing.

  When Malika glanced up, she seemed startled to find me in the mirror.

  Or perhaps I was mistaken about that.

  WHAT MALIKA REMEMBERED about Miss Shakilah had to do with the two occasions on which Miss Shakilah had been at Madam's house before. Once was when Madam's whole class had come over at the end of the school year in 1973 (Malika remembered the heavy rain cascading off the tiled roof of the patio while the girls were serenading Madam with a song they had written to the musical score of Top of the World, which was popular that year and sung on cassettes by Karen Carpenter, the one who later became very sick and died), and the second time in 1979, also in December. That time, Miss Shakilah had come alone, looking a bit different from the first time because she was no longer twelve years old. By then, she had cut her hair (she used to wear plaits), and she had lost a lot of weight (not an ounce left of her puppy fat), and Malika would remember how the seat of Miss Shakilah's blue dungarees had hung off her backside with enough room for two fried chickens, as she put it.

  Now, fifteen years later, Miss Shakilah didn't look so different from when she had left for America. (That was the reason for her second visit to Madam's house. She was gone two days later, on a late-night Pan American flight departing out of the new Changi Airport and destined for the John F Kennedy Airport in New York City, via Hong Kong and Heathrow. What I've heard is that no one suspected it would be the last time anyone here would lay eyes on her for so many years, perhaps not even Miss Shakilah herself. Certainly, her mother was expecting her to come home during the summer holidays at first, and when that didn't happen, Miss Shakilah's mother had told herself, and anyone who asked about it, that her daughter was just busy with her studies and would return after getting her degree. Not even Miss Shakilah's closest friend since childhood, her friend Rose, who had grown up with Miss Shakilah as if they were sisters, knew Miss Shakilah's actual reason for staying away, although because they had been so close, Rose did suspect it wasn't just Miss Shakilah's studies. Besides, Miss Shakilah had received her first degree in 1983, and another one, her master's, in 1985, both in Fnglish literature, and still she hadn't come home.)

  That morning, she was talking in the kitchen with Madam until a quarter to seven, when Madam had to leave for school. (Madam had been driving herself ever since the family chauffeurs retirement shortly after her husband's passing. This was partly to save money, but also as Malika believed, Madam liked the new feel of independence that came with driving her own car. She had owned a driver's license since she was twenty-one, which she had kept renewing over the years, mostly in case there was an emergency and the chauffeur wasn't available. But in all the years that Malika had been with her, Madam had never driven her own car. Now she would take long drives by herself, along the new highway to the airport, where she would turn the car around and drive back. Malika thought it was because that was the longest drive possible in Singapore without traffic jams, as Madam had mentioned to her once. Which, by the way, was why Madam would leave for school at a quarter to seven, in case of a traffic jam, even though driving to St. Agnes usually took less than twenty minutes now that part of the drive was along the new highway. She wanted to be sure she was never late, because General Assembly started at half-past seven and she was in charge of the music. She was late once, on the morning her husband was taken to the hospital for the last time, but from what I've heard, it was only that once.)

  Miss Shakilah and Madam had been discussing what to do about Miss Shakilah's dilemma, which they had started talking about in bits and pieces on the night before. (On the night before, they had talked mostly about their families, Madam asking about Miss Shakilah's mother (Miss Shakilah's father having passed away some time ago) and Miss Shakilah asking about Madam's daughters and the grandchildren. Miss Shakilah had known Madam's daughters in school, but none of them were exactly her age, so they wouldn't have been in the same classes. Francesca was a year older, Caroline was a year younger, and Michelle was four years younger. Francesca and Miss Shakilah could have been friends but Francesca hadn't been very sociable as a child, and as for Caroline, she had been so wild, dressing up and wearing lipstick and mascara even before her elder sister did. Miss Shakilah, when she was still a schoolgirl, hadn't shown a hint of wildness. Malika remembered her as Madam's favorite pupil for years. Bright, quiet, respectful. With the kind of curiosity that might kill a cat, Madam used to say. Her Shak could come up with questions no one else could think of. This was what Malika remembered, when she looked back upon some of her conversations with Madam in those years.)

  From what Malika understood, Miss Shakilah's dilemma boiled down to her having too many voices in this latest novel. That was how Miss Shakilah had described the problem to Madam. Her publisher thought there were too many voices, or more precisely, too many storytellers. They made the story difficult to follow. This publisher wanted Miss Shakilah to revise the manuscript, cut the book down to three voices at the most. Miss Shakilah didn't want to do it. Leaving the book with only three voices would change the story entirely, she told Madam. Yet, how was she going to get the book published, otherwise? Her agent believed she would run into the same problem with most American publishers. Given her new state of affairs (the baby coming), she couldn't afford to be lackadaisical about money.

  "Why are more than three voices so difficult to follow? Don't Americans know how to pay attention to several people talking at one time? They should come sit at a dinner table over here," Madam had pointed out, on the night before, while Malika had nodded her head in secret agreement. (It was the first time Malika had heard anyone discuss storytelling in such a serious way, and she had gleaned enough from the conversation to understand that this kind of discussion must happen often in America, or perhaps only in the university. She wondered what Miss Shakilah meant by her argument that fewer voices would change the story entirely. Malika always tried to leave room in her mind for things she might not be aware of due to her lack of sufficient formal education.)

  "Americans aren't used to it, I guess. That's what my publisher thinks. My editor's afraid the book won't sell." Miss Shakilah had said this with a sigh, and then she had shrugged her shoulders loosely, as if it didn't really matter why the publisher thought there were too many voices. American publishers were impossible to argue with. That was what her sigh and shrug conveyed.

  That was when Madam had invited Miss Shakilah to spend the night, so that they could both sleep on it and see if a solution presented itself in the morning. Given how late it was getting, especially (almost midnight). Taxi drivers would be charging double rates soon.

  "Two heads are better than one," Madam had said, smiling a hit sheepishly at the cliche as she leaned forward on the sofa to clink glasses with Miss Shakilah.

  So the night had ended, with Madam calling for Malika to close the windows while she found some pajamas and a new toothbrush for Miss Shakilah, and then Madam had turned on the air conditioner in Michelle's old bedroom, and she had given Miss Shakilah a foot massage with eucalyptus oil to help her relax.

  But no solution had presented itself, after all.

  Malika watched as Miss Shakilah rose from the table with her empty plate in her hands (both she and Madam had had two slices of buttered toast each, which, accompanied by b
lack, sugarless coffee, was Madam's usual breakfast). Sunlight from the window above the sink was pouring into the room, throwing long shallow beams across the black-and-white checkered floor (modeled after the kitchen floor of a hotel suite Madam and her husband had stayed in when they were in New York City in 1959, the year after Francesca was born and before Malika arrived). As Miss Shakilah put her plate down in the sink, Malika saw how slim her feet still were, but striped pale where the straps of her sandals had blocked the sun, making Miss Shakilah's feet look like the feet of any European tourist. Except for that, and except for her American accent, and the little extra weight gained because of her pregnancy, Malika thought Miss Shakilah seemed very much the same girl who had come to the house in the loose dungarees, with the same air of impatience in her movements as when she had hugged Madam fifteen years ago and said lightly, "See you in June."

  "Miss, you can just leave it," Malika heard herself say, as Miss Shakilah stood a moment at the sink as if she were about to wash the plate.

  Madam had left the kitchen and was in the dining room (where before Madam's husband had passed away, he and Madam used to have their meals but now, the dining table would be set only when her daughters and grandchildren visited, or when Madam decided to throw a dinner party for her old friends, which happened occasionally, once or twice a year"before they all keel over," Madam was fond of saying, with a wry smile). Malika could hear her gathering her papers and books for school, and then the lid of the piano that sat against the dining room wall closing with a soft thud. Madam was going to give Miss Shakilah a lift home on the way. "Come," she had said, and from outside the back door, while sorting out clothes to be put into the washing machine from clothes to be hand-washed, Malika had seen her stroke Miss Shakilah's forearm lovingly before she left the kitchen, "I'll take you to your mum's house."