by Fiona Cheong
(Madam had asked Miss Shakilah when they had first sat down to breakfast, what about getting the book published in Singapore. "You want me to ask around for you?" she had offered, and Miss Shakilah had replied, "I don't know," in a way that meant no, politely. Then with a sigh, Miss Shakilah had added, "I don't think publishers here pay much."
'Tell your editor this is how we tell stories," Madam had suggested, finally. "Ask him-him or her?"
"Her."
"Ask her to look at a piece of batik. Ah, that's what you should do, show her a piece of batik, how complicated and interwoven everything is. Maybe then she'll understand. What do you think?" Madam had so wanted to be of help, and Miss Shakilah had smiled, aware of this, and said she would try it, perhaps it would work.
Malika didn't know if Madam had heard in Miss Shakilah's tone another no. It was a quarter to seven by then and Madam had started getting up from the table.)
"Did you see her?" Miss Shakilah was asking, still at the sink. She was looking out of the window but not at anything in particular, Malika could tell.
"See who, Miss?"
"I think you know."
Malika thought at first that after so many cold American winters, Miss Shakilah was standing in front of the window so she could feel the heat on her face and neck (Miss Shakilah was wearing the yellow linen dress she had worn the day before, loosely fitting with short sleeves and a scoop neckline), but later Malika would wonder if perhaps she was wrong, if perhaps Miss Shakilah had been searching the garden for the girl, although the sugar cane was on the other side of the house and ghosts were often fussy about where they chose to appear.
I saw you," she said, turning to Malika. "Earlier, when you were opening the windows. You must have seen her. Did you?"
There was a certain urgency in Miss Shakilah's voice, and Malika saw in Miss Shakilah's long-lashed brown eyes (still clear and bright but definitely older, definitely experienced, Malika thought now) an anxious glimmer, as if Miss Shakilah desperately wanted to hear that she, Malika, had seen the girl. What Malika wondered was how it had been possible for Miss Shakilah herself to have seen the girl, since the windows in Madam's study opened out towards the banyan trees and the back fence. There were no windows in the wall near the sugar cane. The only way was if Miss Shakilah had noticed the girl before going into the study, so Malika told herself that must have been what happened.
Only later would she realize, as she replayed the scene over and over in her mind, that there had been no one in the sugar cane when she had first looked through the glass of the livingroom windows, when they were still closed.
"Yes, Miss," she said, in reply to Miss Shakilah's question. "The girl in the sugar cane, yes, I saw her. You know who she is, Miss?"
Miss Shakilah shook her head and smiled. "No, I don't," she told Malika.
There was sorrow in her smile, Malika thought at first, and then she wondered if she was mistaken, since there would be no reason for Miss Shakilah to feel sorrow over a child she didn't know, and Malika didn't get the feeling that Miss Shakilah was lying.
"Has Madam seen her?" asked Miss Shakilah, and Malika wasn't sure if she meant earlier that morning, or if Miss Shakilah was inquiring as to whether Madam knew there was a ghost in the garden?
She wondered why Miss Shakilah hadn't asked Madam about it herself, but there could have been any number of reasons. They hadn't seen each other in fifteen years and in a way, Miss Shakilah and Madam were just starting to get to know each other as friends. There was so much else for them to share about their present lives. And Miss Shakilah was preoccupied with worry about her book (and her baby). Or perhaps she didn't want to worry Madam, in the event that Madam hadn't seen the girl.
"No, Miss, I don't think so," said Malika, without clarifying for herself exactly what Miss Shakilah had meant by her last question because there was no time. She could hear Madam leaving the dining room, which was only a few footsteps away from the kitchen, down a small corridor with walls covered with photographs of the grandchildren growing up (there were seven now, the elder four boys and Michelle's three girls).
Madam's flat heels tapped lightly on the parquet floor as they came towards the kitchen. In less than half a minute, Madam was standing in the doorway, with a pink rattan bag slung over her right shoulder and a yellow one hanging from her left hand, both overstuffed with books and manila folders, and she was saying to Miss Shakilah, "Are you ready, darling?"
"Madam," Malika began, but Madam knew what she was about to say and was already waving Malika's words away with her right hand, her diamond ring sparkling on her wedding finger.
"Yes, I know, Malika. Tomorrow. Tomorrow afternoon, I'll go shopping for one of those travel carts. Okay?" She smiled and explained to Miss Shakilah, "Malika's so sweet, always worrying about me. Come, let's go."
"You tell her, Miss," Malika pleaded with Miss Shakilah before she left the room, and Miss Shakilah nodded and agreed to try to coax Madam into not carrying such heavy bags.
Neither of them mentioned the girl, almost as if that conversation hadn't occurred, but Malika could see on Miss Shakilah's face when she was walking out (although Miss Shakilah wasn't looking at her directly) a kind of relief, her features relaxing as if she understood something now, as if a curtain were beginning to rise and someone had lit a candle for her in the darkness ahead.
That was the feeling Malika was left with, as she removed the damp clothes from the washing machine and dropped them into the dryer (it was Francesca who had bought the washing machine and dryer and insisted that Malika learn to use them). She could hear Madam's car backing out of the driveway in the front of the house, then a pause, then the long, slow swing of the wrought-iron gate. Madam never called her out to close the gate for her anymore, not even when it rained.
H A N D R A SUBRINAYA. SHE'S probably changed her name by now, to her husband's name, whatever it is. Probably some kind of Western name, because Chandra was one of those, always hankering after the angmo boys. The blonder, the better, was her motto. Not that she would ever admit it, but it was obvious to anyone who wasn't blind. All you had to do in those days was wait around after her shift at the library was over, and see who came to pick her up. Without fail, it was always an angmo, usually American, since there were already a lot of Americans working in Singapore at the time, which was also why I thought Shak wouldn't find it so strange to be here-if she felt strange.
Chandra must have wondered about it herself, whether Shak was going to seek out the company of Americans, and what sort of competition that would be for her.
Of course it had occurred to me Shak might feel a tiny bit strange. Even if there was no reason for her to feel that way because she was from here, we don't always feel the way we should, right? Fifteen years. That's a long time to be away from anywhere, but especially where Singapore's concerned. We had changed a lot, you know. Our whole country was getting a facelift. Already, we had jumped from being the third busiest port in the world when Shak left to being the first, busier even than New York City or Amsterdam-imagine.
Luckily our neighborhood hadn't changed that much. Not yet, although some houses were being renovated along River Road, where new families had moved in. On our own road, Auntie Coco and her sister were the only neighbors Shak didn't know, since they had moved in in 1985, and by then, Shak had been gone for six years already. (The family that used to live in Auntie Coco's house had moved out after the grandmother died. For a few years the house had remained empty, so people were saying it was haunted by the grandmother's ghost. But then Auntie Coco and her sister had bought the house, and as my mother and her yakkity-yak friends were keen to point out, Auntie Coco hadn't tried to sell the house in all the time that she and her sister had been living in it, so the grandmother's ghost was just a rumor, in their opinion.)
And the old Muslim cemetery was still there, on our side of the granite wall that ran along the back of the cemetery, with Kampong Alam on the other side, where Che' Halimah lived. She
and our mothers used to be classmates, you know. She, too, had once been a pupil at the convent. Che' Halimah, whom most people knew of only as the bomoh. She was still living that year, and I wondered if Shak would want to go and visit her, but I thought I wouldn't ask. In case the idea hadn't entered Shak's mind, I didn't want to put it there. With the old Shak, there would have been no question that she would want to see Che' Halimah, but we were much older now, not teenagers anymore, foolish and restless the way we used to be.
Shak, in particular, had to think for two, as they say.
It still looked the same, the cemetery, except that the hinges on the iron gate at the River Road entrance were so rusted now, no one bothered to try to close the gate anymore and it was always ajar. But the fence was still only on the River Road side. Along the side facing our houses there had never been a fence, and even though I remember people would talk about putting up some kind of barrier, no one had tried to do it. In our schooldays that was the side Shak would use to enter the cemetery, you know, right there in front of everyone's windows. Of course she would do it only at night, waiting until after people were supposed to be asleep. Then she would slip out of her house and cross the road. It was easier than walking down to River Road and all the way to the iron gate. Still, I wouldn't have taken that sort of risk if I were the one meeting boys in secret, to experiment with you know what, over by the baby's shrine, because they could find shelter there in case it rained.
No one else knew how reckless Shak could be. People around here always knew she was wild (only at the convent was anyone fooled into believing Shak was Miss Goody Two Shoes-Mrs. Sandhu for sure, our Secondary One form-mistress who had been Shak's favorite teacher the whole time we were in school-although of course the Sisters always knew the truth, about Shak, because you can't fool nuns, you know). But only I knew what Shak actually did, and what her limits were, because I was her best friend, her oldest and closest friend. That was why nowadays I had fallen into the habit of avoiding people from our past, which is not an easy thing to do in Singapore, but how else was I to save face? Because if someone were to ask me directly why Shak hadn't kept in touch with anyone-not even me-while she was in America, what could I say?
Fifteen years she was over there. And now, out of the blue, she was back. Pregnant and without a single sparkle on her finger. Not even an engagement ring-imagine.
Still, what was important was that she had come home at last. Not for good, but at least to visit. Let bygones be bygones, I kept telling myself.
True friendship never dies, you know.
RY SEEING MR. DHARMA'S garden the way it was, not overgrown with neglect as it is now but ripe with rambutans and papayas where they hung, nestled richly in his trees, the grove of tall, green sugar cane that leaned on the fence in the corner, the wild barrage of stalky, umbrella-shaped weeds in the stippled shade. He offered Jo and me four cents for every weed when the going rate was three, because he knew we were thorough. (You must dig a weed out at its base, work your trowel carefully through the dirt so you can scoop the whole thing out, with its roots intact. Most of the other weeders would give up halfway down and just yank out what they could. Weeds will almost always grow back in this soil, no matter what you do, but they take longer if you attack them at their roots.) Charlotte liked teasing us about it off and on, or rather, she liked teasing me, and if it weren't for Jo's reminding me each time that Charlotte was just speaking out of envy, I may have minded more than I did.
And I did mind, but not enough to stop hanging around with her. I put this information down so you'll know our history with Charlotte and how it was to be friends with her, so you won't be surprised when I tell you that Jo and I hadn't spoken with her (except at school) since our afternoon in the cemetery, nor with Phillipa and Fay, until they stopped by Mr. Dharma's garden the following week.
Anyone willing to talk about that Friday will probably want to tell you about Auntie Coco's sister and how she disappeared that night, never to be found. One or two of our neighbors might even share with you some gossip, if you're patient enough to get them going, if you can wait without interfering for subtle disclosures to be made in the midst of aimlessly unwinding sentences, for secrets to be unmasked in glances cast askance, for the sudden lowering of a tone, the last spoken word precious as a gem. Jo and I weren't home that night, and there's no point to my piecing together for you what we weren't around to witness when I could tell you about the afternoon, instead, irrelevant as some of it may be to what you think you want to know ...
We, too, were once like you.
TAM NEVER EXPLAINED to Malika why suddenly she was afraid of burglars entering the house while they were asleep. And Malika hadn't asked about it because the truth was that she had never been comfortable sleeping with the windows open all night. She used to worry especially about the children, even though Malika herself was only twelve when Madam's mother had sent her down from Malacca to help out. (Malika, like both Madam and Sali, was Malaccan by birth, and from what I've heard, Malika's mother had taken care of Madam when Madam was a child, and it was she who had suggested to Madam's mother that Malika be sent over when Madam became pregnant with Caroline. Madam's main help at the time was a Sri Lankan woman already in her fifties, whom Madam's mother-in-law had hired for Madam and her husband when they got married, and who no doubt was having her hands full with Francesca, who had been two at the time. That was what Malika's mother had argued, or so Malika would recall the conversation that had taken place on the other side of a closed bedroom door a few afternoons before she was put on the small, crowded bus to Singapore. On that bus Malika had stared through the dusty, half-open window at the passing rows of rubber trees, while the bodies of the other passengers surged and hurled themselves back and forth around her. She had had to stand, even though Madam's mother had paid for a seat, because a skinny twelve-year-old girl had to rely on the kindness of strangers, and on the occasion that the kindness was missing, that was simply one's fate for the day. And so she had stood, her insides twisted in a hard, tight ache, unbearable at first, only by the time the bus was pulling into the terminus on this side of the Causeway, miles of dust and sweat (hers and that of strangers leaning much too close for her liking) were clinging to her like a sick rash, and Malika's relief when she recognized Madam waving to her on the pavement outside, with Ahmad, the chauffeur, waiting patiently by Madam's side to carry Malika's bag for her, was so great, it felt to Malika like a burst of joy, and the ache from hours ago became nothing more than a simple throbbing, nothing more than another heartbeat whispering against her ribs. She would forget it, not notice it for years, until after Michelle left. Only then would Malika start dreaming of the green gossamer light of the rubber trees. Only then would she wonder how anyone could misplace a memory of love.)
Malika's room was outside the kitchen, separated from the main part of the house by the passageway in which sat the washing machine and the dryer. It was a bigger room than either Sali's or mine, and Malika had had it to herself for years, since she was twenty-two (when the Sri Lankan woman had fallen ill with diabetes, and in spite of the fact that there were better doctors in Singapore and Madam had offered to pay for her medical expenses, Aatha, as she was called, had decided it was time to go home and live out her old age with her family). Even with the double bed (I, too, had a double bed in my room, but Sali's room had only a single bed), the armoire with a full-length mirror on one of its doors (Sali and I had only chests of drawers with mirrors on top), and a small blue desk that had once been shared between Francesca and Caroline when they were in primary school (by the time Michelle came along, Madam's husband's insurance firm was doing so well, he and Madam had decided to renovate the house and buy all new furniture), even with all of that, there was enough floor space on which to set up Malika's Scrabble board if we so wished, or rather, when Sali could be cajoled into playing. (I enjoyed playing Scrabble very much and so, too, did Malika. Sometimes she would play with Madam's grandchildren when they
visited, just as she had played with the girls when they were young. But the grandchildren owned a fancy deluxe edition, with a rotating base and a plastic board with a grid to prevent the tiles from sliding about. That was how Malika had come to inherit the old edition, which she kept in a corner of the blue desk, and which she much preferred because of its sentimental value.)
Of course in the beginning Malika had hoped for a different room eventually. Even the sewing room would have suited her, as small as it was and with a window facing part of the brick wall built by Madam's British neighbor around his house next door. (This was the neighbor living in the house to the right of Madam's when one looked at the houses from the road. He was a tall, reserved gentleman who as far as Malika knew worked for the British High Commission, and whom she would later nickname Prince Phillip because of the uncanny resemblance she thought he bore to the Queen's husband, but as Sali and I were never around when the neighbor stepped out of his house, we couldn't agree or disagree). Malika's heart had sunk when Aatha had left and she had realized the impossibility of finding a plausible enough excuse to ask for a room inside the house. Unveiling to Madam (who was still her employer, no matter how kind Madam was, and who would have had to consult her husband) either of her actual reasons was out of the question. And so the passing years had layered upon Malika's lips a silence shifting as the rubber leaves used to shift on the grounds of a plantation, in small spirals of resignation and a tapering hope. We could hear the inaudible sighs when she talked, or rather, we could feel their outline, like the glimmering impression hanging behind one's closed eyelids of things not there. Sali was too young and self-absorbed to be concerned, and perhaps so was I, hut on occasion I would wonder if Malika had changed her mind after all, if she had come to her senses, as I saw it, and realized that few servants were as well off as she.