Shadow Theatre

by Fiona Cheong

  She turned off the kitchen light after picking up the book she was in the middle of reading from her blue desk (switching on the lamp on the armoire before she left the room), and walked to the front of the house to settle herself in one of Madam's cane armchairs on the patio, a habit she had started forming after Michelle left, on those first few nights after the wedding, when the silence in the house had been deafening and Madam had started going out for her drives alone on the new highway.

  From the patio one could catch the sounds of Madam's neighbors on the right (on the left if one was looking from the road), a family of four. One might hear the thud of an object dropping on the floor (slipping out of the hands of one of the children, Malika presumed-the son was four, the daughter was five), the clink of a glass or the tinnier ring of a metal utensil, and sometimes voices. Bits of parental conversation might ripple out of a window and drift through the thick hibiscus hedge along the fence, or the son's voice (more often than the daughter's) might break out, raised in a pouting protest. One could hear, too, if one were attentive enough, traffic humming on the main road a quarter of a mile away, a soothing slush of tires through puddles if there had been rain, or on a still night like tonight, just a whirring rhythm of the engines of different cars, the squealing crescendo of a bus approaching a stop, and in Madam's garden an almost imperceptible bristling of night insects beating about in the sultry air.

  As on other nights, the British neighbor's house remained quiet, except for the occasional peal of the telephone, which if it rang would stop after two rings and then the answering machine would click on (or so Malika assumed, since that was what had happened once when Madam had had to call the gentleman because the postman had delivered to her by mistake a letter addressed to him). Malika couldn't tell as she opened her book (a French novel in English translation, about a love affair between a French teenage girl and a Chinese man in the time that Vietnam and Cambodia were known as Indochina) whether the gentleman was home or not, as his house was hidden from view by the brick wall. (It was a one-story bungalow, built in sprawling pavilion style like Madam's, whereas the other houses on the road were two-story and semi-detached, built on a smaller acreage each.)

  The page on which Malika had stopped reading on the previous night (when she had read in bed as Madam had been home) was marked by a vermilion leather bookmark, fringed at one end and bearing a gilt sketch of a domed building (a souvenir from Vatican City, sent to Malika while Francesca was on one of her business trips in Rome). Malika was removing the bookmark when, out of the corner of her eye, she saw the sugar cane quiver, over there to her right, four feet or so from the edge of the car porch. She was about to turn her head when she caught herself. No need to scare the poor thing away, Malika told herself, as she placed the bookmark back on the page. She didn't close the book. She let her hand rest on the page, caressing the fringe on the bookmark with the tips of her fingers.

  The sugar cane grew still. Malika waited for a message, for the girl to speak to her. (If the girl wanted prayer, she thought, she would do as Madam had done after her husband's passing and each time one of the children was getting married. She would write a petition on a slip of paper, fold it neatly, and leave it in the wooden box with a slot in the Church of St. Francis of Assisi, which wasn't far down the road, within walking distance. The box hung on a wall in the enclave in which dozens of votive candles burned daily on a tiered iron rack in front of the statue of the Blessed Virgin. Miracles were said to have happened for petitioners who had left their requests there, although of course not for every one of them. Malika couldn't think of a better solution, if what the girl's soul needed was prayer. Asking Madam if she could attend the Sunset Mass with her (as Malika had been invited to, several times in the past) was out of the question. As far as Malika knew, the lascivious Father Johnson was still there, since Madam would have mentioned it if Father Johnson had retired or been transferred to another parish, although not because Madam was aware the Father's hands had once slithered (seemingly by accident) over Malika's buttocks. Malika was sure Madam didn't know, not even when Francesca started attending Mass at the Novena Church instead, with Caroline and later Michelle tagging along.)

  When no message seemed to be coming forth, Malika looked up and saw there was no longer anyone hiding in the sugar cane. But someone had been there. Malika would not be able to explain to Sali and me how she could be so sure it had been the same girl as on Wednesday but she was, even though one could hardly make anything out in the murky shadows at the garden's edge.

  A light came on in an upstairs window above the hibiscus hedge, and someone moved behind the curtains. Next door to her left, Malika heard footsteps coming along the slate path in the British neighbor's garden. She listened as his gate opened, then closed, with a quick drop of the iron latch. The footsteps continued down the road. She tried to discern if they were a man's or a woman's, but all she could tell was that they weren't the British gentleman's. (She would have recognized his, having heard them on numerous occasions over the years.)

  She leaned towards the doorway behind her and checked the clock on the living-room wall. It was five minutes past eight. Madam wasn't late in returning from her drive, not yet, so Malika couldn't explain the tingling in the pit of her stomach, her spidery sense of foreboding, unless it had somehow been brought on by the girl. But she wasn't afraid of the girl. Ghosts didn't frighten Malika simply by being ghosts. She was more afraid of wolves dressed up in the clothing of lambs.

  She wondered what the girl might want from her if not prayer and, closing her book, sat back to wait.

  LPHONSUS WONG WASN'T Charlotte's first (and if he thought he was, he was a fool, as he and Charlotte weren't even going steady because Charlotte thought going steady would cramp her, make her feel claustrophobic, as she'd put it, but saying it to us, not to him). She was probably with him while Phillipa and Fay came looking for us, their shadows stretching past the yam and pandan leaves as they stepped in and out of the shade of the cemetery trees. (Phillipa had been the tallest and fastest girl in our class before Fay arrived, but they were on the track team together now, often running neck and neck at practice.) We didn't hear them approach Mr. Dharma's gate, but when Jo turned around to work on a straggly clump behind her, suddenly there they were.

  As on other weekday afternoons, Mr. Uharma wasn't home because he was teaching in the afternoon session that year. (He used to teach history and geography at St. Peter's, which as you may know is still one of St. Agnes' brother schools.) All you had to do to let yourself into any of our neighbors' gardens was slip your arm through a dragon's mouth and slide the bolt back, since it wouldn't be until some years after Auntie Coco's sister's disappearance that people would start using padlocks. Jo and I had been working since two o'clock as usual, and when Phillipa and Fay found us, it was nearly half-past three. Some rain clouds were moving in from the beach and the air in Mr. I)harma's garden sagged with humidity, with diffused light and the fragrances of his rambutans and papayas, with the ochreous tincture of freshly dug earth, and of seaweed, but you could still feel the sun on your head as Jo was calling out, "Hey," to Phillipa and Fay, as Phillipa reached in with her right hand and lifted the latch and slid the bolt hack.

  They had come to ask us if we wanted to participate in Charlotte's deal with her cousin Leonard, who was a St. Peter's boy (as was Alphonsus Wong but for obvious reasons, Charlotte was leaving him out of the picture).

  "We're proposing fifty-five cents for a nipple, but if a boy wants to see both nipples, we'll give him a discount. He can get two nipples for a dollar. Taking off our panties is more expensive. Three dollars or five dollars, depending on whether he wants us to squat for him." Phillipa paused so Jo and I could assess how we felt about the terms of the deal as she had stated them. Then she went on, very matter-of-factly, "If you want to charge more, better give Charlotte a call, okay? They're meeting to sign the agreement after the dang-ki's performance tomorrow."

  "What dang-ki?" I
asked.

  "You don't know there's one going to be at the market tomorrow?" Phillipa glanced sideways at Fay, and Fay nodded, her short hair bobbing in the sun, spiky as grass. (Fay wore her hair shorter than most boys did, but her haircut looked so surprisingly feminine with her elfin face, the nuns were leaving her alone about it.)

  "I knew," said Jo, and she added when I looked at her, "I was going to tell you."

  'They've already marked out the area," Phillipa went on. "He's going to be in front of the noodle stalls. There's a square drawn in red chalk on the cement."

  "How big?" asked Jo.

  "About ten feet by ten feet?" Phillipa looked again at Fay, who nodded again. "Ya, about that big."

  Jo turned to me. "So if we can get a place right along the border of the square, we'll be able to see quite a lot. We should be there by three o'clock, at least half an hour early. Okay?"

  There was no question that we were going, and no need for Jo to ask me if I wanted to go because she knew my heart, knew the rise and fall and twists of its passions as if they belonged to her own heart's churning. There was also no question that we would have to lie about going to watch a dang-ki, so if you were to ask our mothers, they would tell you Jo and I were at the cinema that Saturday, and I ask that you not let on to them what you know, or what else you may find out.

  "Okay," I said to Jo, with all the boldness and naivete of girls our age then.

  She whipped out her old, sly smile, wheels turning in her head, and I saw instantly what she was thinking, but I wasn't about to bring it up in front of Phillipa and Fay.

  "So what about Charlotte's deal with Leonard? Are you guys in or not?" asked Phillipa, returning to the topic because Charlotte needed our answer no later than that evening, in case Jo and I weren't interested and she and Phillipa had to round up some other girls.

  I shrugged, and Jo replied that we would have to discuss it first. She didn't look at me as she was telling Phillipa this, but I knew she had caught the hesitation in my shrugging, and so had Fay, who was staring at Jo and me as if she hadn't noticed before how well we could read each other's body language.

  Phillipa already knew how Jo and I were, so all she said was, "Okay, if you don't call Charlotte by seven o'clock tonight, we'll assume you're in, and that you agree with the fees I gave you. Right? Okay?"

  "Right," said Jo, and I nodded, but then Jo added, "If we're in, we'll go over to Charlotte's house instead of phoning. I want to see what the agreement says before it gets signed." She shot me a quick glance. I said nothing.

  "It says exactly what I've told you, but okay-lah, if you must see for yourself, go ahead. I'll let Charlotte know." Phillipa tossed her hair back as she turned to look at Mr. 1)harma's front door. She had gorgeous wavy hair, and she watched the door as if she expected it to open, and Mr. Dharma to stand there and warn us in the manner of our teachers not to fall prey to the Devil, to the unchaste and morally improper thoughts the Devil was known to take great pleasure in sowing in teenagers. (Like Charlotte and several others, Phillipa had a bit of a crush on Mr. Dharma, who was quite a dreamboat back then. Fay seemed unaffected, however, as were Jo and I. He wasn't our type, if you must know.)

  "So have you heard of anyone else seeing them?" Fay asked suddenly, her voice barely an echo, a wisp of thrumming over our heads.

  Phillipa continued to watch Mr. Dharma's door, although she was listening. You could feel her listening.

  I looked at Jo, who returned my look as she told Fay, "Not yet."

  "Do you think other people will see them?" Fay went on.

  "Sooner or later," said Jo, sounding so sure, I didn't doubt that she was right.

  "But so far, you haven't heard anyone talking about it, right?"

  We knew Fay liked living in Singapore, liked being an only child in her uncle's house, liked having a whole room and a bed to herself. (Phillipa had found out about Fay's eight younger siblings over in Jakarta, whom Fay always had to give way to so she could set them a good example. It had been Fay's uncle's idea for her to come and stay with him in Singapore, so she could concentrate on her studies. And so if Fay's parents were to hear of how he couldn't keep her out of trouble, she would most likely be hauled back at once. She wouldn't have been in the cemetery with us if Phillipa hadn't somehow talked her into it, and you could feel her starting to grow apprehensive towards their friendship.) Jo assured her none of our neighbors were talking about what we had seen, which meant the odds were in our favor that no one had seen us.

  "You're sure, right?"

  Phillipa turned to Fay then, and said, "Look, if someone knows we were there, we would be hearing about it by now, okay? Didn't I already tell you?"

  Fay nodded, and gave us a halfhearted smile.

  "You're not going to back out of this deal now, are you?" asked Phillipa.

  Fay said no, she wasn't. She sighed, and I could feel Jo was starting to feel sorry for her (because beneath the tough tomboy exterior you might hear about from the nuns if you were to speak to them, Jo was kind, and her heart could melt faster than butter on an open flame). So I knew the die was cast. For Fay's sake, Jo wouldn't back out, either, and that was why I was ready to say yes later when we were alone, after Phillipa and Fay were gone.

  If WAS AROU N I) half-past four that they left, and Auntie Helena had stepped out shortly after for her weekly gambling game with Father O'Hara and Sister Sylvia. (The three would gather every Friday night in the parish house, and you'd see them huddling over their cards at one end of the dining table, the ceiling fan whirring softly over their heads. They were supposed to be playing just for fun, but everyone knew there was money involved. People simply looked the other way because where was the harm in letting three senior citizens exchange their money among themselves? Sister Sylvia was the oldest, a firecracker of a nun in her time, but that's another story. By the time we knew her, she was already living at Holy Family, cooking and keeping house for the priests. We used to think she'd outlive even Auntie Helena, the youngest of the trio.)

  Jo was starting to ask me if I was feeling shy about showing my body to a boy when we heard Auntie Helena opening her door next door. She may not have heard us, but she was home at the time, for whatever it's worth.

  We exchanged hellos through the fence and then Jo and I watched her drive off in her car. I can't say I noticed anything unusual about Auntie Helena that afternoon, nothing that would point to what was about to happen to her, what she would see in the morning ...

  "ODD IN WHAI way?" I asked, when Jo said there was something odd about Auntie Helena when she was closing her gate. But she simply shook her head and repeated, "Odd," as she picked up her basket of weeds and carried it over to Mr. Dharma's steps, her feet in sandals moving deftly through the grass like fish underwater as she crossed the garden.

  "So anyway, is that why you don't want to do it? Are you feeling shy?" she asked me again.

  I gathered the last of the stalks I'd dug up and stood up with my basket. "What if they want to touch?" I asked, walking over to join her at the steps.

  "Dummy, that's why I want to see the agreement. We can make sure it says no touching."

  "But what if they insist? Who's going to stop them? Each of us will be alone by then, right?"

  No, we'll go off two at a time. Two girls with two boys at a time. All you have to do is go behind some trees for privacy. You don't have to go far. The rest of us will wait and if a boy breaks the agreement, all you have to do is yell, and everything will come to a halt. The whole agreement will be off. We'll make sure Leonard knows that."

  "What if Charlotte doesn't agree?"

  "She'll agree. She needs us."

  And that was all the discussion there was about Charlotte's plan.

  YOU DON'T NEED to know whether we really went through with it. That, too, is another story. What matters is that you see who we were, see what was in our hearts that August, our very ordinary hearts.

  You'll hear her story beckoning in the cemetery if
you try. Stand where we were and let her face brush yours, the unfinished mask of her face hanging like wind off the branches, threading a way through the coarse grass and among the gravesites, whistling low in the lalang that used to grow deeper in.

  You could see it in Jo's face that she was going to ask the dang-ki to show us who the diamond woman was. (We had sworn off the bomoh because she seemed too dangerous, but the dang-ki was a medium of a different caliber. As his powers were temporary, available to him only after a seven-day stint of fasting and meditation, he seemed to us less aligned with the spirit world, and so less of a risk. But then, all we had ever done before was watch, and I wouldn't have thought to ask for his help. I wouldn't have dared, without Jo.)

  She wouldn't have done it, if I had stopped her. I could have stopped her. You should know this about us, how we wouldn't have forced each other into anything. But I wanted to see it, to watch the dang-ki sketch the diamond woman's features while he was in a trance, mark the curve of her chin on one of his thick, yellow squares of spirit paper ...

  Jo was sure we had saved enough to pay him in full.

  So when Saturday afternoon came around, I emptied my share of our earnings onto my bed. I wrapped a rubber band around the dollar notes and picked up the loose change.

  Jo was leaning on the gate when I stepped out of the house, her money pinned safely to the inside pocket of her yellow knapsack, not in a purse which could get snatched. She grinned when she saw me with my knapsack, too.