Shadow Theatre

by Fiona Cheong

  We were two foolish tycoons, about to embark on an adventure with no inkling of the cost. We didn't even wonder if perhaps we weren't the first ever to ask a dang-ki about the diamond woman.

  I watched Jo slide the ribbon off her ponytail before we started walking. She seldom wore her hair loose but when she did, it was wavier and more gorgeous than Phillipa's, with a soft black sheen like moonlight over water, and the power to get us just about anything we desired.

  "Ready?" she asked.

  I said yes.

  R 0 S E S I M

  REMEMBER ms hair, blond like James Dean's, with the sun filtering through the bougainvillea outside the windows to our left lighting up the tips over his forehead. For some reason, I wanted to touch it, the fellow's hair, which to this day I don't know if I can explain, but there you have it. Maybe that's why it's always the first thing I remember about the afternoon, Chandra's boyfriend's hair, because up close, I could see that not only was it blond, but also feathery. Like a yellow canary's feathers accidentally doused in Clorox, I was thinking, and not like hair at all.

  It was almost two o'clock, and Auntie Coco's sister was still with her. That's the other thing I think about, whenever I look hack, how my shift at the library went till three on Fridays, and that Friday, Shak and I had already made plans for me to go over to her house after work.

  Mundane facts, all mixed in with everything else.

  By eight o'clock that night, Auntie Coco's sister would be missing, and Auntie Coco would start wandering up and down the road, dressed in her sarong and calling for her sister, her voice carrying so much anguish, it would spin and somersault over our rooftops and into the cemetery trees like a piece of her actual heart, and Shak and I would not be able to look at each other as we walked over to the door to look out. (We would be in the living room when it happened. Shak's mother was making mutton curry for dinner, I remember, and she had invited me to stay and eat. Mutton curry used to he one of our favorite dishes, you know, Shak's and mine. Our favorite hawker was the one who used to sell outside the convent, some fellow who always wore a coolie hat and no shirt. You could get from him one enormous bowl for fifty cents, which Shak and I would share because neither of us could finish the howl by ourselves, but it was cheaper than buying two small bowls.)

  About Chandra's boyfriend, there was nothing unusual about his being at the library that afternoon, since part of Chandra's reason for dating angmos was to show off. What was unusual was his coming over to talk to me, standing so close now that I could see, for the first time, what angmo hair was like, downy like an animal's. It would be like touching an animal, I thought, while he was introducing himself. Like gently stroking the breast of a canary, a bird so used to living in the cage, if it were to be set free in the morning, by sunset it would be dead.

  That's what I've heard, about the canary.

  "Jason Hill." He had stretched out his hand, so what was there for me to do but shake it?

  So I shook his hand, his palm fleshy and heavy and slightly sweaty.

  Since this fellow was the first foreigner ever to come up and introduce himself to me, I was a bit wary, wondering what he wanted. Usually, foreigners went for other types, right? Not someone like me. I wasn't sexy enough for most of them, and definitely not pretty enough. Even those who came here to the East, as they put it, hunting for a Chinese wife, even they passed me up. Those ex-army types. Foreigners all wanted someone who looked like Shak, or Serena Chan (who, by the way, had bought the house next-door to Ivan Anthony a few years after we were out of school, and now the two of them had something hot and secret going on, which all the neighbors knew about), or Isabella, if Isabella weren't a Sister. This was how they were, the angmos. Not so different from Chinese men, the traditional kind. Even if, mostly, they were looking for wives to stay barefoot and pregnant, as Shak used to say, when she was in her feminist mood, even so, the wives must be sexy. Or pretty. At least one or the ocher.

  I don't remember how he got around to it, the fellow. One minute he was telling me his name and saying, "You're Rose Sim, aren't you?" and shaking my hand, while I looked past him to where some teenagers were coming into the library, four or five of them piling in through the revolving door and almost getting stuck, and the next minute, he was asking me if it was true there was a baby ghost following Shak around.

  His exact words were, Is it true your friend's being followed by a baby ghost, the woman who lives in America? Shakilah. Did I say her name right?"

  He hadn't said it right, so I pronounced it for him, and he tried to imitate me, but his accent seemed to get in the way. Still, it was better than his first attempt, so I didn't correct him again.

  Also, I didn't know what he was talking about. A baby ghost. Following Shak around? I knew at once it must have been Chandra who had passed the rumor on to him. But where had Chandra heard it? I was sure she hadn't started it herself, because I had never known her to have the imagination.

  "Rose? Do you mind my asking you?"

  More teenagers were coming into the library, and the revolving door kept swinging around in a zigzag pattern of sunlight and shadows.

  We were near the bookshelves on the left side of that main floor, in the PN section. I remember because of the bougainvillea outside the windows, flourishing so bright pink against the glass. (The windows were closed because of the air conditioning, which was also why so many teenagers used our library, because not many of the smaller branch libraries were airconditioned in those days.) I remember I had a cart with me, so I must have been reshelving books when this Jason fellow had come up and started talking to me. I could feel the metal handle against my fingers, and I could see, when the revolving door slowed down, outside the air was moist, the heat shimmering over the cement steps and the sago palms at the edge of the library garden.

  Sometimes the evocation of a spirit is enough to bring it near, you know, but there was nothing. I saw and felt nothing. So I asked this Jason fellow why he wanted to know about the baby ghost.

  "You have a lot of ghost stories," he said. He smiled, his eyes bluer than the sea, I noticed. "You Singaporeans, I mean. You tell a lot of ghost stories. Every Singaporean has a ghost story in the family closet. Isn't that so, Rose?"

  "Singapore has a lot of ghosts," I said, smiling so he would think I was joking.

  Angmos never know how to understand ghosts, you know, calling everything superstition even in the face of eyewitness accounts. This one, for instance. Even after hearing enough stories, and for sure, not all from Chandra, the fellow wasn't interested in the truth, I could tell. Because he was assuming there was no truth. Otherwise, he would have done some background checking already, to find out more about our history, not only the parts everyone knows (about the Europeans coming and taking over the spice trade, and all that), but also the earlier parts. At least if he knew enough to think about Srivijaya and Majapahit, he could figure out for himself how as long ago as that, people here were cutting deals with the spirits. (The women, of course. Signing contracts by fasting and not combing their hair, letting themselves look ugly and mad, all for the sake of their husbands and sons, or sometimes, to protect their fathers. Because there was so much fighting and killing, how else could those empires have been built?)

  Ghosts were roaming the region centuries before this fellow's ancestors arrived, and here he was, talking about them as if they were just a figment of our imagination.

  All he wanted was fodder for his letters home, so he could write interesting things about his life here, to his buddies or his family or maybe even a girlfriend who was foolishly waiting for him to return, having no idea he was over here sowing his wild oats with Chandra. That's how foreigners are, the angmo ones who come here. Using our own stories against us, to prove that in spite of our commercial success, we're still a backward people. Still believing in ghosts. (Ask me whether I would bet my soul that by telling our stories, the foreigner thinks he can sound interesting to other people. As long as he doesn't say he
believes in the stories, he feels safe talking, right?)

  So I wasn't going to give this Jason fellow any information, even if I had some, which I didn't. I wasn't sure why Chandra had bothered to tell him about the rumor in the first place, unless it was to pantang Shak, bring her bad luck, that sort of thing. To make certain Shak couldn't use her charm to lure away her boyfriend, in case they happened to meet. I could imagine Chandra thinking up such a plot, because she was that sort. To her, what we all wanted was a blondie boyfriend.

  If so, why pantang someone like that, right? And not only Shak but her baby as well, saying there was a ghost following them around.

  I was getting angry, thinking about it. And maybe that Jason could sense there was no point talking to me further, because he didn't ask any more questions.

  SO W I I I: N S I I I: showed up, Chandra, on the dot at two o'clock, I glared at her with as much disapproval as I could muster. I would have fired her off if we were by ourselves, but I didn't want her to lose face in front of an angmo, whether he was her boyfriend or not. Call me prejudiced, but an angmo's an angmo, I thought. Even if Chandra ended up marrying this one, and every soul is supposed to be sacred, I couldn't help feeling a gap between their kind of people and our kind of people, you know. Maybe because of Singapore's history with Europeans, or maybe the gap's always been there, it didn't matter to me as I looked at her, Chandra. What mattered was, I kept cool, so to speak. I simply glared at her, and when she said, "Hi, Rose," I could hear in her voice, she had gotten the message.

  And when she didn't ask what her boyfriend and I had been talking about, now that she knew, I thought to myself, mission accomplished. Making Chandra feel uncomfortable gave me a lot of satisfaction, I must admit. Partly because I was tired of watching her walk into the library with her short skirts, carrying her high heels in her Gucci bag so she could put them on afterwards when her angmo boyfriend picked her up. She was wearing them now, the high heels, and a black skirt so tight, you had to wonder how her hips could get enough oxygen to sway so hard from side to side as she walked. I had heard her approaching us, of course, clickety clack all the way across the floor. And even though I hadn't turned around, I knew how Chandra walked, and also, Jason's eyes had confirmed it. The look he had given her. If he were a dog, his tongue would have been hanging out already.

  "How's Shak?" she asked, finally.

  "She's fine," I said, very politely on purpose.

  "I hear she's due in December."

  "Yes."

  "How is she coping with the heat?"

  "Getting used to it." Only a white lie, right? This is her home, you know."

  "Well, they say the blood gets altered after you've lived overseas." Chandra smiled at Jason, in such a way that she was almost batting her eyelashes, for no reason except to be alluring. He hadn't said anything, and she wasn't even talking directly to him.

  If Shak's boyfriend had come home with her, she would never have behaved that way, I thought, and I was certain. Especially not in front of me, because it was rude to do this, like almost making love in public.

  But that was how Chandra was. Sometimes I couldn't stand the sight of her. Otherwise, live and let live, as even the Mother Superior would say.

  I was trying not to watch Chandra and her boyfriend as they left the library, their hips bumping like magnets. Because it was what she wanted, to draw attention to herself. So I turned to the windows and tried to wipe the picture of them out of my mind, the two of them pulok-pulok as if long-lost lovers, while I stared at the bougainvillea, at the hot sky, at the yellow library wall, at the black hair of teenagers leaning glumly with their elbows on the long table near the windows, studying. (Younger children also used our library, but their reading section was upstairs.)

  A hand tapped me on the shoulder, and before I turned around, I knew who it was, because her scent had been there from the moment Chandra and her boyfriend had started walking away, that scent of her habit, of her hair, shorter now, rolled up like an old-fashioned Chinese scroll underneath her wimple. A whiff of the dampness in her armpits, making dewdrops on her skin.

  She had waited until they left, I realized, and I wondered how I could have missed seeing her come over.

  Isabella, whom Shak had already asked me about, because Shak didn't know, and how could she? Being away fifteen years and not even replying to my earlier letters with a postcard (which was why I had stopped writing to her, to Shak, because my feelings were hurt, although what I had told myself out loud was to be frugal and not waste stamps).

  "Long time no see." Isabella was smiling such a wide smile, as if truly, from the bottom of her heart, she was happy to see me.

  As I've said, I had been avoiding people from the past, so I hadn't stepped foot in the convent in years, you know. And as Isabella usually used the main library on Stamford Road when she was doing research for her teaching, she was easy to avoid, although I used to daydream sometimes that for some reason, she might come to use our library.

  Now here she was, and I suspected I knew why.

  Outside the revolving door, Chandra and her boyfriend were kissing, his pale hands holding her waist, not grabbing or fondling but so gentlemanly. He was like a Hollywood boyfriend in a black-and-white classic film, but I could tell from the way he wasn't letting go of her, their tongues were smacking inside their mouths. And also from the way some teenagers leaving the library were averting their eyes, because even they were embarrassed at such lack of self-restraint.

  I wanted Isabella to know I also was glad to see her, but when I echoed her words, "Long time no see," they toppled out like tin cans, empty and false.

  She pretended not to notice, just went on smiling before she started asking about Shak.

  What surprised me was when she mentioned the baby ghost, only that wasn't how Isabella spoke of it. She called the ghost "the girl," and the way she eased into the topic, so matter- of-factly, I knew she couldn't have heard it from Chandra, but from someone reliable, someone she knew to believe, although I've never found out whom.

  She didn't say the ghost was following Shak around, but rather, that Shak may be following a ghost. And she didn't say for sure, but maybe.

  Mostly Isabella just wanted me to know, so I could be on the lookout. "You know our Shak. Make sure she doesn't do anything risky, Rose." She herself would be seeing Shak soon, but she wasn't going to bring up the girl if Shak didn't do it first.

  So that's why, when I went over to Shak's house after work, and Shak told me she wanted to see the doctors house, I would wonder if the baby ghost was involved. The girl, as Isabella put it. But I wouldn't be able to come up with a reason for us not to go.

  And it may have had nothing to do with a ghost, you know. Nothing at all.

  ACCOUNTS OF THE

  FOLLOWING

  SATURDAY IN

  august 1994

  HELENA S I M

  ISTER SYLVIA AND her winning hand. That was why-lah I I_ I wasn't around when Auntie Coco started calling for her sister. Alamak, the luck that nun could have. And with her vow of poverty, what was the point? Ah, so anyway, that was the reason I got home so late. Sister Sylvia and her winning hand. That was it-lah. Every time she won, she wanted to play one more round. She was already seventy-plus years old, how to say no to her? Poor Father O'Hara, he wasn't young himself, you know. By nine o'clock I could see him struggling to concentrate, his eyelids already drooping. Both of us thought we were doing penance-lah. Better here than in purgatory, ya? How could we foresee that the old nun was nowhere near death, that actually she was going to live another ten years and Father O'Hara himself would go before her? Things like that, we can't know. Ah, so by the time I got home, all the commotion was over. Then, in the morning when I woke up, Rose was already out. No note to let me know what had happened or anything, everything like normal. That's my daughter for you. Saturdays she always worked half-day at the library, so I knew where she was. But anyone else's daughter would have left a short note-Mum, the p
olice were here last night, Auntie Coco's sister got kidnapped, I'll tell you more later. Something like that, just for information. Not my Rose. She never liked excitement, okay? Always so quiet, from the time she was a child. Her father and I always knew, better not hope for grandchildren. How was our Rose going to find a husband, all the time her nose was buried in books? Both she and Valerie's daughter, although that one used to have all the boys trailing after her because she had the looks, what. Still, who ever expected Shakilah to come home like that? As if anyone was going to miss the fact that her finger was empty. But to be honest, I always liked her. At heart, she was a good girl. Always polite, always kind. And at least she knew how to get Rose to socialize a bit.

  So anyway, Winifred Teo grabbed my arm that morning (we were at the char kway teow stall in the market, both of us happening to arrive there at the same time) and she began by asking me, in that busybody voice of hers, "Eh, Hel, did your daughter tell you what she told the police?"

  You know Winifred. Forever paranoid, that woman. Alamak, as if she was so important, as if the government didn't have other things to worry about. She was wanting to compare notes, you see, in case different people had said different things to the police and the government became suspicious. That was how her mind worked. Of course, I didn't know right away what she wanted, thanks to Rose and her personality. So I had to ask, since I couldn't ignore Winifred's mentioning the police. I thought at first, you know, something had happened to Rose. You know a mother's worst fears. And Rose being how she was, single like that, with no man in her life to protect her. Not even her father, anymore. Myself, I wasn't worried about, because who would want an old hag? But my Rose-she had beautiful skin, you know. So fair she was, like a swan. (She doesn't look the same nowadays, I don't know what happened, but before, she was just like a swan.)