by Fiona Cheong
I looked at that sentence a long time. Then I folded the strip of paper and put it hack into the box. I closed the drawer and dropped the box into the side pocket of the satchel, and I slid the satchel into the narrow space between the bureau and the bed, exactly where I had found it, I thought. Then I walked around the bed to where her suitcase was lying on top of her old desk. Shakilah still hadn't unpacked her clothes and most of her things were in the suitcase, so I opened it slowly. I felt underneath her clothes, slipping my fingers carefully between the layers so as not to ruffle them, and I found the other things, the other details of her life in America which she couldn't tell me about.
That was when I was forced to put two and two together.
NO. I I F R FRII. N►) Rose didn't know, even though she and your mother used to be best friends. Rose never had that kind of wildness in her, and with a mother like Helena, besides.
No wonder Eve would look so broken-hearted whenever I saw her. Back when Shakilah had first left, and the loneliness had been unbearable, the house so silent in the evenings, I used to go for walks. Sometimes if it was the right time, Eve would be outside her house, watering the jacaranda as usual. No wonder sometimes she would look up when I passed by, and look at me in that way. I had thought she understood my sorrow, and for a while, I was even afraid she might have guessed at the truth, because of the way she would look at me.
And all that while, she had been searching my face to see if I had guessed her secrets.
IMAGI NF ►►AIN(;' )M►►►IIN(;likethatstabyouintheback. Your daughter, your own daughter whom you've raised, whom you've gone through fire to protect, so to speak. You start wondering if you did it too late, if your lack of courage made you wait too long. And what about now? What should you do now? What should you do about your granddaughter?
So I knew why she was out for so long that morning, when she had gone for a walk by herself.
I could hear her and Rose talking downstairs when I woke up from my nap. (Zaida's daughter Mahani had also come over that day, but she had left by then.) I wasn't feeling refreshed, not at all. There was still a bit of a headache throbbing behind my eyelids, but it was faint, not the blinding pain that had built up while I was sitting in Shakilah's room earlier. I had never had a headache like that, arrows of pain shooting down my sides, into my arms and my thighs. And how my right hand had burned. A single sharp pain in it, like a red-hot iron needle passing through my palm. No, I had no explanation and I wasn't looking for one. There are more things in heaven and earth, Mercutio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. No, Mercutio never heard those words, because he was in the other play with Romeo. But he, too, was fated to die. You see how we forget the one that's not directly in front of us. Yes, this story's wandering about a bit. Believe me, it's the only way.
At least, I had managed to sleep a bit. Always be thankful for small blessings.
THE WORST WAS yet to come. What was I being tested for? Or was it punishment? When she told me what she was thinking about, I was stunned. I couldn't speak for a few seconds. I could only stare at her, at this daughter who had grown within my womb, whose delicate head had once fit perfectly against my palm. When I used to cuddle her, my fingers would close so easily around the side of her head, and I would hold her like that, her earlobe rubbing on my middle fingertip, her skull so fragile beneath my thumb, I would check for marks whenever I put her down, nervous about leaving a bruise on her. This daughter I used to sing to, very softly after Ben had fallen asleep, partly so as not to wake him, but also because I knew her eardrum was so tiny and new, I was afraid to burst it. This daughter, whom I had loved even before she was born. How could she say she didn't trust me? In a voice so empty, so devoid of feeling. Had she wandered so far from herself? What had happened to her soul in America? What was going to happen when she went back? Because no matter the cost, there was no question that she had to go back, I thought. Your mother was never safe here. Even she knew it. The question was how not to give in to my longing to keep her home, especially now that she seemed so lost, and with another life to think about. Another soul, not yet born and still tender. And I didn't even know about you.
What did Shakilah mean, she didn't trust me? That was what I was wondering when she said it.
You know what I mean, Mama."
She must have read the question in my eyes. Shock and confusion had paralyzed my face. She could see that, obviously. She must have expected it. She had even hoped for it, I thought, as I looked at her sitting there on the couch, with her hands folded in her lap, as if she were demure and ladylike, which as a teenager she had never been. I could see she was a woman now, your mother. I could feel within her the wall surrounding her soul, so that I could no longer reach it. Within that wall was a desert so bleak like the Gobi, miles of dusty sand where her soul was wandering. Was she going to take her daughter's soul there as well? Mama, if something happens to me, I want Eve Thumboo to take care of my baby. I've already asked her. Not a shiver in Shakilah's voice when she had said that, when she had looked me straight in the eye and informed me she was going to give away my granddaughter, and not only that, but give her away to the woman who had already grabbed one child from me.
Finally, I found my voice, but it was shaky. "I don't know what you mean," I told her. "Tell me what you mean, Shakilah."
She just looked at me.
It was close to six o'clock. Rose had left around half-past five, with a sheepish expression on her face as she apologized for not being able to stay for dinner that evening. Now I knew why. Helena herself had stopped by with Bernadette, under the pretense of bringing over some of her pineapple tarts for Shakilah. Wait till they found out about this, I thought. My headache was building up again, a dull pain this time, a sluggish ache centered in my crown and sending thin roots down. I could feel the darkness that was coming as I shut my eyes for a moment. The night was already moving through the trees, heaving against our walls. The pain ripped through my shoulders. I felt it enter my chest, but it didn't go lower than my navel.
"Shall I get you some aspirin?" Shakilah asked, but her voice didn't sound willing or concerned. It sounded exhausted, fed up, even though she was trying to hide it. As a mother, you can hear.
I shook my head and opened my eyes. Outside, the air still carried a dim light, the paltry glow of the sun as it was going down, but in the living room twilight had already arrived. I thought about switching on the lamp on the end table beside me, but my arms felt heavy. I thought, what would be the point? I was also afraid of what else I might see in your mother's eyes, if the light in the room grew brighter. I couldn't look at her anymore. I stared at my hands. How ugly they had become, how dry and old and useless. As always, I was aware of not wearing my wedding ring. At least, I didn't have to wear it anymore. Shakilah must have noticed this, but she hadn't said a word about it.
I heard her sigh. "Are you sure you don't want some aspirin?" she asked, and I made myself speak.
"No, I don't want any aspirin," I said. I could hear the quake in my voice, even though I had tried to speak steadily.
She sighed again. What was she sighing for? I was the one being pierced. To have to live out the rest of your days hearing your granddaughter call the wrong woman Grandma. Imagine it. That Jezebel, holding my granddaughter's hand, teaching her things.
Not to mention the immense shame. How would I show my face around the neighborhood, hold my head up amidst the buzzing gossip, the pity, everyone glancing sideways and not daring to speak to me? Had she thought about that? Had she thought what a sword she was driving through my soul? Wasn't it enough that I was already enduring her shame? Shakilah wasn't deaf. She could hear the whispers that had been travelling up and down the road all week, some of them directed at me. Eh, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. She must have known before she came home what would happen. Arriving with her belly so ripe, her left hand empty.
"What did I do?" I asked her, trying again to hold my voice steady. "What has m
ade you so angry with me, Shakilah?"
"You know," she said, quite sharply. Then she looked at me, as if she had been waiting a long time for me to ask her that question. Now she was waiting for me to say something else, but I didn't know what she was referring to at all.
"No." I shook my head. "No, darling, I don't know."
"You know," she said again, defiantly and suddenly sounding just like Ben, in the old days when Ben and I were dating, when we were young and innocent, and he was still sweet, and in love with me. Those were the old days. Life changes. Or maybe it was marriage that had changed us, Ben and me, or just age. I never knew what had made him start looking at me differently, and in the end, it didn't matter. What I did, I had to do. But Shakilah didn't know about any of it. I was sure she didn't know what I had done to save her. I had been very careful. I hadn't wanted her to carry the burden of knowing.
"What is it?" I asked, and I tried to sound gentle and loving. "Please tell me, darling." I wanted her to understand I was her mother, that I would do anything for her, even though the truth was that I wasn't feeling very strong, and my hands were trembling.
You think I don't remember." Her voice was almost a whisper. I saw her take in a deep breath, and then she went on, "I remember."
I didn't know what she was talking about.
"I thought it was a dream. I thought I dreamt it."
Now I thought I knew the incident to which she was referring, but I still didn't know why she was angry at me, unless she was blaming me for allowing it to happen. Was that it? I didn't want to interrupt her, so I tried to study her face. But Shakilah was looking down at her hands, and even in the dimness in the room, the last vestiges of daylight ebbing away fast, I could sense the deadening between us. It was as if blood and air had left your mother's body, as if her bones and skin were only remnants of the child I had carried. Only her soul was still wandering, blowing about like a piece of seashell in that desert that was inside her. I didn't know what to do, except sit there and wait for whatever else was coming, and accept it. At my age, I could feel fate's hand when it reached in. Maybe guilt had something to do with it. Maybe. Yes, you always have guilt, even when you know you had no choice.
"Children don't have such dreams. Or if they do, they're signs. The dreams are signs."
She sounded as if she had turned into a stranger, right before my eyes. That was how she sounded. On the surface, nothing was changing. She looked the same, with Ben's thick eyelashes and his thick hair, which his relatives had been so happy about, even if she wasn't his coloring. Not that they had ever mentioned it-the only time his relatives had shown some discretion. But I had seen it on their faces, right from the start. As soon as they had left the hospital room, they must have told one another, Aiya, lucky. The girl has her father's looks. Yes, my feelings were hurt, but I was able to convince myself it was okay. As long as Ben loved me, who cared if his relatives didn't find me pretty enough for him? But it was a relief to cut them off after the funeral, not to have to keep tolerating their insults and accusations. They hadn't wanted me to send Shakilah away, especially to America, by herself. If Ben hadn't been so ill, they would have succeeded in stopping me. Yes, they would have, because it would have been them against me. My relatives? No need to ask about them. They've never been involved.
I wondered if your sister was awake, listening to what was going on between her mother and her grandmother. She was going to be a beautiful child. I already knew it, her soul untainted like the first soul in Paradise, her goodness intact like a butterfly's body curled up in its cocoon, like a flower before it buds. But she was staying so quiet, now I couldn't tell if she was awake.
"You put your hand between my legs."
Imagine a mother hearing those words from her own daughter. Even if you've been waiting for them, you're not prepared. She had never talked about it. The doctors at Mount Alvernia had told me the wound was small, it would heal. She's lucky. Whoever did this could have killed her, if he went deeper. We didn't know if she would even remember. I had hoped she wouldn't. Halimah had said she might not, and I had hoped for it. But I must have known that it was impossible, that her body was marked, her mind ravaged beyond repair. I wasn't surprised to hear her speak about it, finally. What I wasn't expecting was where it would lead.
"You thought I was asleep. I wasn't."
She was still looking at her hands, trying to find in herself what was no longer there, I thought. A stolen beginning. A stolen home. My poor darling.
"I wasn't asleep. I know what you did, Mama."
At first, I couldn't respond. I thought I must have misheard her. But I had been listening too carefully to have done that. "What are you saying?" I asked her. "Do you hear what you're saying?"
"You put your hand between my legs."
"No."
"How could you do such a thing?"
Was she mad? Had she gone mad? "No," I repeated. "I didn't do that to you. Listen to me, Shakilah. I didn't do that to you." I kept shaking my head, as if that would make her believe me. She wasn't even looking at me.
"You put your hand between my legs," she said a third time, still looking down at her hands, not at me. "How old was 1? Four? Five? You thought I wouldn't remember."
She was confused, I thought. Perhaps she had woken up once while I was putting on the ointment, even though I would wait until she was fast asleep each time. Had she been asleep when he touched her? I had never found out for sure, understand. Halimah hadn't said it was Ben, and if it was, surely I had acted in time.
No, Halimah had seen to it that the powder she gave me would not stop his heart, but his hands could do nothing. Not anymore.
"You. It was you."
"Darling, no."
"Mama, it was you."
Was it why then, she was the way she was, her passions straying off in their unnatural direction? But if she believed it was I who had committed such an abhorrent act, how could she bear to have more women touch her? How could she bear to touch them herself? In her anger?
Eve's hand. Eve's fingers caressing her skin. The thought of it sickened me. With my granddaughter helpless in the womb, able to hear everything. I had to shut my eyes, and breathe deeply so as not to faint.
"Why did you do it?" Her voice was hardly a sigh. My Shakilah. My darling girl. Was the other one also my age? Were all of them? How many had there been? There must have been more than one. It was America.
I couldn't stand it anymore. To have it come to this, after all the fear and suffering and loneliness and waiting, just waiting, for someone to find out. To have her lying down with women out of some kind of revenge directed at me, because she thought I was the one. Not even women her age, but women too old for men, ugly hags, and all the hungrier for it. Their fingers. Imagine their fingers, hard, skeletal, clawing at her. Imagine their mouths, their dry breath. Greedy. I had done this to my daughter. Somehow, it was my doing.
I got up. I went straight upstairs to the bathroom, my head and chest pounding, my stomach nauseous. I closed the door because I didn't want her to hear me. I didn't want her sympathy.
All I wanted now was my granddaughter. A chance to live out my years as a grandmother with a child who loved me. It was a simple wish. It was all I wanted. Was it so much to ask for?
HELENA S I M
O U KNOW THE story of Pontianak, right? She was stillborn, the daughter of the first Langsuir. Aiya, you don't know what a Langsuir is? Ya-lah, a vampire. Legend has it she was living as an ordinary lady at the time, Pontianak's mother, but with extraordinary beauty-lah, and maybe that was the reason for her misfortune. Because when she found out that her baby was stillborn, and then, worse, had become Pontianak, a vampire doomed to prey on women in labor, the shock of it was so great, she died. To this day, no one knows who performed black magic on her baby. But if you want my opinion, I can tell you some other lady must have been too jealous of the Langsuirs beauty. Maybe Pontianak's father was hanky-pankying around, who knows? Ah, so anyway, young
people nowadays, they call it superstition, but it's true, you know. Pontianak exists. This is not just some old wives' tale, okay? Any time a woman gives birth, the family better be careful. Especially if they know beforehand the birth is going to be difficult, that could be a sign-lah. Pontianak and her mother are always waiting, you know. Together, the two of them. Ya-lah, that was why the mother became a Langsuir again, so she could be with her daughter. According to legend, what she did was clap her hands. Imagine-lah, if you had been in the room with her, watching her clap her hands when her baby was dead. Her relatives must have known at once something odd was happening. That was how she became the first Langsuir-lah. After clapping her hands, suddenly she screeched like an owl and flew out the window into a tree.
"That's folklore only," Bernadette said to me, when I tried to explain. That coconut-head. Folklore doesn't mean it's not true, but she was always like that, ever since I've known her. Forever trying to be skeptical, just for the sake of being skeptical.
"Alamak, these are warning signs, Bernadette," I said, trying to keep my patience. What I meant was this. Something fishy was going on in the spirit world, and what with Valerie's daughter coming home pregnant like that. Life isn't that full of coincidences, okay? But who knew whether Valerie herself was putting two and two together. Probably not, so someone better warn her, hukan? No? Mothers are full of blind spots. But that Bernadette, she refused to see my logic.
"We don't know what's going on between those two," she said. "Fifteen years that girl refused to come home. Who knows why. Now you want to go and interfere. You gila?"
"Warning is not interfering, okay?" I said.
"Aiya, I tell you that story's just a legend-lah," she said. "I never believed it, okay?"
"Eh, you liar," I said. That Bernadette, she couldn't fool me, after all our years of knowing each other. I asked her, "So now you want me to think the ghost this morning was just my imagination?"