Shadow Theatre

by Fiona Cheong

On the nights that Malika didn't dream herself awake and the man climbed onto her bed, she would feel his knees and elbows clambering over her as if he were a child or an animal, unequipped with the smooth and satiny touch one expected of a lover. The first few times he had used his finger and as Malika was sixteen and easily moistened by hormonal stirrings, it hadn't hurt very much when she had felt her vagina pried open (after some fumbling with her labia). There had been a slight sting when the man's fingernail had scraped her hymen (Malika was sure she had heard a pop when the membrane broke), and then it was over. Intercourse would be painful at first, but after a while Malika found herself growing accustomed to it and then her skin no longer smarted and her pelvis no longer ached.

  This was what I knew about Malika's nightmares that Sali didn't know, and it was all I knew of their sexual nature.

  What Sali knew and what worried Malika more as the nightmares continued (sporadically, with no apparent pattern, the man sometimes showing up once or twice a month and then staying away for six to eight months) were the occasions on which the appearance of the man in the songkok was followed by a dream in which one of Madam's daughters would end up bleeding from a head wound, usually Michelle or Caroline but most often Michelle (perhaps because Michelle had seemed so vulnerable as a child, shy and soft-spoken and always eager to please, unlike Caroline, who from what I've heard was not only wild, but tough from the time she was a toddler, and Francesca, who hadn't been wild but had been clear-eyed and determined, with a will like iron). Michelle was the baby Malika had come upon in the worst of those dreams, playing underneath the coffee table while Madam and her husband were chatting with guests during a cocktail party-Malika could hear in the dream the baby laughing, talking delightedly to herself, to to to to ta. But when Malika had knelt down and peered under the table, Michelle's face was drenched in blood, and there was a gash on the back of her head where some blood had dried and Malika could see tangled hair and bits of brain.

  She had never known what to make of this dream, the last and the worst. But as it had indeed been the last and Michelle was no longer a baby by then (Malika had dreamt this dream on the eve of Michelle's wedding), it and the other dreams were now in that cottony realm of matters not quite forgotten, but no longer urgent.

  Perhaps it was after the wedding, too, that the man in the songkok had ceased appearing. Malika was wondering about this on the Friday night of our story as she screwed the new bulb into its socket in the patio lamp. She couldn't say for sure when she had last seen the man, only that her sleep had been undisturbed for many years and when she thought about the nightmares, they were flimsy as a flicker on the horizon, an empty boat bobbing faraway in the past. Could the man have had anything to do with the girl in the sugar cane? Malika didn't think so as he had never come to her when she was fully awake or in the broad light of day, only at night in her room or hovering outside by the washing machine and the dryer (in the darkness she could never be sure if he was Malay, although it seemed only the ghost of a Malay man would be wearing a songkok). She switched on the patio lamp to test the new bulb, then switched it off and turned to leave with the old bulb in her hand (still forgetting her book, which lay on the floor by the cane chair, and which in the morning Malika would convince herself Madam must have seen on her way in from the car porch, even though Madam herself would say nothing about having picked up the book and leaving it on the kitchen table).

  A light came on over the British neighbor's wall and Malika saw the white pool outside his gate. She listened but no footsteps sounded on the slate path or on the road, and after a minute or so the light went off, as if the gentleman or a visitor of his in the house had had a change of mind. (Perhaps whoever it was had heard someone in the gentleman's garden, or glimpsed a silhouette passing by a window, and thought there was an intruder outside the house, but as the occasion would never arise for the sort of casually reminiscent and vaguely intimate conversation in which Malika could ask the British gentleman about this night, we would never know for sure if that had been the case.)

  The next-door family's windows were dark. Whichever of the children had been peering over the windowsill earlier was gone. Malika could make out the grayish frame of the house above the hibiscus bushes and papaya trees, the slope of the roof against a starless sky and a resounding absence of motion within the walls, as if the house had been abandoned, as if suddenly the family had packed up and left or perhaps had never arrived. She gazed into the stillness of the surrounding foliage, the jagged outlines and untamed crests of treetops looming out of the gardens of Madam's other neighbors, and before she turned away and told herself that old age was starting to creep up on her, a hand brushed past Malika's upper arm. Her heart skipped a beat as someone breathed into her ear.

  It wasn't the quick hot breath of a child but the slower, wearier breath of someone much older, and Malika would remember hearing a small gasp as she pulled the sliding door shut (but perhaps it was herself she was hearing, she would wonder aloud as she paused in the middle of her story) and snapped the tiny steel lock into place. She switched on the overhead patio light. A harsh white glare fell over the mosaic tiles and the furniture outside (the coffee table would have to be taken to a carpenter for reweaving soon, Malika noted as she caught sight of a curled strip hanging loosely off the bottom of one of the legs).

  Through the glass of the sliding doors came the rumble of a bus on the main road. Malika sighed with relief at the ordinariness of the sound, but she would confess later that as she stepped away from the doors to start closing Madam's windows around the house, something or someone moved from the car porch onto the grass, and for a moment she felt as if a crowd were gathering in Madam's garden, and the night was webbed with souls.

  Sali's point made sense, however (that if Madam's house were haunted, or sat on a haunted plot of land, this fact would have been revealed long ago) and Malika repeated it to herself as she locked the iron clasp on the window above the rosewood stand.

  She did look through the glass towards the sugar cane, but the girl wasn't there. Malika was sure of this, and it would remain in the years to come a detail of which she would always be sure.

  R 0 S E S I M

  HAK HAD HER hand on the iron bar of the doctor's gate. I could see the emerald bracelet around her wrist, the green stones so clear and deep, so clean, so simple. We used to share our jewelry, you know, although mostly it was Shak's jewelry, whatever her mother would dare to let us wear. Some would be her grandmother's bracelets, beautiful Peranakan antique pieces with rubies and jade set in twenty-two carat gold, I remember. Shak, she had manipulated her mother into letting her wear them by saying, "If you hadn't quarrelled with my grandmother, she wouldn't have kicked us out of the family." That was how she used to be when she wanted something, even though she knew it was because of her father that her grandmother had kicked her mother out. (Because Shak's mother had gone against Shak's grandmother's will and gotten married even after Shak's grandmother had said no. Because the grandmother was prejudiced against anyone who wasn't Chinese, especially when it came to marriage. Or so I've heard.) So Shak used to wear her grandmother's bracelets, and although I had never seen this emerald one, I assumed that was where it had come from.

  "He saw us," she was saying, and when I didn't respond right away, she looked at me as if to check whether I was listening, as if I would ever not listen to her. I was the one who had remained faithful and loyal to her, no matter what. "Do you remember that night? Rose?"

  Her accent was almost like that Jason fellow's, the sounds in her words flopping about, and every r chasing the air. (Not that I minded, of course. Because Shak wasn't doing it on purpose, trying to sound angmo.) I could hear her voice drifting off into the doctor's garden, familiar almost as if we were young girls again, even with her sounding American. She was still Shak to me, you know, and deep down inside, I was sure I was still Rose to her. Even if she was carrying in her watermelon womb a child everyone suspected was mixed. Even if
everyone couldn't help wondering how she could manage to make love to an angmo. I especially. Maybe because I didn't want to imagine it, her fingers stroking that canary hair. That animal hair, with the pale skin underneath.

  "Rose?"

  A breeze was blowing about in the garden, the grass and weeds swaying at the tips, overgrown and deep. I tried to feel whether there was someone watching us, but there was only the breeze, and shadows appearing and disappearing like a dance as some afternoon clouds moved into the pathway of the sun.

  Shak was almost holding her breath, I could feel it. Not desperately, but as if the world might stop spinning on its axis if she were to hear me say I didn't know what night she was referring to, which wouldn't have been the truth, but let bygones be bygones, as I've said. Why dig up what's best left buried? Although I had known from the moment she had said she wanted to see the doctor's house, what she was really talking about, I must have thought that seeing the house would be enough. Because it would confirm for her everything had existed, we had existed, on that long ago night when the doctor was dragging his son out to the gate, and we had happened to be stepping off the bus.

  Whether that was what had kept her away, or brought her back, I didn't want to ask. I was afraid to ask, although I wouldn't have been able to tell you what, exactly, frightened me about it.

  Just seeing the house felt enough to me. Standing there with Shak, actually looking through the gate at the dingy white walls, the red door with the brass knocker imported from overseas, the dirty windows.

  For nine years already, the house had been empty, although the doctor and his wife still owned it (because they hadn't managed to sell it, for some reason). Even the brass plate with the doctor's name that used to hang on the gate was gone, and with the garden so untidy and the cement driveway littered with leaves, the property looked quite forlorn. Nothing like the way it used to look, when the doctor's servants used to take care of everything, and yet, I would avert my eyes whenever I passed it.

  Life goes on, you know, and out of the blue, here we were.

  "Yes, I remember." I spoke quickly before I could change my mind, and I was glad about it, because there was such relief in Shak's eyes, and the way she smiled at me, as if to say thank you.

  But I didn't understand enough, you know. And the next time, I wouldn't be as brave, because I didn't understand enough.

  WHAT I REMEMBER about that night. The amber porch light in the driveway, and the beautiful mandarin orange plant, still healthy, growing in the earthen pot beside the front door. (The son would pluck all the mini oranges off one morning in the future, you know. For no apparent reason, was what the amah had said when people asked. Because that was the kind of child he was, so naughty, you couldn't imagine. Not at all like his sister. His younger sister, even if only by a year. She had been a perfect child. I)id the amah really believe it, or was she trying to be faithful to the doctor and his wife? For job security? Who could blame her, either way?) The front door wide open, the doctor's wife standing and watching with her arms folded across her chest. Bougainvillea petals tipping over the edges of earthen pots along the fence.

  And on the other side of the fence, Laura Timmerman's house. Our classmate Laura Timmerman, who was married and living in Australia by now. But her father was still living in the house, and sometimes I would see him at the market, although his servant usually did the shopping.

  And there was a niece staying with him, who went to St. Agnes. Sometimes I would see her also, she and her friends, two of whom were from our road.

  W E W E R I: A I the doctor's gate five minutes at the most. I was keeping an eye out for anything peculiar, but all I saw were the grass and weeds moving with the breeze, and blossoms falling off the flamboyant trees to our right, healthy and fiery in the sun.

  Shak was gazing towards the house, studying it as if to memorize its faded look, so as to replace the house we used to know with this one. I could feel her taking in the dried streaks of rain and dust on the walls, the locked front door and windows, the empty earthen pot with a crack in it, the other pots by the fence no longer there. I hadn't told her about the Jason fellow, or that Isabella had been at the library earlier that afternoon, partly because I was doing what Isabella was going to do, which was to leave it up to Shak to bring up the ghost, if there was a ghost involved.

  And partly, even though only a few hours had passed, already my encounter with Isabella felt ancient, as if it had taken place ages ago, in a different world. (Because that was how the library was for me, you know, a very different world from our neighborhood. Modern and public, would be one way to put it. And whatever happened there felt like that, as if it really had nothing to do with what went on on our road, which wasn't true, of course.)

  Shak wasn't looking at the garden, until we started smelling the rambutans that were rotting behind the house. Laura Timmerman used to tell us about the rambutan trees, not visible from the gate. The doctor's servants used to gather the fruits in brown paper bags and give at least two bags to Laura's family, the sweetest rambutans you ever tasted.

  But all she said was, "I'm surprised the government's leaving the property like that." That was what she said, Shak.

  And I was relieved, although perhaps also slightly disappointed. Hard to tell, now.

  "Do you like it, Rose? All the changes? Only beauty allowed."

  The government doesn't own it, yet," I said, about the doctor's property, because Shak seemed to be accusing someone of something, I could hear it in her tone. Just a touch of bitterness. But was it directed at me or at the government, and what was there to accuse us of? How else was Singapore to survive without changing, staying ahead of the times? Had Shak forgotten this wasn't America? That our soil wasn't suitable for farming, even if we could afford the space? That we even had to buy our water from Malaysia?

  Fifteen years couldn't have erased that much, surely. She was from here. She should know, I thought, as I watched a flamboyant blossom spiral out of the shade of the tree's branches, then waver in the sunlight before dropping into the weeds.

  "I'm glad," Shak said, and when I looked at her, she was smiling. "I'm glad it hasn't been sold to them. At least, they haven't touched this part."

  Her old, usual, honest smile.

  "They will," I heard myself saying, suddenly. "You can bet on it. Would you believe, the government's giving free money to people who want to renovate their homes? All you have to do is promise to follow their guidelines for the renovation, to make sure your house fits in with the landscape."

  "Make sure your house fits in with the landscape," Shak repeated, the breeze in the garden taking away her words like scraps of paper in the air.

  "You're lucky you came home in time."

  "I'm lucky." Shak smiled again, but differently now.

  Perhaps because she didn't have to live here and make the best of whatever circumstances, because she wasn't the one left behind. And because she hadn't chosen to come back, and not even to write and explain to me why. (One short visit after fifteen years didn't count, not in that way, even by letting bygones be bygones.) Because hurt feelings can last a long time, and we were supposed to be closer than anyone else, and deep down inside, we were.

  Perhaps because of all of that, I was saying things that jabbed and pinched her like the fingers of a spoiled brat.

  I turned away and listened to the breeze settling into the weeds, embarrassed at myself.

  We left soon after that, and as we were walking off, Matthew Coleman was across the road, slipping into the cemetery through the open gate. Probably taking the short cut to his house, I thought. (Because there was a raggedy path that wound around the trees and gravesites, more or less cutting diagonally across the cemetery.) I remember Shak asking, "Who's that?" She didn't know Matthew of course, although she was watching him as if she did, her eyes following the white patch of Matthew's Tshirt as he disappeared into the shrubbery, which took less than a minute, because of how overgrown everything was. />
  When I told her Matthew was Adelaide Coleman's younger grandson, Shak said quietly, "Doesn't he remind you of the doc tor's son?" but I didn't think she could be referring to the way Matthew was always getting into trouble, since she didn't even know who he was.

  So all I said was, "Boys at that age, that's how they are."

  Shak didn't say anything. She was touching her womb with just the tip of her right index finger, as if afraid to let even the shadow of her hand pass over the baby's face while it slept. "You're right, Rose," she whispered, and somehow I knew she meant, what I had said about her coming home in time.

  About her being lucky.

  Maybe that was why she wouldn't bring up everything later, even if she wanted to.

  AUNTIE COCO WAS sweeping outside her gate when we turned onto our road. Hers was the house next door to Evelina Thumboo's, so I remember what time it must have been, because Evelina Thumboo was standing underneath her jacaranda tree, watering her dead husband's ashes. She always did that, you know, at six o'clock, once a week, always on a Friday. From the time Shak and I were children, people were saying it was because her husband had been killed by a tourist driving drunk in the middle of their honeymoon. Evelina Thumboo was in so much grief, no wonder, her mind was halfgone. She had buried her husband's ashes underneath the jacaranda, and every Friday she would water them, hoping to bring him back to life. This had been going on since Shak and I were seven years old, so it was part of our childhood. Like a ritual, you know, Evelina Thumboo watering the roots of the jacaranda, we seeing her.

  So it must have been around six o'clock. Evelina Thumboo smiled at us through the fence when she saw us, and I remember Shak's breath, warming my ear as she leaned towards me and whispered, "She's still doing that, huh?" as if everything was back to normal between us. As if I hadn't accused her of betrayal in some way, just a few minutes ago, outside the doctor's gate.