Shadow Theatre

by Fiona Cheong

  Definitely, she was holding the twig in her left hand. Until this day, I can't get rid of the image. That twig, bent slightly in the middle, moving here and there across the sand, and the lady's skirt draped over her knees. Ah, ya, she was wearing a full long skirt. Sky-blue, that's what the color is called now. That was the color of her skirt. And it was so long, it hid her feet.

  Only when the lady lifted her head and turned to stare directly at the four of us, then we betul-betul terkejut, really startled.

  All I can do is pray I never get that old. I pray Our Lord will show me mercy.

  AH. SO HERE'S the hardest part to believe, but it's all true. Suddenly, as the five of us were watching, that old lady swung around and scuttled off across the grass. Ya, ya, on all fours, and believe me, no normal old lady can move her body that fast, okay? What's more, she passed right through the fence and went off into the lalang. You know how there used to be lalang growing wild behind the garden.

  All of this happened. Not one word I've said is a lie.

  Another strange thing was that Susanna told us later she wasn't the one who screamed. Not only that, she said she didn't hear any scream.

  You see why I say there's only one explanation. But of course, not even Bernadette would admit it. She was the one to bring up my Rose after we were back in the dining room.

  "Does Rose know anything about Shakilah's husband, yet?" she asked me, with her face still quite pale, but you see how she was pretending it was just a normal afternoon. Dorothy and Siew Chin also were sewing quietly. None of us were mentioning the old lady, and Susanna had already gone over to the church for her choir practice, since it was almost three o'clock. (I doubt-lah if that girl herself told anyone, except maybe Jo.)

  You see how takut we were. Scared out of our wits-lah. We thought, in case the lady was you-know-who. Ya, it could have been the same lady as the bus drivers used to see, but that lady also could have been Pontianak, okay? Who's supposed to be beautiful beyond the imagination, true, but only when she appears to young men. Other times, you've heard the stories, right?

  So I played along with Bernadette, knowing at the same time I had to be careful. "You know those two," I said. "Rose is not going to tell anyone Shakilah's business, okay? Their kind of friendship has deep roots, you know."

  What went on between me and my daughter was my own business, ya? Of course I had tried to pry loose the actual story about what was what, umpteen times already. But that daughter of mine, like pulling teeth. And no-lah, I couldn't read her mind. People like to talk about mother's intuition, but it's nonsense, okay? You see my Rose. See how deep still waters can run.

  Anyway, Dorothy joined in with her "I don't think there's a husband involved," which she had been saying ever since Shakilah came home, so it was nothing new.

  "I don't think so, either," Bernadette said, which also was nothing new.

  Only Siew Chin and I had been trying to give Shakilah the benefit of the doubt, although to be honest, in my heart, I actually agreed with Dorothy and Bernadette, and that could be the case with Siew Chin also. But someone had to come to the girl's rescue, ya? Only this afternoon, apparently, neither of us wanted to talk about Valerie and her daughter.

  Siew Chin at that moment was stitching up a purple velvet sheath for the puppet that would be carrying a dagger. Without looking up, she changed the topic by asking, "Did Father Pereira tell anyone what the wayang is going to be about?"

  Ya, ya, we already knew the teenagers were writing their own script. No wonder-lah, since none of them had ever turned a page of the Ramayana. That's young people for you. Probably, they didn't even know much about wayang kulit, which in olden times was a harvest celebration, okay? That's why the play used to begin at dusk and run until dawn-which was something else about it that would have made Father O'Hara object, and that, you can believe the teenagers knew. (In olden times, the play would begin on the last day of the padi harvest-lah, so after all that hard work, people could sit back and relax. Imagine how skillful the dalang had to be, ya? First of all, he had to hold everyone's attention the whole night. And then not only that, but since the audience would be sitting on both sides of the screen, he had to make sure the puppets' movements were absolutely precise. Ya-lah, the women would be sitting behind the stage and all they could see were the shadows on the screen. Obviously, men and women weren't allowed to sit together the whole night. But that was then-lah.)

  Dorothy took the bait and said, Some kind of love story, must be. That's all they're interested in, at their age."

  "I wonder why they want a kris," Siew Chin said, and to be honest, she sounded as if really, she was wondering. She was even looking at the dagger that Bernadette had made for the puppet out of gold foil. It was lying in the center of the table, among the various arms and legs, and you see Bernadette's hidden talent. The dagger was so tiny, and yet so perfectly shaped.

  "You think a love story can't have a kris in it?" I said, mostly to keep us from returning to the other topic-lah.

  "Every love story must have an element of danger," Dorothy said, and of course I was surprised to hear her agreeing with me, for a change.

  Bernadette looked at me with a certain expression in her eyes, as if expecting me to say something. Don't know what-lah, but when I said nothing, she also kept quiet. To this day, I don't know what she was thinking at that moment.

  Then we heard Father Pereira's car outside, so definitely, our chance to talk about the old lady while the event was still fresh was over.

  So that was that-lah.

  BY I Ii F WAY. you know what else about the Pauh Janggi? Malay folklore teaches us, on the island on which it grows, lives a giant crab that sleeps in a cove. Twice a day, the crab swims out into the sea and that's when the waters of the sea rush into the cove. And that's what makes the tides-lah, not only gravity. That's what has been giving us high tide and low tide, since the beginning of the world.

  Think about it, okay?

  NO ONF KNOWS-lah who actually made the call. But here's the truth. When the police came, they came with handcuffs. Ya, ya, people remember, whether or not they admit it. The way those handcuffs shone, when Willy Coleman was marched out to the police car. And that Ying Ying, she was nowhere to be seen. This was on the following Friday, exactly five weeks from the night Auntie Coco's sister went missing. (Sister Sylvia was down with the flu, so that's why I happened to be around to see all this.) No-lah, no ambulance arrived, so it couldn't have been that bad-lah. Only thing, Ying Ying didn't step out of the house for several days after that. Too embarrassed to show her face. Sending her son out to run errands for her. Ya, ya, the boy was home when the police came. Could be, he was the one who called.

  You know only black magic can wield that sort of power, making some of us see or hear one thing, and others seeing or hearing something else. (And by the way, according to Rose, Adelaide's grandson was with her that first Friday night. You remember, Bernadette said she didn't see him outside the house, although I had heard from Winifred that he was there.)

  Now here's the thing. What if the Pauh Janggi is actually that apple tree that's written about in the Book of Genesis? What if that's where we are? And that's why all our gates have dragons. Must sound a bit gila, but now you understand why I started changing my ways. Don't forget the parable of the wise and foolish maidens. Don't forget the bridegroom's words. Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.

  Could be, the Apocalypse has already begun, ya? And Benjamin Nair's death was only part of it.

  R 0 S E S I M

  HEN YOU OPEN a window between our world and theirs, who knows which spirits might approach you. You can't choose who comes to the window. That's what they say. Had Auntie Coco opened the window herself, or was it someone else? Perhaps even us, long ago when we used to visit Che' Halimah, because Shak had talked me into it, you know. But we would do it just for fun. Or perhaps the window was open for good, ever since the Srivijaya and Majapahit women had first bargained
with the spirits.

  Auntie Coco herself had never seemed to me to be the sort to go dabbling in black magic. I was thinking this when Shak said, "Mahani seems to think it's the only possible explanation," as she was trying to arrange the six pillows on her bed before sitting down, so they would give her back as much support as possible.

  Almost four weeks had passed since that Friday night, and Shak's hack was aching more and more every day. We were going for walks only once a week now, because definitely the heat was wearing her down.

  I watched her struggling to get comfortable as she sat down. She tried pushing herself up against the pillows, and then turning her body slowly one way, then another way, then yet another way. I couldn't think of what to say to help, except offer to make her some hot ginger tea.

  So I asked her, "How about some ginger tea?" even though her mother would have made the tea already, if indeed it could make Shak feel better.

  She was home as usual, Shak's mother. I remember she was in the kitchen while we were upstairs, but I don't remember what she was doing. We had passed her on the stairs because she was going down as we were going up, and I had noticed she looked more tired than usual. So she and Shak must have had another quarrel, I thought, possibly about the baby's father, or about the baby's future. (She would give us privacy whenever I was there, Shak's mother. My mother, on the other hand, would have found all sorts of excuses to keep coming into the room if we had been at my house. Although as it turned out, she was at Holy Family that afternoon, making puppets for the wayang show being organized by the youth group to raise money for charity.)

  'Thanks, Rose, but I don't think ginger tea would help right now," said Shak. She sighed. She had stopped moving about and was half-sitting, half-lying down, with her body turned a bit on her side, one pillow tucked between her knees, the rest piled up behind her.

  "What can I do?" I asked her. 'Tell me what I can do."

  She smiled. Even with her figure lost for the time being, you could feel her charm, Shak. You could feel it when she smiled, that same charm that used to send the boys swooning around us, out on the dance floor. Swooning to the beat of the bossa nova, swaying against the samba, and no wonder. Imagine, with her fast hips and her eyes like Cadbury chocolate and her eyelashes, who could resist Shak? So I was sure the baby's father was already pining for her, whoever he was. Some numbskull fellow, who must have quarrelled with her when she had told him she was pregnant, who maybe had tried to talk her into getting rid of the baby, because he wasn't ready to become a father.

  "I'm glad you're here, Rose."

  I wanted to ask her why, why she was glad I was there. Instead, I just smiled as if I understood, which I've always regretted, but there you have it.

  Shak looked at me and smiled again. Then she returned to the conversation we had been having about Auntie Coco and her sister. "So what do you think?" she asked. "What's your guess about what might have happened?"

  "I don't know," I told her. "Quite frankly, I'm surprised Mahani brought up black magic."

  She nodded, knowing exactly what I meant. "1 was surprised, too. But time changes us, you know."

  But I didn't think Mahani had changed that much. (She was another librarian who used to attend St. Agnes, and since she and I worked together, I should know, right? Mahani was the one who used to tell our classmates, all those bomoh stories we were hearing were old wives' tales. An idle mind is the devil's workshop, okay? was what she would go around saying, although there was that incident that had happened when we were in Primary Two. One of our classmates, her name escapes me now, a girl from the same kampong as Mahani. Her father was dying of cancer when one day, the cancer disappeared and never came back. We thought it was a miracle at first, wrought by our prayers, perhaps. But shortly after the father was cured, the girl's mother was spotted in a shopping center, and people couldn't believe how much she had aged. They say that sort of thing can happen when you use black magic, if you have nothing else to pay with, if you're so poor, the only asset you can offer in exchange is your youth. No one knew if it was what the mother had resorted to, but certainly the possibility was there.)

  I must admit, I was slightly taken aback to hear that Mahani had come over to visit Shak on her own, since I saw her almost every day at the library, and she had never mentioned it to me. But then, Mahani and I weren't friends, exactly. She wasn't friends with Chandra, either, which I was glad about, now that I knew. Not that I disliked Mahani in any way, you know. It wasn't because of that, that we weren't friends.

  But I've always liked my privacy, and privacy's not easy to come by in Singapore. It never was.

  "How did Mahani hear about Auntie Coco's sister?" I asked. (Of course what I wanted to know was what else the two of them had talked about, but I thought, sooner or later, Shak would tell me on her own. And it was better that way.)

  "Oh, you know." Shak was looking at me a bit wistfully, so I wondered if she was thinking about the doctor's son again. We hadn't talked about it since that Friday, although there were moments I could feel her wanting to throw things into the open. Other times, it seemed as if she was becoming more like me, leaving the past alone. We hadn't even talked about the morning Laura Timmerman had looked out of the bathroom window while she was uncapping the tube of toothpaste, and there was the doctor's son, tied to one of the rambutan trees. Naked again. Or about what the doctor's servant had seen, the one who was sent out to untie the boy.

  An old lady squatting overhead in the treetop, whom the boy himself claimed he couldn't see. No one had ever known what to make of it.

  "I think it's too early to tell," I said. "For all we know, even as we speak, someone may have found the sister and is taking her to the police station right now."

  "You don't really believe that, Rose."

  "I know. But you remember how people here will gossip without knowing anything. You remember?"

  "Yes, I do remember."

  Already, everyone could feel the sister was gone for good. As if somehow, she was already just one more shadow when the sun rose, just one more leaf dropping off the trees. (Auntie Coco must have known it also. She especially. She seldom came out of her house now, and those of the neighbors who had tried to visit her were saying she wouldn't even come out to the gate or answer the telephone.)

  On the wall above Shak's bed, the pattern of the window railing disappeared briefly, then appeared again. The same pattern as would show up on my bedroom wall, because all of our houses had the same railing, to prevent children from tumbling out and cracking their heads open.

  It must have been around half-past two, although something felt later. We had gone upstairs after lunch, I remember. I could smell the lime blossoms drifting up to us from Shak's back garden. So familiar, the way her room smelled, as if here, nothing could ever be ruined, or changed. Because see how Shak was snuggling against the headboard with her pillows, facing me where I was, at the foot of the bed just like years ago. We would sit like that, our voices weaving together as we talked, our hearts locking in the embrace of children's hearts. That was Shak and me. The way we used to be, before anything had happened.

  Perhaps it was why at the time, I didn't pay attention to the missing photographs. Because at that moment, who cared why of all things to remove from her room, her mother had chosen to remove the photographs of Shak's father? There used to be two, you know, up there on her bureau beside the bed. Those were the only things missing from the room. The other photographs were still there, I remember, those of Shak alone, or Shak with her mother, or Shak with her aunties on her mother's side, and there was one with Shak's grandmother, which had been taken outside the grandmother's house, back when everyone was still in touch.

  See how life is when your best friend comes home, never mind whether or not she will stay for good, and never mind her swollen feet and the watermelon.

  Even with Auntie Coco's misfortune lingering in the air, I felt oddly happy.

  "Hey, Rose?"

  When I
looked away from the railing pattern on the wall, Shak was eying me as if she knew exactly how I was feeling. But all she asked was, "Do people still talk about the diamond woman?"

  "Sometimes," I said, "hut not much."

  Because it was true. Although the story still came up now and then, most of us had gone around it several times already. And I wasn't fond of that story myself, you know. I remember, when Shak and I had first heard about it, for days, I wasn't able to look at my own father directly. I'll admit, I was glad when people's attention wandered elsewhere.

  "So people still don't know who she was," Shak murmured.

  "No," I said. "No one knows."

  She sighed, and I watched her tired face. Of course I wanted to tell her how much I had missed her. But why talk about what we cannot change?

  "Have you talked to Isabella about it?" Shak asked, returning again to Auntie Coco and her sister.

  "No," I said, and then I thought I might as well tell her I hadn't seen Isabella since that Friday at the library. (She had asked me then, Isabella, whether I knew she would be leaving for America soon, and of course I had heard about it. She was going over for further studies in psychology at the University of Chicago, something like that. She had invited me to her farewell luncheon at the convent, and I had said yes, even though I knew I wouldn't be able to bring myself to do it. I was surprised Shak hadn't asked me about it, but for some reason, we hadn't talked about Isabella until now. Although I knew Isabella had come to visit her, as she had said she would.)

  "You didn't see her before she left?" Shak asked, after I had told her. She sounded genuinely surprised, which surprised me, because I thought after talking with Isabella, she would know how Isabella and I didn't see much of each other.

  "We're not that close, you know," I said. "You guys were friends, but she and I, you know how it is, as time passes, and we all end up with our own lives."

  She and Shak, you know, in those two years while they were on the team. Always laughing over something. Sitting on the wet tiles at the edge of the pool with their feet kicking up water, bending their heads together so they could whisper about the coach, or about the other girls, or about boys. Back then, it may have made me a bit jealous, I don't remember if it did or not. But I always knew, it was only because I wasn't on the team that Shak and Isabella became buddy buddy in that way.