by Zen Cho
IT WAS THE fourth day of New Year by the time Jess was able to speak with Sharanya, and she was so tired she overslept. Sharanya had been waiting for forty-five minutes by the time Jess woke and remembered they were supposed to be having a video call.
It hadn’t even been two full weeks since their last call, and it already felt weird seeing Sharanya. She was a relic of Jess’s previous life, when Jess had been a normal person with a girlfriend and plans for her future that went beyond “extricate self from terrifying goddess’s grasp.”
Except Sharanya wasn’t a relic. She was a real live person—and she was annoyed.
“I was wondering if you were actually going to show up,” she said.
Jess was hunkered down in bed, the sheet pulled over her head as usual to reduce the risk of being overheard. The harsh light from her phone screen picked out every unflattering detail—her egregious bedhead, the dark circles under her eyes, her millions of pores. She wished she’d taken a moment to wash her face and brush her hair before getting on the call. “Yeah, sorry, babe. This week has been an utter shitshow. I can’t even tell you.”
Sharanya softened. “Holidays, huh? Has your mom been totally unbearable?”
Most of the time Jess and Sharanya had an understanding about Jess’s mom and it was OK for Sharanya to dunk on her. But right now, it wasn’t.
“She’s having a rough time,” said Jess. “Your mom wouldn’t love it if she was having to live off her sister-in-law’s charity. My aunt’s younger too. It’s a whole thing.”
“Yeah, I can see that’s hard,” said Sharanya, sounding unconvinced. “But isn’t it your mom who’s been shooting down all the options you’ve found for places to rent?”
“It’s not like there’ve been that many options,” said Jess. “We haven’t had time to look.”
“You guys have been in Malaysia for a month now.”
Jess couldn’t really say, “Yes, but I’ve been busy being haunted first by my grandmother and now by something even worse. You thought being manipulated into working for my uncle was bad? Try being forced to become the vessel of a murderous god!”
She said instead, “We’ve been busy. Dad’s taken up with his job, and I guess we’re still finding our feet . . .”
“But your mom’s not working, right?” said Sharanya. “Can’t she take the lead on finding you guys a place? It sounds like she’s the one being picky.”
The thought that Mom might search for a property for them, given she had the fewest commitments, had occurred to Jess before. But now that it was Sharanya saying it, she felt the need to defend Mom. “She doesn’t do that stuff. I think she lacks confidence. Dad always handled that kind of thing for her, and now me.”
“How’s she going to get confident if she keeps relying on you guys to do everything for her?”
Jess should have reminded herself that she’d kept Sharanya waiting; that she’d barely responded to her messages over the past couple of weeks; that she wouldn’t hold hands with her in public when they were at college, for fear of getting caught by her Asian friends, who might tell their parents. But she was feeling too raw and exhausted to filter herself. She kept thinking of Mom’s face, twisted in grief because she couldn’t protect her husband from the small poisonous cuts attending failure.
“I know my mom has her issues,” said Jess. “But if it doesn’t bother me, why do you care?”
“It does bother you. We talk constantly about how much it bothers you,” said Sharanya. “Why are you suddenly pretending it doesn’t?”
“You know,” said Jess, “if you’re in a bad mood or whatever, we don’t have to talk.”
“I don’t want to talk?” said Sharanya. “You’re the one who kept me waiting for forty-five minutes!”
“Oh, sorry for oversleeping when it’s five a.m. here—”
“You’re the one who wants to speak at five a.m.,” said Sharanya. “I could do another time. I’m right here. I answer all your messages. I don’t keep you hanging. All you have to do is tell me what time works for you.”
Jess ignored the gibe about answering messages. She said in a low voice, “You know why we have to talk at this time. There’s always people around in this house. It’s like my aunt has a pathological fear of solitude. I can only speak now because my cousin’s staying over with a friend.”
“You know, it’s not like you have to only talk to me when other people aren’t around,” said Sharanya. “There are other options.”
Jess could not believe this. Sharanya was always the first to say nobody should feel pressured to come out if they weren’t ready, to remind their white friends that even in the twenty-first century there were people for whom being out came with a risk to their job, their family and social connections, even their lives.
“Oh yeah?” said Jess. “Like what? Tell me.”
She glared at Sharanya, daring her to say it.
For the first time in the course of their relationship, Sharanya didn’t back down. She glared back.
“You want to do this? Let’s do this,” she said. “You tell me, Jess. How long are you planning to hide for? Are we going to be roommates in Singapore ten years from now?”
“You know what it’s like with my parents,” said Jess. “They couldn’t even begin to deal. I can’t do that to them, after all the shit they’ve been through.”
“I’m not asking you to tell them now. I’m asking you, when are you going to be ready? You can’t hide behind your parents forever.”
“I’m not hiding behind my parents,” said Jess. It was weirdly hard to get the words out.
Sharanya exhaled. Jess could almost hear her reminding herself to be patient.
This made Jess feel worse than ever. She and Sharanya had never had to be forbearing with each other before. It had always been—maybe not easy, but simple. The most straightforward thing in her life.
“I know it’s not easy,” said Sharanya. Jess could tell it was taking effort on her part to be gentle. “When I came out to my parents, my dad didn’t talk to me for months. But he got over it. You’ve got to give your parents a chance. Maybe they’ll surprise you. They can’t accept what they don’t know.”
“I know how they’d react,” said Jess. “I just—you’ve got to trust that I know my parents. Your family’s different. You’ve got siblings, there are three of you. My parents couldn’t take it. And I’m all they’ve got.”
“I know you want to be a good daughter. I get it, it’s important to you to be filial, but—”
“Filial?” Jess stifled a wild laugh. “I’m not fucking filial. It’s like I’m under an evil spell. They made me, so now I’m in debt and I can never pay it off, no matter what I do. But I don’t get to stop trying. I get to carry this debt for the rest of my life, because I love them, and if I make them unhappy, I’ll know I really am completely useless!”
Sharanya had frozen on the screen, but Jess heard her take a deep breath and expel it in a sigh. She waited for Sharanya to say something soothing and unhelpful, like she always did. Like “Who told you you had to be useful?” or “You know you’re not required to make your parents happy, right?”
Instead she said, “You know this is a prison of your own making.”
There was a hardness Jess had never heard in her voice before.
“It really isn’t,” said Jess.
“It is,” said Sharanya. “And if you can’t even recognize that, how are things ever going to change? It’s not like your family’s going to magically become not homophobic if you just leave the issue for long enough. I’m willing to wait to be a part of your life. But not forever.”
“What are you talking about?” said Jess, baffled. “You are a part of my life.”
“I was a part of your life,” Sharanya corrected her. “Living thousands of miles apart, talking not even once a week . . . I spend more ti
me with my Pilates instructor than with you. This isn’t a relationship.”
It looked like her eyes might be filling with tears, but it was hard to tell for sure on the phone screen. Guilt squirmed in Jess’s stomach.
“I’m sorry I’ve been unresponsive,” she said. “I’ve just been busy.”
“With what?” said Sharanya. “Your uncle doesn’t even pay you. You can’t take five minutes to answer my messages? I mean, are you even applying for jobs in Singapore? What about that job we were talking about, the one I sent you?”
Jess hadn’t done a single job application since Ah Ma had first taken her to the garden temple. The guilt died, drowned out by a rising sense of injustice.
“Look, I have a ton of shit on my plate, and it’s not a priority right now,” she said. “If you had any idea what I’m going through—”
“I would, if you told me,” said Sharanya. “Like I said, I’m right here. But I can’t keep coming bottom of the list, Jess.”
“You’re not. That’s not what I meant!”
“That’s how I feel,” said Sharanya. “That’s how you’re treating me. And I don’t know if I can keep doing this.”
Jess stared at her, dazed at the speed with which the conversation had spun out of control.
“Are you—” Her voice wobbled, breaking embarrassingly, like a teenage boy’s. “Are you breaking up with me?”
“No.” But then Sharanya’s face crumpled and she said, “I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Sharanya—”
There was a knock on the door. Jess’s head whipped around despite herself.
The next moment she’d turned back to the screen, but it was too late. Sharanya was looking at her like Jess had only done what she had expected. She didn’t even look annoyed, or disappointed. She looked resigned.
“You’ve got to go,” she said. “Bye, Jess.”
“Wait, Sharanya—!”
But she’d ended the call. Jess gaped at her phone, stunned.
“Min?” said Kor Kor’s voice on the other side of the bedroom door. “What are you doing? You’re talking to somebody, is it?”
“No,” said Jess.
She got out of bed on autopilot, glancing mechanically at herself in the mirror. She was surprised by how OK she looked. She was pale and mussy-haired, but her face bore no signs of recent disaster.
“Sorry, did I wake you up?” said Jess. “I was watching a show.”
She smiled at Kor Kor, though it made her face feel like Play-Doh, pummeled into the required shape. Nothing to see here. Everything’s fine.
SEVENTEEN
Jess didn’t feel like going to see Sherng the next day, especially when she woke up and saw that Sharanya hadn’t replied to the messages she’d sent after their call. Earnest, groveling messages, running to several paragraphs each, baring her heart as she rarely did even to Sharanya.
The only thing Jess hadn’t told her was everything that was going on. Jess had gone too far down this path of not talking about her dead grandmother and her run-ins with gangsters and her entanglement with a creepy god to turn back. She couldn’t dump it all on Sharanya now. Sharanya had taken enough shit from her as it was.
Though it was starting to look like she’d officially had enough.
Jess was tempted to roll over and pull the covers over her head, try to sleep the day away the way she had sometimes when Dad was sick and the world felt like too much to deal with.
She only managed to drag herself out of bed by reminding herself there would be worse consequences for a no-show than merely offending Sherng. His dad had hit men in his employ. She needed to make sure Sherng understood she wasn’t a murderer, contrary to appearances.
She should also find out whether he’d talked to his father about the accident at the construction site. The photos she’d taken that day were still sitting on her computer; as far as she knew, the construction workers hadn’t deployed them yet either. She hadn’t heard anything of what they were planning since Kassim had messaged her to ask if she’d sent the photos anywhere.
No wonder Sharanya had accused her of not showing up for their relationship. Jess hadn’t been showing up for anyone recently. The least she could do was go and talk to Sherng.
She knew Mom would raise a ruckus about her going out, so she’d scheduled the meetup for noon, when everyone was going to be out of the house. Ching Yee was seeing old school friends, and the aunties and uncles were having lunch with Kor Kor’s small group. The average age of the group was around sixty—Mom and Dad would be the youngest people there—so Jess wasn’t expected to come along.
The house was quiet when she emerged from her room at eleven a.m., both cars gone from the driveway. Jess was ordering a Grab and congratulating herself on how well she’d managed things when Mom said behind her:
“Min, I’ve been thinking.”
“Argh!” said Jess. “I thought you went out for lunch!”
“No mood to go,” said Mom. She didn’t look like she’d gotten any more sleep than Jess had. Her lips were pale and there were shadows under her eyes. “I told Dad to go without me. I was thinking, we should ask Ah Ku to help you.”
“Uh, yeah?” Jess glanced out of the window. No sign of her taxi.
“He’s a medium, like my mother,” said Mom. “But for a different god, Kuan Kong. Last time Kuan Kong was a general, so he knows how to behave, not like Tai Seng Ia. Maybe he’ll know how to handle Ah Ma’s god.”
It seemed unlikely Kuan Kong would be inclined to assist an altar destroyer. If Ah Ku had believed otherwise, he wouldn’t have given Jess that RM100. “But you said you didn’t think mediums would be helpful.”
“Unless you try, you won’t know what,” argued Mom. “We should explore all the options.”
A car drew up outside the gate.
“That’s my ride,” said Jess. “I’ve got to go, Mom.”
Mom said, predictably, “You ordered taxi? Now also you want to go out? This is not the time to hangkai, you know!”
“Why not?” said Jess. “It’s not like it makes a difference where I am. I’m being haunted by a god, not stalked by the Mafia.”
Of course, if a gang did have a hit out on her, she was going out to meet the likeliest reason why. But Jess shook the thought off. Sherng wasn’t going to arrange for her to be assassinated at a novelty tofu restaurant, surrounded by hipsters with smartphones. The footage would be on Facebook before she hit the ground.
“She could come find me here as easily as anywhere else,” she said.
“Choy,” said Mom automatically. “No need to talk like that. At least if you’re in the house, Kor Kor and I can help you.”
The car started blaring its horn.
“Look, I’ll be back as soon as I can, but I have to go,” said Jess.
It wasn’t like Mom would believe her if she said she was going for an interview. But there was one thing that might convince her to let Jess go. Jess only hesitated for a moment before saying, “The guy I’m meeting is waiting. I’ve already canceled once.”
“What guy is this? You tell him you have emergency, cannot make it . . .”
“It’s a guy I’m seeing,” said Jess. “If you must know, I’m going on a date.” Even though the date was invented, Jess felt, weirdly, like she was cheating on Sharanya, adding to the long list of ways in which she’d failed to be the girlfriend she deserved. She turned her face to hide her expression from Mom.
Luckily, Mom wasn’t really paying attention.
“You don’t have time to yumcha all that,” she was saying.
Then she registered what Jess had said. She looked comically astonished—as though part of her knew how unlikely it was that Jess would ever go on a date with a guy.
“Date?” said Mom. “But who is this guy?”
“He’s a friend of a friend,” said
Jess. “He’s from here, but he studied in America. My friend set us up.”
Mom was torn between alarm and delight. “What college did he go to? Why you didn’t tell me?”
Jess’s phone started ringing. She glanced at the screen. “It’s the driver—hey, I’ll be right out, sorry!” She hung up. “I didn’t tell you because I knew you’d freak out.”
“Who’s freaking out?” said Mom. “Sure or not he’s OK? You shouldn’t meet strange men by yourself. Better to go on group date. Oh, but you don’t have girlfriends here. Want or not, I come? I’ll sit at another table. You can pretend I’m not there.”
Being told she didn’t have girlfriends was a little too close to the truth right now. It was with a poker face developed through years of practice that Jess said lightly:
“I’m not going to have to pretend, because you are not coming on my date.” She kissed Mom on the cheek and grabbed her bag off the coffee table. “I’ll tell you about it when I’m back. Don’t worry, Mom.”
She managed to get to the end of the driveway before Mom called out after her, “He’s Chinese, right?”
Little did she know. It was both funny and sad to think how much Mom would love Sherng. If only his dad weren’t Ng Chee Hin, but a different, less felonious millionaire, he’d be pretty much perfect—well-off, personable, accomplished. Good-looking, but nerdy enough to ping aunties and uncles as a “good boy.” Admittedly there was the fact his mom was Indian, but at least his dad was Chinese. With everything else Sherng had going for him, Jess couldn’t imagine his being mixed race would be an issue for long, even though Mom’s worst fear for her love life was that she’d get together with a man who was neither Chinese nor white.
Well. That was her second worst fear. Her worst fear was that Jess would end up forever alone. What Jess was was an eventuality beyond conception; a fear lurking beneath the level of acceptable thought, as nameless and dreadful as any spirit. Even to articulate the possibility to herself would, for Mom, be a betrayal of Jess.
Jess needed to stop thinking about this now.
She looked at her phone to distract herself. Still nothing from Sharanya. The way things were going, she probably would end up forever alone, and her parents would never need to know there were worse things than having a spinster daughter.