They never say my friend is very nice or my friend work in an animal shelter on the weekend. Never, my friend will read you poetry while dusk settles or look after your family forever. Being wealthy is the prize to the China man more than beauty or happiness.
It is everything.
And it is nothing.
Ashes in mouth nothing.
Sour yam nothing.
Child cries nothing.
MA’AM LESLEY
35 Sabre Green
The left side of my face flares in pain whenever I eat or drink. It is a mass of bruised flesh. Although, as I now seem to have turned into a social leper and venturing outside is unappealing, I just sit and manage the pain. I have become a tired, obsolete object, and while I wait for the Xanax to start its miraculous, gentle rescue I feel the torpor in this city of steel and glass. That wrings me out and leaves me gasping. I feel old and crumpled. The tiny waist I had as a young woman is a wistful memory. I fear I’m now the very cliché of a middle-aged frump.
What makes me eat so much here and why is my gorging so secretive and anxious? I stuff chocolates into my mouth without tasting them and cower in the bathroom, running the taps to disguise the crackling sound of their wrappers. Devouring them, one by one, heedless of my fat and disgust, until the ornate Venetian mirror reminds me. I have such beautiful shoes and clothes but they mock me endlessly from the wardrobe, reminding me that I resemble a sow in Louboutins. Asian women are so thin and graceful. I’ve never felt so invisible as I do here. Only five years ago, when Ralph was offered a job in Zurich, I was having dreams of Toblerones and mountains in Lausanne. But he chose Singapore.
How I hate it here. I cannot settle or even have a reassuring drink because of my bloody hormones that dash about like manic horse flies. There are times when my body is a dynamo and times when I can’t leave my bed. And meanwhile Ralph is uninterested, attracted only by the beauty of things. He tries, I suppose, but the talented, confident younger woman he married has aged. And he is exceptionally disappointed with the results.
The problem with Asia is that fat western women are an anomaly here. We don’t shine and we can’t resort to corsets and velvet drapery because it’s too bloody hot. So I have started wearing shapeless blouses and sensible skirts just so I don’t feel too obvious. I’ve bought some size twenty clothes back from the UK where the shop assistant didn’t actually snigger or look embarrassed and for a moment I felt quite confident. Whereas the last time I tried clothes shopping here was a humiliating experience. I walked into Marks & Sparks in Wheelock Place and just browsed a bit, getting my courage up. When I approached one of the sales girls, a tiny Singaporean with false eyelashes and breasts, and asked if she had any larger sizes, she shook her head in a decisive way and stared pointedly, just above my head, until I realised that I was dismissed, and I left.
As I walked out of the store with their scornful laughter adding to my humiliation I decided I would never put myself through that again. Later at home as I sobbed into my towel I cursed those skinny little bitches. I was thin once. Thin and not bad-looking. Perhaps not the belle of the ball and in great demand, but not exactly a wallflower either. When did it all change and I become middle-aged with all the clichéd attachments?
I’m thankful that the invitations to the dreaded dinner parties have dried up and I don’t have to make endless excuses. Feeling like paper cuts every predictable comparison with other women. I’m not even fat and jolly, just fat and sad. Very bloody sad and somewhere, 35,000 feet above the Bay of Bengal, I lost my sense of self and started to become a shadow.
And here I am creeping about trying to smuggle packets of Fox’s biscuits into the house and secreting them in what I viewed as clever, silent places. But Jocelyn, our housekeeper, always finds them and enjoys making me feel guilty and humiliated. She is so capable and easy with her life. I hear her and Ralph laughing together sometimes in the evening and I suppose I should be thankful that he has someone who does manage to make him laugh in this house.
I must have failed him in many ways but by far my greatest betrayal, Ralph informs me, is that I can’t give him a child. The golden baby that would have changed so much for us. He gave up trying two years ago. By that I mean he doesn’t touch me at all. And anyway I have become a sweating piece of dough that has over-risen. Eventually the initial talk of adoption dried up. It must be embarrassing for him to have a barren wife. I should be grateful that he still bothers to live here with me.
But I wish heartily that Jocelyn did not. I would much rather attend to my own housekeeping. I find it very soothing and I’m good at it.
I like to handwash clothes and bedlinen, gently encouraging the suds, easing out the stains, making things look pristine again.
Sometimes, I daydream I am back in Bristol, maybe owning a modest dress shop. At night, after closing for the day, I would climb the stairs to my tiny kingdom and snuggle up with my cats. I would have two, but not haughty, distant things. Probably a couple of Norwegian Forest cats with coats that would make a Viking proud. They would wind their furriness around my legs and neck and make me feel safe. I would pop a nice ready-meal in the microwave. Maybe salmon and watercress, or something cheerful like that, and pour a glass of wine. Not the unfriendly, sour white wine that Ralph likes but something syrupy and unfashionable. And then I would read a book or watch forbidden television programmes, like Bergerac re-runs or Midsomer Murders.
And I would be happy.
Now I find myself pretending to love Ralph’s life and its exhausting trimmings. His friends tolerate me but they are all ex-public school. Not one from a comprehensive, and sometimes I think they enjoy teasing me when they ask about whether I like Lambrusco or something similar. The fact is I do like it. It’s cheap and sweet and I feel comfortable drinking it. I also like Babycham but haven’t had that for years because it definitely is on the forbidden list. Along with toilet. I have to say ‘loo’ or ‘bathroom’. Ralph really hates it when I forget. But I get so nervous and, naturally, begin to forget far more frequently. And then I have to deal with the consequences. Of course, Ralph is very apologetic about hitting me. Well, he used to be; not so much any more, but then he rarely acknowledges my existence at all these days.
I remember when I was free to cook and bake, but Jocelyn doesn’t like me in the kitchen. She doesn’t like me downstairs really, and moans that I bring down dust from upstairs into her clean space. She tells me that my area is upstairs and hers is downstairs and that it is better that way. Last time I tried to cook she became quite nasty. It’s very hot in the kitchen because there’s no fan and the air conditioning is ancient. I was reducing some stock in my risotto and wiping my red and steamy face with the edge of my sarong when I felt a spiteful hand grab my hair and wrench me back from the stove. The shock and pain buckled my knees and I sprawled onto the kitchen floor. A flurry of slaps stung my cheek and my ears as Jocelyn made her displeasure clear. And as she ranted about my weight, and countless other faults, I lay there and accepted it all like the useless lump I have become. I know that she wants me out of the way. I wonder how far she would go to achieve this. And do I even care any more?
Sometimes when I get lonely I wander downstairs making sure Jocelyn is out of sight. If I can hear the television from the drawing room, as Ralph insists it is called, then I tiptoe past and wait for one of Jocelyn’s cackles to cover the sound of me quietly opening the front door. Once I ventured into the drawing room, or front room, as I call it, and found Jocelyn lying on the sofa, one hand holding a glass of champagne and the other plucking chocolates from a box of champagne truffles that I had received for Christmas but been banned from eating by Ralph. Honestly, I’m not that keen on champagne and don’t understand the universal devotion to it. I stood in the doorway long enough for Jocelyn to notice me, and when she did, her teeth clicked in annoyance and her throat made a sound like an irritated thrush. What you want? she drawled. Jocelyn gave up calling me Ma’am a long time ago. I was never comforta
ble with it anyway. This is my time, she insisted, and waved me away with a dismissive hand. Her fingertips were brown and sticky, like they were covered in shit. It gave me a tiny thrill when she licked them clean. But as I stuttered an apology and backed out it occurred to me that she was only doing what deprived children do when they come into possession of things and spaces. I found it hard in that moment to be angry. She had had so little and I so much of life already.
Anyway, once I’m outside, I like to stand hidden by a pillar and watch the neighbourhood children play in the park across the green. The cicadas start their chant early in the day here and the gnarled, canopied rain trees stand guardian over the patchy grass. The houses around Sabre Green are uniformly pleasant. But underneath the manicured surface lurks a pitchy darkness. Each house has an iron gate and grilles on the windows giving it the impression of an isolated fortress. The residents play at being sociable, but their attempts seem forced, as if they are reading a manual on how to do it properly. Just before dusk the play area starts to fill up with maids and children. Western, Indian, Chinese, Singaporean, Japanese and the odd Filipina. If I had a child we would play over there too, and I would refuse to let anyone do any tiny thing for him or her at all. I would celebrate my motherhood and swing from the stars with it.
I think Ralph mentioned that he would call his son Oliver when he still thought it was possible. I quite liked that. Although, Ralph would have forbidden any shortening of the name. It would have been formal and polite. Just like Ralph.
When my husband first told me that the blame lay firmly at my feet for not conceiving, I did ask to see the evidence. I wasn’t able to smile for eleven days after that and my jaw still crunches badly. I only wanted to know, to see, if I could do something about it. Take a herbal remedy or seek a second opinion. But Ralph became enraged. I never asked a second time. As he stood over me he explained, very clearly, that the fact that I couldn’t bear him a child was so deeply disappointing and hurtful that he never wanted to hear it mentioned, ever again.
I tried to understand his hurt, to share it. I thought that if we could comfort each other a bit and talk about options perhaps we could find a solution. But Ralph was adamant that Dr Liu had told him quite forcefully that I was infertile. The emphasis he put on that particular word made it seem that Dr Liu and the whole of the specialist fertility community in Asia were also deeply disappointed with me. He refused to discuss it and I was forbidden to contact the fertility specialist. I wanted to tell him that I was disappointed enough in myself and that I wore my failure like a winter cape, heavy and unyielding.
Soon after, Ralph stopped bringing visitors home, and I became frightened of leaving the house. It was odd that nobody rang and that when I tried picking up the handset I could never hear a dial tone. I presumed that this was an Asian constant and with all the naivety of a new resident gave it little further thought. Jocelyn and Ralph have their mobile phones and there are always flurries of activity around them, but Ralph has insisted that I don’t need one. Who was I going to call anyway? I stared dumbly back, hoping that a name would spring to mind, but he was right. I couldn’t think of a single person who might call me.
My family seem to have given up. Mum is very old now and the last communication I had from my sister, Linda, was when she put Mum in a residential home and could we spare some money for the fees? I had tentatively put this idea to Ralph and he had said, quite generously, that he would consider it, but I never asked again. And consequently, I never heard back from my sister. Now all their faces have become blurred and inconsistent like faulty memories and it is easier to let them fade away gently – a hopeful dementia.
What will happen to me if Ralph decides to move on? I promise I’d go quietly and gratefully back to suburbia but will it be enough for a man who eradicates all evidence of past mistakes? Even in the heat, anxiety squeezes my stomach so completely I have to run for the lavatory. How long am I safe for?
SHAMMI
20 Sabre Green
When I came here it was with big happiness in my heart. I knew I was doing a good thing, making my parents proud. The girls that go to Singapore and Arabia are spoken of with reverence and as good, dutiful girls.
Sawtoh, the skinny girl from my village, she married a western man and now they live in Singapore in a palace with beautiful children and swans. I hear her bed is made from gold and she has many servants. I wish her luck but I never liked her much. She was cruel to animals and the younger children. Would pull pigtails and tear clothes and kick the dogs around the village when the mood took her. My Ebu says the devil is inside her. I don’t disagree with Ebu, but I think that Sawtoh is just very selfish. Most of the girls who marry western men are cunning but – until they have ring on their finger – they play it very sweet like bubur candil. Sawtoh must have been kicking many puppies but in private to mask her real self. I feel sorry for that western man. He went to the market and bought a duck but it turned out to be a fire ant.
It is very dark here at my Madam’s house. I am expected to wash the car before the family wake up. As I stumble out with sleep still in my eyes and weary bones that sigh I see the other black shapes, other maids washing other cars. We might smile and nod but we never call out. The maids that wash cars know better than that. We are divided between the maids that speak and the maids that do not. I see the happy girls wander down the road carrying shopping and chat chat on their cellphones and I think how good do you have to be in the eyes of the Lord to deserve an employer like that? One that gives you freedom and maybe one day off every month or even every week, like Ebony Ma’am? And I steal a glance next door to reassure myself that she is still there.
The sun is rising and I think I am lucky to see such glory every day.
I haven’t been to church for a long time. I think God must be very angry with me. But Madam does not believe in church and she say that I’m a heathen and no better than a dog. I ask for a few hours off to attend service but Madam says that is selfish of me. Selfish! Selfish! Selfish! And I get a slap with her hand each time she shouts the word.
The children watch and their faces are full of bitter leaves.
If the dog barks after a certain time at night then it is my fault and money is added onto the agency bill. How am I to keep the dog quiet? Bind its mouth? Speak softly to it like I do with the piglets back home? The dog is excitable and hot tempered. It does not get enough exercise. I tell Madam at the beginning that I will walk the dog for hours. I would run the dog and laugh with the dog and we would take off with happiness and fly back on a cloud to my village. But Madam says no! Sometimes I think she say no so much that a yes might kill her.
Madam gets angry very quick and I learn not to speak, not to ask and not to be. I am forbidden to speak to anybody outside of the household and am only ever allowed to talk to Madam or Sir if I bow first or they ask me a question. My Madam is very particular and old-fashioned about such things. She is from a province in China but my Sir, he is from Singapore. Madam is very pale and she refuses to go out in the sun. I am expected to hold a parasol over her head when we go out in the day. I am also expected to walk slightly behind her. It is difficult and when I first arrived I would trip and stumble. But when we are out I can look at the world around me. I see the big houses and the even bigger office buildings. So much glass and light. Only sometimes does Madam take me into the city but when she does I study everything so I can’t forget. I watch the sky the most and remember that my Ebu and I share the same sky every day to make me feel less lonely.
The kind woman next door is also brown-skinned and her skin is like honey-roses and she has green eyes like a watermelon rind that glow with health and sweetness. She is full of love and smiles at me when she sees my tired spirit. I call her Ebony Ma’am because she shines like the polished roots of the wood tree that grow near our village. After Ebony Ma’am caught my employer slapping my face Madam makes me do it to myself now. Ebony Ma’am was very cross with my Madam and shouted very fast a
nd when she shout at my employer I heard police. So now Madam makes me take a shoe in my hand and hit my own face with it. If I don’t hit hard enough she makes me do it again and again. At least it is a flat shoe. One of her spike heels that look like a spear would hurt much more.
I don’t tell my parents about these sad things. It would only worry them and what would they do? Old people worry more, it is well known. My mother’s health is no good. They need the money I send home. And I am happy that they can’t see my teardrops and my blood drops. I am not allowed a phone so I could only make a call if Madam was out. But who would I phone? The village I come from doesn’t have telephone lines or electricity. My Ebu and Bapa sleep on the floor on mats. There is more room now I have gone. But that is little comfort. And they are expected to grow hashish on their land. A man from the government came and shouted at them. My Bapa shouted back, why would we want to grow something we can’t eat? And the man hit Bapa across the face and spat at his feet. He said he did not care that Ebu and Bapa would not eat. He did not care that they might die of hunger. And if the government man thinks that then that is what the big men in Jakarta must think.
Last time I saw my parents was two years ago. At least, I think it was. Sometimes, I forget things. I am so tired because five hours sleep is not enough for a person. Am I invisible? Dear Lord, please see me. Please, Jesus. Am I so low that even my God has turned away from me?
Bitter Leaves Page 2