But I am.
I pray to St Jude for the health of my mother and father and to Jesus to guide me and keep me safe and I still believe in the fairy story but perhaps at my age I should know better.
I have been to many of the tea dances in Orchard Towers but they have become more pig market than dance and how the Bangla men swagger and writhe. Cha! The Bangla man is full of sex. I think he must dream about it and bathe in it. Ma’am told me a story about her massage place near Beach Road. The girls that work there are mostly Filipina and Thai. Very good massage and beauty treatments, Ma’am says. But they have panic buttons in the rooms now because China and Indian man have made ‘unwanted advances’ towards the therapists. Ma’am say they have a ‘blacklist’ now and escort men from the premises even if they are guests.
They are bad. Always touch! touch! touch! Hands linger and eyes promise violence. I have friends who have dated Indian man. Their boyfriends have become possessive very soon and sometimes they hit to make their point. And then those soft chocolate eyes become like chips of tar, mean and narrowed. And then the blood flows and the cries start.
I shrug and say, worse things can happen, Ma’am, as my past comes back to me like a punch to the brain and I have to grip the counter to steady myself. I think at least those women are protected, most of us are not. Ma’am is concerned because I look so pale and shaky and tells me to go and rest, feeling my forehead and making anxious noises.
And I go, grateful to be alone so when the fear and the guilt come I can fall to my knees in private clasping my hands so tightly in prayer that my fingers turn white. And that half-seen man’s face shimmers just out of reach, bobbing and floating, but never completely there.
MA’AM LESLEY
35 Sabre Green
I am peering out the gates when one of the local Filipina helpers saunters by and nods at me. She is a typical Filipina beauty but much softer than Jocelyn. Her eyes are not glass-like but shine softly with warmth and humour. She startles me and I find myself laughing out loud in surprise, an unfamiliar sound. Instinctively, I cover my mouth with both my hands, unsure of myself. The woman reaches through the bars and gently pulls my hands away.
‘I’m Lucilla, Ma’am. I live at number 19,’ and she gestures vaguely across the green. Slowly and with a gravitas borrowed from the nineteenth century, she asks, ‘Why you look so sad?’
It is a good question and a complicated one.
‘Your helper she not nice.’ The young woman screws up her perfectly smooth face. ‘You should transfer her, lah. She lazy and say bad things about you.’ I look down at the chipped paving on my driveway. None of this is news to me. I know that Jocelyn despises me. It streams out of her like poisonous tendrils. I shrug, and turn to go, but Lucilla reaches out again, and covers my hand with hers and says, ‘Don’t be sad! I see you.’ Tears bulge and threaten like dark clouds. I muster a shaky smile and plod back to the front door.
Jocelyn is nowhere to be seen and I am poignantly aware how much of a stranger I am here. In my naive days, when I thought we might be friends, I gave her a choice of rooms in the main house. Her look of incredulous distaste at the thought of having to live with us was unmistakable and she has shunned my company from that day.
Frankly, Jocelyn intimidates me, and because of that I have never been in her room since she arrived. I have always treasured my own privacy and try to award that courtesy to others. True, I have heard rumours that some employers remove the door to the maid’s room so they can monitor her, but I don’t have the energy. Today, however, I find myself standing outside her door. There is an overwhelming desire to know my enemy and so I hold my breath and push the door gently.
The first thing I notice is two dresses of mine draped over the bed. They are Diana Von Furstenberg and I bought them when I was slender, engaged and felt my future was assured. Is it odd that I don’t even feel remotely annoyed, rather oddly gratified that they are being used? I always feel pretty things should be displayed and not hidden away. I allow my eyes to wander around the room and notice a huge arrangement of red roses. There must be two dozen long-stemmed, crimson blooms, soft and velvety – they resemble a young woman’s labia. These flowers are about lust, wildness and devotion. I pick up the card and read it quickly.
To my beloved, my fragrant lotus, Oh! Bid me with your joy rejoice til riotous longing rest in me. Devotedly, R.
So. There it is in black and white. My knees give way and I sink onto the bed, still holding the card. I recognise the quotation, not only as Rossetti, but because I received it early on, at the beginning of his courtship. Maybe he has others, I’m not sure, but I know this one. I was once totally overwhelmed by his gravitas and his education. He could weave words like spider’s silk and I had thought him the cleverest man on the planet.
I am remembering again when we met. At a dinner party in London. There was nothing particularly romantic about the actual meeting. In fact, I remember it getting rather heated and politically strained. I was with a male friend and wasn’t much interested in politics – or men, for that matter. I was studying to be a librarian and my attention was captured only by books. My love affair with fiction started with Beatrix Potter. Using a torch that I had stolen from my older brother’s room I would burrow under the covers and read until I was caught or fell asleep.
My passion for the written word increased exponentially and by the time I was being coached for my scholarship exam to the local grammar school I had managed to convince my parents to provide me with an account at the local bookshop. I devoured authors, title by title, page by page. I plunged into Sartre and then discovered I liked De Beauvoir so much better. I blossomed under the visceral Maugham and felt inferior to Waugh’s arrogant satire. Lawrence made me tingle and Maya Angelou made me proud and awed. I was a bluestocking, albeit a reasonably pretty one, and enjoyed the status that I was earning as a guardian of books. I suppose I should say I was ripe for the picking. I hadn’t so much repressed my sexuality as found it irrelevant. Like a novice whose love for God had induced a radiance that makes her breathless, I was content to bask in my knowledge and devotion to the written word.
Librarians were going through a bit of an image revamp. Suddenly, they had become sexy, and to my surprise men who had never seemed to notice me before made clumsy advances. I enjoyed the attention for a while but it became tedious and some of my suitors became overtly sexual and I have always felt that to be vaguely insulting, as if they had become bored of the chase and decided it was time to stop mucking about.
Ralph was the opposite. On reflection, I believe that my naivety was a magnet and my constant adoration the most elaborate ego-stroking. The dinner party we attended, separately but together, was thick with the usual suspects. A couple of ambitious low-level politicians, a nauseating advertising exec, a model or something similar, and our hosts – very old friends of Ralph’s, Mark and Philip, who owned a small but successful literary agency together and were partners in both senses of the word. I was very fond of Philip but found Mark a little acerbic. Bluntness in a person has always baffled and alarmed me. I suppose it is fashionable to be sarcastic and edgy but I have always thought it an excuse for acceptable bullying. I was out of my comfort zone and barely said a word. The usual jokes had already been guffawed at my expense about stockings, lesbians and nymphomaniacs and I had ignored them or been humiliated by turns.
Ralph was seated far down the table from me, and I had noticed him but was not at all aware that he had even registered my presence. Like all insecure, unworldly creatures I felt sure that the other guests would arrive at the conclusion very quickly that I was a fraud and that I would be escorted unceremoniously from the house with tuts and disapproval. I had studied Ralph a little but was given a hazy impression of a patrician type, distinguished rather than handsome but very charming. The model almost fell out of her dress on several occasions and she strove to impress Ralph in her own way. Meanwhile, I was in my cups, which was entirely unusual, but this wine
was sweet and my preference has never been for bone-dry wine. I don’t pretend to be an oenophile and I have certainly never had or wanted the ability to discern a hint of blackberry or mineral or anything else for that matter. As I have said, what I enjoy is a fairly sweet wine that doesn’t challenge me. A supple, unfashionable tipple (another Ralph word) that wouldn’t catch in the back of my throat or build reflux from early evening onwards. In those days, if I wanted to drink these blackballed bottles I could. Now, it would be impossible. Ralph has a delivery every month from a wine merchant along Orchard Road and however much he might be in raptures about them they will always be sour and unreachable. And, really, Ralph’s wine has always disappointed me. The labels have such sonorous promise (Fleurie, Chablis, Nuit Saint Georges) but deliver piss and vinegar.
It was much later in the evening, when the guests could be found draped over the furniture and were becoming louche under the influence of heavy food and wine, that Ralph spoke to me for the first time. I was feeling uncomfortable and had headed for the bookshelves to self-medicate. Philip and Mark had an impressive collection of books and rather refreshingly were not at all put off by pulp fiction. Murdoch, Irving and the ubiquitous Amis, senior and junior, all held their place, but I was delighted to see Lucky Jim slightly askew on the shelf, being rebellious. Then I had just spotted their collection of Dumas, when a voice of honey and oatmeal drawled that Dumas, in its opinion, was one of the greatest storytellers of the millennium, and the Three Musketeers are iconic characters that attempt to capture the notion of the goodness of men.
I heard him first. And then I felt him. His velvet jacket sleeve constantly brushed my bare arm, which I found enormously arousing, and slowly I turned to look. Ralph stood quite close, puffing on a short, stubby Habana and smiling with the arrogance and self-belief only one class can every truly have.
From there it was a sandstorm. Dinners, holidays, thoughtful gifts, lines from sonnets, the traditional asking for my hand that sent my father into a fluster normally reserved for cake-baking ladies of a certain age. And I was blinded by it and allowed myself to be led through the chaos that disguised itself as infatuation.
The first time he hit me was just before the wedding. I had, in direct contrast to most brides, put on some weight with an enormous amount of comfort eating. Ralph commented that I had put on some pounds, and while he loved me, of course, it was just that it wasn’t particularly attractive. I had giggled, being in the first throes of sexual awakening and feeling magnificent and powerful. And while I didn’t love Ralph exactly, I felt a certain affection for him and a rather inappropriate schoolgirl crush. He backhanded me. No explanation, no warning. A short, flat slap that knocked me off my chair and left me speechless on the floor. I stopped eating that day and starved myself to the point that I almost fainted at the altar and I remember the look of quiet approval on Ralph’s face.
And that’s when I should have run.
SHAMMI
20 Sabre Green
Tonight, my Madam has a big party. I always fear these parties. It is so much extra work and not sleeping for almost a day and a night. There will be shouting and shoving, exclamations and excitement. And my Madam will turn into Rangda, demon queen of the Leyaks. She will glitter with nerves and bark instructions and become a tap tap of worry with overlong fingernails like small machetes. A huge drumming band will play for hours to encourage good luck. How I shrink from those drums that are joyless to me. They hurt my head and make my thinking like damp earth. And on a day like today I must be sharp and solid like cassava. I will fail today as I always do. And there will be punishment. Sometimes, when she pushes me or lets spitting oil peck my skin her eyes glow and her skin becomes flushed. I think she enjoys the hurting. She must do because she does it so much. And I will have to do all the cooking although Madam stands over me with wooden spoon and smacks my hand, arm or head when she thinks I’m doing it wrong.
I hate cooking Chinese food. Too much oil, too much fish sauce, too much sour. Too much of everything except goodness. At home in my village we have little food but it dances with life. My Ebu makes delicious rotis, stretching them thin so they are like lace and then baking them on stones in the fire that lifts them delicately in the heat and curls the ends slightly like a piglet’s tail. If a goat has been slaughtered Ebu will make a thick stew, with cassava if the mealy worms have been kind, or rice, beans and chillies if we have them. Sometimes, it is so hot even Bapa has difficulty and he will laugh and choke and say his wife is fiery and good for him. And Ebu will look at him from under her eyes and smile a small but important smile. A smile just for him. And then I envy my mother and father so much for their love, for their faith in each other. I think that faith is as important as love.
Eating in the village is very different too. The evening meal is a reward for the hard work of the day. The family sits together, usually on the floor, crowded but safe, and share what is in front of them. But here, great dishes are prepared and the men and woman nibble at them like spoilt monkeys. And then they are thrown in the rubbish. Mounds of vegetables, meat, fruit and sauces. It makes me want to weep. My village could survive for days on the waste here. These parties are loud and raucous. Every guest seems to be competing for attention and each other and my Madam and Sir dress up like peacocks. Madam paints her face so pale she looks like ghost and her shoes are very high. She has three wardrobes of dresses and silk things. Some garments she has never worn and never will. I have two pair of trousers, six shirts, one skirt, three brassieres and six pair of underwear. There are holes in everything and they have been washed so much that the colours have faded to poor impersonations of each other.
But the one good part of tonight is that I will wear a proper maid’s uniform. I am not allowed to keep it in my small chest of drawers. My Madam brings it out for these occasions. She keeps it locked up the rest of the time. But it is the nicest thing I have ever worn. The material is silky to the touch and the white apron is clean and fresh. I feel so proud in it and this strikes me as foolish because it is a symbol of my pain. But wear it I will because that is what my Madam expects and at least it is clean and fresh and new.
I have been busy since 5am and will stay up long after the party has finished. When Madam and Sir have gone to bed I will collect the debris, the dishes, the soiled napkins and the stinking ashtrays and will clear and wash and wipe and dry until every tiny thing is back in its place and when Madam comes downstairs in the morning, later than usual, because she’ll drink too much, she will stretch and yawn and cast a keen eye over the spotless surfaces and somehow find fault. She will not thank me. Not once has she ever thanked me for the work I do. My very presence seems to make her angry.
My hair, which is long, but now falling out because I’m hungry all the time, is still more beautiful than her thinning, brittle, black reeds – brushed and backcombed and sprayed with lacquer that is like a poison cloud. Her eyes are bug black and have a sly cast to them; her hate feels like a pillow over my face.
She is the type of person that gives the evil eye naturally. It would have come to her at birth. Born under the wrong star at the wrong time. My Ebu says that if that spirit is present when the baby is born it can swim through its little mouth and sink deep into the baby’s soul. If it takes root that baby is cursed for the rest of its life unless the person can find a witch to trade with for it. The witch will draw it out of the person’s soul and capture it in a jar and bury it deep underground. The cursed person is then free but if the jar is ever opened the evil can find its way back like a firefly to the moon. My Madam never found the witch to trade with so she carries the evil in her heart. This evil gets stronger as the person ages and darkness etches lines in her face and neck. And Madam looks like pale bark that is scored with sickness.
When I first arrived I offered to make Madam bread. I thought she might like to taste Ebu’s bread from the village. But her face became hard with rage and her eyes were stone. She slapped me so hard that I fell to the flo
or, crying from shock. She shouted, why I want your shit country bread? Lah? Why you ask? I bring you here and put roof over your head and feed you out of my own pocket. Flecks of spittle appeared in the corner of her mouth. I pay you to insult me, you little bloody bitch? You bloody, dirty, hairy animal bitch. And she kicked me hard, poured herself a glass of water and left. And I lay and wondered what I had done that was so terribly wrong.
Afterwards, Madam gave me tiny, spiky nail scissors and forced me to cut the front lawn with them. It was late at night. By early morning I was so tired I had fallen asleep on the grass and when I woke up I find the kind Ebony Ma’am next door has seen that the gate is open and has come right in and put a cup of water to my lips. She brushes the hair from my face and whispers, poor Babu, and I gaze at her like she is a dark angel. When my Madam come out the Ebony Ma’am gets very cross and points a finger in her face. She mentions police. Prison. My Madam looks at her and says not one word.
And sometimes Ebony Ma’am comes even further into the garden and stares in at the kitchen while I cook and my Madam is leaning over me shouting instructions. And then they both glare at each other and my Madam snorts and leaves the kitchen to go upstairs. And the Ebony Ma’am reaches through the window and links her little finger through mine for a second before going in. And I hold onto that touch for weeks. I think about it at night when I’m cold, which I often am even with the humidity and the lack of air in the corridor.
My employers lock everything at night, even the windows. Huge metal grilles cover every window, big and small, and every door has a lock. The keys to these locks are on a huge ring that my Madam hangs on a hook in the doorway. They are labelled with letters of the alphabet – one for each lock. Why, you might ask yourself, would a Singaporean do this when they have such low crime? Would it surprise you if I say it is not to keep people out? It is to keep us, the maids, in.
Bitter Leaves Page 4