I will use the rest of the journey back to Singapore to mentally prepare for whatever it is that is pursuing me. I concentrate on my breathing and relax my muscles, one by one, listening to the sweet breaths of my children as they settle into sleep.
LUCILLA
19 Sabre Green
It is an odd day, lah! My Ma’am and Sir have returned from Scotland and I am happy. But there is a strange vibration in the air while we await the stinging winds from Indonesia. Ma’am says that the governments are burning palm-oil fields and the winds have changed direction and are heading for Singapore and that it is going to be bad. And Ma’am’s face darkens and her fingers grip and clench the sides of her sarong so tightly that creases leap quickly into the fabric. They mirror the worry in my Ma’am’s face.
When Sir arrives home he pours himself a large whisky drink. Just a touch of water, Lulubell, as he often reminds me, and he returns again and again to the window searching the sky for something. For a sign maybe of the ‘perhaps’ terror to come. Sir huffs and sighs and concern attaches to his face like shadow to the parched grass back home. And the more he drinks the ruddier his face becomes and yet his movements become more deliberate and controlled.
Alcohol is too expensive for us to drink much of it in the Philippines. It is a sodden luxury peculiar to the west and my Muslim girlfriend says it makes whores of its women and monsters of its men. I ask her why she thinks this is so peculiar to the west and not to humans generally. Her Malay prejudice kicks in and a sneer speaks her disgust quite beautifully as she launches into a diatribe about the perilous west and the gentle, misunderstood east. I find her views quite hopeless and frustrating. And yet, when she hurls these hateful ideas at me it is in the gentle, hushed tones of a supplicant at prayer outside the mosque just before Fajr. Her skin is dark honey and her veils bright and spirited like ship’s pennants blustered by the wind.
My Ma’am takes me aside and presses a box of masks into my hands. I protest but secretly am glad that she loves me enough to think of this. So far it is easy to breathe and there is nothing spiteful in the air but we know it is coming and the beginnings of panic creep to the very edges of the country and its blot begins to spread through the reservoirs and into the trees, past the airport and towards the Johor Strait where Malaysia sits smugly thinking that it is not to be troubled.
Rory arrives home in the school bus and there is a sense of urgency even there. Auntie, usually so talkative and quick with laughter and a pinch of cheek, hands Rory over and shuts the bus door robustly with only the twitch of a smile that recedes quickly like the tide before a huge wave is due. The birds are silent and I stare up at the big rain tree opposite the house and search for signs of my demon. And ask for a blessing from God and all manner of things from all manner of things.
The tree stays quiet, remarkable only for its wooden history and its stillness. Not one leaf is turning. And there is a smell in the air. Like madness or violence. Or the smell of a desperate scream from a frightened mouth and I begin to feel my stomach clench and coil with worry. The very realness of this day, of this time.
Ma’am asks me to run to Mr Lim’s shop. Quickly, Lulubell, before it hits. Just a few supplies.
And Sir says loudly that he will go but Ma’am gently dismisses him and asks me to take Rory. It is clear she wants to speak to Sir in private. So Rory and I leave for Mr Lim’s. Only four minutes away. Mr Lim of the rich friends that like Filipina girls. Of the bulging eyes and greasy, sweat-stained widow’s peak that flops like an opium addict. And why should a man who resembles a bothersome tree frog make me feel these things? It is all about his power and my lack of it. I find myself simpering and half-smiling from behind my hands like a good little Filipina girl. Tactics to keep him happy and to keep him from noticing me too much.
Rory swings my hand and picks up flowers off the ground to give to Ma’am. I don’t think a child has ever loved his mother more. Sometimes it is difficult to know where he begins and she stops. I squeeze his hand tighter and smooth his moon-darkened, ripe-wheat hair away from his smooth forehead.
Mr Lim looks different. For a start he is not sitting behind his counter surrounded by the pink invoice books where he totals every item that each family buys on tick. Every time you bring something to the counter he looks you up and down before announcing the house number and your role there. I am number 19, maid. Rory number 19, first son.
Nor is he tending the rows of tiny cages each containing a single sunbird that hops from perch to floor and back again in a monotonous round, only its bright, black, basalt eye showing intelligence of its surroundings. Even the birds’ plumage is dull. A dirty green and a flash of stained yellow around the eye. The western Ma’ams all get very worked up over Mr Lim’s birds. But the fact is they will not fly away. If he cleans the cage they step out and wait, shivering, feathers clutched tightly around them, until he shoos them back in. Maybe they have nowhere else to go. Or perhaps the world seems much more frightening when they are away from their cages. Once you stop thinking about your circumstances and become secure with confinement then nothing else is possible.
For some reason this thought frightens me and I squint up at the sun, noticing for the first time a faint, dark corona settling around it. I pull Rory close.
‘Quickly, darling. Quickly!’
We step through the door of the shop and into the darkened room with its dusty aisles. I can see three other women standing like out-of-place wooden dolls. One is a twitching Chinese employer I recognise from around the green, another the sad-looking western Ma’am I have tried to speak to sometimes, draped in a sarong. The third is the Indonesian maid from next door. She is so very thin and the small light has vanished from her face and from inside. I can see the demons are making casual calls toward her soul and can see but not completely identify the battle that rages inside her. She has awkward hair and a broken tooth. I try to smile but her gaze never rests for long on a person, only on things. The floor, a speck of dust, her feet with such sad toes.
Mr Lim appears from nowhere heading straight for the entrance and jamming all the locks with whipping sticks.
‘Now we are safe. Now the haze cannot touch us,’ he shouts authoritatively.
We all stand united in a brief moment brought about by Mr Lim and his odd behaviour. The girl, Shammi, I think her name is, reacts first and with surprising vigour.
‘You must let me out, sir. You must. Please. My Madam will be so angry.’ And as she tugs repeatedly on his sleeve her little face is pouring. From her eyes and nose and mouth. Salt and froth, snot and saliva.
The western Ma’am tries to comfort her. ‘I’m Lesley,’ she starts. ‘Don’t be frightened.’ But she is shrugged off.
And then the sound of cans and boxes falling and the Chinese Madam falls to her knees, arms outstretched, gulping huge breaths and beating at her head and scratching her face with nails scarlet both from polish and blood and the little Indonesian is the first to react and she tries to stop the woman scratching at her eyes, imploring us to help.
Rory lets out a long, tremulous wail and his tears and fear join the already well-stoked fires of pain and fright starting all around us. I glance at the shop front that is haunted by Mr Lim’s shadow and I think nothing good will come of this.
MA’AM LESLEY
33 Sabre Green
There is something wrong with the air today. It is like breathing scorched earth. A bitter myrrh in the atmosphere but it’s not until after I’ve served Jocelyn her lunch that I catch the news story on the cheap television in her old room that is now mine. The haze is coming, the news reporter exclaims and we watch the news footage of irate Singaporean politicians shaking their fists in the general direction of Indonesia and then other clips of Indonesian politicians doing exactly the same thing to Singapore.
I know about the haze, of course. It has far less legend attached to it than the mistral or a volcano, but it can make life very uncomfortable if the winds betray us. Fickle thin
gs, winds. Like hormones and cats. I have experienced it in other years before now but something stalks the air today in a way that it hasn’t previously, and a nigglesome sense of alarm hangs about like a spite and sin. Singapore, for all its darkness and faults, is safe. You can rely on it to be safe. The dual threats of flogging and death are generally presumed to be working deterrents. But once again man’s rape of the natural world is roaring back.
I am anxious about any potential threats to the baby. Woodsmoke in concentration is hazardous and the pregnant and elderly are most susceptible. What to do with Jocelyn? Should we all move to Malaysia for a few months?
The air is definitely heavier as I run up the stairs to the sound of Jocelyn coughing. And sudden pain, somewhere in her abdomen, makes her start, and the colour leaches from her face as quickly as the sun’s final dip beneath the horizon.
I manage to get her breathing under control but she is clearly terrified, tears coursing down her face. You learn a lot about people living at such close quarters with them and Jocelyn’s emotions are as free and abundant as a high waterfall in late summer. But in that moment I also realise that my protective reflex is bound up with the child in her belly. My child. And I will do everything I can, beyond reason, to make that possession possible. It is an extraordinary moment. I realise that I can love again. That I have the chance to give and receive a sacrament far greater than faith. An intangible belief, just out of focus but there all the same.
I check Jocelyn for bleeding and find none. ‘I need to go to Mr Lim’s and see if he has some masks. The index has risen and I don’t want to take any chances with you.’ I speak quietly, not wanting to agitate her.
‘With this you mean.’ Jocelyn points at her bump and pouts. ‘What you care about me?’
‘I care about both of you. You and the baby,’ I counter.
Jocelyn looks unconvinced but I’m not interested in placating her. I am on a fairly urgent mission and it is important to be outside for as short a time as possible.
‘I won’t be long,’ I yell up the stairs.
The air has thickened and become angry. Now I can actually taste the woodsmoke and my eyes sting, my breath shortens and not a soul can be seen. It is as if the world is ending. Even the status-enabled cars stand idly in the carports and underneath shelters. The birds are silent, censored by an atmosphere squeezed tight with portent. For the first time I begin to feel a very real panic. Nature is so unpredictable.
I pull my scarf tightly around my head and mouth, uncaring of the spectacle I must create, and make my careful but hurried way towards Lim’s shop.
Lim is an odd sort. He survives mostly because of the Singaporeans and expats who live in the Sabre Hills area. But his dislike of us is barely veiled. I have felt his flat, onyx stare and it makes me uncomfortable because it is designed to do just that. I have never asked for his credentials or cultural references or he mine. I am interested but to achieve that purpose would mean engaging in conversation with him and the thought of this makes me even more uncomfortable, so I have avoided it and make up disturbing fantasies in my head instead.
I noticed that he was selling masks yesterday when I took a city cab back from Cold Storage with the shopping. I suspect they will be horribly marked up but for all I know we are living in black market conditions. Walking into his shop it occurs to me that I’ve not been here too often, but my overriding impression is of a shabby bomb shelter. It looks dirty and unkempt as if the owner can’t really be bothered but knew an opportunity when he saw one. Rows of depressed packets, jars and tins line morose Formica shelves. Only the overworked fridges, heaving and sighing their chilly way towards unremarkable deaths, give the impression of life. Today there are only a few customers and I panic briefly, thinking that all the masks have been sold by now, but looking around I see plenty in a couple of fabric bins next to the deplorable ‘beating sticks’ that many Singaporeans still use on their children.
I notice a very fragile-looking Indo girl with an odd haircut. Much too thin with a grey shadow that moves about her face. There is something inexplicably sad about her, and the nervousness of someone not used to being out in the open. Her eyes twitch and blink like a cornered animal and her breathing is shallow and laboured. The Filipina girl, Lucilla, smiles brightly at me and the contrast between the two women is harsh and too bright to consider for long: her hair is glossy, each strand bouncing with theatrical vigour and even though her body is slight it is well fed, nurtured and happy, and she has that beautiful little boy with her who always smiles at everybody.
The last customer is Chinese and seems hazy and insubstantial. Her face is fully made up, but horribly smudged, which makes her look more sinister than tragic. She has the odour of madness. I step towards the counter just as Lim blocks the entrance and locks the shop firmly. His eyes are flush with the fervour of self-justification and my heart begins to flutter as the little boy starts to wail.
SHAMMI
112 Sabre Green
I sit in the kitchen, squatting with my bony bottom barely scraping the kitchen floor and my knees bent. I am quiet and watchful like the feeling inside the house. I am alone. I managed to operate the radio earlier and I know that my employers have left to escape the poison that the wood devils have sent to Singapore. They have left me to its mercy.
But this is something I am accustomed to. The house seems less vindictive in the family’s absence. Less inclined to betray me because even though I am locked in Madam forgot about the tiny window in the store cupboard by the kitchen. A space small enough only for a child to escape through. And through lack of food I am now small enough. I thank the spirits in the house silently for not betraying this mistake.
I move very, very quietly like a refugee from the war hiding in the ruins of a building. Like my family did when the bad city man returned to bully my parents into growing the drug plants. We hid in a secret hole cut into the earth floor of our hut. My grandfather had dug it decades earlier and we used to store sacks of grain and dry fruit. I bite my lip so hard it stops the beginnings of a sob as I remember the sea-coloured batik covers on the walls and the wood animals that my Bapa would carve for us stacked neatly in one of the dirt corners. They seem so far away from my heart. My brain does not work so well and my world is covered with gauze.
My employers are away for the next three nights. How can I be so exact? Because they have left me one brown apple and nine packs of noodles in a pot. I have the money that Ebony Ma’am has given me so if I can gather my courage I can buy other food and some fruit at the store and maybe a mask. I have never been there before and the thought makes me nervous but my eyes sting like Andaliman pepper juice has flicked up from the spice table and splashed in my eyes. The wood devils have sent fog so thick and poisonous that my throat feels dry and raw and my breathing is heavy and hard. Staying still is good, it doesn’t hurt so much, but I must make the effort and get to the shop.
I ask Jesus for courage and pray for salvation. Lying flat on the brown-tiled kitchen floor that cools my cheek and soothes my mind I watch a trail of black armoured ants make their way from the locked food cupboard to the outside, flowing silently under the store door. They are heroic. Tiny, tiny things, barely living but surviving. I envy them their togetherness. A little army marching for a common good and hope. My Madam could learn a lot from them.
I wake with a start. I realise I must have drifted off to sleep for a bit. The shadows in the garden have lengthened and the firecracker flowers have crept back into themselves preparing for the evening. What time does Mr Lim close his shop? Will he serve me or accuse me of stealing the money?
Oh, when did every action start to require so much thought? I’m weary, God, so weary. I cry for my mother and for my poor, sad heart.
There is a cicada on the windowsill. I find this strange because they are naturally shy creatures. Its tobacco-brown body is shiny and strong in the gathering dusk. Its legs create a music that is long past bringing memories back to me of the vil
lage and the gentle nights by Ebu’s fire. It rests on the cheap, steel window edge and I think that it must be brave to be in this strange, troubled place and play its music for me. And that I must be worth something to this world. If the little creature can be brave then so can I.
The window is tight even for my tiny frame and I catch a fragment of my blue shirt on a jutting, rusted nail. Better that than my skin. I wiggle myself through and land lightly on the concrete outside. I feel awkward and unsure like an elephant calf born early but I remind myself that I am committing no crime. I keep that mantra in my head. I know that I can I am small and light enough to climb the security gate that guards the side entrance. I know that the streets will be empty as the air thickens and lungs begin to burn. No one will be bothering about me while I try to pretend that I belong in this outside world.
The first thing I notice is the largeness of everything. I don’t remember the last time I was outside, free to hunt the honey and sail into the wind. A dusty black cat emerges from the little park across the road, swaying oddly with its docked tail. They do that here. Hack off the kittens’ tails or drown them in the big drains at the back of the houses. These people are so careless with life and haughty with death. The cat and I exchange furtive glances before it totters off to raid the bins of a nearby house.
I can see Mr Lim’s shop in the distance. I suppose this makes it sound kilometres away but of course it is only a few hundred metres. The tarmacked road and wide pavements are identical in this area but the flowers and plants explode with a revolutionary beauty. It makes me laugh, but only a little because the air is too choked with the devil fog to see the efforts that go into curbing the gardens and their wild ways. To think you can control the grass, the soil, the roots, the sap!
Bitter Leaves Page 14