It is a curious feeling, this fire in my belly. A rush of protest between my ears and down my arms. My fists clench automatically and my lips purse with displeasure. I am sitting in judgement of something and I relish every moment of it. To experience even a tiny chunk of power is quite wonderful and I stamp down on any thoughts of fear or worry. This feeling is golden. Like my mother’s voice and the milk from our Jamnapari goats. It is delicious.
Something near to confidence brims inside me and the shop is smaller than I had thought. I had always imagined it would be so big. So unattainable and angry. But it is shabby and old. Bare and slipperless. The tiny birds in their cages are agitated by the heavy air but are too weak to sing or chirp and I have no time to comfort them.
Mr Lim is not to be seen and I keep my head down shuffling down the rows of food. I make my way to the back carefully and select some fresh fruit. The mangoes are blushing and smell of rain and leaves and the apples lie rounded and chubby like a serene Indian god. I take one of each and move up towards the counter clutching my ripe fruit. The masks are in cloth bins by the entrance. I can see them but a queue has formed and I don’t want to draw attention to myself. A fearsome-looking Chinese Madam stands in front of me and I automatically take a step backwards to distance myself. She is behaving oddly. Pulling at her clothes and muttering. I glimpsed her face only once in profile and it is a devil mask. A ruined mess of black and red and I look away quickly.
The Filipina girl who works for Ebony Ma’am is holding the hand of the lovely little western boy she looks after. There are times when she still tries to talk to me but I have to gesture silently to the camera that follows my every movement and records my daily work and she nods in understanding and a sad look comes over her face. Her face is not so friendly now – lines of worry crisscross her perfect tawny forehead. The other shopper, an older western Madam in a sarong and slippers, there is a sadness on her face too. I feel a kinship and a mounting desperation that nobody is safe from the pain in this dark place.
Hidden by bars or hidden by make-up. It is all the same. We are all the same.
The shopkeeper has appeared again and he is hopping about like a ragged flea. His face is flushed and I can smell no good on him. My heart pounds as he shouts and gestures at us. What is he saying? There is a rush and the sound of water thunders in my ears as I watch him bolt the door and my mind nearly breaks in two. And I run to him screaming, imploring him to let me out because someone from my Madam’s family will be checking on me later and the consequences, if I am not in the house, will be terrible for me.
And then I hear the child start to sob and I know we are at the mercy of Mr Lim and his mercy is not to be tested.
And then night seems to arrive early and the floor and its mismatched vinyl tiles rise to greet me like a lonely dog too long without its master.
MADAM EUNICE
112 Sabre Green
Today I am fevered. I can feel a sickness invading my blood. It is as if evil has come to stay. The children have been sent home from school because of the hazardous pollution index and their off-tonal screeches of delight reverberate through my head like the sound of the piano tuner.
It is unusual to have my sons home without the iron-banded presence of my husband and I usually enjoy this time enormously. But, today, I am hiding in my white bedroom, a haven of pales and mutes, and still their boisterous play interrupts my thinking. The walls of the room start to pulse and my nerves begin to bounce in time. This makes me anxious because usually this room is the safest space for me. I do not share it with my husband and even the children are discouraged from entering unless absolutely necessary. The maid should never be in here except to clean or bring me refreshment.
But today even this room feels like an enemy presence so I crawl towards the ivory bathroom with its cool and creamy Italian marble, step into the shower stall and push my forehead against the wall. With one hand I fumble for the tap and turn it to its highest setting, barely conscious of the scalding water battering my skin. The water pounds my head and body and suddenly I can hear and see nothing except the water. I sink onto the floor of the shower, the tiles exerting a momentary chill against my skin, and sit hunched against the wall allowing myself to be carried away with the steam and heat.
I think about the haze. Rationally, I know that it is an environmental problem. The palm-oil fields being raped by companies who care little for the place or the people who live there. No point bleating about it unless you want to be seen as lambs ripe for slaughter. Yes, the realist in me has no doubt that this haze, this dense, uncomfortable smoke-laden atmosphere, is unavoidable. As I have often thought, when we have done with this world, it will come to its end and it isn’t for us to argue with that.
But the Eunice who huddles in the shower, whose hands – ugly claws marked by blue veins and chipped varnish – are outstretched before me, this Eunice feels differently. I am not rational as I sit gibbering, my hair plastered against my bony face, my lips chapped and painful. The air outside has been sent to haunt me. To punish me for something I can’t fathom. I rack my brains for histories of a family curse. Of something I have done to anger the gods and make my life so. Surely not, I am only living my life as any good Chinese woman would. Adhering to the Asian principles of face and a fierce pride that are celebrated as an integral part of my culture as well as being imprinted into my personality like a wax stamp.
I do not feel like the Tiger woman that I have shouted about so often. I am little more than a field mouse who has lost her way back to the wheat barn. The rough furrows of soil are confusing and every screech is from a hungry owl tracking my progress. I am weak and naked. Unkempt and unarmed in the face of this backlash. The air is toxic and leaks its poison into my mouth and throat, scraping its grey fingernails hard across shell-pink skin and then pushing into the dark places of the lungs. I feel that if I don’t move I might die here. And so I do move, levering myself upright and stumbling, staggering, falling into each step. I forget that I am soaked and that my make-up is dissolving onto my cheeks. My clothes leak as I haul myself down the stairs, so weak that I have to sit for the last part and slide over each step, shaking and jittery.
The maid is polishing the windows with a scarf tied around her mouth; the air conditioning is woefully inadequate and when she sees me, she pulls her scarf down and her mouth opens in a slack peasant shape and I retain a spark of old ‘Eunice’ and want to slap her face. But even thinking such a thing saps my energy and I am left with just enough to walk the hall, gingerly like a novice model on a Milan catwalk, and make it through my front door.
Outside is deserted and in my highly sensitised state I can feel the silence and see the poisonous trails. The air is red with them. The road and park are empty but I see the lights on in Lim’s shop. You can always rely on greedy Lim to be open in times of trouble. He is probably charging double and rubbing his trotters together as he does. And so what? He is just operating from a sense of survival. He has always treated me with an obsequiousness that I have accepted but felt disgusted by. Lim is too oily, too smiling, too deferential. I fear that like my maid he laughs behind my back. But his lights are on and I need something to shine on me today. I need some illumination and a way to find my path.
The status BMWs and Lexuses are parked as usual; few are moving. But then someone drives slowly past me, or it seems they are. My fear is that time is slowing again, that ghastly precursor of the arrival of the thing that stalks me. The woman driving, beetle-black hair and an anus mouth, scowls at me. And the reflection I see in the car window is an exact representation of how I feel inside. Orange-tinged lips snarling with apprehension. Torn, my colours run, my edges double-blurred. Hissing at the back of the retreating car and the woman’s obvious disgust makes me feel stronger for a second and I carry on limping down the road.
I am trying to remember what brought me here. I wipe the back of my hand over my mouth and then start thinking that I’m bleeding, but it is just the waxy
stain of lip pigment radiating across my hand like infection. I sigh deeply. This cannot end well, I think as I enter Lim’s shop.
I sense other people and I do see them, their details leaping out at me with a sickening precision. Two are maids, I presume. One a sick-looking Indo farm girl and the other a Filipina, far too smug for her own good. Glistening with health and happiness as she clutches the hand of a small western boy with a delightful smile. A western woman that I think must be his mother stands apart from them. She is dressed horribly in a sarong, her rather unkempt hair scraped back and her insipid watery blue eyes flickering back and forth from the boy to the door.
Lim appears from somewhere gabbling about saving us from the toxic air and that no one must leave until the authorities tell us. The idiot must be having a panic attack – his eyes are unfocused, his glasses slightly off key. In a moment of clarity I start towards him to read him the riot act but am beaten to it by the Indo girl who has become quite hysterical, pulling on his arm and slobbering over his cheap, blue shirt.
And then just as I am feeling rather more part of this world an evil palsy is cast over it rendering me frozen. The hooded figure appears behind Lim and a little girl is beside it, her dreadful mouth agape, her eyes crying blackness. The figure lifts a free hand to its hood and pulls it slowly back to show its face for the first time.
And I am scratching at my face and eyes. I would rather be blind than have to revisit such horror again. I barely see the Indo slut sink to the floor and the only sound left in the air is the little boy’s wailing siren.
MR LIM
Sabre Green Corner Shop
I am master of all I survey.
That being a dismal little whore of a shop pandering to fucking westerners and sabi maids. I serve them every day with a grimace on my face and a very dark heart. It shouldn’t be this way. I was born to much greater things.
My great uncle was a famous Singaporean politician. He was tortured by the Japanese during their cursed occupation of my home. And the Japanese know about torture. Just watch a sushi bastard at work. The clinical filleting, the slash-slash of ink sacs and the acidic balm of citrus. I have no Japanese patrons and I am glad. We Chinese loathe the Japanese. It is a historical hatred. They are betrayers by nature. Wasteful, egotistic and demanding. For such a small nation their arrogance is embarrassing. Little tin starred soldiers acting as if sacrifice was such an extraordinary thing. To be celebrated. Pah! We Chinese men know the true meaning of sacrifice as part of our moral code. We nail it to our hearts with our kin’s blood and savour the pain with smiles of the penitent.
I can even smell them. Insipid and wan like the noodles they consume. My sacrifice is this dank little shop serving those who are not fit to collect my piss and my damaged reputation because of one small slip. I had no idea she was so young. Why would I? So I got a bit rough – I thought she liked it. Pah! And the little bitch ruins my reputation and forces my family to turn their backs. So I know about sacrifice, Nippon bastards.
I learnt a long time ago there is no one to trust in this world. Except for my sunbirds. My beautiful song-fire birds. You know how much they are worth. Thousands of dollars. Their olive plumage and twist of yellow around their eyes make them exceptionally rare. A small fortune hopping and tweeting about me during the day and safe in the shop at night.
And those stupid western cows sidling up and looking shocked. Pretending to ask interested questions about my birds when really all they want to do is complain that they are in cages. This obsession with freedom? We are all in cages from the moment we are pulled from our mother’s womb. I’ve learnt to ignore their eyes and their bleating. If a new cow asks a question I generally ignore it and smile in a meaningless way.
My birds love me. When I clean their cages they are nervous and hop around me urging me to finish my task soon. If they are so unhappy why do they never fly away? They have plenty chance but they don’t because they love me, Lim, and my love is like a gentle father.
This haze is worrying me though. I have the television tuned to Media Corps and the pollution is a hot topic. The index seems to leap up every twelve hours. How will this affect my birds? They are my children and without them I think my life will shrink and become unmanageable. I have already brought them in and their cages stand scattered around the back of the shop until I can work out the best way to protect them. And still I watch the news, the lipsticked statue mouthing five depressing stories for every positive one. Her lacquered hair shiny in the studio lamps, thickly black like sweating asphalt in the midday sun, distracts me from the printed ribbon at the bottom giving the hazard index of 401.
This is very dangerous for us. The masks I sell are flimsy and unadventurous. Why would I buy anything more industrial? The politicians promised us it would never happen again. That our collective health would never be threatened in this way. I’m sure their collective health is just fine as they lie on batik sun loungers high above the smog in the Cameron Highlands. Waving ornate palm fans over their stressed brows.
Ach! My head is swelling. I can feel the rage building and this is not a good thing. I watch my hands and the veins turn through blue to purple and swell and throb. My spectacles are misting over and sweat is collecting on my forehead, beads of betrayal, that threaten to run down my cheeks and into my collar. I must close the shop for the first time ever. Even when I had influenza three years ago I slept in a camp bed in the tiny alcove at the back overseeing Hung Ling and his friend. So ill that even the cockroaches that ran over my face and hands couldn’t distract me from how many times the till was rung or the shop door jangled.
But today is different. My birds are in danger and they are too silent and still. There is no joy coming from their tiny bodies – just a silent quivering of fear and possibly death.
There are four cows queueing at the counter but I ignore them in my quest to close the shop against the smog. I wasn’t planning on shutting the shop for ever. Just enough hours to wait out the poison and see if it settles. As I bolt the doors I see a scrawny little brown hand plucking at my sleeve and I turn and there is a skinny farm girl, number 20 maid, with tears in her eyes, begging me to open the doors. Snot is running down her face and her eyes are puking tears. She is disgusting and I shrug her off. Unsteady on her feet already she falls to the ground and lies there.
Then one of my regulars, number 35 maid but not maid, shouting in my face. Her pale, bovine cheeks redden as she lows into my face. How I detest these western cows. This one has rolls of fat and huge udders straining against the flimsy material of a cheap royal blue sarong with small golden elephants dotted all over it. I do find those breasts faintly erotic but the overall demeanour of her repulses me. How dare she shout in my face? I place my hands over my ears and start to hum loudly. This technique used to work with my ex-wife. Shouting over her I explain that it’s not for ever and if they could just calm down.
I didn’t notice the little western boy until now – the really beautiful one with the smile like sun-drenched jasmine. I have always liked him because he is so polite and has such a sweet smile. Also his western cocksucker parents pay their bills on time and their maid is the most beautiful in the area. But she turns me down every time. Politely, sure. But every time? Who the fuck does she think she is? Some Filipina tart who would be working the Manila casas or KTVs if she wasn’t here. I think maybe this anger shows in my face because when I look up she flinches and hugs the boy close to her. Why won’t these stupid women understand that I’m trying to help them? Trying to save them from terrible things outside. And all I’m getting is snot and shouting. And then two things happen almost simultaneously.
The Chinese woman who resembles a mad xiǎochǒu has begun wailing and scratching violently at her face. Blood begins to creep out from beneath her broken nails and I think to myself that this is a woman possessed. That a demon is inside her or nearby, and fear starts to boil in my stomach and my legs feel unsteady. I find myself staring helplessly at them all completely
at a loss. They don’t seem willing to listen or even understand how helpful I’m being.
A banging starts on the outside of the shop door. A relentless thudding and kicking at the door. I can hear a muffled male western voice shouting and swearing outside and as I think about his fists pounding on the doors and how he might, enraged as he is, use those fists on my body, one of my Chinese statues comes flying through the large window that faces onto the green and catches the light particularly well to show off my bargain bins.
A huge, bearded fellow, the Sir of the Filipina maid and papa to the beautiful western boy comes stepping through the smashed glass and broken goods wielding a golf club. It is the raving Scottish teacher and I hold my hands above my head in a placatory gesture. After all, we Asian men know that red-bearded westerners are to be avoided at all costs. They have a fearsome reputation and their anger knows no limits. I care nothing for my shop window but I do care for my life. He spits and swears into my face, towering over me, and I think about cutting his head off with a machete and that makes me feel a little better. My face feels hot and my eyes film over with what I hope is sweat but believe to be tears.
Then the huge, furious ang moh gathers up the women and herds them out of my shop and I watch as they pick their way through the hostile fragments of glass and wood. My statue is gone, shattered into thousands of cheap replica pieces, and I can only hear the thunder of blood in my ears competing with the hysterical shrieks from my birds. I stare at the wreckage and shake my head in dismay. How has this gone so horribly wrong? How did this day become so destructive?
Bitter Leaves Page 15