Cikgu taught her another language too—made of squarish symbols of whorls-and-dots, and branching twigs with crowns of eyes—a language she said no one had any use for any more because the people who used to speak it were quickly dying out of their traditions, forgetting their language. There were not many books to teach it with, but “there’s value in Tuyunri. If you don’t speak it, who will?” Cikgu said. “You are special and that is why I will teach you.” Ria wanted to ask Cikgu how she came to know the language in the first place, but wasn’t sure it was at all right to ask anyone how they knew anything. However, what Cikgu had told her made Ria feel extra special and she took to learning the language with zeal, knowing to spell her apis for “fire” in Sce’ ‘dal, and her krik-eks for the same in Tuyunri. She was happy—happy to know the many ways to speak the same.
Cikgu was not the only person to venture down that path from Kenanga to the isolated house. For all of their isolation and for all of the sweeping that Barani had done, there was one unpleasant thing that persisted in coming.
He first came on a bicycle, meandering over the unevenness of the path, and almost falling more than once. Ria saw him while working on her penmanship at the veranda. His bicycle jolted sideways. He twisted the handlebars as he shot out a leg to stop his fall. He looked up and, seeing Ria, smiled, righting his bicycle before pushing forward until he was just below the veranda. He must have been sixteen or so. The teeth in his smile were very white against his brown skin. His degil ears still stuck out and his hair was still ruffled. When he greeted her, Ria felt like throwing her pencil at him. Useless Boy. But before she could think about not answering his greeting, she had to remember to pull her scarf from around her shoulders to throw it over her head. By that time, Barani came out with her own quiet greeting. Her scarf was already in place and she appeared so composed that Ria suspected she must have spotted the Useless Boy from a distance. The Useless Boy handed Barani sweet potatoes wrapped in tempeh leaves—his excuse for being there.
He always visited when Nenek was not around, his arrival announced by the grating of wheels over the sand covering their small courtyard and then affirmed by the sharp chirp of the bicycle’s bell. Barani would fumble for her scarf, throw it over her hair, tuck in any that tried to wriggle free and rush to the door to greet him. He didn’t seem to mind that Barani’s scarf undulated like a sack full of pythons. He also never asked about the colour of the sisters’ eyes, or why they lived all the way out here. Never. He wore a wristwatch with straps made of “ladder”, like the thing people climbed in the village; an actual watch with moving hands, unlike the one Ria had tried to make out of drawing block paper, which always showed 3.30 morning, afternoon, or evening; a watch he was always consulting when he was with them.
Once Ria carried a pot, ladle and wooden spoon to the veranda, where Barani and the Useless Boy were sitting close together and talking. She drummed a steady “pom-pom” rhythm on the bottom of the upturned pot as she belted out medleys she’d heard before. The Useless Boy clapped for her, which only made Ria sing worse. Barani tolerated it for a while before she snapped her head back and shouted, “Noisy lah!” Other days she wedged herself between them. Still others, Ria spent her day inside the house, reading or writing, sometimes telling stories to herself or folding and lining up armies of coconut-leaf grasshoppers.
Maybe he sensed her boredom and pitied her, because the Useless Boy would at times turn away from Barani long enough to teach her how to make matchbox cars and ice-cream stick guns that shot rubber band bullets. He was attending a public school in a town an hour and thirty minutes away by then, the one with windows that had open-shut glass panes, many classrooms with ceiling fans, a great thing called electricity and a big man named Principal. When he came bearing toys and fascinating new gadgets like ballpoint pens with tube ink encased within hard, transparent outer bodies, Ria decided she liked him a little. Those times, and that time when she had managed to cycle his adult-sized bicycle into a mangrove swamp.
He was smart, Ria often heard Barani praise him in a gentle voice that made Ria’s hair shiver. But Ria recalled the way he had struggled through the swamp mud at low tide to get his bicycle and didn’t think she could agree with her sister. Still, he said a great many things to Barani that Ria, crashing matchbox cars and throwing sticks to bring guava down from trees, did not understand. He would gesture excitedly as he spoke and Barani would listen, watching his face intently. He spoke and she listened, listened until he glanced down at his watch and said he had to go, because he had homework to do and because Nenek would be home soon from her market stall.
Once Ria saw them approaching the veranda after feeding the chickens, and she saw the boy take Barani’s hand. Barani pulled away, staring at him in shock. Ria was watching from the open door, just peeking over the doorjamb, and saw the boy lean in to say something to Barani. Whatever he said, it made Barani run up past Ria into the house. The Useless Boy followed at a leisurely pace, his hands clasped behind his back, chest pumped out full of air. Barani stopped and stood just inside the house, wrapping her scarf tighter around her head, trying to catch her breath.
The boy stared at Barani, as if he wanted to memorise her. Before he left, he said to her, “Ani, wait for Abang eh? When Abang become a doctor, Abang will come back and cure Ani.”
Ria turned away from the scene, mouthing “abang” like it was distasteful question. Disgusting lah, she thought. She popped her head back out. Barani might have replied if Nenek wasn’t suddenly seen hobbling down the dirt path towards the house. Barani threw him a quick glance before darting across the ibu rumah to get to the kitchen. Ria watched the boy mount his bicycle and push off, riding past Nenek with a nod and a greeting. He probably action-action asked Nenek, “Nek, back home already?” but Ria could not hear.
It came to be that he did not return for a long, long time. He was away furthering his education. Some place where they could give him even more homework. Barani pined for him, Ria knew. The older girl seemed to have lost all of her purposeful briskness and went about her chores so distractedly, pausing to gaze out the door so often, that Nenek yelled, “Like there is no other boy tau!” For all his watch-consulting, Nenek knew about the boy anyway. But not from Ria. Ria had kept quiet, swarming matchbox cars with her grasshopper army and bringing down still more guavas with her well-aimed sticks.
Stone People
Sometimes, Ria wished that the Useless Boy would return, if only to make Barani smile again. Barani went through mute periods where she scratched at her arms, as if plagued by rashes, until blood ran. Ria often watched her cook, cry and scratch herself in the gloom of the kitchen. Ria would be on all fours as she peered down the steps, the rest of her body in the ibu rumah and her heart, it seemed, held between crab pincers. If Nenek was home, Nenek would shoo Ria and her questions of “Kakak why, Nek?” away from the kitchen entrance before going down to speak with the older medusa. Those nights Nenek patted Barani to sleep like the latter was still a child. Ria would lie on her side, her hand cradling her head through the flattened pillow, and watch her sister fall asleep in the light from the small oil lamp. When Barani finally lulled into slumber, Ria inched closer and snuggled into her sister’s side, because it was only in sleep that Barani would not push her away.
When Nenek took ill and could no longer go to the market to peddle her wares, it was Barani who undertook the task, strapping a basket to her back and winding her scarf tightly over her head, as if to suffocate her snakes into stillness. Maybe it was because she was a good businesswoman or maybe it was because she was so beautiful, but her returns were always enough for them to live on, albeit simply. Ria had to give up her childish play so that she could be at home in case Nenek needed anything. There were days when she wasted soap while washing clothes, and days when she was too slow in taking out the firewood, so that the rice at the bottom of the pot ended up a blackened crust that she would later spend hours trying to scrape off.
During the aft
ernoon quiet, while waiting for her lessons or for Barani to return, Ria liked to unroll her sleeping mat beside Nenek’s, and lie on her back to be made drowsy by the empty attap roof and the quietude of the jungle sounds. If Nenek was awake, she would ask Ria for stories: “Ria like to story right? Ria story-kan Nenek.” So, Ria told her the stories she’d made up and the ones she’d read. And always the happy ones: those about Feleenese princesses and Scerean princes who would sweep the former off their feet, and about foreign families who lit special, non-cooking fires in their homes and who always had lots of cake to eat.
Nenek died in her sleep.
Every night since Nenek fell ill, Ria woke up to put a salivawet finger under Nenek’s nose to check her breathing. And still Nenek had passed away without her knowing. They only found out after their morning baths when they could not wake Nenek up to be washed and fed breakfast. While the sun was changing into its burning afternoon skin, Nenek’s was cold. The old woman lay in repose, hands clasped over her stomach the way they always did when she slept. Neither of the sisters had known that Barani’s usual leave-taking—“Nek, Ani go first eh?”—and Ria’s gift of a leaf grasshopper that had her best saga seeds for eyes, would be their last. Nenek had never complained, never lamented her lot, never spoke of pains. She had expired in the same quiet, a leaf grasshopper arranged by her head.
The sisters found themselves orphans. They stared at their lost parent before Ria started to cry. Her voice rang from the silence of the small house to the surrounding forest bathed in the light of a bright afternoon.
Nenek should have been buried near their house, where her grave could be taken care of and read to everyday. However, things were changing far beyond the spaces they moved within, radiating from a centre and reaching towards the peripheries of the land they lived on. Cikgu told them that someone called the Gavermen would have none of it. Strange, fancy name this “Gavermen”, and stupid, Ria thought, to not allow loved ones to be buried where loved ones wanted them to be buried. Gavermen had set aside land with plots for every dead body. Plots, Ria thought. A great big collection of stories for passed loved ones, which did not feel quite as comforting. Not knowledgeable enough to argue and with a grandmother waiting to be buried, they agreed to let Cikgu get them a plot number for Nenek. She also helped them arrange for the cleaning of the body and the imminent burial. She advised them to stay at home while some men from the village bore Nenek’s body to her plot. The body was seen into the ground by people who claimed blood relation by husband’s mother’s sisters or brothers, but who had never come to visit, or even liked her presence in the village, let alone that of the two strange creatures in her care.
The day the burial was to take place, Ria threatened to wail, turn Gavermen to stone. However, Barani told her, patience. Sabar. Accept. Some things in life we cannot change, and others don’t do anything wrong to you, you don’t do anything wrong to others.
Because that was Nenek’s moral lesson, Ria listened, slipping her hand into her sister’s as she stood in the shadows just inside the doorway, watching the last of the funeral congregation disappear around the bend in the dirt path. And she accepted.
Then he came, when Ria was crying into Barani’s lap, soaking the material of her sister’s sarong. Barani was stroking Ria’s head, letting the strands slide over her hand, not saying a word. Positioned in that way, Ria almost did not hear the quiet wish of peace upon them. She felt, however, her sister give a start. Ria sat up; wiping her wet cheeks with her palms as she automatically pulled the scarf from around her neck over her head. Eyes heavy and nose feeling swollen, she saw that Useless Boy from years ago peering in from the veranda. Ria glanced to Barani, who stared at the young man like she did not know him, before recognition swept across her features and confused them— with sadness from Nenek’s passing and gladness from seeing him after a long time. She slowly got to her feet as she bade him to enter.
He was dressed in a pressed white shirt, through which his white singlet was visible, all of it tucked meticulously into ironed dress pants. He wore his hair parted to the side, oiled and combed so severely that it looked fake. He wore only his socks into the house, his footsteps feline-like, quiet as a stalking traac’s. He asked after Barani—“Ani baik?”—and hearing the familiar voice was enough to make Barani’s defences crumble.
Ria watched her sister’s face crumple up as sobs racked her body. The man went up to Barani and broke an unspoken house rule when he embraced her. Ria stood rooted while Barani towered, crying into the Useless Boy’s chest. It left Ria feeling a little nauseated. The beginnings of a migraine caught at the areas around her eyes and the top of her head, threatening to culminate at such a point that she had to pick herself up and leave.
Ria walked across the courtyard and ambled into the jungle where she proceeded to pluck fruits she would never eat and to frighten animals on a whim. However, always mindful of Nenek’s rule to never be in the jungle at twilight, she returned home when the day was nearing dark to find the man gone and her sister looking freshly bathed and smelling of talcum powder. Barani did not scold her for being out so late, but Ria found herself wishing that she had.
For days after, she found it repulsive to be near her sister. He came every day. No longer wobbling down the dirt path on a bicycle, his arrival was now always heralded by the steady sputtering of his motorcycle, still on two wheels but moving fast enough so that he could balance himself. He called her “Ani”, sometimes “Sayang”, and Barani called him “Bang”, like she was already his. Ria had never seen the ocean, but if she was to describe it based on what she had read of it, the Useless Boy would be like the ocean, drowning her sister in murk and birthing an alien woman in her place: soft, fragile and silent as a corpse.
Change came to the household suddenly, when the Useless Boy came one day with five other men, one riding pillion with him and the others on their own motorcycles. Barani heard the furore of motors and hurried out, only to halt at the top of the veranda stairs when she saw the strangers. Ria stood in the ibu rumah, her head peeking around the threshold of the front door, watching their approach from behind her sister. Barani eventually descended the steps to meet them, slow and wary.
Two of the men were dressed like the Useless Boy, in short sleeved shirts tucked into pants, while the other three wore shirts with too many metal buttons and too many pockets, tucked into shorts that fell to just above their knees, with black boots and berets. Ria recognised that they were policemen and she tried to recall any bad thing she had done to have them coming for her. Stretching her neck out, she saw the policemen standing at the back of the group, feet apart and hands clasped at their belt buckles.
All the men were staring at Barani, to whom the Useless Boy was excitedly speaking. Barani listened, shaking her head for the duration of the conversation. Soon the two other men started to speak to her as well, first earnestly, then furiously, showing her papers that Barani would not look at.
In time she turned and stormed up to the veranda. Her scarf had come loose, some of the snakes slipping out from under it to dart tongues about her ears. The Useless Boy came in moments after Barani, forgetting to remove his shoes. Ria scrambled further into the ibu rumah when she saw the others come up as well.
The Useless Boy motioned for the others to remain outside as he reached out and grabbed Barani by an elbow to make her turn. “Ani! Don’t be stubborn, Ani. This is all for Ani’s own good!” Ria listened as he spoke about a shelter for them—her sister and herself. He made promises: You will be happy there. It’s better there, and it’s safe. Got electricity, buses and cars, schools!
“Is that where we are going to live? A shelter?” Barani asked in a quiet voice. Looking up to face the Useless Boy squarely, she added, “You said we live with you! In your house!”
The anger in her tone shocked him. It even shocked Ria, who had been on the receiving end of Barani’s disciplining for a long time. After a bit, he relaxed, shaking his head and smiling as if he
found it all very amusing.
“Wah,” he replied, appearing impressed as he leaned back to assess Barani from head down. “Ani so smart now. Talk back to me. Where did you learn all this?” When Barani did not answer, he went on, “Ani, we discuss that later. Abang have a deadline. Development is coming. Everyone is going. The shelter is only temporary. You can work and then buy a house for you and Ria. The city is a place of opportunity, trust me. You don’t have to worry.”
“You promised,” Barani said through clenched teeth, “to cure me when you come back!” She took him in with disbelief before continuing, bottom lip quivering, “I let you—I let you because you said you were going to marry me!”
It frightened Ria to see her sister so angry and so desperate in the way she tried so hard to keep herself from crying. It frightened her even more to know the implications of those words. There was a pause, long and uncomfortable. The Useless Boy made noises in the back of his throat that could be laughter or questioning “uhs” as he kept glancing over his shoulder at the others.
“Life is not that easy, Ani,” he said finally, gripping both of Barani’s arms, his voice hardening as he shook her, as if he was trying to sift into her the complexity of that life. “Ani, you have to understand! I know—Abang know why you can’t go to school. With these ears, Abang hear what the kampung people say, about you, about Ria… Not everyone is like me, Ani. You like or not they will take you away. Better I do than they do. Over there, there will be many people you can be friends with, all really nice people.”
“People like us,” Ria remembered her sister saying when she first found out she couldn’t go to school. It dawned on her why that one girl’s parents said she shouldn’t speak to Ria, and why no one would lend her their eraser. There were no others like them, with snakes for hair that they had to constantly hide, and eyes with which they had to be careful in how they looked at things, especially at people.
The Gatekeeper Page 3