by Ovidia Yu
“We will all wrap up our own food to celebrate Salim wrapping up the case and me unwrapping my foot,” she said.
Nina rolled her eyes but said nothing. Aunty Lee’s hot pohpiah filling was delicious and needed no excuse. There were fresh prawns, crabmeat, shredded omelet, spring onions, and garlic to go with it. It was the ideal spread for a hostess who wanted to enjoy her own party because all the work could be done in advance and during the meal everyone rolled their own dinners according to their taste.
And there were even little dog pohpiahs (filled with bacon and pork hash) for Tammy, who was fully recovered and had been smuggled in for the celebration.
“Pohpiah and my super new invention: Chilled Revenge. Because Mark said revenge tastes better cold.”
“Where is Mark?” Mycroft asked. “Not coming tonight? I hope Selina’s not still feeling bad. For a while I was afraid someone poisoned her and my Cherry might be next!” He grinned at Cherril, who smiled back wanly.
“Mark is not coming,” Aunty Lee said with a huge, beaming smile. “So many things to cook, I almost forgot. Selina went to see the doctor but she is not poisoned, she is going to have a baby! My first grandbaby! Tonight they are at Selina’s parents’ house.”
This led to a round of toasts to the absent couple and laughter that they were spending the evening interviewing various pregnancy fitness coaches and pregnancy diet counselors, but talk soon returned to Josephine and Allison, whether it was worse to kill humans than dogs, and how two apparently nice, normal young women could have turned to violence.
“It all started with the puppy killer case,” Aunty Lee said. “Like Raja said, Allison—who we knew as ‘Vallerie’—was traumatized by the online mob rage directed against her after the incident with the puppy. Allison had always thought of herself as a super organizer and controller, and it was a shock for her to discover she couldn’t control what people thought of her. Like many insecure people she was a big bully in small ways—taking it out on the people and animals around her.
“Josephine was also changed by what happened. With the Internet community cheering her on, Josephine felt famous and powerful. More dangerously, she enjoyed the self-righteousness of having unleashed well-deserved vengeance. The problem is that feeling is addictive, as you can see from witch hunters and Anti Pink Dot gay bashers. When the excitement was over and Allison left Singapore, Josephine was forgotten. Her flower-arranging service was not very successful, but it explains her familiarity with the cable ties and latex gloves she used as the murder weapons. She saw herself more as a vigilante than a murderer. I don’t think she would have put it so plainly even to herself, but that is what it was.
“In fact, Josephine and Allison were very alike. It struck me that they made very similar comments about a gay man working in the hotel—”
“I know you showed Jacky that photo of Josie and Brian,” Cherril pointed out. “He only recognized Brian.”
“Jacky said he didn’t remember seeing Josephine,” Aunty Lee corrected. “That threw me off too. Then I realized that was because dear Jacky doesn’t pay much attention to women. A big mistake, Jacky! Poor Brian. Of course he went to the hotel with Josephine, but I’m sure he didn’t know what she did there.”
“Poor Josie. You know I used to wish I was like her?” Josephine had always been the confident, beautiful one. Cherril had envied Josephine’s confidence even more than her beauty. Josephine had never cared whether other people would accept her or what they would think of her.
“Of course. But you grew beyond it and she didn’t. That’s the problem with hitting your peak too early. You stay at the stage you feel most successful. You don’t try out new things. You don’t grow anymore. You are like the bean sprouts that are grown in the dark. Your body stays white and you never grow green leaves to survive on your own. And you are only good for crisp eating—you will never become a plant.
“Allison wasn’t thinking logically. The lawsuit was a straw she grabbed at and gave her an excuse to come back to Singapore to get revenge on the people who had ruined her here. I wondered why she wasn’t rushing to get out of Singapore as fast as possible, given she was always saying how much she hated Singapore. I think she came to believe that if her ex-husband, Mike, was imprisoned or hanged for murdering ‘Allison,’ then her kids and her London apartment would be hers again. She really didn’t know where else to go or what to do with herself. For all that she bossed her husband around, he had always taken care of all the practical details. And that was also why the people she resented most in her life were not just you animal people but her ex-husband and her sister.”
“Why? What did they do to her?”
“They were successful and they were happy—without her. To add insult to injury, Mike Fitzgerald was planning on getting married again. And to the woman she blamed for what had happened in Singapore. While staying with her sister, Vallerie, in America, Allison learned from her children that their father was going to Singapore. She assumed it was to announce his engagement to Josephine. She got Vallerie to come with her—and records show Vallerie paid for their tickets. But when the real Vallerie found the kerosene that Allison bought to set fire to the clinic, she was horrified. Allison drugged Vallerie with her sleeping medication, and it was Vallerie who was asleep in the hotel room when Josephine came up. It was Vallerie who Josephine killed.”
Aunty Lee continued: “Allison was fine until the Internet explosion against her. There may always have been that side to her personality, but if not for the wave of Internet hatred, it might never have surfaced. In a way, Josephine and the web activists had created the monster in Allison. Or awoken it anyway. Because there is probably some such monster inside each of us.”
When Aunty Lee disappeared with Nina to prepare to present her special dish, Cherril drew Mycroft aside.
“I have to talk to you.”
“You want to talk now?” Mycroft asked. He looked around the room. “We can go back home to talk.”
“No.” Cherril also looked around the room. She did not want to bring this back to the beautifully laid out Peters house. That would always be Mycroft’s home more than hers. But they belonged equally in this familiar, cozy café. Most had finished eating by now. Only a few diehard eaters were still going strong. Anne Peters was tempting or perhaps challenging SS Panchal to swallow just one more pohpiah that she was folding specially for her . . . one filled with little more than her favorite prawns and crabmeat and lashings of chili, garlic, and sweet sauce. Once immediate hunger was satisfied, people could choose to eat what gave them the most pleasure rather than what would fill them up fastest. And that was when their true tastes were revealed. Cherril felt a stab of jealousy. It was not fair. She had a home and a husband and—
“Well?” said her husband.
“What if we never have children?”
“Then we’ll get a dog.”
“Mykie, I’m serious.”
“Two dogs then. So they can keep each other company when we’re not around. And if we want to travel they can look after Mother and Tammy. What sort of dogs, do you think?”
Cherril was almost distracted. It was tempting to think they could just have dogs instead and never have this discussion, but she had just seen firsthand the damage secrets could wreak on a marriage. But how to begin? Aunty Lee always said, when dealing with prickly subjects (crabs in her case), “Just throw it into the pot first. Afterward you can slowly see which parts you can use.”
“I almost had a baby. Long ago, right after school. But it died—I don’t even know if it was a boy or girl—soon after I found out I was pregnant. I think maybe that’s why we’re not having children now. Maybe I can’t have any more babies.” She expected him to be angry, to accuse her of lying and keeping things from him.
“Sweetheart, what happened?”
“I don’t want to talk about it. Not yet.”
“All right. But what happened to the baby?”
“I don’t know. The docto
r said sometimes it happens and nobody knows why. I don’t know whether it was my fault and he didn’t want to tell me. I was only seventeen then.”
“Good lord.”
But Mycroft did not seem angry, at least not with her. “Why should that mean you can’t have another baby now?”
The answer came out of her mouth automatically: “Because I don’t deserve to have one.”
“Do you want us to have a baby?”
“Oh yes, of course. But it’s been so long and there’s still nothing.”
“Then we’ll go and find out what’s wrong. But if you got pregnant before then the problem is more likely to be with me. Would you leave me if that’s the case?”
“Of course not!”
“We’ll figure it out together, okay? Trust me this time.”
“Okay.”
Watching from across the room, Aunty Lee saw Mycroft put an arm around his little wife and give her a big hug. Cherril buried her face in his shoulder and the awful tension that had been growing in her was finally gone. Well, thought Aunty Lee, now Cherril had let go of whatever had been bothering her, and very likely Anne Peters would soon have the grandchildren she was so looking forward to!
Aunty Lee’s Chilled Revenge was a tom yam–flavored spicy seafood jelly made in her largest lotus flower mold and turned out onto a bed of watercress and surrounded by chunks of pineapple. Suspended in the cold blossom’s savory pale yellow gel were chunks of crabmeat, prawns, scallops, and red, green, and orange filaments of sweet peppers, baby asparagus, and carrots. It was beautiful, Cherril thought. But then everything looked beautiful to her tonight.
“Because people say revenge is best served cold,” Aunty Lee explained. “Same with jelly. First must be boiled very hot until the gelatin melts, like Allison’s hot anger. But having hot anger inside for so long made her go a bit crazy. Josephine covered up her anger at Allison—not for killing the dog but for treating her like a stupid local girl. Josephine was full of things she had never forgiven her parents and friends for. And holding so many nuggets of revenge inside her made her cold and dead inside.”
Aunty Lee gestured at her chilled creation with satisfaction. “Sometimes getting successful results isn’t a matter of stirring and applying heat all the time. Sometimes you have to step back and sit down and let things get cold enough for their true nature to show.”
The jelly was a success. The pohpiahs were a success. And Aunty Lee’s ankle was sufficiently healed that she had walked without support all evening without noticing.
“Go to bed first, Nina. I’m just going to sit here awhile.” Aunty Lee settled herself by the open doors to the breakfast patio.
“I just put everything in the fridge first.”
The sweet scent of night jasmine wafted gently in with the night sounds of Singapore. No matter where you were on the island there was the hum of traffic in the background, with occasional vehicles closer at hand. And the lights too—it was never completely dark here. But this was Aunty Lee’s kind of peace. A small photo of ML stood on the low coffee table beside her and she picked it up and ran a finger over the worked silver frame. She had done this many times before. The finger was worn and roughened now and the frame was scratched, but the half figure in the frame remained buoyantly unchanged, laughing into the sun shining on him.
“Your son is having a baby,” Aunty Lee whispered. For a moment a miserable loneliness threatened to overwhelm her. How she wished ML could have seen his first grandchild to carry the Lee name.
Nina appeared with a small glass of Yomeishu health tonic. “Nah. To help you sleep. Otherwise too tired, too excited, you cannot sleep.” She paused. “You may have to order more mangoes.”
“Really? You mean all the mangoes I bought . . .”
“All finished already. People are already ordering more mango konnyaku jellies.”
Aunty Lee sipped her tonic wine and allowed herself to be tired. Her twisted ankle had taught her to allow other people to do things for her, and now she was going to allow herself to take things easy when she had to. That was what was really important—along with knowing others needed you, you had to know what you yourself needed. And, of course, she had discovered online bulk shopping.
“We don’t have to stop at mangoes,” she told Nina. “Durians are coming into season soon.”
Acknowledgments
So many people helped (and put up with me) during the writing of this book. In particular I want to thank my agent Priya Doraswamy; my super editor Rachel Kahan; all my fellow Singaporeans (right up to ministerial level!) who spoke up for Tammy, the 7 month old puppy who was adopted then euthanized; and all the great people at William Morrow/HarperCollins who did the real work of creating this book: Trish Daly, Joanne Minutillo, Lucy Gibson, Alaina Waagner, Katherine Turro, Serena Wang, Jennifer Hart, Liate Stehlik, and David Wolfson.
P.S. Insights, Interviews & More . . . *
About the author
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Meet Ovidia Yu
About the book
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Reading Group Guide
Read on
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Cherril’s Mango Konnyaku Jellies
Homebaked Mooncakes
Aunty Lee’s Guide to All Things Singapore
About the author
Meet Ovidia Yu
OVIDIA YU is one of Singapore’s best-known and most acclaimed writers. Since dropping out of medical school to write for theater, she has had more than thirty plays produced in Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, including the Edinburgh Fringe First Award–winning play, “The Woman in a Tree on the Hill.”
She is the author of Aunty Lee’s Delights and Aunty Lee’s Deadly Specials, and a number of other mysteries that have been published in Singapore and India. Ovidia Yu received a Fulbright Fellowship to attend the University of Iowa’s International Writers Program, and has been a writing fellow at the National University of Singapore. She speaks frequently at literary festivals and writers’ conferences throughout Asia.
Despite her writing career, when she is recognized in Singapore it is usually because of her stint as a regular celebrity guest on Singapore’s version of the American television game show, “Pyramid.”
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About the book
Reading Group Guide
1.At the start of the novel we learn that the victim, Allison Love, had been run out of town by animal activists. Was their outrage warranted? What does Allison (and furry Lola’s) story say about social media and its powers? Are we meant to sympathize with Allison or the activists?
2.The narrator tells us: “[Inspector Salim] was aware his country’s strength came from its ability to attract the best and brightest of foreign talent. Like he had learned as a boy breeding guppies, for the best colors you had to constantly add specimens caught in different canals to vary the gene pool.” Do you think this is an accurate description of Aunty Lee’s Singapore? Are there pros and cons to its highly diverse society?
3.“As a foreign domestic worker, Nina was exposed to a lot more of the hidden underside of people. Nina had observed that people were generally worse than they appeared socially. . . .” Do you agree? Which characters have a hidden underside? How are those undersides revealed?
4.Josephine de la Vega, a former Miss Singapore who feels increasingly washed up, has pinned her hopes on marrying expat Mike as a way to get out of a country where she increasingly feels trapped. Is she right to feel that way? Why does marriage seem like the only possible out to her?
5.“Life would be so much simpler if people said what they thought,” Aunty Lee reflects. True or untrue? Does Aunty Lee herself always say what she thinks?
6.Do you agree with Cherril’s decision to keep her abortion a secret, despite, as Aunty Lee points out, that it was perfectly legal? Was her mother-in-law right to hire a detective to discover Cherril’s secrets before she married t
he family’s only son?
7.How does Aunty Lee get to the truth about Vallerie’s identity? How did the infamous Allison Love manage to hide in plain sight for so long in a place where she was so infamous?
8.Who is Aunty Lee thinking of when she reflects: “The reason cold dishes were complicated was the multiple cooking methods involved. . . . A cold, savory mold called for design, execution and presentation. It was the same thing with creating the perfect revenge.”
Read on
Cherril’s Mango Konnyaku Jellies
KONNYAKU is a traditional Japanese high fiber health food that has recently taken Singapore by storm, especially as a substitute for gelatin in jelly desserts. Konnyaku jelly molds come in a range of designs, from sheets of 8 mini-molds each (this recipe fills 2 sheets) to large animal or cartoon character shaped molds.
Ingredients:
2 cups of ripe mango cubes 10g packet of Konnyaku powder Water
Instructions:
Distribute half the mango cubes in the jelly molds.
Blend the other half of the mango to a puree and add enough water to make up 1 liter. (Instructions on the packet will probably tell you to add sugar, but it’s not necessary if you are using mango puree.)
Heat the mango-water mixture in a pan and stir in the konnyaku powder.
Bring to a gentle boil, stirring till the konnyaku has completely dissolved (about 5 minutes) then turn off the flame.
Ladle the thick liquid over the fruit in the molds.
Chill in the fridge for at least 3 hours before unmolding.
Homebaked Mooncakes
TRADITIONAL MOONCAKES consist of a “moon,” usually represented by a salted duck egg yolk, surrounded by a sweet filling encased in a decorated pastry shell. Most Singaporeans leave mooncake making to professionals but others, like Aunty Lee, love a hands-on challenge, especially when it comes to a tradition of several hundred years!