Now That It's Over

by O Thiam Chin

  When the food is cooked, she heaps the rice and stir-fried vegetables onto a metal plate and brings it to me. Though I’m hungry, I can barely eat more than a mouthful of rice. She serves up a bowl of egg soup and nudges me to drink. I take a few sips and push the bowl away, suppressing the urge to throw up. I lie back on the bed and stare at the ceiling. The old woman returns to the wooden dining table and eats quietly; other than the chirping of crickets out in the gathering dusk and the nervous clicking of darting geckos, the hut is silent.

  The old woman has still not spoken a single word to me, yet I do not find it in any way strange. It has briefly crossed my mind that perhaps she is mute, or if not, that she has chosen not to speak for reasons of her own. Perhaps since she lives alone—I have not seen any other person in the hut or its surroundings—she does not need to speak at all, and maybe has already given up the ability. I myself am still too fatigued to speak, and even if I could, what could I say? Even the simple act of opening my mouth and forming words with my tongue seems like an impossible feat, one that requires a reserve of strength that I do not have.

  After our meal, the old woman puts aside the leftovers in the larder, and washes the plates and bowls. When she is done, she dunks a rag in a small pail of water, then takes out a glass bottle filled with a dark liquid from a wooden chest beside the wall. She places a small stool before me and rests my feet on it. She starts to clean the dirt from the cuts and wounds on my soles and calves, causing me to grit my teeth against the pain. After pouring a small amount of the dark liquid onto another rag, she dabs gently. Some of the injuries are inflamed, while others are starting to ooze yellow pus. I bite my lip and taste blood. The pain tips over into numbness. For some of the larger wounds, the old woman applies a salve—from another jar—with her fingers. By the time she is done with my legs, and then my arms, chest and back, I have been reduced to a mass of worn, frayed nerves, beyond exhaustion, and I pass out.

  Waking up later—is it the same night?—I immediately sense the absence of the old woman from the room. In the near darkness, I listen for any sounds of movement amidst the nocturnal noises of the night. A flute-shaped kerosene lamp is placed on the wooden table, emitting soft, feeble aureoles of light that throw the shadows of the objects in the room onto the walls in sharp relief. The wooden door of the hut is partially open, letting in the cool night air. I stumble to the entrance, using the lamp to guide me.

  Outside, I can barely make out anything in the darkness, which has sealed the surroundings in a thick, impenetrable cloak. The sky is a lighter shade of purple-blue, and the scattering of stars seems to pulse with an irregular rhythm, like weak heartbeats. A wedge of light emerges from a gap in the tiny shed beside the hut. In daylight, the shed looked nondescript and run down, constructed out of uneven planks of wood and a corrugated-zinc roof; but now in the dark, it seems ominous, foreboding.

  I hobble towards the shed, careful not to trip over any unseen objects or make a sound. The door is unlocked. I pull it open, adjusting my vision to the wan light provided by the lamp on the floor. The old woman is squatting just inside, her silhouette shaky on the wall of the shed, her body bent over something. I sidle up to her, and peep over her hunched shoulders.

  Lying on the ground before us is a young boy, unmoving, his body enshrouded in a coarse blanket, revealing only his bloated face. And cutting across his closed left eye: a deep, red scar.

  6

  AI LING

  The pallid sun peeks out from behind a bank of grey clouds as a trio of sea birds glides across the sky. The waves lap onto the beach, leaving behind broken pieces of bleached wood, dead dull-scaled fishes and tangled coils of seaweed, occasionally touching the woman’s feet, leaving behind fizzing trails of bubbles.

  The solitary seagull, glancing at the body, and then at a distant point in the sea, flies down from the branch of the coconut tree and lands a stone’s throw away from the woman. It ambles towards her, hesitant, as if wary of startling her.

  The woman is wearing a white T-shirt, smeared with dirt and grease and in shreds around the neckline and sleeves, and a pair of lavender-coloured shorts that hug her hips snugly. Specks of grimy sand pepper the woman’s arms and legs; her exposed skin has turned darker. The seagull appraises the woman for some time before it ventures closer. It pokes its beak at her shoulder a few times and pulls back, waiting for the woman to move. Then it jabs her neck, harder this time, as if wanting to stir the woman out of her stasis. A tiny hermit crab skitters out of the shadow of the woman’s neck, its claws extended and snapping, and scrambles towards a nearby hole in the sand. It moves quickly, hardly leaving any mark. The seagull watches its movements for a moment, and then, in a swift motion, picks up the crab, crunches it down and swallows in a gulp.

  Emboldened by the quick meal, the seagull lowers its beak to the woman’s face, its dark outline reflected in the dull surface of her right eye. It pokes at the eye, assessing its jelly-like texture. The half-shut eyelid reveals a brown-tinted iris. The seagull regards it for a second, and then in a sudden move, it strikes in sharp, precise thrusts until the eye pops out, restrained only by the optic nerve. Thick dark blood dribbles out of the socket and down the woman’s cheek. The seagull bends and holds the eyeball with the tip of its beak, giving it one last tug, freeing it. The eye catches the sunlight and seems to be taking in the seamless, thriving sea.

  In the next moment, the seagull jerks back its head and consumes the lifeless object.

  Her eyes were what Wei Xiang had loved most about Ai Ling, what most attracted him when they first met during a school reunion. They were attending the twentieth anniversary of their secondary school in Ang Mo Kio; Wei Xiang was three years older than Ai Ling, and although they had been in the same uniformed group in school, the National Police Cadet Corps, they had not known each other then—Ai Ling, being in lower secondary, attended the morning session while Wei Xiang came to school in the afternoon. The uniformed group was the largest activity club in the school, with hundreds of members, and had different activities for different secondary levels.

  At the reunion, Ai Ling bumped into Wei Xiang as she was leaving the buffet table, almost spilling her plate of fried egg noodles and chicken curry on him.

  “I’m so sorry. I’m so careless sometimes,” Ai Ling said. Wei Xiang stood a head taller than her, and his hair was neatly trimmed. She smiled up at him.

  “No, no, it’s me,” he said. “I kind of surprised you there. It’s my fault, really.”

  “It’s okay, no harm done,” Ai Ling said, suddenly feeling self-conscious. Her green-and-black geometric-print dress felt too tight on her hips. She should have worn a different ensemble, perhaps the blouse and skirt she had bought last month; she knew she would have looked better in it. She tried to smooth out the creases in the dress with her free hand.

  They introduced themselves and traded abbreviated stories of their school days: graduation years, mutual friends and acquaintances, teachers they remembered, extra-curricular activities. That was when they discovered they had both been in NPCC, and puzzled over why they had not met before.

  “I wasn’t really the most popular guy in school, maybe that’s why,” Wei Xiang said.

  “Maybe,” Ai Ling said. “Although it’s not as if I was the most attentive person in school either. I was very blur and clueless then.”

  They laughed, and Wei Xiang took a step forward.

  “You have very nice eyes,” he said, holding his smile. “Your irises are light brown, very unusual.”

  “Yup, I know. My parents’ eyes are black, so I don’t know where I got mine.” Ai Ling looked down at her black pumps, embarrassed by the attention that Wei Xiang was giving her. A salvo of noises erupted from the stage, where the emcee was adjusting the microphone on its stand, testing the volume. After clearing his throat, the emcee asked the guests to take their seats, so that they could commence the line-up of performances.

  “Where are you seated?” Wei Xiang asked. Ai Ling
gestured to a table with a nod of her head, where her old classmates were sitting and chatting animatedly among themselves.

  “Can I join you?”

  “Sure, of course,” Ai Ling said, and they walked to the table.

  Ai Ling wanted to take the courtship with Wei Xiang as slowly as she could; her previous relationship had been a shaky, tumultuous part of her life that she wished to erase. Ian, her ex-boyfriend, was also someone she had known back in secondary school, and they dated during their last year in school through their junior college days; for a while, they seemed destined for marriage. At least, it was what Ian had planned, after he settled down with a full-time job in a bank, after serving his two and a half years of National Service in the army. Ai Ling, on the other hand, was not so certain about their future. Part of her doubt had risen while Ian was still in NS and after she had just started her course of study at the National University of Singapore; there, she made new friends and was exposed to different kinds of lives that were more interesting and nuanced than she had known before. With Ian, Ai Ling felt constrained by the ever-narrowing possibility of her choices, as if she were slowly working her way into tight corners and dead-ends. She was fearful of how her life could be neatly parcelled into fixed pigeonholes that would define it: career, marriage, children. Yes, these were things that would matter to her in the long run, but she was only twenty-one then and had not yet seen the world, and she did not want to settle just yet.

  Perhaps, in an unconscious reaction to her gradual drifting away, Ian began to hold on tighter to their relationship, to demand more time, effort and commitment. He wanted to spend every available second together when he booked out of camp on weekends, just them without their friends, as well as to have shared hobbies and activities, like badminton and swimming. For a while, to compensate for her waning interest—she did not dare admit to herself how she felt—Ai Ling often put in more effort to be more involved, to pay more attention to what Ian wanted. She gave in to him time and again, until her own wants and desires nearly disappeared.

  “I feel like I’m losing you,” Ian told her once, over a dinner to celebrate one of their many anniversaries, one which Ai Ling could not remember. Ian bought her some flowers and a small plush bear. She had come to the dinner empty-handed.

  “No, I’m just busy with schoolwork, that’s all,” Ai Ling said, pretending not to understand what Ian was implying.

  “Is everything okay with us?”

  “Yes, of course. Why would you ask that?” Ian shook his head and took hold of Ai Ling’s hand, giving it a squeeze. Ai Ling smiled, knowing that she had, once again, pushed back the inevitable; yet it gave her no relief whatsoever.

  When Ai Ling met Wei Xiang, she was in her mid-twenties, and most of her friends had already got married, settled down, had a kid or two. A steady tremor of restlessness reverberated in her life; Ai Ling had expended much of her energy in her twenties trying to make sense of what she wanted, moving from one job to another, never staying longer than eighteen months in each job. Her parents had frowned on her decision every time she quit, but left her alone. Sometimes, she would feel that she was wasting her life, and that anything that followed was just mere existence. Yet, despite this, Ai Ling rarely envied her friends’ decisions to make do with what they had—husbands, children, good jobs.

  With Wei Xiang, Ai Ling was motivated to grow out of her usual self, to move in an entirely different direction. She was a better version of herself with Wei Xiang, more competent and decisive. Wei Xiang was always sure of what he liked or wanted to do; he was the kind of man who, once he decided to take a certain path in life, would stick to it, and would never stray from it. He laughed at the thought of lost opportunities or opportunity costs: “I make my own opportunities.” At a different stage in her life, Ai Ling might have rolled her eyes at the bland, narrow truth of this trope. She had, in fact, done that with Ian, but with Wei Xiang, she could see the conviction of his actions, the force behind his words. She was drawn to it, attracted to something that she knew was lacking in her own personality.

  “So, what was your ex like?” Wei Xiang asked her on one of their early dates. Ai Ling wanted to dodge this topic, but did not know how to avoid it.

  “He’s okay. We had different priorities. I think he’s married now.”

  “Oh, do you still keep in contact with him?”

  “No. I heard about him getting married from another friend.”

  Ian had got married barely six months after Ai Ling had broken up with him, to a girl he knew from work. Apparently, it had been a whirlwind courtship, something that Ian had orchestrated. He had even called Ai Ling to tell her about his wedding plans, his voice higher than usual: “I’m happy, and I want you to know that.”

  “Yes, I can tell that you are,” she’d said.

  “Will you come to the wedding?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Why?”

  Ai Ling had remained silent.

  “I don’t know what’s the matter with you. You never seemed to be happy with me, and now you can’t be happy for me. Why? What’s wrong with you?”

  “No, really, I’m happy for you.”

  “You were never happy, and you will never be happy with anything. You don’t know what you want, and it’s really frustrating.”

  “That’s not true. I just don’t think that what I wanted was something you could give me.”

  “You are lying to yourself. And you’re lying to me.”

  Ian had swiftly ended the call, and in the wake of it, Ai Ling felt battered by his accusation. Ai Ling had always known what she wanted, or at least what she did not want: her relationship with Ian. She had tried almost everything to keep them together: putting Ian’s needs before hers, being more loving, letting him make all their decisions, giving in to his requests for sex. But the more she committed to this role of being a good girlfriend, the more she felt out of touch with her own self, as if she were living a fabricated life divorced from her inner state.

  “Do you still miss him?” Wei Xiang asked her.

  “What’s there to miss?”

  And Ai Ling believed the truth of her own words.

  When Ian had brought up the topic of marriage, in their sixth year of courtship—he was working his first job, as a junior credit analyst with a local bank, while pursuing a part-time degree in business studies at a private tertiary institution—Ai Ling knew she had to make her decision sooner than planned.

  So, over dinner one night, when she had drunk enough wine to calm her jittery nerves, she told Ian her decision. For a brief moment, Ian laughed, assuming it was a joke. And just as Ai Ling was about to take back her words—maybe she had gone too far—Ian saw something in her eyes that made him quiet down, to fully absorb what he was hearing. He stared at Ai Ling.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t think I’m ready,” she said.

  “Then we can talk about this another time. No hurry in rushing into marriage.”

  “No, Ian, I don’t want to get married. I don’t think…”

  “Why? What do you want then?”

  “I want us to think about what we both want, really. What you want. What I want.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know. I think we should just take some time to think about all this.”

  “Bullshit,” he spat. “Just tell me what’s on your mind.”

  “I want to be alone for a while.”

  “Alone? Why?”

  “I’m tired, Ian. I’m tired of being your girlfriend. I’m tired of where we are going. I’m tired about what’s to come.”

  “You’re just fucking selfish. You only think of yourself. You never think about us.”

  Whenever Ai Ling recalled Ian’s words, she remembered how they had struck a part of her that knew, despite her resistance, that he was right, that she was only thinking of herself, of how she had wanted to get out of something that no longer meant anything to her. She was only being f
earful of what she did not know or want. And for a long time after their break-up, Ai Ling did not dare to date anyone. Even when she began to date again, she was often afraid of taking the next step in commitment, afraid that even at her age, she could still make mistakes that might have worse consequences than those she had encountered with Ian.

  “So you are telling me that after Ian, you dated many guys casually?” Wei Xiang had joked over coffee later. He made a strange face at Ai Ling, feigning incredulity.

  “No! Come on, the way you put it sounds so wrong. I’m not that kind of woman. I just went on some dates, that’s all, nothing serious.”

  “Then what kind of woman are you?”

  Ai Ling pinched Wei Xiang on his arm. He winced playfully.

  “So, this is not serious too?”

  “Well, no, not serious at all, just a casual date,” Ai Ling said, before breaking into a laugh.

  Wei Xiang, too, had gone through a break-up that took a while to get over. His last girlfriend had cheated on him with a colleague, her supervisor at work, a married man with three children. And she had broken up with Wei Xiang, because she had wanted another life with the married man, which was something that Wei Xiang could never wrap his mind around. He could not imagine why anyone would want to live like this, and after the break-up, like Ai Ling, he had refused to keep up any contact with his ex.

  Once, when Ai Ling was over at Wei Xiang’s place—he had decided to cook a meal for them—she peeked into one of his photo albums, curious about how his ex looked. She had expected to confirm some of her suspicions—to have Xiang’s ex marked out in some obvious ways—but the person she saw in the photographs was no different from any woman on the street: pretty, yes, but not special in any way that was physically apparent.

  Yet, Ai Ling still felt a sort of fascination about what the woman had done, to give up what she had with Wei Xiang to be a mistress to a married man.