by O Thiam Chin
Once, Cody asked Wee Boon to join in the football game, and he reluctantly agreed. The leader of the team chose Wee Boon last, eyeing him with a suspicious stare, and commanded him to take the defender position. Unathletic and uncoordinated in his movements, Wee Boon was slow to chase after the ball and too timid to block anyone who charged at him. Unlike him, Cody had learnt to hide his fear, to steel himself against any shot that was thrown in his direction, masking his clumsy footwork with a slide. He was never good at the game, but that was hardly a reason for not playing it. Wee Boon only played that one time and never again, and Cody did not ask him to join in any more.
Being an only child, Wee Boon was doted on by his parents and grandparents, and had everything he wanted: sticker cards for Dinosaurs of the Past, a box of rubber erasers that featured the flags of the world, new pencil cases and school bags every year. While Cody had to save up to buy a new pack of sticker cards every other week, skipping his recess break once or twice a week, Wee Boon would get a pack whenever he went out with his grandparents. His Dinosaurs of the Past book was three-quarters full within two months after they started, while Cody’s was still patchy, with many empty boxes. Wee Boon would give him any sticker cards he needed, though he was too shy to ask. In time, their booklets looked almost similar, lacking only those phantom sticker cards that never appeared in any packet they bought.
After school each day, Wee Boon’s grandmother would be waiting for him outside the school gates. With her white hair held tightly in a bun, and wearing a rosewood samfoo with frog buttons, his grandmother was a gentle, smiling woman, who would reach first thing for Wee Boon’s school bag and water bottle when he came out of the gates. She would smile at Cody and, in a spiel of rapid Cantonese, ask whether they had been good. Wee Boon would look embarrassed and tell her that he was hungry and ask for a snack—an ice-cream or some White Rabbit candies from the provision shop. Since the boys lived in the same neighbourhood—their flats were only two blocks apart—they would walk home together, and Wee Boon’s grandmother would buy Cody whatever Wee Boon was having. When they reached Wee Boon’s block, he would sometimes invite Cody up to the flat, where he had his own room and several large boxes of toys and shelves of comic books. At his place, he would show Cody his latest toy figurines and allow him to play with them, and they would stage epic intergalactic fights that often ended with everyone but one last hero massacred. When they got bored with these fights, they would lie on the floor and read the latest Old Master Q comics. When it was time for Cody to leave, he would borrow a few comics, and promise to return them after he’d finished reading them. When he forgot or wanted to hold onto them, Wee Boon did not say anything or remind him to return them.
In class, Wee Boon was the kind of student that the teachers liked: obedient, quiet, giving all his attention to what was said or written on the chalkboard. He handed up his homework on time and his name was always among the top when the teachers announced the results of a test or examination. He was the form teacher’s pet student, the one she would count on to be reliable and submissive. This naturally meant that he was intensely disliked by the other students in the class, especially the boys, who would ransack his school bag and hide his textbooks. He, however, never did tell on anyone, and would bite his lips and smile away any discomfort or annoyance. Some of the girls would tease him for his shyness, but most of them would befriend him and invite him to join them for zero-point or hopscotch. Because Cody sat beside him in class, he would often copy Wee Boon’s homework; his parents had hired two tuition teachers, one to teach only Chinese, and the other English, maths and science. Cody had to seek help for his homework from his two sisters, who were less than helpful, being too impatient or busy. When Cody was ill-prepared for a test, Wee Boon would tilt his test papers in such a way that made it easy for him to see, and in this way, and many others, they became fast friends, with a hoard of each other’s secrets.
On weekends, after tuition classes, and if Wee Boon’s parents allowed, they would play at the void deck under his block, kicking a ball or taking turns on Wee Boon’s new bicycle, which he had received as a present for getting the highest marks in the midyear examinations. They rarely ventured farther than the void deck or the playground in front of the block of flats, coming up with imaginary battles and using the playground as the battlefield, dividing it up into different lands, fighting against each other, the hero against his enemy. Once, Wee Boon clamoured to be the hero, and Cody pushed him to the ground, telling him that he was too weak to be one, and Wee Boon turned away, his eyes brimming with tears. Sometimes, Cody would let him win the battle, only because he had pitied him. When it was time for dinner, Wee Boon’s grandmother would come down to fetch him, and he would shout at her to leave them alone. Cody would never have dared to raise his voice at any adult, especially his elders; the few times he had done so, he was punished with strokes of the cane. Wee Boon’s grandmother would wait patiently for their game to end, and when they were done, she would draw out a handkerchief from her pocket and wipe down Wee Boon’s reddened face and damp hair, which he would shake off with a brusque shrug.
Their friendship was never a balanced or fair one. While Cody often sought peer approval from the more popular boys in class, joining them whenever they asked him to play football or other games on the school pitch, Wee Boon would seek out only him when he wanted someone to play with. Even at that age, Cody knew better than to be seen playing with him all the time in school, and from time to time he would shun Wee Boon deliberately, or push him away whenever he saw the other boys glancing in their direction. They would make jokes about Wee Boon behind his back and tease him to his face, and even if Cody were standing there, he would pretend not to see or hear anything, and let their laughter run their course and die off. While he was sometimes angry with himself for not doing anything, he was angrier at Wee Boon for being such a pushover, a weakling with no backbone. During these times, in Cody’s dark moods, Wee Boon would stare at him, a look of hurt and incomprehension in his eyes. But Cody learnt soon enough to ignore these looks, pushing them into the background.
It was Cody’s idea to take up swimming as their extra-curricular activity in Primary Six. The swimming lessons were held twice a week after school, at a swimming pool only five minutes’ walk away. After lunch at the school canteen, Wee Boon and Cody would walk there and flash their school passes to gain free entry to the pool. They would change into their trunks at the changing room, and head for the main pool where the coach, a pot-bellied man with leathery skin, would be waiting, along with other students of the school’s swimming club. While Cody learnt to swim the breaststroke adequately after only three lessons, able to complete a lap without panicking, Wee Boon was still struggling to keep his body afloat and to regulate his breathing. After each lesson, he threatened to quit, though he never did. The boys were taught other strokes—freestyle, butterfly, backstroke—and practised these by swimming a few laps. While they swam, the coach would bark out instructions from the side of the pool, correcting arm or leg posture, or telling them not to slow down. When they finished their assigned laps, they would hang onto the edge of the pool, splashing water at each other or competing to see who could hold his breath underwater the longest. Sometimes they would tickle or punch each other in the water to make the other person give up, to let go of his breath. In most cases, Cody was the winner, but during those times, when they really wanted to know who could hold his breath the longest, without any trick or disturbance, Wee Boon would emerge the winner; his longest record: two minutes and fifty-one seconds.
After the lessons ended, Wee Boon and Cody would continue to swim or wait inside the pool, since the changing room would be crowded with their classmates and there were only a few showerheads. They would linger until most of the boys had left before they came out of the pool; most of the shower stalls would be empty by then.
One day, after a long and strenuous lesson, Wee Boon and Cody decided to forego the waiting and brave
the crowd in the changing room. By the time they entered, all the stalls were occupied, and they had to wait, sitting on the damp wooden benches in front of the stalls. Wee Boon turned suddenly quiet, tapping his feet on the wet floor, his body radiating tension. The boy who was showering in the nearest stall, a fellow classmate, turned his body slightly towards them, and in a glimpse, Cody saw a neat turf of black, curly hair above the boy’s penis. He was not surprised, since he had seen other grown men showering in the changing room, and knew what their bodies had looked like. Around him, in school, he was vaguely aware of the changes that were taking place in the bodies of his classmates: the breaking of their voices, the growth of hair in their armpits and on their arms and legs. While it would be another year or two before these changes occurred to Cody, he knew that he was heading for some sort of a transformation, though the thought itself was not comforting in any way.
When the classmate was done showering, Cody told Wee Boon to go ahead, but he shook his head, telling Cody to go first, that he would wait for another available stall. Cody rinsed himself off; his skin felt sticky even after the shower. He quickly towelled off. Later, when he was busy packing his wet swimming trunk and goggles into his school bag, he did not notice Wee Boon coming out of the shower. It was only when he heard laughter coming from some of the classmates at the other benches that he turned to see what they were snickering at. Wee Boon, naked, was frantically searching through his bag for his towel, and even though he tried to hide it as best as he could, there was something odd about his penis at first glance. At first, Cody was surprised that Wee Boon too had grown some pubic hair, since they were the same age, but what was more surprising was that he was sporting a hard-on. Because it was a new sight to Cody’s eyes, it looked painful to bear: bent upwards, red, angry-looking. In his distress, and amidst the boisterous jeering, Wee Boon’s dick got even harder, stretching out of the foreskin, like a turtle’s head peeking out from its wrinkly neck.
The classmates’ taunting grew louder and more explicit, and Wee Boon snatched up his bag and ran to one of the toilet stalls, slamming the door. Even as they left the changing room, the boys continued to chant names at him; one of them even kicked the toilet door hard as a parting gesture. It was only when all of them had left that Cody offered his wet towel to Wee Boon and coaxed him out of the toilet stall. His face was livid with shame, and he did not look at Cody once while they were making their way home, not even stopping at the snack-food stall where they would usually buy a stick of fish balls or a curry puff to share between them. When Wee Boon reached his block of flats, he ran up the staircase without saying anything.
For the next few days, Wee Boon had to endure a battery of merciless teasing from the classmates who had witnessed his episode at the swimming pool. The news took less time to spread than a match catching fire; before the morning assembly was over, it seemed that everyone, including the girls in their class, was aware of what had happened. The girls giggled and whispered loudly among themselves, about how disgusting it was, how gross, so like him to do it, how dirty, how shameless; their taunting, unlike the boys’, was relentless and vicious. Wee Boon, on the other hand, kept up his composure and silence; the only sign that betrayed his distress was his lips, which were tightly pressed into a thin, quivering line. Sitting beside him those few days was like being near a seemingly calm dog with a muzzle over its jaws, contained and subdued, but only barely. He and Cody did not talk about what had happened; they hoped, separately, for all this to pass, which it did, after another episode of embarrassment from a different classmate, who was caught staring up some girls’ school skirts.
Yet the whole incident shifted something imperceptibly between Wee Boon and Cody, as subtle and permanent as a fissure left behind after an earthquake. They still talked, and still played whatever games they had played before, but there was a distinct, though unvoiced, divide that held them apart. It was as if, now that Cody was aware of Wee Boon’s undeniable transition into a different person, he could not not see who he was: a person who was no longer someone Cody could say he knew well, a stranger who had taken the place of a friend. Even in their closeness, they held a respective distance. It was only much later, when Cody discovered his own inclination towards other boys that he knew what he had been afraid of acknowledging then: attraction. Raw, open-faced desire.
Even after the incident, they did not stop attending the swimming lessons, though they had learnt to wait until all the classmates left before getting out of the pool and showering at the changing room. In their separate stalls, they showered and changed quickly, and avoided looking at each other’s bodies.
Even though the swimming lessons ended after the June school holidays, Wee Boon and Cody continued to swim whenever they could, on weekends and on days free from remedial classes or other school activities. Most of the time, they went together, but sometimes Wee Boon went by himself. At that stage, he had become a more consistent swimmer than Cody, and could easily beat him at freestyle. His body too had taken on a different proportion, lean and broad-shouldered, with hair growing intermittently on his lower calves; his voice had cracked in the midst of their final year in primary school.
One Saturday afternoon, Cody was there early and waited for twenty minutes at the entrance before deciding to go ahead without Wee Boon, thinking he must have forgotten about the appointment. After changing, Cody walked to a corner of the seating area, where there were fewer people, put down his bag and began his warm-up. Scanning the pool, he noticed someone getting out at the far end and stretching his legs. Wee Boon. Cody wanted to shout to him, to let him know he was there, but stopped when he saw Wee Boon staring at a man who had also got out of the pool and was walking towards the changing room. The man turned to look at Wee Boon when he walked past, and from where Cody was standing, he could sense something between them, a sort of tacit agreement, conveyed only by the briefest of glances. Wee Boon paused for a few seconds, and then stepped into the changing room. Cody followed them.
The changing room was quiet except for an occupied shower stall; Cody crept over and saw two pairs of feet in the gap of the stall door. A stream of chatter came from inside, and then there was a long period of silence, followed by some other unfamiliar sounds, as if someone were trying to steady his breathing—sharp exhalations, feral and animal-like. Cody stood there, unable to move, time measured only by the growing lump of bile in his throat that he had to force down.
And suddenly the toilet door burst open. Before Cody could think, his feet were already edging towards the exit. In his haste, he slipped and fell onto the wet floor. He looked back; the man and Wee Boon were staring down at him, a mutual look of alarm and panic on their faces. The man came towards Cody, offering his hand, as he struggled to his feet. Wee Boon stood absolutely still, and even as Cody avoided his look, in that brief moment he saw something in Wee Boon’s eyes that he could only interpret at that instance as: Please, no, don’t. Cody changed into his clothes at the seating area, grabbed his bag and left the pool.
Back in school on Monday, Cody and Wee Boon pretended nothing had happened, even as they went through the usual routines. But nothing was the same again after that. They plunged headlong into their studies, revisions and remedial classes—the PSLE was less than three months away—and left things as they were, unasked and unquestioned. Cody studied with some of the boys from the class, and spent more time playing with them, which meant seeing Wee Boon less.
They took the PSLE, and after the results were announced—Cody and Wee Boon got accepted to different secondary schools—they never contacted each other again. They sheared themselves clean of their past, their childhoods, and moved on. The friendship they had was cast aside quickly, heedlessly, as they began their new lives in their new schools.
15
WEI XIANG
For the past twenty minutes, Wei Xiang has followed a local man carrying a young girl in his arms—small in her pink Hello Kitty pyjamas, her limbs loose by her sides, blood
flowing from an unseen wound on her head—as it is clear, even through the man’s visible grief, that he knows where he is going. The man’s face is tormented, his gaze far away, and the last two fingers on his left hand are missing and bleeding freely. His open anguish singles him out in the crowd, and Wei Xiang was drawn to him at first sight. They now approach the compound of a school cum emergency medical centre, circumscribed by a chain link fence crowded by adults and street kids, and a gate attended to by a guard, who lets the man through. Wei Xiang stands by a muddy puddle near the gate. In the courtyard are a number of dead bodies, and several volunteers are constructing a shelter with metal poles and tarps. A group of street kids lingers at the fence, whispering to one another; one of them stares at him with an undisguised curiosity, before his companion distracts him, pointing to something in the weedy shrubs at the edge of the school field. The growing crowd gawks at the commotion, sometimes letting out a collective cry or yell when another body is carried into the school, clearing a path for the procession.
Wei Xiang steps up to the school gate, and the guard stops him, jabbering at him in Thai. Wei Xiang points to the school assembly hall and, with a loud voice and a series of wild gestures, tries his best to convey his intentions. The guard stares at him, and Wei Xiang, exasperated, raises his voice. “My wife!” he screams into the guard’s face, finally losing his calm. He is aware of the attention he’s getting, the numerous pairs of eyes watching his outburst, but he ignores them. The guard finally backs down, moves aside and allows Wei Xiang to enter the school compound. When he looks back, the street kids are still staring at him from behind the fence.