by O Thiam Chin
Standing in the study, Ai Ling did not know how to make sense of the happiness she had once felt. She shook her head, then turned off the light and stood in the dark for a long time.
The next morning, Ai Ling was reading a magazine in her aunt’s hospital room, seated on a chair facing the room’s entrance, and when she glanced up, she saw her aunt’s eyes wide open, staring at her. Ai Ling jolted up out of the chair, tossed down the magazine, and rushed to the bed, careful not to touch the tubes when she held her aunt’s hands. Her aunt smiled weakly, but did not say anything.
Barely an hour after she called her parents to inform them about the news, they were there beside her aunt’s bed, attending to her needs, and skirting the growing puzzlement gnawing at her features. Ai Ling’s mother gently hushed her with admonishment to rest, to have some food, a hot Milo drink. A few times, her aunt looked at Ai Ling for answers, but she was quick to avert her stares. The following afternoon, Ai Ling’s mother told her aunt about the death of her husband in a truncated account of the accident. By the end of that day, her aunt was ready to leave the hospital. Ai Ling and her mother made the arrangements to take her back to her parents’ place, where she would stay until she was well enough to return home. Her aunt did not offer any protest. “She’s still in shock,” her mother said.
At her parents’ flat, Ai Ling watched her aunt even more intently, as if observing a trapped, terrified animal, though she kept an appropriate distance, not wanting to draw attention to herself, even as she stayed alert to her aunt’s presence whenever she paid a visit, every night after work. Her aunt showed little emotion. Once, when Ai Ling saw her aunt standing by the window, staring into space, she approached her and stood by her side, waiting for her aunt to notice her. When she did not, Ai Ling spoke up.
“Are you okay?” Ai Ling said. Her aunt, startled, turned to look at her, rearranging the expression on her face to something less fearful.
“Yes, I am, of course,” her aunt answered.
With the bruises on her face and arms slowly fading, her aunt convinced Ai Ling’s parents that she had recovered and wanted to go back home. After thanking all of them for their caregiving and also for helping to settle her late husband’s funeral, her aunt packed her things and made a quiet departure. Ai Ling offered to help her aunt settle back in. She swept and cleaned and put everything back in place, while her aunt glanced at every item in the flat with a detached gaze, as if she did not know how they had got there in the first place. She left Ai Ling to the tidying up and went to lie down in the spare bedroom, which had a single bed for visiting relatives or friends, closing the door behind her. When she had finished her tasks—the day had slipped into a dusky, warm evening—Ai Ling knocked on the bedroom door and entered when she heard no reply. Her aunt was lying on her side, facing the wall, seemingly asleep. Not wanting to wake her, Ai Ling left the flat quietly.
For a long time after her aunt had moved back home, Ai Ling lived in a state of constant anxiety, and it diverted her attention from the other things in her life that had come to somehow feel trivial and narrow, even petty. Then one night, as she was getting ready to sleep, her mobile phone rang.
“Hello, Aunt Jenny?” Ai Ling said, but there was no reply. For a brief moment, Ai Ling thought that maybe she had mistaken the caller’s detail and glanced again at the screen. It was her aunt’s home number.
“Hello, can you hear me? Is everything okay?” Ai Ling said, fear rising in her voice. Finally, she thought she heard something on the line, a few words, or maybe a cry—she could not tell exactly. Then there was a long, pitiable groan that seemed to reach deep inside her, clenching her in a tight, suffocating grip.
Ai Ling clung to the phone, listening, waiting for a voice to speak to her, to tell her what to do.
20
CODY
The year Cody turned sixteen, his mother was diagnosed with late-stage breast cancer and was sick for eight months before she died. He was taking his O-Level examinations that year, and his mind was distracted during the hazy, indefinite period of her dying. She had known about the cancer after going for a regular check-up at the polyclinic. It was only when the cancer reached the third stage and Cody and his sisters became suspicious of the frequent hospital visits and their mother’s dwindling frame and thinning hair that the parents broke the news over dinner one night. Cody lowered his chopsticks and stared at his parents, who carried on eating from their bowls of rice, unperturbed by what they just said. His mother spoke up after a few unbearable seconds and assured them that everything was okay, and that they would talk about it in due time, after everything was settled. After this, she did not say another word.
Because he was the youngest in the family, Cody was not expected to do much except stay at home after school and study for the impending examinations, while everyone else did whatever they could for his mother. His eldest sister accompanied her to the hospital for her check-ups while his second sister helped their father out at the fish stall from time to time. When she was at home, Cody would stay by her side and talk to her about the latest Channel 8 drama serials, the actors who were in them, the gossip and the scandals, and she would sometimes ask him about school, homework, his preparation for the O-Levels, and his friends. He would skip from topic to topic with as much lightness as he could muster, not wanting to trouble her in any way. Though there were many things on his mind, Cody could not get the words out.
He often wondered how he could tell his mother about what was going on in his life then: that he was struggling with his studies, that he was failing class tests even though he had studied for them, that he had a crush on a boy in his class, that he was confused about his feelings, and how he had become fearful and anxious all the time about who he was and who he was becoming. She did not need to know all this. Even before she was diagnosed with breast cancer, his mother had a forceful and domineering personality, and raised the children with the same authority and discipline employed by her own parents. She was the disciplinarian in the family, and would watch over their comings and goings, making sure that they did not get into any trouble, that they knew exactly why they were punished, that she did not raise them to be spoilt or ungrateful children. She would mete out her punishments—ten strokes of the cane, five slaps on calves or thighs—and tell them to reflect on their actions, to think carefully about their wrongdoings. Only fools repeat their mistake, she would intone. Growing up under the unbreakable spell she cast over them, Cody’s love for his mother was mired with fear and awe, spiked with thorns.
The boy Cody had a crush on, Cedric, was in his form class, and they had been friends since Secondary One, though it had never gone beyond simple exchanges and basketball games and smiles-and-nods of acquaintanceship. Though they hung out together with other classmates on many occasions, he hardly knew Cedric except for the fact that he had a younger sister and his father was an accountant. It was only in Secondary Three that Cody began to become aware of his attraction to boys and to Cedric specifically. It was hard to know when all this first started, and by the time he grew aware of it, it had become something that took up most of his waking thoughts, like a terrible secret had taken up residence in his head. At thirteen, his body had grown into a new one, and he was constantly conscious of its demands and urges and vanity. His first erection was a shock; he was surprised by how little he was able to control something that seemed so natural. His first wet dream when he was fourteen shamed him so thoroughly that he threw his soiled underwear and shorts into the rubbish chute. The first time he touched himself and produced an instant erection and later a quick ejaculation, he was overcome by the intense sensation and complexity of feelings that his body could generate over such a private, secret act. In the jail of his changing body, this act alone was his only constant, an escape into something that his other life, public and visible, was unable to provide.
Cody and Cedric were about the same height, though the shape and size of their bodies were at opposite ends of the spe
ctrum. Cody was skinny, with a long torso and gangly limbs, while Cedric wore his mass of lean muscles comfortably and proudly. Like some of their classmates, Cedric would play basketball without a shirt, his pants riding low on his slender hips, the pelvic bones making a V that disappeared under the waistband of his underwear. Sitting at the side of the court, Cody would pretend to watch the game enthusiastically while, at the same time, ingraining his memory with as many images of Cedric’s body as he could, which he would replay later in his head while masturbating in the school toilet or at home. He never went far with these images; they were only the means to an end, to the pleasure he wanted to extract from them, and he never considered where they could lead him, to recognise something in himself that he was evading. At fifteen, Cody was far from knowing what he wanted, or who he was, or whether there were other boys like him; yet under this murky, impenetrable surface, he was deeply aware of the burden he was carrying and the secrecy that enshrouded it, and he took great pains to hide it. He presented another self to the world to appear normal—a self that was remote and detached, yet accommodating and highly adaptive to its surroundings, changing its shape and form to survive.
Towards the end of her life, Cody’s mother would lie in bed all day long, her eyes fixed on the ceiling, mumbling to herself; when he entered the room, she would turn and stare as if registering him for the first time, a person who had materialised from nowhere. It was the medicine taking effect, his father would say. Cody would bring her simple meals of sweet potato porridge or herbal chicken broth and feed her in small spoonfuls, which she would refuse after two to three mouthfuls. “Enough, enough, you eat,” she would say, lying back on the bed, the exertions deepening the lines around her eyes.
On more lucid days, she would tell stories about her past, how she had wanted to be a teacher but her father’s disapproval—he needed her to help out at home and at the fish stall he owned, and also to take care of her nine siblings—led to her discarding her ambition. She took great pride in her responsibilities towards her younger siblings, a no-nonsense role that had shaped her into the woman she became. Yet, when she told Cody how she and his father had met, she got more bashful. Helping her father at the fish stall in the mornings, she was always conscious of how she smelled. “The stench of fish went into everything, into my clothes, under my nails, into my skin; no matter how I cleaned or showered, it’s always there.”
So when Cody’s father asked her out one day—he was the delivery driver for the vendor who supplied fish to her father—she was caught off-guard, though her doubt did not stop her from going out with him. She was twenty and of marriageable age, and Cody’s father was the first man to ask her out; she was curious about this shy, sinewy man who had never said more than good morning when he handed her the daily invoice. They dated for four months before he proposed marriage, and then they were married for twenty-five years.
“So fast,” Cody said. “How come you never considered other guys, or dated more before deciding?”
“What was the point?” she said, amused. “Waste of time. I knew he was the one I wanted to marry, a good man, stable and reliable. Unlike young people these days, talk about love and romance all the time, have so many choices but still can’t make any good decision, breaking up here, divorcing there.” She then closed her eyes, slipping into other thoughts.
Sometimes, after taking her afternoon medicine, Cody’s mother would turn pensive while she mused. She would remind Cody that she had not got married because she loved Cody’s father from the start—“none of that nonsense”—but because of the realistic, steadfast qualities that marked him as a man of conviction. The love came later, years after they were married.
“Love does not always have to be the first thing,” she said. “Use your head first, and the heart will follow later.”
Love was not the word Cody would use to describe how he felt about Cedric, which was something more evasive, more illicit—lust, infatuation, or something else? It only took a sneak peek in class for Cody’s whole being to be wrapped up for the rest of the day in a confounding state of confusion, shame, and deep unabated longing. He felt sharply alive, and at the same time, terribly conflicted.
In school during recess, Cody would sometimes head to a deserted boys’ toilet located in a quiet corner on the third floor of the Technical block where they had their weekly two-hour Design and Technology lessons. The toilet was used as a storage room for broken toilet bowls and covers, ruined tables and chairs, and cracked mirrors, the floor covered with a brown carpet of dried leaves, animal faeces, and the shrivelled carcasses of cockroaches, beetles, and even a sparrow that had flown in through the broken window slats. He had tried the taps the first time he was in there, but the water supply had been cut. He had pissed into the sink while staring at his reflection in the cracked mirror, emboldened by the little act of subversion. The toilet soon became the one place in school he escaped to whenever he needed to be alone.
Sometimes he would bring a book to read, but because the air in the toilet was stale and dusty, he could not concentrate for long. A few times he gathered the dried leaves into small piles, set fire to them with matches and watched them burn; when the smoke became too thick, he would stamp the fire out. When the mood struck, he would strip down and masturbate in front of the row of mirrors, and come very quickly onto the dirty floor.
Then one day, he heard someone outside while he was masturbating to mental images of Cedric, and ran into the nearest stall with his shorts still down. Just as he slammed the stall door closed, he heard the person enter the toilet.
“I saw you, Cody,” said Cedric. “What are you doing here?”
Cody gasped, but stayed silent, his heart hammering in double-time. He was still holding onto his erection, which had become even stiffer. He willed it to subside, but no luck.
“Come out now, why are you hiding?”
“Go away, please,” Cody whimpered.
“What are you doing in there?” Cedric knocked on the door, and in that sudden moment, Cody came furiously in thick, milky spurts that hit the graffitied wall of the toilet stall and slowly dripped downward. He bit his lips to suppress the cry.
“Nothing,” Cody whispered. “Just go away.”
Cedric laughed and slapped his palm once on the toilet door before leaving. In the ensuing silence, Cody let out a long breath, bristling with heat and shame from his own foolishness—how precariously close he had come to ruin.
After recovering, Cody left the toilet and went to one of the school administrators to report the faulty lock to the deserted toilet. In no time, the lock was changed, and, after that, he never went near the toilet again. When Cedric broached the topic later on, Cody laughed off the whole matter, brushing it aside as nothing more than a childish indiscretion, an innocuous act. Cedric cocked his eyebrows and looked doubtful, but did not inquire further.
Cody was in school the day his mother passed away. He was called out of class by the school clerk, informed of the news and excused for the rest of the day. As he made his way home, his mind stayed vacant. There were a few relatives already present in the flat when he finally got back. His father was talking to them while his sisters went around serving tea and packet drinks. Cody slipped past them, catching snatches of words here and there, and paused at the entrance to his parents’ bedroom. His mother lay on the bed, her eyes closed, hands by her sides. For a brief moment, Cody thought she was deep in sleep, her features undisturbed, but there was an absence that was palpable in its stillness. As he walked up to her, he could not look away from her face. Cody stood by her side for some time before his father entered the room with a relative, prompting him to leave quickly.
The period between the wake and the cremation was unending, an unbroken series of activities, filled with noise, smoke and condolences. People came up to Cody, took his hands and offered their words of comfort. He listened, nodded his head and returned their smiles. With his silence perceived as grief, he was able to retreat
into himself, into the space where words no longer meant anything. Even when he was surrounded by people, he felt cut off, removed from whatever was happening at the moment, and the sensation that it brought was strangely comforting, as if he were slowly becoming invisible, and all he had to do was sit or kneel or stand, and nothing more was expected of him.
After they brought back his mother’s ashes, Cody went into his room and did not come out for a week. At first, he thought that he was just exhausted from the frictional effect that people had on him, from an extended period of contact and proximity. He slept for eighteen hours, dead to the world, and even after he woke up, he could not bring himself to leave the bed or come out of the bedroom. His father and sisters left him alone for a while, thinking that it was a phase, but after two days they became alarmed. His sisters came to sit beside him, patting his head and shoulders, reassuring him with their soft, cajoling words. He closed his eyes and turned to the wall, tensing his body at their touch. They brought food, leaving it on the side table beside the bed, dishes of rice and vegetables and meat that turned cold after being left untouched.
He slept for most of each day; when he could not, he would stare out the window at the narrow fragment of the sky, listening to the muffled sounds of the world outside the flat. He was not able to hold onto any thought that flitted through his mind. Occasionally, a memory would dislodge itself and force its way into his consciousness: a face, a word, a repeated montage of images. He could not shut these memories down, so he let them pass through him. When he slept, these thoughts would slip into his dreams, and in them he could see himself trying to make sense of what he could not hold on to. His mother featured in most of these dreams—standing at the stove and stirring a pot of pork ribs and lotus root soup, or listening to a radio programme on the Rediffusion. Cody would hover at the edge of these visions, observing her, unable to touch her even if he wanted to, his mother existing in a realm beyond his reach. These dreams would haunt him while he was awake, leaving him helpless in discerning the real from imaginary.