by O Thiam Chin
Studying her mother washing up in the toilet, Yifan could see how time had worked its fingers through her body, turning it soft in some parts, and coarse in others. The stretch marks below her abdomen, the sad hanging lump of her stomach, her wide, fleshy hips—they hid a different story from what was exposed, visible to the eyes: her mother’s taut brown arms, her toned legs, her kind, weathered face. How many stories would a woman’s body tell over time, and which was the one that mattered?
In her own changing body, Yifan felt the same doubts running through her, pulling her in opposite directions. She recalled what her mother had told her when she had her first period: you’re no longer a child now, your body is changing, and you have to know what it needs. Yifan, lying dazed on the bed and knotted with the new found pain, could only think of the unreasonableness of what was happening to her, which had felt personal, unequivocal and unfair. Why her, why the pain—and for how long, she bemoaned foolishly then.
Looking at the pale, wrinkled skin of her mother’s stomach, Yifan could not imagine the fact of her birth, nor that of her siblings’. Nine births, nine months each time; nearly eight years of her mother’s life, laden with the complicated burdens of pregnancy, each taking something out of her. Even while the heft of her mother’s body had thickened over the years, a great part of her seemed to have hollowed out.
When her mother stooped to rinse the rag, Yifan caught a glimpse of the wild, unruly bush of her pubic hair, and unable to watch any further, fumbled her way back to the mattress, willing herself not to think about the things which she had no means to understand fully, or escape from.
In time, Yifan’s body began to fill out, giving her a definition and form that was permanent, undeniable. I’m becoming a woman, she would think to herself. I’m no longer a girl, I’m becoming something else, something more. She carried the new weight of her body with as much grace and intuition as she could muster. She took comfort in the fact that all her female classmates were experiencing the same changes, even as she faltered from time to time in her grasp of the new and pressing needs of her own body. She could sense her mind branching out from its restricted confines, feeling its ways into the lives of others, teasing out what lay beyond the smiling, shiny surfaces.
Especially her male classmates. They were a species unto themselves, and she was secretly fascinated by their world, which came with its own rules and laws and gravity. She watched them with a fervid intent that bordered on the maniacal, which she had learnt to mask in degrees with lowered, sideways glances and a cool detachment. Unlike her female classmates, who revelled in heated closed door discussions of the boys in their cohort—who they liked, who they found charming or offensive, who they wanted as boyfriends— Yifan remained stolidly mum about who she had taken a fancy to. When pressed, she would state the overwhelmingly obvious choice, a boy who was a favourite among her classmates: Hai Feng, a tall, lean boy with a smooth, angular face, captain of the school badminton team, already destined for future greatness in the national squad. It was much easier than if she had to name the person she had set her eyes on and defend her choice.
The person in question was a classmate who sat two rows in front of her: a quiet, reserved boy who liked to sketch in a spiral notebook during the lull between classes. Peng Soon had a spidery frame, long arms and legs, with a closely-shaven head and small, high-set ears. Looking at him in profile over the course of six months in Secondary Two, Yifan had longed to trace her finger along the austere lines of his jaws and nose, to feel the stubble on his sharp chin. When she was called out by the teachers to come to the front of the classroom— to write the answers of an algebra problem on the chalkboard, or to present a book report—she would take the narrow aisle skirting past his desk so that he would have no choice but to look up at her. They had only exchanged a few words on occasion, mostly about deadlines for homework or remedial classes after school, and she had not dared to approach him for anything specific.
For some time, Yifan assumed her interest in Peng Soon was purely platonic and observational. Then almost overnight, it became an unwavering point of fixation, commanding her attention like an insistent, silent beacon. This rude flourishing of an urgent and unappeasable feeling inside her was strange and foreign, and she did not trust herself enough to give in to it just yet, so Yifan was cautious and reticent, keeping her distance. When the other girls talked about Peng Soon, they did so in broad, generalising strokes—“too dorky”, “too serious”, “so stiff”—and labelled him, unkindly, as The Artist, goading one another to model for him, to be the subject of his masterpieces. Yifan listened, but rarely participated in her classmates’ taunting, refusing to give them anything they could use on her.
During the half-hour of recess, Yifan would see Peng Soon sitting on the cement bench beside the school field under the shade of a casuarina tree, his body bent over a page, busily sketching. He had never shown his drawings to anyone in class, but Yifan found out from the classmate who sat next to him that Peng Soon was always sketching strange creatures that made no sense whatsoever.
At one long afternoon assembly in the school hall, Yifan feigned a stomach ache and sneaked back to the classroom. She rifled through Peng Soon’s bag and took out his notebook. It was filled with pencil drawings of animals with fantastical features: a winged leopard with two pairs of hairy legs, a three-horned eagle with the face of an elf, a bespectacled moth with a slick, iron-clad body of a fighter plane. The pages were slightly warped from constant erasing and scribbling.
Yifan paused and held her breath at one of the drawings: a human-sized fox (or was it a woman?) with bare breasts and pointy ears, a trail of thick fur lining the contours of her body, a bushy tail in mid-swing. In her paws, the fox was holding something—a burning orb of fire? A half-eaten heart? Something shifted inside Yifan’s head, dislodging a strip of memory—had she dreamt this before? Why was the creature so familiar? She tore the page out and stuffed it into the pocket of her school pinafore and returned the notebook to the bag. If Peng Soon discovered the missing page later on, he did not let on. Yifan kept the page in the folds of her diary and hid it deep inside a cupboard, underneath a pile of old T-shirts.
During recess, the girls from Yifan’s class would sit at the edge of the field and watch the boys play soccer while gossiping. Liu Ying, the queen bee of Yifan’s clique, turned to Yifan while they were playing their usual round of Truth or Dare, and asked: Now, your turn. Would you rather kiss the snail or Hai Feng? The other girls bent to hear what Yifan had to say, exchanging openly eager looks. Yifan knew the answer she ought to give, yet she hesitated momentarily, looking away for a good measure.
In that split second, Liu Ying sensed the opportunity for a round of ribbing and yelped: Oh my god, you want to kiss Hai Feng, right? You always want to kiss him, I know. You want him as a boyfriend, right? You slut, you cheap slut.
The girls rallied around Liu Ying’s mock-outburst and chimed in with more insults, laughing. Yifan, caught off-guard, could only feign ignorance and playfully plead for innocence. Later, returning to their classroom, they saw Hai Feng coming from the opposite direction and started laughing again, pushing Yifan to the front of the group. Go, go, your prince charming is coming for you. Go kiss him.
Hai Feng glanced over at them and gave a puzzled smile, his stare fixed on Yifan. Breaking from the girls, Yifan ran back to the classroom, her face a radiant foil of heat and embarrassment. She could not process a single thought throughout the rest of the lessons that morning. The teasing continued the next day, and spread to the students from the other classes. Most of the teasing was harmless, and Yifan was quick to brush it aside.
Yet the discomfort of being at the centre of all the bloated attention gnawed at her, as if she had accidentally exposed herself with a small indiscretion, and she was worried that Peng Soon would get wind of it. During lessons, she cast nervous looks at him, and once, as she was slipping into one of her daydreams, Peng Soon turned around and gave her a—kno
wing?—smile. Yifan felt suddenly and painfully visible, blood rushing to her face.
Yifan did very little the next few days except to shift the attention away from her. The excitement soon passed. But just when she thought the matter was all settled and forgotten, she was approached by Hai Feng as she was walking home from school one afternoon. He tapped her on the shoulder and called out her name; Yifan wondered whether he had known it at all before the incident. He asked whether she was taking a bus to the town centre. Yifan, looking up at the towering figure before her, spoke slowly after a long moment. No, I’m going home, she said, aware of the glances that were coming her way from the other students.
Before Hai Feng could say another word, a trio of boys came up and slapped him on the head. Whoa, you dirty bastard, what are you doing? Trying to woo this girl ah, one of them shouted. Hai Feng punched the guy lightly on the shoulder, breaking into laughter, which the other boys quickly joined in. Yifan, sensing the gap in the tight situation, turned and ran all the way to the next street corner, feeling the scorching eyes of the boys on her back.
The next time Hai Feng came up to her, Yifan was more prepared, having worked out the right way to respond. The previous encounter was a disaster; this time, she had decided to present the same well-worn public self that she used with the girls in her clique: affable, accommodating, armed with an easy smile. When their eyes met, Yifan noticed that Hai Feng’s eyes were not entirely black, more of a dark hazel. There was a steely canny pull in them which Yifan tried to extract herself from by glancing away several times.
Have you tried the new dessert shop, the one that sells durian cendol? he asked. Yifan shook her head. Do you want to go this Saturday? If you are free, I mean.
Though she had never been asked out on a date before, Yifan paused for a good moment, as if deliberating her decision, before finally nodding her head. Why not, sounds good, she said.
On Saturday, Yifan hurried through her chores of sweeping and mopping the house. She gave her mother the excuse that she needed to go to a classmate’s house to do a group project; she could not tell her mother who she was seeing just yet. To bring Hai Feng up would mean having to offer the backstory of the teasing, which hardly justified what she was doing. She thought she would mention him to her mother later, when things were more settled.
Theirs was a small town, and everyone knew where everyone else lived. Though Hai Feng had offered to meet Yifan at the road junction down the alley where she lived, she chose to meet him at the bus stop beside the row of shophouses where the dessert shop was located. Hai Feng was already waiting when she arrived, holding a small plastic bag of mangosteens. For you, he said.
Hai Feng’s father owned a provision shop near their school, and since Yifan often had to run to the shop to buy packs of smokes or bottles of soy sauce for her parents, she was familiar with his family background. But Hai Feng rarely helped out at the provision shop, since he was also the youngest, and there were already two older siblings to assist in the daily running of the shop. The boy ah, busier than me, always at one of his badminton practices, his father used to complain to Yifan whenever he saw her, though his tone was more proud than chiding.
At the dessert shop, Hai Feng guided Yifan to an empty table, putting his hand lightly on the small of her back. Though it was only a little gesture, Yifan could feel the heat emanating from the touch, coming through the fabric of her beige blouse. She let Hai Feng order the dessert, deferring to his choices; she did not have a sweet tooth, and would have preferred something savoury. But she did not feel it was the right time to state her preferences. Since the days of her childhood, she had learnt to go along with other people’s choices if the decision or outcome had little or no significant consequence to her. So what if she had to give in for just that moment— it would not kill her, anyway.
When they were done with the desserts, they went over to the nearby shopping mall and walked around aimlessly before Yifan had to leave. On the bus, Hai Feng touched the side of her hand, and Yifan did not pull away.
It was on the next date that they held hands, and on their fifth one that they kissed. She knew a kiss was forthcoming, inevitable, and she had prepared for it beforehand by kissing the back of her hand as well as a toy bear from her childhood for several nights. Yet she was still surprised by the force of that first kiss. The close, intimate smell of Hai Feng; his tongue touching hers, overeager and writhing like a slug in her mouth.
She was the one to break away from the kiss, feeling out of breath, unable to find a footing for her rampant thoughts. Are you okay? Hai Feng asked. Yifan could only nod. In the few seconds of the kiss, she had felt a divide opening up inside her, splitting her in half—a child suspended in time inside her, and now something that wasn’t quite completely formed yet, a creature only just starting to flex its new limbs, testing new boundaries. She had taken the first big leap—and it seemed like it was impossible to bridge that first gap of experience except by hurling herself fully into it.
Now that she was here on the other side, she felt lost. What did the kiss mean? And where could she go from now on? She felt loose and untethered in the hide of her new skin, unable to lock herself into the same places in her head or heart. She glanced at Hai Feng’s face as he leant in for a longer and deeper kiss. There was nothing there for her to read, neither recognition nor confirmation. She kissed him back, forcibly and unwaveringly, as if to push away her fears, to make the moment truer than it actually felt.
That night, still in the grip of the kisses’ enchantment, Yifan slipped out of the house and walked into the forest on a well-trodden path that led to the river. Moonlight painted the forest interior with a weak bluish luminescence, and as she walked, Yifan listened for any sudden noise or movement in her surroundings. Moving through the cool, light air of the night, Yifan turned her vision inwards, her mind filled with images she was trying to work into a coherent sequence.
As she came closer to the river, she heard a burst of movement in a thicket of bushes on her right. She stopped and kept herself very still. In a small pale pool of moonlight, she saw a flash of something— fur, tail?—scampering and burrowing itself into the thick underbrush. She remained motionless for long seconds.
When the sound finally faded away, Yifan picked up her pace and broke into a small clearing beside the gurgling river. She walked to the edge and listened to the gushing flow of the water, thinking about the stories her mother had told her of the forest, its dangers and also of its secrets. She allowed these stories—of capricious forest bound creatures and their flighty pacts of love and revenge—to soothe her nerves, to calm her down. How like them she was, in her appetites, in her fretfulness and longings. The longer she stood there, the more she began to lose the sense of who she was, as if the night were slowly breaking down the perimeter of her body, absorbing her into a bigger, darker unknown. As the air cooled her skin and her eyes began to grow weary, Yifan lay on the damp grass and looked up into the curved dome of the night sky. Her thoughts became softer, more pliable. Before she could even think of fighting it, Yifan had fallen right into a deep, barren sleep.
Shortly after that night Yifan approached Peng Soon during recess and asked to look at his drawings. He did not seem surprised by her request, as if he had been waiting for someone to ask him all along. Yifan had been sitting with the other girls on the stone benches in the school garden, and when one of them saw Peng Soon under the tree and made a curt offhand remark, Yifan got up and made a mock declaration. Let me see what the great artist is drawing, she told the girls, playfully fluttering her eyelids. Everyone broke out in giggles, jeering and egging her on. Yifan had needed something to push her into action, something she could use to disguise her own agenda, a cover of sorts. As she moved away from the group, she steeled her nerves, afraid that if she thought any further about her initial decision her fear would grow too strong and she would back out of it.
Everything had been progressing smoothly with Hai Feng, and while she
would have liked to slow it down so her mind could come around to what was happening—her fledgling emotions, the new sensations—it had seemed impossible. Though they kept their courtship under wraps, she was certain that they were now a couple; with the hand-holding and kissing, what else could they be? Things were falling quickly into place, yet Yifan felt caged in and overwhelmed. There were other feelings, like those for Peng Soon, that she could not resolve or push aside. It felt like time was running out for her, as though the next step she took with Hai Feng would seal her in a bind that she would not be able to get out of unscathed. She needed to do something, anything to break out of the fear. Peng Soon tilted the drawing pad towards her, and Yifan bent low to look at it. There was a faint sketching of a bull-man with a muscular body covered in snake tattoos. Is that you? Yifan asked.
Peng Soon chuckled and flipped the page, and began to draw several dark lines across it. Hold still. Let me see you clearly, he said.
Yifan sat immobile, holding her posture rigid, and watched as Peng Soon’s hand moved deftly across the page. She liked his long, slender fingers, which were soft, almost feminine.
For the next few days, she sat for him as he drew, swinging between states of anxiety and equanimity. They talked throughout the sessions, and Yifan was happy to let Peng Soon take the lead in the conversations. He seldom spoke about himself or his life, but instead directed questions at Yifan, enquiring about her hobbies and studies, her family. When something in her replies caught his interest, he would glance up from the page, a half-smile teasing the corners of his lips. During classes, she noticed Peng Soon turning to look at her more than usual. Each time that happened, she would feel a jolt like a static charge, quickening her senses. When Peng Soon gave her the final drawing of her portrait, Yifan took the opportunity to ask him out as a way of thanking him. Peng Soon registered a moment of puzzlement, before agreeing in the next breath.