Sugarbread

by Balli Kaur Jaswal

  “Well, if she’s feeling well enough—” Ma said.

  “The thing is, she’s really less capable now. It’s like she’s weaker every day.”

  “I know. We’ve talked about this.”

  “She’s been talking about you a lot lately.”

  Over the phone, Ma’s sigh was like a roar. “I can’t change what she thinks. I can’t change what anybody thinks any more. You can tell her that.”

  “You can tell her yourself. She told me to call and ask if she can stay with you.”

  “What?” Ma asked. I nearly dropped the receiver. Nani-ji wanted to come stay with us? It didn’t sound right.

  Fat Auntie sighed. “I don’t know why but that’s what she’s been saying. She’s been talking a lot lately about getting old and moving on from the past, things like that. She says that she wants to forget about what happened. It was so long ago. She wants to spend time with you and Pin.”

  “I need to think about it,” Ma said. “We really don’t have much space.” Something brimmed in her voice. It was excitement. Ma was happy; I could hear laughter in her voice. I gently put down the phone and went to the living room to look at her, and I was right. She was sitting on the edge of the rattan couch, her knee jiggling nervously. A smile played on her lips like she was about to unleash a surprise.

  She and Fat Auntie continued to talk to each other for a few more minutes before Ma told her she had not cooked dinner yet. She said goodbye and rushed into the kitchen, where Daddy sat with his newspaper strewn across the table. “I knew it,” she said gleefully. “I woke up this morning, and I just knew it. I just had this feeling that my mother would call soon and ask to come stay with us. I didn’t want to say anything, but I just knew it. She wants to forget about everything.” The fridge door made a kissing sound as Ma pried it open and began unloading the shelves. “I bought so much food today and I kept asking myself what the occasion was, and now I know. I could feel it. She wants to forget. I knew it.” Ma kept repeating this until it became clear that she wasn’t really talking to Daddy, she was talking to herself. Soon the counter top was filled with gourds and leaves, powders and frozen meat. Ma laughed to herself. “What am I doing? She doesn’t eat any of this…but she did say she wanted to move on from the past. Will she even try new food now?” Daddy just stared at her wordlessly.

  “What’s going on?” I asked innocently as I walked into the kitchen. Daddy opened his mouth as if to say something to Ma but she just came right out and said, “Your Nani-ji is coming to stay with us.”

  “For how long?” I asked.

  “Pin,” Ma said, annoyed. “That’s rude.”

  “Where will she sleep?” I continued, glancing around the flat. I couldn’t think of any place to put Nani-ji besides the storeroom.

  “Nothing’s been decided yet,” Daddy finally spoke up. “We don’t even know if she’s really coming to stay with us.” The deep lines on his forehead appeared again. He scratched his head.

  “If I say she can stay with us, then yes, she’s coming,” Ma said.

  “I don’t want her to come here!” I blurted out. Daddy began to gather the pages of his newspaper and neatly arrange it. I did not understand how he could be so calm. Nani-ji liked him the least.

  Daddy and Ma exchanged glances. Ma looked angry but the vibrant layout of her groceries distracted her. She turned her back to me and started arranging the vegetables and meat into neat piles. “I’ll take you out to eat, Pin,” Daddy offered. “Just for tonight,” he told Ma. She shook her head and muttered something about how her mother would have whacked her for being so spoiled but she was in such high spirits, she just left it at that.

  “Come on, Pin. Stop being silly. Let’s go downstairs. We’ll have a bite to eat, then come up and eat whatever your Ma has made.” Daddy gave me a kind smile. He was always doing this, making sure both Ma and I were happy.

  “Okay,” I said and went into my room to change into the long denim shorts I had worn to the market that morning; the red T-shirt was balled up in the corner. The sour fish odour from the market still clung to the fabric.

  A cool evening breeze swept through the air as we stepped out of our block. I took Daddy’s hand, lacing my fingers in his. Sunday evenings meant empty streets and less noise. We walked down the street as if it belonged to us. The hawker centre glowed under fluorescent lights and signs. I chose Hokkien noodles with bean sprouts and chopped chillies. Daddy had Point-Point rice. We called it that because the dishes were laid out in small platters behind a glass case and customers had to ask for a bowl of rice, then point to what they wanted—tofu; fish cake; fried long beans; spinach; steamed chicken. The sign above the stall said Very Tasty Economy Rice because the food was cheap—three dollars bought Daddy a plate piled so high that I couldn’t see the rice. We did not speak as we ate.

  My noodles were flat and slippery, difficult to keep on the chopsticks. The chillies stung my lips. It was spicier than I had remembered. I studied the hawker’s expressions behind the smoke that rose from his hissing wok. Framed by the steel counters and glass casing of his tiny stall, he looked overgrown and uncomfortable.

  Daddy finished his food before I did and let out a contented sigh. I thought of Nani-ji as I ate and tried again to feel some guilt or even a bit of sadness. Something like it rose in my stomach but after considering it, I decided it was just the food.

  “What are you thinking?” Daddy asked. “Are you ready for school tomorrow?”

  I made a face. Daddy laughed, shook his head. “You have a long way to go, Pin,” he reminded me. I made another face.

  “Why does Nani-ji have to stay with us?” I asked.

  “She doesn’t have to. But your Ma wants her to.”

  “Why?” I pressed.

  Daddy paused. He looked like he was selecting the words he would use, Point-Point style. “For one thing, she’s ill. And she and your Ma have a lot of things to resolve… It’s very complicated, Pin. It’s really not for me to explain to you.” He looked down and fumbled with his hands.

  This was why I had never asked Daddy to explain why Ma didn’t want me to become like her. She was just as big a puzzle to him as she was to everyone else. Sometimes when she spoke, a look crossed his face as if he had just met her. Around Ma, we were both awed and slightly confused.

  “She doesn’t like you,” I reminded Daddy.

  “Nani-ji doesn’t like many things. She’s had a tough life.”

  “Where will she sleep? And for how long?”

  “Listen, Pin,” Daddy said. “I don’t want you dwelling on this any more. Whether you like it or not, your grandmother is coming to stay with us. She’s your mother’s mother. She’s family, and sometimes, we make sacrifices for family, okay? If I wanted my father and mother to come and stay with us, your Ma probably wouldn’t be too thrilled, but she would accept it, wouldn’t she?” I wasn’t sure if she would. Daddy’s parents had both died by the time he married Ma anyway.

  “Push it out of your mind. It will take some time—maybe a week or two—before Nani-ji moves in anyway. It’s not like she’s on her way right now. Don’t think about it.”

  A spotted stray cat wove between my ankles and went for Daddy’s next. I reached down to pet it. If Ma had been there, she would have pulled my hand back and exclaimed, “Dirty!” But Daddy let me stroke her long grey fur. I scratched the nook behind her neck until she dipped down and stretched out on the floor, her claws spread and extended. Daddy looked under the table and coaxed her to his side with small piece of fish cake. As she crouched towards his hand, sniffing it, he reached into his pocket and took out an old receipt.

  “Got a pencil?” he asked.

  “No,” I said.

  He pulled the pen he always carried with him in his shirt pocket. “You start,” he told me, nodding towards the cat. I shook my head and pushed the paper back to him. “You first,” I said. Daddy took the pen and started a rough outline of the cat. Slowly, she began to take shape on the
paper.

  At school, I didn’t take art class very seriously. The assignments were boring: draw a bowl of fruits, make a Chinese New Year card, pick a leaf from outside and trace the veins. But sitting with Daddy and drawing was not about assignments. We spent many evenings after he came home from work sitting in our flat and sketching the buildings across from ours. When we were out and there was nothing to say, he always dug out a piece of paper and found something for both of us to draw.

  The cat changed positions. This time, flat on her belly, she looked regal. She narrowed her eyes at me as if I had just insulted her. Daddy laughed, adding some roundness to the slender figure he had drawn.

  “She’s fat.”

  “Well-fed,” Daddy replied. In the distance, there were more cats rubbing against the legs of customers and weaving their way between the tables. They all had the same low bellies that swung like pendulums as they walked. Pieces of noodle, fish, potato and clumps of rice littered the floor.

  Daddy fished in his pockets for another piece of paper. “Your turn to draw,” he said, pointing the pen towards me. I saw his own drawing on the receipt and knew I couldn’t do anything better than that. Daddy told me that he had taken up drawing during his long shifts guarding the hotel downtown when there was nothing else to do. Mostly, he drew what he saw on the security screens since he wasn’t supposed to take his eyes off them. Doors, hallways, sometimes the streets outside from a narrow angle. Ma complained that his pockets were full of useless drawings of black and grey squares, but I didn’t let her throw them away. I kept them clipped together in my desk drawer and carried them to school with me, sometimes flipping through them during Silent Reading.

  I took the paper from Daddy reluctantly. “Want something to drink?” he asked. I shook my head but he got up anyway, and came back with iced chrysanthemum tea in a tall glass. He pushed the glass towards me.

  “No,” I said. The cat’s head rested on a crook between her paws. The folds of her skin stuck out in rings. I couldn’t get the shapes of her ears correct—they were sharp, precise cones without softness in my drawing. The more I drew over them, the rounder they became, but then they were wrong again, lumpy this time.

  “You should have some of this, Pin. It’s sweet,” Daddy insisted. Impatience rushed through me—Daddy was not good with his own combinations. Chrysanthemum tea didn’t go with noodles or his mixed rice.

  “I don’t want,” I said. I pressed the pen into the paper and pushed the glass back towards him. It tipped and spilt onto my paper. I didn’t mean to ruin my drawing but as the ink spread and blurred, it looked as though the cat was in motion. Daddy moved out of the way and switched seats so he wasn’t opposite me. He looked down at the drawing.

  “It looks like her,” he said encouragingly. We both looked over at the cat but she had walked to another table. “The ears were good.”

  I turned over the paper to see if the ink had spread through to the table. There was writing on the other side—a row of numbers.

  “Hey! You have to keep this!” I told Daddy, giving him back the lottery ticket. It stuck limply to my fingers.

  Daddy peeled it off carefully. He spent a minute looking at the numbers, re-reading them and mumbling them out loud. Then he balled up the ticket and tossed it into my bowl of unfinished noodles.

  We got up without saying anything and walked home. I filled the night silence with stories about school—things my teachers had told us, and games my friends had invented during recess. I talked and talked so Daddy wouldn’t have space to say anything. I didn’t ask him why he threw away the ticket because I already knew why. We weren’t going to win. Nani-ji was moving in with us. Our luck that week was not very good.

  • • •

  That night, I fell asleep thinking about the last time Ma, Nani-ji and Fat Auntie had been at the temple. I tried to figure out what Fat Auntie had said that made Ma so furious, but when I thought of her anger, the redness of her scabs flashed into my mind and I recalled the people at the temple with their accusing looks. I woke up in the middle of the night because I thought I heard Daddy telling me to wake up, but he was speaking to Ma. His voice sounded more urgent than I had ever heard it and it scared me. I thought that she had found out about his lottery tickets and he was trying to defend himself, but as his voice rose, I could make out the words.

  “I’m telling you frankly, Jini,” he said. “She’s not coming here to fix the past. There’s more on her mind. She never took your side and she never will. You have to think carefully about your mother moving back here.” I was surprised. I had never heard Daddy sound so forceful before.

  Ma responded, but her voice was too low for me to hear what she was saying. I crept closer to the door but they both became quieter, as if suddenly aware that I was just down the hall. I fought to stay awake after that in case anything else was said, but eventually I sank back into a blank, dreamless sleep.

  2

  OUTSIDE THE GATES of First Christian Girls’ School, I felt like the smallest Primary Four girl on the island. Stark white buildings propped up by long columns, steeples with stained-glass windows and an enormous bell tower loomed over the pavements and glared against the blue sky. The cluster of white buildings sat at the top of a steep hill so the school looked like a majestic ancient castle in Europe.

  At the main gate, I could imagine I was walking into a storybook kingdom but it was difficult to pretend for very long. Every morning, the humid air pressed against my skin and branches holding waxy tropical leaves swept the air and carried a bitter earthy smell that seeped into my nostrils. The man who sold cakes of ice cream sandwiched between coloured bread stood at his pavement cart and yelled, “Lai, lai, seventy cent, seventy cent!” A dense tangle of tree branches blocked some sunlight and in the distance behind them, the pale outlines of office buildings peered between clouds. Everything looked like Singapore. I could not have mistaken it for any other place.

  There were girls at First Christian whose mothers and grandmothers had been students there too, and they carried stories of ghosts settling in the hallways after the war. French missionaries and settlers had built the school during World War Two and those stark white buildings had been hiding places for anybody escaping the Japanese. Pastors in long black cloaks secretly sneaked in strangers to stay in the classrooms while bombs and gunfire rained all over the island. The girls told these stories like they had been there themselves; the rest of us only half-listened because the war was a lifetime ago and we had heard all these stories already. Those were girls whose mothers wore fancy jackets and silk blouses everywhere even if they were housewives like Ma. Their jewellery matched their shoes and they spoke in crisp British English with glistening cherry-red mouths.

  The others were like me—Bursary Girls. Our parents could not afford the school fees so at the end of every month, we queued up in a corner of the school canteen and collected a donation from the school and a bill that showed what we owed. The other girls did not tease us because the principal, Mrs D’Cruz, always reminded them that it was not the Christian way to look down on those who had less. She gently told them to introduce us to the Lord instead, for He brought good things to those who believed in Him and feared Him. Most of the Bursary Girls were apparently not very familiar with the Lord.

  You weren’t supposed to be able to tell the Bursary Girls from the others because we all wore the same uniforms—dark blue pleated pinafores over white blouses, white Bata canvas shoes and white ankle socks. We all wore the same silver badges with a small cross covered in vines. But some girls’ pinafores were a lighter shade of blue or too short because they were second-hand. The elastic on their socks had snapped at the beginning of the year so their socks dropped at their ankles like excess skin. Those girls looked like Bursary Girls. Ma made it a point to buy me a new uniform every year because she didn’t want me looking poor at school. “And we’re not poor,” she often reminded me. “We’re not as well-off as other people but look—we have a roof, we h
ave a television, a phone line, electricity and you have good food to eat every day.”

  Ma was always curious about what I was taught at school. I figured it was because she and Daddy paid more to send me to First Christian than they would have if they had sent me to a neighbourhood school, and she wanted to make sure they were getting what they paid for. She wanted to know everything I learnt, and sometimes I felt like a teacher. I recited my times tables, told her how the reservoirs collected rain and summarised stories we had read for English before she was satisfied. She nodded quickly with each new fact. I started to wonder if she already knew everything, or if she was also learning as I was. One of the few things I knew about Ma was that she’d had to leave school after her O-Levels so she could work to support her family after her father had left.

  I decided to trick her one day. I gave her all of the wrong information, starting with a maths problem sum with a wrong answer. Then I moved on to science. I told her that plants could survive without water. She just nodded, listening, but not really letting the false facts sink in. I could tell because her eyes were glassy. Then I spelled a few English words incorrectly. She did not protest. I racked my brain to think of what else we had covered in school that day. Social studies: we had learnt about Singapore’s early settlers. I told her that Singapura was named after Sang Nila Utama saw a tiger, not a lion. I told her that Singapore was never a part of Malaysia, that it had always been a city-state of its own and they hadn’t chucked us out and told us to go fend for ourselves. I also told her that the Japanese had never attacked Singapore during the war; they had helped us.

  Ma’s eyes widened. “How can you lie?” she cried. “Stupid girl.” She pulled my plate of steaming baby corns and carrots and honey-glazed chicken away from me. I was surprised at her outburst. I sat there with my fork and spoon suspended mid-air.

  “I was just joking,” I told her. “What’s wrong?”

  “There is no joking about the past.”