How We Disappeared

by Jing-Jing Lee

  ‘Hello? HELLO? HELLO? I’m looking for Kevin Lim.’

  ‘Yes, I’m Kevin.’

  ‘This is the tailor on Chin Chew Street. You came to my shop today and asked for Chia?’ I could hear all sorts of noises in the background. The talk and background music of a drama serial, children squabbling.

  ‘Yes?’ I said, barely able to breathe.

  ‘Well, my wife remembers writing his address and telephone number down… Just in case we had to send on their mail, you see. She remembers wanting to tell them that they should come by to pick up a few things they left behind but we couldn’t find the number. We looked in all her address books, I promise, but we couldn’t find anything…’

  ‘Oh. It’s okay. I – It was a small chance. Thank you for trying anyway.’

  ‘Wait, don’t hang up! She tried the big phone book – she’s the practical one in the family – and she found one name. It might not be the person you are looking for, but you can at least call to ask. Do you have a pen with you?’

  I replied yes and repeated it after him to make sure I had the correct numbers and everything:

  204 Redhill Close

  #09–633

  2774658

  I thanked him twice before hanging up and smacking my forehead with the heel of my hand. Phone books. The yellow phone directory, volumes of it, was right under the telephone, stacked high enough to function as a side table. They had been there so long that I didn’t even see them anymore. I stared at the address and telephone number that I had written down, picked up the phone. Put it down. Picked up the phone. Put it down again.

  Then I held my breath as I dialled, as it rang and rang and rang, only exhaling once I put the receiver back in the cradle. I tried again. No one picked up. Maybe they were out. I thought about the things my grandmother used to do in the afternoon. How she would take a walk around the neighbourhood at around five o’clock, just as the ground and air were cooling, before the sun started to set. Maybe they were out, I thought, having dinner earlier than everyone else the way elderly people do. Maybe this wasn’t even the correct Chia Soon Wei and the real one was unlisted. Or didn’t exist anymore. 1946 was a long time ago – anything could have happened to them between then and now. There was only one way to find out.

  The story was that there used to be swordfish in the waters around the island, murderous man-eaters that terrorized the villagers who lived by the sea. It was a fishing town and the men often risked their lives to feed their families. After several men had been killed by the swordfish, the village sought help from the sultan and his army but he did nothing. Men went on dying each time they went out to sea on their wooden boats. It was at the funeral of one of these fishermen that a boy from the hilltop came up with the idea to build a barricade along the coast, using the trunks of banana trees that grew abundantly in the area. With little left to lose, the men set about building the barricade. The next day, the people stood behind the ramparts, waiting nervously as the fish swam closer and closer. One by one, the creatures hurtled towards them, only to get their bills wedged in the tree trunks. As the fish lay suffocating at low tide, villagers held the boy aloft and celebrated, calling him their saviour. These cries soon reached the ears of the jealous sultan. Paranoid that the boy would usurp his rule once he came of age, he sent his soldiers to the top of the hill to murder him. As the boy died, his blood soaked through the ground and down, down the hill. That was how it came about, the name. This was what I distracted myself with during the train ride to Red Hill.

  This time, I looked up the address in the street directory, then slid a bookmark between the pages before putting it into my bag. This time, besides my recorder, I remembered to bring a small bottle of water, and a packet of biscuits. A ten-minute walk and I was standing in front of the block of flats, quite low, painted calamine-pink and pale yellow. All the way there, I thought about what I might say. These are the lines I came up with:

  Hello, my name is Kevin Lim Wei Han and I found a letter that was written to you in 1946.

  Hello, my name is Kevin Lim Wei Han and I think I might be related to you.

  Hello, I think my grandmother might have taken my father from you during the war and raised him as her own.

  Good morning, I think I might be your long-lost grandson.

  I only stopped when I got into the lift, distracted by an overwhelming stench of urine. I clamped a hand over my nose and mouth, held my breath and watched the numbers ping: 1, 4, then 6. When the doors opened at the sixth floor, I lunged out onto the landing, forgetting for a moment what I was there for. When I remembered, I stood and stared into long corridors extending on both sides. Odd-unit numbers on the left, even numbers on the right. I turned left. Even though it was still light outside, the corridor was dank, shut in from all sides but the direction I was coming from. The fluorescent tubes overhead helped little, only gave a cold, greenish cast over the graffiti, the dying plants and newspapers left to curl and yellow in the heat. You could furnish a whole other flat with these things, I thought, looking at the TV consoles and wooden shelves left near someone’s door. I imagined an apartment, much like ours, made up of slightly broken furniture and sunk-in sofa cushions, much too loved.

  There was a man dozing in the doorway of one flat. He wore just a plaid lungi wrapped around his lower body, had stretched his legs out into the corridor. It was difficult to figure out how old he was; his skin was grooved and slack along the forehead and cheeks, but his chest looked curiously smooth. The man slept on as I approached, slowly and as soundlessly as I could. The space behind him was badly lit. It was the first time I’d seen a flat smaller than ours and I squinted to see what I could. Two single beds, pushed together at the far end of the apartment. Boxes, all yawning wide, lined up near a dull, floral-clothed sofa. I tried to make out the odds and ends sticking out the top of the boxes, then started when I realized that someone was watching me. A woman, in a housedress of a pattern similar to that of the couch she was on. I felt my face redden, and continued walking until I reached Unit 179. No one seemed to be home. The windows were shuttered, and the metal grills chained up with a heavy lock. There were no sandals or shoes outside the door where they would normally be. Instead, sticks of broken incense lay unlit, as if they’d slid out of the bundle they were sold in and never been picked up, never considered.

  I hadn’t thought about it. It was only when I got here that it dawned on me that they might not be home. Or they might be home but not want to speak to me, or hear my story; it was so long ago maybe they wanted to forget. Or maybe I was completely wrong. The idea of that, or of them not wanting to see me made my chest feel tight, as someone had bound it with rope and was pulling on both ends. Finally, I knocked. Nothing, not even a slight stirring of the air behind the door to hint at the rising up of old bodies, creaky legs, no voice telling me to hold on. I knocked again.

  ‘Are you looking for the Chias?’

  I turned. It was the man in the doorway, leaning out now with his upper body. I hesitated, then went to him.

  ‘Yes. Have they gone out?’

  He shook his head. ‘Moved. Just moved out this week.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. When I recovered, I asked him, ‘Do you know where to?’

  The man shrugged, bony shoulders pointing towards his ears. ‘Don’t know.’

  It didn’t seem like he was going to tell me more, he had closed his eyes and it was as if the conversation never happened. I was just about to leave when he said, ‘I think she moved to one of those old people flats. Not too far from here… Not sure where.’

  I turned back to look at him.

  ‘She? What about him? The husband?’

  He shook his head and sighed, drew out a tin of tobacco from the waistband of his lungi, and started rolling a cigarette. ‘Old Chia passed away…two months ago?’ He yelled over his shoulder, ‘Oi, when did old Chia pass away?’

  ‘Two, maybe three months ago.’ A woman’s voice, ringing clear from the dark.

&
nbsp; I peered into the flat again, but the woman was no longer on the sofa. Then I saw her, standing in the kitchen by the window. Sunlight was streaming in, lighting up her arms as she reached past the window ledge to draw in her laundry, hung out on long bamboo poles. I watched as she balanced the bamboo between sink and dinner table, then flapped out each garment before folding it and laying it on the table. The air filled with dust motes, falling in and out of the rays of evening sun. It was only then that I realized that they had just that one window in the kitchen. That and the ventilation slats near the door, wide enough for cockroaches and lizards to slide through, nothing bigger.

  ‘I – Thanks.’

  So he’s dead, I thought. He’s dead.

  The woman said, ‘This Buddhist temple helped her with the funeral. Took care of the costs and everything. We didn’t go but I heard it was alright.’

  I heard a faint buzz near my ears, a mosquito, felt its body wing past the side of my face.

  ‘Are you looking for them? What is this about?’

  I couldn’t think of anything to say. In the space of that silence, I saw the man keen forward. They were done giving answers, they wanted to ask questions.

  ‘I’m, I…’ I stepped back, then turned and walked to the landing.

  I was just stepping into the lift when I heard the woman starting to say something else. He cut her short, yelled out that the boy was gone. He’d walked away just like that.

  ‘He can’t hear you anymore,’ he said, before switching to Tamil. The rest I didn’t get. The lift pinged open. I stepped inside and jabbed hard at the button to close the doors before I could hear them say anything else.

  I had one thing left to do and now, now there was nothing. Nothing. I wanted to stay on the train and be driven back and forth across the country. West to East. East to West. I wanted to never get off and go back home to the empty flat. Grandmotherless. One less grandparent, and then two less. Can you lose something that you never found? I was thinking this, half dreaming, as I walked back home. My keys were in my hand when I heard something, a song that sounded like it had come from a long while away, in time and space, all the way from when Ah Ma still slept in her bed, when she would fall asleep to the Chinese opera with the song going right into her chest. One of the neighbours was playing the same song on their stereo or their radio, I thought. But the music got louder and louder as I approached our door and the little invisible hairs on my arms and the back of my neck stood up straight. I tried not to make any noise as I slid the key into the lock, the better to catch her ghost in the act. The better to ask the questions no one else could answer.

  There was a clash of cymbals, the whine of an erhu just as I stepped in. There was no one around. No one. No ghost. The radio blared, making a tinny sound as the melody crested.

  ‘Ah Ma?’ I whispered.

  ‘Hmm?’

  I turned and saw my father lying down on the sofa in his work clothes, his eyes fluttering open.

  ‘Pa?’

  ‘Where were you? Your mother told me to come home and give you this.’ He pointed at a wax-paper packet on the table. ‘Chicken rice. Were you at school?’

  I made a noise that sounded like yes. The takeaway package was still warm and I could feel the grease seeping through. ‘Have you eaten?’

  ‘Yes, yes.’ He gave me a wan smile and pointed at the radio. ‘Your grandma liked this one. When I was your age she would take me to the getai during the seventh month, when they performed this for free outdoors, even when it rained and they only had the ghosts watching. I didn’t like it much. I only liked the fight scenes and the snacks she would buy for me on those outings. We would sit there until the mosquitoes got too much. Unless this one came on, then she would make me sit there for hours… Maybe we could go, this Hungry Ghost Festival,’ he said, getting up and moving towards the door. He smelled of a mixture of chlorine and sweat and sunshine.

  ‘Yes, sure,’ I said, nodding and wondering what I had been looking for and why. I should just burn it all, I thought, the letters that I still had, the cut-outs, the notices. The tapes with their many different voices contained within.

  But I didn’t. What I did was this. I waited until all the lights were out that night before I crawled under my bed and the floor. I got out the shoebox and laid the recorder and the tapes in it. And the scrap of notepaper with the address and phone number of people I thought could matter, but who are really strangers, and put it back where I had found it. I buried it under layers and layers of Ah Ma’s things, already smelling of mothballs now that they hadn’t been worn for a week. Then I shut the drawer and tried to forget.

  Wang Di

  Wang Di had just arrived at Kopi Sua when it started to rain. A fine rain that seemed like nothing at first but, after ten minutes, began to form a pool on the top of her head so that rivulets of water ran down the sides of her face. Her cotton blouse was damp. Her feet making little damp sounds in her cotton shoes. She cursed herself for forgetting the umbrella. But it didn’t look like rain, she argued uselessly, childishly.

  The cemetery was almost deserted. At the gate, the entirety of which was bright green with moss, she had run into a middle-aged couple stepping out of a taxi. She’d decided to ask them for help and was walking towards them when the woman spoke, murmuring something in English. Then they had taken one turn, past a tree and were gone. Wang Di stared at the land before her, a craggy spread of grass and rock. There were more graves than she remembered. This meant that there was less ground for her to walk on, more spaces in which she had to negotiate every step, pardoning herself whenever she came close to stepping on a paper plate of kueh or a bowl of white rice. Brown hell notes, half burned and still folded in the shape of gold ingots clung to the bottom of her shoes so that she had to pick them off and return them to their owners.

  ‘Sorry, sorry, sorry,’ Wang Di kept saying.

  When the rain finally stopped, she dried her face with her sleeve and dug the walking stick into the ground, ploughing past the graves that looked new, well kept. On the bus ride, Wang Di determined that Soon Wei had not visited in ten years. Maybe thirteen. She wished she knew what thirteen years of neglect looked like on a grave but settled on a plan to dismiss the ones that had recently been fed and tended to; then the ones that were engraved with English words instead of Chinese. The next step would be to search for those with a date between 1942 and 1946. Simple as that, she told herself. She did not want to think about what came next, what happened if she found a tombstone that met all the above criteria. It wasn’t as if she would be able to read the words on it. She had an image of herself standing there until someone walked by. It might take hours. Days. That, she hadn’t planned for. Shoved the thought aside when it flitted past her, light as a moth.

  The search made her glad that the Old One had asked for an urn but she understood the need for this. This need for ground, for a square of space. Many times, she had to push away branches and twigs, fallen over the stones like a lock of hair. A few were unmarked, identifiable only with painted numbers. Some had photos on them, aged sepia faces peering out at her. Elderly faces and young ones. Too young. Some were flanked by red lions and guards dressed in uniform. Some were entirely crumbled, sinking into the ground like lost ships at sea. She had counted and rejected fifty-five before she realized that she was going to have to return on another day, was leaning on the walking stick, grateful for the cloud cover when she heard rustling, then a voice.

  ‘Thigh bone.’

  Rustle, rustle.

  ‘Root.’

  Wang Di saw a small object arcing through the air before landing in front of her with a sigh. She made her way over to the voice. An open grave. The smell of earth and black.

  ‘Hello?’ she called out. ‘Who’s there?’

  Another pause. ‘Hello?’

  The first thing the man said when he emerged (half clothed, bandana on his forehead) was, ‘Ah-mhm, what are you doing here? It’s almost six.’ His face was flushed, as
if embarrassed from having been caught talking to himself, or from physical exertion, Wang Di couldn’t tell.

  ‘I’m looking for a grave.’

  ‘It’s almost six. Going to get dark soon. Come, I can walk you to the bus stop.’

  ‘Maybe you could help me. I’m looking for a grave from the years nineteen forty-two to nineteen forty-six. I don’t have the names but there must be a register, right? With the dates in it?’

  ‘Have you been looking through the cemetery like that? At the dates?’

  Wang Di nodded.

  ‘Ah-mhm.’ He scratched his head, ‘I have to tell you that some of the graves have been exhumed. You know…dug out for cremation. That’s what I’m doing right now. Making sure that I have every last fragment of the body. The people you’re looking for might not be here anymore.’

  ‘But why…where do they end up?’

  ‘Oh…in one of the columbariums. Depends on where the next of kin decides to put them.’

  ‘And the register? There is a list of all the bodies, all the people, right?’

  ‘Do you have a serial number?’

  ‘No. I don’t.’

  ‘I’m sorry but without a serial number… Who are you looking for? Your relatives?’

  ‘Yes. No. I don’t know,’ she said, driving the walking stick into the ground to make sure she wouldn’t fall when she swung around, a hundred and eighty degrees, to go back where she came from.

  She told herself she hadn’t lost anything. That the thing she was looking for had already been lost when the Old One died. It was a matter of coming to terms with never having had it in the first place. The search had simply distracted her from the fact of having failed him, of never being able to recover him, his story. No, she hadn’t lost anything.

  The fallout occurred a few days later.

  It was the way the neighbours huddled in, clucking their tongues outside her door, that did it. That, on top of everything else. She heard their tutting, lizard-like, too familiar, and she was twenty again, taking up too much space in her parents’ attap hut. Feeling like she should never have returned.