How We Disappeared

by Jing-Jing Lee

  It came back to her. How she had gone out onto the streets for the first time in years and how people had stared, as if they knew just from looking at her. How the neighbours found out and started treating her as if she were contagious, pulling their children away from her, turning to spit whenever they ran into her outside the public outhouse. Word spreading around like grease, getting onto everything. She had tried setting up stall at the market, against her mother’s protests. And for five days, she had returned home in the afternoon with a full basket, the vegetables turned soft in the heat. So she went round to the cheap eateries that had popped up everywhere to ask if they needed help in the back, cleaning the kitchen, the toilets, anything. Even there, out of the light, she wasn’t wanted. The thing they called her, that they whispered when she had her back turned: ‘comfort woman’; like a slap to the face; like shutting her in a cupboard. Some of them saying that she had done it for money. That she had been looking for a husband. An easy life.

  Even after her marriage, she had felt the shame of it clinging to her. The way a fishmonger never fully got the stench of scales and sea out from under his fingernails. They had walked down the street the morning after their wedding (each having stayed on their side of the bed that night, Wang Di clinging to the edge), Soon Wei showing her the neighbourhood. Chinatown. Their first home, a dingy little room smelling of tobacco and cooking oil. I’m someone’s wife now, Wang Di thought, as her husband walked next to her, pointing out the indoor cinema, the best shops to get their provisions, his favourite food stalls, but Wang Di wasn’t listening. Was transfixed, instead, by the appearing and disappearing faces of Huay and Jeomsun, first hiding among the market-goers, then slipping closer, until both of them were walking alongside her. Where have you been, she whispered, mindful of her new shoes, the clunky weight of them as she stared at their bare feet. But neither of them replied. Huay was smiling as usual and Jeomsun was holding her gaze with clear eyes that said everything and nothing. You have to go, she eventually said, though she was dismayed when they did, vanishing as easily as children playing hide-and-seek. She was helping Soon Wei pick out a batch of vegetables from a stall, was making an effort to smile at him when she saw Huay again, ten paces away from her. This time, Huay had something in her arms. She felt a jolt when she saw who it was, saw the furred crown of his head, his too-pale skin.

  ‘Cheng Xun,’ she said out loud, and pushed past her husband, scattering green onto the ground. By the time she got to them, they were gone again and she was left standing in the middle of the market. ‘Where did you… Cheng Xun?’

  She was still searching for them, was spinning around in her confusion when Soon Wei reached her, approaching slowly as if she were a wild animal one needed to be careful with. ‘Are you okay?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m –’ She looked up and saw that everyone was watching, backing away a little. ‘It’s just…’

  ‘Don’t mind them. Busybodies. Don’t give them a moment’s notice.’ And he had given her his arm. She had slipped her hand into the crook of it. Everyone stared to show that it wasn’t done, contact like that, not even between man and wife. ‘Come, come,’ he hushed, and they had walked off. Got the groceries for the week. The first of many Sundays.

  Wang Di heard the Old One’s voice now. Gravelly with age. Don’t mind them.

  ‘I know, I know. You’re right but…’

  It was the neighbours. Their whispers and looks that did it, made her habit creep back into her bones like pain from an old break. Along with it came memories of the other women. The ones she had left behind. Her friends. Huay, especially. Her bitten nails. The way she drew a perfect parting down the centre of her hair each morning, even when she was ill. All of her. Flitting through the open door of Wang Di’s mind, like a bird flown into a room, trapped and panicked.

  She began again with little things. Hard-boiled sweets, a kaleidoscope of colours in their cellophane wrappers. Matchboxes filched from coffee-shop tables. Plastic bags blowing in the wind which she caught with the toe of her shoe. Little things that she could fit into her pockets. She was almost proud. Felt like she could say to him, See? Nothing in my cart.

  When her gleanings stopped fitting into her pockets, she started negotiating.

  ‘I’ll throw out the pile of leaflets,’ she said as she returned home with a box of videotapes. A small plastic aquarium with a few stones in it in exchange for getting rid of a pair of scissors, so rusted over it wouldn’t open again. A chipped vase for a pair of shoes that was missing most of one sole. She filled her new home with it, took out the news clippings he had cut and plastered them on the wall again, as if to say, See? You’re the one who started it in the first place. She took the rustling of the curtains, or a sudden burst of rain, for his disapproval.

  ‘Last time, last time. I promise.’

  It was only when she woke up one morning to a flat she could hardly recognize, half filled with things from outside in place of the belongings the two of them had bought and saved up for over the decades that she thought she had to stop. Again. It was the cutlery that did it. Getting up at six and opening the drawer to find it almost empty except for a pair of chopsticks, a spoon, and a ladle. She thought she had been robbed until she remembered that she had put out a large coffee can crammed full with cutlery and utensils the day before in return for bringing home a Lego bucket. The curtains had flapped when she came in and she had put her hands up and said, I know, I know, gone around looking for something to trade in, finally settling for the drawer full of kitchen utensils. Things that she would never need again, she told herself. No more reunion dinners, folding a batch of pork dumplings all afternoon for the New Year’s Eve meal, cooking up a pot of chicken curry that would last a week. Or savouring the look on his face as he tiptoed over to the pot to have a look at the curry bubbling and rolling over the fire.

  She got to the void deck as quickly as she could but the bin had been emptied and the coffee can was nowhere to be seen. Not next to it or behind it, when she moved it around to check. She was just straightening up, shifting the bin back into place when the lift pinged and the neighbour walked out, fluorescent-yellow track shoes on her feet, a towel around her neck.

  ‘Oh,’ the neighbour said, backing away a little, as if startled by a stray cat.

  ‘Morning.’ The greeting fell out of her mouth like an apology. She didn’t mean to say it. Didn’t know why she did.

  More for the ladies to talk about. And then, with a stab of regret: I used to have friends too, she thought. She wondered where Jeomsun was. Whether Huay’s people had ever found out about her. Tried to picture what they might look like now, the two of them attritioned by the passing of fifty-five years: Huay, shrunk small and plump; Jeomsun, leaning into a walking cane with her strong arms. Wang Di tried to hold on to those images but they were quickly replaced by others more familiar to her. Two women, infinitely young. Bruises inked on their faces and bodies. Dirt and skin under their nails because they had stopped caring. A pool of water gathering in the hollow of Huay’s clavicle.

  Wang Di rode the lift back up, closed the door and looked around her, at the things she had brought in over the course of the last few weeks. All to obscure the white walls, the space within her empty little cage. Soon, there would be enough even to block out the windows and she wouldn’t have to hear the voices of other people, sailing up with the hot air, the sound of other lives going on around her, creeping into her dreams.

  To meet the silence that greeted her each day, she filled the kitchen with sounds: the kettle’s sharp cry, the round splash of hot water into her tin mug, and the clinks her spoon made while she stirred in a half teaspoon of sugar. These were sounds she was used to. She poured coffee into two mugs, put pastry on two plates, same as every afternoon. Then she turned around to look at her new apartment, at how she had, in the span of mere weeks, gathered and crammed so much into the bit of space that it was starting to look exactly like her previous flat, the home she had lived in for ye
ars and years. The Old One had tried to stop it from getting out of hand in the very beginning, the first year they were married. Once he went as far as leaving the flat with a filled trash bag when it was still dark out so that he could get rid of them without her knowing. It took her a day to realize that they were gone; the things he had taken were old clothes, washed, worn and mended until they couldn’t be saved anymore. Instead of discarding them, Wang Di had pushed them into the back of the wardrobe. She told herself that she couldn’t live without them – the buttons that could be repurposed, the quilts she could patch together with their varying block and floral patterns of blue and pink and green. When she realized that he had disposed of the lot of them, the absence of these objects – their very potential – lurked between them like a third party in their marriage. Less than a week later, she had already begun assembling a small collection of plastic bottles, string and shopping bags in the wardrobe, beneath her trousers and under things. It took little time for them to spill over and into the sleeping area. The Old One left them alone this time.

  Now, she pictured undoing all of it – pulling open the tops of the boxes in the kitchen so that their insides, a mass of red or blue plastic bags, sprang out. There were four boxes filled with these, and one with red rubber bands, all coiled into each other. Under the bed were loosely bound bales of cotton and satin, more boxes, and one suitcase falling apart but filled with cloth samples. And the dining table. That would be last. She thought about sweeping everything on it into a large bin bag. It was covered with mail that had arrived since she moved in; all of it lay unopened, unread.

  What would happen if I got rid of it all? Nothing, she told herself, even as the thought sat her down, making the chair yelp. She would get rid of everything except for the large furniture and kitchen things. Except for the Old One. Except for his things.

  That night, she had just closed her eyes when she heard him. A long, throaty exhale, just the kind of sound he used to make when he was falling asleep. She was so sure of it that she sat up and put the light on, even touched his pillow (his side of the bed, the sheets, which she was surprised to find were cool) to make sure that he hadn’t been there, wasn’t still there, really, it was just her ears playing tricks. In the end she sat up half the night listening out for him. Her mind wandering back to their first evening together after their truncated wedding ceremony where the only guests had been her parents and Meng. They had not touched each other then. Not that first night. Nor the next. He hadn’t asked for anything from her. Not even tried to until she went to him, the end of that week because she had wanted to. She had been nervous, going to bed. Her head had been filled with the scent and warmth of him, gathered in her all day. And she had moved towards him, under the thin covers, after he settled in. Pushed her face into his chest the way she’d seen that starlet with her beloved in the only movie she’d ever watched. Soon Wei had taken his time. Undressing himself before asking her if it was okay to undress her as well. Lifting her top off her, as if he was afraid to even brush her skin with the cool cotton, and then kissing her face. First her left cheek, then her right, before moving on to her neck and collarbones. How different he had been. Wang Di was glad she remembered this. The details as fine as if they’d been sketched just yesterday. That night, as she listened out for him, she let herself bathe in this one memory until she fell asleep again.

  The next day, she sleepwalked through her collection round, wanting to hold on to the feeling of him almost being there.

  It was this that slowed her down. She was opening the door to her apartment when she heard the phone and hobbled over just in time to pick it up and hear a solid click, then the dial tone. Still, she held on to the receiver and whispered, ‘Hello, hello? Is that you?’ before putting it back in its cradle.

  ‘If that was you, call me again. I needed time but now I’m ready. Call me.’ Even as she said this, she was ridiculing herself. Stupid old woman. Crazy old woman. Like the neighbours said.

  August 1945

  When they found me, I was unconscious, lying at the edge of a farmer’s field. They said it looked as if I had tired of working the earth at midday and decided to take a nap in the grass. That’s what it looked like, if not for the abandoned huts just paces away, all of them torn wide open by a bomb years ago. All that lived in the ruins were insects and mould born from that comfortable damp, and clouds of mosquitoes hatched from ephemeral pools formed in broken bowls, a child’s wooden top, crushed underfoot.

  When I woke a day later, I reached out for the baby, wanting to pull him to me for his morning feed. Instead, my hand found nothing but air. That was when I remembered what I had done. How I had done it. I wanted to cry for my loss but was too tired, too hungry to do so. So I slept until the sound of birdcall, sharp and very close, jolted me awake. Mynahs, I thought, opening my eyes. The room was filled with harsh, midday light and the air stung with the smell of disinfectant.

  ‘You’re finally awake. Here…’ A nurse put her arms around my shoulders and helped to sit me up. She brought me my lunch, sat next to me, and held the empty tray in her lap as I ate. She told me that a woman and her children had come across me while they were out digging for root vegetables.

  ‘When they brought you in, we all thought you were –’ She shook her head, catching herself. I continued eating, following each tiny trail of food with the spoon, scraping it clean. When I returned the bowl to her, she said, ‘Oh, I almost forgot to ask. We couldn’t find any papers on you so I’ll need you to give me your name and address.’

  I looked away and said nothing.

  She tried again, repeating her question first in Malay, then faltering Hokkien, to make sure that I understood.

  I shook my head.

  ‘Do you know where your parents are?’

  ‘No.’ I paused. In that moment, I heard the other people in the ward, different voices, different languages and dialects, telling each other about who and what was left in that place they used to call home. They talked about leaving the hospital and returning to their lives as soon as they could. They talked about what they would do, afterwards.

  Afterwards. I had thought about this moment for so long, swung between shame and hope so many times in the past few years, that faced with it now I felt paralysed. Shame or hope. Both. Afterwards was nothing like I thought it would be.

  ‘I’m sure someone is looking for you.’ The nurse touched my shoulder. I flinched, and wished I hadn’t when she removed her warm hand. But she didn’t seem to mind, continued talking, informing me that I had an infection, that they were giving me medicine for it. I let her finish. It only occurred to me to ask when she was about to leave.

  ‘Did they find anyone else? Did they bring anyone else here?’

  ‘Anyone else?’

  ‘Other girls. My age. They would have worn the same clothes…’ I looked down and realized only then that my dress was gone. Instead I was wearing a white cotton gown, soft from washing.

  ‘No, I don’t think so but I can ask around and let you know if there was anyone…’

  I nodded and stared down at the sheets. When I looked up again again, she was gone.

  I fell asleep easily but woke repeatedly in the night, convinced that I’d heard Cheng Xun whimpering. And I would find myself lying on my side, my body curled around an empty oval on the bed, the way I’d slept for the past two months. My chin just above the top of his head. Each time I remembered he was gone, I squeezed my eyes shut, wishing I hadn’t been found. When I woke again, it was morning. The nurse on duty gave me my medicine and urged me to get up, get my blood flowing a little or else I was going to develop bedsores. She stripped the blanket off me and stood with her hands on her hips until I slid my feet off the bed.

  I got up because what else was there to do? I made rounds on my floor, staying close to the wall in case my legs gave way. Most of the rooms I passed were filled with soldiers, mostly ang moh, who looked nothing like the proud, striding foreigners I used to see in the
city. These men looked like mere clutches of twigs, skin stretched so tight over their ribcages that I could easily imagine fitting my fingers between each curved bone. Then I passed a tall window and saw the length of my own body reflected in the glass. Stopped with the shock of recognition. I looked years older. A withered stalk of a woman. Then I saw my mother’s face in my own and stood staring until it became too painful to look.

  When the nurse from the day before came back to check on me that afternoon, I asked for a sheet of paper and a pen. I wrote my name on it, pressing so hard that the nib went through the paper several times, marking the white bedspread. When I was finished, I handed her the paper. ‘That’s my name. Ng Wang Di.’

  I told her my address and she repeated it back to me to make sure that she got it right.

  ‘It won’t be easy, finding them. I don’t think anyone in my village has a phone.’

  She nodded and said, ‘I’ll try my best.’

  I thanked her. If she had stayed on, I might have told her that I hadn’t seen my family in years. That I had been put away for a long time, and it was the time spent away that made me this way, made me speak as if each word was a cold stone in my mouth, and my thoughts rough-cut gems that I was reluctant to spit out. I might have told her I was afraid my family wouldn’t want me back. That too much had happened. I would have told her, but the look in her eyes, careful and searching, suggested that she’d arrived at the truth on her own. The sun was past its peak when I fell asleep again. This time I dreamed that I was back in my little room in the comfort house. Cheng Xun was next to me and he seemed hungry for the first time in days. Relief flooded my chest and I was unbuttoning my top to feed him when I woke, blinking into the bland light of the hospital ward. My breasts were aching with milk, had made damp, dark spots in the hospital gown. It was then that I realized I wanted to be back there, in the black-and-white house with its boarded-up windows, and I wondered why I had run, why I’d left.