Aunty Lee's Delights

by Ovidia Yu

  Selina found Nina, who was flaming sticks of satay over the charcoal brazier in the alley just outside the back door of the shop.

  “Do you know did Aunty Lee see this month’s Island High Life magazine yet?”

  Nina looked blankly at her. “Sorry, ma’am?”

  Sometimes Selina wondered whether Nina was deliberately acting stupid. No one could be as slow as she was. When Selina did not answer immediately, Nina turned back to the row of satay sticks she was squatting over.

  Nina had put on weight since she started working for Aunty Lee, Selina thought. When she first saw her, Nina had been a scared, skinny little thing who had cried when she could not understand what Mark meant when he insisted on her finding their “special cups”—the glass cups that were kept just for Mark and Selina because they could not drink out of the unbreakable plastic cups Aunty Lee had bought for use in the house. Aunty Lee had even fed Nina the Brands Essence of Chicken that people had given her for Chinese New Year. “Too rich for me,” the old woman said. “The girl needs more strength, more meat on her bones!” Selina had been so furious. Whoever heard of feeding Brands to maids? And those were new bottles, not even expired stock that would otherwise be discarded. Selina was married to the son of the house and Aunty Lee had never worried about her health or offered her Brands Essence.

  Selina had been sore enough to refuse to let Mark visit Aunty Lee for two weeks, pointedly saying they were too busy with work and too tired from doing business research and market studies (not surprising since no one thought to offer them the expensive supplements that were lavished on servants). This tactic had always worked with her own parents, but sadly Aunty Lee accepted their absence so stoically that Selina had caved first.

  It was not the first time Nina had made life hard for Selina. When she first arrived in the household, Selina had even warned Aunty Lee that having a young servant in the house with an old man like M. L. Lee was dangerous. “Men are all the same. They get taken in by a pretty face, they feel sorry for her. Next thing you know, she’s got her claws into him!” But though Aunty Lee had thanked her and promised to keep an eye on Nina, she had not done anything as far as Selina could see. In fact she had bought Nina new clothes (“Because people work better in the right clothes”) and sent her for driving lessons and computer classes (“Because two old people like us, we need someone young with good eyes to keep us in touch with the world!”). Nina was still far from fat but she was no longer skinny. And in her loose brown slacks and long cream tunic top, she did not fit Selina’s idea of how a foreign domestic worker should dress.

  “Are you pregnant?” Selina asked sharply. It would be typical of Aunty Lee to allow Nina to go out without supervision. Selina was well versed in the maid horror stories that revolved around lovers, stolen food and jewelry, and prostitution.

  “Sorry, ma’am?” Still looking blank, Nina started to remove the satay onto a waiting plate, already lined with a trimmed banana leaf.

  “I’m talking to you—please stop that and pay attention to me!”

  “Is something the matter?” Aunty Lee popped up in the doorway. “Nina, watch the satay, ah, don’t let it get burned, otherwise we are all going to be in big trouble!”

  Nina turned back to the satay and left her boss to handle Selina.

  “I was just asking Nina—whether you had seen the latest Island High Life magazine,” Selina said. “I didn’t want to ask you in case you hadn’t seen it and got upset.” Even to Selina, this didn’t sound quite right. “Because I didn’t want you to be upset, I mean. So I wanted to warn her to be sure to keep it away from you.”

  “What magazine?” asked Aunty Lee. “I don’t read magazines. Nina, did you remember to add the tamarind juice to the peanut sauce or not?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Added already.”

  “I didn’t want you to be upset,” Selina said almost desperately, “because it had a review of the café in it and it didn’t say very nice things.”

  “Did it? Luckily I don’t read such things. Finished, Nina? Be careful. Don’t drop anything. Carry in and put on the table. Make sure you don’t move any of Mark’s precious glasses!”

  Back inside, Frank Cunningham was fooling around with the paper napkins. Mark and his precious glasses were almost ready, Selina saw with some relief. She didn’t know anything about wine and frequently confused the bottles when she was trying to help her husband.

  “This,” said Frank with boyish pride, “is for you.” He held up a paper napkin folded into a miniature replica of the Sydney Opera House and handed it to Cherril Lim-Peters. Cherril squealed with delight. Selina turned away to get more paper napkins—she would keep Frank Cunningham’s replacement napkin aside so as not to encourage the man, but she wanted to have it on hand so that when the dinner (finally) started, she could hand it to him with a reproving look.

  “Can you believe it? It’s so incredible!” Cherril took out her cell phone to take a photograph of the paper replica. “I have to send this to Mycroft!”

  Selina didn’t like Cherril—she was a stewardess and Selina could tell from her spoken English (fluent but flawed) that she was not of their class and brought down the tone of their gatherings. But as always, Mark pretended not to understand.

  “We don’t have any class,” he had said. “My great-grandfather made money by putting rubber tires on rickshaws. Anyway, Cherril knows more about wine than most of the other people who come.” Mark and Cherril had met at a wine tasting, and thanks to her travels and interest, she sometimes came across interesting wine producers and dealers whom she put Mark in touch with. That was the other and main reason Selina disliked her.

  “We’re from Sydney,” Lucy Cunningham was saying in her gentle, cultured voice. “Frank likes to make that wherever we go—just for a while there’s a little bit of Sydney here.”

  “Oh, Harry is from Sydney too.” Selina recalled herself to her duties as hostess. “Have you been introduced? Frank and Lucy Cunningham, this is Harry Sullivan.”

  “Sydney’s a big, big place,” Harry said.

  “Harry Sullivan . . .” Frank said thoughtfully. “I know the name and you even look familiar . . . you’re much too young to know old geezers like us—are you named after your old man? An uncle maybe?”

  “No. Sydney’s a big place, Sullivan’s a common name,” Harry said. “So what brings you guys to Singapore?”

  It was a question any tourist might expect to be asked, often without any interest whatsoever on the part of the asker. Anything along the lines of “seeing the world now we’re retired” would probably have done the trick. But Lucy looked guiltily at her husband, who ducked his head and said, “Nothing. Nothing.”

  “Have you two been here before?” Immediately Aunty Lee’s rat-scenting antenna was waving wildly.

  “No, no. We’ve never been in this part of the world before. And it’s just chance, pure chance, that we decided to take a look in here for dinner tonight.”

  Mark Lee crushed the napkin he was holding into a crumpled ball and put it on the table next to the Sydney landmark. “That’s the Esplanade,” he said. “Our national landmark.” He laughed. Others laughed too. Later, thinking about the six-hundred-million-dollar spiked domes that graced (or disgraced) the Singapore waterfront, Selina thought it very witty of Mark. But at the time she was anxious to get started and irritated by the waste of another napkin. She was also irritated by how clever Cherril Lim-Peters seemed to find the remark.

  “Can we all sit down and get started? We’re late already.”

  In the manner common to such occasions, hungry guests did not want to seem to be in a hurry to eat (convention did not allow you to say you were starving till seated) and harried hosts could not rush guests through cocktails and conversation no matter how worried they were about dishes overcooking or rapidly cooling.

  Mark, who was normally more focused where his precious wine was concerned, was deep in conversation with Cherril Lim-Peters, who was saying something a
bout “suppliers I met while traveling in the Loire Valley,” and Selina cut her off with a chilly smile. “Excuse me. We’re running late as it is.”

  “I’ve got the names of some reliable suppliers,” Mark said to Cherril. “But if we really want to make it work, we should plan a face-to-face meeting. I find those are always more productive.”

  “I only have a week there while Mycroft is having meetings in Paris . . .” Cherril simpered. “Unless I make a special trip.”

  “Mark, please. I have to talk to you now!”

  Selina clamped a hand just above Mark’s elbow and dragged him away physically. Selina didn’t like Cherril Lim, though not in the same way she disliked Laura Kwee, Marianne Peters, Nina, or Aunty Lee. There were so many reasons to dislike women, just as there were so many reasons to despise men.

  When they finally sat down to the table, it was almost twenty minutes after the stated time, but no one seemed surprised. Selina insisted on the television and radio being turned off.

  “But I want to know if they find out who the woman on Sentosa is!”

  Aunty Lee seemed determined to talk about the body, as though by discussion she could ferret out more information than she had gotten off the radio and the afternoon paper. Selina ignored her.

  The Cunninghams seemed more interested in learning about Sentosa than about the dead woman found on one of its beaches.

  “We heard about the casino, of course. I thought it might be fun. But Frank wants to go take photographs at Universal Studios.”

  “There are wild peacocks there,” Cherril Lim-Peters said vaguely. “I like peacocks.”

  Prodded by Selina, Mark rose to his feet at his place at the head of the table. He reached over and picked up the silver slosh bucket closest to him. “Just to follow protocol,” he announced. “You won’t need these with my wines, but I must ask you not to use them for the food!” It was the same way he had introduced the previous wine-dine. People had laughed then and he was not about to change anything that worked.

  Cherril giggled prettily. Then, thinking Selina looked puzzled, she started to explain to her what a slosh bucket was for . . .

  “First course!” Aunty Lee announced as Nina entered from the back, bearing two platters of hot satay flanked by thinly sliced cucumbers and tomatoes and cubes of rice cake fragrantly steaming with the scent of pandan.

  Mark took them through a white, a rosé, and three red dinner wines before dessert. Only Cherril was paying rapt attention and asking the occasional question, but it was enough for Mark . . . and enough for Selina too, who resolved to keep an eye on the woman. From Selina’s point of view, no one could be that interested in wine—therefore Cherril had to be interested in Mark. That Cherril already had a husband of her own made no difference to Selina except as evidence that Cherril knew how to trap men. Aunty Lee was watching Cherril too—ever since she saw the girl rinse out her mouth with water between mouthfuls of food as well as between mouthfuls of wine.

  “Why you rinse and spit? That is not wine, what?” Aunty Lee asked. “You don’t like my gravy, is it?”

  “Oh no! It’s very good!” Cherril said earnestly. “But this way I can start with a clean mouth for the next mouthful and I don’t confuse the taste. Your gravy is very good, Aunty Lee. Everything is very good. But I want to enjoy it as though every mouthful is the first mouthful!”

  “Keep the bloom, eh?” Harry Sullivan said. “It’s like they say about marriage. The first three years are great, but you have to pay for them for the rest of your life!” He laughed loudly. “That’s why some guys keep getting married. Just keep going through those first three years over and over again!”

  Perhaps this comment was directed at the married couples present? Selina wondered, watching Mark covertly. If he laughed, she would remember to be angry with him later. Selina did not like male-chauvinistic jokes and resented Mark for not putting them down more actively. Lucy Cunningham, meanwhile, smiled at her husband, who had joined in the laughter.

  “That’s what I say too,” Frank said with gusto. “Keep starting over. We all should remember to keep starting over. Every day, every season. That’s the great thing about being able to travel like we do. We keep starting over. And we get to start over with the people we like best!” He had been playing around with his second napkin and had now produced a paper rose with a long twisted stem, which he presented to his wife with a flourish.

  Cherril squeaked and applauded. “So romantic, you two!”

  What an act, Selina thought. She was irritated with Cherril for all her fluttering as well as with the Cunninghams. Who did they think they were fooling? Traveling together was never easy, especially not with someone you had been married to for years, whose every word, said and unsaid, irritated you . . . and why wasn’t Mark keeping better order?

  Aunty Lee watched everyone at the table with interest. “Nice to see married people still being romantic,” she said vaguely. “After so many years, you know what each other like, don’t like already. Can be very good or can be very bad.”

  Nina, carrying in a tray of little orange-and-white ceramic bowls (Aunty Lee liked her food to look good) of bubor cha cha, thought that had certainly been the case with Aunty Lee and her husband. It had been very good while he was alive, no doubt. But once he was gone, wasn’t it worse than losing a husband you had not cared about? She saw Harry Sullivan lean over to whisper something to Selina, who laughed. They shared a common sense of humor, Nina thought. She was careful around Selina, not wanting to upset someone who was so easily upset. But she was not afraid of her. Aunty Lee had made it clear that Nina’s job depended on Aunty Lee alone, not any tales that anyone else might carry back to her.

  “And now, as we prepare for the dessert, let me ask you to pick up glass number five.” Mark had drawn and numbered circles on the strips of white paper set at each place. Even without Laura Kwee or anyone else to assist him, he had managed to set things up remarkably fast. “Most people assume dessert wines are sweeter wines. No doubt if you’re planning to have nothing but wine for dessert, that would suit very well. But in my opinion, when we have a very sweet dessert as we are having tonight—bubor cha cha, right, Aunty Lee?—I believe a slightly fortified wine would accompany it better. See what you think of this. It’s a discovery of mine I’m quite pleased with. You’ll see it has something almost approaching the aura of an amontillado sherry . . .”

  All at the table dutifully sipped as Aunty Lee found it necessary to interject in a loud whisper, “My bubor cha cha is not too sweet. Some people like to make it very sweet, but my one I make it not so sweet. You must have the contrast between the sweet potatoes and yam and the sweet soup . . .”

  “Aunty Lee, we’re not here to talk about the food,” Selina said with an apologetic smile around the table as Frank Cunningham asked:

  “What exactly goes into bubor cha cha?”

  This was precisely the scenario Selina had been most dreading. The wine and Mark’s exposition were forgotten as Aunty Lee went into how important it was that the tapioca jelly should be properly chewy and starchy and how she deliberately used sweet potatoes in different colors—purple, orange, and yellow—as well as yam, not only for the way the dish looked but because when the coconut milk was not too sweet, a discerning eater could tell the differences among them by both taste and texture. “And of course I use my special secret ingredient for the coconut milk soup . . .”

  The bell over the front door of the shop jangled just then. Selina rose to her feet even as Nina stopped distributing bowls and started over to look. They were all congregated in the long back portion of the shop, but the lights were still on and Nina thought someone had come in looking perhaps for a bottle of achar or a late-night snack. Selina was certain it was Laura Kwee, finally showing up with some stupid excuse for her lateness.

  As it turned out, they were both wrong.

  It was difficult to tell the ethnic makeup of the woman who suddenly pushed through the front entrance of
the shop. From her body language Nina thought her probably American—but there was a distinctly Oriental cast to her features. Her hair was very black—far more black than any naturally black hair could be—and her skin was pale beneath the reddish spottiness that Caucasian flesh tended to develop after recent and unfamiliar exposure to the Singapore sun and damp.

  “Sorry. We’re closed,” Selina said firmly. She could tell at a glance that this intruder was no potential customer. Most likely she was lost and wanting directions, free water, or worse—use of the toilet.

  The woman did not pay any attention to her.

  “I’m looking for Laura Kwee,” she said. “I heard she works here and I was told she would be here tonight.” Dismissing Selina after a quick examination, the woman looked around her toward the people sitting at the table in the back room. “I have to talk to her. It’s really urgent. Where’s Laura Kwee?”

  It was obviously urgent to her. It also seemed obvious she was not familiar with the Laura Kwee she was looking for. She was tense, almost trembling with anxiety barely kept under control. She hardly glanced at Aunty Lee as the old woman approached, eyes gleaming with interest.

  “Who are you?” Aunty Lee asked. “Why are you looking for Laura Kwee? Laura doesn’t work here. She is supposed to come tonight but she’s not here yet. Why don’t you come in and sit down to wait?”

  “Laura Kwee’s not coming tonight,” Selina said firmly. The whole point of insisting that people register for the wine-and-dine special nights would be lost if the old woman was going to let in anybody who just decided to drop in. “She messaged me saying she can’t make it. And she said Marianne Peters asked her to say she’s not coming either.”

  The stranger seemed to gasp for air. She stared at Selina with fierce intensity and repeated, “Marianne Peters said she’s not coming? When? When did she say that?”