by Sandi Tan
“I don’t think that at all.”
“The good news is you won’t have to fight ghosts or anything like that.” Little Girl laughed. “All you have to do is sit with her in the dark and reassure her that nothing is there when she wakes up hallucinating. She’s just afraid of death, that’s all.”
“Why doesn’t she ask you to do it?”
“I have to run the house, silly! Besides, she’s too proud to let me see her in a state of panic.” She smiled complacently. “She knows me too well. I’m almost like a daughter to her.” Yes, a daughter paid a pittance to be her maid.
We stepped from the well-stocked pantry out into a Chinese-style courtyard. Poles were fluttering with fresh laundry—colorful cotton dresses, chiffon skirts, and tailored white shirts, some quite fashionable and none of which looked like anything Mrs. Wee would wear. She must have had many children, grown children—at least seven or eight from the number of garments I saw.
“How many children does she have?”
“Just two.”
A floral-print skirt flew upward in the breeze, catching its hem on a wooden peg. Rraahrrrr! I had been spotted by a snarling Rottweiler. Even in its cage, it was threatening, and knew it. The beast was making a big show of its teeth, repeatedly leaping forward and bashing its snout against the mesh until the whole thing rattled.
“Agnes!” Little Girl shouted at the rotten thing, to no avail. The dog didn’t like me. Dogs never did. “I’m so sorry. Agnes was trained to attack intruders.”
We came to a small white stucco wing that looked as if it was once part of the house but had since been pulled off like a doll’s arm and flung aside. The windows had uncompromising bars, which were painted black. They reminded me of the plantation hives—a more benevolent version to be sure, but still close enough to give me the shivers. I knew this was where I would sleep, like a lowly Milkmaid.
A young woman stood on the threshold of the open doorway, sporting the blue tunic and black pants worn by apprentice amahs from Canton. She was staring at us placidly, like the phantom that she was. Little Girl appeared not to see her.
“Do you believe in ghosts?” I asked Little Girl.
She gave me a noncommittal smile. “In the old country, maybe. Not here. The Island’s too new, too innocent—and it’s still mostly jungle. There hasn’t been century after century of war and famine. Why would there be any ghosts here?”
“Why do you think Mrs. Wee is so frightened, then?”
Little Girl stepped over the threshold and through the ghost. I saw her shiver slightly and then dismiss the feeling with a shrug. “Sorry, what were you saying?”
“Never mind.”
She led me to a room at the far end of the servants’ wing. No stacks of bunk beds, thankfully. Just a single bed with fresh linens, a writing desk, and a surprisingly beautiful teak cupboard slightly scuffed from rough use, doubtless an exile from the main house. The room already had an occupant—an old Sikh, sitting on the floor in one corner. My cellmate. He saw me and instantly leapt out the window, through the prison bars.
“Have a good nap,” Little Girl said to me as she closed the door. “I sincerely hope you’re not afraid of the dark.”
Unpacking, I found a yellowed Bible in the cupboard. I picked it up and thumbed through the Old Testament. Fires, plagues, floods—an endless catalog of earthly disasters. I’d forgotten how enjoyably sadistic these stories were. The sun had been down for an hour before I managed to drift off. It was a miracle I slept at all considering the lumpiness of the mattress and the fact that I ordinarily went to bed at midnight.
Three firm knocks on the door roused me at ten o’clock. Little Girl entered before I could tell her to wait.
“You’re wanted. Mrs. Wee’s about to go to sleep.”
She escorted me past the barking caged Rottweiler and back into the moonlit house, where the only sound was the ticking of the grandfather clock.
“Don’t expect me to wake you every night or chaperone you like this,” Little Girl whispered. “Buy yourself an alarm clock and be ready for her at ten every night. She doesn’t appreciate tardiness.”
“Yes.”
We passed a window that flooded the stairway with the fierce blue glow of the night sky. Little Girl stepped back and, with a cocked eyebrow, assessed my black blouse and matching skirt. “Are you going to a funeral? Why on earth are you dressed like this? She’ll take it personally. Wear something less eccentric tomorrow. If you don’t have anything, I’ll lend you some. Then you’re on your own.”
“Very well.”
“If she wakes up in the middle of the night and starts babbling about ghosts, just stay calm and tell her nothing’s there. No matter what, your job is to keep her calm. I’ll be honest, it can be terrifying when she starts wailing in the dark, but don’t let it bother you. It usually doesn’t happen more than, oh, once or twice a night. If she gets…difficult, her doctor has approved the use of spirits—cognac and the like. Offer her a few sips, no more. The decanter’s on the bureau. Above all, never bring up the events of the night with her in the morning. She does hate being embarrassed.”
“Not a problem.” Strange, but nothing I couldn’t handle.
“One final thing. Agnes roams the grounds at night, so I wouldn’t leave the main house if I were you. We’ve both seen how she reacts to you. I’d hate to find you in pieces in the morning.” She left me at Mrs. Wee’s doorway with a sly smile. “The best of luck.”
The room was pitch-black. It took at least a minute for my eyes to tease out the contours from earlier.
“Mrs. Wee?”
“Do you need a formal invitation, girl? Come in. Sit over here.”
I was eighteen years old, and yet hearing her orders, I felt like a scared little girl all over again. Her silhouette emerged against the murky gray—she was in her bed and wanted me in the stiff wooden chair by her side.
“Can I give you a nickname?”
“Yes, madam.”
“What about Shadow?”
“It’s perfectly fine.”
“Do you know why I chose Shadow?”
“No, madam.”
“Because there’s something negative about you, something dark. You know how some people have a radiance about them? Well, you’re the opposite of that. You’ve made no attempt to smile or look cheerful whatsoever. I only took you on, you know, because you said you went to St. Anne’s. I called Sister Nesbit and she told me I absolutely had to take you, that you were the brightest Catholic girl on the market and extremely discreet. By the way, I very much dislike your attire. I thought I told you I wasn’t blind.”
“I won’t wear it again, madam.”
“Well then, Shadow, I’m about to go to sleep. There’s a tray of finger sandwiches on that little table next to your chair, in case you get hungry. But no water. I don’t want you running off to the toilet during the night and abandoning me. Understood? All right, then, I’ll see you in the morning.”
She lay still for a few minutes. Her breathing soon settled into a slow, steady tempo. I’d never known anyone who didn’t toil in the fields who could fall asleep so quickly, let alone a woman who was supposed to be in great pain. Morphine, perhaps? It was too dark to read, not that I’d thought to bring along a book. There was now nothing left to do but sit and wait for dawn, and once dawn came, sit and wait until Madam woke up. If this weren’t wearying enough, I had to sit perfectly still because, I soon discovered, the wooden chair squeaked each time I shifted my weight, however minutely. Of course, this meant taking a nap was out of the question.
I could only stare at the outline of my new employer. She slept resolutely, flat on her back with her hands clasped over her rib cage, like one pantomiming the act of slumber. Only people in movies slept like this. As for me, my role seemed no different from a watchman at the morgue: I was guarding somebody who was effectively dead. My bored eyes combed the room.
I began to lure shapes out of the velvety black. The four pos
ts defined the boundaries of the bed, the square blob was the dresser, the two squat men in conical hats were table lamps. Suddenly, out of the darkness came a low, ominous rumble. This went on for about half a minute.
Eventually, I realized it was my stomach. It needed food.
I sought out the low table Mrs. Wee had mentioned. It was so close by that I nearly toppled it by reaching out of my chair. Thankfully, she didn’t even stir. On the table sat a platter stacked high with small rectangles, each as stiff as a blackboard duster. I picked one up and bit into it. Revolting! It was filled with margarine, ham, and cucumber slices, each layer staler than the one before. The lot of them had probably been sitting there for days. Yet I continued eating. I’d had no dinner, and come to think of it, no lunch before that. I only stopped when the crumbs got caught in my throat—no water—and reached for the decanter of cognac, again careful not to wake my slumbering client. I took a swig from the cut-crystal bottle. The liquor seared a fiery trail down my gullet, but I felt weirdly sated. I sipped again.
My eyes teased out more shapes. The bulging curtains seemed to be harboring silent children. There were about a dozen pillows on the bed, each like a dozing cat. I’d never known one person to need this many pillows, or cats. The grandfather clock gonged—sounding distant one time, intimate the next. Half past ten. Was it really only half past ten? Impossible! These hours were stretching out mercilessly. The job was proving worse than any night watchman’s, who could at least enjoy the indelicate freedom to whistle.
Just then, a wave of coolness came cascading down my arms from above. I took it for a shiver of exhaustion. But the once-solid ceiling had suddenly become an open window, revealing an infinite blackness, like the night sky, save for the lack of stars. The edges of this rectangle began to snow. But it wasn’t snowflakes that fell; it was numinous dust, akin to the pinpricks one saw after staring too long at the dark.
The dust glowed brighter, turning into sparks I was sure would land on my skin with tiny electric pulses. But as they floated weightlessly down, they vaporized into wisps of smoke that drifted toward the center of the room, forming a white, phosphorescent cross over Mrs. Wee. It was uncannily beautiful, like the precursor to a fairy godmother’s entrance or a soprano’s closing aria.
Illuminated by the glow, Mrs. Wee stirred like a horse shaking off flies but did not wake. A figure took form in the gathering smoke, directly above the bed. It looked eerily like Mrs. Wee, but younger, in her late thirties. This spectral Mrs. Wee hovered in the air, gazing down placidly. So seamlessly had I blended into the room that the ghost did not register my presence.
Or so I thought.
“Ah, the new girl.” She said this without turning to me. Her voice was filled with echoes and sibilance, as if it were being transmitted by radio from far off.
“Stop tormenting yourself,” I said. “Everything’s fine. Go back to sleep.”
It was clear she couldn’t hear me. I tried again, lowering my voice into a whisper, to match hers.
“Go back to sleep. There’s nobody here.”
The spirit continued to hover, still not hearing me.
I tried several approaches until, exasperated, I drew in a long, deep breath. As I released the air from the very bottom of my lungs, my voice became slow, low, old, filling the cold room:
“Sleep, please…”
This time, I broke through.
“I have every right to be here, you know. This used to be my room.”
I was so thrilled by my triumph that I almost laughed. But I continued to hold my voice steady, emitting it from deep down in my gut: “It still is, Mrs. Wee.”
The spirit now turned to face me.
“Yes, I am Mrs. Wee, only not the Mrs. Wee you think. Not the aged Mrs. Wee lying in that bed below, so wracked with guilt she’s not had a decent night’s sleep in ten years. Oh no.”
“You mean then you’re her younger self.”
The spirit scoffed. “This isn’t A Christmas Carol, my little ragamuffin. I’m the original Mrs. Wee. The first, the true. Claimed by malaria ten years ago, only to find my old-maid sister getting chummy with my lonesome fool of a husband. Damn that Ignatius! What a drab gal she was, too. They married three months later, you know. And there I was, thinking poor Betsy would be alone for the rest of her life.”
The dying Mrs. Wee’s dead sister. “You’ve been haunting her since then?”
“Ten years and she never once noticed me. Then all of a sudden, hysteria. Poor girl must be on her last legs.”
“Which is why you should leave her be. She’s miserable.” I tried placation. “Besides, you’re in a better place than she is.”
“How would you know? Anyone sent you postcards?”
I kept quiet. A sarcastic spirit. Did all ghosts cleave to their old ticks and quirks? If so, she was probably right: Hers wasn’t a better place.
I closed my eyes to ignore the ghost—but she had plans of her own.
“How would you like to see an old woman scream?” she said brightly. “I find it can be quite bracing.” She floated two steps back and threw her arms up high, preparing to summon her sister.
“There must be something I can do for you,” I said as a last resort, “to help settle that score.”
“Quid pro quo?” She lowered her arms. “Come to think of it…Yes, of course. Certainly. Could you give me my life back? My husband? My children? She despises my children, you know. Thinks they’re spoiled rotten, which is true, but still I’d like them back. Think you can manage all that?”
I grimaced.
“Not so powerful now, are you?”
“Be reasonable.”
“What makes you think reason has anything to do with this?”
I took a breath. “What else has she got of yours that you want returned?”
“My pigeon’s blood earrings.” She said this with a speed that seemed to surprise even herself. “Iggy bought them for me on a trip to Hong Kong. He wanted to bury me with them, but Betsy of course told the undertaker no. Said it would be a terrible waste. Not that she ever wore them herself. I think they clashed with her moles.” She cackled sourly. “Anyway, there they are.”
She hurled a cluster of sparks on Mrs. Wee’s teak dresser. I tiptoed over and gingerly opened the top drawer. The exquisite earrings glistened, little cascading lanterns of cut rubies three inches long. They were laid out on a black velvet panel that flaunted their shimmer even more. In comparison, the rest of the jewelry in the drawer was dowdy—cultured pearls and generic jade teardrops.
“What should I do with them?”
“Use your imagination. Failing that, a burial in the back garden should do.”
Easy. “Consider it done. Will this give you peace?”
“Beggars can’t be choosers.”
I grunted.
The ghost threw me a playful smile. “But it’s the thought that counts.”
Daylight was seeping through the cracks of the curtains. It was dawn. Though it only felt like minutes, I must have been negotiating for hours.
As more light poured into the room, I gazed at the stack of sandwiches. Each and every one was covered in a blanket of gray mold.
The courtyard was abuzz at dawn. Agnes the Rottweiler was in her cage, but this did not stop her from baying at me as I walked toward the servants’ wing. It was as if she could smell the ruby earrings in my brassiere.
The Tamil groundskeeper, Subramaniam, was crouching by the dog with a flap of bloody sirloin. Evidently he also had the loathsome task of feeding the monster. Nodding to me apologetically, he said, “This dog, ah, very unpredictable.” He extended his right hand and showed me the awkward dent where chewed-off flesh had been sewn up by a back-alley surgeon.
While Subramaniam’s men tended the grounds, Saudah the Sumatran washerwoman rolled up her sleeves and began running water into two enormous basins. She and Subramaniam traded morning greetings—“Selamat!” “Salaam!”—and then she waved at me with a hand coated in
suds. Happy to be included, I waved back.
The servants all seemed to get along, except for one notable exception: Issa the wordless Bugis chauffeur. He had just begun his slow daily ritual of washing and waxing the family’s black Bentley. Issa looked at no one, spoke to no one, and yet seemed perfectly attuned to every exchange going on around him. The others left him alone. Just watching him lean across the car, with his warrior’s physique and long, black mane, I understood why. He wore thick gold cuffs on both ears, proud emblems of his seafaring origins—pirate ancestors, undoubtedly—and his watchful, hooded eyes made it clear he did not wish to be disturbed. I thought I saw him take a fleeting glance at me but seconds later was sure I’d been wrong.
I scurried past the lot of them, the ruby earrings icy against my flesh.
The rose garden at the far end of the servants’ wing was hidden and unattended. Using a trowel that had been left in a flower pot, I dug a small hole at the base of the reddest rosebush and buried the earrings. Red under red, for symbolism’s sake.
Heading back to my room, I sneaked a peek at the caged Agnes. She was sitting on her haunches, quietly watching me. Good dog, good doggy.
The thing about civilized ghosts, I thought with enormous relief, was that they were reasonable—unlike the ones in the jungle with their irrational rage. And now, now I could speak to them!
Once in my room, I shooed away the harmless old Sikh. “Privacy, man!” I said in my new gut-whisper, and then fell into victorious slumber. I’d survived my first night.
Watching Mrs. Wee became a breeze. The ghost did not appear that night, the next night, nor the night after that. Burying those earrings had indeed brought peace to her dead sister. Emboldened by my success, I toted slim books, hidden on my person, as I reported to duty each night. Once my client fell asleep, I settled behind the damask curtains and read by moonlight. This way, I always had Baudelaire near and dear, his Flowers of Evil helping to soak up the lonely hours between ten and seven.