Then, Mother and Aunty Katherine started drinking gin and tonics with slivers of lemon until it got late in the evening and when her husband, the Ambassador, came home after work, we all sat down and had dinner. He was a little bald man who spoke in a thick accent, he could have been German, but I wasn’t sure. We ate from plates with gold trimmings and I drank orange juice from a crystal wine glass, while the adults drank white wine, then red, then cognac. Dinner was delicious—there was a meat pie with mashed potatoes, French beans with melted garlic butter and a trifle for dessert. It was the most sumptuous meal I had ever had in all my eight years, and as the conversation drifted later and later into the night, I was carried by the Ambassador to a couch in the study, where I was covered by a fluffy blanket and left to sleep.
Years later, I found out that Aunty Katherine had committed suicide in that house. She had apparently hanged herself from the rafters in the living room, and her ghost still roamed around the area. The house had since been abandoned and it lay in complete ruin. I remembered that afternoon and how happy Mother and Aunty Katherine had been. I never knew what happened to the Ambassador, but I often wondered what had driven Aunty Katherine to hang herself. Was it because he was having an affair? Or perhaps she was the one who had been unfaithful. I wondered what happened to all those beautiful things in the house. All the curtains, and plates and silverware, was it all left in the house? Or did the little bald man pack it all up and have it shipped to where he was going next?
One day I decided to go and look for that house, to see if it was still standing. I drove past the construction site on Jalan Bukit Tunku, found the street sign for Jalan Syers and drove along a gravel road until I came to the house. There were two other similar ones, all in a row. Then I saw a large, orange sign by the road.
Property of Keretapi Tanah Melayu (KTM). Scheduled for demolition. Property Developer –TMF Sdn Bhd.
My heart sank. Omar and Fairman’s company was going to demolish those beautiful houses. The land was owned by the national railway company, so there was no way it could be bought. Or saved.
I parked my car and wandered up the road. The old angsana trees were still there. All three houses had long been abandoned. And I saw that scavengers had been around. Windows had been taken, old fixtures on the doors, hinges, old black bakelite switches missing. The Burmese teak floorboards had been ripped out. I walked into the hallway and heard a flutter of feathers. Pigeons had roosted in the roof. Light pierced from a gaping hole, shadows flitted in between the rafters and green mould charted out archipelagos on the walls. I walked in and felt a shiver.
I walked in and out of the dining room, into the vast kitchen which still had shelves intact, the old ceramic sink was still there, probably too heavy to cart off single-handedly. The servants quarters were more dilapidated, with wooden slats falling off, and holes in the concrete floors. That is where the Indian housekeeper used to live with her son. What happened to them?
As I walked along the side of the house, the creepers thick, the papaya trees overgrown with fruit, I saw a glint of something in the grass. It was a tiny silver spoon, like the one that I had used to stir sugar in my mother’s teacup that day. Perhaps marauding robbers had dropped it in their haste? Perhaps one of the servants had taken the entire set deep in the night, and dropped one lone spoon? I picked it up, brushed it clean against my skirt, and as I walked away from the house, I heard a light hush and I forced myself to not look back.
I needed to do something. I had to look for Alba.
After a few more conversations with Inspector Awang, I somehow convinced myself that she was somewhere in KL, that she had perhaps been “adopted” by a wealthy couple. It was a thread of thought that was logical, that I kept to myself as there was nothing to prove any of my assumptions, and quietly went about my plan to map out certain areas in the Klang Valley where she was most likely to be. I also ascertained that she was probably in the most wealthy residential parts of KL, namely Bukit Tunku, Bangsar, Damansara Heights, Petaling Jaya—which was huge, so only the wealthier sections had to be considered—and Taman Tun Dr Ismail.
I got a map of the Klang Valley and pinned it on the wall of the dining room. Out came a stack of post-its, multi-coloured pins and marker pens. I traced the borders of those areas in black and then subdivided those in red. Each red section would translate to one day of searching.
My conclusions were this. Alba had probably been adopted by a family that was either half-expat and local, or all expat, or all local. The demographic of white-mixed couples in the Klang Valley had increased exponentially in the few years after the economic crisis, and especially since there was a renewed faith in the country. Expats loved living in Malaysia—the “expat package” was synonymous with top-notch housing, free international schooling for kids, a maid and or housekeeper, cars and a big, fat salary.
I stood back after marking out the map and I felt for the first time, a sense of purpose that I had not felt since I ran the streets of KL six years before. There was of course some measure of insanity and ludicrousness to this whole scheme, but I had to try, I had to try something. Not doing anything was more detrimental than anything else. No more drugs, no more alcohol. It was drastic but I had to get to a point where it all had to stop. I needed to have a clear head, I needed to be meticulous about it all. I knew in my heart that nothing would ever destroy my desire to find my daughter. It was the only thing I had left, the only thing that made sense, to keep living.
I don’t know how parents with missing kids survived. In my hours perusing the Internet for statistics and research on missing children, I knew that the percentage of marriages that were destroyed after children died or had gone missing, was high. Few survived. It was the worst nightmare for any married couple, one that took the light out of days and made it an eternal night.
Then, one bright morning Marina called me.
You remember that woman I was telling you about… one of the girls said that she has been coming around again…
What? I choked on my coffee.
She wanted to know if anyone was pregnant or if anyone wanted to give up their babies.
Did she leave a number? I asked, my voice leaning into a panic.
No, but I can find out.
Oh my god, Marina, what if… What if… What if she knows about Alba, what if she was the one who kidnapped Alba? I lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply.
Del…relax. One step at a time…okay?
Can…you find out her name?
I have to be careful. The girls will get suspicious…You know they need the money.
Okay…okay. I said. So she buys the babies?
Marina went quiet. Yes, she pays them cash.
Oh my god, oh my god. I fell to the floor. Please help me find her, please dear god help me, help me. Marina, I need you to find out her name, please. I need to know her name. Who is she? What kind of person does this…
Marina whispered over the phone.
A monster. A devil. Syaitan.
If you’re a well-to-do mother with a young child, chances are, you or your maid will push a pram around your affluent neighbourhood, to daycare or nursery, the playground, assuming that all of the above are within walking distance of your home. There are selected playgrounds in posh residential areas, so it’s easy to stake them out. Most parents prefer to take their kids to indoor gyms where they can romp around in tunnelled mazes, enclosed pens with coloured plastic balls, and jump on mini trampolines, all under the supervision of vigilant care-givers who will only allow you to take your kids once you reveal a secret password. But still, the lowly playground is still an early morning and evening haunt for babies and their carers.
I took to jogging around Damansara Heights in the mornings. As early at 6.30am I would park my car opposite the secondary school and wait for the drivers, or mothers or fathers to drop their kids off. This was probably the top government school in KL and also the most difficult to get in. Sons and daughters of politicians were a
priority, and I’d heard of parents who put their children’s names down on a register the minute they were born. I looked like a parent in a running outfit and after the bell rang at 7.30 sharp and all the cars disappeared, I started jogging. I saw Filipino nannies with babies and toddlers in pushchairs, Indonesian twenty-somethings with babies in sarongs, wrapped tightly around their chests, walking up and down the leafy streets. These were bungalows, houses with multiple bedrooms and bathrooms, with pools, indoor gyms, European cars. I waved and said hi to them, cooed and chatted with the babies and toddlers.
I jogged up and down the Setiakasih streets, going up and down the numbers, looking into houses, cars, windows that were open. I was an eavesdropper, an intruder of sorts, entering the lives of these strangers, imagining their most intimate secrets, their deepest fears. I saw retired men in shorts and baseball caps walking their yappy dogs, I saw teenage girls with headphones stuck in their ears running in candy-coloured shoes, I saw executive types with portly stomachs and early jowls run up hilly slopes and walk with uneven breaths after. Mornings were cool until nine o'clock, when the sun came out in all its glory. Unless you wanted to sweat profusely and unnecessarily, it was time to get into air-conditioning or under a cold shower.
For one week I alternated between mornings and evenings. I saw a pattern that emerged with nannies, joggers and dog-walkers. I started recognising faces, and started saying hi to some. Then it was the Setiabudi streets, Setiaraya—past even bigger houses, more opulent, more modern. I saw similarities in gate designs, plants and flower pots placed outside, water features and fake rocks—good for feng shui—older women in hats and gloves squatting over flower beds. It was mundane, normal, sedate. I saw lonely people wandering in and out of their cars. I saw mothers with shopping bags, babies, maids carrying all manner of things big and small. People going in and out of their houses. All this time I saw nothing suspicious, until one day I went into a cul-de-sac at the end of Setiakasih 7. I saw a neighbourhood guard post with two Nepali guards. One came up to me.
Morning, madam, where are you going?
I was breathless and said, Oh, just going to jog up and down the road.
Sorry, madam, I need to see your IC or drivers’ licence.
I don’t have it, sorry.
Then you cannot go in.
Oh, I see. Not even to jog?
Cannot, madam, last night got robbery here, so boss said cannot let anyone without IC first.
Okay, I understand, thank you.
As I turned to run in the opposite direction, he said, Madam, where you staying? I walk with you, not safe here now.
No, it’s okay. I am not far.
I ran back to my car, and sat in silence as I drank an entire bottle of water in a slight panic. Then I hit my head on the steering wheel and screamed. I was not going to find anything there. It was stupid. A waste of time. How on earth was I going to find my child? By jogging the streets of the city? By staking out playgrounds? By peeking into stranger’s houses? All I had seen were semblances of human lives, families, fragments of minutes spent on roads, insights into people’s time. I felt like a criminal, stealing glances into babies faces, adoring their chubby hands and feet, their gurgles, the way the adult hands dug into young, soft flesh, the sweetness in the cheeks, necks, I just yearned for my baby, my darling baby girl. Where was she? I drove home, tears streaming down my face, I was screaming into the traffic, screaming for the loss of everything that I knew to be human.
The incident with the security guard at Damansara Heights had rattled me more than I imagined. I felt like an intruder, and the way I had skulked around nannies and their prams, peering into babies with dummies in their mouths was simply wrong. But I was a desperate mother, looking for desperate measures, what was I to do? After that day, I had a terrible sense of foreboding, which kept me anxious and awake at night. I had not had a drink and I was determined not to, but when I got home that evening, my hands were shaking.
I called Shah and asked if he wanted to hang out. In an hour I was at his apartment and bent over my second line of coke. He came up behind me and started caressing me, I missed you. I really did. After I did three lines, the panic had subsided but I still felt like there was a light bulb going off in my head, every ten minutes. I paced up and down his apartment and stared out the floor-to-ceiling glass panes.
The city spread out in front of me. I saw the gleaming Twin Towers to my immediate right, the KL Tower to my left yet, a chasm of humanity in between. What untold horrors lay beneath those buildings? What scale of human misery was there? Were there young girls who were being forced to have sex with twenty, thirty men in one night? Was Marina still spreading her legs for some filthy man with unwashed hands? How many beggars were being tortured for not bringing back enough money from the streets? How many Bangladeshi workers were lining up to fuck a Burmese woman at twenty ringgit a pop?
How many people were begging for their lives; for more leniency, more compassion, more mercy at the hands of gangsters, loan sharks, cruel traffickers, cops? The city stewed defiantly right back at me, right at the top of another building that was the folly of thousands of workers. Slave labour, that’s what it was. We were a nation that was built on the sweat and tears of slaves. Just like so many developed countries, just like most of the bloody world.
You look tense, what’s up? Why you keeping away from me? You know I like hanging out with you.
Sorry, been trying to stay clean…
Come here baby… just come here.
Shah was kind, he really was. He knew how to make me feel at ease, and it wasn’t just when we were high, he just knew how to talk to me, that low-slung purring of his, so feline, so utterly sexy. Come here, come here, my sweet, sweet Del. Sometimes I just wanted him to talk to me, in that low sonorous timbre, it was so relaxing it could put me to sleep. I walked towards him, and for a moment I wished that it was Omar I was walking to.
I pestered Marina for the name of the woman, but she kept telling me, I will give it to you when I have it.
Until the morning when Sumi called me and said: Hey…the woman from the adoption agency is coming over today, do you still want to meet her?
An hour before she was due to arrive, I was at Sumi’s with a box of hot, flaky curry puffs, from the legendary stall in SS2. The Fairmans now lived in a guarded community in Mont Kiara and the pre-fabricated house was in a row along with other houses that all looked the same. Kids ran down the pebbled pathways on roller-blades and scooters, babies in push prams, some walking precariously hanging onto foreign hands. Trees were planted exactly ten feet away from each other. It was suburban heaven. Pre-fabricated homes. What KL’s middle classes aspired to own. Sumi was at the gate in full make-up and an expensive silk shirt, looking as nervous as I was.
So, she’s going to come over and brief us about the process, how long it takes, paperwork and so on and so forth.
I sucked on my cigarette, nodding. Then a quick, familiar hug. I was there to help Sumi, that was the plan, and that was what I was going to do. Appear non-fussed, helpful, supportive.
So the same one that Kim recommended?
Yeah, and apparently another friend just got a baby from her too.
I tried to keep my face unchanged, and managed a fixed smile.
Right, okay. Well let’s wait and see.
I knew that Sumi was in a state as well; this was no Tupperware lady hedging in on us, this was a woman plying infants for sale, in the middle of Kuala Lumpur, in broad daylight, in one of the most exclusive neighbourhoods in town.
Thanks for being here, I hope you’re okay with this.
Yes, of course. No worries. It’s kinda exciting, no?
We sat around drinking cups of tea and eating curry puffs, trying to keep the conversation easy. I had two curry puffs in one go and suddenly felt the bits of spiced chicken, potato and fried flour churning in my stomach. My appetite wavered from day to day. Some days all I could eat was fruit and salad and other days vegetabl
es and tofu. Meat turned my stomach.
Suddenly, the buzzer went. We both jumped and Sumi ran to the wall consul.
Hello, hello. Mrs Fairman? The voice crackled through.
A woman stood outside, in a dark blue skirt, carrying a large handbag. Her hair looked slightly disheveled from the breeze that was picking up, and in her arms was a bundle. In a rehearsed sing-song voice, she said.
Hello, Mrs Fairman, here’s your baby!
A baby? You brought me a baby? I don’t want a baby right now… I just wanted to talk to you first.
We were stunned. This woman, this complete and utter stranger had brought a baby to us. Standing at Sumi’s front door, baby in hand, just like that.
Well, Mrs Fairman, sometimes you get a gift, and this baby girl… is a gift. I just picked her up from her mother, who wanted her to find the best home as soon as possible… so I said why not? And I came straight here. She smiled and beamed widely with the whitest set of teeth I had ever seen.
Sumi had turned pale underneath her make-up and gestured for her to come in. The baby was asleep, she made no sound and when I asked to carry her, I could see immediately that she was of mixed heritage. Approximately a month old, healthy, with pink rosebud lips. A full head of black hair.
Once We Were There Page 26