Ponti

by Sharlene Teo

  I kept to the sheltered walkway, one foot in front of another, a game, pretending I was on a zigzag balance beam instead. My schoolbag sopped through my back, my textbooks heavy and useless. I felt hungry and cold. I went all along the corridor and then up the stairwell. I couldn’t have climbed more than a few floors. But later on, when I tried to get the events straight, it was like something in my brain just couldn’t compute. The corridors and identical dun-and-apricot-colored blocks merged and warped into an infinity of stairwells and hallways, like an M. C. Escher drawing. It’s funny how we get so used to the environment we live in that going down a different pathway becomes as unnatural as writing with your nondominant hand.

  Being on the other side of our block of flats, which Leslie and I hadn’t bothered to explore for a while, was enough to unsettle me. The floor I found myself on looked just the same as our own, down to the brown bristle welcome mat a couple of doors ahead and the single potted plant in the corridor. My skin felt clammy and in need of a wash. The rainstorm kept up its angry piston beat. I scratched a mosquito bite on the back of my neck, unsure of what to do next.

  A door opened halfway down to the right, exactly where our flat would be, except this wasn’t our floor. First the inner lock and then the grille came unlatched. An auntie popped her head out. She had white hair and a foggy face. She reminded me of a turtle because of her slow, reptilian stare and the sagging skin of her neck. We had lived in this building for years but I had never seen her. She beckoned for me to come over.

  “Ah girl. You’re Circe, aren’t you?”

  “How do you know my name?”

  “Your mother told me to let you in if you were locked out,” she said. “Don’t just stand there, you’ll catch cold.”

  I stayed where I was, even as she came out and beckoned. She stood opposite me, arms akimbo. She was old, and quite fat. I could see the lumps of her tummy where her blue blouse clung to her, and the dappled flesh under her arms.

  “Your ma told me to look for you. Glad you came here.”

  “You know my mom?”

  “Yes, of course. She said to have you over for tea.”

  She spoke like a teacher who had been educated overseas, yet it was hard to place where her accent came from. I guessed Hong Kong or Taiwan.

  I peered behind her and into her flat. It was dark in there, not even a TV on. I could see the floral edge of a sofa, and the floor was speckled. Now, I must say here that I’m not stupid: I remembered what we had been taught since kindergarten about dangerous strangers, even if Singapore is one of the safest places in the world. The instructional videotape told us to refuse everything offered and to step away slowly, claiming parents were close. I felt flattered that if this woman was a kidnapper, I was deemed worth it and cute enough for criminal calculation. Usually the missing children on TV were British or American, blonde baby beauty queens or mop-fringed cherubs.

  “Come in, lah,” the woman said. “Stop dillydallying. Your ma Magda told me to take care of you. I know her from Bible study. She never say? I’m Madam Chang, by the way. Nice to meet you.”

  Madam Chang herded me in. Her living room was dingy as hell. She gestured towards a rattan chair. The room’s only illumination came from a small aquarium in the corner. Algae grew across the top and bottom of the glass. Two big, bloated goldfish with ragged tails drifted about. They were pearly white with a tinge of red, as if their scales had faded. One of the fish had cataracts.

  “Would you like some juice? Or some Milo?”

  “Maybe some Milo,” I replied. “Thanks, Auntie.”

  She went into the kitchen. Through the din of the rainstorm I heard the pad and hum of the fridge door. She returned with a cold carton of Milo. I took it from her, and suspecting that it could be spiked or poisoned, dropped it on the floor. Madam Chang picked it up and gave it back to me. Again, I let it fall. Making the same mistake twice seemed to upset adults and teachers. If she grew angry, then she couldn’t be trusted.

  “You are naughty,” Madam Chang said as she placed the carton on my lap, but she smiled as she said this and her yellow teeth shone. She sat on the rattan chair beside mine, with her hands placed flat on her knees.

  I smiled at her primly and shrugged. I shook the carton of Milo before I poked the straw in, wondering how long my parents would take to come back, and how long the rainstorm would last. As I sipped the Milo I stared at the goldfish with the cataracts, bobbing unsteadily. It looked like it would go belly-up any moment.

  “You’re looking at my jinyu, huh? Guess how old they are?”

  “Dunno.”

  “Come on, guess.”

  “Two?” I took another sip, making a small gurgling sound with the straw. The Milo tasted slightly bitter.

  “Wrong!” Madam Chang said, and grinned at me. “Try again. Come on!”

  I shrugged.

  “They are both a hundred fifty years old. Husband and wife, you know. They lived through the war and the British people. If I had more space these fishes would be the size of ducks. Or even pigs.”

  I said nothing and looked at the tiled floor.

  “Do you like school?”

  “It’s okay,” I replied.

  “Don’t say like that,” Madam Chang said. “Okay only? You’re lucky you get to go. I never got the chance. My father made me stay inside all day. My sisters, some of them so clever, but they weren’t allowed books, they had to cook and clean and sew. I had to learn everything on my own. Don’t say the government bad to you to make you go to school.”

  I rolled my eyes internally. I knew what pattern she was: Preachy Propaganda Auntie. I loathed being lectured.

  “Can you read? Can you do maths?” I asked, because I hated both those things. “I’m good at maths,” I lied. “I got full marks for my last test.”

  “Wah, so clever,” she said. “Are you hungry?”

  “I’m okay,” I replied, but Madam Chang got out of her seat. It cost her a great effort.

  I stared at the pile of women’s magazines neatly stacked on the coffee table. Madam Chang returned with a plate containing some love letter biscuits. I took one just to have something to do. When I bit into the biscuit it crumbled completely and scattered all over my uniform.

  “How come you know my mom?” I inquired as I helped myself to another. “I’m in the yard all the time. I’ve never seen you.”

  “I keep to myself,” Madam Chang replied.

  I was about to ask her why when she fixed me with a serious expression. Her eyes were very shiny, and very black. All of a sudden she seemed sad, and her sadness sucked the light out of the room. It had a weight to it, a heft.

  “You are a very special girl, Circe,” she said. Her voice was brittle. “Not everyone is like you.”

  The aquarium light shifted from purple into teal and the walls took on a waving quality. In a matter of moments, Madam Chang seemed to grow younger as the room turned the green of cartoon slime, nuclear waste. Now she didn’t look any older than fifty. She had this serious, yearning expression. She reached towards me, made to touch my cheek, and I flinched, not because I thought she would hit me but because when her hand got close I felt a force I can only describe as extreme vertigo, or what I would find out years later is called a hypnic jerk, that jolt you get when you’re falling asleep.

  In the laser-green light, Madam Chang told me she was thousands of years old. I can’t remember her exact words, just the gist of it. Even her voice changed. She had a storyteller’s rasp now, almost theatrical. She was born in the Qin Mountains, forever ago. When she was very small, five priests and an astrologer came to her house. They had searched the land for someone like her for a long time. They inspected her body and declared that she met all the requirements. She had twenty perfect teeth and a neck as curved as a conch shell and lampblack eyes and bovine eyelashes. She was five years old. The men took her to a giant room full of the fly-ridden heads of slaughtered animals. They snuffed out their torches and left her there, locke
d in the darkness alone. At the crack of dawn, when they found her sitting calm and cross-legged amidst the carcasses, they declared her a goddess.

  From then on she could leave her chambers only for ceremonial occasions. She saw only her sisters. She was considered so sacred that her feet could never touch the common ground or her powers would leave her. She was carried everywhere on an elaborate beaded palanquin and people wept when they caught a glimpse of her. They made her offerings of giant fruit, rice, flowers, sometimes crayons, even though everyone was dirt-poor. Happy and reverent tears looked just the same as sad ones. She was lonely and sick of making people cry. Her legs grew soft and weak as stalks. Life carried on this way until she shed her first blood and she was told that, just like that, she and her family would return to the anonymity of their own village. It was very hard for her to be normal after years of being treated like a divine being on Earth. Even to walk with certainty, big bold steps, when she was accustomed to a shuffle.

  The men who married goddesses like her were cursed to early deaths, but she didn’t want to believe it. She grew up, fell in love. Her husband, Mr. Chang, worked in a mine. They made joy for each other for four perfect years, and then he fell ill. He had dust in his lungs and the sinseh could do nothing to help. One night, when the moon was so full it flooded the window, Madam Chang woke up with a gasp. She remembered that trial night with the bloodied buffalo heads staring into her soul, their victims’ eyes and long, dusty lashes. How moving, how cold. She wondered why it marked her as special to have endured that. Now she was powerless. Her husband’s labored breathing rattled beside her. The sinseh said he had not long left. Her heart hurt and she was seized with the impulse to get away from this sickbed and the pain that filled every corner of the house. She decided to go walking up the mountain.

  She wandered along the winding dirt path, lingering with the slow steps of one reluctant to return home, but who soon must. Something small gleamed ahead, winking like a signal. In the middle of the mud she found a pearl. It had a glowing pink luster. It was perfectly beautiful. She had never seen anything like it. Without thinking she put it in her mouth, tilted her head back, and swallowed. It tasted foul. Almost at once, she began to feel her bones lighten and her whole body had the sensation of dissolving like foam. Her once sacred, now callused feet lifted from the ground. Her shoes slipped off and then she floated up and away. She rose above the trees more quickly than she could shout. She watched the village and the mountains shrink to the size of her thumbs.

  “And then what?” I asked Madam Chang.

  Her hand brushed my knee. The light from the fish tank turned blue and lit up the lines across her forehead.

  “I kept floating until the whole earth looked like a scroll full of ink smudges. I went past clouds and birds. All the way until I reached the moon,” she said. The living room was now cast in astral blue.

  “Up there I had no need for shoes. It’s not so special, the moon, just rock and cooled lava; it smelt of gunpowder. Like fights, like volcanoes. I heard a sound in the distance, as if someone was chopping wood. How strange, I thought. That definitely sounds like a woodcutter. I kept moving along, trying to get closer. I walked for many hours but didn’t seem to be making any progress. Just when I was going to give up, I heard a thump and a rustle. I looked around and saw a white rabbit peeking out of a crater. First the little ears, and then the round eyes . . .”

  “No way!” I exclaimed. “That’s the story of Chang Er, the moon goddess. The Mid-Autumn Festival is next week, right? The mooncake festival.”

  “Next week?” Madam Chang said, and peered at me with a small, shy smile. Her pupils were huge. “Mooncakes?”

  “Come on, Chang Er? Everybody knows this one. It’s in my Chinese textbook . . .” I continued, though less insistently. “Even got a TV series about her last year . . .” My voice trailed off and I stopped talking because now she was staring at me as if I’d offended her. Her eyes turned hard and beady for a moment. And then she relaxed.

  I could almost picture her as that young goddess with a delicate nose and a rosebud mouth, drifting towards her lunar exile. Why were there a woodcutter and a rabbit on the moon? The myth made no sense. Why and how did she come back to earth? I wondered these things but I didn’t want to know. Instead I put down my carton of Milo.

  “I got to go home,” I said.

  “Cannot,” Madam Chang replied. “Your parents are out. You shouldn’t be alone.” Thunder rumbled and lightning lit up the locked grille.

  I tried to calculate whether I could make a break for the door. My limbs felt leaden, slow. Madam Chang got up and reached across me, towards the table. She grabbed the topmost magazine: Nuyou. She flipped to the middle. The pages made a sound like smacking.

  The spread opened to show a brown-haired Eurasian model posing on a chair: nothing unusual, but all these pieces of paper fell to the floor.

  “Look at these,” Madam Chang said. “I made them myself.” I didn’t want to touch anything. She pressed a few pieces firmly into my hands. They were thin as tissue. I held one up to the light, my hand shaking. It was cut in the shape of a bird. Another was shaped like a prowling paper cat.

  “Cat,” I said. I tried to get up but I was stuck.

  “Do you like them? I made for you,” she said. She smoothed out a piece with her two hands, turned to me. She put her face right in front of mine.

  “Circe. Listen,” she said. “Time is a wild animal. Time is a tiger. Time is an ox. Time is a rat. Xiao lao shu,” she said in Chinese, waving the stencil almost comically. “You’re a little rat.”

  The light changed to yellow. A goldfish plopped in the tank. The person who called herself Madam Chang looked old again. She moved around behind me. I froze. She put her hands on my shoulders. I dropped the stupid stencils.

  “You’re young now, but one day your body will change,” Madam Chang said. Her hands moved gently around my neck. My eyelids felt heavy. Her voice sounded garbled, as if filtered through the fish tank. “Your skin will loosen. You will drop hair. One day you will wake up with your bones all wrong and find it hard to move like you used to, and you can’t run from that.”

  When my mother returned around five thirty with Leslie in tow, she found me slumped in the corridor outside our flat. I had fallen asleep with my schoolbag as my pillow, legs curled up, arms splayed at angles. The rainstorm had died down to just a small, steady trickle. It was almost dark. My uniform was all crumpled and I had a smear of blood on my right leg but no cut; she checked. Later on my mother would tell me, “The smudge looked like you smacked a huge mosquito just as it was biting you.”

  My mother put me to bed.

  “Where is she?” was the first thing I asked when I came round.

  “Who?” my mother asked. I was running a high temperature. She pressed a cold towel to my forehead.

  “Madam Chang. The auntie who lives upstairs. From your Bible study group. Is she here?” I looked around furtively, eyes bulging. My temples pulsed.

  “No, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know such a person. You’re not feeling well. Go back to sleep.”

  By the time my father came home from work, I felt even worse. They took me to the doctor, who concluded that I had dengue fever. Fever can cause hallucinations; my forehead was hot as a stove.

  My parents asked around the block but nobody had heard of a Madam Chang. I was too scared and weak to go with them to look.

  “It was the same door as where our flat would be, just a different floor,” I said. “Moon lady with the fish tank.”

  They looked at me as if I was mad.

  “Bible study group.”

  “Stop saying that!” my mother cried out. “For the millionth time, there is no Madam Chang in my Bible study group!” She considered for a moment. “We do have a Mrs. Chan, though.”

  “Not her,” I replied. “She’s nice.”

  “Did this Madam Chang do anything to you?” my father almost bellowed. �
�Anything unusual?”

  My mother tutted. “Teck, don’t say like that. She won’t understand.”

  My father’s face was like thunder. He grabbed my arm and my palm opened into nothing. Without understanding fully, I knew the rough of what he meant. The speculation reddened my cheeks.

  My parents tried every flat in the block. My father couldn’t find a place like the one I described, with a fish tank in the corner, a floral sofa, rattan chairs, and gray floors. He scolded that it was my fever talking, that I had dreamt it all up. I was already known for telling tall tales, exaggerating. Then my mother spotted a living room on television that matched my description precisely—it was the set of a maudlin Channel 5 “dramedy” called Bukit Panjang that showed every Thursday at 8 p.m. Even if it looked slightly different, all the components were there.

  I could go look upstairs for myself if I wanted, they said, but I did not. For the remaining year we lived there, I never took the stairs up to the other floors again. Leslie was spooked by the smear of blood on me, and focused on the idea of a ghost that had given me the fever. In the end my mother concluded that I had scared myself. There were simple, often boring explanations for everything, she said.

  *

  By the time I stopped talking, Szu had a wide and peaceful smile across her face. She looked like a kid who had just heard a cozy bedtime story. I felt irritated. What I had just told her did not comfort me. Now that I had gotten the words out, I felt like they were wasted. I stared at the dusty floor.

  “Is that why you have trouble sleeping?” Szu asked.

  I looked up at her. Her eyes were bright and irritating.

  “Well, yeah,” I said. “Sometimes I have bad dreams and wake up in the middle of the night. And can’t get back to sleep.”

  “I see,” Szu replied. “Bad dreams of Madam Chang?”

  “No. Just random nightmares. Anyway, it’s better now.”