SPELLS

BY OVIDIA YU

Tiong Bahru

We were minding our own business! Never causing no trouble! And then, for no reason, you came and cursed us! You are wicked—evil!”

The accusation bursts out of the figure lurking by the vase of welcoming lilies on our rooftop terrace as we come out of the lift.

“Please—not another suicidal teen!” says Renee, my flatmate, only partly in jest.

Living in a modern condo in a heritage conservation district where walkups are the norm means an unexpected visitor to our private penthouse lobby is a potential mugger.

The woman turns on Renee: “You busybody slut, this is all your fault. You made this one curse me! Now my husband is gone and my boy has diabetes and the doctor says he has some lump growing inside so he has to go and operate!”

Renee retreats before the barrage of Singlish and spittle.

The woman has the fierce, focused intensity sometimes seen on people verging on insanity. Her hair looks dirty and she smells . . . a stale, sour odor of unhealthy, unwashed flesh and fabric envelops and moves with her.

If I were meeting her for the first time, I would classify her as crazy.

“Should we call the police?” Renee asks quietly from behind me.

“Call Gary,” I say. I stay between Renee and our visitor. Gary, chairman of our management committee, lives in the other penthouse in the Banyan Tower and is a reliable witness.

“It’s all your fault! You destroyed my family! And now you are making my son get sick and—and—”

Tears and memories overcome her words. She cannot make herself say the word die. But I know it is not only her son that these harsh raw sobs are for as she twists herself in agony against our front door.

“And that stupid maid. Can you believe the girl had the cheek to offer me money for my boy’s treatment? Whoever heard of such a thing? I told her, if you so laowah and got so much money to throw at people, why are you here washing toilets? I told the police, I told the maid agency, if the girl got so much money she must have stolen it from me! Those useless people come and tell me I’m the one that owes her back pay!”

Renee, ever softhearted, moves over to comfort the intruder. Instinctively, I reach out an arm to block, to protect. The blue ceramic vase shatters on the wall rack beside her head and—

“Did you see that?” The madness in the woman’s voice rises and she shrieks again. “Did you see what she did? I didn’t break that—but I know you are going to blame me!”

“No one is blaming you . . .” Renee says, but she retreats to safety behind me. She obviously doesn’t recognize the woman.

It is not surprising that I remember her. After all, I remember everything about Tiong Bahru since the 1930s and it was only a year ago that I first encountered our not-yet-mad visitor at the newly reopened market. The old stigma of subsidized government housing is forgotten in our district’s graceful curved balconies and pastel wooden shutters, and the vegetable patches between rows of terraced walk-ups are tended by a mix of original inhabitants and recent arrivals. In the prewar days the buildings were called mei ren wu or houses of beauty because mistresses of wealthy businessmen lived here. Now that coffee bars, modern bistros, and retro bookshops have moved in, property prices have gone up, attracting real estate agents like this woman.

* * *

The first time I saw her was at the market when she cut in front of me at the chwee kueh stall. Chwee kueh is rice flour and water steamed into delicate discs and topped with fried pickled vegetables and sesame seeds. It is still one of Renee’s favorite treats.

The woman had her husband, maid, and two children in tow and was talking loudly about the profits she intended to make. “I don’t see why this place is supposed to be such a big deal. People buying to rent to homos and foreigners—that’s why the prices are so high!”

She complained about the quality of the chwee kueh. She complained about the seating and the birds and she scolded her daughter for not eating, her husband for not listening, and her maid for not stopping her son from throwing his fork and plate and water bottle at the birds.

Then she slapped her maid for trying to collect their unfinished food in a plastic bag. “So dirty! People will think we don’t feed you!”

The maid had not been given anything to eat or drink. But the maid was not as thin as the daughter, who had transferred the food from inside her bowl to under her plate, bypassing her mouth. I noticed, even if her mother did not. She might have been a pretty girl, I thought, if not dwarfed by her mother’s size and manner.

That would have been the end of it had the woman not appeared in front of the Seng Poh Road ground-floor flat I was living in then.

I recognized the smug, strident voice mocking our simple wooden doors and painted window grills even as she stuffed Best Price Offered for Your Property flyers through them.

“I tell you, these days all the rich homos and poor ang mohs want to live here. These stupid old people don’t know what they are sitting on—eh-eh-eh, boy-boy, don’t throw!” A crash followed.

I opened the door to find her pale pudgy son had smashed the arowana tank on the five-foot way with a cup cactus. Water and broken glass were mixed with porcelain fragments and the pink-tipped petals of the crushed Sedum rubrotinctum were being smeared on the cement walkway by my two desperately flailing fish. The boy had already picked up another pot off the wall rack, a three-inch Tiger’s Jaw in a clay pot, and was looking around for his next target. When he saw me his eyes gleamed; he raised his arm in my direction but squeaked and dropped the plant as its needles twisted around and jabbed him. The husband and maid were nowhere to be seen, no doubt distributing flyers elsewhere, but the anorexic daughter was standing there looking both sullen and alarmed.

The woman smacked the girl on the back of her head, making the chubby boy forget his pinpricks to crow in glee. “Why didn’t you watch your brother? This is all your fault!”

* * *

Now the lift doors open again. Handsome, efficient Gary appears with his two Filipina maids and chauffeur, assorted neighbors, and an apologetic security guard. They are armed with kitchen knives, Gary’s golf clubs, and a Koran.

“Police are on their way,” Gary says. “Renee just said you had a psycho up here—I didn’t know if she meant psycho as in suicide, murderer, or opposition party member.”

“She’s the wicked one! She took my husband away! She’s killing my son!” the woman shouts at them.

Here, at last, we have arrived at the heart of the woman’s bitterness. Not surprisingly, Renee still doesn’t recognize her. Instead, stress and incredulity burst out of her in a sudden spurt of laughter.

“Her? She’s not into men and she won’t even eat meat because she won’t kill animals!”

Now the woman stops, her attention caught, and really looks at Renee for the first time. “And she took you too. I never knew you were so serious about singing. I thought you were just playing the fool. For once in your life, listen to me. Tell her to stop killing your brother!”

Renee looks confused. Fortunately, Gary steps in and directs his chauffeur and our security guard to take the woman downstairs. She is still struggling with them when the police arrive.

The policemen take the woman away, of course. One of them shyly tells Renee he has all her CDs and always watches President’s Star Charity when she sings on the show. She gives him a can of chrysanthemum tea and an autographed photo and he goes off happy, promising he will make sure she is never bothered again by this “whacko nutcase.”

The woman is still shouting. We can hear her at street level, the desperation in her voice growing with the distance.

“She cursed me! She cursed my whole family! She stole my daughter!”

I had not cursed the woman or her damned family. As her daughter had helped transfer my poor suffocating fish into a tub, I had spoken quietly to the woman, outlining the future coming to her. There is no need for harsh tones when your words hold power. Even her daughter, measuring capfuls of water conditioner into the tub as she held the plastic hose steady, had not heard a thing.

Besides, it was already clear to me then that her husband had left her bed for another months before and was well on his way out of her life. Likewise, her son’s cancer had already been hovering, a dark miasma of stickiness in the air around his soft, sickly body. All I had done was name it and bring it to the surface. I know the smell of sickness very well. I was only twenty-seven years old when I died of diphtheria during the Occupation.

Some things hang in the balance and a word spoken is all it takes to tip it . . .

“Will she be all right?” Renee says. She looks beautiful and concerned. “She’s crazy, isn’t she?”

No, the woman is not crazy yet, but she will be soon. And she is likely to find herself labeled crazy long before that happens. Perhaps after she tells her story to her boss—her shift supervisor at McDonald’s who, though sorry for her, will be forced to fire her because of parents’ complaints that she frightens their children. And of course the police and the court-appointed psychiatrist will label her delusional and psychotic.

I decide it is safe to forget her.

But Renee still looks shaken. “What she said just now—for a moment I almost seem to remember—” It is as though some bitter echo remains in her. “I don’t want to end up like her,” she says a second time.

When my Renee first said that a year ago she was referring to our uninvited visitor’s hard, calculating eyes and the harsh lines etched around a discontented mouth stained with cheap lipstick. That was when I decided to save her from her life. I called her “Renee,” meaning “reborn.” Because I rescued her, I will protect her.

“I love you,” I remind my Renee. “Nothing else matters. I will always keep you safe.”

My words protect and bind her securely to me again. Renee’s lovely face clears and she smiles and turns and goes into our home. I will follow.

But first I heal the shattered vase and its contents. I bless the shimmering koi in their new unbreakable tank. I adjust the sand, the salt, and the watching seeds that shield our entrance. The smooth, hard, shiny golden-brown shells of flax seeds in their box with two whole dried chilies will protect us from forces stronger than a desperate human, but I know better than to take them for granted. As I stir my energy into the seeds, I feel subtle barriers of protection rise and hear Renee laugh. These items are more for show than anything else, of course.

The most powerful magic still lies in words—

Not in words spoken but in directions heard.