IT TOOK A FEW DAYS FOR THINGS TO GO BACK TO normal. During those days everyone tiptoed about, whispered when they met each other in the corridors and lifts. The Bangla workers stopped gathering to sit on the patch of grass below and drink and make noise. The good-for-nothing neighbours, even they turned down the volume of their TV in the evening and managed not to quarrel or yell at their children. It was the accident. That and the police and their blue and white tapes. There were blue and white police tapes around the area where Ah Tee fell and in front of the door to his flat. While they were there, it felt as if everyone’s mouths were bound with those tapes. Now that they were gone, things could go back to normal. The building could breathe again.
I was going home with the day’s collection, it was after six and a few old men were sitting around the stone benches near the building, talking about the fall. Pretending to joke about buying the numbers on the door of Ah Tee’s flat, or any number they could find that had anything to do with him. His birthday (does anybody know?). The day and time it happened. They hushed when I got nearer and pretended to talk about something else. Someone put on their portable radio and a song came on — a familiar one I don’t know the name of. I can’t remember the words but it is one my mother used to sing when it was too hot and the six of us had to sleep pressed into each other so we could fit on the rattan mat. She would sing, her voice so thin it splintered, scattered over our heads but it still sent us to sleep. A soft breeze in our faces. I don’t remember the words so I hum it low while I put away the bowl and cup by the sink, go to bed and lay myself down. Slow and careful. The way I put him down on the grass that evening. It was dark and it was the right time. The shame of it goes away at night, just a little. Even now, after so many years, it seems I breathe easier in the dark so I don’t switch on the lights in the evening unless I have to sew. Every day, I draw the curtains when the sun shines in mid-morning and towards dusk. I am a thing of the dark. One of those creatures that go scattering when you pull up old floorboards or rustle through leaf litter.
I wrap myself in the dark the way I wrapped him up years and years ago, swaddled him in rags from the cell, then put him in the ground. That day, when I picked him up to leave, he looked half-blind, his right eye only open a crack. I was blind too, but from the sunlight, walking out into it for the first time in months, years. I scrambled backwards when the riben-guizi, the Devil, came around to unlock our cells, shouting at us in Japanese and pointing towards the main door. He motioned for us to get out but it took me a while to realise what was going on. Only when I saw everyone leaving, all the other girls, did I lift him, his nothing body, wrapped him up in the one rag I could find. It was the only thing I had. Then I walked out, expecting any moment to be pulled back, to be shot. But I walked and then I was outside, deafened by the whine of crickets playing their long scratchy tune, their evening call.
The others were standing around, waiting. Some exhausted just from walking out of there, I could hear the hiss of their dry throats, see the rise and fall of their chests, almost choking on the fresh air. Two of them, the ones who came in last, the only ones still able, went right off, torn wisps of their dresses rippling behind them. I envied their strength and imagined how fast I could run if I still had meat on my legs, then I looked down and took in my feet, blackened, sharp with yellowed nails and bones. They ran, not looking back, and I followed them until the little needles of pain in my chest grew unignorable. Then I followed them walking, focused on planting my feet firmly in the ground. Walked towards the sound of the crickets, away from the road. I told myself afterward that I had no idea what I was going to do while I was walking. All I wanted was to get away. Far as possible from the barracks. From the possibility of the riben-guizi coming back. It’s been so many years since that I can almost believe it if I don’t linger upon it too much, if I busy my hands, working and picking up things and cooking and washing.
I knew enough though, even then. I had to leave him. I knew the moment I walked out of the cell.
It was right by a tree. A tall, old angsana. I stopped and looked around, but there was no one. I lay him down, stayed squatting and watched him for a while, for so long I thought I saw his lips move just a little. For a moment I thought he might cry, claim me with his sound and smell and I wouldn’t be able to leave him then. He might cry after days of keeping silent and still. Like he had given up, realised I had nothing for him to eat. There was nothing of me he could have. I thought about putting my ear to his mouth or heart but I stopped myself. What good did it do to know? Dead or dying, it didn’t matter, I could never bring him home. So I stood up and stepped back.
Hey.
I turned around, almost tripping, and put out a hand to steady myself against the rough trunk of the tree. Then I saw someone standing some distance away. A ghost, I thought. But then it moved and I saw that it was another girl from the barracks, clutching at the front of her torn blouse to keep it closed, so thin her trousers were almost falling off her hips. She looked about my age, was seventeen at most.
Hey, she said again, walking in my direction. Wait for me! Do you know the way? she said.
I said nothing, just watched her get closer, close enough to peer around me, to see what was in the bundle on the ground. There were bruises on her cheekbones and a cut that was mending on her lip. She looked at me as if she knew exactly what had happened and understood that I couldn’t go back like this — not with the child.
You should bury it, she said, it’s only proper.
I raised my hands to look at them. Or rather, I felt them moving on their own. They could be paper. Paper, or air, I thought, looking at them.
I’ll help you, she said and she crouched down.
Soon we were digging, both of us, with our fingers. Scraping away the rich, dark soil so soft I imagined I could put it in my mouth, chew, and it would taste of the lunches they used to give us in school. Rice and fried egg and even minced meat, sometimes. I would chew and swallow and be full.
That was what I was thinking while I dug out the hole in the ground for my child.
After five minutes or so, the girl stopped. I think that’s deep enough, she said.
I was glad because I was tired and my arms were aching. I was so tired, I could fall asleep right there but I picked the bundle up from the ground, rearranged the rag so that it covered all of him, his face down to his tiny doll feet, and put him in.
AS soon as the war was over, my mother wanted me married off. She didn’t say it but I knew she wanted me out of the house so they wouldn’t have to look at me. Even after a year, the neighbours still talked, whispering among themselves while they hung out their washing in the courtyard right below our window. It wasn’t as bad as before, when people would turn away from us at the market, call me wei-an fu, comfort woman, as we were walking away. My mother’s face would burn and she would fan herself vigorously with her palm-leaf fan, as if doing that would chase the shame away. At night I heard her ask my father who to give me to. When to do it. Soon as possible, was her suggestion. My father never said much, only grunted his assent. I heard this all through the thin veil of the curtain dividing the room. My six-year-old brother, the only one of my siblings left, would sleep through, legs twitching to the dream-feel of his afternoon games of football or sepak takraw.
It wasn’t long before the matchmaker came by our place. Instead of just talking to my mother, Auntie Tin made me sit with her, patted my hand kindly while she talked, a corner of her pink handkerchief peeking out of her sleeve.
I found someone for you, she said, a nice Hokkien man; a bit older but he’s a good man. Even has his own shop. She stopped there, then lowered her voice. His wife, his first wife died in the war. But better not talk about that. Bad luck.
For a minute, she just sat, sipping from the cup of tea in her hands.
He’s a good man, she said, looking straight at me, a good match for you.
Auntie Tin arranged everything, told him how useful I was around the house, how prudent I was, gave him a picture of me taken just for that purpose, lips and cheeks rouged with red paper. It was the first time I had seen a camera; and they had to keep telling me to smile but it seemed that I had forgotten how. Years later, the Old One showed me the picture he had been given. In it, I looked stiff and humourless and I wondered again why he had chosen me.
There were many times in the later years when I felt I had to tell him. Talk about why I couldn’t give him children, about what happened during the war. I had always wondered if he knew. He must have known. I wondered why he married me then, if he knew. I almost asked him, once, at the hospital during his last few weeks, watching him as he slept, falling in and out of a fit of dreams. I sat next to him and listened to him murmur, talking a little and I thought I might be able to tell him and he would wake up and nod at me and tell me it was alright. I needed to apologise, for what I didn’t know. A nothing word, sorry. There was nothing to mend, to be sorry for unless I wished to rip up the quiet, soothe myself by talking about something that wouldn’t help him, not now. So I touched his hand, careful not to go near the tube running into it and let him sleep. The same as when the doctor came in and told me to be ready, it was time for him. I told him, it’s okay, Old One, you go rest now. And I kept watch until the rise and fall of his chest was no more.
TODAY, the people from the church came to help me move. Not that I have a lot of things — it’s just that an old woman like me cannot do it by myself. They made me sit by the wall, protested whenever I went to pick up an object or to help. The only thing I could do was to daydream while they busied about, whispering to each other, as if they thought it wasn’t right to talk to each other in a language I couldn’t understand. So I told them I wanted to take a walk, that I couldn’t stand the dust and needed fresh air — it was getting dusty, with all the things I haven’t touched in years and years being moved around. They worried at first but I insisted. After a minute, the one in charge said, okay, auntie, you go have a cup of tea and then we’ll meet you there. I nodded, waved at them and left.
The only object I carried on my own is the black and white picture of the Old One, the photo for his place on the altar. I took it just in case the Christians get offended, or they decide to lose it on the way to the new flat.
It is a short walk to the new place. But the neighbourhood is entirely new. Full of shops and streets and people I don’t know. I wonder how long it will take for me to learn where to get my usual shopping again, how long it will take to know stall-owners well enough so that I learn about their children, how many they have and how old they are. And how long until they start to keep aside cheap bits of meat, and insist on giving me extra vegetables and eggs just before the Lunar New Year. I walk and try to memorise where exactly everything is; the nearest doctor, coffee shop, grocery store. In twenty minutes, I’m there. I take the lift up to the fourth floor. The corridor that I walk through to get to the new flat is clean and quiet and almost all the doors are open because other people are still having things done to their new homes. I look into them and see that they look exactly the same as mine. Maybe with different coloured doors and floors but these are the same one-room, built-for-the-elderly flats. I get my new keys out and let myself in for the first time. It is still dirty from construction work, but nothing a good sweep cannot fix quickly.
This is our new place, I tell the Old One. Then I put his photo on the only tall surface there is, the kitchen counter. Without curtains, the room is bright, with light bouncing off the walls. The newness of everything makes me stand still for a moment and I think carefully before saying what I said next, because you don’t make promises to the dead and not keep them. I made up my mind and then I said, I have a story to tell you. Maybe tonight, or tomorrow night, I will tell you. A story. My story. From a long time ago.