THE POLICE TAPE WAS ALREADY GONE A FEW DAYS later when I left with all my things in a box and my bag. No one, I thought, was going to go near the spot any time soon. No one who knew what had happened there would be able to walk casually over the place where he landed and stop themselves from imagining that it was happening over and over again, at every single moment. They would not be able to stop their skin from lighting up with goosebumps at the feeling of him falling through their bodies, all moonlight and wisp. He was still there, you could picture it. But then I saw the tins and the stumps of two candlesticks, bits of food left on a paper tray. And I thought, right, of course. I wondered who the first one was to try this and win, if ever anyone had won money from getting numbers from the dead at all.
The others, Sam and Linda and Xinyi, all took turns trying to get us back together. They tried tricks of all sorts — calling Cindy and then passing me the phone, saying that it was another one of our friends wanting to speak to me or making her go to my new workplace for “a drink and a chat”. It took them a while to realise that we weren’t just fighting, that we hadn’t fought at all, really. I missed her but I knew it wouldn’t do either of us any good to see each other. So I told my friends to stop, there was nothing left for them to do but let me sleep on their couch or shut up. It was fun at first. Sam and Linda had their own place and that was easy. I slept on their big couch and we got takeaway and camped out with a bunch of DVDs the first weekend. The novelty wore off quickly, since both of them worked and arrived home late at night, too tired to do anything but shower, eat, and sleep. I started to mind that the couch smelled of their two dogs and Linda got increasingly jealous that they preferred to curl up with me even though their bed was big as fuck and I shoved them off the couch whenever I bothered to. I stayed for two weeks, moved out when it was clear that they were fighting whenever I was not around. I didn’t want to be the cause of trouble like that.
After that, Xinyi took me in even though she still lived with her parents like most people our age. She was the only child and simply told her parents that I needed a place to stay for a few days and that was that, no questions asked. Her mother was nice. A nervous little woman, but nice. At first, she couldn’t tell if I was a boy or girl and had to ask Xinyi when I was away in the washroom. Afterward, she told me she couldn’t be sure if her mother was more relieved that I couldn’t get her daughter pregnant or if it was a cause for more concern, since we were sleeping in the same bed. We laughed about it and stayed up nights talking. It was okay for more than a month until I met up with an old girlfriend one evening and stayed over at her place instead. When I got back to Xinyi’s the next day, she picked a fight and told me to leave. I hadn’t seen it coming, or perhaps I refused to since it made things easy for me, a comfortable bed, home-cooked food made by either Xinyi or her mother. I packed quickly — I could now put all my things together and be ready to leave in fifteen minutes — and left.
I went back to Sam and Linda’s, knowing full well that the arrangement couldn’t last long, and slept there for a few nights until I found an ad online. I moved into a room, lived alongside a single mother and her children. It was then, while living in a stranger’s flat and constantly worrying about not being able to make rent, that I thought about sleeping outdoors. It was the kind of thing that would horrify my mother if she found out and the thought of that alone made me go round to the stores, the ones which sold hiking and climbing equipment, to have a look around. I made a game of it at first. I was just looking for fun, I thought, but I went and chose a pop-up tent in dark blue one day. The salesman said it was the easiest kind to set up, there was no need to put any stakes in the ground and it folded away just like that, and he snapped his fingers to make his point. It was light in my hands and felt oddly like freedom. I carried it with me to work that day and stashed it in my locker, telling myself that it was there for whenever I needed it.
It wasn’t long after that. Three months, I think. Three months of not being able to afford real food, and hearing the cries of the landlady’s kids as they got whipped for not getting their homework done on time, or messing up their school uniforms by playing after school, or for looking at her wrong. I was done asking for help from my friends, I thought, and I opened the locker to change out of my work clothes, which had dried milk and coffee all down the front and there it was.
THAT first night I picked a spot on the grass, near the trees. The tent opened right up, like the salesman said but the location was a mistake and I woke up after an hour, realising that the fucking ants had gotten in. The next night, I set up camp on the beach and that was better.
I told myself that my age allows it. There could be no better time for it; twenty-two and sleeping in a tent on the beach. In the morning, just before it gets really light, I stick my head out into the fresh air, breathe in a bit of the sea before packing up and leaving before the sweepers arrive. They arrive pretty early with their cart and different bins and brooms and rakes. I’ve slept in a few times to wake up to a rustling around me, a scraping together of the piles of trash weekenders left behind. Some of the cleaners try to get rid of me, as if it’s part of their job to make sure that people don’t sleep there. The foreign workers try to pretend that I’m not there, keep a wide berth from my spot and avoid my eyes as if they’re telling themselves it is not true — this country that they moved to just for work, this country laid with glitter and gold couldn’t have its people out on the streets.
Once, the park officers came on one of their routine checks when I was still asleep and this old man came to wake me up, prodding me through the fabric with his broomstick. Ma-ta lai liao, the police are here, he said, when I stuck my head out to see what was going on. I’ve had run-ins with them before and I didn’t want to get stuck with another fine I couldn’t afford to pay, so I had to knock my tent down and run into the public restroom with all my things. How lucky I was, how funny, that I could get up and run off in a minute with all my life in my arms, I thought. The sweeper was waiting outside the bathroom for me. Up close, I saw how old he was, older than my grandpa when he died and got laid out in the coffin for everyone to look at. He looked like the kind of old Chinese man who would live on. Live on and look tougher with age, the thick veins on their arms and hands taut like piano strings. They are strong until they’re not. When I came out of the restroom, the old man shook his head and sighed so heavily that he started to cough and I thought he might start to lecture me. I’ve had that happen before, especially with elderly Chinese people. They seem to think it was only right that they demand me to go home, because of my age, because of theirs. But then he gave me a tied-up plastic bag, put it on top of all the other things I had in my hand. From the rustle and clink of it, I knew it was money, so I ran after him trying to return it but he started to talk in Hokkien, pushing the palms of his hands towards me. He wasn’t going to take it back so I said, kam sia, kam sia, thank you, several times, until he turned away and went back to work. I had to sleep somewhere else after that. I couldn’t bear seeing him again. I could take the stares and the cleaners sweeping their dirt towards me, but this heavy kindness, I couldn’t bear.
I GOT to realise that it is not being alone that I mind so much but the wakefulness of it. Outdoors, I have to be aware of everything and I miss crashing in front of the TV, going through every channel, watching nothing in particular. Bare feet on cool floors, that’s another thing I miss. And fresh air at night; I chose stuffiness over the constant threat of mosquitoes. But I got used to it, even started liking it, living in my own little shell. There was no need to creep around someone else’s home, feeling bad for taking up space, for making them invent stories to their parents about why this girl was staying with them, what’s wrong with her doesn’t she have a home. No need to give some stranger six hundred dollars out of my nine every month to have them watch me and sniff around my things, just for a bit of space and a bed.
With the money I saved on rent, I could afford real food again — not just instant noodles and nothing else — and go out and hang around with my friends. I stopped shoplifting books, which I had to do when I was renting. I had barely any money after paying rent. So I stole newly published paperbacks from the big bookstores in town. Only paperbacks, never hardcovers. Every single time, I would look into my wallet before walking into the store. I had to make myself feel better about stealing — none of my friends read the books I liked and I couldn’t wait ages and ages for them to get stocked in the library. I took only bestsellers, and only male writers. Jeffrey Eugenides and Haruki Murakami. I would flip through them to find the security tag (almost always tucked into the first few pages or right at the back) and walk out with it in a shopping bag. I’ve never had a problem. When I finish the book, I usually put them back where I got them. There were some books I refused to steal. Alice Munro, I saved up for. Also, Ali Smith. All I brought with me to the beach was my tent, a battery lamp, water and biscuits and toiletries and some books. I read, and when I tired of that, solved the puzzles from magazines which I brought home from the cafe. Sometimes it was just good to lie there and listen to the waves right outside.
I got to like being close to all that water. Being woken in the night by the wind and rain almost on me, whirling away just a few inches from my body. It kept me up, the first few times. I stayed awake waiting for the tent to fall in on me, for the rain to swamp my body and I wondered if I would finally get up when the fabric had closed itself in on my eyes and nose and mouth or if I would just let it be and let it be until I couldn’t care or get up anymore. Now I’m so used to it that I note it in my sleep, mid-dream. It’s raining heavily, right outside of me, I would think, and the thought would disappear and I would sink right back into the dark.
IN the beginning, it was strange to emerge from a tent every day, wash in the public restroom and go to work, pretend like I was normal. Like everyone else. I thought my colleagues and the customers might see it in my face. Ragged sleep lines made by the zip on my jacket that I used as a pillow. The smell of nylon and cheap soap. I imagined they wouldn’t want a homeless person making their morning cappuccino, handling the food orders. No one ever asked though and I realised that no one looked at other people the way they looked at themselves. Not half as close. No one saw and my colleagues were nice enough, the managers were talking about promoting me, having me take care of the shifts and things. We went out for meals sometimes, and movies. But it was hard to get closer than that. I would have to tell them where my home was and what then? I was tired of pity and wary of the inevitable, half-hearted offers of a couch or spare mattress. I had no desire to fuck things up with the people I worked with. So I lied and led them to believe everything was just fine with my parents and we all lived happily under the same roof.
It was at the beach that I ran into my brother one weekend. A Sunday, early evening and quiet enough for me to set up my tent without getting too much in the way of anyone else. I was busy shaking out my towel, the one which I used for sleeping on when he called my name. Except he called me Alexandra. It took me a while to hear it and turn around. It had been months and months since anyone had called me that.
Adrian looked surprised and happy to see me. Even grabbed me in a half-hug, something he had never done before.
Mei! he said.
Kor, I said. He must have heard me but he went on talking. They were just here for a walk, him and Grace and she had gone to the washroom. They were going to have a baby, they just found out.
That’s great, I said. He was still smiling. I had never seen him so happy before and I couldn’t help but be happy too.
He told me they were taking a walk. And afterwards, they were going for dinner, why not join them?
I looked back at my tent. He saw me looking and then said, oh, are you waiting for your friends?
Yup, I said. But why don’t I join you for dinner? They’ll understand.
It was during dinner that he asked me to move in. He and his wife exchanged glances before he said it, and the way Grace looked at me made me feel I was a part of some new project, something to busy herself with while she was taking time off from work. I’d lied to them, of course, told them I was staying with a friend. But we’re family, he said. Adrian had never been like this before. When I left home some time ago, he texted, telling me to call if I needed help, but that was it. Nothing like this. His tone was warm, pleading, almost. I said okay.
I moved in to my brother’s place with a kind of hope, imagining that he would help me, lead me around by the hand the way he did when I first started primary school, and I would be comforted. At age seven I hadn’t asked for his kindness, was even resentful of it. I could find my way, I thought, even as I got lost trying to get to the canteen. All I had to do was wait for him outside my classroom during recess time and there he would be.
They gave me the spare bedroom. It had a guest bed in it, a nightstand, an old study table worn and marked with ink, which he had brought from our parents’ home. Grace led me in and told me they were going to paint the room yellow. A colour perfectly neutral so it wouldn’t matter what gender the baby was. They didn’t know if it was going to be a boy or a girl and didn’t want to find out beforehand.
Why spoil His surprise for us? Grace said, putting a towel on the bed. And then, feel free to take anything you want from the kitchen. Oh, and no smoking, she said, before shutting the door behind her, patting her belly even though she wasn’t yet showing. She smiled widely at me, as though smiling could hide that she thought me a wreck, an aberrant.
I had not bargained for the extreme quiet of their home. Air-conditioned to freezing, sealed shut against the air outside. It was meeting him at the beach that did it. Talking to him like that brought back memories of Saturdays with my brother and our parents. Whole afternoons spent knee-deep in some pit that we had dug, collecting seashells and counting afterwards to see who had more. It made me imagine that we would fall to it again. Go back to board games and laughter. Fights that we would almost enjoy and quickly get over. Childish thoughts.
Their initial pleasure at having me in their home faded quickly. Eventually, Adrian and I only came to interact around the occasional meal and the news, which we felt obliged to watch together, a lingering habit from the days when we both lived at home, and were forced to watch the news on first the English channel, then the Chinese because our father said it was important to keep up our mother tongue. Mostly, it felt as if only Grace and I lived in that sleek, carefully furnished apartment. I would come home from work in the evening, if I were doing the opening shift, and we would have dinner together. Adrian often got home from the clinic around nine, to a meal warmed up in the microwave oven, served hot the minute she heard his keys jangling outside the door. The two of us would sit at the dinner table, me thanking her for the lovely food and her being polite, modest in return, and try to think of something to say, often about how she was feeling that day, the different things she was going to do once she had the baby. It was pleasant enough. She didn’t pry, didn’t try to practise her mothering skills on me, which I was grateful for. They did try to get me to church again though. The first Sunday, they stood at the doorway asking if I would like to go with them. They kept on at it every week even though I always said no. All the while, Adrian remained kind, his kindness drawn from a stock brewed to a thickness from all the mornings in Sunday school. The type of kindness that can smother. He waltzed in and out of his living room much as a doctor would, solicitous but distant, letting his pretty wife tend to the practicalities. It became all too familiar and more than once, I caught myself looking at him and seeing both my mother and father in his face.
He only ever tried to get us together once. During Christmas. It had been awhile and I didn’t feel like putting up a fight so I shrugged and left it to him. We were supposed to go to dinner at a restaurant. He had reserved a table for five people but my parents never showed up. My mother had refused to leave the house once she realised that I was going to be there. Not until she goes to church and asks for forgiveness, she said. Grace relayed this information to me, twisting the ring on her finger all the while. Maybe you should think about it, she said. I mean, you can’t avoid your parents forever.
It was the day after and Adrian was at the clinic again. We were having a decidedly un-Christmas-like meal. Chicken rice bought from a stall near the apartment. Not half as good as the chicken rice at Block 204, before all the food stalls moved away. Grace was busy putting everything on a plate, going as far as to shaping the rice into neat mounds. I wouldn’t have minded eating off the brown waxed paper, but Grace seemed to enjoy the civility of having plates and bowls and napkins.
You know, I knew someone like you when I was in secondary school, she said while washing her hands.
I laughed. Someone like me, you mean a barista? Or someone who really loves reading? I said, and was instantly sorry. Grace had turned around and cheeks were flushed red.
I’m sorry, I said, you were saying.
Well, she said, putting the food on the table and sitting down. Well, this classmate of mine... She went with girls. We were friends, though not very close. She got into a lot of trouble when her parents found out — even more so because we were in a Christian school. But I ran into her sometime ago. She’s married now, has kids and everything, Grace said and fell silent.
She didn’t look up from her food for a few minutes and we ate in silence. Then I said, did my mother tell you to say that?
Grace shook her head. No, no, no, I just thought it might help. You know, there are other people who come out of it...
We hardly spoke for the rest of the meal. After that night, I took to working the closing shift even though it meant that I had to wash up and stack the chairs, which I hated.
It didn’t last long after that. It was only when Adrian started to bring up Grace in every other conversation that I realised they felt it too. Grace is just nervous about her pregnancy. Grace thinks you should get a better job. Grace would like to know what your plans are. If you could come with us to church this Sunday, for once. Grace with her long neck and her perfect hands and nails that I stared at so often when I was supposed to have my head bowed over the dinner table while she or my brother gave thanks out loud. I thought how much easier it would have been if I were anything like Grace. Once she opened her eyes and saw me watching. Her eyelids had snapped open as if she’d felt the shot of a dart and she had looked at me with a kind of dread, and then she looked at me no longer, not once after that night.
HOW’RE things? Where are you staying now? he said.
I’m fine, I said.
I told Adrian nothing about sharing a flat with someone else. I could afford it since I got promoted. I said nothing about going to night school either, maybe because I hated talking to him over the phone. I could picture him in his office, squinting through his glasses at his patients’ files, tapping away at his laptop, hoping that I couldn’t hear the sound of his finger on the trackpad.
Maybe I was just afraid that I wouldn’t see it through, that it’ll be another thing he would be disappointed about.
How’s mum and dad? I asked, for lack of anything better to say.
Why don’t you call and ask them yourself? he said. Maybe you could go over for a visit one day, you know? He paused for a while, and then added, I think they miss you.
I couldn’t think of a good answer to that so I just told him my break was up, I needed to go back to work.
How long are you going to work at that coffee place? All your life, mei? Skipping around from one stranger’s home to the other. Is that what you want?
I hung up on him and finished my cigarette before going back to work. All that day, I kept thinking about what I should have said. What I want. What I want. Even if I had told him that I was the same person, it wouldn’t have made a difference, not a dent or a scratch on his armour. I was irrevocably changed, as if by moving in with Cindy and cutting off my hair I had metamorphosed, Samsa-like. If I said to him, I am still the same person, he would have kept silent; to him, it would sound like the most transparent of lies. There would be nothing left for us to do but stop calling, stop pretending to talk on the phone. I was left with the most tenuous of ties with my family through him and even that would be lost, perhaps for good, if I opened my mouth and spoke.