April 1984
“I also come can or not?” Annabelle Foo asks and Reza not even looking at her charming smirk says “No need.” You just mind your own business thank you welcome goodbye advises his whole demeanour.
At the top of the attic stairs we pause. Above us Cyril Dragon’s closed office door. Below us the dusty sunlit shaft of that long long staircase. At the bottom of the staircase Annabelle Foo squinting up into the swirling motes.
Now Leo whispers to Reza, “Coming ah she? You managed to get rid of her or not?”
“I don’t know about get rid of her but she’s not coming,” Reza says. “I told her off. She’s standing like a coconut tree like that there at the bottom.”
Leo slaps his thigh and I snort with laughter. The delight of being included in their gang sits like silk on my skin.
Through the window on the attic landing we clamber. But I don’t climb out all the way. I confine myself to the windowsill perching gingerly upon its amble breadth. I can still hear Annabelle Foo shifting and breathing. Below me Reza and Leo are already sprawled out on the roof tiles like it’s a grassy slope in a park somewhere.
“Wait wait,” Reza says. “Anytime now he’s going to warn us—”
“Don’t,” I beg. “Don’t go so far lah. It’s dangerous.”
“Told you isn’t it,” says Reza. Then he and Leo cover their eyes with their hands and snigger.
But I refuse to be mocked into submission. I try again: “If you fall—”
“This fler is a real old lady,” says Leo.
Reza takes his hands off his face to agree: “An old lady trapped in a small boy’s body.”
Annabelle Foo pads up one-two-three-four-five steps.
“You and your brother are opposites,” Leo says to Reza. “One scared of nothing, one scared of everything. One full of questions, one full of answers. One badboy, one goodboy.”
With a smirk Reza says, “You know what that means.”
“What?”
On the staircase Annabelle Foo holds her breath as though somebody is about to reveal a great secret.
“He must have got it from his father,” Reza says. “Hahaha!”
Leo guffaws. “Remember,” he says to Reza, “when you used to tell me that your real father will come and fetch you one day? Or you’ll go there to join him?”
Reza keeps quiet.
“Remember or not?”
“I suppose so,” Reza says.
“I suppose so,” says Leo in an English accent that Reza does not actually have. “Action only lah this bugger.”
Reza smiles a tiny reluctant smile that Leo and Annabelle do not see: the one’s eyes are closed against the sun and the other is on the staircase imagining whatever she wants.
“Anyway so what?” says Reza.
“I’m telling only.”
“Telling what?”
“No lah. You know what, even though Cyril Dragon is not your real father, you’re still his favourite. So bloody unfair! You’re everybody’s favourite. Isn’t it, Kannu?”
In the distance I can see a finger-thin plume of smoke rising from the chimney of the Catholic Priests’ Retreat House. I can see the plantation workers beetling about on the tea terraces and I can see a flock of white birds circling in the sky above them. I can see a cloud shaped like a dragon and another like the profile of a witch. Only I can see these things because Reza and Leo are keeping their eyes closed.
Into the silence Reza shoots a single bullet of laughter.
“Who said life was fair?” he says. “You would think my holier-than-thou brother would be Cyril Dragon’s favourite at least, but what can I do if he isn’t?”
Their eyes are still closed and their faces scrunched up against the sunlight so that no one perhaps not even they themselves can tell whether they are joking around or having a serious conversation.
Leo snorts. “Pity only you,” he says. “Poor, poor thing. Cyril Dragon’s favourite and your mother’s favourite also. And as if that’s not bad enough on top of that everybody else also trying to angkat you all the time. So clever this boy so handsome so active! And the way that Annabelle Foo looks at you! Hahahaha! You didn’t ask to be so popular what!”
In and out she breathes on the stairs. Calm and calculating. Her breath wafting up to my nose with its cool poisoned smell of vinegar and green mangoes. She folds her arms and presses her lips together and thinks of the lessons she will teach us all.
Then—still without opening his eyes—my brother says something so wise and cruel that I will never forget it.
“The thing is,” he says, “people pretend how much also they cannot help worshipping the mat salleh. They may not be allowed to say Indian-Chinese-Malay but just because you cannot say doesn’t mean you cannot see. And Cyril Dragon can preach until he got no more breath about everybody being equal but he cannot cancel out that dubba-dubba-dubba in people’s hearts”—here Reza pounds his fist on his chest—“when they see a white face. They cannot help it. Even if they don’t want to admit it, I am like a small god for them. Like a movie star or a book hero floated down on a cloud and landed among them, and they all want to gather around me and touch me. Hahaha!”
“Hahaha hohoho heeheehee,” Leo says. “Great fler lah you.”
There follows a long pause. Then Leo says, “You still waiting ah?”
“Waiting for what?” Reza says.
“Waiting … to … to go back,” Leo says. “Waiting for anybody to come and rescue you from here.”
“Aaaah,” Reza says dismissively. “I don’t need anybody to rescue me.”
“But you still miss it isn’t it?”
“I’ll tell you what I miss: lamb chops and beef steak. Prawns and crabs and lobster.”
A creak on the stairs: Annabelle Foo shifting her weight.
“Joker lah you. Bluff only. Where your mother had that kind of money?”
“She had money what.”
“From where? You didn’t even have a father. From where she got the money?”
“I had a father. But also money from other people.”
“What people?”
“People used to give us money.”
Then without warning but very calmly very casually Reza gets up and walks to the edge of the roof. Right up to the edge he goes until—my shoulders stiffen just to see it, my arms hug my knees tighter and tighter—his toes curl right over it.
“Eh!” Leo yelps. “Baddava rascal, don’t play the fool! Don’t fall and die, okay? You slip now, I’m not going to come and rescue you!”
Annabelle Foo climbs another one-two-three steps. Faster this time yet still not far enough to see.
“I won’t fall lah,” Reza says. “I’m not that brave.”
Nevertheless Leo slithers across the roof on his stomach like a jungle commando. As soon as he can reach Reza he slips his fingers around Reza’s ankles like he’s shackling up a prisoner’s legs.
“Got you!” he says. “Now you cannot go anywhere.”
All at once all three of us are laughing. Not sniggering not chuckling but laughing. Fresh cold air fills our lungs and we laugh and laugh and laugh as the white birds circle over our heads.