A BOX OF HAIR AND NAIL
LITTLE SISTER CLIPPED the last nail from Big Sister’s slender toe and carefully placed it in the carved rubberwood box. She made sure she had twenty clippings and, although her club foot made it difficult to crouch, she checked that every piece of hair she had trimmed from her sister’s head was accounted for.
Big Sister snorted, not unkindly. “You don’t still believe that old tale, do you?” She examined her reflection in the pocked mirror on her bedroom wall. Even with the window open, both sisters were covered with a sheen of sweat: at least, Little Sister perspired; Big Sister glowed. “Bapa was only trying to scare you into behaving.” The young women shared a sorrowful glance. Their mother had passed six years ago from tuberculosis. Last month, their father had been killed in a logging accident in Sabah. Another piece of their shrinking family gone.
“No, it’s true,” Little Sister said, pushing the ache in her chest away. “If a man steals your hair and nail clippings, he can take it to the bomoh and have him cast a spell on you. Then you’ll be under the man’s control. You’ll have to be his wife forever.”
“I will be no one’s wife,” Big Sister said with a sniff. “I don’t care what magic the shaman does.” She shrugged out of her slip and pulled on the brightly coloured top and skirt of her kebaya. It was much more form fitting than their father would have allowed. She swept her thick, glossy hair up into a bun and applied a slick of lipstick. She grinned and headed for the door. “My life is going to be only kissing and fun.”
Little Sister watched as Big Sister walked along the path that led to the village, her hips swaying with each step. Any number of suitors would be awaiting her presence at the dance. Little Sister never went; no one could see past her deformity. She only ever left the house to visit the wet market or to buy fruit and vegetables.
As Big Sister rounded the bend and disappeared from view, the bushes behind her parted. Little Sister stared, breath held. There had been wild boars in the area lately. They could be dangerous if meddled with.
A thick-set, bow-legged man emerged.
The bomoh.
Little Sister frowned. Had she summoned him with her talk of love magic? What if he had overheard Big Sister’s disparaging words? She watched as he crept after her. Prickling cold ran down Little Sister’s spine. Even from her position at the window, she could see the avarice on his face.
***
The next day, the bomoh appeared at their door. “Is Big Sister home?” His smile was open and sunny.
Little Sister had no good reason to refuse him. He was respected in the village—it was said he had followed someone beyond the edge of death and lived to tell the tale. She kept her face smooth as she nodded and stepped aside.
His gaze lingered on her as he entered their house. Then his eyes dropped to her twisted right foot and distaste crossed his face.
“Who is it?” Big Sister called.
The bomoh’s expression cleared as she entered the living room.
“Oh. Tuan,” Big Sister said, using the honorific reserved for people of high regard. She dipped her head. “How kind of you to visit us.”
The bomoh settled himself in a chair and stretched his bandy legs out. “Tea,” he said to Little Sister. “Barley water, if you have it. Not too sweet.”
Little Sister hesitated for a second, then at Big Sister’s scowl, she hobbled into the kitchen.
“My condolences, Big Sister.” His voice rumbled from the living room. “It must be difficult for you to manage, now you have to look after a cripple on your own.”
“She’s more capable than you know.” Big Sister’s voice was low and firm, and Little Sister’s heart swelled.
The bomoh chuckled. “Still, without a father, and no husband, it’s hard, yes?”
Big Sister made no answer.
“I find, despite my position, I am without a wife. I think we could come to a sensible arrangement.”
“Arrangement?”
Little Sister slowed her stirring. She had put double the sugar into his barley water and it was taking a long time to dissolve.
“Yes, you need a husband and I need a wife,” he continued. “You’re of an age, and your beauty makes you a suitable match for a man of my stature.”
“Tuan, I’m . . . honoured. But it—we haven’t observed the proper forty days of mourning.” Big Sister’s voice wavered artificially. “It’s only been thirty-six days since we lost our dear father.”
There was a creak of a chair. “Of course, it wouldn’t do to disrespect the dead. I understand completely.”
Little Sister peeked out from the kitchen as the bomoh walked to the front door. He turned and smiled; this time it was as dark and laden as a monsoonal storm cloud. “I’ll return the day after tomorrow.”
When he had rounded the bend in the path and was out of sight, Little Sister spun. “What an odious man!”
Big Sister sighed. “But he’s right. Without our father, or a husband for me or you, we are at the mercy of fate. We still have some of the money Bapa left us, but that cannot last forever. And my work pays so little.” Her dark eyes glistened. “I make light that I will never marry, but we both know I must.”
Little Sister took her hands and squeezed. “But it’s so unfair. He’ll use magic against you.”
“Oh, little one, you and your superstitions.” Big Sister squeezed back and smiled sadly. “He won’t need to. Now that he has announced his intentions, no one else will dare to come forward.”
***
Big Sister had gone to work. She taught at the local school and Little Sister hoped that the children might help Big Sister forget their troubles, a least for a while.
Little Sister fussed with a skirt that needed mending, the bomoh’s words circling her head like a cloud of noxious mosquitoes. When she pricked her finger for the third time, she put the sewing aside.
She had to take precautions.
She got up and limped into the woods, searching the forest floor and gingerly checking thorny plants for coarse tufts of hair. Nothing.
After a few minutes, she came across deep furrows in the ground that had filled with last night’s rain. Already, tiny insect larvae wriggled in the shallow water. The surrounding mud was torn up with many boar hoof prints. She would have to be careful.
She bent to one of the smallest impressions and eased a broken crescent of nail from the soil.
***
“Little Sister! Where is my brooch?” Big Sister was running late to meet friends in the village and, as usual, had misplaced her things. True to his word, the bomoh had left them alone for a day, but the tension had soured her temper.
Little Sister shuffled in from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her skirt. “Isn’t it on the dresser?”
“Of course not! That’s where I looked first.” Big Sister rummaged in the cupboard. “Why do we have these silly boxes? There’s no room for my clothes. Just throw them out.”
“That will invite bad fortune.” Little Sister hobbled over to the dresser and picked up a carelessly discarded headscarf. Underneath was the leaf-shaped pewter jewellery. “Here it is.”
Big Sister spun and beamed. “Ah! Finally!”
Little Sister pinned it to her top and smoothed a stray hair back into place.
Big Sister hugged her tight, the brooch an uncomfortable point between them. “I’ll be back at midnight. Don’t wait up.” She pecked her on the cheek, straightened her skirt, then was gone, leaving only the faint scent of orchid in her wake.
With a sigh, Little Sister began righting the contents of the room. She bent to the cupboard and stopped. Heart quickening in her chest, she lifted the various baskets and piles of clothing.
Her sister’s rubberwood box was gone.
***
The bomoh arrived with a basketful of ducklings and a goat the very next morning. “I’m here for my bride,” he announced at the door.
Big Sister drew a fuming Little Sister behind and inclined her head. “Thank you, tuan. But I cannot accept your proposal—”
His expression darkened.
She held up a placating hand. “—yet. We must observe the full forty days of mourning. It would not do have any rumours of ill conduct around our courtship.”
“Yes . . . I-I suppose you’re right,” he muttered. He narrowed his eyes then nodded. “Soon, you will come around.”
“You may leave the ducks and goat. As a show of good faith,” Big Sister said sweetly.
He stared at her for a long moment, then dumped the basket and thrust the goat’s rope into her hand. Without another word, he departed.
Big Sister exhaled and sagged.
“He will be back,” Little Sister muttered.
“Yes, but the mourning period doesn’t end until after tomorrow. I bought us another two days.” Big Sister smiled impishly. “And four ducks and a goat.”
Little Sister tried to return the smile but her thoughts were of the rubberwood box of hair and nails. It was only a matter of time before he used it.
***
The lowing of a cow announced the bomoh’s arrival the next morning.
“Tuan, how nice to see you again . . . and so soon,” Big Sister said politely.
He dipped his head a mere centimetre. “I have come to claim you.”
Little Sister bristled, but again, Big Sister held her back at the door. “We thank you for the cow. You are too kind”—the bomoh grinned and passed her the rope. He went to step inside the house but Big Sister blocked his way—“but I have decided not to marry you.”
His face clouded with confusion. “But . . . how can you refuse me?”
“I’m sure you would not want the refusal to be public, so I make it here, now,” Big Sister murmured, “to spare you.”
“But—I brought you the ducks . . . the goat . . . the cow . . . ”
Big Sister returned his meagre bow. “We are most grateful for your kindness. A bomoh should look after the vulnerable in his village, yes? With these animals, we now have enough to survive. All will know of your generosity. And that you ask for nothing in return.”
He huffed and spluttered, mouth twisted with all the things he wanted to say.
“You’ll change your mind,” he snarled. “Just wait and see.” He spun on his heel, stormed down the path and disappeared.
***
A furious hammering startled Little Sister from her troubled dreams. She tugged on her house dress and hurried to the front door. Big Sister had gone out with friends for the night. What if something had happened to her?
Little Sister swept the door open and gasped.
The bomoh brandished a boar’s head; the neck was a ragged mess. Gore splattered her face and she tasted warm iron. “Where is she?” the bomoh bellowed.
She wiped her mouth and drew herself taller, heart thumping. “What is the meaning of this? She has refused you, now leave us in peace.”
His eyes bulged and his mouth split to reveal a gritted mouthful of teeth. He shook the bloody head. “She did this. She switched the hair and nails!” He twisted and lifted his tattered shirt. His back and buttocks were scraped and scratched raw. “The pig came at me like a beast! I almost couldn’t escape its attentions!”
Little Sister bit her lips together. What a sight that would have been.
“You dare laugh?” He drew his parang from his belt.
She froze. The fourteen-inch blade hovered under her chin.
“Don’t worry, Little Sister.” He smiled, a demon in a red mask. “This is for Big Sister. I will take what is mine by right. And I will teach her to respect me.”
“No!” Little Sister glanced at the clock on the wall. It was midnight: Big Sister’s favourite time to return home from her jaunts. “She wasn’t to blame. Take me. I will be your wife.”
He tossed the pig’s head at her feet. She forced herself not to step back.
“Maybe I will. Big and Little Sister. Why not?”
He was gone before she could wake her numb arms and legs. Little Sister hobbled after him, following the sound of his footsteps and furious muttering. Her stomach was a sour, twisting knot.
What had she done?
She shuffled as fast as she could but each step sent a jag of pain from her ankle up to her hip. She paused to listen. Only the calls of night birds and frogs answered her. Something crashed through the trees to her right. A woman’s screams pierced the night. Silence fell in the forest all around her as the creatures crouched, hoping the violence was not for them. Little Sister sobbed and hurried on.
***
Big Sister did not come home that night, nor the night after, nor the one after that. Little Sister searched and searched, but there was no sign of her. The villagers said she must have gone to the next town with a suitor; after all, she had so many. No one blamed such a beautiful young woman with so much promise for abandoning a cripple.
Little Sister fell into melancholy, and the villagers agreed that Big Sister had made the right decision.
Little Sister went long days without washing. She had let her ducks run off, and her goat had grown his beard too long. He was often found wandering a neighbour’s garden, chewing on the clothes hung out to dry. The cow broke from her pen and found better pastures. Little Sister no longer visited the wet market, nor bought fruit and vegetables to eat. She was terribly thin, and her hair hung like a greasy curtain over her face. Some say she had become a ghost.
After two months, something had to be done. With her deformity, she had little chance of being married off; in her current filthy state, none at all. The elders called a midwife from the next village over. They thought it wise not to summon the bomoh. Little Sister had been heard raving about him in the days after Big Sister had left, and they felt it best not to involve him.
It seemed to work. Little Sister began eating, and her ducks once again had gleaming feathers. Her goat was now plump, with a tail lifted happily on most days. The cow had been rounded up and was back in her pen.
Little Sister even began grooming herself.
She would wash in the river, wrapped in her sarong, then make her way back to her house, humming an old love song. She would sit at the window, brushing her long, silky hair. At times, she would place her shapely left foot up on the sill and, carefully and patiently, trim one nail after the other.
The bomoh crouched in the shadow of the trees and watched. Apart from her bent right foot, he saw that she was as beautiful as Big Sister.
He had not been able to couple with Big Sister. His rage and humiliation had been too great and, damn her, she had fought like a mongoose. No matter. He would take Little Sister as his bride. The midwife had brought her back from being a ghost; perhaps she could do something about the foot too.
He watched as she gathered her nail clippings and pieces of hair and placed them inside the new rubberwood box. He made sure not to blink as she closed the lid and tucked the box back into the cupboard.
She turned her back and allowed the sarong to fall from her body.
He sucked air through his teeth.
She drew on a red and orange kebaya and wove her hair into a glossy plait. She disappeared for a moment, then reappeared at the front door. Still humming her song, as if calling to him, she locked the door behind her and, in the light of the fading afternoon, she began her slow progress into town.
Now was his chance.
***
With Little Sister’s box tucked under one arm, the bomoh rushed back to his house on the edge of the village. The sight of Little Sister, her smooth and naked back framed in the window, had inflamed him and he could not wait a moment longer. At the doorstep, he glanced around, then hurried inside, closing the door behind him. He lifted the lid of the box and breathed deeply, nostrils flaring at the sweet scent of orchid. Big Sister had favoured this perfume too.
Soon. He must prepare, then perform the ritual by the cover of night.
***
Dusted in ash from the strangler fig and naked except for a sarong tied around his waist, the bomoh crouched over the stove. He coughed at the acrid stink of burning keratin swirling around him but did not dare stop. It was difficult magic; any little misstep or the wrong ingredient could bring terrible results.
He had not used all of the hair and nail clippings in Little Sister’s box. He had kept some back, just in case Little Sister proved to be just as intractable as Big Sister, and he needed to repeat the ritual.
He intoned the final words, then went to wash and change. This was his wedding night and he wanted to be presentable.
As he smoothed down the thinning strands of his hair, he heard a shuffling step outside. He grinned and adjusted his trousers. At last. He had had enough of going to the sisters, hand held out to them. Now it was time for one of them to come to him.
He hastened to the front door and laid his ear against it. Again, the sound of hobbling steps outside. He closed his eyes and imagined he smelled orchid. Would the skin between her breasts be redolent with that scent?
He swung the door open with a grin.
The path was empty.
With a frown, he stepped outside. “Little Sister? Where are you?”
The hiss-thump of a dragged foot sounded around the corner of his house. He saw the flutter of long hair in the darkness, then it was gone. The shape of Little Sister’s back and the gentle curve of her buttocks flashed in his mind. His pulse quickened. He circled after her.
Hiss-thump. This time it was from inside the house. With a chuckle, the bomoh spun and hurried in after her. He peeked into the kitchen, the living room, the first room. No Little Sister. The game only set him afire.
Hiss-thump. The squeak of bed springs from his bedroom.
He began stripping off his coat and shirt. He pictured her in his bed, her lovely hair spread out around her. That awful foot, mercifully hidden beneath the sheet. He yanked at his clothes, hopping from one bandy leg to the next in his hurry to pull his trousers off. Why had he bothered with so many garments?
Finally naked and ridiculously erect, he crept into his room.
The sheet was pulled up to her ear. It seemed her back was to him, as all he could see was a head of dark hair and the delicious line of her hip. She must be shy. It was up to him to make the first move. He grinned. “Hello, my bride. I have come to claim you.”
She rolled over and his straining member wilted like a dying flower.
Hair sprouted from every inch of her face and body, thick and black. She opened her mouth and sang, and the room seemed to swoop around him as he saw rows and rows of nails growing from her tongue and cheeks. She threw back the sheets, and although he had long waited to see the perfect globes of her breasts, he uttered an airless shriek. More thick, dark hair marched down her chest, belly and legs, waving like filamentous worms. Yellowed nails budded from her ribs and at odd points along her breastbone. Two talons jutted from her hips. The scent of orchid, earth, and rot filled the room.
And all along Big Sister’s body, were the gaping wounds from his parang, crusted with the soil he had piled over her corpse.
Hiss-thump from behind him. The bomoh spun.
Little Sister stood in the hall, tears streaming down her face. “Big Sister,” she murmured, “I’ve finally found you.”
The creak of bed springs. He spun again. Big Sister had risen and her arms were held out, beseeching. Her milky eyes fixed on him. Her crowded mouth tried to smile.
“My . . . love,” she cooed. She took a step forward. Hiss-thump. Her leg dragged, the muscle of her thigh split where he had struck, that fateful night.
He looked to Little Sister in horror. “What did you do?”
Little Sister held out the rubberwood box. He recognised it as the one he had used in the ritual. “You wanted a bride. She has come to claim you.”
Hiss-thump. He shrieked as Big Sister laid her hands on his shoulders. Tendrils of hair pierced his skin and slowly, inexorably, as he struggled like a fish in a net, she turned him to her.
“Please! No!” he screeched. “I can reverse the spell!” He twisted his head back towards Little Sister. “You’ve found her!” He gave a trembling smile. “It’s alright now, don’t you see? I helped you find her. That’s all!”
Big Sister pursed her lips and drew him ever closer. More thick strands of hair burrowed under his skin and he wailed.
“I gave you ducks! And—and the goat! And the c—”
His words were swallowed as Big Sister lovingly pressed her bristled lips against his. His eyes bulged and rolled as her tongue thrust into his mouth, razor nails along its length slicing into his. He thrashed and pummelled her, but she only sighed and embraced him tighter and tighter. Hair began to envelop them both, speckled with ochre-coloured nails: some thick, some slender and delicate. Around and around the cocoon wove.
With a thump, the nest of hair toppled and lay twitching.
Little Sister shuffled closer. The bomoh’s single, wildly rolling eye sought her out. There was no other sign of anything human. Whatever had been her sister was long gone. She laid Big Sister’s box of hair and nails on the floor, walked to the kitchen and found the bomoh’s keys. She hobbled outside and circled the house, locking each window and door.
When she arrived home, she checked that her rubberwood box was still snug beneath the floorboards, then went to feed her animals.