Angel sinks into bed and cups her lotion-scented hands to her nose. She inhales the sweet floral smell and squeezes her eyes shut. A thousand roses burst into bloom and swirl through her consciousness. On the bedside table, her phone will not stop buzzing. She should leave these group chats altogether—she hasn’t spoken to her old friends since Suzan broke up with her. But everybody has a theory about the East Coast murder, and Angel can’t resist another scroll.
Her ma’am probably worked her too hard. This is what it came to!
I think she was stealing. These Ilocano are all kuripot, they see money and have to take it.
What does this have to do with Ilocos? My mother is from there, she says they are much more honourable than you metro people.
We don’t know much yet, but if the Singapore police have caught her, they must have a good reason.
How come it takes them so long to arrest their own people when they abuse us? Remember that girl from Myanmar who was beaten and starved by her employers? Took five years to convict them, and then they only got three years in jail!
This morning, after Angel heard from this group chat that a murder had taken place off East Coast Road, her first fear was that Donita had finally snapped and gone after Mrs. Fann with a meat cleaver. Even though the linked article clarified that the victim’s name was Carolyn Hong, Angel immediately sent Donita a message on their group chat: Donita, are you okay? That murder happened around your neighbourhood. Two ticks next to her message indicated that Donita had received her message, but there was no reply until just an hour ago, after Angel put Mr. Vijay to bed.
Donita: This is my friend Flor! The one who was looking out for us on the ma’am pages!
Angel stared at the message for a while to let the information sink in. She went back to the article and read the woman’s name again. Flordeliza Martinez. Flor. That was when Angel retreated to her room.
Angel: Oh my God, Donita. This is awful. Were her employers really horrible?
Donita: She didn’t do it! I know it.
Angel: You must be in shock. Please take care of yourself.
Donita: You don’t understand. I saw her.
Angel: Where?
Donita: Around Jalan Besar at 6:43 p.m. The murder happened at 6:30. It would have taken her at least thirty minutes to get home in yesterday’s storm. She couldn’t have done it.
Angel: You’re sure?
Donita: I’m positive. I know I saw her. They’re accusing her wrongly.
Angel: Who did it, then?
There was a pause and then Donita sent Angel the link to a university website. Under the words Dr. Peter Hong, Dean of Mechanical Engineering, a man’s headshot filled the screen. He was looking past the camera with a small smile, but his eyes were steely, and his squared shoulders made Angel feel small.
Donita: This is the husband. Flor told me he was having an affair. Who do you think killed the wife?
Angel: There has to be evidence, though. They can’t just arrest someone for murder if they don’t have any proof.
Donita: What about the way the police rounded us up the other day? What if that saleswoman hadn’t come out to cover for you? They can do whatever they want.
Sitting in her bed now and breathing in the scent of a rose garden, Angel wants to think of Singapore as a place where these things don’t happen—where powerful men can’t get away with murder just because they sit in boardrooms and live in big houses. But she also remembers Marisol Concepcion, the Filipino maid accused of murder in 2001, and the trial that dominated the news. Angel’s employers were nervous around her and started locking their bedroom door at night. During Sunday gatherings, Angel became acutely aware of the divisions among her friends—there were those who believed in Marisol’s innocence and those who insisted she was guilty and were upset with her for ruining the image of Pinoy workers. In 2001, Angel was new to Singapore and she had not known what to think until Cora had printed a special edition of her newsletter. “It could be you or me,” Cora had said as she slid the double-sided pink sheet across the table. “Any of us could come home to find that we’re murder suspects.” After Marisol Concepcion was sentenced to death, the sound of that lock clicking into place felt personal.
Cora hasn’t chimed into the conversation between Donita and Angel, and thoughts of Marisol make Angel realize how much Cora has changed since that time. Is it age? Mrs. Vijay used to tell her that, as she got older, she became more accepting of the things she could not change. But Mrs. Vijay was never a fighter, not like Cora.
As Angel ponders Cora, she watches her old group chat blink with new messages, and her stomach twists every time she sees Suzan’s name come up. They don’t talk to each other anymore. Angel was the one who went silent. After Suzan broke up with her, this felt like a way of regaining her pride—See, I don’t need you after all—and she stopped showing up to their friends’ Sunday gatherings. Sometimes she regrets doing this, and she stays in the chat group in hopes that they will reach out to her. Leaving this chat group feels too final; it’s the last space she and Suzan still share.
I heard she’s got a daughter back home.
Poor little girl! What’s the news in the Philippines saying?
Nothing yet.
Cowards. Probably don’t want a diplomatic incident. At least the embassy should issue a statement?
You think they care that much about us? They’re not interested in our welfare unless we’re pumping money into our provinces.
A sudden knocking on Angel’s door startles her. “Hold on,” she calls, pushing herself off her bed. She opens the door to see Raja standing in the hallway. Canned laughter rises from the television in the living room, where Sumanthi and her boyfriend, Anand, are camped out with Vietnamese takeaway. The Vijays’ two shih tzu terriers, Coco and Toffee, are curled up on the sofa next to them.
“Hey,” says Raja. He is holding two bottles of Sprite, the soda that Angel keeps in the fridge.
Angel straightens her shoulders. What do you want? she thinks, but she says, “Yes?”
“I just wanted to see how you were doing. You seemed a bit upset yesterday.”
Upset? Angel wants to snort. She was livid. Raja, who was supposed to assume caretaking duties for Mr. Vijay at ten a.m. on Sunday, slept in until noon. By the time he took over, Angel had missed her lunch with Cora. “I’m fine,” Angel says curtly.
“How was your day off?” Raja asks. She is not imagining it; he is saying it pointedly. “Must be nice to have a rest day.”
“I spent the whole day walking here and there,” Angel informs him. She had to make up for lost time in various queues. First at the bank, which had special hours on Sundays for domestic workers. She was only there to reset her internet banking password, but it took nearly an hour to get to the counter. Afterward she stood in a crowded train, determined to get to Tai Seng, where there was a Charles and Keith warehouse sale. Cora had joined her for that one. In the store, there were two women who suddenly grew quiet when Cora arrived and started speaking in Tagalog to Angel. “You want to go or not,” one of them whispered to the other. “This must be one damn cheapo sale if the maids are all lining up.” They hurried away, which meant Angel got the last pair of the sandals she had really wanted.
“I just wanted to say sorry about yesterday,” Raja says. “It won’t happen again.” He holds out the Sprite. “Peace?”
“Thank you, apology accepted, but I don’t have sugary drinks at night,” Angel says. She steps back and is starting to shut her door when Raja begins speaking again.
“I don’t know if my sister has told you, but she’s looking into hiring a nurse.”
“She is?” Angel asks. Sumanthi hasn’t mentioned it. There has always been an agreement that Angel, despite her lack of nursing experience, would stay and acquire the skills needed to take care of Mr. Vijay.
“I mean, I wouldn’t want you to leave,” Raja says, stepping closer. He’s past the threshold, so his feet are planted in her room. Angel wonders what would happen if she started shouting. Sumanthi and Anand are just down the hall, so Raja wouldn’t try anything, but how would they react if she marched out right now and complained that he was harassing her? Sumanthi grumbles about Raja not doing his share of the work, and she scolds him for leaving his shoes scattered in the doorway, but she doesn’t see Raja doing this kind of thing. Neither does Mr. Vijay. Raja knows it is easy to hide; even now, he waits for the television noise to drown out his voice, and he smiles conspiratorially at Angel, as if they are both in on a little secret.
“Thank you for letting me know,” Angel says. “I’ll talk about it with Miss Sumanthi. She is the one who handles all matters related to my employment.” You are not my boss. You have no power. Angel wants to get this across to Raja somehow, but a smirk plays on his lips. He has no fear. As he turns to leave, Angel says, “Please throw your drink in the rubbish bin when you are finished.”
After Raja walks away, Angel wonders if this was going too far. She has never told anybody to clean up after himself in his own home. This is her only coping tactic—pretending that Raja is a guest, easing her discomfort with the knowledge that he lives in his university dorm for most of the week. She feels particularly unsafe on the nights when he returns because she keeps her bedroom door ajar to listen for Mr. Vijay.
She reaches for her phone and sees there’s still nothing from Cora. She texts her.
Angel: How was your day?
Cora comes online. So she is there, Angel thinks. She wonders if she should ask Cora what she thinks about this East Coast murder, but before she can type, Cora replies: It was okay. Ma’am wanted to know where I got my shoes.
Angel: She was suspicious?
Cora: She wanted to know where to get her own pair!
Angel: Ha-ha-ha. Should have invited her to take the place of those women in front of us.
Cora: How are you today? Spoke to Joy?
It’s another thing weighing on Angel’s mind. Last week, her sister bade farewell to her husband and children and took a bus to the training centre. I am thinking of you, Angel had written to her, but she was glad she hadn’t been anywhere nearby as their relatives peeled Joy’s wailing daughters off her. In their brief phone call last night, Joy hadn’t wanted to talk about the departure. Instead she told Angel that the training for work in Saudi Arabia would be quite different from what she expected. There were lessons on ironing, washing, and basic cooking, which Joy had no trouble with, but also lessons on simple Arabic phrases and Islamic culture. A trainer had taught them how to manoeuvre a mop without getting their abayas wet and told them to always wash the family cars before sunrise to avoid heatstroke.
Angel: She’s keeping busy. Just have to hope she has fair employers.
Cora: That’s all we can do, no?
I should have . . . Angel begins typing. She can’t complete the sentence. It’s what she shouldn’t have done that haunts her. Why did she have to tell Joy about Suzan? Things haven’t been the same between them since.
Angel: Hey . . . this East Coast murder is making me think about 2001. Remember that?
Cora: Not really.
Angel: Oh, come on, Cora. Marisol Concepcion? You don’t remember how everybody became scared of us? It looks like it’s going to happen again.
Cora doesn’t reply. Angel wants to talk to her about Donita’s messages as well. She sees that Cora is still online and has read her messages but she is not typing anything. After staring at the screen for another ten minutes, Angel gives up. It’s quiet in the living room now. She steps out into the corridor and can hear Mr. Vijay’s gentle snoring from his bedroom. The walls of the hall are lined with framed photos of the family—Sumanthi in cap and gown; Raja in his National Service uniform; a faded photograph of Mr. and Mrs. Vijay resplendent in their wedding garments against a waterfall backdrop.
The television is muted, and Anand is sitting at the edge of the couch on which Sumanthi is stretched out, fast asleep. On her bare feet are tattoos that crawl up her ankles, which she covers by wearing long pants and high-top shoes to work. Anand gently takes Sumanthi’s glasses off her face and folds them before placing them on the coffee table.
“Will you wake her up later?” Anand whispers. “I have to go. I don’t think she should spend the whole night on the couch like this.”
“Before I go to sleep, I’ll wake her up,” Angel replies. Never mind the yawn escaping from her mouth as she says this. It’s close to ten, and she has been on her feet all day. Today, Mr. Vijay was stubborn. He did not even want to grip the badminton racket. “You are being naughty,” Angel chided him. Mr. Vijay avoided her stare and Angel felt overcome with pity. “Ay, sir,” she sighed, smoothing a wrinkle in his shirt. “You used to do everything by yourself; now I have to make you practice this simple child’s game. I also would be frustrated.”
After Anand leaves, Angel brings her phone to the balcony and sits on the deck chair, watching the lights twinkling in the neighbouring buildings, the nature reserve reduced to a hulking shadow in the night. The baby in the apartment upstairs is fussing and Angel can hear Rubylyn on the balcony, singing “Sa Ugoy ng Duyan” to soothe him. She flicks two black ants away from the table. They must be coming out of that crack in the wall again; Angel needs to sprinkle repellent powder here. The tennis court downstairs will stay lit all night, and in the adjacent apartment complex, the pool ripples softly. The Vijays’ apartment is on the fourth floor, low enough that Angel can see the television screen flickering in the security guard’s station. During school holidays, Hassan’s grandson follows him to work, dragging a bag full of books from the library and reading them under that long fluorescent bulb. Hassan leans out of the window and waves to Anand’s car before returning to his seat and recording the departure in his logbook.
The island appears like a silent movie at this time of the night, but Angel’s group chats tell her otherwise. The comment about that poor girl from Myanmar has gained momentum, and everybody is contributing her own example of outrage. What about the woman who endured third-degree burns from having a kettle of boiling water thrown at her? What about the two sisters from Indonesia who were forced to slap each other for their mistakes? What about the woman whose sir made her take off her nightgown, mop the floor with it, and then wear the filthy sopping clothes to bed? Those were just the cases that made it to the news. So many more cruelties go unpunished, and the thought makes Angel feel ill. Joy is on her way to a place where there are even fewer laws to protect maids.
Another message pings on Angel’s phone, this one from Suzan’s WhatsApp group, the one she never left.
Listen, I know we all want to defend this woman, but we don’t know her motives. My cousin in Tacloban has a friend in Singapore who knows the nanny for a kid who lives on the same street as Flor. She heard that Flor was supposed to meet with her friends for a picnic near Dhoby Ghaut Station but she never showed up. Why would she do that? If she was innocent, she’d have at least told her friends.
Someone else types: I’m hearing some rumours about her too. She sleeps around. She has a daughter back home but nobody knows who the father is. Better not to claim to be friends with her or even friends of a friend.
A third person adds: Yeah, stay away. What if they come around to question everyone she knew?
Maybe there are things we don’t know yet, Angel types angrily.
She’s not just saying it because of Donita’s sighting. It’s the way the conversation has turned so easily to smearing Flordeliza. She knows why they are eager to disassociate themselves from the case; there is more peace of mind in not asking questions. Isn’t that what they did to Angel after her breakup because the truth was too uncomfortable? She presses Send and feels queasy doing it; it has been so long since she spoke up in this chat group that the other women probably think she left Singapore. Or they have forgotten she ever existed.
Then her phone buzzes. Joy? No, and when she sees who it’s from, her heart goes still.
Suzan: Hey! Been thinking about you. How are you doing?
The phone suddenly feels like the whole world to Angel, and everything else in the periphery dissolves. Is it really Suzan? The phone number is hers, and her face fills the circle next to her name. Angel has managed to avoid looking at pictures of Suzan since Christmas, and even though this profile picture is tiny, the sight of Suzan’s arched eyebrows and impish smile makes her stomach twist with both longing and anger. She reads the message over and over again, assigning meaning to each word and considering the implications. Hey . . . It’s like they’ve just brushed against each other in the street. How are you? It’s a little formal and open-ended. How to respond? What does Suzan expect, a rundown of all her complicated feelings? Or a nonchalant Hey, I’m good. How about you? to see where the conversation goes?
And Been thinking about you. Angel puts the phone down and paces across the balcony. What do you mean? she wants to ask; the message is glowing from her phone screen. It is hard to keep her mind from getting carried away, but soon she is lost in the hope of this message, the sign that Suzan might be tentatively reaching out. For a moment, she dares to be as honest as she’s ever been. I’ve missed you so much. I think about you all the time. I wish there were some way I could change your mind about us, because you’re the only person I want to be with.
Angel’s heart pounds in the hollow of her chest as she types her reply: Good to hear from you ☺ How are you? The moment she presses Send, she regrets it, but she doesn’t try to retract the message. Time passes slowly before the word Typing . . . appears under Suzan’s name. Angel’s stomach somersaults, and the jitters travel to her fingers, which begin to pinch the hollow of flesh between her knuckles. Another black ant scrambles across the table.
The message, when it finally arrives, is so simple and cruel that it cuts off Angel’s breath: Sorry, wrong number. Angel feels as if her insides have been scooped out. Her first instinct is to take the phone and fling it off the balcony—she imagines how it would feel to watch it soar and get swallowed up by the night sky. What she does, what she knows she must do now, is much less satisfying. She blocks Suzan and exits the group chat. There is no subtle way to do this; everyone will see that she has finally gone.
As Angel sets her phone down, the glowing screen highlights a dark line running across the table. Ants. She follows their squirming trail with her phone’s light until she reaches the source—an open Sprite bottle on its side in a pool of liquid. A punishment; Raja tipped it over on purpose.
She trains her eyes on the distance and waits for the anger to seep away. Where does it go? Does it swirl into the atmosphere to take the shape of the island’s gnarled branches and hunkering shrubs? Does it settle as fine dust on eyelashes and windshields? Or does it build in your fingertips, in your heart, seizing on a moment where everything collides and your body becomes an engine of rage? Donita claims she saw Flordeliza Martinez at the time of the murder, but Angel would understand if Donita’s imagination was working overtime. She knows that it’s all the little things added up that makes you really want to hurt a person.
From the ma’am Facebook pages:
Yu Fang Ong: We want to send our maid to classes to learn some conversational Mandarin so she can communicate better with my in-laws. She is refusing because the classes are on Sundays. So choosy! I told her it’s only two hours and she said she has other things to do. Of course I’m not going to send her on weekdays or Saturdays because she has responsibilities in our household. So lazy and unmotivated—that’s why you’re only a maid! We sacrifice so much for them and they turn around and backstab us. This is what happened to that poor Carolyn Hong.
MK Ng: Maid wants our Wi-Fi password so she can talk to her children. OK with me but my husband asked her to just use her mobile data. He told her, “This is like me asking my boss to send me to work via hired taxi every day because the MRT is too crowded.” Not the same thing lah, but he say must draw a line, otherwise these women will climb on our heads. As long as she dun climb into our bed and try to steal my husband I’m okay lah, otherwise one day kena bludgeon to death like that East Coast lady then how?