“Ugh! Ugh! Ugh!”
“What your Kai-yeh gave me.”
Cha-li stared at the head and vacant eyes. “Did he...? Did he...?” Helpless, she turned to Rose.
“He raped me. Then I tried to abort him.”
Rose patted the lolling head, which said, “Ugh! Ugh!” and more spit dribbled.
“Good morning, Madame Mei Kwei! Good morning, Ugh-Ugh!” two girls called out in Mandarin as they came down the stairs, their nipples showing under their skimpy nightdresses. Cha-li remembered seeing them when she was walking Saddam Hussein. One of the girls approached them and planted a kiss on the lolling head. “Ugh! Ugh!” The distended mouth dribbled more spit, and the wrists strained at the belt that strapped them to the armrests.
Rose turned away. “Let’s go back. They’re getting ready to eat.”
Cha-li followed her back to the first house. The sun had come into the living room, and the light that bounced off the white marble floor hurt Cha-li’s eyes. Her head was swimming.
“Is Robert the mastermind?”
“No. Robert has to settle his gambling debts. I... ah! I need the money and so do these China girls. They have something to sell that the Indians want to buy. Robert brings the Indians. I bring the girls. Everyone is happy. It’s not a crime.”
“I don’t know about that.”
Rose drew the curtains. “Report it to the police if you want. I don’t care what you do.”
“Why? Why didn’t you tell me what he did?”
“Tell you?” Rose’s laughter bordered on the hysterical, a wild gleam in her eyes. “Tell you? The bastard’s monkey girl? The Great Lord’s Chosen One with a paper gold band on your head? And a fake gold chain around your neck? The bastard was holding the bloody chain while you pranced before the devotees, drunk in their adoration. Strike me dead, Cha-li! I couldn’t tear open my heart to a prancing monkey in silk robes!”
She wanted to slap Rose, but walked to the front door instead and stopped at the doorway, surprised at the sudden weight in her limbs. Her shoulders sagged. The memory of the gilt headband that she’d worn in those days made her cringe. It was made of cardboard and cheap plastic, painted gold. Later, she had bought the bronze headband to replace it.
The sunlight outside hurt her eyes, which were beginning to tear, the same eyes that had remained shut when footsteps were shuffling in the middle of the night into the kitchen where Rose slept. Rose’s mouth was moving, saying something to her, but she couldn’t catch the words. She kept thinking of the lolling head and dribbling mouth next door.
“The... the temple will be demolished. Very soon,” she said without turning around. She couldn’t face Rose. She wanted to shut her eyes, shut out the noonday glare, but she forced herself to keep them open, fixed on the green lawn outside sizzling in the midday heat. “I... I can get a flat big enough for the three... three of us... er... you and him...” Her voice trailed off.
Spells
by Ovidia Yu
Tiong Bahru
We were minding our own business! Never causing no trouble! And then, for no reason, you came and cursed us! You are wicked — evil!”
The accusation bursts out of the figure lurking by the vase of welcoming lilies on our rooftop terrace as we come out of the lift.
“Please — not another suicidal teen!” says Renee, my flatmate, only partly in jest.
Living in a modern condo in a heritage conservation district where walkups are the norm means an unexpected visitor to our private penthouse lobby is a potential mugger.
The woman turns on Renee: “You busybody slut, this is all your fault. You made this one curse me! Now my husband is gone and my boy has diabetes and the doctor says he has some lump growing inside so he has to go and operate!”
Renee retreats before the barrage of Singlish and spittle.
The woman has the fierce, focused intensity sometimes seen on people verging on insanity. Her hair looks dirty and she smells... a stale, sour odor of unhealthy, unwashed flesh and fabric envelops and moves with her.
If I were meeting her for the first time, I would classify her as crazy.
“Should we call the police?” Renee asks quietly from behind me.
“Call Gary,” I say. I stay between Renee and our visitor. Gary, chairman of our management committee, lives in the other penthouse in the Banyan Tower and is a reliable witness.
“It’s all your fault! You destroyed my family! And now you are making my son get sick and... and—”
Tears and memories overcome her words. She cannot make herself say the word die. But I know it is not only her son that these harsh raw sobs are for as she twists herself in agony against our front door.
“And that stupid maid. Can you believe the girl had the cheek to offer me money for my boy’s treatment? Whoever heard of such a thing? I told her, if you so laowah and got so much money to throw at people, why are you here washing toilets? I told the police, I told the maid agency, if the girl got so much money she must have stolen it from me! Those useless people come and tell me I’m the one that owes her back pay!”
Renee, ever softhearted, moves over to comfort the intruder. Instinctively, I reach out an arm to block, to protect. The blue ceramic vase shatters on the wall rack beside her head and—
“Did you see that?” The madness in the woman’s voice rises and she shrieks again. “Did you see what she did? I didn’t break that — but I know you are going to blame me!”
“No one is blaming you...” Renee says, but she retreats to safety behind me. She obviously doesn’t recognize the woman.
It is not surprising that I remember her. After all, I remember everything about Tiong Bahru since the 1930s and it was only a year ago that I first encountered our not-yet-mad visitor at the newly reopened market. The old stigma of subsidized government housing is forgotten in our district’s graceful curved balconies and pastel wooden shutters, and the vegetable patches between rows of terraced walk-ups are tended by a mix of original inhabitants and recent arrivals. In the prewar days the buildings were called mei ren wu or houses of beauty because mistresses of wealthy businessmen lived here. Now that coffee bars, modern bistros, and retro bookshops have moved in, property prices have gone up, attracting real estate agents like this woman.
The first time I saw her was at the market when she cut in front of me at the chwee kueh stall. Chwee kueh is rice flour and water steamed into delicate discs and topped with fried pickled vegetables and sesame seeds. It is still one of Renee’s favorite treats.
The woman had her husband, maid, and two children in tow and was talking loudly about the profits she intended to make. “I don’t see why this place is supposed to be such a big deal. People buying to rent to homos and foreigners — that’s why the prices are so high!”
She complained about the quality of the chwee kueh. She complained about the seating and the birds and she scolded her daughter for not eating, her husband for not listening, and her maid for not stopping her son from throwing his fork and plate and water bottle at the birds.
Then she slapped her maid for trying to collect their unfinished food in a plastic bag. “So dirty! People will think we don’t feed you!”
The maid had not been given anything to eat or drink. But the maid was not as thin as the daughter, who had transferred the food from inside her bowl to under her plate, bypassing her mouth. I noticed, even if her mother did not. She might have been a pretty girl, I thought, if not dwarfed by her mother’s size and manner.