Meticulously, she rearranges the Swarovski collection, predominantly birds. Most of them are seagulls, birds that she has never seen in her two years in this country, even though the waterfront villas are nestled amidst lush tropical foliage, on an isle within a cove of an island off the Singapore shore. Perhaps there are no birds because the vegetation is landscaped, the isle built from Cambodian sand and the cove artificially carved. Or maybe because there are never any crumbs to be found.
She picks up a small crystal seagull and looks at it more closely under the lamp. It has tiny red gemstones for eyes — rubies? How much is it worth? she wonders, as she has in the past. Enough, surely, to pay for half a year of round-the-clock care when her mother’s Alzheimer’s takes full grip. Enough to buy time for her younger brother to complete secondary school.
Look after Nanay. Study hard. I’ll send everything I get.
A sound from the floor above startles her. He is clearing his throat, his usual noise like a skanky alley cat coughing up fur and filth. His noxious spit will follow. She turns off the lamp and briskly heads back to the servants’ quarters. She does not run anymore.
Merla locks herself in her tiny room, behind the utility area where the washing machine and dryer are kept. She has a single bed with a thin mattress, a low chest of drawers, an unreachable window near the ceiling facing the side wall of the compound. The cicadas are quiet tonight. In the adjoining bathroom, she removes her blouse and winces as she lifts her bra away from her scalded breasts. The skin is still raw. She showers quickly, with cold water. She knows she should have seen him coming the other night, when he appeared in the kitchen doorway just as the kettle started to boil.
As she towels herself off, she stops to touch her back, where the deep burn from a few months ago has dried and hardened into a large triangular scab. Not the way to do collar! he had yelled. He yanked the cord, grabbed the iron away from her, and rammed her face against the wall. Hot metal. Fabric stuck to melted skin. As she writhed on the floor, trying to muffle her own cries, he ransacked her room, leaving with her battered old Nokia, her address book, and her passport.
At least that time there was a reason. The luxury of a reason. But sometimes there is no reason, or logic, or fairness. Only faith. She kneels and surrenders her eyes — one swollen, both weary — to the framed picture of Mother Mary on the bedside unit. Five hours to go before she is expected to toil again, but she knows that as always there will be little sleep. Still in need of solace, she recalls her long-dead father. The year His Holiness visited the Philippines, her father emptied his savings account to travel from their remote village by bus to Manila, bringing his teenage daughter with him. His wife and newborn son stayed at home. Young Merla watched as he wept in Luneta Park during closing Mass. She felt forever changed. From a roadside stall, he bought her first rosary beads, made of wood. Now the beads remind her not just of home, but of the time they were shoved into her mouth and forced down her clenched throat. The time she was left gagging, her shaking hand pushing through her open jaws to get a grip of the chain, her esophagus cut as she pulled out the metal crucifix.
The rosary beads are where she always keeps them — coiled around a corner of a small mirror, next to the picture of the Virgin Mary.
Gray meets gray where the mackerel sky merges with the South China Sea on a blurry horizon. A light breeze blows across the upstairs balcony of the vast master bedroom. She prefers it like this. When the sun blazes, the light catches the thousands of specks that fly and float with every desperate stroke of her feather duster, making her work seem an impossible struggle; she is certain she has lost battles of several lifetimes. As she is alone in the house, she allows herself a minute. He left hours ago — she saw his red Ferrari speed down the driveway and swing right at the gates with a haughty vroom. His wealth, so incomprehensible to her, so inescapable, seems to be the only topic he deigns to speak of when he has no intention of abusing her. More than once he has described with glee, in his broken English, the expression on the real estate agent’s face when he turned up with a suitcase stuffed full of cash from Chengdu, and every retelling concludes with a rant about how the conveyance should have been completed then and there. FAH-king bu-raw-CRASSY!
Just as Merla is about to shut the sliding door, she is jolted by the sound of a splash from the pool below. By the time she takes tentative steps toward the balcony railing and peers down, all she can see is a trail of wet footprints on the path leading into the house. The fact that he never uses the pool heightens her alertness. As she tiptoes along the landing and down the glass stairs, the stereo comes on at full blast. This is no burglar. Then the stranger moves into view.
For a second, the unexpected sight of near nakedness and bright yellow swim trunks makes her avert her eyes and retreat behind a wall. But when she peeks again, she sees that he is more boy than man, though blessed with the promise of every physical glory of male adulthood. His wide-eyed good looks and not-too-tanned complexion remind her of the Pinoy pinups that adorn the celebrity rags she has seen in Manila. Not yet eighteen, she reckons, or else he would already be conscripted for national service. There is only one connection she can draw between the boy and the house. The den. She never lingers in that room long enough, never raises her eyes from the tray long enough, to see or remember faces. She cannot be sure. She has seen many young men in that room, and witnessed things that remind her that there is at least one kind of wickedness that will not befall her in this prison. For that, she thanks the Lord.
The boy notices her and calls out, affably. My name is Zhiwei, he yells through the loud music with a grin, but everyone calls me Zach. Sensing her discomfort, he covers himself with a white bathrobe from the pool hut. He turns down the volume and talks as he runs his fingers through his shortish hair. About him being a lifeguard at the beach on the far side of the island, near the Cafe del Mar where he got to know the owner of this house. About how amazing this place is, how you can definitely fit the entire flat where he lives with his grandmother into just half of the lounge from there to there...
She feels she should hurry away but his voice, with its rise and fall, so strange in a house of oppressive silence, takes an easy hold of her; so she stays, busying herself with her duster and cloth. He crisscrosses the room aimlessly, glancing at the paintings, now and then touching the sculptures. He speaks in the local English slang, his jumbled syntax interspersed with the occasional big, misused word. He tells her he is from one of the oldest housing estates, went to the neighborhood school — What’s the point? — from which he got expelled — What to do? — and that he has big plans for the future. There are other ways to make it in life, Zach says, as he slips his hands into the robe pockets; just look at the guy who owns this villa, he comes from some province in China and can’t be that well-educated. The boy emphasizes this with a shrug.
Interrupted by the ringing of his mobile, Zach leaps onto the nearest oversized sofa to take the call, burrowing into the plush cushions. From what Merla can make of it, it is the man on the line. They converse in Mandarin for a minute or two before hanging up, after which Zach passes on the message that the man will not be coming home tonight, and that she is to serve the boy dinner. Their eyes meet for the first time, for just an instant.