Bad Fruit, page 12
“What kind of things?”
“I don’t know. That was all she said.”
Lewis’s eyes are narrow behind his glasses.
“It doesn’t make sense. Mama’s always told me she loved her father. She said he always looked out for her, provided for her. She measures every man against him. He’s the ideal.”
“Or an ideal.” He takes off his glasses, wipes the rain with the edge of his T-shirt. “If you were going to recreate your past, the first thing you’d reinvent is the worst person. Does your mother talk about your grandmother or aunt?”
“Never. She talks about the emerald house and her father, but not her mother. I didn’t even know she had an aunt. Why?”
He slips his glasses back on his nose. “I wonder if you love someone, you stay faithful to them, even to their memory. Maybe that’s why she doesn’t involve her mother or her aunt in the fabrication.”
Beyond the red brick of the old observatory, one of the domes is opening, the thin split down the center slowly pulling apart to reveal the rig of the telescope, the dark circle of the lens. An astronomer will be looking out tonight, it’s eye-end poised for galaxies while I search for a different kind of star.
“I heard back from the admissions office. Your mother was never offered a place at Oxford. There was no scholarship.”
I didn’t know until he said it, how much I wanted Mama to have told me the truth. In the rain, the grass is slipped blades.
“I’m sorry.”
“Tell me something.”
“Like what?”
“A story, a thought, anything.”
Beside me, Lewis breathes in and out slowly. “When you told me about the flashbacks, I thought of this place. It’s called the Astronomers’ Garden now, but it used to be called the Home of Time Garden. The Observatory has always measured chronos time—”
“From the Greek.”
“You know Greek?”
“Latin, but I like etymology.”
“You’re wasted reading Law, you know that, right?”
I shrug. I don’t want to speak to him, I just want to listen. He could say anything, doesn’t matter.
“Chronos has become time as we know it—hours, minutes, seconds, that constant, measurable march. But in Ancient Greece, there was another type of time—kairos. Kairos moments are significant moments, moments when the fates change. When I think of your mother’s flashbacks, I think they’re kairos time, incredibly important. Each time you have one, you’re one step closer.”
“Closer to what?”
“The truth.”
“Do you think if I find out the truth, the flashbacks will stop?”
“Possibly. I don’t think it can hurt to find out.”
“She comes back tomorrow.” Rain is soaking through my clothes, the dark patches turning my skin chilly. I turn my hand up to catch the drops, the same hand that slapped my brother. “I feel unreal. Like I’m unraveling and no one’s watching. Have you ever felt like that?”
“A few times. When my parents would fight, and then on the streets.” He swipes rain off his shorts and stands up. In the observatory, staff are setting up for an event, laying out champagne flutes on white tablecloths, the scene lit by the brassy glow of cogs and dials, the clockfaces of ancient timekeepers. He adjusts his rucksack and says something so quietly I’m unsure I’ve heard him. It could have been: “You’ve got me. I’m watching.”
* * *
I GET THE email from the Singapore Land Authority as I’m crossing my front garden. It confirms a number of things. The emerald house belongs to Rachel Tan and before that, to Henry Tan, or as Mama called him, “Uncle Henry.” It was never owned by Mama or her father, Jimmy Tan. Which means the flashbacks are true: Mama’s been lying. She never grew up in the emerald house. And then I need Lewis so badly, I want to run all the way to The Polar Explorer House, one glimpse of him will be enough—a curtain being pulled shut, a light being turned on.
Stop.
I’ve already followed him home this afternoon. Poorer substitutes will have to do.
I find the dandelion I’ve saved from the orchard a few days ago and plant it in a pot. As I carry it through my treacherous house, I think this twisted root holds the light of flowers, a light I’m bringing in. In the hole, the dandelion beside me, I write Lewis’s name and snippets of our conversation on the cardboard walls. You’ve got me, I’m watching.
17 / LOVE LETTERS
MAMA LANDS IN SIX HOURS and I’m making kueh kapit. It’s a festive biscuit, usually a Chinese New Year snack, but I don’t care—it needs to be special to smooth over the fallout from the swimsuit photo, her mood when she gets back, my nerves. I measure out the rice flour and pour in the coconut milk. In Singapore, huge tubs of these wafer-thin biscuits are sold in the shopping malls under Chinese New Year decorations. I remember Mama’s face brightening as she clutched one to her chest. “I had these every year when I was a child.” Is that true or invented?
Julia walks into the kitchen holding two empty shopping bags, wearing another kaftan, this time, in intricately embroidered cream.
“What are you doing here?”
“Hello to you too.” She drops the bags and jumps up onto the counter so she’s close to the window. I opened the windows to get a little airflow, but there is none; the rain hasn’t broken the weather.
I push down lumps of flour clinging to the sides of the mixing bowl and start to whisk. I never use the electric mixer, it’s nice to have something to beat.
Julia’s heels bang against the cupboard. She dips her finger in the mixture before I snatch it away. “Making love letters for Mama again?”
“Don’t call them that—it’s a Westernization.” My cheeks burn. “In Malay, they’re kueh kapit.”
“Worried about Mama coming home?”
“Are you?” I nod at the empty bags. “Isn’t that why you’re here, to take back more of your things?” Julia has acquired an extraordinary amount of clothes in her eighteen years at home, mostly from wheedling Mama over grades. At her peak, the monetary value of an A was £600. She laughed at me for not “benefitting” from my schoolwork. “You’re missing out. You can buy anything you want,” but I never had her appetite for acquisition. The idea of negotiating with Mama for hard cash was as inconceivable back then as it is now. “How do you think Mama’s going to punish you, set your jeans on fire?”
Julia hesitates and then throws her head back, laughing hysterically, her dark hair shaking. I roll my eyes at her, but the knots in my stomach are already loosening.
After she calms down, she draws out a wad of cash from her pocket, smoothing her hair back behind her ears before she fans out the notes. She counts them as though she’s dealing cards, parting them expertly with her thumb.
“Where did you get that from?” In the daylight, all I see of her is bone and shadow—the clavicles under her skin, her thin ankles. I order myself to keep whisking.
“Daddy.” She points a note at me. “He’ll give you money when you’re at Oxford too, more if he’s feeling guilty, like he is about the whole Francie thing. Catch him when Mama’s not there, and he just empties his wallet.”
“You knew he had a secret bank account?”
“He’s had one for years.”
This is becoming rapidly familiar: I’m the only one who doesn’t know. Of course Julia knows about my parents’ income; all her fights with Mama are about money. “Why doesn’t Mama give you enough?”
Julia stuffs the cash back into her pocket. “Because she’s a tightfisted little hoarder. She keeps it all to herself, her clothes, her handbags, her jewelry, always trying to look like someone she isn’t. She doesn’t care if we actually live in poverty, just how we look, and then when you actually need it, she doles it out only if you act the right way, study the right thing. It’s her way of control.”
I’m not so sure. Mama has a list of things she wants—a Hermès handbag, a Yves Saint Laurent envelope wallet, Manolo Blahnik pearl boots—but she never checks those items off, not even after a bonus or a birthday. She likes to go to Harrods, to Liberty’s, Harvey Nichols, but more to skim her fingers over the designer clothes and bags. When she does purchase something expensive, she agonizes over it for months, checking constantly online like a fluctuating share price, trying to apply seasonal discount codes. Otherwise, she buys mounds of pink and purple imitations on the high street. But she can’t have spent all her money on that.
“Why are you asking anyway?”
“It’s nothing.” I rub oil on the inside of the kueh kapit press. It’s two iron circles, four inches across, attached together with lengths of metal. On one side is a pattern of rabbits, on the other, a rooster. I spotted it in a supermarket above a metro station in Singapore, an ancient tool lying among the packets of disposable cutlery and gingerbread cutters. “Buy it,” Mama had said, “you can’t find anything like that in London.” Looking at it now, I have the same thought I had then—it would sear a pretty pattern on a cheek, the plates a perfect weight to bring down on a head or a neck.
“Anything happen with the boys after I left?” Julia’s feet swing in and out of vision.
“Nope.”
She nudges me with her toes. “What’s wrong?”
I almost don’t say anything. But she’s the only person who would half understand and, once Mama comes home, I won’t see her as much. I sieve the batter and swallow. “What would you say if I told you Mama never got a scholarship to Oxford?”
Julia snorts. “Who cares?”
“Remember a few years ago when we went to Singapore? It was just you and me. Jacob was at uni.”
Julia links her fingers together and stretches her arms out in front of her. “That was boring. Until I made friends with those guys.”
I dismiss the image of my seventeen-year-old sister leaving the hotel with a man’s hand around her waist. “But before that, do you remember visiting the emerald house?”
“Vaguely.” She yawns.
“Did you think it was real?”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you think she really lived there? Did her family wear sarong kebayas? Do you think she grew up eating this?” I wave the sieve.
“Honestly, Lil, I stopped listening to Mama a while back.”
I spoon batter over the mold. “What if she was lying?”
Julia stares at the packet of rice flour, the empty cans of coconut milk, and then at me holding the mold. “If she’s lying, what the fuck are you doing?”
I switch on the stove. The gas roars. “Did you ever wonder why she’s the way she is?” I thrust the mold into the flames. “People aren’t born like that, so up and down. Maybe something happened to her.”
“Don’t feel sorry for her.”
“I’m not, I just … what if she had a really bad childhood?”
Julia rolls her eyes. “How tragic, the fire that killed her family and left her all alone—”
She’s told Julia about the fire? Am I the only person she’s told about the car accident?
“—who cares? It doesn’t matter. She is who she is now.” She gives the batter a stir. “She’s not some mystery you need to solve. You’ve got six weeks until uni, and then you’re out. Oxford is two and a half hours away.”
I eye her warily. How does my sister—who is terrible at geography, who has never shown any interest in my education—know how far Oxford is from Greenwich? She must have checked. “You want me gone?”
“I want you safe.”
“Don’t be dramatic.” The kueh kapit crisps in the mold. It’s nearly ready. “I am safe. The way she is with you, she isn’t with me.”
Julia snatches the mold from me. The plates swing dangerously close to my face, and I think everything I imagined has come true—I will have rabbits burned into me—but nothing touches me except a band of heat. She drops the mold in the sink, the metal clattering against the ceramic. Her fists are clenched at her sides. “It’s OK, is it? If things happen to me but they don’t happen to you?”
“You provoke her.”
“That’s who she is.”
“You make her that way.”
“Oh, really? Do you remember her throwing Jacob and me out of the car? Or why you had to make kueh kapit the first time?”
I remember. I was thirteen, Julia, sixteen. She’d been driving Mama’s car to and from school for weeks. Mama discovered the transgression when she came home early with a cold. She thought the car had been stolen. I messaged Julia while Mama called the police. “Stop her!” Julia replied, so I did, I told Mama a half-truth—that Julia had borrowed it to practice. Half was bad enough. Mama hit her across the jaw when she stepped into the house, screaming, “You’re nothing, you’re worthless, you whore.” I checked the clock each hour—ten, eleven, midnight—but Mama was relentless with the insults, the attacks. That’s when I started making batter. My voice shook when I called Mama over to taste my kueh kapit.
I push past Julia and lever open the mold. It’s a perfect golden circle, the rabbits and rooster visible. Julia puts her hand out for the biscuit. I hold it back. “You know what I’m saying. No more stunts. No more photos.” I fold it into quarters to make a fan shape and lay it on her palm.
Julia traces the shape of a rabbit. “It makes me feel better.”
“No more!”
“Oh, come on! What did she expect, sending that photo? Everyone to fawn over her and tell her how—”
Then I’m shouting. “I’m still here, Jules, I’m still here!” The words choke my throat. “So don’t come in here on the day she’s coming home and tell me what you’re doing is fine. Because if you push her, all the biscuits in the world are not going to be enough. I’m just trying to—”
“Survive?”
I look away.
“All right, Lil, all right, I won’t fuck with her. But you promise me something too. Don’t let your guard down. You know she’ll come back worse.”
I start on a new biscuit.
“Can I do anything?” Then I know she’s really sorry because she wouldn’t lift a finger otherwise. “Have you made juice?”
“Always.”
Julia hugs me. Her arms around my neck are loose and cool. “That bitch,” she whispers.
* * *
FIVE HOURS TILL Mama lands. I put the final touches to Mama’s room, but—surrounded by her things in the sweltering heat—my heart pounds. Julia’s right, Mama’s going to come back worse; unsupervised, she’ll have grown more paranoid. My head is roily fitting Mama’s freshly ironed satin sheets, smoothing her Peranakan quilt over the end of her bed. Daddy has fitted a new bulb since she’s been away, but the light is too white, she’ll wince under it. I swap it for a softer one and then start on the teddies, angling each of their faces so they look out over the bed. I give Sapphire special attention, propping her up against a pillow, retying her bow, pressing the ends so that they sit flat against her tummy.
I can see Daddy in the front garden, he’s busy with his own preparations for Mama’s return—deadheading the roses. The sounds carry through Mama’s open window, the thud of petals, the shears slicing through the still, summer air and I know, instinctively, that I must shut the window if I don’t want another flashback, must shut my eyes, but it’s too late—I’ve already seen the blades of the shears, the metal overlaid with a delicate patina of rust.
“Who’s that?” the teddy whispered. Goldie and the girl were under the bed covers, having a tea party. The girl tilted Goldie’s head this way and that as if she was pricking up her ears.
“Neighbor,” replied the girl. “Drunk again.”
The girl listened to Baba click his lighter open on the other side of my bedroom door and drag on a cigarette. “Unlock this door!”
“It sounds like a bad man,” said Goldie.
He rattled the handle. “Stupid girl! Just like your mother!”
Goldie put her paws to her eyes and started to cry.
The girl cuddled her. “Don’t be scared băo băo, baby. That man? Nothing to do with us. Just a neighbor, drinking too much.”
The girl heard him take a swig of whiskey. “Everything you have is mine—the clothes on your back, your teddy!”
“He sounds close,” said Goldie.
“He’s not. He can’t get through the door.”
“You’re nothing, you hear me, nothing! When I get you, you’ll see what I’ll do. I’ll take off your clothes! I’ll push you outside!”
Goldie looked at the girl, her glass eyes uncertain.
“Worthless!”
The teddy hid in the girl’s neck.
The girl squeezed her tight. “He’ll fall asleep soon, and then Mummy will come home. Come on, don’t let him ruin our party.” It was hard to keep the sheet over them and hold Goldie, so she lay on her back and used her feet to prop up the blanket. “See, we’re in our special tent. Want some tea?” The girl fumbled for her plastic teacup, offered it to Goldie’s thread mouth.
“Whore!”
I’m clawing at my chest for a teddy who isn’t there, my ears ringing with the sound of a fist against a door, those terrible words. Sapphire has fallen to her side, and then I’m broken, clutching her against me because I understand what she is, who she’s supposed to be. She’s Goldie upgraded, a plusher, beribboned incarnation, the teddies on the window seat, Goldie multiplied, and then I know why Mama likes the teddies positioned the way she does. They aren’t staring at Mama in bed. They’re alert for the door—sentinels watching for the moment Mama’s drunk father rattles the handles.
Is this why I’m having her flashbacks, so I’d understand her, so I’d pity her? Then it’s done, don’t show me anymore, I’ll be better, do better. How many teddies would it take to make Mama feel safe? Tell me and I will buy them, a thousand times over.
I fetch the plate of kueh kapit from downstairs, position Sapphire and the other teddies around it. I brush the fur back from their eyes so that they gleam, round and inviting. I’ll redeem the teddy bears’ tea party from her childhood, from behind that locked bedroom door, bring it out into the open, a celebration of her return. There’s nothing to be afraid of.
