Written in Black, page 4
Unlike the rest of us, Kevin’s sister went to an international school, a very reputable institute according to my uncle, and one where she had the opportunity to immerse her overachieving fingers in all kinds of curricular and extra-curricular pies. From what Ah Peh had told us, Frida studied hard to maintain the 90% average across all tests and assignments that she had held throughout her first year in secondary school, and she spent her free time learning the violin – she was presently studying the instrument at a grade seven level and all her best friends were from the school’s violin club – and writing poems, a few of which had been published in an Australian teen magazine. Frida’s busy schedule worked in Kevin’s favour though; it wasn’t in every household that the little brother got complete control over the household TV, video and game selections.
Also unlike the rest of us grandchildren, Frida was quite good looking. Fortunately for her, she hadn’t inherited any of the Lee genes, nor did she have any tendency towards her mother’s height and personality traits. Her dainty, delicate features, sizable eyes and slender nose made her the prettiest girl of her year-group, and she was quite a contrast to Jen’s rounder, stockier build. Frida also happened to look the most brooding out of us all, and it sort of made her all the more attractive for it. I’d be lying if I denied having had a crush on her up until last year. Those feelings often threatened to spill out even now, but I kept them a secret, much like how I keep it a secret that I still wet the bed every so often. I suspected that Aaron had a crush on her too, but I had never brought this up for discussion with him so far, and certainly never would in the future.
The five of us ate our dinner in silence. We were being served lamb curry, vegetables, sweet-and-sour pork, braised chicken, beef bone soup, noodles, and spring rolls (fried and non-fried) to go with the two types of rice available (white and brown). A fairly typical meal at my uncle’s place, and most of it ended up on Kevin’s plate, and my cousin devoured his ample helping with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. When we were done, Jen and Frida dashed off upstairs quickly, without as much as a “see you later” to us. It was just us boys again, and this made me feel comfortable enough to try resuming my conversation about Mum with Aaron.
“Aaron, I’m going to try and ask Pa again about Mum,” I began. Kevin didn’t seem to be paying us any attention. He was finishing off his third bowl of soup while one of his servants cleared the table around him. “I wanted to ask him earlier, but … you know …” I didn’t have to explain myself; Aaron knew I had been too scared to ask.
“We need to talk to her by tomorrow. We haven’t spoken to her in so long …”
My stomach began to rumble. Oof, was it the diarrhoea trying to make its last hurrah? My tummy never took too kindly to the food at my uncle’s. Yeah, there was plenty of it here, but it was nothing compared to Mum’s cooking; her food had that special something that I didn’t get anywhere else. I thought about the special noodles she made with diced vegetables that were so perfectly crispy, and her thin-cut chicken breast slices wrapped around mozzarella and chopped ham, my favourite. Eating her food always made me feel like I was having a good day, regardless of how terrible it might have really been.
“Not really.” Aaron shrugged. “I spoke to her last week.”
“What?”
“Yeah, Mum called us last week.”
This was unexpected. Why hadn’t anyone told me? “When? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“It was on Wednesday. Oh, yeah, you were at tuition, that’s why. And … er … Pa told us …” Aaron was twisting in his seat uncomfortably. “He told us not to tell you.”
“I can’t believe this.” Why had Pa wanted to hide this from me? My mouth suddenly tasted bitter. “What time did Mum call? I came back at 8.30.”
“I think it was right after you left. At 6.00. Around that time.”
I was on the verge of exploding. It was Cikgu Zaini who’d pushed the session an hour earlier so he could go visit his sick brother or something. And he didn’t even go in the end. That bastard. What I’d give for just one moment alone with his car and a nice, sharp object.
Of course, I knew there was nothing I could do about it anymore. But I was all the more determined now to get what I needed, which was to find a way to talk to Mum before tomorrow.
“Did she say anything about going to Dubai?” I asked as calmly as I could. The wary expression on Aaron’s face however told me he’d seen the murder in mine. Kevin could probably see it as well; he had stopped eating and was listening to us quietly.
“No, she didn’t. We didn’t talk for that long, Jonathan. Maybe ten minutes.”
“Did she ask about me?”
Aaron smiled weakly at me. “She said she got us presents. She said they were on the way here in the mail. I think I’m getting that dinosaur book I wanted at the Science Centre …”
“Screw the dinosaur book! I’ve got to get Pa to call Mum tonight. I’m getting my damn phone call!”
I stomped off, my head fuming and my stomach gurgling even more. No, I couldn’t take a toilet break now. The anger that was drumming up my courage would get flushed away with my shit, and then it would be back to plain old “yes sir” Jonathan again, who wouldn’t dare walk up to his father and demand that he get that phone call he wanted.
Pa was still in the hall with my uncle and my grandmother. Ah Ma sat slumped in her wheelchair in front of the makeshift altar, staring at Ah Kong’s feet, while my father and Ah Peh were sat on the floor, tending to the fire in the basin. Around them, their beddings had been arranged in a neat row. Was it for an overnight vigil? Not that I cared about what they were up to. I had other things to worry about.
“Are you all done eating?” Ah Peh asked.
“Yeah, we are,” piped in Kevin from behind me. Trust him to follow me here in gleeful anticipation of watching me make a scene. I turned and saw that Aaron stood behind me too, looking quite distressed. I sucked in my breath and went for it.
“Pa,” I said forcefully. “You didn’t tell me about Mum calling home last week.”
His fingers froze and stopped with the paper-burning, but he didn’t look up to face me. After a few seconds, he continued feeding the fire as though I’d not said anything.
“Pa. I didn’t get to talk to her. Can I call her now?”
“Stop it. I told you not to nag me about this, Jonathan.” He still wasn’t looking at me.
“What’s this about, Seng?” Ah Peh seemed curious.
“Mum’s going to Dubai tomorrow and she said she won’t be in touch for a long time.” Pa flashed me a dirty look for this. My stomach growled again and so loudly that I was sure everyone in the room had heard it. “I haven’t talked to her in so long …”
“Seng, just let him talk to his mother,” Ah Peh chided my father. “Why doesn’t she want to be contacted? Now if it were me, I’d make sure that …”
“I don’t want to talk about this now,” Pa mumbled, but Ah Peh didn’t seem to notice.
“She’s gone for treatment, you say? Well, I know a few doctors in Dubai. But isn’t Dubai very hot? I’ve been there once before, and it was so hot there that I had to stay in the hotel 90% of the time. It was like trying to walk around in an oven! Mary never did like hot places, did she? Why didn’t you ask me for help, Seng? Singapore is so much closer and the doctors there are just as good. Or even better! I have a friend who knows a very good one working on Orchard Road. This doctor has his photo stuck on all the MRTs. I can arrange for Mary to see him in a week.”
“She has friends in Dubai. She will be fine there,” my father interrupted.
Ah Peh gave him a smirk. “What friends? Are you sure you can trust them?”
“I’m sure.” Pa abruptly turned to me. “Jonathan. I’ll talk to you about this later.”
“But …”
“I said later!” he snapped. “Why don’t you go upstairs and get ready for bed now.”
I knew the conversation was over. I nodded grudgingly and charged up the staircase, my stomach hammering anxiously. Kevin and my brother didn’t follow me this time; they probably wanted to stay on and see what the adults were getting up to.
So much for the fight left in me. And now I was almost certain that Pa would pay me back in kind for embarrassing him in front of his brother. Could Ah Peh have conceivably weakened Pa’s resolve by even a smidgen so that there was still a chance of getting what I wanted? That I was clinging on to this as a last strand of hope was enough proof of how dire my prospects really were.
Chapter Four
I looked in the mirror as I rubbed my hands together vigorously and built up a mound of Dettol froth around them. The first glimpse of my face startled me. I had no idea I looked or felt that miserable. I forced my lips to curl up into a grin, but the boy in the mirror stared back at me with an eerie sort of crazed glee. And it felt so heavy to keep my lips up, especially the corners, as if physical weights had been tied to them. The strain wearing me down, I allowed my mouth to drop back to its default look, and I was almost relieved that I only looked sullen again, instead of a psycho kid.
I had chosen this bathroom because it was the only one in the house that had a hose next to the toilet seat, and I could use it to wash my behind and make sure I got everything off. Coming upstairs and away from the others in the family had come as a surprisingly welcome break; it was nice getting a couple of minutes of calm to myself, even if it had been spent on the loo.
With my relentless diarrhoea hopefully laid to rest, it was now time to get back to the business of getting that phone call. I opened the door and stepped back into the upstairs common area. The door to Kevin’s room was half-open, and I could hear my father’s voice coming from inside. I sneaked over to a bookshelf that allowed me a view into the room but at an angle so tight that Pa would’ve had no chance of seeing me even if he was facing the door. I saw him standing there, turned away from me and looking down at Aaron, who was squatting on the floor, rummaging through some clothes in my bag.
“There you go,” Pa said, in an understanding tone that was usually reserved for Jen or Aaron. “Now, tell me again, what you’re going to do after you get up tomorrow?”
“I’ll brush my teeth, wash my face and put this on,” my brother answered.
“Good. You’re a big boy now, Aaron. You don’t need me or a maid to tell you these things anymore.”
“Okay.” Aaron dragged my bag across the floor then shoved it in a corner. “Hey, Pa?”
“Yes?”
“Are you going to call Mum for Jonathan? He didn’t get to talk to her last week.”
Pa sighed deeply. My fingers dug hard into the edge of the shelf as I waited for his answer.
“Your mother needs to rest before she leaves for Dubai. Maybe she’ll call again when she reaches there … Why did you tell him about the call?” Pa asked, lowering his voice. “I told you and Jen not to say anything to him.”
That last sentence came like a kick to my gut, and it was a good thing I’d already emptied it a few minutes ago. Pa knew how important speaking to Mum was to me, but he hadn’t said anything to me about her call nor had he bothered arranging for me to talk to her on another occasion. He’d just pretended to me like it had never happened, and as usual, my siblings did nothing but mindlessly obey him. I felt foolish for hoping that they’d be of any help.
There’s a Malay word called geram, and it describes a feeling that no English term I know could properly communicate. Imagine the worst itch in the world, an itch one hundred times worse than the itchiest bite that the itchiest mosquito could ever give you, but that it’s inside you, stirring up all your internal organs and agitating them to the point where you’re on the verge of clawing and tearing them out with your bare hands if only to make it stop. You can pound the ground with your fists, break things, scream and shout at the top of your lungs … It doesn’t help; nothing helps. That’s geram. And, like an itch, trying to address it only makes it grow stronger and last longer. Well, that was what I was feeling, to the point where I was physically trembling where I stood, half-ready to charge in and try tackling Pa to the ground, just so I could punch him in that soulless rock-face of his, again and again until I could break it down to expose what was hidden underneath.
Thankfully, the other half of me quickly took over, and I managed to pull myself away from the bookshelf and walk soundlessly past the door and down the stairs, away from my father.
When I saw my uncle and aunt standing around the foot of the staircase, speaking to each other in low voices, I halted, and remained on the landing where the stairs made a 180 degree turn before they climbed down. I was not more than a few metres away from them, but Ah Peh and Ah Em were deeply engrossed in their conversation and weren’t aware of my presence. A good portion of the living room was visible to me, and I saw Jen and Frida sitting near Ah Kong’s platform. My sister was carrying on with the paper-burning task that I’d seen Ah Peh doing earlier on, and my cousin was busy folding sheets of yellow paper into small boxes and putting them into a sack that was almost full with them.
“I don’t understand what the problem is. He should just let the past be and take the poor boy back in. Aaron and Jonathan must be missing him so much,” said Ah Em.
No, we weren’t.
“Seng is too stubborn. Won’t let anyone change his mind … He’s always taking the hard way. Remember when he just finished his bond? I said to him, ‘Seng, do yourself a favour and come work under me. You’ll make at least twice the salary you’d get as a civil servant. You see my big house and my Mercedes? I guarantee you’ll be able to buy one for yourself and Mary by the end of the year.’ And he just looked at me as if I’d asked him to be my toilet cleaner. He said, ‘I was a teacher, so I should stay in education all my life.’ There’s no helping a man like that.”
The tirade left Ah Peh wheezing, and Ah Em began to brush his brow and caress his arm.
“And don’t even get me started with Mary,” Ah Peh continued, still out of breath. “It’s no wonder it all turned out the way it did … Now I worry about the children.”
Oh, really? Wow, thanks for your concern, Ah Peh.
“Well, Jen and Jonathan are quite smart. If they went to the same school as Frida, they could be almost as good as her.”
Did Ah Em really just call me smart? That was something.
“But raising four children all by himself? That’s not the way to do it. How long can this go on for? They need someone to look after them, and if Mary isn’t going to come back, then for heavens’ sake start looking …”
Ah Peh was probably drunk or high or both if he thought that was seriously going to happen. How I’d laugh about this with Mum the next time we talked. As if Mum would really refuse to come back home. And as if anyone else would be ready to marry a man like my father out of her own free will; chaining oneself to a live volcano might be a less painful experience.
Adults did love to talk about the same old thing again and again, didn’t they? I’d overheard this kind of talk before from our relatives after Mum had left, and it was annoying to have to hear it yet again. I wanted to leave; this wasn’t worth listening to any further. But here I was in a bit of a tight spot because I didn’t want to give away that I’d been eavesdropping on them by climbing down the rest of the stairs, and I didn’t feel like going back up either. Or, at least, into Kevin’s room where Pa probably still was.
So, back into the toilet I went, and I waited there for another ten minutes until I heard Pa leave.
When I went in, I found that my cousin had joined Aaron in the room.
“That took long,” Kevin said with a snide smile. “Have a nice time in the toilet?”
“Did Pa say anything more about calling Mum?” I asked my brother, ignoring Kevin’s jibe.
“Huh? How did you know Pa was here?”
“Never mind that. Did he say anything else?”
“Uh, no.”
“Okay, did he say anything about trying to find me?”
“No.”
“Fine. As long as he isn’t after me anymore.” It was a small comfort that Pa had forgotten about my earlier indiscretion. “You know, you could have told me about Mum’s phone call earlier. Nice timing, Aaron, now that she’s leaving again.”
“But Pa said …”
“Can you stop talking about your Mum?” Kevin moaned, interrupting my brother. “That’s all you’ve been talking about since you’ve come here. It’s boring.”
Oh, how I wanted to lay one into his stomach then and there. But then he would go running to the adults and make a big scene of it. Besides, I knew I could never hurt him. He had superhuman flab all over his body, and especially his belly, and it made him indestructible. Like the time he got hit by a car while chasing after a football. Didn’t have a scratch on him, but the car got dented so badly the owner apparently had to throw it in the scrap yard.
“Shut up, Kevin.”
“Well, I am bored. You’re so boring …”
“Stop being such an ass, Kevin! Ah Kong’s just died and I’ve just found out I might not be able to speak to my mother again for God knows how long. So, yeah, sorry for not being too much fun right now.”
Kevin just shrugged. “Well, let’s play a dare game then,” he said. “Come on, it’ll be proper fun.”
“Uh … What?” I had no idea what Kevin was up to.
“A dare game? A dare to do what?” Aaron asked, looking just as confused.
“A dare to … A dare to go into Ah Kong’s room. His ghost is probably still there … Woooo …” He made his fingers swim at us, like he was trying to cast a spell, and howled.
“No, Kevin. Stop kidding around,” I said.
“I am being serious.” He stood up suddenly, back straightened, his belly popping out further. “Besides, this will give us a chance to get some things from his room. It’ll be nice to bury Ah Kong with some of his stuff. I’m sure he’d like that.”
