Written in Black, page 6
“Don’t look at that!” His finger was moving furiously now.
“‘You have to delete the cookies as well’,” I read aloud again, then grinned at my cousin.
“Gah, further up!” Kevin grimaced.
I was enjoying torturing my cousin, but at the same time, I was feeling a little niggle about my elder brother being in touch with Kevin, and on such friendly terms too. It was almost like … No, I couldn’t be jealous. Over Michael?
“‘Got to go now; expecting a call from my Mum’.” There it was, dated around three weeks ago. “‘You talk to your Mum?’ … ‘Yeah, once in a while’ … ‘How’s she doing?’ … ‘Alright. She’s glad to be out of Brunei’.”
And that was it, a mere five messages about Mum before they had talked about whether Kevin was interested in selling Michael any of his old phones for cheap.
Glad to be out of Brunei? Well, she would be glad, wouldn’t she? Mum had been in quite a bad way around the time she had left, so I imagined all those months of relaxing and not having to deal with the demands and responsibilities of her old life would’ve been a welcome break. But that didn’t mean she didn’t want to come back. Once she was done with her break, she’d be back home and ready to start over afresh.
“Where does it say that she’s never coming back?” I demanded from Kevin.
“Oh, it doesn’t? Maybe Michael told me that over the phone …”
“Well, Michael’s an idiot. Just because she’s getting a good rest doesn’t mean she’s not going to come home ever.”
“I know what he told me. He talks to your Mum quite often and knows what’s happening with her. Why don’t you ask him yourself?” Kevin grabbed the phone from my hand. “But … Oh, wait …” Kevin scrolled down to the latest message my brother had sent him that night; it said not to message Michael anymore on the current number because he was selling it to a friend, and that he would give Kevin his new number once he got one.
“Sorry, you’ll just have to wait.”
“Wait? But what about Mum? She’s leaving for Dubai tomorrow! Michael didn’t say anything about that?”
“Er, no …”
“You two are useless! I need to talk to him now! At this rate I’ll have to wait till the end of time to find the truth. Call him up!”
“Okay, okay, maybe he’s still using this number. Let me try, okay.”
My cousin pressed on Michael’s name and put the phone to his ear. Aaron remained asleep on the floor, oblivious to the ruckus we were making. I wondered if I should wake him up, so he could talk to our brother, but decided not to. I couldn’t risk him blurting it out to Pa that I had spoken to Michael.
“Hello … Hello?” I felt a shiver run down my shoulders and upper back, and my skin broke out in goosebumps.
“Hey! Michael …” Kevin began, and my heart began to pound like a jackhammer. I made a move for the phone but Kevin waved me away. He was frowning.
“Huh? Already? Okay, okay.”
Down went the goosebumps, sinking back into my skin.
“Can you ask if Michael knows …” Kevin was seemingly interrupted by whoever was speaking on the other end.
“Hey, do you know where … Oh, you don’t? Hey, can I add you to my … Hello? Hello?”
Kevin put the phone down and looked at me apologetically.
“Sorry. We’re too late.”
I had to think of something. Quickly. What else could I do to reach Michael before Mum left?
“Do you know anyone who might know him or where he is?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Are you sure?”
“I don’t know his friends. You should know more about that than me.”
“Why should I know that?”
“Well, you’re his brother! Maybe his friends have been to your house before?”
“Well, yeah, a few of them. I would recognise them if I saw them somewhere but I don’t remember their names …”
“Do any of these guys look familiar?” Kevin held out the phone to me again. The screen showed four guys posing in front of an array of drums and guitars. They were a scruffy bunch, all of them with long straggly hair and faces marked with bright-red acne. Dressed in torn jeans and black shirts emblazoned with the names of bands I’d never heard of before, like “Ass Bites Snake” and “The Suck”, they stood with their arms folded in a tight, sombre stance. The most striking of the lot was the one on the far left, who stood a head taller than the rest, his pale complexion making his pimples look all the more obvious.
“Mmmph, ha ha … He looks so weird,” I found myself sniggering. “He grew his hair! He’s in a band!”
“Yeah, they call themselves Astragah. They’re shit.”
“No surprises there.”
I studied the faces of Michael’s band mates closely. “No, I don’t know the other three.”
The picture had a comments section below it, and there were three entries posted there, all of them barely understandable, none of them useful. One of the posts looked like it had been written by a band mate of Michael’s, one Ahmad Ponteng. I recognised him from the photo I had just seen of the band. Clicking on his name took us to a page that showed his profile picture in full: an afro-haired goon whose ears looked less like they had got a professional piercing job and more like he’d gone to a stationery shop and got them ring-bound, two for the price of one. Then there was another picture that showed a side view of him, topless, his arm flexed and holding a guitar as if it were a dumbbell. It might have looked mildly impressive if it hadn’t been for the fact that his elbow was being supported by a rather substantial belly, and that there was an equally substantial tuft of hair on said belly, curling around his navel then extending downwards into his sweatpants.
Because Kevin wasn’t “friends” with this fellow, our access to his page was restricted and these images were the only reward we got for our inquisitive efforts. This was hopeless. I sighed and slumped down on my bunk. Kevin clicked on a few more photos on Michael’s profile, but they only showed my brother doing stupid things like hugging a motorcycle or standing in front of a fast food restaurant. Besides, these photos didn’t have any comments to provide us with any additional leads. The only thing I had learned from them was that even after many weeks of not seeing Michael, I was still sick of the sight of his face.
Now what? Phoning or messaging him was all but out of the question, and I didn’t hold out much hope for sending him an e-mail. The only thing left to do was to go meet him in person. But where was he? Nobody knew. And there was a bigger problem: even if I knew where Michael was, how exactly would I get there? In a country with practically non-existent public transport and taxi services, the only way I could ever get to Michael’s place was to be driven out there by my father. And there was as much chance of that happening as there was of Michael’s band winning a Grammy.
Kevin, sensing that he’d done enough for it to count as amends, climbed back onto his bunk, and he took his phone with him. I stretched my back and scratched a leg, feeling just as restless as I had before I saw the confirmation of Michael talking to my mother.
“Hey, Jonathan, look!” Kevin’s head appeared over the edge of his bunk again, and he handed me his phone. I steadied myself as I took it, trying not to get too hopeful.
I found myself looking at the very first photo I had seen, the one with the band lined up in front of their instruments. Except now, there were two more comments underneath it, posted only a minute ago. The first was from Ahmad Ponteng, asking, in what was barely discernible as English, about when and where a certain get-together was to be held tomorrow. This was answered by a “Michael Lee”, confirming that the meeting was to happen at Friendly Garden Pool Centre at 1.30 p.m. A search on the name of the place directed me to an address: Unit 32, Simpang 64, Jln. Badir.
Badir was a relatively recent development and I’d only ever been there a few times, usually to eat out with Pa and the others on the days we got sick of instant noodles and food from the ringkat delivery service we relied on for most of our dinners. Badir was an unimportant commercial district only a short drive from the capital, so it wasn’t too far away from here, but getting out of the house was still going to be impossible. Michael may as well have been in space for all it mattered. It was all the same. I was never getting out, never in a million years, let alone in less than a day’s time.
Unaware of the damage he’d further done, Kevin cheerfully plucked the phone off my hands and returned to a good night’s sleep. I sighed and lay down, putting my pillow over my face to cover my eyes, but then pulling it away immediately. Crap, it was still wet with my tears.
Chapter Six
I was sitting in my classroom. The same old place I went to five days a week, every week, where two out of the four ceiling fans didn’t work, and there were desks covered in graffiti, either carved in with compasses or drawn in Tipp-Ex, cockroaches lurking about in the cubbyholes, mice in the dustbin, and thirty-four children sitting crammed together to have a textbook dictated to them word for word for two hours straight.
Only, everything had suddenly become wonderful, and the classroom was now as good as heaven on earth. No more Mrs. Yap and her tyranny or Mr. Shah and his tedious lectures on civic-mindedness; our new teacher was my mother, back from her break in sunny Melbourne. And everyone in my class loved her, as they obviously would.
The only problem was that I couldn’t see her face. Her back was turned to me the entire time she solved the problems on the blackboard, and when she read us stories, her whole head remained hidden behind the book. It was strange that no matter how much I shifted my body or inched myself closer, her face continued to evade me. Like trying to pull a surprise on the boy in the mirror, anything I attempted was futile. I knew I had to be patient. But at least the story was a good one, and one that I knew Mum liked to tell. We had got to the part where Procrustes invites his guest up to his special room when my mother finally began to lower her book to look at me.
And then the alarm rang in my ears. It was 6.30 a.m. I was back in Kevin’s room.
Though most of the details slipped away into the widening gulf between my dreaming and waking, I managed to keep hold of a picture of everyone sitting in my classroom, all smiles, writing away with black pens and instantaneously grasping those unfathomable concepts of functions and integers that usually stumped us. Now, no fraction was too hard, no multiplication too complicated. My Mum explained things so well that we were all like sponges dropped into a swimming pool, soaking up every bit of mathematical knowledge that flowed our way. Then on to English, and her telling of the tale, of Procrustes the innkeeper and his wonderful bed that could always fit every traveller, no matter how tall or short they came to his door. What a shame the alarm clock went off before she could finish and then give me a glimpse of what I had missed for six months.
After three successive beeps, Aaron shut the alarm off and began to stir, while I tried to re-enter the dream, despite knowing full well that it would never work. If I did get back to sleep at all, it would be with a completely new reverie, and most likely one that wouldn’t have Mum in it.
I brought my mother’s face up in my mind. No, I hadn’t quite forgotten it yet. How could I? She hadn’t been gone that long, after all. Six months was a mere … 5% of the life I had lived so far? Didn’t seem that big in the grand scheme of things. But with my waking came something else, something I hadn’t felt before, not even on the night my mother had left, and it felt even worse than the geram from last night. It was a pang, a longing in my chest that went so deep and came on so acutely the instant I was fully awake that it left me unable to get myself off the bed, or even move my body in the hope of somehow shaking it off. If the geram had been a stirring up of my insides, then this was like an implosion, a black hole sucking out all my defences and leaving behind a vast emptiness that all the yearning in the world would never have filled.
I brought a hand to my chest and rubbed on it to ease the ache, but that only brought back a memory of when I’d fallen ill with a bad flu last year. The fever had led me into a terrifying dream in which I’d found myself on a collapsing staircase that was crumbling down and falling forever through an infinite sky. It was Mum who had jolted me awake and out of that agonisingly endless plummet by bringing a hand to my brow to wipe off my perspiration. She had then adjusted my blanket so I was warm but not stifling, stroked my flushed cheek to comfort me, and then made me sip from a fresh jug of water until I was settled once more. The dream never returned, and I had slept undisturbed for the rest of that night.
In many ways, what I was experiencing now was at least as bad as that hellish nightmare I’d suffered a year ago, but this time Mum wasn’t there beside me to make things better. There was no soothing hand against my forehead to let me know that there was something to hold on to in the darkness. No warm body against mine, offering nothing but kindness and reassurance and the chance to hug back as tightly as I could and never let go. No soft, graceful voice to tell me that no matter how scared or helpless I felt, it would all be alright in the morning.
One way or another, I had to find out. I had to find out today, or else it would be like this day after day after day, and I couldn’t bear to face this feeling for even one second more. If I didn’t do something, I might lose her forever, just like Kevin had said I would.
The pain dulled only a bit as I finally managed to pull myself out of bed and changed into my official mourning clothes, and then headed over to breakfast, which was a routine wordless affair. The adults were also fully clad in their own mourning outfits, to be worn for the rest of the funeral: the men wore white shirts and black trousers while Ah Em was completely covered in black. Over their clothes they had on vests fashioned out of some type of coarse beige-coloured material, which looked like the stuff used to make gunny sacks.
The silence at the breakfast table was, however, soon broken by the arrival of our aunt and her husband. It started with the sound of their honking car from outside the house, and was followed by a flurry of activity from the funeral room, the chattering and flapping about between them and Ah Peh bursting into the kitchen through its thin walls.
I anticipated a brilliant climax to the commotion outside, and I wasn’t disappointed. A ninja crashed through the doorway suddenly, startling all of us.
“I came as soon as I could!” our aunt gasped, panting heavily. She was clothed in black from the neck down, and her outfit even had a black hood-like accessory that she’d pulled over her head.
“Hello, Ah Koh,” we chorused. Pa muttered a greeting to his sister and invited her to have some cold tuna sandwiches with us.
“Ugh, no thanks. My lymphatic system is still negatively charged and I haven’t oxidised my colon yet, yah,” she responded rather calmly before breaking into a wail. “How did it happen? He was only in for his chest! How, Seng? Were you there?”
Pa gave a very subtle, disapproving twist of one corner of his mouth. “No, Ming, I wasn’t there. You’ll have to ask Soon.”
“I was giving a presentation on how to charge your brain magnetically for my ‘Holistic Mind Achievers’ course when I got the message. It was so terrible! I burst into tears right there in the middle of the room! And I felt him, Seng, I did! At that moment! Going up and up … And then I looked up and raised my arm out to our father …” Ah Koh sighed deeply and lifted up her arms for dramatic effect.
Our aunt’s husband, Uncle Ben, popped up behind her.
“Hi, Chin Seng. Hi, kids,” he greeted. He always insisted that we call him “Ben” rather than “Koh Teoh”. Our compromise was to address him as “Uncle Ben”. The weird part was that his name wasn’t even Ben; it was Beng Huat. “Ben” was apparently something he’d come up with after getting together with my aunt. Whatever floated his boat; who was I to argue with someone who was a lecturer at the university and had a PhD in Physics.
Uncle Ben and Ah Koh had met while studying in New Zealand, and they were a couple of years into their married life, or the “ball and chain” as he liked to put it to me. I often wondered who the ball was and who the chain.
“Hey, guys.” Uncle Ben pulled up a chair and squeezed himself between Kevin and me, nudging his big moon-cheeked face into ours as close as he could. “It’s tough, isn’t it? But don’t you worry. Ben is here to make things all better. Any time you kids need me, I’ll be there.”
“Yeah, thanks,” I said as I edged away from him.
“You guys don’t have to be sad, okay. Your grandpa’s gone off to a special place. He’s up there now, smiling down on all of us …” Uncle Ben broke off to stifle a sob. “Excuse me … He’s … up there with God and …” Uncle Ben couldn’t hold it back, and trailed off into a high-pitched squeal that ended in uncontrollable sobbing. Ah Koh went to his side and embraced him, rubbing his back in the same way a mother would do to burp her baby.
“Aww, poor Benny … Yes, he’s gone to a better place. No more suffering.”
“Unghh … Oh no, it’s happening again …” Ben mumbled, weeping readily into Ah Koh’s sleeve.
“Uncle Ben, you know, we kids are here for you if you need anything,” offered Kevin. This made our uncle cry even harder, and Ah Koh had to lead him away to help him recover.
In addition to being considerably younger than her two brothers, Ah Koh looked and acted nothing like them. Quick-tempered and impulsive, she was used to speaking her mind whenever she felt like it and always got the last word in with anyone in the family, aided in no small part by her status as the baby of her generation. As the eldest, Ah Peh probably still got the final say in most things that involved him and his siblings, but I’d heard him complain more than once that he’d gone half-deaf in one ear after years of listening to his sister’s incessant nattering.
She did make a good physical match for Uncle Ben though, both of them quite short and with the same petite builds and similarly rounded faces. They even had matching squints, though her eyes went in divergent directions while Uncle Ben’s pointed inwards.
