Shadow Theatre (10 page)

Ghosts were roaming the region centuries before this fellow's ancestors arrived, and here he was, talking about them as
if they were just a figment of our imagination.

All he wanted was fodder for his letters home, so he could
write interesting things about his life here, to his buddies or his
family or maybe even a girlfriend who was foolishly waiting for
him to return, having no idea he was over here sowing his wild
oats with Chandra. That's how foreigners are, the angmo ones
who come here. Using our own stories against us, to prove that
in spite of our commercial success, we're still a backward people. Still believing in ghosts. (Ask me whether I would bet my
soul that by telling our stories, the foreigner thinks he can
sound interesting to other people. As long as he doesn't say he
believes in the stories, he feels safe talking, right?)

So I wasn't going to give this Jason fellow any information,
even if I had some, which I didn't. I wasn't sure why Chandra
had bothered to tell him about the rumor in the first place,
unless it was to pantang Shak, bring her bad luck, that sort of
thing. To make certain Shak couldn't use her charm to lure away
her boyfriend, in case they happened to meet. I could imagine
Chandra thinking up such a plot, because she was that sort. To
her, what we all wanted was a blondie boyfriend.

If so, why pantang someone like that, right? And not only
Shak but her baby as well, saying there was a ghost following
them around.

I was getting angry, thinking about it. And maybe that Jason
could sense there was no point talking to me further, because he
didn't ask any more questions.

SO W I I I: N S I I I: showed up, Chandra, on the dot at two o'clock,
I glared at her with as much disapproval as I could muster. I
would have fired her off if we were by ourselves, but I didn't
want her to lose face in front of an angmo, whether he was her
boyfriend or not. Call me prejudiced, but an angmo's an angmo,
I thought. Even if Chandra ended up marrying this one, and
every soul is supposed to be sacred, I couldn't help feeling a gap
between their kind of people and our kind of people, you know.
Maybe because of Singapore's history with Europeans, or
maybe the gap's always been there, it didn't matter to me as I
looked at her, Chandra. What mattered was, I kept cool, so to
speak. I simply glared at her, and when she said, "Hi, Rose," I
could hear in her voice, she had gotten the message.

And when she didn't ask what her boyfriend and I had been
talking about, now that she knew, I thought to myself, mission
accomplished. Making Chandra feel uncomfortable gave me a
lot of satisfaction, I must admit. Partly because I was tired of
watching her walk into the library with her short skirts, carrying
her high heels in her Gucci bag so she could put them on afterwards when her angmo boyfriend picked her up. She was wearing
them now, the high heels, and a black skirt so tight, you had to
wonder how her hips could get enough oxygen to sway so hard
from side to side as she walked. I had heard her approaching us,
of course, clickety clack all the way across the floor. And even
though I hadn't turned around, I knew how Chandra walked,
and also, Jason's eyes had confirmed it. The look he had given her. If he were a dog, his tongue would have been hanging out
already.

"How's Shak?" she asked, finally.

"She's fine," I said, very politely on purpose.

"I hear she's due in December."

"Yes."

"How is she coping with the heat?"

"Getting used to it." Only a white lie, right? This is her
home, you know."

"Well, they say the blood gets altered after you've lived
overseas." Chandra smiled at Jason, in such a way that she was
almost batting her eyelashes, for no reason except to be alluring. He hadn't said anything, and she wasn't even talking directly to him.

If Shak's boyfriend had come home with her, she would
never have behaved that way, I thought, and I was certain.
Especially not in front of me, because it was rude to do this, like
almost making love in public.

But that was how Chandra was. Sometimes I couldn't stand
the sight of her. Otherwise, live and let live, as even the Mother
Superior would say.

I was trying not to watch Chandra and her boyfriend as
they left the library, their hips bumping like magnets. Because it
was what she wanted, to draw attention to herself. So I turned
to the windows and tried to wipe the picture of them out of my
mind, the two of them pulok-pulok as if long-lost lovers, while
I stared at the bougainvillea, at the hot sky, at the yellow library
wall, at the black hair of teenagers leaning glumly with their
elbows on the long table near the windows, studying. (Younger
children also used our library, but their reading section was
upstairs.)

A hand tapped me on the shoulder, and before I turned
around, I knew who it was, because her scent had been there from
the moment Chandra and her boyfriend had started walking away, that scent of her habit, of her hair, shorter now, rolled up
like an old-fashioned Chinese scroll underneath her wimple. A
whiff of the dampness in her armpits, making dewdrops on her
skin.

She had waited until they left, I realized, and I wondered
how I could have missed seeing her come over.

Isabella, whom Shak had already asked me about, because
Shak didn't know, and how could she? Being away fifteen years
and not even replying to my earlier letters with a postcard (which
was why I had stopped writing to her, to Shak, because my feelings were hurt, although what I had told myself out loud was to
be frugal and not waste stamps).

"Long time no see." Isabella was smiling such a wide smile, as
if truly, from the bottom of her heart, she was happy to see me.

As I've said, I had been avoiding people from the past, so I
hadn't stepped foot in the convent in years, you know. And as
Isabella usually used the main library on Stamford Road when
she was doing research for her teaching, she was easy to avoid,
although I used to daydream sometimes that for some reason,
she might come to use our library.

Now here she was, and I suspected I knew why.

Outside the revolving door, Chandra and her boyfriend
were kissing, his pale hands holding her waist, not grabbing or
fondling but so gentlemanly. He was like a Hollywood
boyfriend in a black-and-white classic film, but I could tell from
the way he wasn't letting go of her, their tongues were smacking inside their mouths. And also from the way some teenagers
leaving the library were averting their eyes, because even they
were embarrassed at such lack of self-restraint.

I wanted Isabella to know I also was glad to see her, but
when I echoed her words, "Long time no see," they toppled out
like tin cans, empty and false.

She pretended not to notice, just went on smiling before
she started asking about Shak.

What surprised me was when she mentioned the baby
ghost, only that wasn't how Isabella spoke of it. She called the
ghost "the girl," and the way she eased into the topic, so matter-
of-factly, I knew she couldn't have heard it from Chandra, but
from someone reliable, someone she knew to believe, although
I've never found out whom.

She didn't say the ghost was following Shak around, but
rather, that Shak may be following a ghost. And she didn't say
for sure, but maybe.

Mostly Isabella just wanted me to know, so I could be on
the lookout. "You know our Shak. Make sure she doesn't do anything risky, Rose." She herself would be seeing Shak soon, but
she wasn't going to bring up the girl if Shak didn't do it first.

So that's why, when I went over to Shak's house after work,
and Shak told me she wanted to see the doctors house, I would
wonder if the baby ghost was involved. The girl, as Isabella put it.
But I wouldn't be able to come up with a reason for us not to go.

And it may have had nothing to do with a ghost, you know.
Nothing at all.

HELENA S I M

ISTER SYLVIA AND her winning hand. That was why-lah I
I_ I wasn't around when Auntie Coco started calling for her sister. Alamak, the luck that nun could have. And with her vow of
poverty, what was the point? Ah, so anyway, that was the reason I got home so late. Sister Sylvia and her winning hand. That
was it-lah. Every time she won, she wanted to play one more
round. She was already seventy-plus years old, how to say no to
her? Poor Father O'Hara, he wasn't young himself, you know.
By nine o'clock I could see him struggling to concentrate, his
eyelids already drooping. Both of us thought we were doing
penance-lah. Better here than in purgatory, ya? How could we foresee that the old nun was nowhere near death, that actually
she was going to live another ten years and Father O'Hara himself would go before her? Things like that, we can't know.
Ah, so by the time I got home, all the commotion was over.
Then, in the morning when I woke up, Rose was already out.
No note to let me know what had happened or anything, everything like normal. That's my daughter for you. Saturdays she
always worked half-day at the library, so I knew where she was.
But anyone else's daughter would have left a short note-Mum,
the police were here last night, Auntie Coco's sister got kidnapped, I'll tell you more later. Something like that, just for
information. Not my Rose. She never liked excitement, okay?
Always so quiet, from the time she was a child. Her father and
I always knew, better not hope for grandchildren. How was our
Rose going to find a husband, all the time her nose was buried
in books? Both she and Valerie's daughter, although that one
used to have all the boys trailing after her because she had
the looks, what. Still, who ever expected Shakilah to come
home like that? As if anyone was going to miss the fact that her
finger was empty. But to be honest, I always liked her. At heart,
she was a good girl. Always polite, always kind. And at least she
knew how to get Rose to socialize a bit.

So anyway, Winifred Teo grabbed my arm that morning
(we were at the char kway teow stall in the market, both of us
happening to arrive there at the same time) and she began by
asking me, in that busybody voice of hers, "Eh, Hel, did your
daughter tell you what she told the police?"

You know Winifred. Forever paranoid, that woman. Alamak,
as if she was so important, as if the government didn't have other
things to worry about. She was wanting to compare notes, you
see, in case different people had said different things to the
police and the government became suspicious. That was how
her mind worked. Of course, I didn't know right away what she
wanted, thanks to Rose and her personality. So I had to ask, since I couldn't ignore Winifred's mentioning the police. I thought at
first, you know, something had happened to Rose. You know a
mother's worst fears. And Rose being how she was, single like
that, with no man in her life to protect her. Not even her father,
anymore. Myself, I wasn't worried about, because who would
want an old hag? But my Rose-she had beautiful skin, you
know. So fair she was, like a swan. (She doesn't look the same
nowadays, I don't know what happened, but before, she was just
like a swan.)