Now You See Us, page 10
After Raja walks away, Angel wonders if this was going too far. She has never told anybody to clean up after himself in his own home. This is her only coping tactic—pretending that Raja is a guest, easing her discomfort with the knowledge that he lives in his university dorm for most of the week. She feels particularly unsafe on the nights when he returns because she keeps her bedroom door ajar to listen for Mr. Vijay.
She reaches for her phone and sees there’s still nothing from Cora. She texts her.
Angel: How was your day?
Cora comes online. So she is there, Angel thinks. She wonders if she should ask Cora what she thinks about this East Coast murder, but before she can type, Cora replies: It was okay. Ma’am wanted to know where I got my shoes.
Angel: She was suspicious?
Cora: She wanted to know where to get her own pair!
Angel: Ha-ha-ha. Should have invited her to take the place of those women in front of us.
Cora: How are you today? Spoke to Joy?
It’s another thing weighing on Angel’s mind. Last week, her sister bade farewell to her husband and children and took a bus to the training centre. I am thinking of you, Angel had written to her, but she was glad she hadn’t been anywhere nearby as their relatives peeled Joy’s wailing daughters off her. In their brief phone call last night, Joy hadn’t wanted to talk about the departure. Instead she told Angel that the training for work in Saudi Arabia would be quite different from what she expected. There were lessons on ironing, washing, and basic cooking, which Joy had no trouble with, but also lessons on simple Arabic phrases and Islamic culture. A trainer had taught them how to manoeuvre a mop without getting their abayas wet and told them to always wash the family cars before sunrise to avoid heatstroke.
Angel: She’s keeping busy. Just have to hope she has fair employers.
Cora: That’s all we can do, no?
I should have . . . Angel begins typing. She can’t complete the sentence. It’s what she shouldn’t have done that haunts her. Why did she have to tell Joy about Suzan? Things haven’t been the same between them since.
Angel: Hey . . . this East Coast murder is making me think about 2001. Remember that?
Cora: Not really.
Angel: Oh, come on, Cora. Marisol Concepcion? You don’t remember how everybody became scared of us? It looks like it’s going to happen again.
Cora doesn’t reply. Angel wants to talk to her about Donita’s messages as well. She sees that Cora is still online and has read her messages but she is not typing anything. After staring at the screen for another ten minutes, Angel gives up. It’s quiet in the living room now. She steps out into the corridor and can hear Mr. Vijay’s gentle snoring from his bedroom. The walls of the hall are lined with framed photos of the family—Sumanthi in cap and gown; Raja in his National Service uniform; a faded photograph of Mr. and Mrs. Vijay resplendent in their wedding garments against a waterfall backdrop.
The television is muted, and Anand is sitting at the edge of the couch on which Sumanthi is stretched out, fast asleep. On her bare feet are tattoos that crawl up her ankles, which she covers by wearing long pants and high-top shoes to work. Anand gently takes Sumanthi’s glasses off her face and folds them before placing them on the coffee table.
“Will you wake her up later?” Anand whispers. “I have to go. I don’t think she should spend the whole night on the couch like this.”
“Before I go to sleep, I’ll wake her up,” Angel replies. Never mind the yawn escaping from her mouth as she says this. It’s close to ten, and she has been on her feet all day. Today, Mr. Vijay was stubborn. He did not even want to grip the badminton racket. “You are being naughty,” Angel chided him. Mr. Vijay avoided her stare and Angel felt overcome with pity. “Ay, sir,” she sighed, smoothing a wrinkle in his shirt. “You used to do everything by yourself; now I have to make you practice this simple child’s game. I also would be frustrated.”
After Anand leaves, Angel brings her phone to the balcony and sits on the deck chair, watching the lights twinkling in the neighbouring buildings, the nature reserve reduced to a hulking shadow in the night. The baby in the apartment upstairs is fussing and Angel can hear Rubylyn on the balcony, singing “Sa Ugoy ng Duyan” to soothe him. She flicks two black ants away from the table. They must be coming out of that crack in the wall again; Angel needs to sprinkle repellent powder here. The tennis court downstairs will stay lit all night, and in the adjacent apartment complex, the pool ripples softly. The Vijays’ apartment is on the fourth floor, low enough that Angel can see the television screen flickering in the security guard’s station. During school holidays, Hassan’s grandson follows him to work, dragging a bag full of books from the library and reading them under that long fluorescent bulb. Hassan leans out of the window and waves to Anand’s car before returning to his seat and recording the departure in his logbook.
The island appears like a silent movie at this time of the night, but Angel’s group chats tell her otherwise. The comment about that poor girl from Myanmar has gained momentum, and everybody is contributing her own example of outrage. What about the woman who endured third-degree burns from having a kettle of boiling water thrown at her? What about the two sisters from Indonesia who were forced to slap each other for their mistakes? What about the woman whose sir made her take off her nightgown, mop the floor with it, and then wear the filthy sopping clothes to bed? Those were just the cases that made it to the news. So many more cruelties go unpunished, and the thought makes Angel feel ill. Joy is on her way to a place where there are even fewer laws to protect maids.
Another message pings on Angel’s phone, this one from Suzan’s WhatsApp group, the one she never left.
Listen, I know we all want to defend this woman, but we don’t know her motives. My cousin in Tacloban has a friend in Singapore who knows the nanny for a kid who lives on the same street as Flor. She heard that Flor was supposed to meet with her friends for a picnic near Dhoby Ghaut Station but she never showed up. Why would she do that? If she was innocent, she’d have at least told her friends.
Someone else types: I’m hearing some rumours about her too. She sleeps around. She has a daughter back home but nobody knows who the father is. Better not to claim to be friends with her or even friends of a friend.
A third person adds: Yeah, stay away. What if they come around to question everyone she knew?
Maybe there are things we don’t know yet, Angel types angrily.
She’s not just saying it because of Donita’s sighting. It’s the way the conversation has turned so easily to smearing Flordeliza. She knows why they are eager to disassociate themselves from the case; there is more peace of mind in not asking questions. Isn’t that what they did to Angel after her breakup because the truth was too uncomfortable? She presses Send and feels queasy doing it; it has been so long since she spoke up in this chat group that the other women probably think she left Singapore. Or they have forgotten she ever existed.
Then her phone buzzes. Joy? No, and when she sees who it’s from, her heart goes still.
Suzan: Hey! Been thinking about you. How are you doing?
The phone suddenly feels like the whole world to Angel, and everything else in the periphery dissolves. Is it really Suzan? The phone number is hers, and her face fills the circle next to her name. Angel has managed to avoid looking at pictures of Suzan since Christmas, and even though this profile picture is tiny, the sight of Suzan’s arched eyebrows and impish smile makes her stomach twist with both longing and anger. She reads the message over and over again, assigning meaning to each word and considering the implications. Hey . . . It’s like they’ve just brushed against each other in the street. How are you? It’s a little formal and open-ended. How to respond? What does Suzan expect, a rundown of all her complicated feelings? Or a nonchalant Hey, I’m good. How about you? to see where the conversation goes?
And Been thinking about you. Angel puts the phone down and paces across the balcony. What do you mean? she wants to ask; the message is glowing from her phone screen. It is hard to keep her mind from getting carried away, but soon she is lost in the hope of this message, the sign that Suzan might be tentatively reaching out. For a moment, she dares to be as honest as she’s ever been. I’ve missed you so much. I think about you all the time. I wish there were some way I could change your mind about us, because you’re the only person I want to be with.
Angel’s heart pounds in the hollow of her chest as she types her reply: Good to hear from you ☺ How are you? The moment she presses Send, she regrets it, but she doesn’t try to retract the message. Time passes slowly before the word Typing . . . appears under Suzan’s name. Angel’s stomach somersaults, and the jitters travel to her fingers, which begin to pinch the hollow of flesh between her knuckles. Another black ant scrambles across the table.
The message, when it finally arrives, is so simple and cruel that it cuts off Angel’s breath: Sorry, wrong number. Angel feels as if her insides have been scooped out. Her first instinct is to take the phone and fling it off the balcony—she imagines how it would feel to watch it soar and get swallowed up by the night sky. What she does, what she knows she must do now, is much less satisfying. She blocks Suzan and exits the group chat. There is no subtle way to do this; everyone will see that she has finally gone.
As Angel sets her phone down, the glowing screen highlights a dark line running across the table. Ants. She follows their squirming trail with her phone’s light until she reaches the source—an open Sprite bottle on its side in a pool of liquid. A punishment; Raja tipped it over on purpose.
She trains her eyes on the distance and waits for the anger to seep away. Where does it go? Does it swirl into the atmosphere to take the shape of the island’s gnarled branches and hunkering shrubs? Does it settle as fine dust on eyelashes and windshields? Or does it build in your fingertips, in your heart, seizing on a moment where everything collides and your body becomes an engine of rage? Donita claims she saw Flordeliza Martinez at the time of the murder, but Angel would understand if Donita’s imagination was working overtime. She knows that it’s all the little things added up that makes you really want to hurt a person.
From the ma’am Facebook pages:
Yu Fang Ong: We want to send our maid to classes to learn some conversational Mandarin so she can communicate better with my in-laws. She is refusing because the classes are on Sundays. So choosy! I told her it’s only two hours and she said she has other things to do. Of course I’m not going to send her on weekdays or Saturdays because she has responsibilities in our household. So lazy and unmotivated—that’s why you’re only a maid! We sacrifice so much for them and they turn around and backstab us. This is what happened to that poor Carolyn Hong.
MK Ng: Maid wants our Wi-Fi password so she can talk to her children. OK with me but my husband asked her to just use her mobile data. He told her, “This is like me asking my boss to send me to work via hired taxi every day because the MRT is too crowded.” Not the same thing lah, but he say must draw a line, otherwise these women will climb on our heads. As long as she dun climb into our bed and try to steal my husband I’m okay lah, otherwise one day kena bludgeon to death like that East Coast lady then how?
Seven
Don’t get involved!
Cora sent this message to Angel and Donita in their group chat last night, but they continued sharing snippets of information about the Flordeliza Martinez case. Angel posted screenshots of comments she found about the original news article, while Donita contemplated calling in an anonymous tip to the police. Cora wanted to march over to both their homes and knock some sense into them. The last thing any maid could afford to do in a time like this was get into trouble—despite what she said to Angel, Cora vividly remembers how it felt to have all the employers looking sideways at the help after Marisol Concepcion’s arrest, as though one false move would make the maids pounce. To stem her anxious memories, Cora has been working overtime, polishing every bit of silverware in the back cupboards and refiling the loose sheets jutting out from Ma’am Elizabeth’s neglected recipe folder.
The sun is a boiling yolk over the island, and even the outstretched tree branches are unable to keep the concrete driveway from baking. Ma’am Elizabeth is flipping through the recipe folder now, with her feet curled up under her on the veranda, a small bowl of cubed honeydew melon at her side. Occasionally, she shifts on her lounge chair. In the carport, Cora keeps her in the corner of her vision. Cora, there’s no need to be outside in this heat, Ma’am Elizabeth would say if she spotted her washing the car, then she would implore Cora to come inside and have an iced drink. Yesterday, she asked Cora if she wanted to have a television in her room. “Is that something you might like, to keep yourself entertained? You’re welcome to watch TV in the living room, of course.” Cora shook her head so vigorously that her neck felt sore afterward. What next? Ma’am Elizabeth giving her the keys to her BMW and encouraging her to take a joyride? There are lines that cannot be crossed, and if Ma’am Elizabeth tells her to sit and have tea with her or tries to lend her a silk scarf to match her Sunday clothes one more time, Cora might have to say something.
One offering that Cora does accept, though, is the Samsung speaker that Ma’am Elizabeth bought her after noticing that she liked listening to music while washing the dishes. Cora objected at first, but when Ma’am Elizabeth demonstrated how much clearer and deeper the sound was with the speaker rather than her phone, Cora accepted it graciously. It is sitting on the front porch now, thrumming through a playlist of songs that remind her of home. She can’t help singing along with Lolita Carbon’s husky tones. The sound of Freddy Aguilar’s voice stirs memories of seeing hundreds of thousands of protesters singing “Bayan Ko” in Manila during the People Power Revolution in 1986.
She dunks the washrag into a bucket of soapy water and wipes off the flecks of dirt that splattered the car’s windows during last night’s storm. Heat shimmers off the hood of the car, and Cora fights to keep her sluggishness at bay. Last night, the rapid-fire raindrops hammering the roof made Cora sit up in her bed and clutch the sheets to her chest in terror. She turned on her music to soothe herself back to sleep but she was too alert, and the force of the storm unnerved her. That was when she scrolled through the news articles and studied Flordeliza Martinez’s picture—a heart-shaped face with arched eyebrows and lips painted red. She looked like Donita.
Cora indulged in reading a few comments under the news articles. Most people had no doubt that Flordeliza had killed her boss. Filipinos can’t be trusted. Thieves and liars, now murderers, said one commenter. Another one wrote: Send her back to get executed in her own country. No need to waste taxpayer dollars here, we are always supporting these foreigners with our hard-earned money, and they turn around and stab us in the back!
There were lots of replies to that one, people expressing their general dissatisfaction with the government and getting off the topic of Flordeliza Martinez altogether. There were comments about the Philippines too.
Their own government is so corrupt, what to expect? Good thing Duterte has come into power. I see he is setting things straight in the Philippines. You have to pull out these bad weeds or they’ll infect the whole society.
Setting things straight. She couldn’t blame people here for thinking it was so straightforward. She too had been impressed with Rodrigo Duterte when he ran for president in 2016. With his promises to bring down crime rates in the whole country, he could be forgiven for speaking crudely sometimes. She paid little attention to the reports of his death squads or to the tsismis around her neighbourhood about vigilantes gunning down suspected drug dealers.
She continued scrolling past the derogatory comments until she found an interesting one.
Unilass007: Obviously the husband did it and this is just a cover-up. Peter Hong is known among students as Peter the Cheater!
Cora clicked on the user’s profile, but little information came up. She searched for Carolyn Hong’s husband, and immediately the page was filled with photographs of Dr. Peter Hong, the dean of a local university. The pictures of him sitting at his stately desk reminded Cora of Mr. Lee, but this man stared directly at the camera. His lips were set in the same stern expression in every picture, and he didn’t look like the kind of boss that Cora would want. What kind of husband was he? she wondered.
Further down the thread, there was another comment from Unilass007.
Peter Hong presided over a case that involved a tutor named Merissa Fang and my friend Priyanka. The tutor plagiarized Priyanka’s essay for an article on her wellness blog but denied it completely. Peter Hong didn’t bother investigating and threatened Priyanka with suspension for going public with the matter on social media. Why was he protecting some part-time tutor?
There were a few replies to this one.
If a university official can cover up something that is so blatant, imagine what else he was hiding.
That’s Peter the Cheater! We also call him Petty Peter.
Does anyone know where Merissa Fang was that day? How do we know she didn’t kill Carolyn Hong? Must have slept with the dean for the job in the first place; next “promotion” is wife status.
She was on holiday in Bintan. Look at her Instagram. She was doing “daily blinks for positivity.” She’s dumb but she has an alibi.
Angel and Donita also discovered the story about Peter Hong. Within minutes of sending links about Peter Hong over the group chat, they were convinced he was the murderer and that some huge cover-up was at play. Their excitement was apparent in their rapid, overlapping messages; they all but forgot Cora’s existence in the group chat. Cora returned to the profile of Peter Hong and read about him. Graduate degrees from top universities in England, government scholarships all the way. A Young Achiever award that kick-started his academic career. A long time ago, these achievements were rungs on a ladder to success that she had used to plan her nephew’s future. Now she saw them as a fence that protects powerful people from facing consequences. Her hand travelled to the soft flesh of her earlobe—a lingering habit, even though she never got to wear those gold earrings that Raymond bought her.
