Now You See Us, page 18
Yesterday, when Donita told Cora and Angel that she was going to attend a poetry reading with Sanjeev because one of his friends was performing, Angel replied immediately. “The Migrant Workers’ Poetry Competition? I submitted so many poems to them and they didn’t choose a single one. Tell me if the winners’ poems are any good, okay?”
Not waiting for an invitation, Angel also sent a few of her poems to the chat group. Cora replied right away: Bless you, Angel, you have such a big heart. Donita wasn’t sure what a good or bad poem looked like. I’ll let you know, she wrote to Angel anyway. She looked through Angel’s poems and found that they were all about her breakup. One was titled “Suzan You Are a Fucker I Wish You Get a Disease.” Maybe the judges didn’t want to know about her heartbreak.
She and Sanjeev arrive at the Esplanade for the reading, and Sanjeev looks as if he might launch into a guided-tour speech about the architecture if Donita asks him about it, so she tells him that she looked it up before they got here. It was not quite what she was expecting. It’s certainly a landmark building, surrounded by financial towers and a boathouse restaurant on the banks of the gleaming river, but its hunched spiky dome doesn’t look very inviting.
In the lobby of the Esplanade, a blast of air-conditioning and soft amber spotlights welcome Donita. There is an installation of delicate silver wind chimes hanging from the ceiling, and at the slightest movement or whisper on the ground, sound waves travel to create an orchestra of harmonious tunes. A grand piano on a marble platform overlooks the crowd.
“So in this country, the people do have music, but only inside the correct buildings,” Donita says. Her remark reverberates through the wind chimes, which produce a tinkling melody to match. Sanjeev laughs.
Donita feels Flor’s presence strongly because she woke up this morning with her mind still tangled in a dream of that Sunday when they met at the Marine Terrace market. In the dream, on their walk towards the canal, they heard a cheer erupting from a group heading across the road to the beach, followed by thumping bass beats. Flor told her: “If you don’t hear any music, it means somebody has made a complaint.”
“They don’t allow music on the beach?” Donita asked incredulously.
“Oh, they are fine with it,” Flor replied. “Your ma’am makes music all the time, no? Yelling, banging things? They just don’t like us doing it.”
Here, at least, it looks as if people wouldn’t mind the kind of music Donita is hearing. Gathered on the stairs and gravitating in groups towards a live free concert on the mezzanine are other Pinoy women.
“They are all here for poetry?” Donita asks, wondering if she should have worn something a little more formal. Her hair is still damp at the ends from their shower together.
“Maybe, maybe not,” Sanjeev says. “A lot of people come here on weekends.”
They make their way towards the stage where a man with dreadlocks is playing bongos. Donita’s shoulders bounce to the rhythm. The man makes eye contact with her and thumps the heels of his hands against the taut skin of the instrument. The beats travel right through Donita’s body and she shakes her hips. “Come on,” she says to Sanjeev, pulling him in before he can decline. The crowd gives them space to move together, and they begin a call-and-response song with the bongo player. Sanjeev’s feet are quick to catch the rhythms. His hands grip Donita at her waist, secure, and for a moment, she feels as if everybody else disappears. They are two people dancing together, their bodies carried by a song from another continent. Her laughter rings in the air as the song fades to an end, the width of her smile matched by Sanjeev’s.
Laughing and catching their breath, they move away from the crowd, hand in hand, and go up the escalator to a gallery on the third floor. There are people milling about here too, but they chat in low voices and laugh politely. Some are clearly artists, like that woman wearing a slick purple wig and white go-go boots who is staring intently at a framed black-and-white photograph on the wall. A couple of teenage girls carrying grainy white tote bags huddle together, peeking furtively around the room. Behind them, there is a long table with plates of sliced fruit, bottled water, and cheese.
While Sanjeev says hello to his friends, Donita makes her way to the table. She fills a small plate with slices of cheese, papaya, and grapes. One of the teenage girls glances at Donita, and she freezes, wondering if she was supposed to pay. There is no sign or cash register, but maybe there are things that people just know about art events. Did everybody get an e-mail beforehand about wearing these shapeless linen dresses and gigantic black-framed glasses? There is a man standing near the window who definitely looks like he is in costume.
Another young woman smiles at Donita, calming her nerves. She notices a crowd gathering at the back, a group of Filipino and Indonesian domestic workers in separate cliques, and they have kept away from the fruit table. When the host of the event tells people to take their seats, those women hang back and gravitate towards the seats in the farthest row. Donita wants to shout at them: It’s Sunday! We can sit wherever we want! But she gets nervous too, holding her plate of fruit and hovering by the front row with all the other people. Sanjeev gives her a wave from where he’s standing with his group, and she waves back and points at where she’s saved him a seat. He nods.
The woman who smiled at Donita is carrying a tote bag with sage printed across it. That’s the same word that was on Mrs. Fann’s forms, the ones she instructed Donita to cross-check against the list on her laptop yesterday. As they settle into their seats, Donita asks the woman, “What is this place, SAGE?”
“It’s an organization for women,” the woman says. “Society for the Advancement of Gender Equality.”
“Oh,” Donita says. “I think my ma’am is joining you, very busy becoming members with all her friends.” Although . . . gender equality doesn’t sound like something Mrs. Fann would champion. What she knows is that Mrs. Fann doesn’t like the way this SAGE place has been running sex education programmes in schools. “They’re saying it’s okay to be gay,” Mrs. Fann told Donita. “You come from a Catholic country, so you understand. They don’t allow this in the Philippines, right? Singapore is becoming too liberal. It’s time to get some sensible leaders in there.”
Donita looks at Sanjeev, hoping he will call her over and introduce her to his friends, but they only look at her briefly and offer smiles and waves from a distance when Sanjeev breaks away to join her.
The host of the event is a bespectacled man who goes by the name Syncopate. He is dressed head to toe in loose black garments, and even though he has a microphone, his voice is a whisper. He frowns. “Testing?” he says.
“It’s like a funeral,” Donita whispers to Sanjeev.
“I think it will be more fun than that,” he says.
“You sure? Look at him. He looks like he’s going to jump into the Singapore River afterward.”
Sanjeev chuckles and Donita nudges him back. They lace their fingers together. “Later, when I meet your friends, I have a lot of questions about you,” she says, touching the threads on his wrist. She might just be imagining it, but Sanjeev’s body suddenly tenses.
“Don’t need to mention too much,” Sanjeev says.
“Mention what? All the things we did this afternoon? You think I am going to give them a full report?” She laughs. “I was just going to ask them, Is Sanjeev really so nice to his sisters that they give him so many threads?” Sanjeev returns her teasing nudge, but his laugh is hollow.
Syncopate has been given a new microphone now and he is introducing the poets. Sanjeev’s poet friend has a moustache that has been so finely sculpted with wax, it looks like a drawing. There are also two men from Bangladesh wearing long kurtas over their jeans. A Filipino woman in a frayed dark denim skirt and a ruffled blouse sits next to Syncopate. She keeps smiling at her friends in the back row and then biting her lip, as if she’s afraid she’ll start laughing. The Indonesian woman next to her is less reserved. She waves with both hands and blows kisses to the back row.
“For this year’s edition of the Migrant Workers’ Poetry Competition, one winner, two runners-up, and three honourable mentions were awarded to poems that captured the foreign worker’s experience in Singapore. There are many talented writers in our midst. To think that they just started writing poetry a few years ago!”
At this, one of the Bangladeshi men frowns and whispers to the other one, who nods. “Sir,” he says, tapping on the microphone in front of him. “Sorry for interruption.”
Syncopate looks slightly ruffled but he allows it.
“Sir, many of us already knowing poetry long before coming to Singapore.”
“Of course, of course,” Syncopate says, nodding. He holds up his notes. “As I was saying—”
“No, sir, something the Singapore people must understand,” the man continues. “In Bangladesh, we all read Rabindranath Tagore, the Nobel Prize winner. Even the poorest children also can recite famous Tagore poems. My father used to read Jibanananda Das’s poems to me. You know the writer Mohammad Rafiq? I wanted to study with him. Everybody in my country is a poet.”
“I see you’re ready to take the stage, Abhi,” Syncopate says with a tight smile. “Will you read us your poem?”
Abhi reads in his native language. Like most people in the room, Donita doesn’t understand any of it, but the words are like a wave softly swishing over her bare skin. She feels like closing her eyes, but she’s afraid she will look ridiculous. When Syncopate reads the English translation, all of the hairs on Donita’s arms begin to rise.
“This Is What I Do for You”
My father says these words
as I pack my bags for a land
hungry for buildings. The trees here
are steel against the wind; the rain
does not replenish soil, but makes
the rivers swell to their limits.
Here my fortunes will rise like the rivers
in my hometown. They will seep into
the soil, and the roots will stretch far
so my father can forget
our wealth of sweet mud and emerald fields
reduced to white paper, signed scrawl.
Debt gawps like a canyon and makes my
father ill. My days are compacted into
dormitory solitude
mobile phone screen
measured steps along bamboo scaffolding.
One day, I will have enough to leave,
and then I will watch this island grow
tiny under my soaring body. The buildings
shrinking, the trains scrawling
like signatures and I will say:
“Singapore, this is what I do for you.”
The audience members sigh and hmm collectively. Donita hears her voice among theirs, and she’s surprised at this involuntary response.
“Tell us about your poem, Abhi,” Syncopate says.
“This one is about sacrifices,” Abhi says. “We migrant workers, our families give up so much so we can come here. My father sell his land to pay the agent so I can come here, make money. He say, ‘Abhi, when you go to Singapore, first thing you must do is pray.’ But when I come to this country, first thing I try to find is poetry.”
“The participants were given a prompt,” Syncopate explains to the audience. “‘Convey the migrant worker experience to Singaporeans.’ Every year we also have a theme. For this year, the theme was Returning. All the winning entries explored this theme with depth and complexity. Siti Hadiyah from Indonesia wrote about how she returned to her Islamic faith in Singapore and started wearing the hijab as a way to cope with a difficult work situation when she first arrived.”
“Yes, thank you for the introduction, sir,” says the Indonesian woman. Her round face beams like the sun. Syncopate invites her to read her poem, which is written in Bahasa, a language that crackles like applause. Donita picks up some words that this language shares with Tagalog: lima, anak, saket. When Siti Hadiyah says the word mahal, she pauses to ask the audience in English: “Do you know what this means?”
“‘Love’!” “‘Expensive’!” “‘Love’!” “‘Expensive’!” members of the audience call out. Syncopate rises from his chair and makes a Lower your volume gesture with two flat hands, which nobody heeds. Siti Hadiyah smiles. “In Tagalog and Bahasa, one word meaning two things. ‘Love’ and ‘expensive.’ Which one will it be?” She repeats this phrase in Bahasa, and when she finishes, her friends cheer loudly, and she begins to cry and fan her face in embarrassment. “Sorry,” she gasps.
Donita feels as though she might start to cry as well. There are times when Mrs. Fann berates her so relentlessly that Donita can feel the tears in the corners of her eyes, but she blinks them back. To cry would be to let Mrs. Fann win. Sometimes Donita even digs her fingernails deep into her palms to distract herself from her despair. Sanjeev noticed the little half-moon dents in her skin while they were showering today. They were small ridges, and the water made them shine. “You going to tell me my future?” she teased, and he said, “Your future is with me.” She happily put aside all her questions.
Now his friend is taking the stage. Sanjeev sits up a bit straighter. “I’d like to welcome Ranvir Singh to read his poem. Ranvir, will you be reading the English version? He translated it himself.”
“No, sir, I only want to read the Punjabi version.”
“Then I can read out the translation,” Syncopate says.
Ranvir shakes his head. “No need, sir. My English translation is not so accurate—the rhythm is wrong. I will just read the Punjabi version; afterward, if anybody want to know what it is about, they can ask me.”
Syncopate grips his notes. He looks as if he might have a heart attack.
“Go, Ranvir!” Sanjeev calls as if this is a football game. Syncopate shoots him a dirty look.
Before Ranvir reads, he takes in a deep breath and looks at Sanjeev. “This one is about something very close to all of us,” he says, and then he reads. The lines of the poem sound like brushstrokes, one and then another. Donita has no way of knowing what he is saying, but she notices it’s having an effect on Sanjeev. He leans closer to the stage, his face turned up and eyes closed, as if there is a breeze coming through an open window. At the end, he sighs.
“Very nice,” Syncopate says, and he moves on to the other poets. Donita sneaks a glance at Sanjeev and finds that he is looking off into the distance. He has also let go of her hand.
After the poetry readings, there is a reception, and once again, Donita does not understand the currency. The poets sit at one end of a long table, where Syncopate’s books are proudly displayed along with a collection of migrant workers’ poems. There are price tags on Syncopate’s books, but a donation box for the collection, and Donita wonders if the money will go to the poets. If so, she needs to work out how to write poetry because it could be a good side business.
Flor enters her mind then. It is impossible for Donita to cast her out of her thoughts—there she is, between the lines of all the poems, sitting in a cell and saying nothing about where she was that day. Why won’t you tell them? The question keeps Donita up some nights, and it is making her see things. Last night, before going to bed, Donita looked out of the window and saw a woman who resembled Flor sitting by the canal, flicking the ashes from her cigarette onto the ground. The night shadows obscured her face and she was only a faint outline between the trees, maybe not even there at all; Flor’s ghost, come to haunt Donita and beg for her help. Donita eyes the microphone on the stage and an image flashes in her mind: She is marching up there and calling for everybody’s attention. I want to tell you all about something important. My friend is Flordeliza Martinez and I know she is innocent. And then what? Where is the proof? Everything sounds like speculation—the stormy look in Peter Hong’s eyes as he loomed over his daughter; Donita’s glimpse of Flor walking slowly through the torrential rain. Donita knows what she saw, but sometimes doubt singes the edges of her memories. Sometimes she shuts her eyes to picture Flor and she sees a stranger.
There is another problem now. Sanjeev still has not introduced Donita to Ranvir. In fact, every time she tries to wander over to Sanjeev and his friends, Sanjeev turns his shoulder slightly to close the circle.
“That guy is your lover or what?” Donita asks, irritated, when they leave the Esplanade. “He read his poem, you pay so close attention until you drop my hand. Then you don’t even introduce me.”
“No, no,” Sanjeev says. “Nothing like that.”
“What was his poem about?” Donita asks.
“Something a bit difficult to explain,” Sanjeev says.
According to Sanjeev, anything in Punjabi is difficult to explain. Sometimes he views videos on his phone, grainy and shaky squares of people talking straight into the camera or animated in skits with other characters. His shoulders shake with laughter, but when Donita asks him what’s so funny, he shrugs and tells her there is no translation.
“You can at least give me a summary. Don’t be like that Stinko-Face, cannot explain anything.”
“Who?”
“The host just now.”
“Syncopate,” Sanjeev says.
“Whatever,” Donita says, losing patience. What is this argument even about? She’s annoyed with Sanjeev and she can’t figure out why, exactly. She just thought that this afternoon would be more about meeting his friends and getting to know them. Maybe they’d all go out in a group afterward, and they’d bring their girlfriends too. But since Ranvir read that poem, Sanjeev has been in a wistful mood, and he’s hiding something.
They walk together in uncomfortable silence along the boulevard outside the Esplanade. The sea is silver and still. Everything in this city looks designed for permanence, yet Donita always feels as if she’s on a rickety bridge. Last night, after seeing the ghost of Flor from her window, she felt as if nothing were real. As if maybe she died back in the Philippines, and Singapore was some strange afterlife. The rules are always changing or do not exist at all. These are things she cannot quite explain to Sanjeev—she doesn’t have the words for them in any language.
