Now You See Us, page 19
A long double railing divides the land from the river, and on one section of steel grids, tiny pieces of coloured paper are attached. As Donita and Sanjeev approach, she sees that they are actually small padlocks, some painted in vibrant pinks and yellows.
“Why are they locking the bridge?” she asks.
“It’s something the teenagers do,” Sanjeev says. “They put their initials on the padlocks and then lock them onto the bridge to symbolize their love.”
“What is the point of putting it here?” Donita asks. “The padlock is forever?”
“I guess so,” Sanjeev says.
“So you will buy me one?” It comes out more forcefully than the light teasing that she intended.
Sanjeev looks at her. “Donita . . . I’m sorry about my friends. I thought they would be more welcoming. I invited you because I wanted to introduce you to them, but I became afraid of what they would say.”
“Why don’t they like me?”
Sanjeev sighs and rubs his face in his hands. They are standing on the bridge, surrounded by couples. “That poem that Ranvir read is about having two lives. One here and one back home. Different expectations.”
“So what does that mean?” Donita asks.
“Ranvir’s poem was a letter to his past self in Punjab, warning that he would change once he came to Singapore. He would start to walk differently, talk differently, and even . . .”
“Even?”
“Love differently,” Sanjeev says. His voice is barely a whisper. Donita sees the shape of the word love on his lips and wishes this weren’t the way she had to hear it the first time. “I didn’t know about any of this, but Ranvir had a girlfriend here, and they were together for two years. He kept it a secret,” he continues. “Then he went back to India for a holiday and he was going to tell his family that he was marrying this girl—she was Filipino, so he knew they would have a hard time accepting her, but he was determined.”
“What happened?”
“His mother fainted.”
Donita snickers. “Serves her right. Racist lady.”
“It’s not funny, Donita,” Sanjeev says. “Ranvir’s whole family was grieving.”
“Why? She died?” Donita retorts. “All this drama because she cannot accept Filipino daughter-in-law.”
“Ranvir wrote his poem about his struggle. He broke up with the girl, and he told me to be prepared for things to be very different if I wanted to be with a Filipino girl in the long term.”
“Just because he cannot say no to his mother does not mean you are like that.”
“Our families are very important to us.”
Donita understands what he’s saying now. “Even your family?” she asks.
“I don’t think my mother will faint, but she certainly will be upset if I bring home a foreign girl.”
“Then what is the point? Just sex?” Donita asks.
“No,” Sanjeev says. “That is not all we’re doing together. We are also talking and sharing our lives. I want you to be in my life. That is why it’s so difficult. Because this feels like a relationship.”
“It is a relationship,” Donita says.
“And it can go on,” Sanjeev says. “But it will end.”
“When?” Donita asks. “When they expect you to go home and get married?”
Sanjeev bites his lip. “This is why I wanted us to get to know each other as friends first,” he says.
“Friends?” Donita asks incredulously. What they did together this afternoon was certainly not the exchange of friends. “If you are using me, why don’t you say so?”
“I am not using you,” Sanjeev insists. “I just want—”
“What do you want?” Donita asks. “Sex with me but real love from somebody your family will choose for you?”
“No, Donita,” Sanjeev says. His voice is full of sorrow but Donita is too hurt to buy it. The bile rises in her throat—this is what anger does to her.
“Then what?” she asks. “In the shower, you said I was your future. Your future what? Future story you can share like Ranvir, so you can win some poetry contest?”
“I want to take things slow.”
“Take things slow? Everything else you do very fast!” Donita jabs her finger at Sanjeev’s crotch to make her point clear. His cheeks go red as Donita spins on her heel and storms off in the opposite direction. He doesn’t follow.
She finds herself back in the comfort of the Esplanade. Her stomach is churning and she wonders if it’s from the excessive food today—the double desserts and the cheese at the poetry gathering—or from being so upset. She can feel a sob rising in her throat and she makes it to a bathroom just in time to throw up everything she has eaten.
Donita’s sobs come quickly and loudly then and they echo across the bathroom. She flushes the toilet and steps out of the stall to see the Filipino poet standing near the sink, her face full of concern. “Are you in trouble?” she asks quietly, handing Donita a tissue.
One glance in the mirror shows Donita how she must look to the woman. She has been throwing up and sobbing. “No,” Donita says, braving a smile. “Not like that.” She and Sanjeev are always very careful because she would be deported if she tested positive for pregnancy at her twice-yearly checkup.
The woman doesn’t look convinced. “Listen, there are places to go if you need to . . . you know. They take cash, no records.”
Donita shakes her head. “I am fine,” she insists, but she also realizes she doesn’t know this for sure. What if she’s pregnant? Her last period was a long time ago, but stress always throws off her cycle. Fresh tears spring to her eyes. How did her only day away from Mrs. Fann manage to bring her so much misery?
The woman scribbles down a phone number and an address for Donita. “But listen—don’t tell anybody about this place, okay? The people who work there . . . they’ll be in huge trouble if the government finds out. You don’t want them coming after you.”
Donita takes the piece of paper from her. It doesn’t sound like a place she ever wants to go to, but if she needs to take care of matters, it’s the only option. She can’t just go to any clinic to get an abortion without them alerting the ministry. She stuffs the paper into her purse and wills away this problem, at least for a little while.
On the bus going home, Donita watches the buildings gathered at the edge of the silvery sea. The bus climbs a ramp to an overpass and the city falls at her feet—a spray of red-roofed resort-style apartment buildings and green parks carved around the water. The bus pulls up to her stop on Marine Parade Road far too early. There are still two hours left till curfew and she is not going to waste them inside Mrs. Fann’s flat, where she will be confined for another two weeks. Donita follows the smell of salt and sea and crosses the pedestrian bridge to the beach. The sound of her footsteps pounding down the ramp drown out the question in her mind: What if, what if, what if?
Picnic blankets and tents cover the grassy parkland. A Roller-blading couple zip around Donita as she crosses the running track onto the sand. All of the barbecue areas are overflowing with opened bags of chips, soft drink bottles, music, and laughter. Donita finds a stone bench and sits watching the waves crash against the sand. There are families swimming and picking up seashells, and of course she wonders about the parents she never knew. By the time her mother was Donita’s age, she had already given birth to a child, but was that when her life began to end as well? Donita looks up to see that a group of Pinoy women at a nearby barbecue party are looking over at her, and she understands why—it’s strange to be alone like this on a Sunday. Everybody has company, but she fell straight into Sanjeev’s arms when she arrived, and her other friend has been arrested for murder. Angel and Cora had invited her on their trek through Clementi Forest today, but she wanted to spend time with Sanjeev.
What if she is pregnant? That will be the end of her time in Singapore, which means starting from the beginning again with even less than she had before. There will be debts to pay to her agent, and she will have nothing to show for her time away, not even a modest balikbayan box. She tries counting the days since her last period, but her round-the-clock work makes the dates blur together.
She takes out the piece of paper and types the address into her phone. The hushed fear in the Filipino poet’s voice makes Donita feel nervous herself as the map appears on her screen. She hunches over it, noticing first that the address is in a very small side street—so small that it juts out like a ledge. All the other streets in this area are tiny veins.
Donita shrinks the map with her thumb and forefinger and sees where it is in relation to Chinatown, the Singapore River, and Sanjeev’s apartment. A long straight line before a dive into back streets.
Her heart begins to thrum.
She pinches the screen and spreads her fingers apart. The lanes widen and signs expand. Donita travels through the neighbourhood with her fingers, a sense of gnawing familiarity growing stronger as the back lanes bring her to the hotel where she and Sanjeev stayed that first afternoon. With a flick of her finger, Donita is on the main road opposite the fruit stand and the tea stall. She can picture the wall mural on the building labelled shophouse 23, and she can see the little symbol for the bus stop coming into its dimensions—the bench, the roar of vehicles, the laneways sprouting from the main road.
The only thing missing is the rain—and Flor walking away as Donita shouts her name.
Twelve
The eggshells from this morning’s breakfast are scattered around the Vijays’ home. It’s a funny trick, scaring the geckos away by convincing them that something larger has hatched nearby. Angel hadn’t thought it would work the last time, but within days, the walls were clear of dots of fresh droppings.
She glances at her phone. It hasn’t made a sound but she checks anyway. No new messages from Donita, so she reads through their exchange from last night again.
Donita: I think I know where Flordeliza was! There’s a clinic in Jalan Besar where domestic workers can get abortions and morning-after pills. They pay in cash, and the clinic won’t report it to the employers, so the women’s work permits won’t get cancelled. I saw her coming out of this lane. Look!
Angel: Oh my God!
Cora: How did you find out about this place?
Donita: Another woman told me.
Cora: Are you in trouble, Donita?
Donita: Don’t think so. I started having my regular cramps last night. Was having some indigestion before, so I didn’t notice them.
Angel: So Flordeliza thinks she’s better off being charged with murder than exposing the people who run these clinics?
Cora: She is. If she leads the police to the abortion clinic, those guys will come after her for exposing them. These unlicensed operations have a lot of connections with gangs. If she stays quiet, there’s some hope the police will find the real killer and let her go.
Donita: Or maybe she’d just prefer a slower path towards death. If they charge her with this murder, she’d get the death penalty, but it will take a while.
Cora: Maybe she told the police the truth at some point, but they can’t lose face after pinning the murder on her. It’s easier to close the case here. The whole country thinks Flor is guilty.
Angel: What are you going to do, Donita?
There’s been no reply since last night. Angel doesn’t know if this is because Donita returned to work or because she is plotting her next steps. What would happen if Donita went to the police? Would they believe her? Angel wondered about this after discovering the camera that Raja planted in her room. She imagined walking into a station and approaching a blue-uniformed officer sitting behind a desk, but the image stopped there. The scene stayed stubbornly frozen whenever she returned to it.
Thankfully, Raja has been spending more time in his university dorm since his father whacked him over the head. He hasn’t moved out entirely, though; yesterday Angel walked past the residents’ gym to find him sprinting on the treadmill. She fantasized about bursting in and knocking him off the machine. It fills her with boiling rage to know that Raja will face no further consequences for what he did. The evening Angel found the pen, Sumanthi knocked on her door to apologize on Raja’s behalf, but she spoke of his actions as an immature prank.
“He and his buddies challenge each other to do these things sometimes,” Sumanthi said. “I’ve told him it’s not okay.”
“It’s illegal,” Angel reminded her.
That word cast a shadow over Sumanthi’s face. She bit her lip and said, “Can we talk about it later? I have a lot on my mind right now.” So far, that conversation has not happened. This morning when Nurul arrived, Angel noticed her and Sumanthi chatting quietly at the door and shooting glances her way.
Angel can see Mr. Vijay and Nurul from the balcony. Nurul pushes his wheelchair along the walking path and guides his hands to feel the spongy coralvine leaves. Watching them interact each day, Angel feels a growing distance from Mr. Vijay. She dusts each surface twice and attempts new recipes for dinner, but the work feels simple and unsatisfying. She wants to take care of a person. She never knew this until Mrs. Vijay was hospitalized, and Angel was by her bedside, feeding her meals and massaging her feet between the nurses’ rounds. It just made sense for Angel to take on Mr. Vijay’s care after his stroke because she had a natural ability, if not the formal training.
Angel sees the dogs nudging at the half eggshell that she placed under the dining table. Reaching down to pet them, she notices chew marks on the leg of one of the chairs. “Which one of you did this?” she asks the dogs. Toffee yawns, revealing her plump pink tongue. Coco is the more likely culprit, with her penchant for clamping her razor-sharp teeth on anything that isn’t a chew toy. They scramble into her lap, radiating the kind of warmth that makes anger impossible.
“Now I have to learn to restore furniture,” Angel jokes. Her heart wouldn’t be in it, though. A sense of disquiet is brewing within Angel. She could resign and find a new job, but that’s not all she wants.
In the evening, there is still no reply from Donita. Angel sends her another message asking if she is all right. Only half an hour later, a quick text: Mrs. Fann made me spend the whole day in church with her. She and her friends are up to something. I think they’re planning to take over this SAGE organization.
That would certainly be interesting. Angel doesn’t know much about SAGE but she remembers Raja teasing Sumanthi for carrying a water bottle with its logo on it. “Will you stop shaving your legs next?” he asked. “Does Anand know you’re a lesbian?”
At the sound of the main door’s lock sliding open, the dogs rush to the foyer and tumble over each other to greet Sumanthi. Angel pushes herself to her feet and waves hello. “Your dinner is ready, Sumanthi. I make the aglio e olio recipe you always like but I replace the chicken breast with salmon flakes because the fish will be better for you.” Sumanthi tried calling in sick this morning because her stomach ulcer was acting up, but her boss scolded her so loudly that Angel, at the other end of the flat, could hear his voice pouring down the receiver.
“Thanks, Angel. Anand’s coming over too,” Sumanthi says.
“There’s enough pasta for him,” Angel says.
“How was Dad today during mealtimes?” Sumanthi asks.
“Stubborn again about food,” Angel says. “I don’t know how to make him eat.”
She had to chop his dinner into a fine puree, and he still resisted by pressing his lips together like a child. “Sir, you need nutrition to be strong,” Angel had insisted. She pulled her arm back and made the fork fly like an airplane, making engine noises, and felt Mr. Vijay’s contempt rising like smoke.
“Nurul says it’s only a matter of time before we have to use a feeding tube,” Sumanthi says.
“Aging is hard, Miss Sumanthi,” Angel says. “They have their lows. He will bounce back, don’t worry.”
“I hope you’re right,” Sumanthi says. “I don’t want to . . . I can’t lose him.”
“I know,” Angel says. The only movement in the flat is from the dogs’ tails sweeping the floor in brisk arcs. Angel used to think of loss as one huge wave—rising floodwaters that engulfed a person. But death also sucked away the sweetness that used to tinge the air of this flat: the pot bubbling with rice and milk on Pongal, overflowing for prosperity, the same week Angel started working for the Vijays three years ago. Mrs. Vijay decorating the doorstep with swirls of coloured powder for good luck—it was for the sake of tradition, as there were no consequences for the harvest for them, living in this city.
When Angel met Suzan for the first time that Sunday, Suzan was carrying a tote bag with van Gogh’s Starry Night printed on it. Angel had seen reproductions of those churning clouds and deep skies on countless key chains and mugs and cell phone cases, but it became something new to her. For days after the Pongal decorations faded away, Angel traced the faint outlines with chalk while she gathered the courage to ask Suzan if they could spend a Sunday alone together, hoping Suzan would know how she meant it.
Sumanthi takes a bite of her pasta and squeezes her eyes in pain. “You want to lie down?” Angel asks.
Sumanthi shakes her head. “I’ll just have some tea and toast.”
Angel nods and goes to the kitchen. As she does, she hears Mr. Vijay’s snores growing louder. She doesn’t know if he’s having trouble breathing, but the look on Sumanthi’s face tells her she’s asking herself the same question. “Should I check on him?” she asks.
“I’ll do that,” Angel says. She pops a piece of Gardenia bread into the toaster, switches on the kettle, and hurries to Mr. Vijay’s room. He is sleeping on his side with one leg thrown over the edge of the mattress. Angel takes care to move him limb by limb, inching him to the middle of the bed before gently rolling him to his back. He snorts and gasps as she does this, and she waits for his breathing to stabilize, then lifts his head so she can place a pillow under it. He needs one of those reclining beds, but she knows that suggesting this to Sumanthi would just bring them both back to that depressing nursing home. “There,” Angel says as she smooths the wrinkles out of Mr. Vijay’s pyjama top.
