Now You See Us, page 22
Jacqueline, Cora realizes, is not waiting for an explanation. She snaps her compact shut and slips it back into her purse. “I’m guessing you took something from them, yes? Something valuable? What was it? A silk? An antique?”
Of course, to Jacqueline, the only thing of value that can be stolen is expensive. Cora says nothing.
“What Mrs. Calvert did tell me was that there was some issue with your nephew. She found out after you left that he was into drugs, so the situation must have been desperate for you to do whatever you did.”
Cora closes her eyes. “Mrs. Calvert said this?”
“She said some men showed up looking for you. They waited outside the gates of the Calverts’ community and approached her when she was on her way to an appointment. Your actions have consequences, Cora. You have to remember that. Now, who were they?”
Cora’s whole body is shaking now. Jacqueline crosses her arms over her chest again. “Who were they? Come on. Don’t lie, I can find out easily. A private investigator in Manila costs nothing. God knows my mother still has a whole legion of detectives on retainer after having them chase my father around Asia on his indiscretions.”
Tears fill Cora’s eyes. If the men came after the Calverts, were they safe? How about the children? Their school had high security too, but Madison liked to walk to High Street for doughnuts at Krispy Kreme with her friends after soccer practice. How many lives did Cora ruin in order to save her own?
“Out with it, then. Who were they? What did they want?”
“Police,” Cora whispers finally. Plainclothes officers. Or thugs. Same difference after the election. She knows she could lie and say “loan sharks” or “some gang members,” but what does that make her? A person who gets involved with those types of people? She’d rather tell the truth.
Jacqueline’s eyes widen. “So you’re running from the law? Now, that’s very serious. That could get you into a lot of trouble here.”
“I can explain,” Cora pleads. “My nephew didn’t do anything wrong.”
Jacqueline takes a step towards Cora and puts a hand on her shoulder. Her expression remains as hard as a fist. “I am sorry for what you went through,” she says. “You understand, don’t you, what this could do to our family’s image?”
Cora nods and wipes the tears from her cheeks. “Miss Jacqueline, please,” she says. She doesn’t know what she’s pleading for. Jacqueline pops open her clutch and takes out a tissue. Its lavender scent makes Cora feel nauseated.
“My mother takes these for anxiety,” Jacqueline says, holding up a small white bottle. “She needs an extra dose sometimes to help her really relax.”
“I am not going to feed drugs to your mother,” Cora says.
“Yes, you are,” Jacqueline says calmly. “You can crush them into your fabulous Teochew porridge. She won’t know the difference.”
Cora shakes her head vehemently. Jacqueline grabs her hand and pushes the bottle roughly into it. She wraps Cora’s fingers around the bottle and squeezes it tight.
“You get my mother to sign those papers, and all is forgiven,” Jacqueline says before walking out.
From the ma’am Facebook pages:
Nikola Herber: Hi, ladies! With Hungry Ghost Festival around, please remind your domestic workers that the food offerings are not for them. If you recall, last year there was a case where a construction worker in Pasir Ris mistook some packets of rice for a donation meal, and it attracted a lot of ugly comments about migrant workers. If you see something like that happening, just gently remind them. There’s no need to take photos and publicize it over social media.
Jovina Sim: LOL I was away on a business trip in Tokyo last year and missed this news entirely. Did somebody truly think that the food left on the ground was for him to eat? Obviously it’s for dead ancestors, cannot be so stupid, right?
Nikola Herber: Here’s the news link about it from Big Island Weekly. It was an honest mistake. There was a retiree in that complex who often bought packet food to treat the workers. The offering of chicken rice was in the same type of Styrofoam container, so the worker thought it was for him. There’s no need to call them stupid.
Jovina Sim: I wasn’t calling the worker stupid. I was calling you stupid.
Nikola Herber: That’s uncalled for. Moderators, please remove this member.
Peiying Chen: Maybe he got possessed. That could be the reason the picture went around, not because people wanted to shame a migrant worker.
Nikola Herber: Possessed by what? The chicken?
Peiying Chen: Now you are the one being offensive. It is a known fact that messing with offerings can incur the wrath of the spirits. The offerings are for making peace with our ancestors.
Nikola Herber: A known FACT? Proven by science? And empirical studies? Are you seriously so dense?
Mia Ganesan: If you don’t like this country and its customs, why are you here?
Nikola Herber: Go to hell. Or I should say, “Go and join your ancestors.”
--- MESSAGE FROM MODERATORS: Singapore is a multicultural country, and as such, we must respect the cultural and religious views of others. This group has a zero-tolerance policy for inflammatory language. Comments have been closed on this thread, and the member who wrote the original post has been removed from the group.
Fourteen
This afternoon, it’s a pair of beige underpants with lacy trim along the waistband. Last Tuesday, it was a single athletic sock, and a few weeks ago, a striped towel with frayed edges. Mrs. Mok, who lives upstairs, always arrives at their door with apologies and the same excuse for her laundry snapping off her bamboo pole and landing on the Fanns’. “It’s the wind, lah. Very strong nowadays,” she tells Donita when she comes to retrieve her fallen items.
Later, Donita sees her again as she is shuffling into the lift with Mrs. Fann and her church boxes. Mrs. Mok gets out of the lift. “God bless you,” Mrs. Mok says to Mrs. Fann. She even offers to help, but Mrs. Fann says, “No, thank you, that’s what my maid is for.”
“Anything you need, you just let me know,” Mrs. Mok tells Mrs. Fann. She slides her gold-rimmed glasses farther up her nose. “What you’re doing is very brave. You are a good woman.” Just for that, Donita vows to toss all her clothes off the pole next time, let the Moks’ underwear fly all over Marine Parade. She can blame the wind.
Mrs. Fann beams and graciously returns the blessings. These days, she walks around wearing a lanyard dangling below her prominent cross necklace. People glance at it to confirm that she is really Fann Poh Choo, the woman who has been in the news, the new president of SAGE. “Have to keep it on, even if it puts me in danger,” Mrs. Fann told Donita. “I need my supporters to know that I am on the ground. Then, if any you-know-whos try to make trouble with me, people won’t hesitate to rush to my defence.”
The compliment from Mrs. Mok keeps Mrs. Fann afloat while Donita struggles to maintain her grip on the cardboard box full of pamphlets. sex education programme is printed in a stern official font across each one. Mrs. Fann picked them up from the printers yesterday but forgot to take the keys to the church office with her, so she had to bring them all home. Now she needs them loaded into the car so she can take them to the SAGE office, which, according to Google Maps, is a twenty-minute drive away on the west side of the island. Twenty minutes there, twenty minutes back. Maybe she’ll spend some time in the office, maybe not.
Her schedule has become unpredictable since she and her church friends took over SAGE, but Donita just needs an hour to go to the clinic in Jalan Besar. That’s where all of the answers about Flordeliza will be.
“Gently,” Mrs. Fann barks as Donita lowers the box into the boot, as if it holds precious crystal instead of pamphlets about abstinence. Yesterday, Donita opened one to find a long red list of Don’ts, followed by a hotline number for the church. If you are feeling romantic urges, DO the following things instead: Talk to a friend. Watch a parentally approved movie. Take a walk or play a sport. Remember that urges pass. Intimacy is for married adults. If she were still talking to Sanjeev, she’d take a picture and send it to him with a dirty message about all the ways they could rebel against these suggestions. They haven’t spoken since their fight outside the Esplanade. If Sanjeev has tried to contact Donita, she isn’t aware of it because she blocked his number.
Under the glaring sun in the open-air car park, Mrs. Fann rattles off a list of things she wants finished by the time she returns. Sweep the floors, mop them, clean the blades of the fans, replace the dehumidifiers, unhook the curtains and wash them. “The news crew is coming next week but I want you to start keeping the house clean now,” Mrs. Fann says. Donita’s mind plays a reel of fantasy revenge scenes: Leaving the rubbish chute wide open so the news crew walks into a living room filled with the stench of rotting food. Or replacing Mrs. Fann’s whitening deodorant with black shoe polish so when she raises her arms, the tarry streaks on her armpits make her look like somebody who doesn’t bathe. Or taking down the notices for insect fumigation so Mrs. Fann invites the news crew on the wrong day, and they arrive just as the last surviving roaches are juddering their wings and flying in frantic circles to escape the poison, and the whole country’s first view of Mrs. Fann is of dying cockroaches.
“Aiyah,” Mrs. Fann says as she opens the car door. “Forgot my phone upstairs. Go and get it, Donita. It’s on the dining table.”
Donita does another calculation as she enters the lift and presses the button. A round-trip journey to the clinic by taxi would take much less time than the bus, and if Mrs. Fann is out for, say, two hours, she’ll be able to do some investigating. Donita could say she needs to know what time to expect Mrs. Fann so she can serve her dinner warm. Mrs. Fann was just complaining the other day that the reheated leftovers always had cold spots in the centre.
A pungent smell hits Donita as she steps out of the lift, but she doesn’t realize it’s coming from the Fanns’ flat until she gets closer to the gate. By then, it’s overpowering, the stench of fish guts and entrails that are strewn through the alcove. Somebody has flung them through the grilles of the gate in the few minutes they’ve been downstairs. Donita gags and steps back into the lift. As she descends towards Mrs. Fann to tell her what’s happened, she knows already she’s going to be blamed for it.
“Ma’am, somebody throw fish at the gate.”
Mrs. Fann’s eyes widen. “Who would do that? One of your friends, is it? Loan sharks? Who was it?”
“I don’t know, ma’am. You must come up and see.”
Mrs. Fann follows her up to the flat and shrieks when she sees it. “Donita, who did this?”
Her voice bounces across the walls. Donita’s eyes follow the tiny beige tiles and scan the trunks of pipes that run up the walls in the landing between Mrs. Fann and her neighbours. She unlocks the gate and steps gingerly into the stinking alcove. As she’s about to open the door, her eye catches a flash of white in the shadows near the shoe rack. A postcard, thrown so far through the grilles that it almost disappeared between a pair of Mr. Fann’s black flip-flops. She picks it up, and as she turns to hand it to Mrs. Fann, she sees the message written in stark capitals.
you do not speak for all women. step down from sage.
The colour drains from Mrs. Fann’s cheeks as she reads the postcard. Donita can see her bare fear beneath her heavy makeup. What did she expect? Each time Mrs. Fann replayed her television unveiling on her phone, she stopped the video just before the camera cut to the former president and vice president of the organization, whose voices were hoarse with shock and anger. Donita watched the whole thing in her room last night.
“I don’t know how these women can walk in and tear down three decades of advocacy work for gender equality,” a woman named Nadya Hashim said. “Are these new leaders qualified to handle the calls from domestic-violence victims on our hotline? Or are they going to tell them to be better wives? Why are they doing this? They can’t even say the word feminist, and they refer to members of the LGBTQ community as ‘you-know-whos,’ as if this identity is so shameful that it needs to be erased.”
Mrs. Fann and Donita both jump at the sound of the door of the opposite flat opening. The neighbour, a sprightly retired woman named Doris who also congratulated Mrs. Fann when they crossed paths yesterday, is talking on her phone and barely notices them.
Her appearance seems to break the spell, and Mrs. Fann straightens her back and regards Donita, her eyes full of contempt.
“Why are you just standing there? Get my phone,” she says. “And use the heavy-duty Jif under the cabinet to scrub the floors. Throw out the welcome mat; I’ll buy a new one. Wash all of the shoes.”
It’s got nothing to do with me, Donita wants to say again, just to remind Mrs. Fann that she has invited her own troubles, she is not immune to this kind of ugliness. But what’s the point? Donita still has to clean up the mess. There is no way she will be able to go to the clinic now that Mrs. Fann is watching her so closely.
Donita is finally done with her work for the day, and the Fanns are asleep. The night is quiet, and the air smells like burning. It is the season of the Hungry Ghost, the month when the gates of hell open and spirits roam the island to feast on offerings from the living. The pavements are littered with scraps of charred paper money. Black rings scar the grass next to offerings of pillowy kuehs and joss sticks glowing at the tips. Whenever Donita looks out through her window at night, she sees flames lurching from the gaping mouths of metal barrels.
When she looks down, she is almost unsurprised to see the same ghostly figure near the canal that she saw a few nights ago. In the shadows, it could be mistaken for a young tree, but then it floats across a pale pool of moonlight and Donita sees shoulder-length hair and the outline of a dress. “Is it you, Flor? What have they done to you?” Donita whispers. It is impossible to see the woman’s face, but the way her head is tipped up, it looks as if she is staring right at Donita. Then, as if a spell has broken, the ghost is gone, moving swiftly in the direction of the beach. Donita watches her leave and wishes she could escape with her.
Donita’s fingers smell like bleach, her skin is gritty from the Jif, and the chemical lemony smell has seeped into her pores from cleaning this morning. Mrs. Fann was away from the flat for only a few hours before she returned, agitated and shouting in Mandarin to Mr. Fann. The two of them spent some time inspecting the alcove, and Donita stayed at the other end of the flat, arranging the items in Mrs. Fann’s vanity cabinet. In the back of it, she came across a glittering piece of costume jewellery. It looked a lot like the earring that Mrs. Fann had taken from her and thrown down the rubbish chute, but it was star-shaped and dotted with emerald rhinestones.
Now Donita trains her gaze on the sawtooth rows of rooftops off East Coast Road. What happened to Flor? The question is as constant as the quickening of her heartbeat when she found Flordeliza’s backpack in the Hongs’ backyard that Sunday afternoon. The only way to find answers is to leave this flat. It is too risky to go poking around the back lanes of Jalan Besar at night, but if she can get onto the Hong property and climb into Flordeliza’s room, maybe she will find some evidence of her innocence. She rummages through her closet and picks her darkest clothes—a black blouse and long black drawstring pants to help her blend with the night.
Donita opens her room door carefully, knowing the precise amount of pressure she needs to keep the hinges from creaking. When she reaches the main door, her heart begins to slam in her chest, but it’s from exhilaration rather than fear. She opens it carefully, slips on her shoes, shuts the door slowly behind her, and works her key gently into the lock. Once she steps past the gate and into the lift, Donita lets out a long breath that she didn’t realize she was holding.
Crossing to Flordeliza’s neighbourhood takes only two minutes. It is close to midnight, so the path along the canal is bare, but a flash of night cyclists makes Donita freeze. Luckily they are too absorbed in their ride towards the beach to notice her. From the tide of crashing waves, the wind carries the sharp smell of salt. She hurries away from the sea to the path behind the Hongs’ house. The windows and curtains are shut, and the gate is closed. She looks around quickly before gripping the gate, hoping it’s unlocked. It creaks but doesn’t budge. “Shit,” she says under her breath. Stepping back from the gate, she considers what she would need to do to scale it. The windows of the Hongs’ house are dark save for a faint light glowing from the high window of what must be a bathroom.
The sudden clap of footsteps sends Donita diving to the ground. She crawls on her belly along the pebbles until she is safely crouching behind a row of hedges lining the property. Joss sticks form a spiky border on the edge of the grass, where the breeze is stirring a mound of fine ashes from a paper-money offering.
She hears low chatter, a young woman’s voice. Donita squeezes her knees to her chest and keeps her head down but her ears perked. A man’s voice overlaps with the woman’s now, and the footsteps stop. Donita raises her head just slightly to see them standing a few paces away from the back gate of the Hongs’ home. The woman flicks her hair, and Donita sees a flash of a high ponytail. It’s Carolyn Hong’s daughter, Elise. Parting the branches carefully, Donita is able to see her silhouette, but the man’s shape is unfamiliar—a wide and boxy frame towering over the girl. Donita’s heart clenches. Is the girl in danger? “Please,” the man says. “I just want you back. We had such a good thing together.” He takes Elise’s hands and draws her to him. She leans away stiffly and says, “That was before everything. I promised my dad I would never see you again.” The man whispers something to Elise, and she shakes her head. “I can’t,” she insists. “I only came out tonight to tell you to stop. It’s over.”
A rustle in the bushes gives Donita a jolt. Something is moving in here—just a bird, Donita hopes, or a cat slinking low to the ground. Just don’t let it be a rat. Since the Hungry Ghost offerings started, Donita has seen them from her window, scurrying between open containers of braised pork and broiled cabbage. She has joked bitterly on her group chat with Angel and Cora that the island’s rodents and dead ancestors are getting better meals than her.
