Now You See Us, page 8
If Donita hadn’t been so eager to rip off Sanjeev’s clothes and run her tongue all over his body, she would have participated in the conversation. I know how they feel, she would have said, thinking about the way she used to collect little trinkets and tell stories about how they were gifts from the parents who had left her with relatives when she was too young to remember. She once stole a faded red T-shirt from the neighbour’s clothing line because it had the word Howdy! printed in cracking raised yellow letters across the jagged shape of the state of Texas, and she could pretend that her parents had ended up there somehow.
“Sanjeev,” Donita tries again. She twists a lock of hair between her fingers. The cloying scent of jasmine incense fills her nostrils. “I don’t know if I have off day next time. My ma’am is doing a project and she want my help.”
Sanjeev is supposed to understand from this that it could be a month before they see each other again. A month! Who waits that long to get down to business? She had texted Flor this question yesterday. One day off every two weeks. How am I supposed to have a life? She knew the answer: she wasn’t supposed to have a life. Flor sent three crying-face emojis to let her know that she sympathized.
Remember to use protection came another message from Flor after that. We get tested every six months for pregnancy, and if your test comes up positive, you will be deported.
It was better advice than the agents gave: avoid sex while working overseas. It did strike Donita earlier today that perhaps Sanjeev was abstaining. Like, as a religious thing? But he also told her that he wasn’t religious. He certainly isn’t like those pilgrims. His Sikh temple sits in the near distance, a plump golden dome atop a short white building. They passed it on the bus coming here and saw turbaned men slipping off their shoes, women tugging the sequined hems of their scarfs. Sanjeev had muttered a quick prayer, but his eyes also definitely lingered on Donita’s cleavage when she leaned towards the window and squeezed her shoulders together to make her breasts bubble up to her neckline.
“What project?” Sanjeev asks.
You are an idiot, Donita wants to say. “Something for her church,” she replies. “Anyway, we are standing here so long, it is so hot already.”
“Sure, let’s go,” Sanjeev says, nodding in the direction of the block of apartment buildings. “I’ll show you where I live.”
Now they’re getting somewhere. Donita ignores the pinch in her toes from her patent high heels and trots along with Sanjeev. “You go to church with your ma’am?” he asks.
She shakes her head. “Not for worshipping. They have meetings; last Sunday I went along to help.”
The church was like nothing Donita had ever seen before: Busloads of people streaming into a lobby, where ushers directed them to different sections of a massive auditorium with plush red seats. Long spotlights swung around the stage, on which a 3D hologram of a cross rotated slowly. An usher handed Donita a programme and said, “You can go to upstairs seating.” Women like Mrs. Fann were escorted to the front rows. “She won’t be joining the service,” Mrs. Fann explained to the usher before directing Donita down the hallway to a meeting room that ran deep into the end of the building. On a long mahogany table sat three cardboard boxes labelled appeal letter, new member registrations, and envelopes, respectively. “By the end of the service, I want all of these envelopes stuffed with one letter and one registration form each,” Mrs. Fann instructed. Donita did as she was told, tapping her feet to the music throbbing from the auditorium. The work was repetitive, like her job at the mushroom factory, but at least she was in an air-conditioned room and alone. When she was done, for the first time, Mrs. Fann actually looked impressed with her work. Three women entered the meeting room with her and filled canvas tote bags with the sealed envelopes. They talked excitedly about “starting a movement” and “having a strong presence on the big day.”
Mrs. Fann returned to her usual self on Thursday when she hosted Bible study. She was very anxious in the hours leading up to it, scolding Donita multiple times. She’d had to reschedule the meeting from two days before because the council had announced an extra round of cockroach fumigation due to unusually humid conditions, and after the monthly fogging, there were always large-winged roaches attempting to escape the poisonous fumes. They sometimes climbed up the rubbish chute and died in the kitchen, which was what had happened on Tuesday, prompting Mrs. Fann to call the council to ask them to please wash away the cockroach corpses from downstairs immediately. When it didn’t happen, she sent Donita down with a can of Baygon to finish off the survivors and a broom to sweep them into the gutter.
The leader of Mrs. Fann’s church group was a woman named Dr. Lena Teo; she sat at the head of the table and commanded everyone’s attention. Donita didn’t catch the other women’s names, but she noticed that everybody deferred to anything Dr. Lena Teo said.
“Poh Choo, you are a living example of good,” she said. “You have volunteered so much of your time to this project, and you readily opened up your home when the rest of us couldn’t.” Donita caught a few quick looks and smiles passing between the other women, but Mrs. Fann beamed like God Himself had touched her hand.
“Have you all heard that Swee Lin’s son, Justin, is engaged?” one woman asked as Donita went around the table pouring tea.
“To that Eurasian girlfriend of his from junior college days? What was her name?”
“I don’t remember her, but this is a different girl. Her name is Juli. Juli Ashraf.”
There was a chorus of teacups clattering to saucers. Donita stepped in to wipe a few drops that had spilled on the table. Even serene Dr. Lena Teo looked perturbed. “She’s Muslim?”
The woman who had announced the news took a sip of her tea. The pitying frown on her face did not match the glee in her voice. “Swee Lin was beside herself. He’s converting to Islam. He says it’s more compatible with living a moral life.”
As the women continued talking about the choices that children make, Mrs. Fann’s demeanour began to change, and her body seemed to shrink into her chair. “These boys, they just think in the short term about everything, especially when hormones and pretty girls cloud their judgment,” somebody said. Donita remembered Cora’s titbit of gossip: that Weston Fann and Ma’am Elizabeth’s daughter had been a couple.
“Speaking of falling in love, how was the media launch for Come Home?”
“Spectacular. It’s already getting some buzz online. The you-know-whos are finding fault with it, as usual. They say we’re co-opting their flag, as if they have sole ownership of the colour pink.”
“What do you think of it, Poh Choo?” Dr. Lena Teo asked.
The women turned to look at Mrs. Fann. A smile cracked across her face. “It was very good,” she said.
“Has your son seen it?”
Mrs. Fann shook her head. “You know how busy our children are,” she said apologetically. The women exchanged glances again, and this time Mrs. Fann was aware of the looks. Donita was feeling the slightest bit sorry for her until she snapped, “Donita, where are the lemon biscuits?”
Donita hurried to the kitchen and shook the box of lemon biscuits onto a rectangular plate. She brought it out, and Mrs. Fann began offering them fervently to the women. “Shall we return to the task at hand?” she asked. “We don’t have much time till the election.”
After the women left, Mrs. Fann cornered Donita and listed the things that she had done wrong. “The biscuits were soggy. Didn’t you store them in an airtight container? And did you have to put on the washing machine while they were here? So loud, they had to raise their voices to talk like we were in a hawker centre. If you managed your time properly, you would have finished all of this work early in the morning.”
By the time Donita finishes telling Sanjeev all of this, they have reached his apartment building. It sits on the end of the neighbourhood, adjacent to other identical towers that form a loose horseshoe opposite Keppel Shipyard. The land is tiered, and three sets of stairs are built into the hill so people can descend to the road. Brawny container ships nest on the glassy surface of the sea. The sun hasn’t begun to set yet but the ship lights are blinking, or maybe they just appear to twinkle because of the shimmering water.
“Your home is that way,” Sanjeev says, reading her mind. She was just wondering how long it would take to walk along the shore from Marine Terrace and reach here. One hour? Two? A tiny black cable car moves across the sky like a cursor between the sheer afternoon clouds. The deep green hills remind her of home, but only from a distance. This morning, she was disappointed to find that the man-made Sentosa Island was nothing like her province. The sandy beaches were cut out as if from paper, and a monorail packed with noisy tourists glided above the rooftops of resorts and restaurants.
“You have this view from your flat?” Donita asks. “From your bedroom?”
Sanjeev nods. “But we are eight people sharing one flat, so somebody is always blocking the window,” he jokes.
“Oh,” Donita says. “Even now, everybody is there?”
“A few. Some are working today; some have their day off, so they’re out.”
The pilgrims from earlier are wandering across the park between the high-rises. They look like a drifting cloud. Does everything move this slowly on Sundays in this neighbourhood? Even the stray cats are spilling like liquid across the first-floor steps. Sanjeev’s face is turned towards the sea; he closes his eyes, and, as he takes in a deep, calming breath, Donita decides she has to be direct.
“Sanjeev, can we go upstairs to your flat so we can be closer together?” she asks.
Sanjeev opens his eyes and smiles. “Aren’t we getting closer all the time? Aren’t we close now?”
“Yes, but . . .” Donita shakes her head. “Sanjeev,” she says firmly. “I want to be alone with you.”
Sanjeev looks around and Donita follows his gaze. There aren’t any people around except the shrouded pilgrims shuffling across the walkway. “This is so much more peaceful than my flat, believe me,” he says.
“Sanjeev, I want to have sex with you.” Donita’s announcement reverberates across the courtyard, bouncing from lift to stairs to concrete mah-jongg table to the wall of steel letterboxes. The pilgrims all look up, aghast, and they hurry away. Sanjeev begins sweating profusely.
“You do?” he asks.
“Yes!” Donita cries. “Why we go this building, that building, you show me Singapore whole history—for what?”
“I didn’t want to . . .” Sanjeev throws his hands up and seems to be making a shape in the air. Donita stares at him. “The first time we talked, you said you liked my message. The other men were all sending you messages about your body.”
“Yeah, of course I want to have respect first. But now I want to have sex.”
“Okay,” Sanjeev says. He swallows. “I also would like to have sex.”
“In your room?”
“No, no,” he says, and when Donita puffs her cheeks in exasperation, he says, “I can bring us somewhere better.”
“We must be quick,” Donita says. “My curfew is seven p.m.” It is now almost five p.m. Sanjeev springs into action. He takes Donita’s hand and leads her down the stairs to the empty, tree-lined road that divides the neighbourhood from the highways and harbour. The taxis parked along the kerb have their green lights on to signal they’re available, but the first driver in the line refuses to take them. “Uncle, I have money,” Sanjeev says, prying apart the mouth of his wallet to display his dollar bills.
“I’m not going there,” the driver says, winding up the window. They have not even told him where they’re going.
“Then we give our money to somebody else,” Donita says. Behind him, there is a driver leaning against his car and finishing a cigarette. He nods and tosses his cigarette into the grass when Donita waves at him.
As they pull away from the kerb, Sanjeev tells him they want to go to the nearest Hotel 81, and the driver says, “Nearest is Chinatown but sometimes on Sunday fully booked.” He grins sheepishly. “People tell me, ah, I never go inside one.”
“Okay, then where?” Donita asks.
“Got some hotels in Jalan Besar, but not so safe place,” the driver warns.
“It’s okay, Uncle, I will protect her,” Sanjeev says firmly. He puts an arm around Donita and she feels the heat coursing through her body. “Not safe?” she asks after the driver revs the engine and his radio begins playing. “What place in Singapore is not safe?”
“I think he means it’s old, that’s all. And a lot of foreigners like us.”
Donita has come to understand that there’s old and charming, like those preserved shophouses in Spottiswoode Park, with their original wooden shutters and intricate flower-design tiles bordering the porches, the cafés with complicated machinery and people tapping away at their laptops on high benches. There’s new and filled with foreigners, like Marina Bay Sands, with a boat suspended in the clouds atop three dizzyingly tall buildings, the Technicolor fireworks of electric Supertrees, and financial buildings raised like swords. Then there’s old and filled with foreigners like us, like these lanes they are starting to enter, with pavements shaved to ledges and used Fanta bottles and plastic bags strewn in the street corners. The disorder would repel the Mrs. Fanns of the country. Even so, there are families milling around and entering restaurants, women holding up apples and mangoes at street stalls. Sanjeev tells her that his friends arrange cricket games in these lanes sometimes. On one wall, a mural of a woman peering from her headscarf watches over the crowded intersection.
As they scoot out of the cab, the driver winks at Sanjeev and says, “Good luck!” which makes Sanjeev’s cheeks turn red. Donita feels a throb of tenderness that grows as she watches him ask the front-desk manager about the rates, then hands over his identification. The front-desk manager is a woman wearing a navy blazer that is too tight around the shoulders. The tips of her long sideswept fringe are dyed the colour of milky coffee. She gives Donita only the quickest glance before handing the key card to Sanjeev.
The bed fills up the tiny room, barely furnished but clean, with white sheets, white walls. Sanjeev looks sheepish. Maybe it’s because he works in some classy hotels and has been inside the ones where you can stand over the bay and hold the entire city in your hands. “If you don’t like this place . . .” he says. His words trail off as he watches Donita’s face. He thinks she’s having second thoughts, or she’s disappointed, but actually she’s surprised by her emotions. I like any place where you are, she thinks before they tumble onto the bed together.
Donita has some awareness of how much time has passed, and she knows she should leave in the next few minutes if she wants to make it home by curfew, but it’s so hard to part with the cool air and the crisp sheets and Sanjeev’s bare body next to hers. Both of them are bathed in a sheen of sweat, and Sanjeev’s chest is still heaving, as if he cannot believe what just happened. It is not the time to invoke Mrs. Fann, but she pops into Donita’s head nonetheless. This morning before Donita left the house, Mrs. Fann made her stand with her legs and arms spread as she ran her hands up and down to check if Donita had taken anything. With a hard jab at Donita’s inner thighs, she asked her to spread her legs wider, and then she rummaged through Donita’s bag.
Sanjeev’s touch healed all the places that Mrs. Fann pawed at, but now, as their time together is dwindling to its last minutes, dread mounts in Donita’s stomach. If only she could buy time somehow, the way they bought the hour in this hotel, she could learn more about Sanjeev in those whispered, lingering conversations that happen only in bed. His eyes follow her naked body as she gathers her clothes. She steals a bit of time for this, picking up her bra and tracing her fingers along the front hooks, giving him a chance to savour the sight of her breasts before she pulls the cups closed like shutters. Bending to pick up her shorts, she is aware that his vision is filled with the curves of her bottom. It is the opposite of a striptease, and it’s riveting to Sanjeev, who smiles as if they are speaking a secret language. When Donita is finally fully clothed, she checks the time on her phone. “Okay, I really have to go now,” she says. If she leaves now by bus, she’ll be able to get home before curfew.
Sanjeev is sitting at the edge of the bed, and his arms are resting on each side of her waist in a loose embrace. “Don’t go yet,” Sanjeev says, drawing her back to bed. “Never mind your curfew. Tell your boss you got stuck in traffic.”
“Ha!” Donita says, pushing Sanjeev away. “Mrs. Fann doesn’t believe anything I say, even when I tell the truth.”
“Then just tell the truth,” Sanjeev says. Mischief twinkles in his eyes. “Tell her what you were really doing.”
Donita mimics putting her phone to her ear. “Hello, Mrs. Fann? I am late because I am having fun in a hotel room with my boyfriend.”
The word boyfriend falls out of her mouth and hangs in the air between them. It startles Sanjeev a little bit—Donita sees the jolt in his shoulders and the way his mouth suddenly twitches as if he wants to say, Boyfriend? She can feel the flush rising in her cheeks. “Just as an example,” she mutters, swiping her purse off the nightstand. “I don’t say it seriously.”
“Boyfriend is fine,” Sanjeev says. “But I don’t see you very often.”
“That’s why when we see each other, you don’t take me on tour of Singapore,” Donita snaps. She’s angry all over again at how much useless information about the railroad she had to learn today.
“Okay, okay.” Sanjeev puts up his hands. “Maybe we just have to plan better. I want to keep seeing you.”
“But you don’t want anything serious? I understand,” Donita scoffs, trying to hide her hurt.
Sanjeev pushes himself off the bed and wraps his arms around her. She falls into his chest, which is bare and slightly damp. “Stay here with me a few more minutes. I’ll call you a taxi to go home.”
Donita shuts her eyes. She has never felt this safe with anybody before, and she can feel her whole body go limp against his. “Okay,” she whispers, and time doesn’t matter anymore. The moments stretch and shrink when she is as far away as possible from Mrs. Fann’s flat.
