Shadow Theatre (13 page)

I heard her sigh. "Are you sure you don't want some
aspirin?" she asked, and I made myself speak.

"No, I don't want any aspirin," I said. I could hear the quake
in my voice, even though I had tried to speak steadily.

She sighed again. What was she sighing for? I was the one
being pierced. To have to live out the rest of your days hearing your granddaughter call the wrong woman Grandma. Imagine
it. That Jezebel, holding my granddaughter's hand, teaching her
things.

Not to mention the immense shame. How would I show my
face around the neighborhood, hold my head up amidst the
buzzing gossip, the pity, everyone glancing sideways and not daring to speak to me? Had she thought about that? Had she thought
what a sword she was driving through my soul? Wasn't it enough
that I was already enduring her shame? Shakilah wasn't deaf. She
could hear the whispers that had been travelling up and down the
road all week, some of them directed at me. Eh, the apple doesn't fall far
from the tree. She must have known before she came home what
would happen. Arriving with her belly so ripe, her left hand empty.

"What did I do?" I asked her, trying again to hold my voice
steady. "What has made you so angry with me, Shakilah?"

"You know," she said, quite sharply. Then she looked at me,
as if she had been waiting a long time for me to ask her that
question. Now she was waiting for me to say something else,
but I didn't know what she was referring to at all.

"No." I shook my head. "No, darling, I don't know."

"You know," she said again, defiantly and suddenly sounding
just like Ben, in the old days when Ben and I were dating, when
we were young and innocent, and he was still sweet, and in love
with me. Those were the old days. Life changes. Or maybe it
was marriage that had changed us, Ben and me, or just age. I
never knew what had made him start looking at me differently,
and in the end, it didn't matter. What I did, I had to do. But
Shakilah didn't know about any of it. I was sure she didn't know
what I had done to save her. I had been very careful. I hadn't
wanted her to carry the burden of knowing.

"What is it?" I asked, and I tried to sound gentle and loving.
"Please tell me, darling." I wanted her to understand I was her mother, that I would do anything for her, even though the truth was that
I wasn't feeling very strong, and my hands were trembling.

You think I don't remember." Her voice was almost a whisper. I saw her take in a deep breath, and then she went on, "I
remember."

I didn't know what she was talking about.

"I thought it was a dream. I thought I dreamt it."

Now I thought I knew the incident to which she was referring, but I still didn't know why she was angry at me, unless
she was blaming me for allowing it to happen. Was that it? I
didn't want to interrupt her, so I tried to study her face. But
Shakilah was looking down at her hands, and even in the dimness in the room, the last vestiges of daylight ebbing away fast,
I could sense the deadening between us. It was as if blood and
air had left your mother's body, as if her bones and skin were
only remnants of the child I had carried. Only her soul was still
wandering, blowing about like a piece of seashell in that desert
that was inside her. I didn't know what to do, except sit there
and wait for whatever else was coming, and accept it. At my
age, I could feel fate's hand when it reached in. Maybe guilt had
something to do with it. Maybe. Yes, you always have guilt,
even when you know you had no choice.

"Children don't have such dreams. Or if they do, they're
signs. The dreams are signs."

She sounded as if she had turned into a stranger, right
before my eyes. That was how she sounded. On the surface,
nothing was changing. She looked the same, with Ben's thick
eyelashes and his thick hair, which his relatives had been so
happy about, even if she wasn't his coloring. Not that they had
ever mentioned it-the only time his relatives had shown some
discretion. But I had seen it on their faces, right from the start.
As soon as they had left the hospital room, they must have told
one another, Aiya, lucky. The girl has her father's looks. Yes, my feelings were hurt, but I was able to convince myself it was okay. As
long as Ben loved me, who cared if his relatives didn't find me
pretty enough for him? But it was a relief to cut them off after the funeral, not to have to keep tolerating their insults and accusations. They hadn't wanted me to send Shakilah away, especially to America, by herself. If Ben hadn't been so ill, they
would have succeeded in stopping me. Yes, they would have,
because it would have been them against me. My relatives? No
need to ask about them. They've never been involved.

I wondered if your sister was awake, listening to what was
going on between her mother and her grandmother. She was
going to be a beautiful child. I already knew it, her soul untainted like the first soul in Paradise, her goodness intact like a butterfly's body curled up in its cocoon, like a flower before it buds. But
she was staying so quiet, now I couldn't tell if she was awake.

"You put your hand between my legs."

Imagine a mother hearing those words from her own
daughter. Even if you've been waiting for them, you're not prepared. She had never talked about it. The doctors at Mount
Alvernia had told me the wound was small, it would heal. She's
lucky. Whoever did this could have killed her, if he went deeper. We didn't
know if she would even remember. I had hoped she wouldn't.
Halimah had said she might not, and I had hoped for it. But I
must have known that it was impossible, that her body was
marked, her mind ravaged beyond repair. I wasn't surprised to
hear her speak about it, finally. What I wasn't expecting was
where it would lead.

"You thought I was asleep. I wasn't."

She was still looking at her hands, trying to find in herself
what was no longer there, I thought. A stolen beginning. A
stolen home. My poor darling.

"I wasn't asleep. I know what you did, Mama."

At first, I couldn't respond. I thought I must have misheard
her. But I had been listening too carefully to have done that.
"What are you saying?" I asked her. "Do you hear what you're
saying?"

"You put your hand between my legs."

"No."

"How could you do such a thing?"

Was she mad? Had she gone mad? "No," I repeated. "I didn't
do that to you. Listen to me, Shakilah. I didn't do that to you."
I kept shaking my head, as if that would make her believe me.
She wasn't even looking at me.

"You put your hand between my legs," she said a third time,
still looking down at her hands, not at me. "How old was 1?
Four? Five? You thought I wouldn't remember."

She was confused, I thought. Perhaps she had woken up
once while I was putting on the ointment, even though I would
wait until she was fast asleep each time. Had she been asleep
when he touched her? I had never found out for sure, understand. Halimah hadn't said it was Ben, and if it was, surely I had
acted in time.

No, Halimah had seen to it that the powder she gave me
would not stop his heart, but his hands could do nothing. Not
anymore.

"You. It was you."

"Darling, no."

"Mama, it was you."

Was it why then, she was the way she was, her passions
straying off in their unnatural direction? But if she believed it
was I who had committed such an abhorrent act, how could she
bear to have more women touch her? How could she bear to
touch them herself? In her anger?

Eve's hand. Eve's fingers caressing her skin. The thought of
it sickened me. With my granddaughter helpless in the womb,
able to hear everything. I had to shut my eyes, and breathe
deeply so as not to faint.

"Why did you do it?" Her voice was hardly a sigh. My
Shakilah. My darling girl. Was the other one also my age? Were
all of them? How many had there been? There must have been
more than one. It was America.

I couldn't stand it anymore. To have it come to this, after all
the fear and suffering and loneliness and waiting, just waiting,
for someone to find out. To have her lying down with women
out of some kind of revenge directed at me, because she
thought I was the one. Not even women her age, but women
too old for men, ugly hags, and all the hungrier for it. Their fingers. Imagine their fingers, hard, skeletal, clawing at her.
Imagine their mouths, their dry breath. Greedy. I had done this
to my daughter. Somehow, it was my doing.

I got up. I went straight upstairs to the bathroom, my head
and chest pounding, my stomach nauseous. I closed the door
because I didn't want her to hear me. I didn't want her sympathy.

All I wanted now was my granddaughter. A chance to live
out my years as a grandmother with a child who loved me. It
was a simple wish. It was all I wanted. Was it so much to ask for?

HELENA S I M

O U KNOW THE story of Pontianak, right? She was stillborn,
the daughter of the first Langsuir. Aiya, you don't know what
a Langsuir is? Ya-lah, a vampire. Legend has it she was living as an
ordinary lady at the time, Pontianak's mother, but with extraordinary beauty-lah, and maybe that was the reason for her misfortune. Because when she found out that her baby was stillborn, and
then, worse, had become Pontianak, a vampire doomed to prey on
women in labor, the shock of it was so great, she died. To this day,
no one knows who performed black magic on her baby. But if you
want my opinion, I can tell you some other lady must have been
too jealous of the Langsuirs beauty. Maybe Pontianak's father was hanky-pankying around, who knows? Ah, so anyway, young people nowadays, they call it superstition, but it's true, you know.
Pontianak exists. This is not just some old wives' tale, okay? Any
time a woman gives birth, the family better be careful. Especially
if they know beforehand the birth is going to be difficult, that
could be a sign-lah. Pontianak and her mother are always waiting,
you know. Together, the two of them. Ya-lah, that was why the
mother became a Langsuir again, so she could be with her daughter. According to legend, what she did was clap her hands.
Imagine-lah, if you had been in the room with her, watching her
clap her hands when her baby was dead. Her relatives must have
known at once something odd was happening. That was how she
became the first Langsuir-lah. After clapping her hands, suddenly
she screeched like an owl and flew out the window into a tree.

"That's folklore only," Bernadette said to me, when I tried to
explain. That coconut-head. Folklore doesn't mean it's not true,
but she was always like that, ever since I've known her. Forever
trying to be skeptical, just for the sake of being skeptical.

"Alamak, these are warning signs, Bernadette," I said, trying
to keep my patience. What I meant was this. Something fishy
was going on in the spirit world, and what with Valerie's daughter coming home pregnant like that. Life isn't that full of coincidences, okay? But who knew whether Valerie herself was putting two and two together. Probably not, so someone better
warn her, hukan? No? Mothers are full of blind spots. But that
Bernadette, she refused to see my logic.

"We don't know what's going on between those two," she
said. "Fifteen years that girl refused to come home. Who knows
why. Now you want to go and interfere. You gila?"

"Warning is not interfering, okay?" I said.

"Aiya, I tell you that story's just a legend-lah," she said. "I
never believed it, okay?"

"Eh, you liar," I said. That Bernadette, she couldn't fool me,
after all our years of knowing each other. I asked her, "So now you want me to think the ghost this morning was just my
imagination?"

She didn't want to answer, but I knew what she was thinking. That was just my luck-lah. To be honest, Bernadette wouldn't
have been my first choice to tell about my experience. But
what to do, she was the only one who happened to be around
that afternoon. I was desperate, okay? I didn't wake up from my
nap until half-past two. See what a deep sleep I had fallen into,
just as if I had been put under a spell. Rose had already come
home and gone out again, all without my knowing. The last
thing I wanted was to be left by myself the rest of the day. So,
that was why I started calling people, and just my luck, Dorothy
and Siew Chin both were out clothes shopping. I was a bit upset
with them, you know, Dorothy and Siew Chin. Why hadn't
they called to ask if I wanted to go? But the two of them could
be like that sometimes. Sometimes they would go out just so
Siew Chin could complain to Dorothy ad infinitum about
Jeremy. Since Hock Siew and I had had the perfect marriage,
they didn't want me along-lah. Of course I knew this. Ah, so
anyway, no one answered the phone except Bernadette. (I don't
think Dorothy's girl was home, that Lulu Mendez. Unless
maybe she was off in her room with her nose in a book.) So this
was how come I was stuck with Bernadette-lah.