Shadow Theatre (31 page)

Why did I lie to Fatimah? Because this story now belongs to
you, my darling.

Your grandmother, Valerie Nair, believed your sister had no
heart, that the doctors had missed nothing, that there never was
a heartbeat. You hear what I'm saying? Your sister was a stillbirth.

YOUR GRANDMOTHER, VALERIE, bathed her before the
ambulance arrived. In an enamel basin, in frangipani water, on
the floor of your mother's bedroom, away from the windows.
She knelt over your sister's body and rubbed off the blood, peeling the placenta from your sister's foot and slipping it into her
own pocket. We all saw it. Your mother, I, and Sister Rosalind,
who also was there that night and had not yet decided to
become a nun. Yes, they were close, Sister Rosalind and your
mother. They were childhood friends, like you and Fatimah.
Rose, Sister Rosalind was called in those days.

We had to change the water six times before it remained
clean when we immersed your sister.

I took you from your mother when Rose-Sister Rosalindwho was watching by the windows, saw the ambulance arrive.

We were in the bathroom downstairs when the men entered
your grandmother's house. You were already asleep, a limp and
heavy wonder in my arms, your hot breath blowing over the
hair on my skin. You flinched when the men went up the stairs,
and I heard you whimper, but when they came back down, carrying your mother and your sister, you were quiet.

Your mother's bedroom was already cleaned up when the
men saw it. They didn't know about you, and all they would
have heard if they had been listening on the stairs would have
been the water I had left running in the bathroom sink, a
rhythm to keep you soothed, a murmuring like your mother's
blood, to make you think her muscle was nestled against your
head, her hones cradling you.

Neither Rose nor I asked your grandmother that night what
she was going to do with the piece of placenta in her pocket, and
later it seemed to me, as it must have to Rose, that some questions should he left alone, that perhaps it was better for you not
to know everything.

Now you've kachaued all of that, my darling, you and your
grandmother, as perhaps is the inevitable outcome. No doubt,
she still has it, that piece that was stuck to your sister's foot
locked away in one of her lacquered boxes, tucked between the
pages of your mother's last hook, the one your mother was trying to finish writing before you were born, the one she was
afraid her American publisher would not accept and yet she had
written it anyway, for you.

Rose and I searched high and low for it that night, while
your grandmother sat outside with you on the patio. Perhaps
some of what you dream is hers, the trace of eau de cologne
from her skin, the taste of limes and jasmine in the dark. It was the only time I would break my promise to your mother to keep
you away from your grandmother until you were grown up.
Because your grandmother was already falling ill-that was why
your mother gave you to me, and why I let your grandmother
hold you that night. Her mind had already begun to send words
out of her mouth that made no sense. What she believed about
your sister having no heart, about there being a hollow space in
her rib cage where the heart was supposed to be. She was sure
she had felt the hollow space when she bathed your sister.

If she approaches you again, ask her for that book, your
mother's book. See what she says. Rose and I never found it. I
am sure your grandmother has it. But don't follow her into the
house, my darling, if only to honor your mother's last request.

No matter if some of the neighbors see you. They won't
recognize you. You do not have your mother's face.

LISTEN TO THE wind outside. Nothing so beautiful as the freedom of the wind, the music it makes roaming through the
branches of the banyans. Hear how it slides between the leaves,
sprinkling what we have been into the night, the ashes of our
skin, droplets of what you and I have spoken and will speak,
here in our time together, here a humming consonant, there an
open vowel, our memory gathered and looped like necklaces
and bracelets over the earth's own blades of grass.

We are the earth's own, my darling. Hear how your mother
is not lost, never lost. Hear which beads in the wind are hers.

Your grandmother may have used Halimah's powder on
your grandfather, and I was not the only one who had always
suspected it. You understand our silence now?

Now go and let Malika know we will be ready to eat soon.
Then come back and bring another candle. No, leave the windows open. It will not rain, not tonight.

-1 I.\'GLISH. THE E.\'GLISI I vernacular of Singaporeans, is a hybrid
language formed from the blending of King's English, Hokkien, and
Malay, languages spoken by this island's largest communities following
British colonization. Hokkien is properly termed a dialect, originating in the
Fukien province in China. Malay is indigenous to the region, and while the
path of its formation remains uncertain, Arabic and Sanskrit influences are
evident.