Shadow Theatre (5 page)

Miss Shakilah shook her head and smiled. "No, I don't," she
told Malika.

There was sorrow in her smile, Malika thought at first, and
then she wondered if she was mistaken, since there would be no
reason for Miss Shakilah to feel sorrow over a child she didn't
know, and Malika didn't get the feeling that Miss Shakilah was
lying.

"Has Madam seen her?" asked Miss Shakilah, and Malika
wasn't sure if she meant earlier that morning, or if Miss Shakilah
was inquiring as to whether Madam knew there was a ghost in
the garden?

She wondered why Miss Shakilah hadn't asked Madam about
it herself, but there could have been any number of reasons. They hadn't seen each other in fifteen years and in a way, Miss Shakilah
and Madam were just starting to get to know each other as
friends. There was so much else for them to share about their
present lives. And Miss Shakilah was preoccupied with worry
about her book (and her baby). Or perhaps she didn't want to
worry Madam, in the event that Madam hadn't seen the girl.

"No, Miss, I don't think so," said Malika, without clarifying
for herself exactly what Miss Shakilah had meant by her last
question because there was no time. She could hear Madam
leaving the dining room, which was only a few footsteps away
from the kitchen, down a small corridor with walls covered with
photographs of the grandchildren growing up (there were seven
now, the elder four boys and Michelle's three girls).

Madam's flat heels tapped lightly on the parquet floor as
they came towards the kitchen. In less than half a minute,
Madam was standing in the doorway, with a pink rattan bag
slung over her right shoulder and a yellow one hanging from
her left hand, both overstuffed with books and manila folders,
and she was saying to Miss Shakilah, "Are you ready, darling?"

"Madam," Malika began, but Madam knew what she was
about to say and was already waving Malika's words away with her
right hand, her diamond ring sparkling on her wedding finger.

"Yes, I know, Malika. Tomorrow. Tomorrow afternoon, I'll
go shopping for one of those travel carts. Okay?" She smiled
and explained to Miss Shakilah, "Malika's so sweet, always worrying about me. Come, let's go."

"You tell her, Miss," Malika pleaded with Miss Shakilah
before she left the room, and Miss Shakilah nodded and agreed
to try to coax Madam into not carrying such heavy bags.

Neither of them mentioned the girl, almost as if that conversation hadn't occurred, but Malika could see on Miss
Shakilah's face when she was walking out (although Miss
Shakilah wasn't looking at her directly) a kind of relief, her features relaxing as if she understood something now, as if a curtain were beginning to rise and someone had lit a candle for her in
the darkness ahead.

That was the feeling Malika was left with, as she removed
the damp clothes from the washing machine and dropped them
into the dryer (it was Francesca who had bought the washing
machine and dryer and insisted that Malika learn to use them).
She could hear Madam's car backing out of the driveway in the
front of the house, then a pause, then the long, slow swing of
the wrought-iron gate. Madam never called her out to close the
gate for her anymore, not even when it rained.

H A N D R A SUBRINAYA. SHE'S probably changed her name
by now, to her husband's name, whatever it is. Probably
some kind of Western name, because Chandra was one of those,
always hankering after the angmo boys. The blonder, the better,
was her motto. Not that she would ever admit it, but it was obvious to anyone who wasn't blind. All you had to do in those days
was wait around after her shift at the library was over, and see
who came to pick her up. Without fail, it was always an angmo,
usually American, since there were already a lot of Americans
working in Singapore at the time, which was also why I thought
Shak wouldn't find it so strange to be here-if she felt strange.

Chandra must have wondered about it herself, whether
Shak was going to seek out the company of Americans, and
what sort of competition that would be for her.

Of course it had occurred to me Shak might feel a tiny bit
strange. Even if there was no reason for her to feel that way
because she was from here, we don't always feel the way we
should, right? Fifteen years. That's a long time to be away from
anywhere, but especially where Singapore's concerned. We had
changed a lot, you know. Our whole country was getting a
facelift. Already, we had jumped from being the third busiest
port in the world when Shak left to being the first, busier even
than New York City or Amsterdam-imagine.

Luckily our neighborhood hadn't changed that much. Not
yet, although some houses were being renovated along River
Road, where new families had moved in. On our own road,
Auntie Coco and her sister were the only neighbors Shak didn't
know, since they had moved in in 1985, and by then, Shak had
been gone for six years already. (The family that used to live in
Auntie Coco's house had moved out after the grandmother
died. For a few years the house had remained empty, so people
were saying it was haunted by the grandmother's ghost. But
then Auntie Coco and her sister had bought the house, and as
my mother and her yakkity-yak friends were keen to point out,
Auntie Coco hadn't tried to sell the house in all the time that
she and her sister had been living in it, so the grandmother's
ghost was just a rumor, in their opinion.)

And the old Muslim cemetery was still there, on our side of
the granite wall that ran along the back of the cemetery, with
Kampong Alam on the other side, where Che' Halimah lived.
She and our mothers used to be classmates, you know. She,
too, had once been a pupil at the convent. Che' Halimah,
whom most people knew of only as the bomoh. She was still
living that year, and I wondered if Shak would want to go and
visit her, but I thought I wouldn't ask. In case the idea hadn't entered Shak's mind, I didn't want to put it there. With the old
Shak, there would have been no question that she would want
to see Che' Halimah, but we were much older now, not
teenagers anymore, foolish and restless the way we used to be.

Shak, in particular, had to think for two, as they say.

It still looked the same, the cemetery, except that the
hinges on the iron gate at the River Road entrance were so rusted now, no one bothered to try to close the gate anymore and
it was always ajar. But the fence was still only on the River Road
side. Along the side facing our houses there had never been a
fence, and even though I remember people would talk about
putting up some kind of barrier, no one had tried to do it. In
our schooldays that was the side Shak would use to enter the
cemetery, you know, right there in front of everyone's windows. Of course she would do it only at night, waiting until
after people were supposed to be asleep. Then she would slip
out of her house and cross the road. It was easier than walking
down to River Road and all the way to the iron gate. Still, I
wouldn't have taken that sort of risk if I were the one meeting
boys in secret, to experiment with you know what, over by the
baby's shrine, because they could find shelter there in case it
rained.

No one else knew how reckless Shak could be. People
around here always knew she was wild (only at the convent was
anyone fooled into believing Shak was Miss Goody Two
Shoes-Mrs. Sandhu for sure, our Secondary One form-mistress who had been Shak's favorite teacher the whole time we
were in school-although of course the Sisters always knew the
truth, about Shak, because you can't fool nuns, you know). But
only I knew what Shak actually did, and what her limits were,
because I was her best friend, her oldest and closest friend. That
was why nowadays I had fallen into the habit of avoiding people from our past, which is not an easy thing to do in Singapore,
but how else was I to save face? Because if someone were to ask me directly why Shak hadn't kept in touch with anyone-not
even me-while she was in America, what could I say?

Fifteen years she was over there. And now, out of the blue,
she was back. Pregnant and without a single sparkle on her finger. Not even an engagement ring-imagine.

Still, what was important was that she had come home at
last. Not for good, but at least to visit. Let bygones be bygones,
I kept telling myself.

True friendship never dies, you know.

RY SEEING MR. DHARMA'S garden the way it was, not
overgrown with neglect as it is now but ripe with rambutans
and papayas where they hung, nestled richly in his trees, the
grove of tall, green sugar cane that leaned on the fence in
the corner, the wild barrage of stalky, umbrella-shaped weeds
in the stippled shade. He offered Jo and me four cents for every
weed when the going rate was three, because he knew we were
thorough. (You must dig a weed out at its base, work your trowel carefully through the dirt so you can scoop the whole thing
out, with its roots intact. Most of the other weeders would give
up halfway down and just yank out what they could. Weeds will almost always grow back in this soil, no matter what you do, but
they take longer if you attack them at their roots.) Charlotte
liked teasing us about it off and on, or rather, she liked teasing
me, and if it weren't for Jo's reminding me each time that
Charlotte was just speaking out of envy, I may have minded
more than I did.

And I did mind, but not enough to stop hanging around
with her. I put this information down so you'll know our history with Charlotte and how it was to be friends with her, so you
won't be surprised when I tell you that Jo and I hadn't spoken
with her (except at school) since our afternoon in the cemetery,
nor with Phillipa and Fay, until they stopped by Mr. Dharma's
garden the following week.

Anyone willing to talk about that Friday will probably want
to tell you about Auntie Coco's sister and how she disappeared
that night, never to be found. One or two of our neighbors
might even share with you some gossip, if you're patient enough
to get them going, if you can wait without interfering for subtle
disclosures to be made in the midst of aimlessly unwinding sentences, for secrets to be unmasked in glances cast askance, for
the sudden lowering of a tone, the last spoken word precious as
a gem. Jo and I weren't home that night, and there's no point to
my piecing together for you what we weren't around to witness
when I could tell you about the afternoon, instead, irrelevant as
some of it may be to what you think you want to know ...