Authors: Fiona Cheong
"She watch too much TV," said Auntie Coco, as her sister
was opening the gate.
"You want some peas?" the sister asked, looking only at Shak
and ignoring me completely. She could be like that sometimes.
"No, thank you." A few strands of hair fell over Shak's face
as she shook her head, so gracefully, even in the heat. I saw both Auntie Coco and the sister noticing it, as if only now were they
seeing the auburn hue of Shak's hair, not black like the rest of
ours. But who could miss seeing her hair the first time they saw
her? It used to drive the boys wild, that hair, all the boys,
Chinese, Malay, Indian, European, their background didn't matter when it came to Shak. Because of her hair, and also what
some of the lay teachers used to call, Shak's six-million-dollar
eyelashes (the teachers were punning, of course, on the six-million-dollar man, Lee Majors, the American actor).
"Sabi," said Auntie Coco. "See?" And she put her hands on
Shak's womb again, moving them around this time, a bit gingerly, as if to make sure not to disturb the baby while she measured the length and width of its head. That was how it looked
to me, what Auntie Coco was doing, although maybe she was
measuring something else, somehow.
The sister also put her hands on Shak's womb, and I looked
at Shak to see if all this touching was making her uncomfortable. But Shak seemed quite at ease with it, you know. She was
looking down, watching their hands, with her head tilted sideways, her beautiful hair falling against her cheek.
Other neighbors may have seen us out there, although
there was still no one else outside, and Evelina Thumboo had
gone back into her house.
I remember looking over at the jacaranda, its violet flowers
spreading so delicately in the evening light. Evelina Thumboo's
lamp was on, the usual one by her living-room window. Her
curtains were open, I remember, and so were the curtains in
most of our other neighbors' houses.
"Babi, what do you say?" Auntie Coco was asking.
"Boy," her sister replied, with a giggle. "Boy baby."
Auntie Coco smiled, looking pleased, and for some reason,
I noticed the wrinkles around her eyes, as if she might be older
than I used to think she was.
"You want a boy?" she asked Shak.
I already knew Shak's answer, although we hadn't talked
much about her baby, you know.
"I want my baby," she told Auntie Coco. "Boy or girl, I don't
care. I want my child." And there was something about the way
she was looking at Auntie Coco, I remember it now. I saw it even
then, but I couldn't place my finger on what was so odd about
her expression, only that maybe, she was starting to believe
Auntie Coco a bit.
"You have a boy. Ambitious also."
"How do you know?" I interrupted them, feeling a bit left out.
"Always kicking, right or not?" Auntie Coco went on, still
talking to Shak.
'That's why you think it's a boy?" I asked, just to see what
she would say. "Girl babies don't kick?"
Auntie Coco turned to me and asked, "You want to learn?"
but her tone implied she knew I wouldn't go for it. "You want to
learn, I can teach you."
I looked at Shak, who was watching me as if she were
holding her tongue about something. But about what, I wasn't
sure.
"We have to go," she said suddenly, to Auntie Coco and her
sister. "My mum, you know. She doesn't like it when people are
late for dinner."
"Ah, okay-lah," said Auntie Coco. "We talk some more
another time. Go, better go-ah."
"Go," echoed the sister, and she reached out and patted
Shak's womb as if for one last time.
And that was how we left them.
I THOUGHT SHAK would want to start talking right away about
Auntie Coco. I thought she was going to ask me right away,
whether or not I believed what Auntie Coco had foretold, but
as it turned out, Shak didn't speak until we were almost at her house, and then, what she asked me was, "Do you know how
Laura Timmerman's doing?"
Shak knew I wasn't in touch with most of our classmates,
but I hadn't told her it was by intent. Because then I would have
to tell her why, which would only drag up the fifteen years and
how much I had missed her, and she hadn't found time even for
a postcard. What would be the point, right? Better to move on
with life, as they say.
So I lied a hit, although I felt uncomfortable doing it, since
Shak and I weren't the sort to lie to each other. "She's fine," I
said, and fortunately I had seen Laura's two children from afar
once, when they were visiting their grandfather. So I was able
to refer to them, only not by name. I told Shak, "She has two
daughters. They're happy living in Australia."
'That's good," she murmured, and I wasn't sure which part
she was remembering, but I thought, since she had asked about
Laura Timmerman, perhaps her mind had drifted past that
night to the following morning. To our school tuckshop where
Laura Timmerman had told us (while Isabella was also there),
how the doctor and his wife had made their son strip off his
pajamas in the driveway, first the shirt, then the trousers, right
where all the neighbors could see, as well as anyone passing by
the house, man or woman, boy or girl.
All Laura's neighbors could do was stay away from their
windows. Keep their own faces out of sight. Laura and her
cousin who was visiting, they had heard everything from
upstairs in Laura's bedroom, how the son kept begging and begging, "Please-lah Daddy, please don't make me do it," when his
father was telling him to take off his trousers.
By the time Shak and I were stepping off the bus, he was
already fully naked, the son, and whimpering as he was being
dragged towards the gate. Thirteen years old, I remember,
younger than us. A St. Peter's boy. His hips so pale in the amber light, his penis sticking out like a carrot every time the doctor
grabbed his arm to prevent him from covering himself.
"How could a father do that to his own child?" Shak was
saying, as if she were reading my mind. It was the same thing
she had said on the night itself, when finally, we were able to
make ourselves walk away.
"1 don't know," I said, just as I had said before. Had Shak been
thinking about the doctor's son, the whole time Auntie Coco and
her sister had been touching her womb, and making predictions
about her baby? I wondered about it, but I couldn't make myself
ask the question. Not that I had forgotten anything, certainly not
what Shak and I had grown up hearing about the boy's sister, how
she had been kidnapped when she was four, and molested and
then murdered. (Her body wasn't found for two weeks, another
of our unsolved cases. Maybe that was why, because there was no
one else to blame, the parents kept punishing the son.) But I knew
how to put things on the back burner, so to speak. Because I didn't
want to become obsessed with the past. I wanted to move on, not
be like Americans, everyone going into therapy.
But the other side to the story was that at fifteen, Shak wasn't
meeting boys in the cemetery, yet. Neither of us had ever seen
a naked boy, you know. We hadn't even seen naked girls,
because in school, for P.E. everyone would change into shorts
and T-shirts in the bathroom stalls, all of us protecting our modesty in those days.
So being Americanized, maybe that was why, even after we
had seen the doctors house, Shak couldn't put it behind her easily.
That was what I told myself, because I didn't want to think
she might be holding on to it on purpose. Because I wanted to
move on, as I've said.
So I brought us back to Auntie Coco.
"What do you think about what Auntie Coco said?" I asked
Shak. "You think the baby might be born early?"
"Maybe," she said. "But the baby's not a boy."
"You've already found out?"
No. I just have a feeling."
We were passing Willy Coleman's house, I remember, his
front door closed, curtains drawn across all the windows downstairs as usual. (Because he was a very private man, that Willy
Coleman, and his wife, being from China, she had never tried
to have much say about anything, and their son was only eleven
years old. He had even less say, that poor Matthew. Always getting caned for one thing or another, you know.)
Next door to Willy Coleman's house was his mother's
house, and I could see Adelaide Coleman's other grandson, the
older one who lived with her, Nathan, talking on the telephone
in the living room. He was standing near a window, smiling and
laughing and shrugging his shoulders this way and that.
Probably talking to a girl, and no wonder. Because he was
becoming quite a heart-throb, that boy. Like Ivan Anthony in
our time, I could see it coming already, and I wondered vaguely whether Adelaide would be able to control him, or was it true
that every child needed at least two parents?
Shak hadn't told me anything about the baby's father, but I
was sure she would tell me eventually. Maybe she could sense I
didn't want to talk about it, yet, which I myself wasn't aware of.
Only looking back now, I see it may have been what was going
on with me.
"Do you think she's right?" Shak asked me, as we reached
her gate.
I was surprised, because I thought for sure, she would remember why Auntie Coco might call the baby a boy if the baby was
actually a girl. To deceive the spirits, of course, to confuse them
in case they came looking for a newborn. Which sometimes, spirits would do, come looking for a newborn, for whatever reason.
So I told her, "Yes, Auntie Coco's right. She's one of those
women, okay? She can tell about things like that."
Shak looked at me for a moment, and I could feel her uncertainty over what to say, as if again, she was holding something
back. Then she asked, "Are you sure about her? This Auntie
Coco. She's reliable?"
And I was relieved. Because we shouldn't have been talking
so openly about it, you know, especially standing on the road
like that.
Not that the cemetery, which was only several feet away,
the air there dusky with the approaching night, with the aroma
of frangipani and jasmine damp like dew on the leaves, not that
it was anything to fear, or Che' Halimah even. But who could
tell who or what might be listening?
Whether the baby ghost was more than a rumor, or not.
"Yes," I told Shak. "Auntie Coco's reliable."
And it seemed to be all she needed to hear.
MOST OF THE neighbors were home that evening, Evelina
Thumboo, as I've already said, and Gopal Dharma, his car was
parked in the driveway when we had passed by his house. Also,
the baskets left by the two girls were gone by then. (We hadn't
seen the girls that afternoon, but their baskets had been there
when Shak and I had passed the house earlier. Jo and Susanna,
who would come every Friday to weed Gopal Dharma's garden.
We had seen their baskets on the front step, so they must have
left by the time we were leaving for our walk.) My mother wasn't
home, since she was at Holy Family, playing gin rummy with
Father O'Hara and Sister Sylvia. Because that was her act of
charity, as my mother would say, and every Friday evening, it
was where she went, to Holy Family, and she would stay there
sometimes as late as ten o'clock. Willy Coleman was home, and
Adelaide, too, and Wong Siew Chin and her husband Jeremy,
and Serena and Ivan. All of them would come outside later, I
remember, when Auntie Coco started calling for her sister.
Sally Soo-Tho would come out as well, and Bernadette Tan,
who was good friends with my mother (even though my mother
was always complaining about her). Wong Siew Chin was also
friends with my mother, but she was closer friends with Dorothy
Nco (who I don't think was home). Those were the yakkity-yaks,
the main ones. Sally Soo-Tho and Bernadette Tan couldn't have
seen Shak and me when we were outside Auntie Coco's house,
because their houses were too far up the slope. But they were only
a few doors away from Shak's house, you know. They may have
seen us outside Shak's gate, since we were there talking for a while.
Later, when people were going over the night, no one
would say anything about a baby ghost, or about any girl hovering nearby. As if none of our neighbors could see her, not one
of them, not even Auntie Coco.
So where had that rumor begun?
Shak was standing beside me, waiting, as I closed the gate
after us. We could smell her mother's mutton curry, rich and
spicy, coming from the back of the house, and I was thinking,
at that moment, about Isabella. I was thinking of Isabella coming to the library that afternoon, and on the morning Laura
Timmerman was telling everyone about the doctor's son (how
after the doctor had pushed him outside the gate, he had
crawled underneath a neighbor's car parked on the road, and he
had hidden there until a servant was sent to get him, when it
was almost midnight). I was thinking about Isabella watching
Shak, the whole time Laura was talking, and when Shak finally
noticed, the two of them had exchanged looks, just for a quick
second, and then they had turned away from each other.
Since Shak had never spoken to me about it, I must have
thought after a while, I had imagined it. But I hadn't, you know.
"Rose?"
I knew from her tone, Shak was thinking I wanted to say
something, but there wasn't anything to say. So I shook my
head, and I answered, "Nothing."
"You sure?"
Her American accent sounded stronger when I couldn't
see her face clearly, since by now, the sun had gone down.
That's how I remember the moment, not because it bothered me
to hear the accent. Because on that other night, we were standing like that also, although it was later in the night, and she had
asked my name like a question. Only then, her voice was still
Singaporean, and young, so young. I wasn't sure when I had felt
her lips touching mine what was happening, whether she was
kissing me or not, and I've never been sure.