Shadow Theatre (6 page)

We, too, were once like you.

TAM NEVER EXPLAINED to Malika why suddenly
she was afraid of burglars entering the house while they
were asleep. And Malika hadn't asked about it because the truth
was that she had never been comfortable sleeping with the windows open all night. She used to worry especially about the
children, even though Malika herself was only twelve when
Madam's mother had sent her down from Malacca to help out.
(Malika, like both Madam and Sali, was Malaccan by birth, and
from what I've heard, Malika's mother had taken care of Madam
when Madam was a child, and it was she who had suggested to
Madam's mother that Malika be sent over when Madam became pregnant with Caroline. Madam's main help at the time was
a Sri Lankan woman already in her fifties, whom Madam's
mother-in-law had hired for Madam and her husband when
they got married, and who no doubt was having her hands full
with Francesca, who had been two at the time. That was what
Malika's mother had argued, or so Malika would recall the conversation that had taken place on the other side of a closed bedroom door a few afternoons before she was put on the small,
crowded bus to Singapore. On that bus Malika had stared
through the dusty, half-open window at the passing rows of rubber trees, while the bodies of the other passengers surged and
hurled themselves back and forth around her. She had had to
stand, even though Madam's mother had paid for a seat, because
a skinny twelve-year-old girl had to rely on the kindness of
strangers, and on the occasion that the kindness was missing,
that was simply one's fate for the day. And so she had stood, her
insides twisted in a hard, tight ache, unbearable at first, only by
the time the bus was pulling into the terminus on this side of the
Causeway, miles of dust and sweat (hers and that of strangers
leaning much too close for her liking) were clinging to her like
a sick rash, and Malika's relief when she recognized Madam
waving to her on the pavement outside, with Ahmad, the chauffeur, waiting patiently by Madam's side to carry Malika's bag for
her, was so great, it felt to Malika like a burst of joy, and the
ache from hours ago became nothing more than a simple throbbing, nothing more than another heartbeat whispering against
her ribs. She would forget it, not notice it for years, until after
Michelle left. Only then would Malika start dreaming of the
green gossamer light of the rubber trees. Only then would she
wonder how anyone could misplace a memory of love.)

Malika's room was outside the kitchen, separated from the
main part of the house by the passageway in which sat the
washing machine and the dryer. It was a bigger room than
either Sali's or mine, and Malika had had it to herself for years, since she was twenty-two (when the Sri Lankan woman had fallen ill with diabetes, and in spite of the fact that there were better doctors in Singapore and Madam had offered to pay for her
medical expenses, Aatha, as she was called, had decided it was
time to go home and live out her old age with her family). Even
with the double bed (I, too, had a double bed in my room, but
Sali's room had only a single bed), the armoire with a full-length
mirror on one of its doors (Sali and I had only chests of drawers with mirrors on top), and a small blue desk that had once
been shared between Francesca and Caroline when they were in
primary school (by the time Michelle came along, Madam's husband's insurance firm was doing so well, he and Madam had
decided to renovate the house and buy all new furniture), even
with all of that, there was enough floor space on which to set
up Malika's Scrabble board if we so wished, or rather, when Sali
could be cajoled into playing. (I enjoyed playing Scrabble very
much and so, too, did Malika. Sometimes she would play with
Madam's grandchildren when they visited, just as she had
played with the girls when they were young. But the grandchildren owned a fancy deluxe edition, with a rotating base and a
plastic board with a grid to prevent the tiles from sliding about.
That was how Malika had come to inherit the old edition,
which she kept in a corner of the blue desk, and which she
much preferred because of its sentimental value.)

Of course in the beginning Malika had hoped for a different
room eventually. Even the sewing room would have suited her, as
small as it was and with a window facing part of the brick wall built
by Madam's British neighbor around his house next door. (This
was the neighbor living in the house to the right of Madam's when
one looked at the houses from the road. He was a tall, reserved
gentleman who as far as Malika knew worked for the British High
Commission, and whom she would later nickname Prince Phillip
because of the uncanny resemblance she thought he bore to the
Queen's husband, but as Sali and I were never around when the neighbor stepped out of his house, we couldn't agree or disagree).
Malika's heart had sunk when Aatha had left and she had realized
the impossibility of finding a plausible enough excuse to ask for a
room inside the house. Unveiling to Madam (who was still her
employer, no matter how kind Madam was, and who would have
had to consult her husband) either of her actual reasons was out of
the question. And so the passing years had layered upon Malika's
lips a silence shifting as the rubber leaves used to shift on the
grounds of a plantation, in small spirals of resignation and a
tapering hope. We could hear the inaudible sighs when she
talked, or rather, we could feel their outline, like the glimmering
impression hanging behind one's closed eyelids of things not
there. Sali was too young and self-absorbed to be concerned, and
perhaps so was I, hut on occasion I would wonder if Malika had
changed her mind after all, if she had come to her senses, as I saw
it, and realized that few servants were as well off as she.

The sewing room was no longer used as a sewing room and,
in fact, had been used only briefly when Madam had converted
it into a sewing room in 1963 (Madam's school principal had
assigned her to teach some of the sewing classes that year while
the regular sewing teacher went on maternity leave, and Madam
had confessed to Malika she was out of practice and that was
why she needed Malika and Aatha to clear out the storeroom
and clean it up, the sooner the better because Madam had purchased a new Singer and it was to be delivered within the week,
one that even stitched buttonholes).

Another bird flew past one of Madam's windows on that Friday
afternoon, the one in the sewing room this time. I was passing by
the doorway on my way back from the bathroom. Sali had played
enough with Madam's jewelry for the time being, and she and
Malika had gone into Malika's room because Malika's room was
cooler than Madam's without air conditioning. (Malika had an air
conditioner in her room, which neither Sali nor I had, but during
the day she preferred fresh air, since at night, her windows were always shut. I would have chosen air conditioning at any time, and
Sali would have, too, if we could have chosen. It was only Malika
who could afford to enjoy the shady, dappled light of the flamboyant trees outside her windows, enjoy the scratchy harmony of
a breeze now and then rocking the leaves.) I felt the bird's shadow
swerve over the sunlight just like before, and then there was only
sunlight, hard and brilliant on the British gentleman's brick wall.

Malika was kneeling on the floor by the bed, unfolding the
Scrabble board (the old edition had a cardboard one that folded in half for storage) and saying to Sali, At some point, you
should try not using the dictionary and see what happens,"
when I reached her room.

It was after four o'clock. A neighbors servant (not the British
gentleman's) was outside beating on a carpet, the flat slaps thudding away as the fence over which the carpet hung rattled
beneath its weight. Otherwise the air was quiet, with not even
the thread of a wailing baby anywhere.

Malika set the board down, then settled herself nimbly into
a position in which she was sitting with her back against the
bed. She stretched out her legs and swung them to the left of
the board, and then she stared for a moment at her feet peeking
out from her white salwar. She had always found her feet
unfeminine, flattish-looking like a duck's feet, as she put it.
Then she sighed and almost smiled, secretly, as if to remind herself to feel gratitude for small blessings bestowed on her by fate.
A continued delay in the onset of arthritis was more than a small
blessing of course, but Malika, like the rest of us, would realize
this only in hindsight, only when the first tiny degree of a hint
that flexibility was draining out of her limbs startled her, when
she found herself wincing as she swung her legs over the side of
the bed (such a simple action) on a morning yet to come.

But that time waited unforeseeably in the future on this afternoon, and except for Malika's news of her sighting of the girl
behind the sugar cane, it seemed a Friday like any other. Sali and I would stay until Madam came home, and then we would say
hello to Madam and leave and return on the bus to our lives in
Miss Shakilah's neighborhood (Sali worked for the Albuquerque
family, and I, for Miss Dorothy Neo, who was a spinster).
Although at the moment that I entered Malika's room a sensation
of lightheadedness took hold of me and the room spun into a
giddy whiteness, it was for no more than a few seconds. I blinked,
and there was Sali standing by a window, gazing rather wanly at
the flamboyant trees, and Malika was drawing columns on a
foolscap pad in her lap.

"Birds seem to he circling all around the house today," I said,
and Malika glanced up to see if I was referring in some way to
the girl. When she saw I wasn't trying to, she turned her attention hack to the columns, writing her name in neat, cursive blue
letters at the top of the first one.

Sali continued to gaze out the window.

"I just saw another one zooming by the sewing-room window," I went on, sitting down on the floor beside the Scrabble
board.

"No birds zooming by here," said Sali, and she heaved a sigh.
Sometimes it all became too much for her, the languid breeze
and the shadows of the flamboyant leaves hardly moving on the
ground, the air watery, tepid with light. Even the tiled roof of
Madam's next-door neighbor on this side and the flat white wall
of the neighbor's house, partially visible through the banana
trees along the fence, were so familiar as to depress her at times.

Malika was writing my name in the second column (always
going by age), looping together the 1, u, 1, u, so gracefully like a
repeated pattern in lace. (Sometimes I wondered which nun's
handwriting it was that Malika had, only because I knew that
before coming to Singapore, she had received some schooling
in a convent.)

"When an ancestral spirit returns, it may take the form of a
bird, you know," I said, mostly for Sali's sake. (Because of her poor reading habit, Sali knew very little about the world and wasn't
even aware there were limits to her knowledge.)

She turned around with some interest. I watched her gaze
flicker over Malika's bent head before she asked me if I was sure.
I told her of course I was, and Sali looked at Malika again. But
Malika didn't look up until she was done writing all our names,
and then all she said was, "You want to try not using the dictionary today?"

"No way, okay?" said Sali. She came away from the window
and sat down, folding her legs Buddha style, and shook her head
as she faced Malika across the board. "What, let you both bantam me? No way."

Malika smiled and pulled her Oxford Dictionary out from
under the bed where she kept it (so that it was within her reach
if she needed to look up a word while she was reading at
night). It was one of the few possessions she hadn't inherited
from anyone, a Christmas present from Madam years ago, and
Malika quite cherished it. The dictionary's spine had been loosened by her frequent use in the past, and the paper jacket had
long been removed (Michelle had torn it accidentally one day
when she was just over ten months old). Malika ran her fingertips gently over the navy-blue cover, before pushing the dictionary over to Sali.