If I Could Tell You (5 page)

This is how come I am working now. How I get to have money every month to send back home. This new job is better. There is work every single day, Monday to Sunday, and the money comes every month, on time. Cleaning the building is not too bad, only the smell. Not even a cloth wrapped around my face can stop the smell from getting into my nose, my head. All day the rubbish smell follows me around but the pay is good and there is a proper place I can sleep in, in a flat with five other people. It is small but it’s a proper place, a building that even other Singaporeans live in. I almost couldn’t believe when I saw the beds, with mattresses in them, the two-storey beds which just fit into the space. It was the first time in months and months that I felt clean and comfortable, but I woke up four, five times that night, not knowing where I was until my eyes adjusted to the dark and I saw the curtains, the light from the corridor outside, heard the other men in the room snore, breathe deeply in their sleep. Then I thought about Ismail crying for his mother, and Sanjib, whose mother must know by now. They got someone to call his family, not just to tell them about Sanjib but to ask for money to send his body back. I knew they couldn’t afford it but I left before they decided what to do. I thought about that until the birds started making noise, and in the end I stayed awake until the alarm rang and I had to get up to wash. My sleepiness made it feel even more dreamlike. Just a week ago I was sleeping on a thin mat on the ground, getting up in the morning for nothing, nothing to do but to wait. Now there was proper food in the morning and a T-shirt they gave me just to wear for work. It was all still dreamlike when I went downstairs but the smell soon told me it was real. My job was to collect from the bins — full of rubbish that comes falling down the chute, all the way down from all the floors, and wheel it to the rubbish centre shared with the other buildings. This work was bad at first but then I got used to it. The rest of it was okay. Cleaning and sweeping and washing the ground once a week with water.

That’s what I had to do that day. After the police left and took away the blue and white tapes, the tent, the dead man in it. I tried to clean the floor where the man fell. There was blood and other things and people had put candles and food on the ground. For the dead man, my new boss told me. There were ants all over the food and I asked boss if I should throw everything away but he just scratched his head and waved his hand. Leave it first, just scrub the blood from around the offerings, he said. So I tried hosing the red down from far away. It wouldn’t go. A few days later, boss changed his mind. There are rats in the neighbourhood, he scolded, as if he had forgotten that he was the one who told me to leave it alone. He looked strange as he told me to throw the things away, kept touching a red string that went around his neck and into his shirt, and then pointing to the dark patches where the blood had refused to come off. I began as soon as he left, picking up the offerings and putting them in a trash bag even though the old lady with the cart got mad at me for doing so. I had to wait for her to go upstairs before I threw it into the bin. Then I went on my knees to scrub the floor again and while I did that I wondered how he fell and why. I cleaned it well but the next day, there were more tins and candles and food on the floor. Each time I cleaned up, there it would be again, the next day or the day after that. Singaporeans must be very religious, I think, to treat their dead like this. I hoped they did the same for Sanjib.

That night, I asked the others in the flat — they are cleaners like me, but in different places — and Muthu told me the man just wanted to die. Something wrong in his head. These people, he said, living in nice buildings, with cars and no money problems and still they want to die. And he made a puffing sound with his mouth and bent his head to eat.

I told him that was no way to talk about the dead. You don’t know why he wanted to die, I said. But Muthu had already turned away, was listening to the others talk about going to play cricket on Sunday.

I knew what it would be like, I thought. Just weeks ago, I had to pick up the phone and talk to my wife, hear my son playing in the background and know that I had absolutely nothing. Nothing to give them. I imagined arriving home, my bags lighter, my debts at home waiting for me, the moneylenders shouting and threatening outside the door until one day they burn down the house, the way they have done with other people’s houses. But it was my family’s Welcome Home that terrified me. Going back to smiles and tears and happiness, expectation. Until the moment they realise that I was poorer than before, that they were all poorer than before, which made me think about doing it. Running in front of a car. There are many cars in Singapore and people drive so fast. The only thing more than cars are buildings. Tall buildings which people live in. I knew what it would take, I thought, to make a man do that.

IT APPEARED THE DAY AFTER THE BLUE AND WHITE police tapes had been taken away. The paper plates of savoury rice cakes, cans of beer opened and left untouched, joss sticks stuck into an ash-filled tin can. Neatly placed, right where the man had landed. Every morning the cleaner, a young Bangladeshi man, would walk past it, sweeping carefully around the modest display. It was a week before he decided to throw it all away. The ashes and beer had been upset and ants had gotten into the food, had formed a steady black swarm over the cold offerings.

He is standing in front of it, black trash bag in his hand, when he hears a shout from behind. Oi! And the light patter of feet, a creak of rusty wheels. The man turns around, expecting a child with his bike, but it is the cardboard auntie, pushing an empty cart in front of her. Waving her hands at him and then pointing at the makeshift shrine.

I know, the cleaner says, but I’m the one who will get fired when the rats start running around. He tries to say all this by pointing at the fallen-over things, at the ants scattering at their feet, then pointing to himself and making a face.

She continues unabated, gesturing and talking at him in Cantonese. They had never spoken before this, never really looked at each other. He knows her simply as the old woman with the pushcart. Sees her coming and going during the day with stacks of flattened cardboard boxes, and then again in the evening with scraps for the cats. But now he sees that she is old, sees the age marked in her face. Old, older than my ma, he thinks. But ma is at home, probably resting on her stool in the kitchen, telling my sisters-in-law how to do this or that, all the while cooling herself with her palm-leaf fan.

He looks closely at her, at her toothy, black and silver mouth, her grey hair pulled back into a bun and fastened with a small fine-toothed comb, the mottled skin on the back of her hands, and he wants to ask her, where’s your son? Don’t you have children? He wants to tell her to sit down, it isn’t right. She should be drinking tea in this heat, not wheeling things around all day, on her own. But he doesn’t. Instead he stands there, silent. Trash bag in hand, the black of it whipping away from his body with the wind.

Then he puts his hand up in front of him and makes to move away. Only then does the cardboard auntie stop, nodding. She moves towards the lift, looking back several times to make sure that he has understood.

Later in the evening, the cleaner goes back to the spot. He makes sure to put his palms together several times in supplication before he clears away the little shrine, head lowered, bowing all the while.

YOU MADE TEARS FOR DINNER LAST NIGHT AND tears for breakfast today. I watched as you ladled out the porridge, meant to be a sugary comfort in the morning, ladled it out in thick, salty lumps. I stir it around in the bowl, watch the fat curls of steam rise off the top, then try to wash the first mouthful down with my tea. Or what looked like tea. I keep my eyes down as you go about filling the kitchen with the noxious fumes of burning coffee, put a sweaty carton of juice on the table. Listen to the silence, broken only by the sound of your feet, shuffling across the floor in threadbare bedroom slippers. The ones you had been so embarrassed about putting in your luggage, but did anyway. It is from years ago, from the hotel in Thailand where we spent our first holiday together.

I want to ask if you remember. The fried crickets sold like kebabs at the snack stalls. The live budgies, snakes, lizards, rabbits, and other tiny mammals which we saw stuck in cages at the market, right next to each other. How the animals looked as if they didn’t know or didn’t care. Prey and predator squashed side by side, separated only by bits of wire. How you started crying and shouting abuse at the stall owners, skinny men hunched up on their wooden stools. I had to drag you away, saying yes it’s cruel but it can’t be helped, before adding that you were just premenstrual. And you turned around and whacked me quite hard on the head and then started laughing out loud, your face still wet from tears.

You try to hide it these days. But I smell the tang of it, on your skin, your pillow in the morning. I know from the way I find you at the other side of the bed, right at the edge when I wake up in the middle of the night, when before you would be close, curled up, your face squashed into my side. I know from the way you hold yourself tight so that I won’t be able to feel you shaking, you think. The way your voice sounds like it is muffled, choked down, over the phone. And your eyes, especially your eyes.

I try to bring it up all the time — gathering the questions in my mouth once the lights are out and we’re both in bed. But I cannot, they come out different, slip out of my mouth dressed as completely mundane questions like How was your day? and How’s that project coming along at work? As if I’m missing the vocabulary for the questions I need to ask. On these nights, I end up thinking about my mother, my father, how they dealt with it by not talking, never talking. About how people say history always repeats itself and I always nodded, thinking that I knew exactly what they meant, only I didn’t. I do now. I never actually saw my mother cry either, but I heard her. Through the door of the bathroom, through the walls even as I sat in the living room, crashing my toy soldiers into each other, into the furniture. And then there were her eyes, dull, filmed over, and red at the waterline. The skin around them puffy, looking as though they were threatening to close in and blind her forever. Just like yours.

Kim? I say, catching myself by surprise because I didn’t intend to speak. Was rehearsing the words in my head. I do this a lot now, sieving out any subject, any words that might hurt you. Listen, let’s both skip work and go for a drive it’s a nice day we could just drive along the coast we don’t even have to get out of the car, I say. The words come tumbling out, much too fast. It makes you frown and smile a bit at the same time and you say yes, okay.

WE are on the long stretch of highway when you decide to roll the windows down and stick your hand out. You like to touch the wind, you said once, you like that it feels like an actual living thing, pushing against your hands, weaving between your fingers. The roads are clear since rush hour has passed. I don’t go too fast so you can admire the faraway river on the left, and the buildings lining it, their windows glittering in the light like so many precious stones.

I take a deep breath. I’ve never told you, I say, to get your attention first. It works and you turn to me, and say, told me what?

About my father, I say, we used to go out on Saturdays, the two of us. He would drive us all around the island, for his odd jobs. This was before my mother died. She would stay at home on those days, I say.

I stop to think about how I had pretended we were running away, my father and I. We were running away and leaving my mother with her silence, her cold hands. I think about that day. When the ride had taken longer than usual. Passing slowly from our side of town, with its neat, tall buildings, all white or eggshell coloured; clothes, linen, a floral dress, dancing in the wind. We drove into an unfamiliar street, and another, and I pressed close to the window until my father said I could wind it down if I wanted, so I did. These streets were narrower, darker too somehow, even though the sun was still at its peak, giving out a lazy, damp light, honey swirled in a glassful of water. There were people slinking about in what looked like their pyjamas. Also, Bangladeshi men, squatting roadside in their dhotis, passing food, fingers to mouth, from a paper bag. They watched me coolly as the car drove past, scattering dirt and smoke into their open mouths. Even the air was different — a mixture of smoke and the smell of cut apples browning on the kitchen table.

Your father did odd jobs? you ask.

Yes, I say, we were poor then and my father had a lot of other jobs beside his normal one. Jobs cutting grass, feeding white people’s dogs when they were away on holiday, jobs cleaning out their swimming pools. He worked very hard, I say.

I know, you say and nod. You are fond of my father, and he, you. When we go over to his place for the fortnightly visit, he spends the entire day cooking your favourite food. On those visits he beams at me, evidently proud even though once he pulled me aside and hissed don’t screw it up boy.

So one day, while we’re in the car, he brings out these new shoes, blue Nikes that I’d wanted for a long time, I say, he tells me to put them on, they are a present. I do and I’m so happy I don’t realise till he parks the car that I have no idea where we are. So I ask him where we are going and is this a new job. My father tells me no, he’s not working today and like an idiot I suddenly see that he is wearing dark trousers with his shirt tucked in. Not the usual old things that can be thrown away if they get too grimy. I ask him where we are going again and this time he says that we are going to meet someone. I thought he was going to sell me, for real, I say.

They don’t sell boys, silly, only girls. You say all this, smiling.