Tales From A Broad (32 page)

There is a knock. I am grateful for the excuse to turn my back on the people on the balcony. I open the front door.

‘Pearl!' I say, seeing my stocky little friend. She stands on the threshold and peers at the balcony.

‘Oh, I come at the wrong time.' She looks at me and smiles. ‘Maybe right time?'

‘There's a bit of a mess. What's up?'

‘I have a subcontractor now. Jean. She's a grandmother. So here's her card and here's an invitation to my house for Chinese New Year. I invite all my clients.'

‘Listen, I don't want this to get out, but we've just had to fire Posie. I could use someone for a couple of weeks.'

‘Can can,
lah
. Jean will be here.'

‘But I don't know Jean.'

‘Okay, you don't want a babysitter?'

‘Well, is she good?'

‘Yes yes,
lah
.'

‘Um, all right.'

The next day, Frank purchases Posie a ticket to Manila. He and I had gone over it again and again and had decided that she was possibly a thief, had a stalker boyfriend, lied, showed incredibly bad judgement … the best thing was to let her have a new start. She could return to Singapore later and pretend we never existed.

Posie breaks down when she kisses Sadie and Huxley. Bet shows up in a new party dress and full make-up. She wants to go to the airport to see Posie off. I wave to Posie as Frank puts her little birdcage of a suitcase in the taxi. Posie is wearing a sweet, pale yellow dress. I see Frank slip her a fat envelope of money. I did the same thing earlier. I think this whole affair is more costly than having our money stolen but we feel it's the right thing to do. Frank gets in and the taxi drives away.

I go back inside and open the door next to the refrigerator. I want to travel down her old hall, take a look in her room, perhaps to punish myself, I think. I need to feel for her for a moment.

I slide open her bedroom door. The television, VCR, microwave, toaster oven, cable TV box, even the rice cooker … gone. And it hits me. Oh! My! God!
That
was
my
sweet, pale yellow dress. And, of course, the pearls, you know, the ones I wore with it on Christmas Eve … gone too.

Someone, I don't know who, left the cake out in the rain. It's been sitting in the middle of the sidewalk on the corner of Marine Parade and Boonlap Road for two weeks. Every time we walk to the New Barrel, every time we make our way home from the New Barrel, I pass this cake. The other night, in a torrential downpour, the cake acted like it was perfectly normal to be there, like it was perched on the bakery shelf, fresh and dry. No one dropped it by accident (a Singaporean would never, ever mistreat food). It is an offering, a token for someone deceased who must have liked cake al fresco. Or the person who invented weatherproof cake, falling down dead before the craze really took off. The cake won't melt under the sun; it won't budge in the winds. It holds court there day after day. We pass it now as we make our way to Pearl's Chinese New Year lunch. The big dent left by my shoe when I got the urge to smoosh the cake collects a small puddle in the middle. Frank seems happy to see the cake's surviving; he's all about live and let live. The reason it was placed on that junction is a mystery but no more so than what we see every day, like finding a huge wake being held in a corner of your parking lot or a shrine erected behind a shrub off the side of a cricket field. We just assume that the location must hold meaning to someone involved here or beyond.

The fortnight of Chinese New Year celebrations has disgorged so much peculiar detritus it is improbable they can move about at all in China, hemmed in with holiday shrapnel. The red packets,
hong bao
, are strewn about the streets; ashes from joss sticks, shrivelled oranges and fake money swirl about the gutters and nestle themselves in the boughs of trees. The whole country looks red, gold and gaudy. And, there must be some passage in the Mandarin text that claims the apocalypse is near – the food-buying frenzy amounts to sheer hysteria. There isn't a parcel of land, not a sidewalk, parking lot, building site or even traffic island that hasn't remade itself into an instant convenience store. Even the quickie-marts have stopped pumping gas so they can use that area to clone themselves. The goods are all the same: sodas, nuts, dried fruit, hard candies, big cellophaned gift platters stacked with all the above, chips, chips and chips, expensive tins of abalone and shark fin soup, floss, floss and floss (that'd be your standard pork floss, chicken floss and cuttlefish floss), instant noodles, durian and beer. ‘Tell me again, what is it that no human
really
needs? Okay, I'll double my order.' I shouldn't make fun. I mean, what's so different about this to the holiday hoopla back home? Our chickens might come with their heads off, and we might serve our food to those still visible to the naked eye, but it's all about abundance … Ah, who am I kidding, it's totally different here: the smells, the sounds, the scurrying to buy, sell, give, eat, burn; and their junk is junkier. I
am
in a foreign land. I need to simply accept their way of doing things without analysis or criticism, rather with generosity and respect; no judgement, but embracing, absorbing, growing, learning. I'm glad I came to this decision
after
I got the pleasure of stepping down on the cake.

The holiday seems to mean the world to Pearl. Issuing an invitation to her home on the most important day of the Chinese New Year season means she considers us as family, or very important people in her life at the least. People she wants to impress. Should she happen to bounce a kid on her knee, I'm sure she'll waive her usual fee on this day. Of course, we'll all get a card. Not a holiday card, silly, the new one's she's putting out that now includes information on her seminar: ‘FilipiNO, How to Fire Your Maid! (Call Pearl Now.)'

But Pearl probably wouldn't have been so eager to entertain us had she known I'd go back to the maid thing. After Frank and I had fired Posie I thought about calling Pearl but found myself calling Jessica: ‘May I speak with Jessica, please?'

‘Hello, Mrs Rittman. This is Jessica.'

‘This is Fran Rittman. I came to you from Samantha Burns. We hired Posie.'

‘Yes, Mrs Rittman. I just saw your husband the other day to prepare the paperwork for Posie's departure.'

‘Posie left.'

‘I know, Mrs Rittman. I helped with Posie's departure.'

‘I'm not sure I understand your tone, Jessica.'

‘Pardon?'

‘Pardon?
Pardon?
You
helped
Posie? Like, I
didn't?
Do you even know how hard I tried to make her a member of the family?'

‘Mrs Rittman, sometimes it just doesn't work out.'

‘I gave her every Sunday off. And holidays, too. I gave her a workout tape.'

‘Would you like to interview for another maid, Mrs Rittman?'

‘One that she could do in her room. I told her that she should start off with cans, big tins of beans that I would have used in a recipe or something but instead I gave them to her … and I promised I'd buy her a set of weights once she mastered the beans. Oh, it is just so hard to believe. Do you know I gave her brisket lessons?'

‘Yes, you did the right things. Would you like to look for another maid?'

‘Yeah, right, life goes on, huh, Jessica? I remember the time she told me right away, when I came back from something or another, that Huxley had cycled down the steps. “Ma'am, Huxley rode his tricycle off the steps.” Just like that, that's how she used to talk. She gave him a bandage. He rolled down 16 concrete stairs.'

‘I have several girls who would be suitable for you.'

‘Jessica, I just lost my Posie. Am I to settle for
suitable?
'

‘I assumed you were calling me to look for another maid.'

‘And replace Posie. Just like that?'

‘She was special, but …'

‘But what, Jessica? You think I forced her to steal from me? I raised her to be a good maid.'

‘Yes, Mrs Rittman. You did your best. Why don't you take some time and call me next week.'

‘Okay, but don't sell them all before I get back to you.'

‘We don't sell them, Mrs Rittman.'

‘You know what I mean. Save a good one for me. Listen, just so you know, I think I want a fatter one this time. Not sloppy, just, um, ample.'

I should've known my call to Jessica wasn't necessary. Fortune Gardens had learned of Posie's departure and all the surrounding facts about the same time we did. There's the speed of sound, the speed of light, and the speed of gossip. Frank had just arrived back upstairs from seeing Posie and Bet off and found me in the middle of Posie's old room, stupidly looking under posters and envelopes for the missing television. I wanted to find it because I did not want to get in the hot car and chase her down some steamy tarmac. I'd just showered. I didn't care any more, really. There was no one there to watch the TV now, or to microwave a small bowl of noodles and hot Milo. The necklace, well, everyone saw it on me a few times anyway.

‘What are you doing, Fran?' Frank asked.

‘Frank, she took
everything
, see?'

‘I cannot believe this! What a … everything? The TV? The refrigerator?'

‘We can still catch her if we hurry.'

‘Um, like now?'

‘Well you don't
wait
to catch someone about to board a plane.'

‘Yeah, but by the time we park.'

‘And pay for parking …'

‘That's $2.50 already, we might as well just buy a new set.'

‘Yeah, and we'd be rushing. Our luck we'd get into an accident or we'd get a ticket.'

‘I agree. Rittman luck.'

‘She doesn't have them on her, anyway. Bet probably has everything down at the church ready for some raffle.'

‘And we'd get in that accident for nothing.'

‘Yeah, we can always get another TV.'

‘But you don't get your life back, Fran.'

Before we could continue pretending we weren't just hot and lazy, the phone rang and didn't stop. Everyone was offering condolences, which basically meant offering some maid-time. Caroline was breathless, ‘Well, I told Bethy she could do your laundry on Sunday at three.' Dana said, ‘Gwen isn't working two Saturdays from now so you could go out.' And Tilda said, ‘I knew it was coming. You were too nice, practically ruined it for the rest of us. I was sure Carol was about to ask for a radio.
BUT
, mind you, you should call Irish Kell. Two maids over there and they're leaving.' And so I did.

‘Hi Kell, Vulture here.'

‘Oh, Frahn, I was just gonna call ye. I know ye'll be thinking of having a wee word with Imogenia or Marzipan now, won't ye?'

‘Tilda mentioned …'

‘Aye, I know. Well, we'll be taking Marzipan back with us and Imogenia, well …'

‘Can I talk to her?'

‘Just don't be expecting much.'

‘Not the brightest bulb on the tree, eh?' I whispered to Kell, who was no longer on the extension.

‘Hello, Ma'am. It's Imogenia,' she said softly.

‘Oh, hi. How are you? Did you hear about Posie?'

‘I didn't hear about the TV.'

‘What else didn't you hear about?'

‘The VCR and the fridge, Ma'am.'

‘How's the church raffle going over there at Our Lady of Overburden?'

‘Ma'am?'

‘Never mind, anyway, I want you to come work for me. That way you get to stay in Fortune Gardens with your friends and you know my kids already and they know you …' I was getting excited by this now. Imogenia was a big, soft, oleaginous thing with stringy hair and big, thumbnail-sized teeth. Her silhouette was decidedly missing linkish. She had worked for Irish Kell for years, so she must be efficient, and I recalled that kids didn't necessarily run away the minute they saw her coming, so it'd be okay. I continued, ‘You could start after –'

‘Ma'am,' she broke in timidly, ‘Ma'am?'

‘Call me Fran. Come on over and I'll show you the room.'

‘Ma'am Fran, I can't.'

‘Well, I know you can't right now, but when you get a chance.'

‘I yam sorry, but I yam afraid of you too much.'

‘
What do you mean?
'

‘You yell.'

‘I do not yell.' I made my voice tiny.

‘You get angry.'

‘Oh, not very often.' I made my voice tinier.

‘Your temper is bad, Ma'am.'

‘Do you
like
television, Imogenia?'

‘I yam sorry.' Click.

Just as I hung up, astonished, stung terribly by the rejection and quite shamed to know that I wasn't simply considered volatile-though-kind, the phone rang again.

‘I
heard
,' said Jenny.

‘Yeah, some say I was too good and some say I was too fierce.'