A Yellow House Read online

  A Yellow House

  Karien van Ditzhuijzen

  Monsoon Books

  Burrough on the Hill

  Published in 2018

  by Monsoon Books Ltd

  www.monsoonbooks.co.uk

  No.1 Duke of Windsor Suite, Burrough Court,

  Burrough on the Hill, Leics. LE14 2QS, UK

  ISBN (paperback): 9781912049349

  ISBN (ebook): 9781912049356

  Copyright©Karien van Ditzhuijzen, 2018

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Cover design by Cover Kitchen.

  Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  1

  The first time I saw her she was dripping wet. Dashing the fifty metres in the barrage of rain from the car to the entrance of our block’s tower had made her purple shirt cling to her body, revealing a black lacy bra underneath. She didn’t look at me or Dad, just stared down at the puddle that grew around her feet. I followed her gaze, watching the rainwater creeping over the shiny white tiles, its wet arms moving towards my toes. I backed away and turned to Dad, who was shaking his umbrella just outside the door.

  ‘What’s that?’ I pointed at the water spreading across our living room floor. When wet, the tiles became as slippery as the ice rink in Jurong mall.

  ‘What? You mean who. This is Merpati. We told you about her, Maya. She’s from Indonesia.’

  Yes, you told me, but I made sure I forgot. I wanted to melt into my own puddle on the floor.

  Dad continued, ‘Merpati is your new nanny. Maid, helper, amah, domestic worker – whatever they call it these days. She’s going to take care of you and Chloe when Mama goes back to work.’

  She still stared at the puddle around her feet.

  ‘I don’t need taking care of.’ Other words bubbled from my belly but I swallowed them down; if I said them, I might cry. Instead I glared at Dad. ‘I can take care of myself.’

  He smiled indulgently. ‘What about your baby sister? What about school? No, you girls need Merpati.’ He shoved the umbrella in the red china vase.

  ‘She can’t stay. She doesn’t even have luggage!’

  ‘Shoot! I left her suitcase in the car. All that rain…’ Dad went back out to the corridor, leaving wet footsteps behind him.

  The woman in wet purple finally looked up. I narrowed my eyes, watching the drops of rain that slid from wisps of dark hair and ran down her cheeks.

  She smiled.

  Even years later, I would not have been able to tell you the meaning of that first smile. I could not have told you if it was a smile that wanted to please, or a genuine one that wanted to get to know me. But even then, staring back at her with pursed lips, I watched the wet crack of her lips widening and could see the light in her eyes, where the real smile lived, fading away.

  I ran to my room.

  I didn’t need another person to come into my life then turn her back on me. I didn’t need a dripping wet whatever-they-call-it-these-days to replace Mama and my dead PoPo. That’s why I’d pushed thoughts of her to the place I put all the difficult ones; behind a special wall in my head. I built it as solid as the concrete of our Singapore condo, with its rising towers whitewashed and bright. If the gardeners ever neglected their endless pruning, tropical creepers would climb up the lower floors, pushing into the stone with green, prodding arms. Her smile felt as intrusive as those creepers.

  I struggled to remember her name anyhow. Merpati. What kind of a name was that?

  When I saw her later she was drier. Her purple shirt was hanging on the drying poles on the balcony behind the kitchen. Her black lacy bra was there too. On our poles.

  She’d changed into shorts and a faded green shirt. Her black hair, still shiny wet, was pulled into a pink clip. It was a pretty clip, with tiny fake diamonds along the edge. It annoyed me. It clashed with her shorts and T-shirt, the standard uniform of all the helpers in the condo. Plain and boring, they disappeared into the background, unnoticed unless needed. On Sundays they transformed into butterflies, flying out in skirts and dresses, their eyes painted. On Sundays they became women – at least, the ones whose employers allowed them to.

  I didn’t see much more of her that day. Mama, Dad, Chloe and I went out for satay and fried rice at the food court, and Dad said she had better stay at home to get settled, since it was Sunday and technically her day off anyway.

  The next morning Mama wanted to head off for work straight after breakfast. Dad had left already, which meant I’d be left with this woman I didn’t know. She had arrived two weeks late because of problems with paperwork. There’d been no time for getting used to each other – Mama’s words. As if two weeks would have made a difference. The only one who’d met her before she arrived was Dad. He’d done all the interviews and hiring papers – he said Mama wasn’t ready to cope with such a thing yet.

  I blocked the door in my pyjamas. ‘You haven’t combed my hair or made my pigtails yet! You can’t leave us alone. Chloe is only nine months old!’

  And I’m only ten, I wanted to add, but didn’t. Mama knew how old I was.

  ‘You won’t be alone,’ Mama said, patting my hair. ‘Mer – erm – Merpati is here. She’ll take care of you. I’m sure she can do perfect pigtails.’

  ‘I don’t need her. I can take care of myself!’ I shouted. ‘I just don’t want to do it alone.’

  ‘Honey, I can’t be late on my first day back at work. Don’t make a scene. You’re a big girl. Look at your little sister.’

  Chloe was sitting on the rug throwing toys against the wall. The door slammed behind Mama, the sound pulsating in my ears. I wanted to cry; I badly needed my PoPo. Instead, I turned around and was confronted with her. I stared at her until her stupid smile slid away.

  I was sulking on the sofa in my pyjamas when I heard her come up behind me. She stroked my hair and I froze in my seat.

  ‘You have pretty hair,’ she said softly. ‘Let me make it nice.’

  I grunted. First smiles, now flattery. I wouldn’t fall for that.

  But I couldn’t do my own pigtails yet, so I let her get the brush and the elastic bands from my room. I closed my eyes and tried to enjoy the fingers caressing my scalp. It was so different from the way Mama did it, pulling hurriedly and cursing me for not using enough conditioner. My hair wasn’t black and sleek like Mama’s, but lightened by Dad’s blonde, frizzy and tangly. Now I imagined it wasn’t a brush that slid through my hair but a shell with long teeth, sweeping it ou
t in long, wavy locks like a mermaid’s. I felt my limbs loosening with my hair.

  When I looked in the mirror it was terrible. The pigtails were all wrong. They were too high. Too far to the front. And too tidy.

  Thirty minutes in a school bus with Jenny, Meena and these pigtails would be thirty minutes of pure hell. I felt a surge of panic. It was all her fault. She was smiling at me again, but I was sure now the smile was fake. How could Dad have hired her? She and her shitty pigtails had to go.

  I pulled the elastic bands out and rubbed my hair into a sticking-up mess. Then I ran to my bedroom, locked the door and built myself a tent of sheets. I retreated inside it to read my library book, ignoring her pleading knocks until I knew for sure the school bus would have gone.

  Mama was blazing when she had to come back to drive me to school; but even though she yelled at me, I could tell she really wanted to yell at her. She seemed to think so too, because when Mama dragged me by the arm to the car, she flinched as we passed, as if scared that Mama was going to hurt her. It was the first time she didn’t have a smile for the occasion.

  As Mama pulled me over the threshold I turned back and saw her raising her hand at me. Was she miming hitting me in revenge? Did she plead for my help? Or was she merely waving goodbye? Mama’s strong hold pulled me out of sight to the elevator before I could decide.

  In the car, when Mama asked why, I mumbled, ‘Because of the pigtails.’

  Mama clenched her jaw. Then the shouting started.

  ‘You’re such a drama queen. Seriously, make me late on my very first day? There I was, hoping to come home early today for you girls! Well, that’s not happening now. I hope you’re happy. If you pull this again tomorrow I’m not driving you. You can stay home and fail school! Drop out for all I care! Go work in a hawker stall frying noodles! It would serve you right. Stupid pigtails. Seriously, you think it’s easy being a woman? You’ll find out one day. Trying to raise two daughters and have a job? No, not a job, a career? Deal with an irrational boss while your boobs leak? Fucking pig. And only to bump your sleepless head against the glass ceiling. No, you wouldn’t know, you just care about your bloody pigtails…’

  Mama had said fucking. Wow.

  Mama continued muttering under her breath, but when we got to school she combed out my hair in the parking lot, pulling painfully yet pleasantly at the tangles. Then she hugged me. ‘I know this is difficult for you, Maya, but you’re a big girl now. You understand that I need to go back to work, right? Merpati will be alright. Trust me.’

  She kissed me and zoomed off in the car. Only then did I realise she’d forgotten to redo my pigtails. In the school bathroom, staring at the mirror, I thought back to the scene by the door and suddenly saw them: the two red elastic bands in her upheld hand. I stood pondering this, considering shaving my head, when the door opened. I froze. Jenny and her minion Meena stood

  on the doorstep.

  Jenny let out a long hiss. ‘Hello, Cockroach.’

  2

  There was a large bowl of goreng pisang on the table when I came home. I rushed over to it without taking off my shoes or backpack.

  ‘Watch out, pisang is hot,’ she who cooked them called out, but I knew goreng pisang was worth burnt fingers. I paused momentarily, telling myself I shouldn’t fall for her trap, for her trying to buy me with sweet stuff. Then I ate six pieces of the fried bananas. I needed something to cover up the wriggling in my stomach that Jenny and Meena’s sneers had caused.

  When she said, ‘Let’s go to the playground,’ I curled up in my chair. No. No, no, no. I tried to run to my room, but Chloe was already in the stroller, blocking the way.

  ‘I’m too big for the playground,’ I said. ‘The playground is for babies.’

  When she ignored me, I rubbed my belly and told her it hurt.

  ‘Too many pisang,’ she smiled. ‘Need to work that fat.’ She slapped my behind and shoved me towards the door, pushing Chloe in the stroller. The imprint of her hand felt warm on my back, annoying me more than I cared to admit. I wanted to call after her, but had forgotten how to say her name.

  Our playground was fine, as condo playgrounds went. It served all five blocks and there was a climbing frame, a slide, some spring riders and a see-saw. When I was younger, I went there every day. The floor was made of that stuff they used for playgrounds everywhere, soft when you fell but still hard enough for Jenny’s brother Harry to break his arm when he tumbled off the top of the slide. If you picked at it hard enough you could loosen whole slabs – good fun, as long as the parents or security guards didn’t catch you.

  Luckily, most of the time there were few parents around – and while some of the aunties were just as bad, others never paid attention; we, of course, knew exactly which ones. Some kids had grandparents supervising playground visits, but they had become more and more rare. Had they all died, like PoPo?

  Most of the day the playground was scorched by the Singapore sun, but in the late afternoon the sun slipped behind the trees and the towers and the playground filled with shrieking kids. When I was younger, I’d been part of my own gaggle of condo children, meeting every day after school, climbing, running, yelling, doing what kids in playgrounds do. We’d been like family.

  Now, as we walked down the concrete stairs, everything looked the same as it always had. The gaggle of kids, the swings and slides. They hadn’t changed, but I had. I was older now. Many of my friends had moved away or just stopped coming. Of our group, only Jenny and I still came regularly, and the boys who played their eternal games of football on the asphalted square at the side.

  I really only came for one thing: the swings. I loved swinging, the feeling of flying, of taking off and knowing the only things still connecting me to the world were two pieces of rope. I secretly hoped one day the rope would snap and I would be catapulted into the sky. It was something Jenny and I’d had in common, our love of the swings. Why else had I been friends with her? I found it harder and harder to remember all the fun we’d once had; it seemed to have faded away, as if it had never taken place at all.

  Today, like most days, there were children and aunties. And Jenny, but no Meena. Jenny was hanging around the bushes with some kids I didn’t know. I felt a dark shape in my belly move and stretch its legs.

  I looked around for her, but she had taken Chloe to the bench in the corner and was chatting to the other aunties, feeding Chloe apple slices. I considered making a dash for the swings, but they were in full view of Jenny. Instead I crouched down behind the climbing frame and watched the group of aunties.

  I’d never seen her talk so much. At home, she just smiled in silence and spoke when spoken to. Now, she chatted and giggled. It had taken her exactly five minutes to make friends in my playground. Life was easy for some.

  Suddenly, her lips froze and she bit them together under a frown. Curious, I was about to sneak up and try to listen when I felt a tap on my shoulder. ‘Roach, we’re playing hide and seek,’ said Jenny. ‘Now. You’re it.’

  The thing in my stomach jumped up and down and I had to force down the no that was on my tongue to quieten it. I shrugged. ‘Okay.’

  I counted to ten, slowly. ‘Ready or not, here I come!’ I yelled. When I opened my eyes, Jenny and the others were nowhere to be seen.

  I started looking, looking for the catch that wasn’t there. They’d gone. Relieved, I strolled over to where she was sitting, still chatting to her new friends.

  ‘Have you seen Jenny?’ I asked.

  ‘The girl with the red dress?’ I nodded. ‘The girl went home. Took her bag and go.’

  Her stupid smile was back. Grateful that Jenny was gone, I smiled too.

  I sat on the swing. The afternoon had turned out to be not too bad. I rocked back and forth, swinging higher and higher. I tried to keep the good feeling, but slowly it slipped away. I swayed along to the rhythm of my thumping heart as the images slowly pushed themselves up from the dark thing in the pit of my stomach. And, after the images, the acr
id taste I couldn’t get rid of.

  Things had been good before Meena moved into our condo. Jenny had still been Jenny – not the easiest friend, and a bossy one – but my best friend all the same, as I was hers. With Jenny you could never be bored; she could create the best games out of nearly nothing. Until the day her imagination had turned against me.

  Swinging my legs up to reach for the sky, I tried for the millionth time to make sense of it all. What had I done wrong? It had been so unfair. The double standards. The stupidity. What had Meena done right, besides standing at the side-lines laughing? I was the one who’d tried to be original and brave, and Jenny chose her anyway. Jenny chose Meena. After she made me do that shameful thing, even more shameful because I’d been the one to suggest it.

  I’d got the idea from PoPo. PoPo was, had been, is Mama’s mother. PoPo was grounded in Singapore, like she really belonged.

  PoPo told me stories about when she was a child in the war, when the Japanese ruled Singapore and everybody was hungry. So hungry they had to eat chichak, the tiny lizards that walked our ceilings and made their presence known by their clicking ‘ci ci ci’ sound. PoPo had grinned when she told that story. I liked chichaks, walking upside down over the ceiling like that, catching flies and mosquitoes. But eating them? No way. But PoPo had said they were quite tasty when deep fried, just like ikan kuning, the little fish that are served with nasi lemak, fried to a crisp so you can eat them with head, bones, tail and all. Ikan kuning are yummy.

  And, PoPo had added slyly, some people had been so hungry they ate cockroaches. Her brother had once. Raw, straight from the floor.

  ‘Think of that next time you’re hungry,’ she’d said, ‘if you’re ready to eat cockroach, your hunger is for real.’

  I’d hoped I would never know hunger like that.

  When Jenny said Meena and I needed to prove to her who was the best friend, the bravest, the friend that was for real, I was ravenous to please her. Meena had just chuckled.