A Yellow House Read online

  ‘Then what?’ I sneered.

  ‘Then she loved you a lot.’

  I didn’t know what to say. ‘You can’t use it,’ I mumbled, and buried myself in my book.

  8

  The next afternoon I was still in a huff when Aunty M asked me to come to the playground. She hadn’t used that word again.

  ‘I can stay home alone. I’m ten already.’

  ‘I know, and I think you can, but I need to check with your Mama first. I’ll do that tonight. Then you can stay home tomorrow.’

  ‘Can’t you check now?’ I pointed to the phone Aunty M held in her hand.

  ‘Do you think your Mama will like it when I call her when she is in an important meeting? She will be much marah, very angry. She’ll say no, because she don’t want to think about it now. Better ask tonight.’

  I hated it when she was right. ‘There’s nothing for me to do there. Only babies go. Can I bring my book?’

  ‘Sure.’

  I collected my book and hoped I would be lucky, that she wouldn’t be there.

  When we arrived I could smell in the friendly air that Jenny wasn’t there. I sat down behind the benches and leaned against the trunk of an orchid tree to bury myself in my book. I remembered all too clearly how the last time I’d tried to fit in with the aunties had ended.

  Suddenly, all the aunties started twittering. I couldn’t help myself; I was in too good a position not to listen. And as long as I kept my eyes on my book, no one would suspect. But the commotion died down quickly. It had had something to do with Wati and her boyfriend, who had asked her to marry him.

  ‘Only together for a few months, how can?’ Jenalyn cried. ‘Anyway, maids cannot marry, can we? It’s not allowed. Need to wait two years.’

  ‘I hear he’s an Ang Moh. With Ang Moh can.’ Maricel responded. ‘Cannot marry Singaporean, but foreigner ok.’

  ‘Wah,’ said Jenalyn, ‘Will she hire a helper herself? You know, my friend Marilyn, she has a friend, I forgot the name, she married an Ang Moh. These white foreigners, very good husbands. Anyway, after she married, she had a baby. So she hires helper. You think she treat the helper well?’ She paused, building up the suspense. ‘No. She was nasty! So when Marilyn visits, you know, this helper, Pinoy too, from the same area as Marilyn, she complains to my friend. Her friend so bossy!’

  They all laughed.

  Jinky tutted. ‘She should know better. Did she at least give off-day?’

  Jenalyn said, ‘I don’t know. Maybe not.’ She frowned. ‘You know, my boss, when she has the baby, she wants to cancel my off-day. Can she do that? I don’t want her to.’

  Jinky said, ‘There is this new law, you know. Can’t you say no?’

  It was Aunty M who replied. ‘Yes, the new law says everybody has the right to the day off. You can agree to work on the Sunday, but they need to pay extra.’

  ‘I don’t want extra money,’ Jenalyn said. ‘I want my off-day.’

  ‘You can refuse,’ said Aunty M.

  ‘I told her already I don’t want to, but she said she would hire someone else who did. She says she cannot allow a transfer, because she needs me. If she sends me back to the agency, she cannot hire someone while I am there. She says she will hire someone else, and send me back to the Philippines when the new one starts. I don’t want to lose the job. What can I do?’

  ‘No choice,’ Jinky shrugged. ‘At least you have had the off-day. And maybe when the baby is bigger, you will get again.’

  ‘You have a day off, don’t you?’ Aunty M asked.

  ‘More like afternoon off,’ Jinky answered. ‘I need to make breakfast, clear up, and be back in time to help cook the dinner.’

  Mama always made me set and clear the table for Sunday breakfast, and for dinner we ate out more often than not. I figured the kids Jinky looked after were too young to help.

  One now toddled dangerously near the edge of the climbing frame and Jinky jumped up to save him. The aunties returned to the subject of Wati’s boyfriends and I went back to my book, the trunk of the orchid tree rigid against my back. I hated that I hadn’t been able to stay in my room today. Being an aunty was as bad as being a child; you always had to do what other people wanted. I’d be better off as an investment banker like Mama when I grew up.

  I tried to imagine what I’d do if, like the aunties, I never had a day off. My life at school was horrible – the whole cockroach thing had been escalating rapidly – and the idea of not having the weekend to recover before going back there again was unbearable.

  The mention of Khusnul’s name roused me from my thoughts, and for the first time I realised she wasn’t there. Something had been on my mind ever since that afternoon in her unit, and before I could think better of it I had gone up to Aunty M.

  ‘Aunty M, those cameras in Khusnul’s house – is that allowed?’

  Aunty M thought for a while. ‘I read in the Straits Times about a case where the employer put a camera in the bedroom of the domestic worker, and also in the bathroom. The employer was convicted for outrage of modesty. If a male employer watches a woman undress, domestic worker or not, that is indecent behaviour. They can go to jail. But it’s ok to check what your domestic worker does in your living room, especially when they take care of young children. So I think in Khusnul’s case, where the camera is in the living room, it is allowed.’

  My sudden pluck had alarmed me, and I nodded and retreated quickly to the swings.

  9

  The next day there was no school. It was a teacher training day, and Aunty M and I went to the market with Chloe in the stroller. We walked in silence.

  The concrete was boiling; it seemed like the rainy season was finally coming to an end and coils of heat crinkled off the pavement. I let my hand drag through the bushes on the side. They had pretty red flowers, breaking the grey of the noisy, smelly road and the sleek condo towers behind.

  In the distance big clouds of white billowed over the pavement, like fog in the countryside Singapore style. Aunty M held out her hand to stop me. ‘Wait. They are fogging.’

  The poisonous smoke was meant to kill the mosquitoes. Not that it worked, there were still mosquitoes aplenty. The acrid smell wafted over us and I coughed, just because I could. We waited for the clouds to dissipate.

  I don’t know whether it was the toxins from the fog, but suddenly I could take it no longer, the silent treatment I’d been trying to give Aunty M. I knew exactly what it felt like when nobody talked to you, or worse, nobody listened to you; it was as if you didn’t exist. My relationships with the other kids in my class had got worse, and it wasn’t just Jenny and Meena who called me Cockroach now. Everyone did.

  At home, it wasn’t much better. Chloe couldn’t speak more than seven words, Dad only spoke on the phone, and Mama spoke at me, not with me, moving on without listening to my replies. I felt like talking, shouting, making noise – anything to make my presence known.

  Aunty M was paid to listen to me, wasn’t she? So I asked her about her children.

  She didn’t seem surprised or pleased. She showed me photographs of them on her phone. A girl with dark hair like hers in a pink, frilly dress, and a smaller boy with a clip-on tie.

  ‘They look pretty. Was there a party?’

  ‘Yes,’ Aunty M said. ‘Nurul had her graduation at primary school.’

  ‘Really? Did they celebrate like here, with a stage and performances?’

  Aunty M turned red. ‘I think so. I wasn’t there.’

  ‘Ok. I see.’ But I didn’t, not really.

  Aunty M stared at the photo. ‘I got her the dress, sent it from Singapore. She adored it. My mother said she did not want to take it off that night. She slept in it. It was all wrinkled the next morning.’

  ‘When did you last see them?’

  Aunty M took some time to work it out. ‘About two years ago now. Adi had just turned eight.’

  I stared at her in horror. Aunty M looked back and stroked my hair. She laughed. ‘Nurul
could look just like that.’

  Suddenly I felt weird, in a way I couldn’t tell was good or bad. Aunty M must have felt the same because she turned away from me and fingered some orange spiky flowers on the side of the road.

  I needed a different subject. What would PoPo do? She’d taught me that food was always safe. She said, ‘In England, if you don’t know what to say, you talk about the weather. In Singapore, you talk about food.’ PoPo had never been to England, but she knew Singapore and it sounded like solid advice.

  ‘Aunty M, do you like beef rendang?’ I asked.

  The air cleared, and not only from toxic fog. ‘Yes, I love beef rendang.’

  Since PoPo had died, food in our house had become a lot more boring. PoPo had been a good cook, each dish more fragrant and flavourful than the last. Mama was such a bad cook she couldn’t even tell Aunty M what to make properly, always picking the same, safe dishes. ‘I have failed in your upbringing,’ PoPo would lament to Mama. ‘What woman cannot cook?’

  Dad, on the other hand, was a good cook. He used to let me help, and together we’d make the biggest mess. His specialty was risotto and he called me his sous-chef, which is French for helper cook. But these days he was always too busy with work.

  For some reason, the blander our food became, the more stiff and boring dinnertime was too.

  PoPo’s rendang, sweet beef curry, made both your eyes and mouth water, but she never wrote down her recipes. They were a pinch of this and a handful of that. Mama had not even tried to cook it since she died.

  ‘Can you teach me to cook beef rendang?’ I asked Aunty M.

  ‘Sure. Do you have a recipe?’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘Don’t you? It’s Indonesian, right? Did your mother not teach you?’

  Aunty M smiled. ‘No, she didn’t.’

  ‘Why not? What did she teach you then?’

  ‘We grew tapioca in our garden. We would make curry from the leaves, singkong lemak, with coconut milk. The roots are starchy, we ate them fried. And we got salted fish from the market. Very salty, that fish. You had to soak it for hours but it always stayed salty.’

  ‘Tapioca?’ I asked. ‘Like tapioca pudding?’

  ‘Yes,’ Aunty M said, ‘like tapioca pudding.’

  ‘And then you had it with rice.’

  ‘Actually, you know, rice was expensive. We could not always afford it. Tapioca every day, when I was your age. I hated it. When we had rice we were very happy. Even if we only had it with garlic and chilli. For special occasions we would catch a chicken, we had plenty of kampong chicken running around. Village chicken meat has the best flavour, like it’s concentrated in their scrawny bodies. Not like those ones you buy in the NTUC supermarket, fat but bland. My mother could fry up a chicken, so good. Just like I do now, the one you like. Yes, she taught me that.’

  Aunty M looked like she could almost taste that fried kampong chicken. And I had to admit, her fried chicken was good – much better than Mama’s, although I was not yet ready to admit it was better than PoPo’s.

  Aunty M said, ‘But you know, beef, beef is even more expensive than chicken. So how can my mother teach me to cook beef rendang?’

  ‘I see,’ I said, and this time I did.

  ‘You know, sweetie, we will buy beef today and we will cook rendang together. We can figure it out.’

  ‘And then you can teach your daughter too one day,’ I added.

  I thought it was a nice thing to say, but Aunty M didn’t look happy. She walked in silence for a minute. Then she stopped and smiled. ‘Yes, I will, you are right. You know, I am very lucky: I have a job. My children eat good food every day.’

  We didn’t have a recipe, so Aunty M had to guess what ingredients to buy. We got beef, spices, and vegetables, as well as everything else on our list. Then we had thosai for lunch, the Indian pancakes I always had when we were at the hawkers’ stalls. We hadn’t been there often since PoPo died.

  On our way back Chloe, full of thosai, fell asleep straight away. At the gate of our condo we saw Sri’s employer drive past in her car. Immediately Aunty M pushed the loaded stroller towards the elevator. ‘Come Maya! Hurry up, before she gets back.’

  As always, Sri’s door was closed. Aunty M knocked softly but no one answered. She knocked again, a little louder: ‘Sri, it’s me, Merpati.’

  We heard shuffling behind the door, then a muffled voice.

  ‘She can’t open the door, it’s locked,’ I said.

  Aunty M squatted, pressing her lips as close to the slit under the door. They spoke in Javanese.

  Suddenly, the door next to Sri’s opened and a teenager came out. I jumped up before Aunty M could stop me. ‘Hi, can I ask you something?’ The teenager grunted something that sounded like yes. ‘We need to speak to your neighbour. Can we use your balcony? This door’s locked.’

  He looked at me dubiously.

  ‘Please,’ I said. ‘It’s important. A matter of life or death.’

  ‘Sure,’ he said, laughing as he opened his door for us. ‘But be quick, I need to go out.’

  I pulled Aunty M’s sleeve but she pointed at Chloe. ‘She’s asleep,’ I said, ‘Come on, let’s go.’

  Aunty M shouted something through the door, and when we got to the balcony behind the kitchen we could hear Sri already on the other side. The teenager handed Aunty M a chair. She climbed onto it and hung over the wall separating the two balconies to speak to Sri.

  After a minute the guy became impatient. ‘Why are you doing this? Why can’t she open the door?’

  I explained that she was locked in, and very lonely, and that we had talked through the grille until Sri’s ma’am caught us.

  The guy seemed to wake from his zombie state. ‘That’s ridiculous. She should leave that place.’

  I reminded him that the door was locked. ‘They shout at her too,’ he said. ‘We hear it all the time. My mother always complains about it. She called the police once, but they did nothing. They couldn’t act unless they beat her, that’s what they told us.’

  I told him about the bruises, and the black eye Khusnul thought she saw. ‘You’ll need to prove that, though,’ he said.

  Aunty M was still talking to Sri, and we could hear sobs from the other side of the wall.

  ‘Sorry, but I need to go or I’ll be late. If you want to come back any time, be my guest. Come in the afternoon. I’m usually home alone.’

  When we got back, Aunty M started to unpack the groceries. She didn’t mention what had happened or compliment me on the presence of mind I’d shown in asking the teenager to let us use his balcony. That put me in a huff. We shared an important secret – surely we should discuss it? There was an invisible thread that tied us together now, yet Aunty M ignored it.

  But I needed some nice thoughts after the week I’d had at school, so I suppressed further worries about Sri; and when Aunty M said, ‘Let’s make the rendang. It needs to cook very long,’ I smiled at her.

  Aunty M put Chloe in her cot and we googled recipes for beef rendang, which Aunty M studied carefully before finally picking one. We chopped and pounded ginger, turmeric, galangal, garlic, chilli and lemongrass together for the rempah, a spice paste that we fried till the house smelled like the hawker. Next we added the beef, coconut milk and more herbs and spices. We chatted about nothing as we worked, and I felt light and happy.

  ‘Now, sayang, we leave it to simmer,’ Aunty M said. I shot her a look and she clasped her hands in front of her mouth. ‘Sorry, sa… sweetie.’

  I gave her a tiny smile and went to my room to simmer too. I felt a lot better after my day with Aunty M. The talking had done me good, and now it was time to think. Finally, I allowed the thoughts I’d been suppressing to bubble to the surface.

  What had changed at school? It had never been this bad before. Other than the daily trial of the bus ride, my school days had been mostly comfortable. My classmates were nice enough, maybe not my friends but friendly. Now the silence in the bus was worse than the bull
ying had been, and in class no one spoke to me either. A while ago, people had sniggered behind my back, but now even that was over.

  Had Jenny and Meena gone around school telling people to stop talking to me? Or had just sharing the cockroach story been enough?

  At international school everyone was supposed to be different, but they all seemed the same to me. Happy. Talking. Sociable. Not liking me. No one sat next to me in class or at lunch. If someone had to team up with me in a project they’d roll their eyes, sigh, and be as economical with words as they could to get the work done. No chit-chat, no how was your weekend, or did you see that movie? I ate lunch alone too. Quietly.

  I could smell the rendang cooking, but I needed something stronger to cover up the cockroach flavour. I summoned up the memory of the pineapple tarts PoPo and I had made together for Chinese New Year. PoPo was a good cook but not a good teacher. It had made me try to be a better student, and I had jotted notes in my Hello Kitty notebook constantly. PoPo kept pushing the notebook away.

  ‘Don’t write. Knead. Feel with your fingers.’

  I kept asking how much, how many, how long – but PoPo shook her head. ‘You need to feel. Feel with your fingers, smell with your nose. And then think with your brain. No book.’

  She threw in ingredients in portions she described as handfuls, pinches, big spoons, small spoons. The most specific measure was a cup, but it wasn’t always the same cup. ‘No scale in my kitchen,’ she’d said. The pineapple tarts had tasted amazing.

  I searched my drawers for the Hello Kitty notebook, then leafed through it until I found the pineapple tart recipe, or what passed for it. I folded the rendang recipe and slipped it inside next to it. It wasn’t long now until Chinese New Year.

  Mama looked startled when Aunty M put the rendang on the table.

  ‘Maya and I made it together,’ Aunty M said.