A Yellow House Read online

  Mama stared at the pot for a few seconds, then raised her face and forced a smile. ‘I’m glad you’re starting to get along,’ Mama said.

  I was too, I realised – but Mama didn’t need to know that so I looked away. When I turned back to her, Mama didn’t look glad either. She asked a few more questions – about the beef rendang, about how our day had been – but she didn’t really listen to the answers. She was staring at a spoon full of rendang held just in front of her mouth, as if hesitating to eat it. She inhaled the flavour and a small tear formed in the corner of her eye. I hadn’t seen Mama cry, ever.

  Mama finally put the spoon in her mouth, closed her eyes, and chewed silently. After she swallowed she wiped her eye and looked guilty. ‘Wow. A lot of spice in there. It tears up my eyes.’

  ‘Do you think it’s a bit like PoPo’s?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s different, I think,’ Mama said, heaping another scoop into her mouth. ‘But very nice,’ she added hastily, her mouth full.

  I felt bad that our rendang had upset Mama. I decided to change the subject. ‘So how was your day, Mama?’

  She swallowed her food and dropped her spoon on the table. ‘It was horrible. I don’t know how to do this, seriously. This guy Chua – I mean, what does he think he’s doing? Why does a boss feel it’s ok to interfere with the way an employee does her job? I can’t really tell you, you’re too little, let alone your sister. You wouldn’t understand.’

  She started off on one of her rants. I should never have asked.

  ‘And it’s not just work stuff. Where does he think he gets the right to an opinion on my marriage, my children, my pregnancy, even my mother dying? You know what’s next? He’ll decide how to do those bloody pigtails of yours! That would be the end. Can’t people just stick to their own stupid lives?’

  It was clear she didn’t want an answer.

  ‘As if I don’t have enough on my mind, enough to deal with, without having to worry about how he feels about it! If I deliver my targets, that should be good enough. I make tons of money for his bonus! Work is work and my life is my life.’

  She was unstoppable. I wished Dad were there. Aunty M was quiet and Chloe just kept wiping her greasy hands in her hair.

  ‘Girls, I’ll tell you something. You stick to your own shortcomings, don’t bother about other people’s. Let them live their own lives. Don’t try to help. Helping is just a euphemism for interfering, no matter what they tell you.’

  Eu-what? Mama caught sight of my puzzled face and seemed to remember who she was talking to. ‘Don’t worry, girls. I’ll raise you to not put up with this kind of crap.’ She laughed a weird, crooked laugh. ‘One day I’ll just quit. That will teach him!’

  Was a bland, boring dinner better than one that was too spicy?

  I thought about Sri. Why didn’t she just quit, like Mama had threatened to do? Could we make that happen? Get her out, over the balcony, and away? The excitement I’d felt before rose inside me again – but then something Mama had yelled stuck like an extra hot chilli padi in my throat: helping was just another word for interfering.

  The following Friday afternoon, when I was just back from school, I remembered those words when Aunty M’s phone buzzed. It was Khusnul. Aunty M exchanged a few sentences with her, grabbed Chloe, and shoved me towards the door.

  ‘Come, quick, it’s Sri.’

  10

  We hadn’t gone to see Sri at all that week. I wasn’t sure whether Aunty M had visited when I was at school, or whether she had taken Mama’s helping is interfering to heart too. I had no time to remind Aunty M of those words now; she was already striding towards the elevator with Chloe in her arms.

  It took me less than a second to run after her. I jabbed at the buttons, willing the elevator to go faster. Neither of us spoke.

  Downstairs, we ran to Khusnul’s block and took another elevator to her floor. Khusnul opened the door to us pale and shaking, and pulled us inside. ‘Come look. Quiet, the kids are sleeping.’

  From Khusnul’s kitchen balcony we looked across to Sri’s. It was empty.

  ‘No,’ Khusnul pointed, ‘There, below.’

  Our condo was made of large slabs of concrete, piled together like play blocks. They jutted out irregularly, as if someone had thought that adding a pinch of creativity could break the monotony of the concrete towers. Here and there, narrow ledges had been formed between the slabs. On one of them, just below Sri’s apartment, lay a dark shape.

  ‘It’s her!’ I cried.

  Sri was lying face down, unmoving, like a mosquito squashed on the dirty white concrete. Aunty M started talking to Khusnul in Javanese.

  I pulled Aunty M’s sleeve. ‘We need to go. We need to rescue her.’

  Khusnul nodded. ‘I can’t leave the kids. You go.’

  We went back outside, and it seemed the elevator was even slower in coming this time. Why did our condo have so many floors? I started pushing the buttons again, but Aunty M snatched my hand away. Finally it arrived and we descended and ran back to our block. The doors of the second elevator opened immediately. My finger hovered above the numbered buttons. ‘Which floor?’

  ‘Sri is on the sixth floor, right? So we need fifth.’

  ‘But how will we get in?’

  ‘Just try,’ Aunty M said.

  We rang the doorbell of the apartment we guessed was the closest to where Sri lay. Yet another aunty opened the door. I hadn’t seen her before.

  Aunty M said, ‘We need your help. It’s an emergency. Is your ma’am home?’ The aunty looked at us blankly. She shook her head. ‘Do you understand what I am saying?’

  She shook her head a second time. ‘No Eng-lis.’

  The aunty was still blocking the way and Aunty M grabbed her hand. ‘You, need, to help. Help. You help us?’

  The other aunty nodded uncertainly and Aunty M pushed her aside. She placed Chloe in the middle of the floor and turned back to me. ‘You watch her.’

  I picked up Chloe and followed her to the back balcony. Aunty M started calling softly over the concrete wall. It was lower on this side of the ledge; the other side was high, like the wall between the balcony of Sri’s apartment and the one where the teenage guy lived. I remembered that day, and how I hadn’t gone back to talk to Sri since then. I felt a pang of guilt.

  Over the concrete wall we could see Sri huddled on the ridge across the gap. The other aunty saw her too and pointed, shook her head, then nodded. She hurried to fetch a small stool and climbed over the barrier onto the ledge beyond. She looked over her shoulder impatiently.

  Aunty M followed. ‘Sri,’ we heard her calling, ‘Sri,’ then something I couldn’t understand.

  Slowly Sri turned to face us. I felt my pulse hammering in my throat.

  Aunty M spoke to Sri softly in Javanese. The gap was not wide, but Aunty M stared down at it anxiously. We were on the fifth floor, the ground far below. Looking up, I was glad that Sri didn’t live higher – our condo counted 20 stories.

  The other aunty didn’t hesitate. She stepped across to where Sri lay, then stooped and rubbed Sri’s back. Sri slumped further down. When she saw that, Aunty M stepped over too.

  Together they pulled Sri to her feet and over the gap to the ledge nearest the balcony. My breath came in ragged bursts and I swallowed it down. I held my hand over the wall.

  ‘Can she stand?’ I asked.

  Sri’s leg was hanging at a weird angle. Between us we helped her over the barrier and inside to the sofa. The aunty got Sri a glass of water.

  ‘How long had she been there?’ I asked Aunty M. ‘Is she ok?’

  ‘Not long, inshallah,’ said Aunty M. ‘She was lucky Khusnul saw her.’

  She and Sri started talking in Javanese again. I tried to listen but couldn’t understand what they were saying. I turned to the other aunty, who stood there, her face a cross between a smile and a frown. ‘What’s your name?’ I asked. ‘I’m Maya.’

  She pointed at herself, and ejected a rush of words th
at sounded something like winter thing.

  ‘I’m sorry, what did you say?’

  She said it again, slower this time. The first bit was Win, the rest of it I couldn’t catch. I repeated it back to her and she shook her head. She said it once again, and when I repeated it she grinned. ‘Can I just call you Win?’

  Win nodded. ‘Win. Win ok.’

  ‘Where are you from?’

  ‘Myanmar.’

  It seemed we had exhausted Win’s limited vocabulary, so I turned back to Aunty M and Sri. ‘How is she? Is she ok?’

  Aunty M said, ‘She must have broken her leg. She needs to go to hospital.’

  I looked at Sri, and it seemed there was more wrong than just the leg. She had another fresh black eye and more bruises on her arms. Her eyes seemed the most broken of all; they stared into thin air, looking right through me.

  Aunty M said, ‘She tried to escape, she tried to jump down to this floor. Look at her, what Ah Mah did to her. Her ma’am knew and did nothing. She is the one that locked her in.’

  ‘Did Ah Mah do all that?’ I asked, pointing at Sri’s bruised face.

  ‘Yes. It’s her sir’s mother. Old lady stay with them and Sri has to take care of her. The old lady is evil. Every time Sri makes a mistake – pulls her hair when combing, does not pick up something fast enough – Ah Mah hits her.’

  Sri still looked through me into nothing, but now she was nodding.

  ‘Not only Ah Mah is mean,’ Aunty M added. ‘Her son does not stop her, and sometimes his wife hits Sri too. Sri said the worst part was being alone. They took her phone so she could not call home.’

  ‘Lonely,’ I responded. ‘She was lonely.’

  Aunty M nodded. Why hadn’t we gone to see her sooner? Maybe we could have got her out before she’d got hurt. Was Mama wrong about helping?

  ‘Should we call an ambulance?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ Aunty M said. ‘We’ll take taxi. We can ask someone to go with her. Maybe Mary Grace or Maricel. Maricel ma’am and sir never home before dinner. I could watch the dog for her.’

  Aunty M and Win each took one of Sri’s arms, supporting her weight as she hobbled down the hallway and into the elevator.

  I waited with Sri in the lobby while Aunty M called Mary Grace. Her employer was out, but Mary Grace said she wouldn’t mind anyway. Mary Grace might not speak Javanese or Indonesian, but she had no children to look after and was free to go.

  ‘Does she have money?’ I asked Aunty M. ‘Shouldn’t we call her employer? Who will pay?’

  ‘I gave Mary Grace money for the taxi already,’ Aunty M said. ‘And the employer did this, didn’t they? Why call them? It’s the police we should call!’

  Sri straightened at the word police. ‘No, no police. Police trouble for me. Please, no.’

  They spoke some more in Javanese, and then Mary Grace arrived, a red taxi behind her. We waved at them as they left.

  Win pointed after the taxi. ‘She ok, yes?’

  Aunty M gave her a hug. ‘You were great, thank you. Thank you so much. I’ll stop by sometimes, yes? You my friend?’

  Win nodded. ‘Friend.’

  I felt like hugging her too, but didn’t dare. Instead I just smiled.

  Win smiled back. ‘Friend,’ she said.

  We took Chloe home. Win’s final word had left a warm glow until I remembered Sri. ‘What’s going to happen?’ I asked Aunty M.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Let’s wait till we hear from Mary Grace.’

  She didn’t say much more, and when we got home she told me to do my homework. ‘I need to cook dinner.’

  I went to my room and sat down feeling good. Then I felt bad for feeling good. Hadn’t I just witnessed a horrible thing? Shouldn’t I feel upset? I didn’t. I was happy Sri was finally out of that house, and that I’d helped, and that I might have made a new friend in Win.

  When Mama came home I was on the sofa playing on the iPad, and I just nodded when she asked me if I was going to greet her. I couldn’t look her in the eye. Aunty M said nothing about Sri at dinner, and I didn’t either.

  After she had cleaned up, I saw Aunty M furiously messaging on her phone. I hovered, and when I was sure Mama was out of earshot I asked whether there was any news.

  ‘She broke her leg bad. They will operate tomorrow. She is still in hospital. She bruised some ribs too. And the doctor called the police. They took photos. Not just of her leg, but her eye and arms and everything. They said they can press charges for the hitting.’

  ‘Wow. Do we need to testify?’

  ‘I don’t know. I will visit on Sunday, and ask her.’

  Today was Friday, so Sunday wasn’t far off. ‘Can I come?’ I asked.

  Aunty M looked at me like she wasn’t sure. ‘That is sweet of you. Maybe next time?’

  I realised I’d have to tell Mama and Dad if I wanted to go, so I shrugged. ‘Ok. Tell her I say hi.’

  ‘I will, sayang. Good night.’ She turned back to her phone.

  But there was still something on my mind. ‘Aunty M,’ I said.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Why did Sri not just quit?’ Like Mama, who I still hoped would do as she’d threatened and quit the job that took her away from me every day. The job that had made her stop liking me.

  Aunty M pondered for a while. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. Then, ‘No, actually, I do know. We have a contract. It is for two years. Maids cannot break it, only the employer can. So Sri needs to finish her contract.’

  I repeated the words in my mind, making sense of them. They were mama-words. Contracts and investments. Would the same apply to Mama? Would she have to finish two years? In two years I’d be in secondary school already. I wanted her to quit now.

  But Aunty M was already continuing. ‘Also, she had to pay a lot of money to get this job. Eight months’ deductions. It is her first job in Singapore.’

  I didn’t understand. ‘What’s a deduction?’ I asked.

  ‘You have to pay to the agency that got you the job. But if you don’t have the money, they take it from your salary. The first eight months, sometimes six, you get no salary. You only get allowance, maybe twenty dollar, to buy toiletries. Sri has worked six months, so she still owes the agency two months’ worth of money. She can’t go home.’

  ‘So she didn’t get paid?’ I asked.

  ‘No, not yet. Maybe next month. She needed the money. She needed to stay.’

  I started to understand. ‘And what about you, do we pay you? Do you have this deduction?’ Aunty M had been with us less than six months.

  She smiled. ‘I only had to pay two months of salary because it was a transfer. I worked in Singapore before. Your dad paid the rest. And I had some savings. Don’t worry about my salary, it is fine.’

  I felt relieved. ‘But Sri did not get any money. And she got beat up. That’s not fair.’

  ‘No, sayang, that is not fair. And that is why she jumped.’

  It seemed some things were simply not easy to fix. At least the hospital called the police. Someone knew what was right and wrong.

  The words fair and unfair kept popping up in my head throughout the evening. Eventually, as I was getting ready for bed, another thought drove them away: Aunty M had called me sayang again.

  11

  The beef rendang, which had worked perhaps too well in loosening up Mama’s emotions, had taught me the power of food. I wanted to try again. It was almost Chinese New Year but no one seemed in a festive mood. Mama had decided we’d go away for the holiday: without PoPo, she said, there were no family obligations important enough to stay in Singapore. PoPo had loved family traditions. Mama treated them as a chore.

  ‘We won’t need to have a reunion dinner or New Year’s Day visits this year. Won’t that be great? We did Christmas dinner already – that’s enough elaborate cooking for a year for me. We’ll go to a beach resort, and we won’t have to do anything except relax.’

  I pointed out that Aunty M could do the cooking
– she could do Chinese food as well as anyone – but Mama ignored me. She had booked this place in Thailand that looked flawless, with a pristine stretch of beach bordering turquoise sea, lined by palm trees, and backed by a resort with a shiny blue pool and yellow parasols. The photos looked way too good to be true, but I did not say that. Aunty M would stay at home.

  I pretended to love the idea, agreeing with the stupidity of reunion dinners. In a way Mama was right: our reunion dinner would be pretty lame. Mama was an only child and Dad’s brother was far away and probably had no clue what a reunion dinner was anyway. Both my great-uncles had died before PoPo, and without her we had lost the link to their families. Would they even visit us for New Year if there was no PoPo? Would we visit them? I hadn’t seen any of them since the funeral, and it was better not to risk disappointment.

  I wondered whether Mama had planned it like that on purpose. It was what I did at school: better to pretend you didn’t care so that after a while you could convince yourself you were fine on your own. Then again, perhaps Mama genuinely wanted to get away from it all, away from her pig boss and from Aunty M. And away from home, PoPo’s absence would be less noticeable.

  I wanted to cheer up Mama, that’s why I asked her about the pineapple tarts. We had never had Chinese New Year without homemade pineapple tarts. PoPo wouldn’t allow it. The taste of shop bought ones was unacceptable, she said, and experiences were better when you put in more effort. To my surprise, Mama agreed and sent Aunty M to the market to buy pineapples.

  When I brought out my Hello Kitty notebook with the notes on PoPo’s recipe Mama’s eyes filled with tears she didn’t try to hide. ‘She made the best tarts, didn’t she? I didn’t know you had this, PoPo’s own recipe.’ She hugged me, and I could already taste the tarts.

  When Aunty M came home with the pineapples, I thought Mama was going to flake and tell her to cut them up; but instead she asked her to take Chloe to the playground. ‘Just me and my big girl,’ she said, squeezing me in another hug. She hadn’t hugged me this much in months. My plan was working.