That night, and I promised myself that night only, I decided to let him have the pillow. But I didn’t say anything. I just held his head on my lap between my hands trying to remember a song whose tune was at the tip of my tongue but whose words I couldn’t recall. After he fell asleep and started snoring I changed my mind and pulled the pillow away from under his head. I started thinking of all the friends I had lost, and the boys whose favours I had tried so hard to win back in secondary school, mentioning their full names one by one. And then for those whose names I had forgotten I mentioned what I most recalled about them. The one with the flapping shirt. The one with the dark nipples. The one with the flying shoelaces. I even tried to remember silly things like how my mother looked like when I was four years old. I cradled the pillow tightly and pressed my nose into it. I had a feeling that if I were to come up for air my face would crack into hundreds of wrinkles.
CORRIDORWhen the body of the murdered man was found in the corridor we were having our holiday in Jakarta. Our next door neighbours weren’t in as well and nobody knew where they had gone. But we told the newspaper man not to send our newspapers for seven days. This was different from the last time when we could tell our old neighbours, Mr and Mrs DeSouza, back in Tampines to take the newspapers for us, read even if they want to, just return to us once we got back home. And even if they were to give the newspapers back with, “sorry we had to cut out this coupon, the sale ended yesterday”, or if one of their children scribbled someone’s face with a blue beard and spectacles, we would close an eye. And also please help water the plants, except the children’s cactus, because they will rot with too much.
Thank you, and yes, we will have a good trip.
The body was found by one of the women along our corridor, this woman who goes to work in the morning earlier than everyone else. She always keeps her windows closed and once in a while she would bring a man back to her house. But we don’t care what they do. Anyway she was always well dressed, she knew how to wear shoulder pads and stockings and sometimes when I am in the living room I see her passing in front of our house. This is when I tell my grandchildren to hurry up, put on their shoes quickly − why so dirty, just second day of school, come, don’t forget to kiss your grandmother’s hand here, study hard. I think of that woman sometimes and how she must have walked back to her house, fumbling with the keys. Calling the police.
Asking why she has to call the police. Asking why they needed her address. Asking why they needed her name.
I think if I think hard enough, I can remember her name, because one day one of her men was shouting for her as she raced down the corridor, trying to hide her face. Like she was crying. He called her something like Lydia or Linda, “Lydia come back I’m sorry.” If my memory serves me right I think it was Lydia.* * *In Jakarta I stayed in the hotel most of the time. They would come back from the open-air markets with food; it was always food, chicken wings in oily plastic bags, fishballs on sticks, sitting on the edge of the bed, watching TV and eating. Sometimes I’m not sure what to say because I don’t eat a lot, so I will tell them, this afternoon I watch this show already. Then they will tell me this is a hotel so they get cable, so the shows repeat themselves, as if I didn’t know. I sometimes want to tell them I know, it’s just that I want to tell you that I watched it, I’m not complaining, in fact I want to tell you that it was funny, it made me laugh all alone in the hotel room with the curtains drawn. Which in itself is a funny thing.
Then I will ask my grandchildren what they did and they will show me the shells they collected at the beach, common ones, some cracked, but they will ask me to keep them. When I ask them what they want to do with the shells, they will say that they will wash them. Wash them, and then lay them in the sun to dry. What else, I will ask, and it will be my son-in-law who will say, oh, they’re so young, don’t ask them questions like that, what are they supposed to answer. I sometimes feel like saying it’s as if we don’t have a beach where we come from but usually I kept quiet. Whatever it is when he scolds his children they will run to me, and I will say let’s get some ice cream, go look for my purse, even though I knew where I had put it.
I caught my son-in-law one day telling my daughter, your mother has a sharp tongue, and my daughter,
