Corridor

school friends, whether any of them would remember her, the girl who had left too soon. But when Kala walked towards her table balancing a tray with sugarcane drinks and some hawker food, biting her tongue (Kala’s habit, as Rosminah had found out within minutes of their first meeting), Rosminah knew that it was possible to make up for lost time.* * *For the past three nights, Rosminah had not slept. After her husband started snoring, she would creep out of the room and walk into the kitchen. Kala’s birthday was just the week after, and Rosminah would open up the newspapers to see which of the department stores had sales. She saw a fruit juice maker from the Oriental Emporium that caught her eye. There was also a steam iron that came at a bargain, but it was only sold at Sogo, which was somewhere far away in town. She could not put down the reasons for her excitement. In her wallet was 50 dollars, something she had painstakingly saved up for the past six months. She had skipped late night supper breaks at work, always telling Kala that she was full, sometimes bringing food to work: a packet of chickpeas or some melon seeds. Maybe her eagerness had something to do with the thrill of having been able to save up so much money and then the scandalous thought of spending it not on herself but on someone else. What would her husband think?

Or maybe it was because she had never bought anyone a gift before. She had bought toys for her children, but always in their presence, always because they had pointed at something dangling from a raffia string tied in front of a provision shop, some action figurine or doll (Siti Nuraini had one whose eyelashes could flick open and close depending on whether it was standing or horizontal). And Rosminah had bought the toys to silence them, sometimes suspecting that they had asked for the toys purely out of boredom, and feeling annoyed that all she had bought were some kitchen towels or wooden pegs that cost only about a tenth of the toy’s price.

But this gift for Kala was something different. It was to be done in secret; Rosminah would have to make sure that it would be a surprise. Was that what Rosminah wanted? Surprise? Kala’s eyes growing wider than it already was, the painted finger nails caressing the gift, shaking it perhaps, bringing it close to the ear; Rosminah had recreated the scene a hundred times in her head. It was morning, the end of their shift, and at the lockers Rosminah would tell Kala to wait awhile, there seemed to be something stuck in her own locker. She would ask Kala to take a look, and Kala would see the thing wrapped in a flower-patterned wrapping paper with a bow on it. Kala would take it out and then the stage would be set. Kala’s characteristic “Aiyoo” rang sharp in Rosminah’s ears, the blabber of “For me ah? You sure or not? Hah? Why you never tell me... why... you never... aiyoo... how much?” It was a form of revenge, of course. On many other occasions, Kala had been the one to surprise Rosminah.* * *Rosminah walks to the kitchen and sits down. The house is in complete darkness, but she can find her way around because she has lived in their three-room flat for 11 years, and also because there is not much furniture around. While walking from the children’s bedroom to the kitchen, a few things had caught Rosminah’s eye: the glowing digits on the VCR,˚ the orange feline eye of the Airpot set to “warm”, the red squares that pulse on the plugs that keep the refrigerator and water heater alive. Rosminah knows that some of her appliances were wedding presents, but to her, that seemed such a long time ago; she and her husband unearthing crystalware, Queen Anne’s silver, and counting out money, so much money that they uncreased and sorted into bundles. It seemed then that everything they would ever need was in that room. They had money, they had a bed with coiled springs, they were the first ones from their families who had a table lamp, they had a new white satin bedsheet they might just use that night and store away forever, they had each other. Of course, the bedsheet stayed for one week, another, and after a while the pristine whiteness was gone, and it acquired a smell.

In the quiet of the kitchen, the refrigerator hums soothingly. Rosminah fixes herself some orange squash and settles into one of the kitchen stools. Those lights still going on during the night, still blinking. Wedding gifts, the VCR and Airpot, and the rice cooker and electric kettle, which are not turned on at the moment. Rosminah wonders; if she had a hundred electrical appliances and set them running all at the same time, would their small function lights flood her kitchen like an entire constellation? Maybe they could form a shape, like neon letters in the dark, a sign, lucid answers. Her question: did she love the man she married? Or should the question be: did she marry the man she loved? All she remembered of the wedding was her husband sitting cross-legged, in front of the kadi,˚ having to say “I, Awang Bin Razali, receive Rosminah Binte Abdullah, with a dowry of 50 dollars, cash down.” He had stuttered a few times before he finally got it right, even at one time saying Awang Bin Abdullah and Rosminah Binte Razali, to much laughter. When he finally got it right, the witnesses had chuckled heartily and shouted “Sah!”˚ and then patted him on his back. Rosminah takes another sip from her glass. She had cost her husband 50 dollars.* * *“You ever come here before?” was what Kala had asked her.

Rosminah shook her head. In the distance, she could see shophouses scarred with strips of