‘Agnes drove us to the San,’ Ammuma says very softly. ‘I sat in the back, with Francesca. Told stories.’
She closes her eyes, then says under her breath, ‘And when the sun came up, she knew that she was safe.’
Mrs Selva closes her eyes too, and breaks wind defiantly. Like Ammuma, she’s matter-of-fact about her body. Blood, pains, cramps, the empty-balloon breasts revealed by her hospital gown. She’s seen worse, and most of it’s been right here.
‘So. Enough of questions, Durga.’ Ammuma crosses her arms. She’s had enough of me, of Mrs Selva, of the stink of breakfast congee from the corridor. She’s all in favour of smells and stubbornness, but they’ve got to be her own. She shuts her eyes defiantly. Daylight reveals all the scuffs on the skirting board and the darns at the bottom of the bed-curtains.
I can’t let it go, though. ‘I thought you sent her there just to have me. Because she wasn’t married …’
Ammuma snorts. ‘Couldn’t know who to marry, is it? Some George-boy, Anil-Uncle, Arif-the-postman. Eenie-meenie, it is, like on the playground.’
Anil-Uncle? She gives me a cunning, sideways glance. See, Durga, she’s saying. A woman who seduces her own uncle, well, who knows where she’ll end up? Fallen. Ruined. Scarlet, and wicked and witchy as snakes. Locked up in the San for her own good, and for everyone else’s too; when we dragged her out she was fucking the postman.
‘But you told me my father was a boy, from her school …’
Ammuma gives me a loving smile that doesn’t quite come off. Too much gleam to it, too much fang and impatience.
‘And now I tell different,’ she says. Which is Ammuma through and through. She tells stories; she tells drowned women and Malay housewives and tiger-princes, and she’s told me all along that she’s not to be trusted.
‘More than one way to be right, isn’t it, Durga? Your mathematics, hanh?’
‘But this isn’t … I mean, it’s facts, Ammuma. It’s not mathematics, it’s –’
It’s real life, I’m about to say, and she gives me a triumphant look over her bedsheets.
‘In love, they were,’ she goes on calmly. ‘Your mother and Anil-Uncle. Your mother and anyone.’
‘But …’
‘And then he died. Romantic, all this kissing-mooning, but not right for her. She needs safer. Needs locks on the gates and windows.’
Locks on the gates. I can feel Ammuma wince as she says it, and I squeeze her hand tight. ‘So Francesca died in there when it burnt down? Oh, Ammuma, I’m so sorry, I’m –’
‘No, Durga!’
As Ammuma says No! there’s a sound from Mrs Selva’s bed. A bubble of foul air forces its way from the tissues of her chest and her ribs begin to cave. There’s a sound like air being blown into a crumpled paper bag, and an alarm goes off on one of her machines. She coughs, making a noise like chickens squabbling, all snapping beaks and wings clapped together. Another alarm starts, blaring in the corridor outside. There’s a thud of feet on the vinyl floor. Ammuma turns to me quickly, her eyes bright and urgent.
‘Still see her,’ she whispers in my ear, a hot gush of words under the howling alarm. ‘My baby one, every month. In Kampung Ulu.’
She gives me a grin – a shocking, toothy flash – and pushes her legs down to the end of the bed. Her lips are closed firmly over her teeth and she’s sitting back now, watching the show.
The machine gives another shriek and Mrs Selva yelps. She’s woken in a flurry, her hair on end and no breath to complain about it with. I jump as the door’s flung open and Tom hurries in with his white coat flapping. He runs to Mrs Selva’s bedside and pushes a code into the machine’s front panel.
The alarm ratchets down a notch, then starts to rise again. Tom turns a dial, adjusting a bag that’s pumping fluid into her withered arm. After a few seconds the alarm cuts out. It leaves the room ringing with silence and the scrape of breath. Mrs Selva’s Christmas cards flutter in the breeze and Tom reaches out to set them straight.
‘Don’t worry,’ Tom says. He sounds professional, all-under-control, but his forehead’s furrowed with tension. ‘All OK, Mrs Selva, Mary-Auntie.’
Neither of them looks convinced. The noise of the alarm seems to have hammered them down, left them flattened with unease. If bodies can fail even here, in the lights and disinfectant of a hospital bed, then how can they be trusted at all?
Ammuma shoves her teeth out with a clack. They drop into the palm of her hand, glistening with spit, and she puts them on the bedside table. She’s done with talking, she’s done with being questioned, and she’s certainly done with explanations. Mrs Selva, with no teeth to make her own statement with, looks mutely envious.
A few nurses come bustling into the room, their white coats stiff with authority and starch.
‘Thank you, Dr Harcourt,’ one of them says. ‘We’ll take over now.’
She gives him a toothpaste-commercial smile of her own, and holds the door open for us. Tom ushers me out in front of him, but he looks less sure of himself suddenly. He’s been dismissed. He’s not wanted; he’s been replaced by shining hair and lipsticked smiles and competency in skirts.
‘Sorry about all that,’ he says when we’re in the corridor. ‘We’re a bit stretched, you see. Mary-Auntie wouldn’t normally be in with Mrs Selva.’
I don’t see why not. Someone worse off than herself is exactly what Ammuma needs to pep herself up.
‘Hopefully she’ll be out in an hour or so. We’re waiting on the last scan results, but as long as they’re fine she’s good to go.’
‘Sorry?’ I don’t understand. ‘You’re sending her home?’
He nods. ‘We’ll sort out a nurse to help you. Perhaps one of the girls from here, just for a month or so …’
Tom goes on talking, stringing out a
