Shadow Theatre (15 page)

ILA! HAVE YOI I lost your mind? How can you let her go by herself? What kind of mother are you? Those had been the accu
sations, Ben's relatives descending like vultures. Ever since
Shakilah was born, they had had their eyes on her, the first
niece, the first granddaughter. Ben had accused me of overreacting. He never saw them for what they were, vultures. But
then, that was his family. He had been an only son, everyone's
favorite nephew, the eldest grandchild, handsome and deeply
beloved. No wife could have lived up to the expectations everyone must have had, what's more a Eurasian Chinese. I used to
think about asking them if they realized that's what Shakilah was, a Eurasian Chinese, but for Ben's sake, and then for
Shakilah's, I had held my tongue. Do you know what can happen to
her over there? A single girl like that? They never understood. So
locked within their own preconceptions, they never saw how
Shakilah's protection had always been foremost on my mind.
Such chagrin and outrage at her name, when I had chosen it.
That's a Muslim name! Why are you giving her a Muslim name? How
relieved I had been that Ben had believed me when I said I was
naming Shakilah after my closest childhood friend, whose family had moved away when we were ten. He was too pragmatic
in his nature to have understood why some babies must be disguised. But some of his aunts could have guessed at this, if their
minds had been open to the possibility that they might not
know everything.

Sooner or later, they were going to find out she was back.
The word was going to spread, even though none of them lived
nearby. Everyone talks on an island this small. Here, you can get
family news from strangers.

How was I going to protect a granddaughter if I couldn't
even say she was mine? And what had Shakilah told Eve about
me? Was I going to be forhidden to be near the baby?

Fate's hand, as I was saying. You have to know when to preserve your energy. I leaned over the sink and washed my face.
Before going back downstairs, I went into my room to put on
some powder.

A sparrow was perched on the windowsill near my bureau
when I entered the room, and my mind drifted towards
Halimah. But it was only habit that made me think the sparrow might be something other than a sparrow. Yes, I'm sure.
She would have been too busy at the time to bother with us,
especially since she had warned me from the start not to marry
Ben.

I combed my hair, and I changed my blouse. Never look as
though you've surrendered, understand.

"DON'T WORRY. I'M not going to tell the world," Shakilah said,
while she was washing the rice. She didn't look up.

I listened to the grains falling between her fingers, their
sound like a rain shower in the rice pot. She swirled them around
a few more times in the water, then drained the water out, holding her palm against the rim of the pot. Strange as this may
sound, it gave me comfort to see her washing rice. You've heard
what they say about Americans, how they don't wash their rice
because they think they'll wash away the vitamins. Imagine that.
Cooking rice without washing it first. Not that I had wanted
Shakilah to stay exactly the same. I had known when she left
that she would change. And no, I don't regret it, and I didn't even
then. I would have paid any price for her safety.

"I'm not worried about that," I said, even though I was.

'That's because you know I would never tell," she said, her
voice carrying no feeling at all. It drifted about the room like a
splinter, or an old scab, a flake of skin that had fallen off her
body, with nothing attached. And only the air was holding it up,
as if the air were water, as if again, we were separated by water.

So you see, life hands you what it will. Better to accept it and
make your peace, than to try to alter your fate. I had known this
when I married Ben, and yet, I had married him. He and I weren't
meant to be. His being too handsome for me had been a sign.
Halimah had tried her best to persuade me. Keep the baby. You want the
baby, keep her. Leave the father alone. But to become an unwed mother?
Especially in those days? I wasn't brave enough. I was only sixteen.

"Are you going to keep avoiding the police?" she asked, as I
opened the refrigerator and reached for some watercress. That had
always been her favorite vegetable, the only vegetable I could get
her to eat without her trying to spit it out, when she was a child.

She must have thought my fear was that somehow or other,
the police would find out what I had done, what she believed I had done. Would it be easier on her if she knew the actual
crime? What about your sister? What if she were to hear the
truth about her mother, and about her grandmother, and about
her grandfather? It was going to be bad enough when she found
out about her father. Your mother didn't have to tell me the
father's sperm had come from a sperm bank. I knew, now.

I don't have anything to tell them about Auntie Coco and
her sister," I said, pretending that was what your mother
had meant with her question. "I can't tell them anything that
would help them."

Not that I wasn't concerned about Auntie Coco, but I knew
eventually she would realize her sister was all right. She would
feel it.

Shakilah didn't ask anything else or say anymore after that.
We did the rest of our cooking in silence, with the night outside
like a black cloth moving over the grass. Once, I thought I
heard a dog barking, and as we were setting the table, one of the
neighbors' children shouted something up the road. That was
when I checked Shakilah's face to see what her reaction was, but
your mother's face was a closed book to me now, and I couldn't
tell if she had even heard the shout.

Other than that, the night passed peacefully for us. (No, it
didn't rain again, and Elizabeth Sandhu didn't stop by as she had
on the previous night. Yes, she used to be Shakilah's favorite
teacher at St. Agnes, but I'm quite sure there was no dirty business going on between them. Not Elizabeth. Don't go off on that
wild goose chase. She had stopped by only for a brief visit,
around nine o'clock. Yes, the police had left by then. No, no,
there was nothing odd about Elizabeth's being in the neighborhood. She was simply visiting her in-laws on River Road.)

WHAT ELSE I I A F) I found in Shakilah's suitcase? A booklet with
an American Indian man on the cover. He was carrying a spear and dancing on the grass, and the words Santa Fe Visitors Guide were
strung out above his head. Two postcards, one showing a field of
yellow wildflowers with purple mountains in the distance. The
other showed an underground room, with a wooden ladder leading up to an open door in the ceiling, which seemed to be made
of tree branches. Light from outside was falling into the room,
throwing the shape of the door onto the wall behind the ladder.

And there was a third postcard, obviously local. On the
front was an artist's rendition of the Malay Great Argus, which was
the title printed underneath the picture. There were two beautifully painted argus pheasants, male and female, with the male in
his glory. He was parading about and showing off his feathers
while the female eyed him across the jungle clearing. The background showed a gauzy screen of pastel greens and blues, with
the shapes of fallen tree trunks fading into the shadows. I took
down for your sister the historical information given on the back
of the postcard, so here it is: The male great argus pheasant exhibits one
of the most spectacular courtship displays of the bird world. Their enormous
secondaries and intricately patterned primary wing feathers are masterpieces of
nature's elaborate design. The two central tail feathers will grow to a length of
4 feet in the male. Due to the large amount of tree cutting in Malaysia, the wild
habitat so necessaryfor this species to survive is now being seriously threatened. Nothing about the female, naturally.

Yes, there was handwriting on the postcard. Of course it
wasn't the same as the handwriting on the backs of the
American postcards.

I found a handkerchief, too. It was ironed and folded into a
small square, and hidden between the pages of the booklet. A
yellow handkerchief, with scalloped edges trimmed in blue
thread, and an embroidered fuchsia flower in each corner.
Underneath one flower was the alphabet C, sewn in yellow
thread as if to camouflage it.

No, don't ask me what the handwriting said. And no, there
were no photographs. Not one.

HELENA S I M

O-LAH. NO ONE was surprised when Benjamin Nair
passed away. We never knew what exactly was wrong
with him, but for how long already he had been sickly, at least
eight or nine years, okay? Always in and out of Mount Alvernia.
First, because of terrible headaches, so everyone suspected a
brain tumor. But nothing showed up on the CAT scan, bukan?
And then, when the fellow started tripping over nothing and
falling down for no reason, still, the doctors couldn't come up
with anything definite. Ya-lah, a bit of rumor was already going
around that something else must be involved. Since Mount
Alvernia's a Catholic hospital, if you can't get well there, gone case-lah. Ah, I remember that's what Dorothy and Siew Chin
they all were saying when it happened, Bernadette even. But
you see how I never jump to conclusions unnecessarily. I was
the only one who disagreed, okay? Even though there was a
logic to what they were saying, about black magic being
involved. You can't find a holier hospital than Mount Alvernia.
Nuns on every floor. (I've already told Rose, when my time
comes, that's where I want to go. Lucifer better not get my soul
in the final hour. Hopefully she was listening. You never know
what that one might try when you're feeling weak. Look how he
tried to go for Our Lord himself when Our Lord was feeling
faint from hunger. Not shy, that Lucifer. Going for the Son of
God, imagine). So anyway, none of us were surprised when the
fellow finally went. But what I told the others at the time was
that he must have had very poor nutrition as a child, and eventually that sort of thing catches up with you, you know.