Shadow Theatre (26 page)

Definitely, she was holding the twig in her left hand. Until
this day, I can't get rid of the image. That twig, bent slightly in
the middle, moving here and there across the sand, and the
lady's skirt draped over her knees. Ah, ya, she was wearing a full
long skirt. Sky-blue, that's what the color is called now. That
was the color of her skirt. And it was so long, it hid her feet.

Only when the lady lifted her head and turned to stare
directly at the four of us, then we betul-betul terkejut, really
startled.

All I can do is pray I never get that old. I pray Our Lord will
show me mercy.

AH. SO HERE'S the hardest part to believe, but it's all true.
Suddenly, as the five of us were watching, that old lady swung
around and scuttled off across the grass. Ya, ya, on all fours, and
believe me, no normal old lady can move her body that fast,
okay? What's more, she passed right through the fence and
went off into the lalang. You know how there used to be lalang
growing wild behind the garden.

All of this happened. Not one word I've said is a lie.

Another strange thing was that Susanna told us later she
wasn't the one who screamed. Not only that, she said she didn't
hear any scream.

You see why I say there's only one explanation. But of
course, not even Bernadette would admit it. She was the one to
bring up my Rose after we were back in the dining room.

"Does Rose know anything about Shakilah's husband, yet?"
she asked me, with her face still quite pale, but you see how she
was pretending it was just a normal afternoon. Dorothy and
Siew Chin also were sewing quietly. None of us were mentioning the old lady, and Susanna had already gone over to the
church for her choir practice, since it was almost three o'clock.
(I doubt-lah if that girl herself told anyone, except maybe Jo.)

You see how takut we were. Scared out of our wits-lah. We
thought, in case the lady was you-know-who. Ya, it could have
been the same lady as the bus drivers used to see, but that lady also
could have been Pontianak, okay? Who's supposed to be beautiful
beyond the imagination, true, but only when she appears to young
men. Other times, you've heard the stories, right?

So I played along with Bernadette, knowing at the same
time I had to be careful. "You know those two," I said. "Rose is
not going to tell anyone Shakilah's business, okay? Their kind
of friendship has deep roots, you know."

What went on between me and my daughter was my own
business, ya? Of course I had tried to pry loose the actual story
about what was what, umpteen times already. But that daughter
of mine, like pulling teeth. And no-lah, I couldn't read her mind.
People like to talk about mother's intuition, but it's nonsense,
okay? You see my Rose. See how deep still waters can run.

Anyway, Dorothy joined in with her "I don't think there's a
husband involved," which she had been saying ever since
Shakilah came home, so it was nothing new.

"I don't think so, either," Bernadette said, which also was
nothing new.

Only Siew Chin and I had been trying to give Shakilah the
benefit of the doubt, although to be honest, in my heart, I actually agreed with Dorothy and Bernadette, and that could be the
case with Siew Chin also. But someone had to come to the girl's
rescue, ya? Only this afternoon, apparently, neither of us wanted to talk about Valerie and her daughter.

Siew Chin at that moment was stitching up a purple velvet
sheath for the puppet that would be carrying a dagger. Without
looking up, she changed the topic by asking, "Did Father
Pereira tell anyone what the wayang is going to be about?"

Ya, ya, we already knew the teenagers were writing their own
script. No wonder-lah, since none of them had ever turned a page
of the Ramayana. That's young people for you. Probably, they didn't
even know much about wayang kulit, which in olden times was a
harvest celebration, okay? That's why the play used to begin at
dusk and run until dawn-which was something else about it that
would have made Father O'Hara object, and that, you can believe
the teenagers knew. (In olden times, the play would begin on
the last day of the padi harvest-lah, so after all that hard work,
people could sit back and relax. Imagine how skillful the dalang
had to be, ya? First of all, he had to hold everyone's attention the
whole night. And then not only that, but since the audience would
be sitting on both sides of the screen, he had to make sure the puppets' movements were absolutely precise. Ya-lah, the women
would be sitting behind the stage and all they could see were the
shadows on the screen. Obviously, men and women weren't
allowed to sit together the whole night. But that was then-lah.)

Dorothy took the bait and said, Some kind of love story,
must be. That's all they're interested in, at their age."

"I wonder why they want a kris," Siew Chin said, and to be
honest, she sounded as if really, she was wondering. She was
even looking at the dagger that Bernadette had made for the
puppet out of gold foil. It was lying in the center of the table,
among the various arms and legs, and you see Bernadette's hidden talent. The dagger was so tiny, and yet so perfectly shaped.

"You think a love story can't have a kris in it?" I said, mostly to keep us from returning to the other topic-lah.

"Every love story must have an element of danger," Dorothy
said, and of course I was surprised to hear her agreeing with me,
for a change.

Bernadette looked at me with a certain expression in her
eyes, as if expecting me to say something. Don't know what-lah,
but when I said nothing, she also kept quiet. To this day, I don't
know what she was thinking at that moment.

Then we heard Father Pereira's car outside, so definitely, our
chance to talk about the old lady while the event was still fresh
was over.

So that was that-lah.

BY I Ii F WAY. you know what else about the Pauh Janggi? Malay
folklore teaches us, on the island on which it grows, lives a giant
crab that sleeps in a cove. Twice a day, the crab swims out into
the sea and that's when the waters of the sea rush into the cove.
And that's what makes the tides-lah, not only gravity. That's
what has been giving us high tide and low tide, since the beginning of the world.

Think about it, okay?

NO ONF KNOWS-lah who actually made the call. But here's the
truth. When the police came, they came with handcuffs. Ya, ya,
people remember, whether or not they admit it. The way those
handcuffs shone, when Willy Coleman was marched out to the
police car. And that Ying Ying, she was nowhere to be seen.
This was on the following Friday, exactly five weeks from the
night Auntie Coco's sister went missing. (Sister Sylvia was down
with the flu, so that's why I happened to be around to see all
this.) No-lah, no ambulance arrived, so it couldn't have been
that bad-lah. Only thing, Ying Ying didn't step out of the house
for several days after that. Too embarrassed to show her face.
Sending her son out to run errands for her. Ya, ya, the boy was
home when the police came. Could be, he was the one who
called.

You know only black magic can wield that sort of power,
making some of us see or hear one thing, and others seeing or
hearing something else. (And by the way, according to Rose,
Adelaide's grandson was with her that first Friday night. You
remember, Bernadette said she didn't see him outside the house,
although I had heard from Winifred that he was there.)

Now here's the thing. What if the Pauh Janggi is actually
that apple tree that's written about in the Book of Genesis?
What if that's where we are? And that's why all our gates have
dragons. Must sound a bit gila, but now you understand why I
started changing my ways. Don't forget the parable of the wise
and foolish maidens. Don't forget the bridegroom's words.
Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.

Could be, the Apocalypse has already begun, ya? And
Benjamin Nair's death was only part of it.

R 0 S E S I M

HEN YOU OPEN a window between our world and
theirs, who knows which spirits might approach you.
You can't choose who comes to the window. That's what they
say. Had Auntie Coco opened the window herself, or was it
someone else? Perhaps even us, long ago when we used to visit
Che' Halimah, because Shak had talked me into it, you know.
But we would do it just for fun. Or perhaps the window was
open for good, ever since the Srivijaya and Majapahit women
had first bargained with the spirits.

Auntie Coco herself had never seemed to me to be the sort
to go dabbling in black magic. I was thinking this when Shak said, "Mahani seems to think it's the only possible explanation,"
as she was trying to arrange the six pillows on her bed before
sitting down, so they would give her back as much support as
possible.

Almost four weeks had passed since that Friday night, and
Shak's hack was aching more and more every day. We were
going for walks only once a week now, because definitely the
heat was wearing her down.

I watched her struggling to get comfortable as she sat
down. She tried pushing herself up against the pillows, and then
turning her body slowly one way, then another way, then yet
another way. I couldn't think of what to say to help, except offer
to make her some hot ginger tea.

So I asked her, "How about some ginger tea?" even though
her mother would have made the tea already, if indeed it could
make Shak feel better.

She was home as usual, Shak's mother. I remember she was
in the kitchen while we were upstairs, but I don't remember
what she was doing. We had passed her on the stairs because
she was going down as we were going up, and I had noticed she
looked more tired than usual. So she and Shak must have had
another quarrel, I thought, possibly about the baby's father, or
about the baby's future. (She would give us privacy whenever I
was there, Shak's mother. My mother, on the other hand,
would have found all sorts of excuses to keep coming into the
room if we had been at my house. Although as it turned out,
she was at Holy Family that afternoon, making puppets for the
wayang show being organized by the youth group to raise
money for charity.)

'Thanks, Rose, but I don't think ginger tea would help right
now," said Shak. She sighed. She had stopped moving about and
was half-sitting, half-lying down, with her body turned a bit on
her side, one pillow tucked between her knees, the rest piled up
behind her.

"What can I do?" I asked her. 'Tell me what I can do."

She smiled. Even with her figure lost for the time being, you
could feel her charm, Shak. You could feel it when she smiled,
that same charm that used to send the boys swooning around
us, out on the dance floor. Swooning to the beat of the bossa
nova, swaying against the samba, and no wonder. Imagine, with
her fast hips and her eyes like Cadbury chocolate and her eyelashes, who could resist Shak? So I was sure the baby's father
was already pining for her, whoever he was. Some numbskull
fellow, who must have quarrelled with her when she had told
him she was pregnant, who maybe had tried to talk her into getting rid of the baby, because he wasn't ready to become a father.

"I'm glad you're here, Rose."

I wanted to ask her why, why she was glad I was there.
Instead, I just smiled as if I understood, which I've always regretted, but there you have it.

Shak looked at me and smiled again. Then she returned to
the conversation we had been having about Auntie Coco and
her sister. "So what do you think?" she asked. "What's your guess
about what might have happened?"

"I don't know," I told her. "Quite frankly, I'm surprised
Mahani brought up black magic."

She nodded, knowing exactly what I meant. "1 was surprised, too. But time changes us, you know."

But I didn't think Mahani had changed that much. (She was
another librarian who used to attend St. Agnes, and since she and
I worked together, I should know, right? Mahani was the one who
used to tell our classmates, all those bomoh stories we were hearing were old wives' tales. An idle mind is the devil's workshop, okay? was
what she would go around saying, although there was that incident
that had happened when we were in Primary Two. One of our
classmates, her name escapes me now, a girl from the same kampong as Mahani. Her father was dying of cancer when one day, the
cancer disappeared and never came back. We thought it was a miracle at first, wrought by our prayers, perhaps. But shortly after
the father was cured, the girl's mother was spotted in a shopping
center, and people couldn't believe how much she had aged. They
say that sort of thing can happen when you use black magic, if you
have nothing else to pay with, if you're so poor, the only asset you
can offer in exchange is your youth. No one knew if it was what
the mother had resorted to, but certainly the possibility was there.)