Short stories

by Kow Shih Li

I have lived with my aunt for the past thirteen years. She is forty nine and on good days, she looks no more than forty. In forms with blank spaces next to 'Occupation', she writes 'Accountant' but I am much better at managing real money. Due to this simple skill, it is my duty to balance the expenses against her pay cheque and she depends on me to get the bills paid on time. For this, I extend myself a modest allowance every month.

Aunty is my mother's younger sister, born a year apart. My parents died, both in road accidents, five years apart. I was orphaned at seven and Aunty raised me as best she could, which was not too badly at all.

We live in a house which belonged to my parents. Upon their deaths, insurance was a blessing which helped avert financial insecurity during a time of sorrow. Since Mother had been savvy enough to leave a will, the house will be mine when I turn twenty one in two years. Until then, it is held in trust by Aunty. I guess you could say that I put a roof over Aunty's head.

The roof in question is a single storey house on the corner of a street with eight feet of garden on one side and a neighbour called Uncle Thomas on the other. The garden and Uncle Thomas have a love-hate relationship chaperoned by Aunty. The garden is now overgrown with stray vegetation, pandanus gone wild and rogue lemongrass. The beds of chillies and trellis for climbing beans have been overwhelmed by barb-headed weeds, light-sapping creepers and shrubs that turn overnight into trees with thorny green trunks.

I have tried for a long time to persuade Aunty to allow that man on a motorbike to bring in his machete, motorized grass cutter and towel around his face to clean it up. She refuses. The little jungle has its fingers now on the doorstep of our kitchen. It stays just outside the boundary of what is acceptable through Aunty's sheer force of will and the fact that she occasionally pours a jerry can of kerosene on the edge and throws a half finished cigarette on it.

There was a time not so long ago when we had fresh chillies to pound and pandan leaves to put in our desserts. Smiling neighbours up to ten houses away came to cut fragrant stalks of lemongrass from our garden. There were ladies fingers hanging from the trellis and watermelons pregnant on the vine under that. We even had two rows of spinach planted on raised beds.

That was the time when Uncle Thomas could be found in our garden every evening digging, trimming, watering and tending to the little plot while Aunty made tea and white bread toast with butter and sugar. They would sit looking at the chillies until the sky turned dark with crows flying home to roost.

Uncle Thomas never stayed for dinner. Maybe because Aunty never asked him to. She was not a very good cook. I tried hard to eavesdrop crouching low under the window near the kitchen but I never overheard a conversation. I think they hardly talked. Maybe that is how things are when you get older. The only sign I saw in my covert observations, like a view you get when a curtain lifts momentarily in a short breeze, was the one time I saw Uncle Thomas pluck a leaf from Aunty's hair. She put her heart in her eyes when she smiled at him.

After the visits stopped, Aunty tended our garden with a vengeance. "I don't have to depend on him,' she would say with anger breaking her voice. It was during this period of manic gardening that Uncle Thomas dyed his grey streaks black and brought his Vietnamese bride home. We saw his friends come for dinner and barbecue sessions. We were never invited.

The garden grew erratically under Aunty's rage. The chillies shrunk in fear and the ladies fingers dropped off before they were more than the size of a baby's thumb. The spinach, on the other hand, grew larger with coarse, defensive leaves that were inedible. The watermelons split open before they could ripen and soon, Aunty stopped trying.

Then, she started collecting men. Of all shapes and sizes. Men who rang our doorbell and opened their car doors for her. Men who called and stayed on the telephone line for hours. Men she never spoke about to me. Their names eluded me but I knew them by the cars they drove. There was the one in a baby blue Volvo 740, a gaunt man who always stood outside the gate finishing a cigarette while waiting for Aunty to step out in her high heels. One in a silver Ford Laser sedan with glasses and broad ties. Another in a green diesel Pajero who always said 'Hello, young man' if I answered the door. A balding dandy in a black two door Honda Civic hatchback, in jeans and white shirts. A chauffeured executive in a Mercedes Benz who never got out of the back seat, not even when Aunty was trying to lock the gate holding up her long dress in one hand and her purse in the other.

I sometimes see Uncle Thomas do things I am not meant to see. Like when he checked Aunty's tyre pressure when the car was parked outside. Or the time he picked up our morning papers and put them under our porch because it looked like rain. Or oiling the hinges of our gate. Small signs of care or remorse, I did not know which. Aunty never noticed or pretended not to see.

I often wanted to ask Aunty if she was happy but we never spoke of such things. Like the other day, when the words were just behind my teeth. I opened my mouth and instead, told her that I was doubling my allowance, just for this month. It was so that I could go to Pulau Tioman with my girlfriend after the exams.

"Don't depend on me to take care of you," she said as she was wont to say these days. She knew I knew I did. I relied on her income to put me through school. On her presence as the only living relative I have. I depend on her to feed and clothe me the same way the garden depended on Uncle Thomas. To be stopped from growing wild and unkempt from lack of care. I do not understand why she says what she does.

Without warning, last Friday, she fell unconscious walking to the sink with the dinner dishes. When I called, Uncle Thomas climbed over the dividing wall in our backyard and carried her into the car. He drove like a madman to the emergency ward of the nearest hospital.

A tiny clot had grown in the one of her many arteries. Like a miniature stopcock, it blocked the free passage of blood to a part of Aunty's brain. Deprived of oxygenated blood to feed and keep it alive, this part of her brain died and along with it the nerves and puppet strings it was attached to. Aunty lost the use of her left side and her speech.

I saw frustration in her eyes and shame in the set of her head. When I fed her, her lower lip could not close over the spoon. Her eyelid sagged with her cheek as though her face was carved of butter and left out to melt. Her tongue lolled in her mouth and I knew it could not mould the sound coming from her throat into words. She could have spoken and I would have learnt to understand her but she stayed totally silent for five months.

I suspected that she tried to speak when she was alone, away from prying ears. No one would hear then that her consonants sounded like vowels and imagine her tongue like a wooden spatula filling her mouth. I guessed at this because when she did speak, it was clearly audible and the words were perfectly formed.

She said,"You can't depend on me now." There were no tears.

"It's OK, Aunty. You can depend on me," I said.

I wanted to hold her hand then but I did not. I wanted to say that I was so afraid she would die when she was at the hospital and I would be a seven year old again in a funeral parlour. But I did not. I said, "Uncle Thomas and I are going to start fixing up the garden."

Uncle Thomas and I tore up the wilderness in our backyard. We planted a carpet of soft, springy grass, a border of tiny star-like purple flowers and a climbing plant with bold yellow trumpet blooms which hugged the perimeter fence. The structured fronds of big palms shaded a multitude of plants with variegated leaves. Begonias on the ground and hanging pots of flowering petunias looked like candy kisses on some mornings. Our garden became a profusion of pretty things.

On some evenings, Uncle Thomas and I sit on the porch looking at the morning blooms close into themselves and put their heads down. Occasionally, his wife would come over with 2 cans of 100-Plus and dainty snacks laid out on a plate. She would sit with us for a while with a smile on her smooth, young face. Sometimes, we would just sit in the gathering gloom of dusk and wonder about what goes on inside my house.

Labels: Kow Shih Li

share this:

by Kow Shih-Li

I remember the first time I saw Baby. She lay in a crib, one in a long line. Third cot from the right. She was wrapped in a pink flannel blanket, like a fish in newspaper. There were some others wrapped in blue and yellow. If the blues were boy babies, then I had to guess what the yellow ones were.

The young nurse on the other side of the window had walked me here. She wore a green uniform and rubber soled white shoes like the ones I used for school. They made no sound on the shiny floor when she walked. She pointed Baby out, jabbing the air above Baby's head with her finger while her mouth shaped the words "your sister'. I pressed my nose to the window. The glass felt like cold metal. If I crossed my eyes, which I did often, I could see my own reflection. When I uncrossed them, I could see the head of the brand new little sister that Mother made.

I did not want a baby sister. I did not want a baby anything, much less one that looked like a hairless chimpanzee or some other animal. She did not even look human but none of the other wrapped up babies did either.

I turned away. The hospital smelt like my doctor's clinic, the one that Mother takes me to when I have a fever. Only this was much bigger and a lot colder. I went and sat on a row of four blue plastic chairs joined together at the base. I sat on one end and if I rocked my seat, the whole row followed. Mother was not around to stop me, so I rocked back and forth, making a grinding sound.

"Stop it, girl." It was a nurse in a blue uniform. I did not hear her sneak up on me because she was wearing those same silent shoes. I stopped because she looked fierce. Her eyes bulged when she glared. The type I did not like. She was also fat which meant that if she hit me, it would hurt. When she left, I rocked a little more but the fun was gone.

I walked down the corridor. No one paid any attention to me except for a walking baby with plastic shoes that made a loud squeak with every step. He tried to chase me and I had to stop so that he would be still and the shoes would be quiet. I wanted the blue nurse to come say "Stop it" and take the squeaky shoes away but the baby's father swept him up with a laugh before she came.

I stopped at every ward and looked inside. Each room had tired mothers who looked like the air had been let out of them. Everyone had bad hair and loose clothes. The opposite of wedding dinners when all the ladies had good hair and tight dresses. The babies were like parasites, sucking the air and good hair days out of their mothers through the breast. I must ask Mother if she ever thought of me as a parasite.

I was at the entrance to Mother's ward. It had 2 beds but the other was empty today. A lady was there until last night. Her baby was in a glass box under a light. "He's yellow," the nurse had said but he looked very brown to me and not at all yellow. I hated the sight of that baby under the light. He looked like a wrinkly, newborn kitten worming around on the floor with his eyes closed. I was glad that he was gone today and there would be no more mewing sounds.

I could hear Father's voice. Mother was crying. I stood outside the door, where I could hear without being seen.

Mother kept saying,"I don't know, I don't know, I don't know."

"Don't lie to me. This is not the time." Father sounded very angry. Angrier than the time Mother scratched his car driving through our front gate.

"No, I am not lying. Please believe me. I don't know why."

I don't know if Father believed her. I don't know if I believe Mother when she says she's not lying because she does sometimes. She often says something tastes good when it does not to make me eat it. She once said she could not take me to the park because she was feeling tired but five minutes later, she agreed to go to the mall when third Aunty called. I think she lied about being tired. Like the time she lied about why she was late picking me up from school. She said she was at the grocery shop but there were no groceries in the car.

Father said, "It's impossible."

"Maybe the nurses switched…"

"I was right outside the delivery room when they brought it out."

"Please don't call her 'it'. She's your daughter."

"I can't be sure about that, can I?" Father's voice leaked out through the door and pushed through the corridors. I pressed myself against the wall so that the anger in his voice would not touch me. I decided to stay outside to keep watch for the blue nurse who might come to shush him.

Mother started crying again. "God help me, I swear. I did nothing wrong."

That day, my father left never to return and I had to hold Mother's hand for five days as she cried. Doctors came and gave her injections that made her sleep. They also gave her bad dreams because she tossed and moaned in her sleep. Baby did not feed at her breast. Nurses gave her the bottle instead and patted me on the head. They said things like, "Be a good girl", "Poor thing" or "Take care of your mummy". I never answered.

Grandma came to see Baby in the baby zoo. That was what I called the room with the glass window. She did not coo to her or tickle her cheek like some of the other grandmothers did. Mother did not know she came. Grandma gave me one hundred ringgit and some chicken rice. That was also the last time I saw Grandma, the mother of my father.

From then on, it was Mother, Baby and me. Mother went back to her work, I went back to school and Baby went to the babysitter every morning. That was how things were everyday every year.

Last week, Baby turned four. Mother said, "Let's make a happy photograph." Baby in the middle, between Mother and me, and the pink frosted birthday cake in the front. It is a very nice photograph. We are all smiling and we look the alike, as though someone had taken three photographs of the same person at different times and stuck them together.

Look at us. I have Mother's eyes. Single lidded and almost disappearing when we smile. So does Baby. When I smile, only my lower teeth show, just like Baby and Mother. Even our hair is the same, black, straight and flat falling close to the head. The only feature Baby and I have that is not Mother's is the broad, flat nose with the upturned nostrils. That came from Father.

I am going to make a Chinese New Year card with this photograph. Last year, I made one with a drawing of fishes with gold sequins for scales. The year before that was cut-out patterns from red paper. Father calls me sometimes. When he does, he tells me about his new job and Grandma. I hope he calls this Chinese New Year when he gets the photograph.

He will see how alike Baby and I are. How can he not see? How can anyone not see? The only difference is that Mother and I are the colour of milk tea, Baby's skin is the colour of roasted chestnuts. That's all.

Labels: Kow Shih Li

share this:

by Kow Shih-Li

Tuesday

Today, I am at the bank, as always. The fluorescent lights throw a flat, white brightness on everything including the plastic potted palm standing by the grey blinds. Everything is sterile and inorganic, including me in my starched, white shirt. The continual whirring of the bubble jet printer is unrelenting, printer-head grinding its teeth on accordion-folded, four-ply paper. I am as accustomed to this background noise as I am to the sound of my own breathing but today, its dogged busyness jars my senses. The inescapable dreariness of mechanical efficiency is distressing.

I have been sleepless for three nights now. Some non-existent pump in my gut is pushing adrenalin through my body. Continually nervous, I feel as though I am standing on metal grating in a high place through which I can see the long fall down. Maybe it's the tea-lady's coffee, maybe it's Her.

Work is a distraction. My shirt collar chafes the back of my neck, the tie presses against my throat like the cliched noose. I have to plan for bigger things now. I have to plan for Her. It is impossible to concentrate. The dotted lines awaiting my signature float in and out of my field of vision randomly as I try to focus on the loan approval forms. Fuad had better be diligent checking though the paperwork.


Wednesday

I am told I have an analytical mind. A way with numbers, never misses details yet always sees the big picture. The powers that be tell me that in my annual performance appraisals every year, without fail. Of course I have a bloody analytical mind. What other kind of mind would a dean's list accounting student with a Masters in International Finance have, the morons?

Today, this exemplary mind is taxed by the thoughts of Her and lunch last Saturday. It was Japanese, always safe for a first date. No sharing of food, no clumsy cutting, no splattering gravy, no messy servings and prawn shells strewn on table cloths wet by tea. Only convenient, bite sized pieces on individual plates that you could transport into your mouth without appearing undignified.

So, we ate, sitting across each other at a small table, a young couple on the other side of the fake rice paper screen. Conversation ebbed and flowed with the tea. Her hands were beautiful, curled around the glazed teacup. She smiled a lot and laughed a little. She would be away, she said, for a few days. Would I call her when she got back?


Thursday

The framed poster in my office proclaims, "A dream is just a dream. A goal is a dream with a plan and a deadline. -Harvey Mackay-" I did not know who this Mackay was but plan I shall.

It has been 5 days since we first met. I could not remember her face, only the fact that it was pleasing enough. The prospect of seeing her again tomorrow excites me. I plan an agenda for the next two months. Ten dates tabled under the headers Date, Meal Type, Restaurant Options and Other Activity. I had vicarious pleasure with Other Activity. Date-plan.doc is saved in my Personal Folder on the computer.

Friday - The Second Date

Her favourite steak place was a dimly lit colonial bungalow. In the candle-illumined gloominess, we talked about work. Listening to her voice lilting around narrations of difficult clients and the tiredness of being on the road, I drank 2 beers and felt the nervous anticipation of the week drain away from the base of my spine. She had red wine with her medium rare. God, I love a woman who eats red meat. When we finished, she touched my arm with her beautiful hand as she got up from her chair. A fleeting two seconds, a slight pressure burning a hole through my sleeve. I thought she was heaven sent and hot as hell.


Monday

The bank has me in its confines again. Lee Mei, my assistant, is driving me crazy with her rational explanations of why every problem she brought to me had a right to exist and was impossible to solve. Fuad has been sensible enough to stay away and feign independence. The slowness of time makes me increasingly crabby.

I type out an imaginary conversation with Her, save it as Conv-plan.doc and mark as 'Done' Date No. 2 in my dating schedule.


Tuesday - The Third Date

I had an Other Activity planned; an artsy Chinese movie with subtitles. Her closeness in the darkness of the cinema was discomforting, the space between our shoulders hung like a tangible mass. The movie was filled with grandly coloured scenes but I barely heard the dialogue. I was too busy rehearsing, in my head, the witty conversation that I had concocted yesterday. I would use that over teh tarik and thosai after the movie.

It worked brilliantly. I brimmed with charm and she was adorable in her compliance to my scheme to win her.


Wednesday

She calls and we speak on the phone in the privacy of my office for twenty-five minutes. I spend another forty-five replaying the conversation in my head, reinterpreting for clues. Someone less pragmatic would have called the analyzing cold-blooded; I prefer to think that I am searching for a way into her beautiful mind.

Two cursory knocks on my open door. "Good morning, Andrew. Where's that monthly loan status report you were supposed to give me yesterday?" I am startled but the matronly bulk of Mrs Tan is already lowering itself into my visitor chair. Chain-smoking, audit tyrant from HQ. I didn't know she was at the branch today. Shit.

"Hey, Mrs Tan. I didn't know you were coming today. Fuad! Somebody, get Fuad please and tell him to bring the loan status report."

Mrs Tan lights a cigarette. That woman has no decorum at all, and it is against branch regulations to smoke indoors. My coffee cup turns into an ashtray. I hated her stubby fingers. They were so inelegant compared to Hers.

"Come on, Andrew. You're slipping up. You always meet your deadlines and now you've missed three in 2 weeks. This is not going to look good in your appraisal. What's wrong? You lovesick or what?" she said, emphasizing 'not' with a little pause and puff of smoke.

"No'lah, Mrs Tan. Everyone is just a little overstretched. That new loan scheme HQ launched last week is flying and we're just trying to cope with the response. I haven't had a good break since I don't know when."

"Is that so? Well, maybe you should take some time off when you sort out this mess." She steals a glance at my computer screen. Thank god I had just opened a busy looking Excel file to work on.

Fuad comes in with the loan status report, looking mousy in a beige shirt. Mrs Tan is diverted, she has fresh prey.


Saturday - The Fourth Date

It went exactly as planned. We spent the whole day together. Shopping, eating, another movie. Her closeness was no longer a thing to be conscious of. We held hands and it was perfectly natural.

Over dinner, I told her about Mrs Tan and the people at work, making Mrs Tan uglier and the rest more incompetent than they actually were. It threw my own competencies into clearer relief, I thought. She laughed, said "You're so mean" and slapped me on the arm. What would I say to my friends about her? I told her and she fell silent.


Sunday - The Fifth Date

The walk back to the car from the restaurant was secluded. I kissed her and she leaned in.

It was a triumph of planning and execution. The Kiss was 2 dates ahead of schedule.

I allowed myself to think about a future involving a diamond ring of a certain size. This was The Big Picture.

*****

I stopped planning dates because there was no longer a need. We were calling each other several times a day, and meeting as often as we could. I started planning a little holiday away. A 3-day rendezvous at the beach, probably Langkawi. I booked the AirAsia tickets from the office and filled out an Annual Leave Application form.

The people in the office say I look good. I agree. A spring in my step, a sparkle in my eye. Work was no longer a burden. In fact, I excelled - I was incisive, emphatic, even warm and connected. Fuad and Lee Mei flourished under my effectiveness. Mrs Tan would have no reason to visit again.

Food tasted better.


The Holiday

She was surprised when I told her about Langkawi. Not as happy as I expected she would be but she said was tired from the pressure of meeting quotas. The month was coming to an end and she had to sell more insurance policies to make her numbers.

"Why don't you sell me a policy? How short are you on your quota?"

"I couldn't. It's not right. This is too personal, you can't bail me out all the time."

"Why not? Anyway, I don't have one of those medical cum life cum unit trust type of fancy schemes you have. "

The monthly premiums could have paid for a small car but what the heck. She would love me for it. I was doing well at work and my transfer to HQ would come through in 6 months.

In Langkawi, I gave her a necklace with a little diamond heart. Just to let you know you're special. Oh, I love you, she said, with tears in her eyes. The sun set behind her, an orange globe swallowed by the single line of the horizon. I had a right to be smug. It was perfectly timed, perfectly planned. The sky flushed a rosy pink. All was right with my

*****

I had another preoccupation now. Planning a marriage and a new life after. I was filling in the colours of The Big Picture.

The structured demands of a HQ career worked well for me. My name cards have been reprinted twice, each time with a title bearing more letters and hyphens. A real plant with juicy, verdant leaves sits next to my office door. There are no printers within earshot. Bliss.

An October wedding would be ideal. We'd have Christmas together for a honeymoon and be comfortably acclimatized to face Chinese New Year in January as an angpow-giving couple together.


The Proposal

I made reservations at an expensive French restaurant. A resident four-piece string quartet would provide a suitably romantic ambience, I was told.

The half-carat ring is in my pocket. I had taken care to wear dark trousers so that I would not have a stain on them after I got up from bended knee. The menu would be light and delicate. Salads, pates, fish, soufflé, wine, mousse.

On the way to dinner, she disgorged the daily complaints about work and her boss. It was tiresome to listen to but it was her routine. I let it wash over me. It would be another coup; I had the perfect evening planned. She would say yes, the strings would play and I would be on my way to a perfect, married life.

After the cheese and before the dessert, the quartet moved close. It turned out to be a Filipino mariachi group, all grinning broadly. What the heck. The only strings were the six on the guitar. The bongo playe had the drums hanging
down to his shins. I pushed my chair back. I have something to ask you. Down on one knee, smoothly practised.

"Will you marry me?" Ring box clacked open decisively, the diamond was a triumphant, multi pointed sparkling star.

She had a strange smile on her face. It looked almost pained. I noticed then that she wasn't dressed her best. It must have been a rough working day. I didn't remember what she had said in the car. Her shoes had a ring of dried mud around the soles and her make-up had lost definition.

"No."

The word quivered in the air. I saw us frozen as in a still photograph. She in her chair, me in the ludicrous pose, the guitar, the bongos, the tambourine and the maracas in attendance. The 'No' written in thick strokes hanging over our heads.

The music faltered, leaving the singer unaccompanied for an awkward second, his voice unadorned. He wavered, picked up the song again and started to walk to another table. The rest followed the cue. My chair felt like it was a million miles away.

Dessert arrived, chocolate mousse with strawberries and sugar dusting in the shape of a heart. It all seemed so contrived now, like a Valentine's Day gimmick.

"Why?"

"Because…because this has all been about you and only you. You don't know me. I am not an acquisition merger joint venture whatever. What am I all about? What did I dream of today? What do I want? I am not a scheduled timetable to be followed and executed. Not a target to be met, to help you achieve a goal of marriage before you turn 40. I am not incidental. I refuse to be."

Quietly aflame, her tone was low and her face controlled but I did not see her. My excellent and reliable mind was already reacting, making a list of counteractions to deal with this. Plans for finding a substitute, for apologising, for trying again, raced through my consciousness. The logic machine was moving in full gear. Yet I could almost, almost but not quite see, like a speck of dirt on my glasses that wants to be ignored, something in there crumbling like a house of cards. That speck, in its quietness, knew that something would break and would not heal but I do not accept that. Planning and effort conquers all. There would be no failure. Grief was not permitted.

"And happy birthday, by the way. It's next week isn't it? Turning 40 isn't so bad," she said.

She got up to leave, putting both her beautiful hands on the table. When she was gone, the Langkawi heart was left on the table where her hands were. Small and encrusted in glassy stone.

I tried to drink, swallowing was painful. Breathing hurt but all I needed was another Plan. Mr Maracas' curious eye was set on me, he was singing back up. Bloody musicians

Labels: Kow Shih Li

share this:

by Kow Shih Li

The three of us sat in the fortune teller's office, an eight by ten space tucked at the back of a tailor's shop. The glass front overlooked bales of cloth in various shades of grey, blue and black. Apart from the view, it was surprisingly businesslike. I had expected at least some incense, the sundry deities or feng shui diagrams but there were none in sight.

I sat in the fabric covered chair, the type clerks used in administrative offices. Connie wassubdued and I assumed that she had stopped crying. I could not see past those oversized, opaque Jackie-O sunglasses she had on. In the car, she had cried all the way here, big sobbing breaths, between which she gasped out her account of how she had struggled to support her truant husband in his younger days. I heard for the sixth time how she had to take the bus to work so that he could use the money saved for her car to start his now successful trading business. Her crying invariably took on a slightly high pitched whine when she said, as she always did, "How could he do this to me? After all that I've done for him, how could he leave me for a twenty year old cheap trick?"

The "cheap trick", according to Datin Tai, one of our regular lunch friends, was a part time caddie at the golf club where Connie's husband plays. Pretty face and nice legs, but of course we never said that in Connie's presence.

The fortune teller cleared his throat. He was a short man in a slightly grimy Pagoda T-shirt tucked into polyester trousers that were probably made by the tailor out front. His face was smooth, shiny and impersonal. With more hair, it would have been difficult to place his age.

"Who wants to 'see' life fortune?" he said in Cantonese, nodding questioningly at Connie and me. That was the reason I was here. Connie needed a translator, and the rest of the lunch gang needed an inside account of what was soon to transpire.

I indicated Connie and told him about her predicament. I had never been very good with details and it took me less time to tell it than one of those commercials on radio.

"Datin Tai recommended you," I said, after I was done narrating the facts in what I thought was adequate detail. "You remember, Datin Tai from Damansara? She said you helped her when she had this same type of problem two years ago."

Datin Tai had told us in great detail, over a 3-hour sushi lunch, how this fortune teller had saved her husband from the clutches of a "gold-digging GRO from hell". There were readings and talismans given to hide around the home. She was convinced that her husband saw the error of his ways soon after, and even became a more successful businessman from that point onwards. Connie was skeptical but on the verge of desperation. I imagined her grasping at the talisman straws offered by Datin Tai.

The fortune teller asked for Connie's time, date and year of birth. We had come fully prepared. We had hers and her husband's printed on Connie's company letterhead paper. It was the Chinese date of birth that was required and Connie had spent two days getting her office staff run a search for a conversion calendar on the Internet.

Eighty ringgit per reading, we were told. One hundred and fifty ringgit to include a reading for Connie's husband. A ten ringgit discount for a two-in-one. Extra charges for other things. Datin Tai's talismans must have been one of those optional, cryptic other things.

On the fortune teller's table was a tray with two stacks of pre-printed forms - pink and blue. He pulled out a pink one. It had the crisscrossed Chinese character for female in one corner. I presumed the blue would be for men. The paper was neatly printed like a job application form, with blank spaces, ruled lines and little headers. The Pagoda T-shirt was the only incongruity that belied his professionalism, I thought to myself.

I wondered if Connie noticed any of this. She sat in the way she always did when we were out for tea - legs neatly crossed at the knee, hands on the handbag cradled in her lap. Today, she had her new monogrammed Louis Vuitton. "I bought it to cheer myself up," she had said on one of those days when she wore her brave, smiling face. If she had a tall glass of iced coffee in front
of her, she would have looked perfectly normal to anyone who knew her.

Connie was a good looking woman. Not beautiful or even pretty, but she had a polish to her that obscured all physical flaws. A polish honed and developed by years of carefully studying and assimilating the habits of the very rich. She wore a sheen buffed to perfection by money. Her husband was wealthy enough to have no need of the titles bestowed by local royalty, which implied that he was richer by far than Datin Tai's husband.

I turned to the fortune teller. He had started muttering, his fingers twitched. His left thumb touched each of the other fingers on the same hand in turn. The ballpoint pen in his right flew over the pink sheet, a number here, a word there. The blank spaces were filling up. Connie's fate was being calculated and summarized, like an answer to a math exam question.

I reached out and held Connie's hand. She smiled and two black rivulets appeared under her dark glasses. Her tears were making her mascara run again. A grey drop dislodged from her chin and made a tiny splash on her bag. I wriggled my fingers over my face to tell her. She said, "Oh," and "Oh, oh" when she saw the smudge on her bag. She dabbed a tissue at the bag before wiping her tears.

The fortune teller was now poring over a red-covered book with newsprint pages. It looked like a cheap dictionary. This, I recognized. It was the Tong Shu. One edition is published every year, chronicling life and fate based on the simple statistic of date and time of birth. Anyone who knew this basic information would be able to have his life laid out year by year, like a lifetime horoscope. A destiny which completely disregards all other variables and social indicators like education, upbringing, social status or geographical location. If the Tong Shu says you will marry at sixteen, it would happen irregardless of whether you were born Chinese or Icelandic. I wondered if Connie's reading would be accurate.

The fortune teller closed the book and put down his pen. There was an air of finality when he smoothed the pink form with his hands. I sat straighter, ready to do my duty. I had to make sure that Connie understood everything that he was about to say. Datin Tai had reminded me not to forget any detail. She and the rest would be all ears at our lunch tomorrow and I was to relate all the juicy bits accurately.

"I have calculated both yours and your husband's lives. Your life is quite good, actually but hard. I can see a lot of work. You must work at everything. Work for money, work for health, even work to get love husband. Nothing comes easy to you."

He went on to say that her parents had died when she was eight and described how she had to work to put herself through school. I made mental notes of everything.

"Twenty two years old, you got married. Your husband was rich and you made him richer. You bring a lot of good luck to him." I repeated everything in English.

I imagined Datin Tai asking me, "Are you sure that was what he said? Did he say she made him richer or she made him rich? I thought they were poor when they started off. You know, that story about money for the car?"

Connie was listening to me, nodding and sniffling a little at the same time. The crumpled tissues were piling up on the table. I felt sorry for her. It was strange feeling. I was more used to being envious of her perfect, wealthy life.

"Now, your husband is complicated. He is heaven born with 'dou fa wan', the peach blossom luck. The playboy luck. Throughout his whole life, he will have women coming and going but three times he will encounter real interference, serious relationship."

I repeated this. Connie said, "Three times? So what am I supposed to do? How do I change his luck, break this thing? Ask him if there is something he can give me."

After a translation delay, like a badly edited movie, the fortune teller replied, "You cannot change his luck. Only he can change if he wants to."

"But he doesn't want to. He wants to divorce my friend here and marry this other girl."

The fortune teller took off his rimless glasses, put them on the table and sighed. Up until this point, he had been talking to me. Now he looked directly at Connie. He said, "Please translate this question for your friend. 'Didn't your husband divorce his first wife to marry you?' "

We drove home in silence that afternoon.

Labels: Kow Shih Li

share this: