Sugarbread Page 13

  The basketball court was next to a large canal that ran through the neighbourhood. It was usually empty, but after the day’s rain, a shallow stream of water ran through it. Each time the ball rolled close to the canal, a boy would run to save it while the others yelled excitedly. The boy who saved the ball was a hero for the moment and he returned to applause.

  I wanted to save the ball from the canal too, but every time it rolled off the court, a faster boy like Malik or Wei Hao would race ahead of me and get all the glory. I still gave chase. Once, I got really close before Kaypoh swooped in and kicked it back toward the court.

  “That’s not fair,” I said.

  Kaypoh shrugged. “You’re too slow.”

  “You’re a show-off,” I shot back. I noticed Roadside standing nearby.

  “You’re a—” Kaypoh began, but Roadside interrupted him. “Eh, it’s going to rain again soon. Let’s get back to the game.”

  Kaypoh glared at me and stalked back to the court. The game continued. I stayed at my post and kept my eyes trained on the ball. My feet shuffled to the game’s rhythm, and when the boys began advancing towards me, I was ready to block the goal. Malik had the ball. He stared past my shoulders and drew his leg to score when Kaypoh darted out behind him and punted the ball hard. It flew way past the goal post and landed in the high branches of a tree.

  The other boys gathered round and looked up at the tree. I smirked at Kaypoh. “What kind of goal is that?” I taunted. Malik and Wei Hao chuckled.

  Kaypoh didn’t seem bothered. He shrugged and wiped the sweat off his forehead with his T-shirt. Then he said, “Go and get it.”

  I looked up at the tree. The ball was wedged between in the crook of a thick branch that bent like an elbow. I glanced at Kaypoh.

  “How to get up there? Can’t you just shake the tree?” I asked.

  Kaypoh shrugged. “You want so badly to catch the ball. That’s the goalie’s job, right?” Now he was the one smirking.

  I looked up again. On a dry day, it would be possible for me to scramble up the trunk, pressing my feet against the little nubs that stuck out from its sides before reaching a sturdy branch. But the rain had made the trunk slippery and I would surely slip.

  “I’ll fall,” I said.

  “Then maybe your boyfriend can save you,” Kaypoh said. “Can or not, Roadside?”

  My heart caught in my throat. Was that what everyone thought? “He’s not my boyfriend,” I said, glancing at Roadside for confirmation. “Tell them,” I urged.

  “Kaypoh, you better watch your big mouth,” Roadside warned. “Don’t go around saying stupid things like that. It’s not true.”

  “Of course not, lah,” Malik said. “He’s only joking. Where got Chinese boys go out with Indian girls? Crazy, right?” Wei Hao and Samuel laughed. I joined in even though I didn’t think it was that funny.

  The boys became occupied with finding things on the ground to throw at the ball to loosen it. Deven offered his sneaker. It became its own game, trying to get the ball out of the tree. By the time it finally bounced out onto the ground, it had started raining again.

  When I got home, I scowled at God sitting comfortably in His frame. Nobody ever challenged Him or told Him to sit on the side of the courts. Even He seemed to be laughing at me. I thought about what Ma had said when she was telling me her story. “We feared God so much, we didn’t even think to blame him for the things that went wrong.” I realised that I feared God much more when I didn’t see Him all the time. Now that He lived in our flat, I was beginning to grow weary of Him. He didn’t leap out of the frame to punish me when I was rude. He just sat and watched, a bemused expression clouding His face. He had the opposite effect on Ma. She had twitched nervously throughout her story, glancing at Him as if seeking approval. She had ended where Pra-ji was going to arrange a marriage for her older brother because she was tired, she claimed, but the way she kept her eyes on God told me she was afraid to go on.

  That night, I tossed and turned. I couldn’t get to sleep because I was hurt by what Malik had said. I told myself that I should have climbed the tree and avoided being insulted. A low wind whistled through the windows before the familiar patter of rain began. The room was humid, the air in short supply as if Nani-ji was taking it all up with each loud gasp. I climbed onto the bed gingerly to crack open the window. Nani-ji’s arms and legs stuck out stiffly from her body. A towel folded into a triangle lay at the bridge of her nose. She soaked it in warm water and mint oil before she slept every night.

  I still couldn’t sleep. All I could hear was the rain. Maybe it was all I wanted to listen to. I got up and walked out into the living room and sat on the floor in front of God.

  “What’s your favourite colour?” I asked. No response. “Do you have any friends?” Still nothing. I tossed every question I could think of, hoping that one would strike Him. “Why can’t I cut my hair? Why do I have to cover my head when I go to your house?”

  “Pin?”

  I jumped. It was only Daddy. He squinted at me.

  “I can’t sleep,” I informed him.

  “Who were you talking to?”

  I looked at God shyly and just shrugged at Daddy. “Nobody,” I said. I hoped that my words would sting God. You’re not important, I wanted to tell Him. But His expression did not change. He was good at staying still when Daddy was around.

  “Go back to sleep,” he told me. “You have school tomorrow—you won’t be able to wake up.”

  “I can’t sleep,” I insisted.

  “You have to try,” Daddy said gently. He hooked his hands under my arms and lifted me up but I hung limply like a dead weight. “Go on,” he said, steering me back into my room.

  But I still couldn’t sleep. Nani-ji rolled over and mumbled something in her sleep. The wind made ghostly sounds through the gaps in our windows. I sat up straight on my mattress. My eyes were heavy but I did not want to close them. Suddenly, I knew what I had to do to get God to pay attention. I crept back out of my room and went into the kitchen. Ma kept a pair of scissors in the bottom drawer close to the sink. I walked out into the living room with the scissors, looked straight at God, and slipped a lock of my hair into the open mouth of the blades.

  Say something, I challenged. But He shrugged. I pressed the scissors against my hair and heard a crunching noise before the loose strands sprinkled down the back of my neck. I gave another snip. God just watched expectantly. Nothing seemed to surprise Him. I don’t believe in you, I said to Him. If you were real, you’d try to stop me. You’d do something. And He still didn’t move.

  • • •

  Ma no longer cooked. The refrigerator shelves and cabinets were bare. Under the sink, there was a bag of flour and a hot plate on the stove. A few onions, some garlic and ginger sat in a small bowl next to the salt and pepper bottles. Next to them were jars of chilli powder, curry powder, coriander and turmeric. Besides these, the kitchen was a hollow shell.

  I did not count making roti as cooking because Ma did not enjoy it. She dragged herself into the kitchen twice a day and stared blankly at the flat dough as it bloated and smoked on the stove. Her dhal was bland no matter how much chilli powder she put into it, because she did not care about this food. There were no messages in roti and dhal, only memories of how little she’d had to eat as a child.

  I ate my lunch at school nowadays. I queued up with the other girls in the tuck shop and paid for fried bee hoon, chicken rice, fishball noodle soup and nasi briyani, which the Malay Auntie only cooked on Wednesday. The nasi briyani was always too salty but the Auntie could not taste it. She was fasting for Hari Raya and she cooked everything without tasting it first. She always apologised when she handed over the plate of steaming yellow rice and curry chicken. “Sorry, girl. Maybe today more salt, ah? Auntie cannot taste,” she said.

  Farizah was also fasting, so I made it a point to eat quickly even though she said I didn’t have to. “You’re not the one who’s fasting. I am,” she said.


  “Aren’t you hungry?”

  She shrugged. “You get used to it,” she said. I thought about my hair and felt guilty. I was supposed to grow out my hair and just get used to it. I told Farizah about it and showed her the end of my braid that I had snipped off. The hair was jagged and uneven. Farizah’s eyes widened. She looked impressed.

  “Does your mother know?”

  “No,” I said. Ma didn’t notice anything these days.

  “Does your grandmother know?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Why did you do it?”

  I thought of telling Farizah about how I wanted to challenge God, but realised that if I said it out loud, it would sound silly, like I was talking about an imaginary friend. “I was feeling hot,” I said. Farizah laughed. She pointed at her legs, covered by her long socks. “I’m feeling hot too, but if I pull these down, my father will rotan me.”

  “But if you did it in school, your father wouldn’t know,” I said. “Who is going to tell him?”

  Farizah’s eyes darted around her like she was considering this. “Nobody,” she said slowly. “But I just can’t. I always cover my legs.” She tugged at her socks to make them a bit higher as if our conversation was somehow making them slip down to expose her skin. “Hurry up and finish eating. We can play cards or something,” she said in a quiet voice. She did not look at me. Later, while we were playing, I asked her if she was angry, but she said, “No.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah.” Then the bell rang, and she gathered her cards and raced to the class queue ahead of me.

  I promised myself that I would not cut my hair any more. It was an experiment to see what God would do, and it had failed because he had displayed no reaction. As I stepped onto the school bus at the end of the day, I pulled my plait around my shoulder and stroked the bristly ends. The girls were playing the Question Game again but I didn’t join in.

  As the bus approached my stop, I pulled the straps of my bag over my shoulders and made my way to the front. I noticed that Bus Uncle was asleep, but he still gripped the railing. His knuckles were tense and white. I watched him and tried to imagine him as a young boy in Singapore, but could not see past the creases and folds of his skin. Some people just looked like they had been born old.

  Suddenly, the bus braked hard, the bus driver swearing under his breath. My arms shot forward to protect myself as I fell onto Bus Uncle, my hands pressing against his rough face. He jumped awake and shouted something at the bus driver, then grabbed my elbow. I tried to pull away but he was surprisingly strong. He brought me so close that our faces were practically touching. His breath smelled sour, like stale cigarettes and fish. The bus stopped. I could see my block, blurry through the afternoon drizzle.

  “Mungalee,” he breathed like he was still dreaming. “Go. Go home. Dirty Mungalee.” The words were like blades. I turned to see if the other girls had noticed but the few left on the bus were too busy playing the Question Game. I yanked my arm away from Bus Uncle. I wanted to say something terrible to him but I knew I’d get into trouble. He just smirked at me and said the word again, stretching it out this time. “Mung-a-lee.”

  I raised my foot and stomped down hard on his. I dug in my heel, then flew down the steps of the bus and ran to my block. My heart beat loudly in my ears. I could hear Bus Uncle calling out still, yelling it now, “Mungalee! Mungalee!” But I was not sure if he was really shouting or if it was just in my head.

  When I got home, I looked at God squarely in the eyes again. He moved this time. He shifted back in the frame, sensing my anger. “Why did you let that happen?” I asked Him. Why was Bus Uncle allowed to humiliate me? Why did the bus stop like that and cause me to topple onto him? Why did I step on his foot? I was furious with Him. I ran back to the kitchen, took out the scissors and chopped off another bit of hair. God looked taken aback this time.

  I’ll keep doing it, I warned him. I’m not afraid of anything. But if He could read my mind, He would know what I was really feeling.

  • • •

  “You need to follow the doctor’s instructions,” Ma was telling Nani-ji. “Or your breathing problems are never going to get better.”

  “Rubbish,” Nani-ji said. “Since when did you become such an expert?”

  “I’m not very educated, but I know a few things about taking care of you,” Ma replied haughtily. “Take your medication and you’ll be fine.”

  A puff of air escaped Nani-ji’s tightly pursed lips. “Fine? I will not be fine. I am old.”

  “You’re making yourself older,” Ma said.

  “Pin!” Nani-ji called. “Pin, come into the kitchen.”

  I tucked my plait into the back of my T-shirt in case Nani-ji noticed, but she didn’t even look at me. She looked at Ma as she spoke to me. “Tell your mother to stop bossing me around, eh? Do you boss your mother around like this? I tell you, your manners are better than hers.”

  Ma threw her hands in the air and said, “I give up.” She shook her head wearily at me. “When I’m old, Pin, don’t take me in or take care of me if I’m going to be half as annoying as this woman.”

  Nani-ji coughed so hard, her entire body rattled. Ma tried not to react, but I saw her eyes—she was panicking. “What’s wrong?” she asked when Nani-ji finally stopped.

  “Nothing. Nothing is wrong with me. I’m not dying.”

  “I never said you were. But you’ll be in serious trouble if you don’t start taking the doctor’s advice seriously. These sorts of infections are common killers.”

  “I know exactly how I will die,” Nani-ji said. “It’s written in my palm.”

  Ma’s face turned to stone. She got up from the table and occupied herself with clearing it. “Pin, help me tidy up here,” she said in English. Nani-ji gave me a questioning look but I pretended not to see. Ma’s shoulders were suddenly very tense. Nani-ji settled back into her chair and started to look intensely at her palms.

  “He could see the future, you know,” she told me.

  “Who?” I asked. I glanced at Ma, who shot Nani-ji a dirty look. It did not seem to bother Nani-ji though. She was smiling as though recalling a sweet dream.

  “A wise man who lived in our neighbourhood. He passed away a few years ago. We called him Pra-ji because he was like everybody’s big brother. He was blessed—he could look into your eyes and tell you what God wanted you to know.”

  Ma’s mouth was a straight line and her arms became rigid. “Pin, I don’t want you hearing this. Leave the kitchen,” she said quietly in English. I stood, frozen. Nani-ji’s eyes darted back and forth between Ma and me. She did not know English, but she could read Ma’s tone.

  I put the teacups in the sink and rushed to my room. I expected to hear shouts ringing out—Ma telling Nani-ji never to mention Pra-ji again, Nani-ji telling Ma that she was disrespectful. But there was a dreadful silence, like something had entered our flat and sucked all of the noise out of it. And after listening to the silence for a few moments, I decided that this was much worse, and I wished they would start arguing again.

  • • •

  Bus Uncle did not complain to the school about me. He did not even look at me when I got on the bus the next day. He pretended I didn’t exist. I figured that God might have had something to do with this; perhaps shutting up Bus Uncle was God’s way of helping me. We were almost even then, although I was still upset about what Bus Uncle had said, and God couldn’t erase the feeling of shame that sank in my stomach every time I heard Bus Uncle’s taunts in my mind.

  Nobody noticed how my hair was short and long in different places. Ma did not do my hair in the mornings. She did not wake up for breakfast like she used to. I braided my own hair, which was messy at first, but Farizah had taught me how to tuck in all of the stray strands. She was a good accomplice because her sister was in Secondary School and she sneaked out to meet with her boyfriend on weekends. But she did not approve of what I did. “If your mother catches you, you’ll get a caning for sure,�
�� she said, shuddering as if she were the one being punished.

  “My mother doesn’t know. And she doesn’t beat,” I informed her. The consequences of Ma finding out did not concern me these days. I was testing God. I didn’t dare say it out loud yet, but I wasn’t sure if I believed in Him at all.

  “Just don’t tell her I helped you,” Farizah said, pulling back my hair. “Don’t you dare.”

  “Deal,” I said.

  • • •

  Nothing bad came from cutting my hair. I realised this a few days after I had started doing it. It didn’t matter if I did that or if I prayed or if I ate temple food. God paid attention when it suited him; He ignored me when it didn’t.

  I started snipping off chunks of my hair without having any reason, just to see what God would do, and nothing happened. Lightning did not strike our flat, I did not get hit by a speeding car on my way to school—nothing. This lasted for a week. Then one night, Nani-ji began to gasp loudly in her sleep and before I realised she was starting to die, I knew that God was paying me back a lump sum of punishments for my little batches of sins.

  • • •

  When it was night-time, it was hard to see the stars from where we lived, because the buildings opposite swallowed the sky. One by one, the lights in other flats went out like candle flames. Deepavali was coming soon. There were a few Indian families in our block who framed their doorways with colourful lights that blinked long after they were asleep. One of our neighbours down the hall had hung a string of silvery paper flames around their gate. One of the paper flames was torn off by the wind one day and somebody came and slipped it under our door. It wasn’t our holiday though. Sikhs have a holiday called Vesakhi, but I didn’t think it was all that special because nobody got off school or work on that day. I kept the paper flame in my room between my school textbooks. It was ripped in the corners but ever since Nani-ji had been hospitalised, I had a hard time throwing anything away. To get to the garbage bin, I had to pass God in the living room and I couldn’t bear to look at His face, I told you so dancing in His eyes, making the corners of His mouth twitch. He could barely contain His glee. I felt it every morning when I rushed past Him to get to the door.