FOREIGN POLICY
Elizabeth Sachs |
 |
WITH A FIRM WESTERN HANDSHAKE AND A TOOTHY SMILE, YOUR LANDLADY
Sharon Fong jolts you out of despair and puts you on your mettle instead. She, from the disciplined society of Confucius, has learned not only your language but your customs. You, from the slovenly States, know hardly any Chinese. Further, the fruit of two weeks' harried observation of your students is mainly that Singaporeans are sleek as dominoes, and about that expressive.
Still. Relentless strain has made you a quick study. When Sharon showily shucks off her shoes, glances at your shod feet and says "Oh, you not afraid scratch floors?" you catch her drift: if you don't apply scrupulous domestic care to her flat, your hefty damage deposit will go up in smoke like the hell money Singaporeans burn for their ancestors. You riposte with a cold look left over from those you were giving your husband just moments ago, freezing Sharon to the spot for a moment so her husband, Hong, bumps her from behind. "Sorry, sorry," he apologizes, to you for some reason, and compounds your confusion by murmuring, "A preasure to meet you, Isaberra." Your name is Ellen. His gaze ping-pongs to you feet then roves up the considerable length of you, splitting open like a melon when he meets your eyes. You smile. By way of consolidating the reassurance of this cachet you evidently possess, over here, you let your mind flash to events of last weekend's Night Safari. Your Western grip softens in Hong's squeeze, damp and warm as steam bread. So does your enunciation.
"A preasure," you murmur.
Thump-thump. Jiggle-jiggle-jiggle.
Hong's face is a fierce mask as he works the key to a drawer of the cheap wardrobe, trying to unjam the lock you jammed. Jiggle-jiggle. He grimaces hideously. Sharon opens a blue, plastic shopping bag and rustles inside.
"Better try magic fluid?"
Thump jiggle. Hong nods.
Your heart beats faster. You've gathered that mysticism lies just beneath Singapore's high-tech surface. You don't mind--you're intrigued. At "Happy Good Fortune Household" you had to buy either three or five wine glasses in a packet, since "four" somehow connotes death. You've noticed joss sticks burning on roadsides and parkways, beside offerings of oranges stacked like cannon balls. The inquiry, "My son has many bruises--are ghosts pinching him?" in the medical advice column of the Straits Times made you marvel. Now, apparently, you're going to witness an application of magic to the little lock whose key you twisted in a jet-lagged version of your usual, sad caution the night you arrived. "Whoa, baby!" came your husband's exclamation from the master bathroom, you jumped like a startled animal and *click,* all your bras and your silk travel sack of jewelry were locked away. For two weeks you've worn one bra and one pair of earrings. You badly want your things.
What Sharon draws from the blue bag and passes to Hong with the seriousness of ritual is, however, only "WD40." Your husband guffaws softly, then hushes at Sharon's wondering look. Hong attaches the red-plastic proboscis and aims into the lock, squirting once, twice. He slips in the key and jiggles, glances at you in despair, then withdraws and sprays the key until it shines and drips. He inserts again, tumbler by tumbler in lubricious clicks, and "Sss--" he breathes, his face contorting so that unwittingly you think of your husband the long-ago last time you made love--the fierce concentration before the last, ecstatic push. You blink the image away.
The drawer shoots open, revealing silk sack and coveted bras in mounds of pink, black and white. "Ah, success!" hisses Hong, staring a moment before sliding the drawer to and "Ah, so!" exclaims your husband, who can cast away irony as quickly as he casts away most things. Both men's faces are merry and exultant as Laughing Buddha. "Ha-ha-ha!" laughs Hong and your husband laughs a gruff, Asian-male-sounding "Har!" "Hee-hee-hee!" agrees Sharon. You try to laugh, too, but you're out of practice and the best you can manage is a tight smile. Sharon, giving a small-fingered point to the drawer and a conspiratorial nod to you, suddenly sobers, bland as an egg, at whatever your face reveals.
"Mission accomprish!" blares Hong, and, though you nod gratefully, you're already taking a large, suggestive step toward the door. The others don't follow. When you turn, you see that Sharon is detaining Hong with a hand on his arm and staring at you like one of the bright-eyed, unfamiliar as well as unfathomable creatures you saw the other night, at the Night Safari attraction of exotics and dark jungle. Both men look clueless, as men will. Sharon, by contrast, looks clued-in--though to what you don't know. She pats Hong's arm.
"Hong, I think I take Erren around rest of prace, show her what is what," she says, her smile toothy and Western again.
You feel alarmed. But before you can shake your head and make up some excuse, Hong bows and nods your husband toward the living room. And of course your husband complies. You want to protest--that you come from the gender-equal West, that if Sharon wants to give domestic advice it really ought to be to your husband as well as yourself, because you're partners. Which isn't exactly true, of course--but still. Sharon quells you with a touch on the arm and a smile that is kinder. Less Western.
"Everyone know, women best for take care of house," she says, close to your ear, and now, inconveniently, your native honesty comes to the fore. You wince, then nod.
"Facades very fragire in tropics. Be ruined unress maintained carefurry."
"Oh? Uh-huh. I suppose so." You keep your gaze trained vaguely out the spare bedroom window so Sharon can't read your impatient look. You've already assured her, "No worries!" about the clothes festooning metal knobs of bedstead and windowsill. This is your drying room, because of the lovely breeze that blows through this window, and because--well. Hastily averting your eyes from the washer-dryer on the adjoining utility porch to the pool below, you smile. This pool, large as a lagoon, is open all hours. You swim every chance you get, often joined by another teaching colleague who is also housed in the complex. Sharon picks at a bikini strung on a doorknob, tests the moisture content of a sarong flung onto the bed. She is all quivering nostrils and nervous fingers as she picks and feels and tests and you think--macaque? No. Slow loris? No. Binturong, maybe, but no--more of a flying fox fruit bat. Your principal quest at the Night Safari was for the Malayan tiger, but along the way you stopped at a display featuring the flying fox, upside-down on a branch, peeling a mango with gestures a little like Sharon's. Its fur was loose and prickly over small bones, its wings thin, warm skin in which you felt a heartbeat even faster than your own. You smile at the yellow sarong, feel your face grow warm at the memory of selecting it in the gift shop. Sharon's gaze now trains on you, and you nod seriously when you catch it. She lifts your husband's swimsuit from a bed knob and doesn't seem reassured to find it desiccated, stiff as a carcass. Picking her way to the window beside you, she makes a noise like "Cluck!"
"Ah! Must no reave open rike dat! Prevairing wind from that direction, brow in rain. Raminate might buckre!"
You're stung, as if by a bee in your bumptious Western ass, and warmth in your face becomes heat. This heavenly breeze not only dries your clothes, it also cools the flat that is otherwise stuffy and in need of "air con" as Singaporeans call it. Air con makes you feel stale and trapped. A deep portico overhangs this window--the same one that protects the utility porch--and surely it's deep enough--
Sharon has turned on the full bank of light and points at the floor before the window. Indeed, it's paler just there. She leans and swipes the floor, shows you the shining damp on her hand. "Ah," you say, staring. Then, sadly, "uh-oh--lah?" as your students do when ceasing to bicker about mistakes on quizzes somehow being your fault instead of theirs. You study the window, whose sheer curtain billows luxuriously. You sigh. So does Sharon.
"Breeze very nice. But, storms unpredictabre--come from nowhere, anytime, day or night. Trus' me--I know."
Tight-throated, you nod. Sharon chews her lip, then slowly pulls the window to, twists the handle and locks it. The room turns immediately stifling. She lifts the air conditioner remote control from its slot and aims it at the unit. Cool, stale air begins to circulate.
"Is better rike so," she murmurs. "Rearry! Come. I show you."
She makes a beeline out the door. You follow more slowly.
The colleague who accompanied you and your husband to the Night Safari is an economist, very handsome, with a gaze that seems intently focused on his thoughts, when it's not focused on--you. A brief storm swept in and he suggested you take the tram to the tiger instead of wandering in the dark. A very good idea, you thought. He found you seats--your husband two cars behind the one where he squeezed in next to you. Speaking close to your ear to be heard through the loudspeaker din and the huffs of animals on either dark side of the tram, he finished explaining "cost-benefit ratios." "Most Westerners are afraid to assess net present deflation if initial cost of an investment was high. They're risk-aversive, just when they ought to take risks. I'm not. I believe in necessary risk, and so do Asians in this economy. That's why I love it here."
Just before you shut the door, you click off the air con and toss the remote back to the bed where Sharon set it down. Later, you'll push the window back open. Your silent, risky maneuver reminds you of the student who today deftly flipped pages and signed the attendance roster for a friend who was absent. Or, did she? When you indignantly flipped pages over, the signature was too close a match to challenge.
You arrange your face like the girl's, deadpan, but your effort is wasted. Sharon has vanished.
In the living room, Hong inclines toward your husband. "One is architect in Beijing, another is accountant . . ." Your husband winces just a hair. You and he have no children. "Two in correge," Hong continues, "so I must still work very hard. One reason for buy this frat to rent. . . " Your husband moderates his wince to a nod, careful not to distract Hong, who is his guest. The familiar conflict constricts your throat. Your husband can be such a good guy. "A prince," your friends used to say. His initiative at the university, not yours, got you both this gig abroad. But as usual, just as you were pleased and relaxed, trusting him a little, he did what he does and went on a drug and alcohol rampage for thirty-six hours, just one week before your departure, while you raged and wept and put holds on all the credit cards, watched out windows for the boil of police lights, even as you continued packing. "You want to crash and burn?" you hissed tonight, panic gusting banked fury into an inferno. "You could get caned, for what you do. You could get worse! They hang people here, every Friday morning! You know that?"
"Erren! Erren--in here!"
The master bathroom is ablaze with lights. Your heels clatter on the polished tile floor, but Sharon does not glance down at your offending shoes. Instead she smiles beatifically and continues making urgent "come here" gestures, like someone gleeful about a gift she's about to give.
"Want to exprain bathroom! Made for enjoy. Nicest feature of whole prace, and ver' typicar Sing-poh, where we fussy about some things but enjoy our ruxury too!"
Hands clasped like a diva, Sharon resembles two Madame Butterflies: the real her and the one reflected in the ormolu mirror. By contrast, your face next to hers in the mirror is crabby, pinched. Indeed, this is a resort-style bathroom--five-star. Rococo marble, gilt-bronze and beveled glass gleam in the glittering light of faceted vanity sconces. Like the bathroom of the Las Vegas hotel where you and your husband once spent a weekend, this one has a whirlpool tub as well as a steam shower, and, astonishingly, a bidet as well as a toilet. It touches a Rat Pack chord in your husband (that "Whoa!" he crowed, your first night here) and, noting the wolfish smile he gave you as you emerged from the steam shower one day, you experienced a showgirl moment. Then you remembered that cocaine and pole dancers turn his crank, not you, and scowled.
"Just one thing." Sharon speaks gently. "Perhaps notice, marbre stain ver' easiry? Expensive, sand-and-porrish again. So, prease be carefur. Steam from shower and whirr-poor also make marbre finish drab. These two squeegees will hehrp."
She picks up squeegees you've mostly ignored, one short and one long, and makes gay, battle-ready stabs at the air. She is cute and winsome as can be. In the mirror, your face gets crabbier still. You've taken exactly one steam. You've had no interest in the whirlpool. None. And really, this bathroom isn't so great. In fact, like the resort bathrooms on which it is obviously modeled, this one is intensely impractical. Intensely! There are no cabinets at all. No shelves. There is a grand total of one towel rack, from which droops the towel your husband used to mop his face while you answered the doorbell. Your things crowd the countertop--deodorant, vial of waterproof Maybelline mascara, Vaseline Intensive Care, etc. You've been indifferent to chic cosmetics for a long time, but still it smarts to have these pitiful things on display before Sharon. She, picking about, seems nervous once more. She lifts your vial of hair jell and fingers the cap--for marble-staining goo, you realize. "Hm, not sticky," she murmurs, hesitates a flash then whisks up deodorant, mascara and wrinkled tube of hydrocortisone cream in quick succession. You're relieved that you stored your diaphragm and spermicidal jelly in the nightstand--though those, too, would be pristine.
"Neat as pin," she admits. Her small nostrils twitch. She seems as much puzzled as pleased.
"You need a chest of drawers," you bark. Her eyes widen and her head goes to one side, in the universal stance of bewilderment. You try again.
"Chest! Of drawers! Or, a medicine cabinet at least! And, why not a closet? People need closets! Where are the closets?" You make drawer-opening and -closing motions, closet-open-and-shut motions, and, for good measure, flutter and flatten hands at various heights in shelf pantomime. Sharon's eyes, very wide, follow as if following the flights of exotic birds.
"Cabernet," she says, faintly.
Vigorously you nod and with relief see that your reflection doesn't look so strange. After all, Westerners often appear congested and teary when they're indignant. They often get all mottled like that. Sharon, still-faced, nods slowly back.
"Ah. Unfortunatery, croset not possibre in Sing-poh. You see, cabernet difficurt. Reason is--" She blinks and looks strained with the effort of complex explaining. Nonetheless, she soldiers on. "Reason is, wooden framing, such as use in West, is not use here. Use cement instead. No prace put croset." She reaches and knocks on a wall, which in fact makes a tight, stony sound. "Very difficurt, penetrate cement, so not even cabernets commonprace, except sectionars for kitchen, etc."
Her grimace and waving hands convince you, beyond a doubt, of both the difficulty of the construction and of her own heroism in explaining it civilly to you. You grimace too, feeling suddenly ashamed.
"Ah. I see. I'm sorry. I--"
". . . Hong go over budget for bath fixture, aready. Then, unfortunatery, had to say 'no' to cabernet. Now, am sorry. Would be ver' good to have. Protect marbre too. I remember your compraint. Make note. May be able to rectify, one day."
The perfection of "rectify," plus her drooping shoulders, compound your shame. She looks ashamed too, and all at once you wonder--what is life really like for the Fongs? Someone else's potential hardship instead of your certain one is a relief to contemplate, and so you do. Singapore is god-awful expensive. The Fongs have--four?--children. And, all pride in them aside, children are expensive. This condo is an investment, and maybe one they had to scrimp to risk making? Despite some swank features such as your own, profligate husband might have chosen, others are cheap. Doesn't the paint job seem amateur, for instance, the lines wavery at seams? You can suddenly imagine Sharon on some Saturday, handing brushes, rollers, up the ladder to Hong, most likely working without masking tape, which you've noticed in Singapore seems in very short supply, along with tampons and ibuprophen (so that god only knows what menstruating is like, for Sharon). You've read that Asians dislike expressions of sympathy. Nonetheless, you cock your head and transmit Western-style compassion, broad and crinkle-browed.
"Life must be tough in many ways for you--" you begin, and are surprised, then encouraged, to see an expression of agony in her eyes--agony on a par with your own. Without thinking, you reach out and squeeze her hand. Now she looks downright horrified. You snatch your hand back.
"I'm so sorry! Really, I--" Then you recoil.
With the delicacy of a lab scientist and a face wiped clean of whatever emotion it showed just a moment before, Sharon is inspecting the bidet. Her brows lift.
"Hm. Sparkering crean," she murmurs.
"Hey--" You twitch as a shock like electricity passes through you, for now she is lifting the toilet lid. Asian toilets are designed for low-water-use. They are difficult to keep sparkling clean.
"Wesserners no seem to know," says Sharon, lifting the seat, "that best way crean up mess is, do immediatery. Instead, it seem they let mess compound. Let me show you. Toiret brush here, you see? Here is creaner--squirt-squirt! Ever notice rittle pot here, turn up-side-down on floor? Perhaps have never thought about what is for?"
Your head feels frozen. You shake it anyway. Sharon nods.
"I show you."
She flicks two squirts of bowl cleaner and gives several swishes with the brush, causing suds to spring up and slide about. Tapping brush head daintily in the pot she moves both to the sink, runs the tap and swishes the brush in the potted water. She smiles as she swishes, brisk and earthy and matter-of-fact. Swooping pot to toilet, brush to pedestal, she tosses the water into the bowl in a practiced arc. A sweep of tissue from a box and a flutter about the rim completes the task. She turns to you with a sweet smile. No. Not sweet. Satisfied.
"Go kitchen next," she says.
Humbly, and steeling yourself against a dull thud of dread, you nod.
Last Saturday, you, your husband and the economist took in Chinatown, a district where first stories of beautiful shop houses are gutted for tourist traps, and where shuttered second stories hint at private lives forever closed to you. You modeled wood-soled sandals for the men, who watched absent-mindedly. Summoning a gaiety you did not feel, you pointed to a temple across the street, chattered and clatter-soled your way there.
Where the experience was like a dream. The enormous Buddha, gold-leafed and imperturbable, the saffron-clad monks and looped garlands of chrysanthemum--all of these, though novel, were at least familiar from National Geographic . What was surreal was the activity. Accustomed to the unison and linearity of a Western mass, you couldn't understand the milling about, the chatting half ritualized and half social, the visits that struck you as improvisational to secondary shrines around the periphery, by individuals who seemed more--individual--than any you'd yet encountered in this collectivist society. You watched one devotee add a basin of steaming rice and lentils to an altar already laden with other basins, and you couldn't help but think of a buffet. It seemed as though you should be able to interpret these cues, which seemed straightforward in a way--even downright homey. You joined a queue for one buffet. Then a monk got you aside to point out your sandals and your bare shoulders, urged you back outside to remove the first and cover the second, and your embarrassment was such that the economist's smile and shrug were no help at all.
Sharon's a help, though. On her knees before the cabinet beneath the kitchen sink, she spreads her hands as if to the god (goddess?) of Domestic Order. Deep inside, the drainage pipe is a sinuous, atavistic gleam. Hong's sonorous voice comes from the living room, ". . . mos' weekends. Weekday nights after work too, rike tonight. But worth it, we think. We good randrords; tenants appreciate. . . " Sharon speaks, hushed and glowing-faced.
"Here is everything for make home perfect. Here is creanser very good for grass tabertop, windows, mirror. Use newspaper-- Straights Times maybe--for make shiny. Rike so." She pantomimes, makes tiny scrubbing motions in the air before her face, then presses hands together ecstatically. Charmed, you nod.
"Here. Here reather creaner for couch. Will stay nice ver' easiry if use--oh, once-a-month. Here, speciar creaner for marbre floor--use cap-ful in bucket, here, warm water, keep bright and shiny, no need reporrish even if scratch!" Now she allows herself a glance at your shoes. So do you, shame-faced, but she only nods.
"And here--small bowl here for coffee grounds--keep for prants!"
You're befuddled. "Prance?" Then realize: Plants . Sharon turns serious.
"Mus' be carefur, prants; not good have inside because water attract mosquito, perhaps bring dengue fever." You've heard about dengue--the high fevers leading to hallucinations, madness, sometimes death. You shiver along with her. She looks satisfied.
"So. What can do, if ver' carefur, is put prants on redge outside front window, where can grow up around sides. You notice, oddah neighbors do?"
You nod. Yes. The streamers of crimson and fuchsia bougainvillea. The orchids snaking from pots. Even, in the apartment above yours, frangipani, whose stalks make parasol shadows on your windows and whose creamy blossoms drop in evenings to die on your sills. When you got home from the Night Safari you put a few in your hair. Sharon smiles at whatever your face reveals.
"Yes. Romantic spot for sit--after chil'ren go to bed."
You flinch, just a hair, and Sharon looks conscious. You shrug and nod to assure her you're not hurt--not at all, of course not!--but she has already risen and gone to the stove. You shrug again, for your own benefit.
"Each burner have own puhpose. Large pots here, small, here. Can steam rice here, and here is appriance for tea press. Can convert this burner to grirll. Chinese kitchen very compact, but versatire. And of course, no matter where in world, kitchen always heart of home."
She points to flames she calls to life, smiling and smiling and you find yourself smiling too. What she's doing looks silly, magical, and fun, and you wonder--have you ever done something like this? Maybe. As a girl, maybe, with your Easy-bake oven, its tiny sacks of mix yielding lumpy cakes that you frosted as well as you could, enticing your parents to eat them and be happy--to please, please be happy! Why was it so hard for them to be happy? Or, the rocks you washed in your red bucket and laid out in the sun on the plank seat of your father's rowboat. Long ago, your father took a picture of you, hands plunged in the bucket of water, scrubbing and smiling and smiling with that little-girl knack of charming, and being charmed. That little-girl-heroic effort of holding a man's fugitive attention.
Sharon throws out her arms, at natty kitchen and spanky appliances, louvered windowpanes onto the utility porch out back, all neat as a postage stamp. Through the slats blows the same breeze currently shut out of the spare bedroom, for here in the kitchen the porch's protection and the durable tile make a breeze allowable even if it brings rain. You put your hands on your back and stretch, a very Asian gesture like the tai-chi old ladies do at poolside every morning, and feel breeze tickle your throat, cool and unstick damp cloth beneath your breasts with a delicious "pop." You shiver. Sharon laughs, a soft, exultant sound.
"Mos' Wesserner no rearry unnderstan' Sing-poh. But I think--maybe you wirr."
Her expression, friendly, eager, cautiously hopeful, reminds you of something.
Before the tram, staring in amazement as the exoticism of this new land rolled itself out to you, you thought of reaching for your husband's hand. Time and again, brushing footfalls and hoarse pants behind the scrim of jungle revealed themselves as animals incredibly beautiful and incredibly cute. The babirusa, gray and furry and with a name meaning "dear pigs." The fishing cats and barking deer. The Malayan civets and slow Loris, the binturang and Himalayan tahr who were, despite their eerie names, sleek and bright-eyed. The giant flying squirrel, bat-eared fox, and of course the flying fox. You saw your husband staring, too, but when you reached for him he lagged behind, or slipped ahead, and so each moment was lost. You thought of the countless times he'd slipped away, off to do his "thing" in the deep privacy of his addiction, and felt your habitual caution, panicky and defensive, kick in. At your side, the handsome economist intoned, "Bridge of Suspense," reading the plaque beside the footbridge you were about to cross. His sideways glance at you glittered. "Suspense about what, I wonder?" you said, and arched your brows when he laughed.
Sharon's gaze is still friendly, if a tad strained at the long wait for your reply. Startled, you try to remember what she reminds you of. Of course. It's you.
"At any rate, I trus' apahtment in good hands--"
You take a breath. "Sharon, I need your help," you say.
You feel your face struggle against the impassivity you've learned to put on, here, in streets and busses and trains, when you've needed help and your need has been met with silence. Singaporeans' silence is potent as a reproach and silences you, too. Silence feels a bit like suffocating, to you. Now you speak, but softly.
"The washer-dryer made some peculiar noises. Then it--I don't know. It--" You consider how to convey the clinks and clanks that frightened you, and caused you since to wash by hand and hang things in the drying room. You give up trying.
"Maybe you should take a look."
Sharon's eyes glitter. She gives a curt nod. You, shrinking back, use the silence of meekness to urge her, "You first." But she gestures you forward with a jab.
Truly, you combed through eight pages of instructions in the manual, including disquisitions on "Sorting the Clothes" and "The Significance of Washtub Symbols." You bought the recommended, low-suds detergent, though it was heavy and your hands bore deep, plastic-handle imprints by the time you got home from "Good Luck Grocery." After re-reading "Loading the Clothes" and measuring out Persil into the correct one of three slots, you ran a load, heard alarming noises, and returned an hour later to find the wash quite clean and rinsed--but the floor puddled with water full of black specks like soot.
"Ras tenant, did not take care washer-dryer, crogged up with wrong detergent, had to be charge eighty dollars crean out." This comes out on one long, adumbrated whine, but you notice that Sharon's hands, folding back the front flap of the pink-sprigged washer-dryer cover in the same way you do--appreciatively, creasing twice--tremble.
"Had whole thing creaned out before you arrived, and ran machine twice. Worked perfectry."
You study her. She looks sincere. You decide to bide your time, be silent in a receptive way.
"And so--you read direction?" says Sharon, sharply. "For continued good service, must continue good care. Follow instruction to letter. Use appropriate detergent."
You nod blandly.
"--because ras tenant no berieve old rady!" She gestures to her chest with the ghost of a smile. You don't smile. She's in her early forties, perhaps--like you. She's not old. "--and use sudsy detergent, gunk up works, typicer wasty Wesssern ways--as if suds mean crean."
You purse your lips. You haven't believed such schlock as "suds mean clean" since you were a kid, and believed all sorts of things. You cut Sharon off with a firm gesture to the large box of Persil behind her.
"Oh." She is flummoxed. It seems to you she has gone pale, and suddenly you know how to assess that in Asians: it's the change from café au lait to latte.
"Brack soot," she says, faintly.
"Uh-huh. I mopped up the mess, of course--"in her breathless suspense she doesn't register your smug tone"--but maybe some specks remain. Ah, yes. Here. In corner. Let me show you--" You stoop and swipe a finger, brush soot into your palm. Just two specks. Sharon bends low over your cupped hands to stare.
"Ah. Rook rike rust. Obviousry, water overfrow."
She winces, touches your palm with fingers light as tentacles. You wince too, intuiting the terrors of rust in a tropical country.
"An' maybe, I know where rust come from. Here. Drainage pipe. Hong paint with rust-proof paint, but no reprace. Was not in budget this year." She gestures to a pipe that protrudes from the floor. You lean to inspect it. Sure enough, it's roughly rusty beneath a layer of white paint. You've spray painted over rust at home, too. You can't afford to replace much, so you understand. Before you can stop yourself you nod sympathetically and say,
"I understand."
"On other hand," Sharon continues, "question is--why washer overfrow in first prace? Was working just fine before. You read directions carefully? You no over-road with crothes, or road detergent in rong srot?"
"Of course! And, of course not! No! I'd never. I--"
"Humph," Sharon says, kneeling before the washer, not exactly worshipful this time. More like a Night Safari keeper with an exotic animal: proprietary and expert, and keeping the tourists well back. "Ret's see. Drum rook fine. No evidence of over-road. Now. Hmm. Did you crean out rubber rip of drum? Water gadduh inside, you see, and mus' keep dry, or erse rubber crack, no keep good seal. Maybe that's what happen, huh?"
You sputter and protest. It's ridiculous to think that one round of washing in a machine with an un-dried rubber rim could cause inches of water on the floor! Moreover, you did dry the rim! You followed all directions to a "t," using the thin towel Sharon left atop the pink-sprigged cover like a little hankie attending the outfit. Yes, indeed. You dab-dab-dabbed--
Well, okay, you didn't dab quite that energetically. And you didn't do what she's doing, which is peel the lips open along a seam you see now but didn't see then. She inserts two fingers in a gesture that reminds you uncomfortably of gynecology, and you reflect, as you often have during the past two weeks, that Asians are much less squeamish than you are. Heads and feet left on frozen chicken. Meat in strange cuts that expose joints and cartilage. "Mama Poo-poo" brand diapers. Very little seems to faze them.
"Oh," you say weakly, noting her industrious wipes and hearing click-click-click . Rattle-rattle . She looks up. You feel your face drain, and go cold. She pincers fingers between rubber lips, grimaces and pries out one, two, three, four objects. Now she looks shocked. You certainly are, and feel a familiar wash of sickening shame.
Tiger Beer is Singapore-made. It comes in liter bottles. Many might nurse one throughout an evening. Four is a shocking amount. Each of the four bottle-caps Sharon holds is lapis-colored and features a miniature tiger, orange-white-and-black striped like the Malayan tiger that turned out to be sleeping, at the Night Safari, it not being a nocturnal animal after all. You laughed to see it snoozing, one paw pressed against the display glass. You touched the glass, then shivered with the economist reached and touched your hand.
You shiver now. You are so accustomed to the many forms that revulsion takes to your situation that you can intuit Sharon's forms from amongst them. She is nonplussed by a general, civic horror. Here in Singapore, only greasy men in hawker centers drink publicly to drunkenness. She is also distressed, as a landlady, wondering what she has gotten into, renting to you. And, you suspect, she also struck by the fear, more potent in Asia than it is in the States, of losing face by being friendly with someone like you? Asians fear the loss of face more than ghosts. More than anything, you've gathered.
You look at her sideways, reading for that response. But you don't see it. Instead, in the continued downturn of her head and the down-pushing movement of her neck as she swallows, you read something different, which surprises you.
Sympathy. She's sympathetic.
She revolves the bottle caps in her hand. They click like dice. As your heart continues beating rather wildly you see her decide to do what all Asians seem to do when in doubt: stick to practicalities.
"This very careress," she says, at last. "Very bad. If got into motor, rip up works rickety-sprit. Have pay for whole new-washer-dryer."
She glances at you, who nods silently. Her expression softens. Her mouth opens, shuts, then opens again. She speaks in a rush.
"Actually, grad find this out--grad you tohd me. Oddah tenant probabry would have said nothing, would mos' rikery have postponed, waited machine break down, botter caps crack-crack around, ruin ho ting. Much troubre reprace fo' me, in addition expense fo' him. Would have been ver' bad, wuss than this fo sho. In part muss say, grad you mention--respect dat, lah? You unnerstan'? Lah?"
"Lah," you say--y es --though her accent is suddenly so powerful, her words run together so quickly, you keep thinking you'll lose her. But you don't. As she races on, you feel as if you're hearing a new language that you miraculously follow. You've had dreams like this, of being more fluent than you are, and they've been wonderful--like dreams of flying. "Singlish," they call the patois of English spoken here, with its infusion of Chinese tonalities. Usually, you listen for the English within it. Now you listen for the Chinese.
"And actually-- Werr, actually--" Sharon says, and you smile. Singaporeans say "actually" when they're intent and self-forgetful, and it's one of the two words whose "l" they pronounce with ease, the other being the all-pervasive "lah."
"--Actually, I too, many year ago, had some trouble, sometime. With severar ting. Incruding washa-dryer. Is no easy machine use in Singapore, lah? Is maybe true what Hong say: have too many instruction--maybe too compricated, dericate. Rike high-strung horse, la? Hah-hah! Many machine in Singpoh Chinese in origin, an'--" Here her face contorts a bit. She is about to make a difficult admission it seems. "--could be Chinese instruction too compricated. To terr you truth, I broke washing machine earry on, foh reason maybe like this one. I too was careress. I did not watch crosry enough. One mus watch ver-very crosery, when one is home-makah. I too made mistake--had conserquence ver' bad foh me."
Fascinated, you nod. Actually, you've often thought of your husband as a high-strung horse, glossy but spooked and inclined to bolt. In addition, you now feel she's telling you something personal. About her own husband? You wonder about Hong. Wasn't he the eensiest bit weird, earlier? Not just "male" but spastic and twitchy? Your own husband can be that way. Often you've seen him sneak a look at women's boobs, and his look of vacant longing and narcissistic emptiness has let you know he's indulging a momentary release of his pitiful id--though he sure doesn't relish real-life releases of it with you. You study Sharon. Doesn't she also, come right down to it, have the Occidental version of the parched, deprived look you often wear? You wonder--how has Hong handled such intense pressure to provide for his family? As Sharon holds your gaze with round eyes you surmise, "With difficulty." You nod, just slightly. Her nod back is even smaller. For the moment, communication between you seems perfect.
"Odd," you think. How odd it would be, to travel to the other side of the world and find the friend you've needed to find. Sharon's voice is light as the breeze.
"Erren, tricky be home-makah. I show you beddah way--lah?" You shrug.
Actually, maybe all this isn't so odd. You are an excellent linguist. That's why you're here. You are first-rate: very subtle and teachable when your mind is clear, and even when it's not. The handsome economist noted that too, as you and he chatted after the Night Safari, your husband having elected to go back to the apartment and catch up on sleep. "You are a good communicator," he said, his gaze dropping to your lips, and breasts, before returning to your eyes. "Me, I'm more of a cunning linguist." It took you only a moment to register the joke.
You sigh as you look from Sharon's earnest eyes to the Tiger Beer caps she has ranged on the problematic washer. Maybe, at one time, the magic of a cross-cultural friendship could have helped you solve your problems--made them manageable, anyway. But it's too late.
After all, the bottle caps are yours. You and the handsome economist each drank two bottles, before you slipped the jewel-like caps into your pocket as a memento.
You blink, because tears fill your eyes and sting with the breeze. As your eyes clear, you notice something which makes you feel both triumphant, and sadder.
"Sharon--" you say, bending to grasp the cheap, accordioned-plastic tube which in Singapore passes for hosing and which has apparently come out of, or never been properly attached to, the rusty metal pipe. This, after all, caused the puddle, and the soot, and this near-confidence. You wave the hose for her benefit, with a tired sense of victory. As the handsome economist says, no matter how faulty and self-serving U.S. policy may be, "Well, someone's gotta lead. Somebody's gotta be in charge." True. Fucking-well true. But you wish victory weren't so hollow.
"--actually, my dear, I think the problem's here. . . "
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