There was something in his eye, a sort of greedy loneliness that I recognized from all those long afternoons dancing with strangers.
“Here’s my card.” He handed me a sharp-edged rectangle of paper. “Give it to the medical director and say you’re interested in nursing. Or you can fill out an application and I’ll pass it on to Matron.”
It read: William Acton, General Surgeon, followed by a row of letters that meant nothing to me but were apparently enough to carry weight with hospital officials.
Perhaps I’d misjudged him. I shouldn’t be so distrustful; it closed doors and pushed people away. My last year in school my form mistress, distressed that I wasn’t going on for my Higher Secondary Certificate, had offered to come home with me to persuade my parents. There were only a handful of girls sitting that examination, perhaps four or five in the entire country, and she was sure I could be one of them. I’d refused. I couldn’t bear to bring her to my stepfather’s house to witness his refusal and my humiliation. But maybe I should have fought harder.
So this time, I said “thank you” and really meant it. Tucking the card into my pocket, I felt the engraved name slide under my fingertips.
Perhaps my luck had changed. I’d heard people say that luck—good and bad—came in phases, like the story of Joseph in the Bible. My mother had sent me to a school founded by Methodist preachers, and the quiet chanting, the standing and sitting, and opening of hymnals had been a solace to me, even while I’d thought about dreadful, evil things, like poisoning my stepfather.
But the salesman, Chan Yew Cheung, had also talked about luck. In fact, he’d said that he was about to be very fortunate though he’d ended up dead in a ditch.
* * *
There was a rattle in the corridor, and Shin, carrying yet another box of files, barged in. He stopped short, surprised.
“Well, I’ll be on my way,” said the surgeon, suddenly brisk.
Shin circled warily into the room. He looked at William Acton, then at my flushed, excited face.
“Is there anything that you need, sir?” Shin asked.
“You’re one of the summer orderlies. A medical student, is that right?”
“Yes, sir.”
They were like two dogs sizing each other up, but I paid little heed. A door to a career that I’d thought was closed had cracked open, and perhaps I might squeeze through.
“Tell Rawlings I came by,” and with a brief nod, the doctor was gone.
Shin stood in the doorway watching him for a moment.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
Of course I was. A year ago I’d have been more shy, but working at the May Flower had inured me to strangers. And he hadn’t really tried anything. Not like the various buayas whose wandering hands I slapped away. Though if, like Rose or Pearl, I had a hungry child waiting for me at home, I wouldn’t have had the luxury of refusal. Sometimes I wondered whether my mother’s decision to remarry was my fault. Had she, staring at my too-short clothes and the empty sack of rice in the corner, decided that marriage was her best option? But no, she’d liked my stepfather as well. There was something about him that appealed to her, I couldn’t deny it.
“Let’s take a break for lunch,” said Shin. “The canteen’s still open.”
He locked up and we crossed the grass to another building. The red earth broke apart in coarse warm crumbs, and large black ants, each the length of the top joint of my finger, scattered frantically underfoot. Shin was very quiet; his earlier good mood seemed to have evaporated.
“He said they have at least a dozen fingers in the pathology collection,” I said, pleased to have something to report. “We ought to cross-check the records to see if any of them are missing.”
It was a relief to reach the shaded walkway, out of the burning glare. An orderly in a white uniform wheeling an old man in a wheelchair gave Shin a friendly thumbs-up as they passed.
Shin nodded glumly. “Is that all you talked about?”
“Why?”
“There are rumors about that doctor.”
“What’s wrong with him?”
“He’s a good surgeon, very competent. But they say he has an eye for local girls.”
“That’s not surprising—they’re all like that.”
He shot me a swift glance. “You’ve changed.”
Of course I had. Things like love affairs and call-outs and mistresses no longer shocked me; I’d learned more about them in a week from the other girls at the May Flower than I ever had in my school days, even if Hui said I was still hopelessly na?ve.
“How do you know about him anyway?” I asked.
“My roommate told me.”
The card William Acton had given me lay in my pocket, like a train ticket to a long-awaited destination. I wanted to tell Shin about the possibility of nurse-training but he didn’t seem particularly encouraging. We weren’t equals anymore, I thought resentfully. I didn’t have a scholarship to medical school, or the luxury of choosing summer jobs.
At the canteen, I wanted to try the exotic Western food—sardine sandwiches, chicken chops, and mulligatawny soup—listed on the blackboard. Shin said patronizingly, “You should see the mess hall at our college. There’s a much better selection.” Then he stopped, remembering, I supposed, how much I’d wanted to go to university. I fixed a stiff smile on my face to hide my irritation.
It was now two in the afternoon, and the tables were mostly deserted. When we were almost done, we were joined by the orderly who’d been wheeling the old man earlier. He had a jowly face, like a cheerful piglet. Drops of perspiration trembled on his upper lip.
“How come you’re here on your day off?” he asked Shin, plonking down a steaming bowl of fishball noodles. “Wah! You even brought your girlfriend. What kind of cheap date is this?”
I couldn’t help smiling; his small eyes were so humorous. “I’m Shin’s sister. He’s making me work for him today.”
“I didn’t know you had such a beautiful sister. Why didn’t you introduce us earlier? I’m Koh Beng and I’m single.” We shook hands across the table. His palm, as I feared, was sweaty. “What kind of work are you doing?”
“Cleaning out the pathology storeroom,” said Shin.
“Nobody wanted that job. Don’t you find pickled organs frightening?”
“Sorting the files might be worse,” I said.
“Have you seen the preserved head? Apparently if you hold it up at midnight, it talks.”
I gave him a skeptical look, and he winked. “There are other strange things locked up in that room: a sorcerer’s pelesit that looks like a grasshopper in a glass bottle and has to be fed blood every month, and a finger from a weretiger—one of the harimau jadian who can put on a human skin and walk around in daylight.” Turning to Shin, he said, “How about I help your sister clean up?”
Shin looked exasperated. I said quickly, “We’re almost done,” though it wasn’t true at all. “What time is the last train to Ipoh?”
“I’ll take you back,” said the irrepressible Koh Beng. “I’m heading there this evening. I’m single, by the way.”
“So you mentioned.”
“Just making sure.” Koh Beng might look like a piglet but I couldn’t help finding him amusing. What’s more, he clearly knew it.
“I’ll take her back myself,” said Shin coldly. “Or you can stay over if you want. My friend said you could bunk with her for tonight.”
“Who’s this friend?” asked Koh Beng, taking the words out of my mouth.
“A nurse.”
“Your brother’s only been here a week but he’s already caused so much drama among the nurses.”
“That doesn’t surprise me.” Still smiling, I felt vaguely irritated. But it was true, there was nothing surprising about Shin acquiring yet another girlfriend.
* * *
Shin’s first girlfriend was two years older than us, the cousin of one of my school friends. To be honest, I hadn’t expected him to pick her, though she was nice enough. What I’d liked about her, however, was that she seemed so mature and even-keeled, though I didn’t realize he was dating her until almost a month had passed.
“Shin’s out a lot, isn’t he?” I’d remarked to my mother one evening.
We were sitting at the kitchen table in companionable silence. The oil lamp shone on her sewing and my library book. I’d given up on poisoning and was now reading Sherlock Holmes purely for entertainment. All was calm and ordinary. You could scarcely believe that Shin and my stepfather had traded blows here, wrecking the old table, and then smashing out into the back courtyard, or whatever finally happened that terrible evening. But that’s the way people are, I think. We forget all the bad things in favor of what’s normal, what feels safe.
My mother bit off her sewing thread. “He’s probably seeing Fong Lan home.” Fong Lan was the daughter of the carpenter who’d built my mother’s new kitchen table—my stepfather’s way of apologizing to her after the fight with Shin.
“That’s nice of him.”
My mother gave me an odd look. “He’s going steady with her, you know.”