She threw her hands up. “A girl only has one chance to marry well. This whole relationship is a mistake! You’re confused because you’re fond of him, like a brother. Besides, at your age it all seems romantic.” All of sudden, she fixed me with a horrified look. “You didn’t … you haven’t slept with him?”
Why did everyone ask about that—what business was it of theirs? But of course I knew why. Humiliating as it was, it was blood currency: a girl could still find a husband if she could prove her virginity, even if he were old and fat and ugly. “What do you think?” I said bitterly.
Her eyes clouded with doubt, and I felt betrayed. Finally, she nodded timidly. “Of course I trust you. But don’t do it. Promise me! It gives you the option to change your mind. I don’t want you to ruin yourself, throw all your chances away.”
“Mother,” I said. “Do you really hate Shin that much?”
“I don’t. He’s a good boy. Just … I wish he wasn’t for you. I was afraid of something like this, but you were always hung up on Ming. And I thought it would pass when Shin went away. I didn’t think he’d be so stubborn. Marriage isn’t easy. It doesn’t always turn out the way you expect.” Her gaze slid sideways. “You know your stepfather has a temper.”
“Shin’s never raised a hand against me!”
“But he’s still young.” She twisted her hands. “You don’t know what he’ll be like when he’s older.”
Fair enough, I thought, struggling to be stoic, though I wanted to shout and protest she was wrong and Shin was nothing like his father. Most of all, though, I wanted my mother to forgive me, and bless me, and tell me everything would be all right, just as she had when I was little, and there were only the two of us in the whole wide world. But perhaps that was part of not being a child anymore.
* * *
On Saturday, we stood on a platform at the Ipoh Railway Station. It was a beautiful morning, all white and gold. I had only a suitcase and a box, tied neatly with string. Gazing at the painstaking knots that my mother had tied, I felt a lump in my throat. My pretty dresses were packed away, and I was wearing one of Mrs. Tham’s best confections since, despite my protests, she’d insisted on seeing us off.
It turned out to be a blessing that she and Mr. Tham came, because her chirping commentary made the goodbyes bearable despite the tears that threatened to fall from my mother’s eyes. They’d brought an enormous bag of mangosteens and a tiffin carrier of steamed pork buns, as though we might starve before reaching Singapore. It would be a long journey south: four hours to Kuala Lumpur, then an overnight sleeper of eight hours to Singapore. A total of about 345 miles—farther than I’d ever been in my life.
As the train slowly pulled out, everyone began to wave frantically in some unspoken semaphore. Even my stepfather, usually so undemonstrative, raised a hand, though I couldn’t tell whether it was directed at Shin or me. At the last moment, my mother ran up alongside the train. I was filled with sudden panic. Was she going to denounce us? But she simply pressed the palm of her hand against the window. I fit my hand against it, all five fingers. Then she was gone, blown past by the gathering rush of the train.
Goodbye, I thought, as their figures shrank, left behind by the steady clack of the wheels, the humming of the track. Goodbye to my old life, and hello to the rest of it, whatever it might bring. Excitement and melancholy knotted my stomach, and I thought once again of Yi, that small boy left behind on a railway platform. Had he really gone away? I had the odd certainty that the ties binding all of us had been remade in a new and different pattern. I’ll never forget you, I promised. My fingers curled around the letter in my pocket. I’d missed my chance to drop it in the post box, but I’d do it when we stopped in Kuala Lumpur.
* * *
The outskirts of Ipoh flew past—coconut palms, wooden kampung houses on stilts, a skinny yellow Brahmin cow—until green jungle pressed in on both sides.
“I’ll have to find a place to stay in Singapore,” I said, recalling how we’d lied about a hospital dorm.
“That’s easy,” said Shin. “I’ve got some money saved up.”
“But that’s your savings. I don’t want to use it.”
“Why’d you think I’ve been working? I wanted to bring you to Singapore.”
“Really?” My heart skipped a beat. All those long, lonely months when I’d waited for Shin’s nonexistent replies to my letters.
“Though I didn’t know if you’d come. You were stuck on Ming for years. I was afraid if he changed his mind, you’d go running to him. You’ve given me more trouble than all the other girls combined.” His mouth twitched. “We need to keep you busy. Perhaps you can sit in on lectures.”
“I’d like that.”
Shin shook his head ruefully. “Why do you look so much happier about this than a ring? Please don’t ditch me for a surgeon.”
I shuddered. “No more surgeons.”
“I’ll borrow your class notes every night,” he said with mock seduction. My stomach gave a little flip. If Shin kept looking at me like that, I was going to make a fool of myself, and he knew it.
“Shin.” I took a deep breath. This was going to be difficult to say.
In answer, he traced the palm of my hand delicately with his finger.
“We can’t get married.” I stared straight out of the window. His finger stopped. “At least, not now.”
He was silent for a long time. “Because of your mother?”
“No, we ought to think things through properly—it will be hard for you at school and work. People will talk. And I want to live on my own for a bit. Find a job, take care of myself. I don’t want you to be responsible for me, when you’re still studying. And I’m not ready to get married right away.”
“How long?”
“I’m not sure.”
“A year,” he said without looking at me. “In a year and a day, if you haven’t made up your mind, then you’ll be mine.”
“I told you there’s no such thing as belonging to anyone!”
But he only said maddeningly, “There has to be a time limit. Otherwise we’ll just go on and on like this. I refuse to play at being twins anymore.”
A year and a day. It sounded like a dark path strewn with thorny vines and unknown beasts. Were we out of the jungle yet, Shin and I? I’d no idea of the terrain ahead, but perhaps that was all right. I had a sudden vision of high-ceilinged rooms, long sunlit hallways, and quiet libraries. The King Edward Medical College, of which I’d heard so much. Shin laughing across a table with a group of fellow students. Myself, getting on a crowded bus while balancing a box full of books. Frying rice in a cramped apartment kitchen, listening for familiar quick footsteps on the stairs. Shin and me, walking by a river in the cool evening air, eating fried bananas and arguing companionably. Strangely enough, in all these scenes I was dressed fashionably enough to please Mrs. Tham. The breeze from the open train window whipped my short hair and bangs. My heart soared.
“All right,” I said, laughing. “Friends?”
Shin rolled his eyes, but stuck his hand out in the familiar gesture. “Your mother said some terrible things about me the other night. But she was right. I’m definitely going to seduce you.”
53
Batu Gajah
Two weeks later
When it’s all over—the police and the funeral and the well-meaning rush of visitors—Ren sits on the back kitchen steps. The house is empty; there’s only him and Ah Long left packing up the master’s things. Not that there’s much. William had very few personal effects though he had, in his characteristically efficient way, drawn up a will. Very recently, the lawyer said. Ren knows about lawyers; he remembers the one in Taiping who took care of Dr. MacFarlane’s affairs, and how he’d grimaced at the mess of papers stuffed into the crannies of the old doctor’s desk. But William’s affairs are neatly arranged.
Heart failure was the official verdict. Miss Lydia made a scene at the funeral, crying and carrying on that she was his fiancée, which was a surprise to lots of people, including her own parents. Her grief and fury were astonishing. Embarrassing, even. She wanted everything that had belonged to him, but the lawyer said she wasn’t in the will and a fiancée wasn’t the same as a wife. The servants have spread the gossip through their swift channels, and everyone knows about this by now.
Ah Long sighs and shrugs. “Lucky he didn’t marry her.” The lines on his face are deeper and his wiry frame has shrunk. As he moves around the empty house, packing away the good silver and crystal to be sent back to the Acton family, his steps are slow and less sure. He doesn’t seem to care about the bequest that William has made: To my Chinese cook, Ah Long, a sum of forty Malayan dollars for his loyal service, though it is a princely gift.
Ren doesn’t have the heart to rejoice, either, despite the fact he, too, is mentioned. There’s a scholarship fund for Ren to go to school, though the monies can only be used for education.
“I don’t want it,” he says to the lawyer’s surprise.
“Why not?”
“I don’t want to study. Not right now.”
The lawyer frowns. “Why not wait? Give yourself time to think about it.”
* * *