The End of Men(25)

For the first time since I arrived in Singapore, my vulnerability here feels poisonous. I can’t rip the boards off. I can’t leave, I need this job. What am I going to do? Where would I go? What if the Plague ruins my life here? I hadn’t thought the Plague was going to be a problem in Singapore. I’ve heard about it. My mother has been e-mailing me about it, but Singapore is the safest country in the world and they shut the borders to foreign citizens. I thought I would be untouchable like the rich people are, but I’m just the help. I’m nothing to them.

Over the next two days we wait, and wait and wait in an odd pretense that everything is normal. Dressing as normal, eating breakfast as normal, playing with the children as if any of this is normal. We’re locked up in the apartment and I don’t know whether it’s scarier to be in here or out there. After two years as a nanny for the Tai family, I’m so used to being quiet and unquestioning that it didn’t even occur to me that I could just . . . leave. As I walked through the lounge first thing this morning, I saw that one of the cooks, Davey, was leaving. He had used knives and his hands to force off the wooden boards Mr. Tai had nailed across the elevator. He asked me if I had seen Mr. Tai today. I said I thought he was still in bed. “In that case,” he said and took the Ming vase that sat on the mahogany table by the elevator.

“Take care of yourself,” he said as the elevator doors closed.

I waved good-bye to the closed doors and thought Davey was stupid for leaving. As if a vase is going to save him from the Plague. He’s the one who should want to stay in here, not me, although the thought hovers around me that the Plague could already be inside the apartment. My throat tightens in fear for Rupert.

I walk around the huge living room, trying to breathe slowly, trailing my fingers along the glass panes that make up one wall of the apartment. When I first started working for the Tais I thought this room, this whole apartment, was the most unbelievable thing I had ever seen. All I knew before I arrived was that a family in Singapore had chosen me from the agency’s books. I didn’t know that Singaporeans are obsessed with having Filipino nannies because we are seen as the best. I just knew it was better money than I could make at home and the hours weren’t too bad. I was nineteen and didn’t know any better.

The moment I first met Mrs. Tai I knew she was challenging. The woman at the agency who hired me warned me it would be a shock. She said it was easy to feel resentful at first when they complained about how hard their lives were and talked about wanting more money, more jewelry, more everything. I nodded and thought Okay, lady, but I didn’t get it. Not until I got here and they had more money than I had ever seen in my life.

They don’t wave physical money around, obviously. It’s not cash, it’s everything. Servants, nannies, cooks. They live in three floors of this huge glass apartment block with the most amazing views. Mrs. Tai goes out shopping every day and comes back with more bags than the maids could carry. Or at least she used to. And then she complained about being tired. Oh, the irony.

Angelica is sitting on the sofa, playing on the iPad. It’s only 9:30 a.m. and I’m usually quite strict with iPad time but we’re locked up so the normal rules don’t apply. It was obvious immediately that I hadn’t been hired to be a nanny; I had been hired to be a mother. Mrs. Tai pays the children hardly any attention. She says good morning and good night to them and that’s it. I’m there for kissing bruised arms better and pinning their paintings onto the nursery wall and saying, “Yes we can watch Moana again but only if we watch Lilo & Stitch tomorrow and no we can’t have Frozen until next week, I don’t want to let it go again, that ice lady needs a time-out!” I hear their laughs and their cries and their mumbles in their sleep and I know what temperature Rupert likes the milk he still has at night that I really need to wean him off of, but it’s a good source of calcium and I’ll let him have it for a few more weeks.

I sit next to Angelica and stroke her hair. I want to ask her how she’s feeling but I don’t have any answers for the questions she would inevitably ask, so instead I just sit here, hoping my presence is enough. My phone pings for the fourth time in an hour. It’s another message from my mother. The Plague is back home in Mati. My mother calls it a sumpa, a curse. Her e-mails are hysterical. She doesn’t know anything, just that it is a terrible disease and the men are dying. It is scary enough being here but back home, if the power goes out or there are food shortages, there is no way to fix it. I try not to feel worried. At least we are a family of women. I think this every day and it makes everything seem better. My father left when I was small. Our greatest weakness has become a strength. Now, I think, what’s the worst that can happen? They will not die. I will not die. We will be okay.

I’m about to go and check on Rupert—he’s suspiciously quiet—when I hear a scream and Angelica and I jump up in unison. It’s Mrs. Tai, yelling for help in the bedroom. I know what this must mean but I can’t bear it. Don’t let the Plague be in the apartment, please. Not here.





LISA


Toronto, Canada

Day 68

Everybody in my office, we’re late, run don’t walk.”

One of the lab assistants practically sprints into my office, spilling coffee everywhere. Jesus Christ. The screen comes alive as one of the AV people finally gets the TV plugged into the laptop, and we’re greeted by a patchwork of faces of various pixilations. I immediately start scanning the screen for faces I recognize. It’s hard to see anyone. There’s so many on the screen, everyone except Amanda Maclean—the host of this online get-together—is tiny.