The Night Tiger(127)

“What shall we do, Shin?”

He curled his fingers around mine. The slant of his eyebrows looked oddly vulnerable. “First, we’ll get a copy of your birth certificate. I’ve already got mine. Then we’ll go and register our marriage.”

“What?” I straightened up.

“My father said so, didn’t he? When you’re married, you’re not his responsibility anymore.”

“He’ll kill us!”

“He won’t. He set the conditions himself. It didn’t matter who it was, as long as he had a decent job. Of course, he was thinking of Robert.” Shin scowled. “Anyway, you and I aren’t related, not even on paper. My father never adopted you—I checked.”

I didn’t know whether to laugh or quail at Shin’s brazenness. “Are you sure you want to marry me? Aren’t you still a scholarship student?”

“I’ve been planning this for years.” He was utterly serious.

“What if I don’t want to marry you?”

“You will.”

His lips brushed mine. Lightly, but my legs went weak and a dizziness took hold of me. It was like a spell, a conjurer’s trick that pressed the air out of my lungs. Shin looked at me triumphantly. I had that feeling again, of love and longing and wanting to smack him all at once.

“People will talk.”

“Let them.”

Soft, urgent kisses. The moist heat of his mouth, the delicate probing of his tongue. That fluttering in my chest again, like a bird that yearned to fly. Shin’s good arm encircled my waist; I shivered as he pressed me, hard, against the chair. My breath came in faint gasps. Using his teeth and his good left hand, he started to unbutton my thin cotton blouse. I should stop him, I knew it, but my fingers slid through his hair instead.

“Don’t laugh,” said Shin in mock indignation. “You’re the reason my arm is broken.”

In answer, I pressed my mouth against his. We were so absorbed in each other that we didn’t notice the creak of the stairs, and then my mother’s horrified whisper.

“What are you doing?”

Shin’s hand froze on my half-unbuttoned blouse. We sprang to our feet, a dull roaring in my ears. His face was crimson.

“Mother,” I said.

But she wasn’t looking at me. “How dare you touch my daughter!” Even then, I noticed she kept her voice down, hissing the words out.

“It’s not his fault, it’s mine!”

It was then that she slapped me. My mother had never hit me across the face before. Disciplined, yes, with a weak switch when I was smaller, though she was easily talked out of punishing me. But never like this: a blow that made me gasp. The strange and terrible thing was that all this took place in near silence. None of us dared to raise our voices in that hushed dark house. We knew what would happen if my stepfather woke up.

I gripped my mother’s frail shoulders, then let go. If I wanted to, I could easily have shoved her back. On the rooftop with Koh Beng, I’d fought desperately, kicking and scratching. But I couldn’t raise a hand to my mother. Neither could Shin. The two of us stood with bowed and guilty heads as she slumped suddenly, as if the life had gone out of her. “Didn’t I raise you properly?” she muttered. “Why are you doing this?”

“I love him,” I said.

“Love?” my mother said. “What were you thinking?”

She wept, then, in that dreadful, silent way that unnerved me. The way all of us had learned to cry in this house, without making a sound. Stricken, I found myself helplessly consoling her. It was always like this. No matter what happened, I’d try to save her. I glanced at Shin, signaling him to leave the kitchen.

But instead of heeding me, he knelt before her. I’d never seen Shin get on his knees to anyone, he was too proud, but now here he was lowering his head.

“Mother,” he said. “I’m serious about Ji Lin. Please let me marry her.”

At the word marriage, my mother’s body arched in a rictus, as though she was having a spasm. Alarmed, I caught her in my arms.

“You can’t get married,” she said faintly. “You’re family now. I absolutely forbid it.”



* * *



One of the appalling yet convenient things about being family is that you can trade dreadful accusations at night, then pretend next morning that nothing has happened. Because that’s exactly what we did at breakfast. We all came down, quiet and somber, and my mother dished out limp, steaming hanks of noodles. The noodles were bland, as though she’d forgotten how to cook. Her eyes were swollen, but she told my stepfather that she hadn’t slept because of a headache.

He grunted, and I hoped that he hadn’t noticed anything. After all, he was a heavy sleeper. Shin and I sat, unnaturally still, like two cardboard siblings in a perfect cardboard family.

“I’m going back to Singapore at the end of the week,” Shin announced.

My mother nodded. She bent over her tasteless noodles, just as my stepfather did.

“Ji Lin is coming with me,” said Shin. “She can get a job there.”

Now both heads went up.

My stepfather’s eyes narrowed. “Why her?”

“The truth is, there was a murder at the Batu Gajah hospital on Monday. Another orderly was killed by the same man who tried to shove Ji Lin off the roof. The police asked us not to talk about it, but there’s a scandal brewing. Why do you think the hospital is paying me for not working? In return, they’ve asked us both to leave the area.”