The Night Tiger(42)

My mother gave me an odd look. “He’s going steady with her, you know.”

I was taken aback, but perhaps I shouldn’t have been. Eventually Shin was bound to find a girl he liked.

Fong Lan had a round face and gently slanted eyebrows, and she adored Shin. People were surprised that he’d chosen her out of all the girls who mooned after him. There were disparaging remarks, like “her calves look like lo bak,” the giant white radishes, but if Fong Lan heard, she didn’t seem to care. That was part of her appeal, that mature sincerity of hers. Sometimes she was so good that it made me want to scream. Yet I, too, was drawn to her. When she talked to me in her soft, serious voice, I felt that I wanted an older sister like her to comfort me. To cherish me and love me.

Once, coming home unexpectedly early, I’d caught her with Shin. It was a quiet, empty afternoon, so still I’d thought no one was home. I could whistle loudly, meddle with all the things that my stepfather didn’t like us to disturb. Stupid restrictions like tearing the next page off the daily calendar, or changing the radio dial to a different station. I could do all of them, but instead, I walked decorously upstairs.

At the top of the stairs, I cast my schoolbag aside and slid noiselessly down the corridor in my socks. And then I stopped at an unfamiliar sound—a gasp and a soft moan. A girl’s voice, coming from Shin’s room. I froze. There was a tingling sensation, as though my skin was seizing up, shrinking too small for me. And through the open door, I saw them.

They were on the floor of Shin’s room, that space I was no longer permitted to enter. Fong Lan was leaning against his bed. The front of her blouse was open revealing the pale, heavy swell of her bare breasts as she bent over him, her hair parted like a shining curtain. Shin’s head was cradled in her lap. One of her hands splayed possessively on his chest. His face was turned away, but I could see hers. She looked entranced, as though she’d never seen anything so beautiful as Shin. And he was beautiful. It was obvious even to me at that moment, the lean careless length of his body, the sharp tilt of his chin.

In that instant, I understood a great deal. About Shin, and about me. And how there were some things that you could never have. In all the years I’d lived in that house, I’d never seen Shin so relaxed, without the watchful tension that wound his body like a spring. When I’d held him in the darkness behind the chicken coop, I’d felt it: the rigidity and anger that wouldn’t go away. But here, in the soft hazy afternoon light, was a different Shin, one that I’d never seen before. And I felt horribly, sickeningly inadequate. No matter how close we were or what secrets we shared, I could never give him this peace.

A choked gasp forced its way out of my throat. Fong Lan lifted her head but I was already gone, running down the long corridor. When I think about that shophouse in my memories, it’s always a dark, endless tunnel both upstairs and downstairs. Not knowing what to do, I ended up wandering around in a daze, and only returned when I was sure my mother and stepfather were back. Shin had acted as though nothing had happened. He showed no reaction when I came home, so late that the lamps were already lit and my mother was scolding me in fear and relief. But Fong Lan talked to me a few days later.

“I know you saw us the other day,” she said. “It must have been awkward for you.”

Her very softness and meekness felt like a stab to the heart.

I tried to shrug it off. “Don’t worry about it.”

But she said seriously, “I really do love him, you know. We haven’t done it yet. I don’t want to tie him down if I got pregnant. But I will if he wants to.”

I wanted to shake her. What kind of thinking was this? My mother had warned me, stamped it into my head. Chastity was one of the few bargaining chips women had. No matter how good-looking Shin was, Fong Lan was a fool. And yet, part of me couldn’t help admiring her. She really did love him, I thought.

Haltingly, I tried to give her advice even though she was two years older than me. She listened patiently, then shook her head. “I know what it’s like in your family,” she said. So he’s really told her everything, I thought in amazed resentment. “But I want to make Shin happy. And if it means giving myself to him, that’s all right with me.”

Was that love or stupidity? But maybe that was just the hardheaded part of me, calculating my chances of survival. I wouldn’t give myself away to some man, become one of his possessions. Not without the economic assurance of a wedding ring. Even then, from what I could see of my mother’s choice, perhaps the price was too high.



* * *



I never did find out what happened with Fong Lan because not long after, Shin broke up with her. And strangely enough, when it was all over I found myself defending her.

“You’re supposed to be loyal and faithful,” I’d said, six months before Shin left for Singapore. We were sitting at the round marble-topped table studying. At least Shin was. I had nothing to prepare for, no university to go on to. “You’re not like your name at all.”

He’d barely looked up from his textbook. “What are you talking about?”

“Why did you break up with Fong Lan? She cried buckets afterwards. I know she did.”

“Are you telling me to date her again?” He looked annoyed.

“She seems a lot more serious than whoever it is you’re with now,” I’d said defensively.