If I Could Tell You Read online

  © 2013 Marshall Cavendish International (Asia) Private Limited

  Supported by the National Arts Council, Singapore

  Published by Marshall Cavendish Editions

  An imprint of Marshall Cavendish International

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  Cover art by Cover Kitchen Co. Limited

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  National Library Board, Singapore Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

  Lee, Jing-Jing, 1985-

  If I could tell you / Lee Jing-Jing. – Singapore : Marshall Cavendish Editions, c2013.

  p. cm.

  eISBN : 978-981-4435-99-4

  1. Public housing – Singapore – Fiction. 2. Home – Singapore – Fiction.

  3. Singapore – Fiction. I. Title.

  PR9570.S53

  S823--dc23 OCN819310610

  Printed in Singapore by Times Printers Pte Ltd

  For Marco,

  my home

  “A multitude of people and yet solitude.”

  — Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

  HE STEPS OUT OF HIS SHOES, THE WAY HE DOES EACH time he arrives home, the round tips of each meeting the wall. Home, he thinks, he’s home. He won’t leave.

  EARLIER that day, Boss gave Ah Tee a large paper bag packed full with ground coffee, tins of sweet milk, a loaf of bread, coconut jam, mincemeat buns, and a carton of eggs laid carefully on top, narrow ends pointing up. Once the bag was safely nestled in his arms, the older man pressed into his palm an ang pow, a red packet. For good luck, he said, looking at the half-torn posters on the wall. He turned around to face his car as if to make sure it was still there, then turned back to look at the poster again, at the young woman wrapped in a slinky black dress holding a bottle of beer up against her face. It was to her that Boss said, take care of yourself, good luck. He said this over and over, never looking at Ah Tee, even as they shook hands in front of the coffee shop, its shutters already drawn down and locked even though it was only two in the afternoon. There was no one left to feed.

  Ah Tee waved as Boss went into his car, the family waiting in the cool interior. Watched as the two children sitting in the back turned and shouted words he couldn’t hear and waved wildly at him through the rear window. Watching even when the car was just a fading blue smudge in the distance. He stood there for a while, both arms wrapped around the paper bag. Then he turned to walk the little way to the lift. The jingle of his change purse marking his every step. His shod feet clapping against the concrete.

  He passed two other shops on his way. A hairdresser’s and a grocery store. Both closed; their owners had found some place else to set up their businesses and relocated long ago, unlike Boss, who decided to sell up, work for a larger chain of coffee shops — the money was better, he said, and it was less work. He looked abashed when he told this to Ah Tee, said he would try to get him another job, he would. That was months ago. Nothing had come of it.

  Ah Tee guessed the time to be just past two. Ten past, at most. It used to be his favourite time of day, the hours between two and four. Everything was quiet then, and he could sit and rest his feet after the madness of breakfast and lunch, running from table to table, taking drink orders and cleaning up spills. From two to four he could sit and watch nothing happen, it was so still. The quiet bothers him now. He steps into the lift, listens to the clank of metal as it lurches upwards. The building might hear him and know, he thinks. But when he gets to the top floor and the lift doors rumble open, there is no one there. Most of the residents on this floor have moved into their new place and he goes through the empty corridors, leans against the parapet. He notices a few clouds in the distance, the ones with a tinge of grey and yellow, like a troubling bruise. Looks like rain, he thinks.

  This place. He grew up here. He has lived in Block 204 all his life.

  He steps out of his shoes, lines them on the floor like he does each time he arrives home, the round tips of each meeting the wall, scuffed heels touching. The imprints of his feet have been ground into the tender soles, the cotton worn thin after years of walking and shuffling. He grew up here, he thinks. He won’t leave.

  FOR months, it was filled with coming and going. The pacing back and forth of everyone. The carrying of tables and mattresses and things which had to go across corridors and all the way down stairs, the men dripping, chests heaving at the end of it. I watched them put their lives on the backs of trucks, strapping them down with tarp and rope and driving away. Young ones sitting on top of a chest of drawers laid on its side, holding on to the side rails with clammy hands. The neighbours, the ones who helped, wave until the truck rolls away, through the narrow, curving driveway and out of sight. Then they walk into the lift, go up, back behind their doors, into their little boxes. To take care of their own moving away.

  All the while they did this, they left bits of themselves. Threw up parts of their home outside their doors. Sacks bulging with unwanted clothes, the fallen out stuffing of old toys. Books yellowed, their spines pristine and unlined or tender and ripped, neatly stacked at first, but now fallen into a heap on the floor. Shoes belonging to feet now overgrown. They threw it all out, letting it clog the walkways, pile up at lift landings so that the cleaners sighed and shook their heads. Jabbed their brooms at the mess but could not or would not do anything about it. They have been growing so much, it is difficult to get around, to get into the lifts.

  The only people left are the old, the poor, people who have had trouble finding a new home. Or those who put it off because it didn’t seem real until officials came with sheets of paper to paste on all the doors. Sheets of paper that used clipped, official words to say, this home it is not yours anymore you have until the end of the month.

  Everyone here, they all know this.

  The boy on the second floor leaving home, jingling the keys in his pocket to make sure they’re there and then closing the door behind him. He loops a length of raffia string around his hand, letting the black and tan dog at the other end of it tug him forward along the corridor, towards the staircase. The dog goes too fast down the steps and he grabs the railing and laughs. Ma would love him, he thinks, she would.

  The girl on the sixth, smoking to the very end of her cigarette, calling out, could you bring me another Coke? I’ll just start the DVD to get over the boring parts. She drops the finished cigarette in an old tin can put on the coffee table just for that purpose, leans b
ack on the sofa and waits.

  The man on the eighth, jamming his keys into the door. It takes a while, his hands are shaking so much. When he finally gets into his flat, the quiet of it makes him jump even though he knows his wife is at work. She shouldn’t be here, should she? Still, he goes through the rooms saying, Kim, Kim. Calling out and wanting a reply, not wanting a reply. He doesn’t know which.

  The old lady on the ninth floor who lives on her own, in a flat choked with everything she has brought home over the years. Rusty fans which don’t work anymore, stacks of newspapers from long ago, which line up against the wall, fill the air with the sharp scent of ink. She counts the flattened cardboard and empty soda cans she has collected that day, puts them by the door so she wouldn’t forget to bring them away in the morning.

  The man from the tenth. The lone man, bone thin, bone white, moving through the space in his loose shirt and trousers, past the shuttered coffee shop, past the little store which sold everything before they too moved out. He gets into the lift, presses and lights up the topmost button.

  All of them and all the others who are left, wrapping their lives up in paper to put into brown boxes, inhaling borrowed air. Happy only for the breeze, the wind moving along the corridors, past the gaps of the louvered windows, under doors, through the hollows of my inside. It is all quiet. Shut up suddenly. Like the slamming of doors to make a point.

  OLD One! Old One, come and see. Something happened, she says.

  She shouts through the things around her, abandoned furniture picked from the skip behind the building and hulled back home with the help of her pushcart. Several mismatched chairs, stacks of phonebooks, an open bag of dry cat food which she brings to the neighbourhood strays every morning. A small foldaway table topped with empty pots, papers, a number of biscuit tins with just crumbs in them. All of it make her look smaller than she already is, bent and shuffling across the tiles in her gnarled feet. There is no reply, only the tinny, cracked sound of the radio, an old song about a woman named Rose.

  She looks down again. From here, she can just make out the fallen stick-figure lying at the foot of the block of flats. Limbs sprawled wide, feet bare, like a sleeping child caught in a bad dream.

  What on earth was he thinking, she says, leaning out of the window. She pulls in the bamboo poles flagged with clothes and folds them over the back of a chair, breathes in the smell of soap and sun. She stands there even after everything had been brought in. Telling herself she would not be able to have an accident like that, because she would have to get a stool to stand on and heave herself over the ledge, which she was too old to do. Even if she wanted to, it would take some work.

  In a second, someone in the flat below, to the left, has stuck her head out. A young girl, her long hair swinging in the wind. The girl, the old lady thinks, who walks around half-naked, with black coloured all around her eyes so that she looks like a haunting, a wandering ghost. The girl drew her head back in to shout something, she couldn’t hear what, then her friend, a skinny boy who’s always wearing shirts too big for him, sticks his head out alongside hers. The girl has a hand to her mouth and the boy is saying things. Then she takes out a phone, punches in the numbers and holds it to her ear, all the while staring at the figure on the ground, as if thinking it might move again, it might move and she’ll have to cancel the call, hang up.

  Tch, I’ve seen worse. When the Japanese were here. Much worse, she says.

  To show how little she cares, she turns away and calls out again. Old One, what do you want for lunch? Fan wat ze jook? Rice or porridge? she asks. Then she nods, bends her old body to retrieve the rice from the bucket, measures out half a cup and pours it into the pot. She will put it under the open tap, rinse and pour, and repeat until the water runs clean. When she is finished, when she puts the pot on the fire, the police vehicle will just be turning into the parking lot, screaming much too loudly for her to ignore. She will wipe her hands dry and go to the window. Call out for the Old One again.

  DID you see that? he says.

  The neighbour (he can’t remember her name, only what everyone in the building calls her) stops mid-sentence, turns away from him to face the staircase landing.

  Auntie Wong shuts her mouth, then opens it again, says calmly that if it’s those young people throwing things out of their window again, somebody should call the police. It’s not the first time. Potted plants, they’ve thrown, and plastic bags full of rubbish. Those people, she says and stops there, shaking her head slowly.

  Yang says nothing. He goes down the flight of stairs so he can lean over the railing. He thinks he knows what it was that fell and he can barely contain the scream inside his throat but goes to the edge of the parapet and looks out and all he can think is, thank god.

  Thank god, he thinks. Then he turns to her. We need to call the police, he tells her, hoping that his voice is not shaking, that he doesn’t look too relieved.

  She puts one foot forward and stops there, as if she couldn’t make out what Yang’s look meant — if she should go to take a look or not.

  Don’t, Yang says, backing away. It’s an accident, call the police, he says.

  He has to go back to the office now, he thinks. He shouldn’t be here, standing around when he should be at work. He left the office during lunchtime, intending to grab a sandwich around the corner but he found himself in the car, driving the twenty minutes it took to get back home. All because of the text Kim sent him some time during the morning. He had asked her what they should do about dinner and she had replied, anything. Doesn’t matter. See you, Yang. The last three words had made his stomach lurch. And he had gone home, ran into the bedroom, the kitchen. He left the bathroom till last because he was too afraid, turning the handle of the door as quickly as he could and flinging it open. She wasn’t there. He was leaving the flat, starting to think himself mad when he ran into the neighbour close to the stairs. She had said hi, told him that it was going to rain and had they brought their laundry in when something fell through the air, close enough that they felt and heard the whoosh as it went past them.

  Auntie Wong has the phone in her hand now. She’s just holding on to it while leaning out into the air, looking at what’s on the bottom, on the ground. It takes a while for her to realise what it is, she can’t quite believe it.

  I have to go. I have to go back to work, Yang says and goes down the stairs, two at a time. He leaves the older woman standing there, silently staring at the ground below.

  I’M not kidding, Cindy. There’s somebody lying on the ground. I think he fell, the one leaning over the window says. Behind, music and the sound of car tires, gunfire and shouts come to an abrupt stop.

  Seriously? Cindy says, rising from the couch. When she gets to the window and squints and sees the person on the ground, she says, shit, oh my god, is he dead? Then she steps back and says, wait– Wait, that’s the guy, Alex. Isn’t that the guy from the coffee shop?

  Alex leans out again. What? I don’t know, I can’t see. Get the phone. We– We need to call the ambulance or something.

  The girl takes out the phone from her pocket, her hands shaking so much she thinks she might drop it. While she talks to the operator, she pushes the window open wider and sticks her head further out. They’re too high up for her to see and she’s half-glad. More disappointed than glad so she squints and tries to get a clearer look, she doesn’t want to but she can’t help it.

  Later on, after the ambulance and the police and people have left, they will go back to the couch and see that the man on the television screen is still frozen mid-run, his mouth still widened in a yell, his eyebrows up in his hair. Both of them will stare at the screen for a second and the girl will laugh and shake her head, as if it’s the funniest thing she has seen for a while. She will call up their friends saying, oh my god you won’t believe what happened just now. They will talk till late, until they finally decide that they can’t sleep there tonight, they don’t want to. And when it is decided, they breathe
easy again, quickly dressing and getting the keys. Let’s go, they say, and they will go out into the dark, avoiding the place, the taped out square at the back of the building.

  HE’S used to the waiting. Watching the clock. The passing of ten, fifteen, thirty minutes. Knows enough that when his mother says fifteen minutes she means thirty and when she says thirty, it will take her closer to forty-five minutes to get home, although it still catches him off-guard. Like today, he made himself a peanut butter sandwich as a snack but of course it wasn’t enough. He tried not to think about dinner but his stomach was making low, rumbly noises and he looked down, imaging that he might be able to see the prodding of little hungry devils through the skin on his belly. It didn’t matter though. Everything was alright today. Nothing could spoil it. Not even the neighbours could spoil it. He was sitting in the doorway, the door swung wide open, hoping to catch a breeze. Already, two of the neighbours had passed on their way back from doing the shopping, asked in their sing-song voices, waiting for your mother, huh, boy? Strolled past with plastic bags of vegetables and raw meat and their wallets jammed into their armpits.

  He tried to ignore them, kept an eye on the dog sniffing around the things in the living room. The couch, the TV on its little table, their shoes by the door. He sniffed the air, imitating the dog. It smelled like rain. It was probably going to. His mother might need an umbrella, he thought. It was a short walk from the bus stop to their building but there was no shelter in between all the other buildings. She would get drenched and that would not be good. Ah. He would go to the bus stop with an extra umbrella to make sure that she stayed nice and dry. His mother would come out from the bus expecting to get drenched but then she would see him with the umbrella. Then she would realise that he was all grown up. Responsible, that’s the word. He was responsible for her, and therefore he could be responsible for the dog.

  Come on, he says to the dog, and he picks up the big umbrella propped up behind the front door. He locks up and they walk through the corridor, going down the stairs to the outside. There is a grass verge by the side of the parking lot, where there are never any cars because the trees there bear fruit which fall heavily and bleed a dark juice which you can only get off with hard scrubbing. The boy stops for a bit to let the dog sniff around and make a pee. He kicks away a few of the dark fruit, watching them bounce across the tarmac a good distance away. Maybe there’s a stick he can throw around and have the dog fetch. He will have to give him a name, he thinks, looking at the dog now putting his nose everywhere in the grass, making deep, snuffling sounds. This is what he is doing, running a list of names through his head, trying to decide on Bobby or Tin Tin when he hears a loud, damp thud behind him, and then the dog is barking, running away all of a sudden, running towards the building. Hey come back, he says, going after the new dog. Come back.