Maid In Singapore (15 page)

‘It is a big
country, you know. Boracay, Siquijor, Camiguin, Guiuan, Malapascua,
Bacuit, there are so many places to see and visit. If you want to
make the best, you will need weeks if not months to really enjoy
yourself,’ she said, relaxed, in a manner when a common friend,
even though absent, or in this case dead, eases the tensions that
strangers feel as they size one another.

‘Yes I am
planning a whole month and hope to have a good time for myself,
around Christmas this year, which I understand may be the best time
to visit,’ I wanted to prolong the conversation, as I imaged
her creamy-milky body, the parts that may have been left supple,
unlike the face, the grey hair and the hands which showed plainly the
impact of time, even on Asians.

‘I shall be
visiting home, too, during that period; we live near Cebu, in the
quiet fishing villages. Well, they were quiet, but slowly the
tourists are arriving with their money, and discovering the calm that
the countryside of the sea offers,’ she said. ‘I can give
you my number and you are free to call and visit us when you are
there and if you make the time,’ she added.

‘That would be
wonderful; I was hoping you would offer, because, I was hoping to
have at least a few days of home-stay while I was there, and that is
the point, moot, that I had been speaking to Mrs Kettlewood about,’
I replied, completely taken on by Mary and her presence, reeling in
the years that had passed since I had had her, feeling unhindered
about what or who I was, and where I was heading.

We spoke, a bit more,
as tentative dates were set, numbers and email ids were exchanged
before we parted, to meet later that year, a few months down the
road, where I would finally become quiet and natural. I gave her a
different email id, different from the list of ids that my landlord’s
mother had used, to dispatch her overwritten, excessive, trashy
journal, which had led me to Mary, setting in motion the final few
events that led to quietude.

It was bustling, when I
arrived at Cebu, with no hints of the promised paradise, only noisy
jeepneys and a lurking suspicion that the city was out to cheat the
tourists who had just landed. Being robbed in a new city remained a
mindless suspicion, because in reality, Mary had arranged for my pick
up with trust and care. I was placed in a car and driven to the ferry
terminal, where a lunch of fertilized eggs helped with my diet plan,
and its demands of a frugal calorie count. On the ferry, things
became languid, with most passengers abandoning their seats and
spreading out on the deck above, soaking in the promise held by the
sun and the sea-air. I, too, bikinied and lay on a deck chair,
looking at the coastline, served up by the islands as we motored
past, thick with trees, except for a few clearings created for the
spread of resorts, which were sprouting on each island. The surf was
frothy as it neared the beaches, landing in a whimper of waves,
creating an ideal playground for swimmers and beach-goers, leaving
the surfers forlorn as they eyed the horizon with hopes of waves, big
ones. In the sky, a few people soared on parasails, tethered to
motorboats in the water below, which pulled them through the air,
like wingless birds, in fancies of actual flight.

A young couple asked me
to photograph them, keeping the sea and the islands in their
backdrop, which I did to the best of my abilities, hoping that their
expensive camera made up for my ignorance as regards capture of
images is concerned, because to me, a photograph is a symbol of the
past, a past from which I needed desperate escape.

Alongside the yacht,
every now and then, schools of small fish jumped out of the water,
breaking though the surface in large groups, flying away from the
yacht, disturbed by its presence—a massive presence as regards
fish went.

I smiled as an old
question surfaced in my mind, one I had heard on an audio CD many
years ago, posed by a disciple to an eclectic preacher. The question
was, ‘Every now and then, why do fish jump out of the water?’

He thought it was a
strange question, but proceeded to provide an answer, which outdid
the strangeness of the question. It was something about wanting to
simply jump out of the water, and in this case, hoping to see the
giant thing on the surface, the yacht, that disturbed the routine of
whatever it is that fish do under the surface of the water, when they
don’t feel the need to jump and peep outside their watery
world.

In about half an hour,
apart from the beer drinkers who had appeared from the bar below,
most of the travellers had transcended into a sleepy stupor. The beer
drinkers chatted, in a manner that was not incommodious, in the
least.

The yacht, anchored
itself every hour or so, with long wooden water taxis pulling
alongside it, as parcels of fresh produce were lowered for them to
carry back to the resorts and the hotels, which may have remained
otherwise cut off, on the islands around us. The men, sea gypsies,
conducted their business with smiles in Cebuano, the local dialect
which sounded sweet and welcoming, with no harsh edges or sharp
retorts.

On my phone, I slid to
my latest download, playing it at a soft tone and a comfortable
volume. Rock music, came belting through—
Wal
t
Grace,
desperatel
y
hatin
g
hi
s
whol
e
place
.
Dreame
d
t
o
discover
a
ne
w
space
,
an
d
burie
d
himsel
f
alive…

By late afternoon, the
crowd of travellers on the yacht thinned, and my phone battery ran
low, as they left for their time out on the resorts that they had
chosen on the Internet, before carefully reading reviews from across
the globe . . . unlike me who had local inside help.

When it was my turn to
disembark, I was informed, well in advance, giving me enough time to
visit the ladies’ room and gather my belongings, which were
soon lowered, along with me, onto the water taxi that had pulled
alongside with a sea gypsy, who confirmed the authenticity of his
passenger by repeating the words ‘Eve? Eve Costello, Eve?’
often enough for me to clearly register that he was my man, arranged
by Mary for me to be brought to her.

The water taxi offered
a new dimension of travel, with its noisy engine and its dubious
un-burnt fuel, emitted unfiltered through the exhaust, sometimes
directly into my nostrils, depending on the whims and the twirls that
the sea wind dealt. Mixed with the smoke, the fuel rose foul as it
entered me. I moved to the bow, away from the stern where the rickety
engine sputtered angrily, belching its poisonous exhaust. I sat there
on the nose of the boat, dangling my legs seawards, enjoying my
titanic moment.

Above the noise,
conversation was futile, and I simply hoped that I got to Mary’s
place, before it grew dark. I peered into the waters, which were
shallow at times, teeming with reef and its denizens, soothing and
sufficient for now.

Towards evening, the
sea flared, taking on the colour of the sky, which lit in a complex
orange of the setting sun. The water took on a molten, thick-
still-viscous texture, seeming to slow the boat with its evening
density, when all it was, was the de- throttling of the engine that
the boatman had executed, pointing us shore-wards as we slowed and
drifted towards our destination, finally, a relief in the subsidy of
noise and air pollution. A boy’s silhouette broke through the
surface of the watery canvas, coming up for air, before running
inland, beach-wards, his arm raised and pointing to us, seawards,
announcing my arrival in Cebuano, while his litheness ran away,
shouting loudly.

It was him, Rafael. Who
else could it be, young and fleet, quick with youth on the sand that
slows us, the middle-yeared ones.

The point of the day’s
journey, and its narration was to remind myself that there can be
days that are quiet, without the need of dwelling on myself and my
sexuality, a subject that came flooding back, as soon as I saw Mary
appear from the beach hut along the coastal treeline.

He helped me ashore,
Rafael, my son, reaching out, almost lifting me in his arms and
depositing me in the surf, from where I waded ashore, turning around
to look at him only when I had reached dry sand. The lad was strong
and burnt by the sun, shoulders and chest broadened by the demands
that rowing and such may have put upon them each day. He pulled the
water taxi ashore, a stout rope from the bow, running over his back
and held firm in both his palms, as his feet dug into the sand for
traction. The engine idled before the seaman killed it, jumping
ashore with a few belongings, by which time Rafael had secured the
boat to the ropes that had emerged from the sand.

His image was striking,
and left me happy and captivated, enough for me not to notice Mary
standing right behind me.

‘Welcome to our
little home. Hope your journey was comfortable. That is my son.
Rafael, come here and say hello to Aunty Evelyn,’ she said with
a smile. The boy came towards us, his face illuminated by the last
dying light of day, a likeness, unmistakable even in the dim fading
light.

He said hello in
Cebuano, adding ‘English very little,’ becoming a bit
shy, in unknown foreign company.

‘Hello,’ I
said, wanting to turn away and climb back onto the boat again, making
my way back to where I had come from, even though it was almost
completely dark by now. My loss, at being able to tackle what lay
ahead, came to fore as soon as I exchanged those first few words with
my son, that first evening. It was too late to turn back and run,
also ill-advised from a standpoint of safety, given the dark and the
sea gypsy’s plans of resting for the night at Mary’s
place, before heading back out again in the morning to resume his
maritime duties.

Mary’s house was
one large indoor living space, mostly made out of wooden beams,
bricks and cement holding up a slanting roof, which may have needed
constant mending to keep it from leaking or flying away. In the
singular, large living space, was a bed, on which lay an old man,
being spoken to in a high pitch by Mary, like when one needs to
penetrate the deafness that age brings on. By way of light, there
were hurricane lamps, though I did notice a few dead dust-ridden
electric bulbs hanging from the ceiling, used infrequently I
presumed, depending on the availability of power from the bent poles
outside, weighed sideways by over-wired loads on them.

A lot of the living
actually happened outdoors, where there was almost infinite space.
From a large pot on a fire outside, Mary asked Rafael to give me a
bucket of hot water, which he kept obediently near a part of the yard
that was relatively hidden behind wild bushes. There, I
bathed—quickly since I was naked and surprised, as stars in the
millions twinkled on, upon me.

My boatman had already
settled outside, closer to the beach, lying on a sheet at the edge of
the sand where Mary gave him a plate of rice with some fish on the
side. He accepted it, smiling before tucking in.

I too ate, the rice and
the fish, which was fresh and sumptuous, refreshing me instantly
after an entire day of journey.

In these parts, living
happens with the cycle of light, starting up at dawn and shutting
down just after dark, when everyone rests.

I lay on the floor, on
a thin mattress that Mary had unrolled indoors, right beside her’s,
me, making plans for leaving on the following morning along with the
rested sea-gypsy, worrying about tickets and hotels after I reached
Cebu.

Why did I want to flee?
Thing was, the insincerity of knowing all about Mary and Rafael,
while exercising the choice of not revealing myself to them, it had
started to gnaw at me from the very moment I had seen them together
on the beach that evening, welcoming me with smiles, knowing not who
they were welcoming in.

The price of bottling
secrets up inside of me was probably not worth paying for, again. It
was best to disappear quietly in the morning.

She lay beside me,
right next to the open door of the single room, lulled by the gentle
roar of the surf, in darkness, illuminated only by the moon and
starlight. She was beautiful and I had to turn away, forcing myself
away from thinking that way about her again, because the thought of
having sex with her was leaving me nowhere, neither male—which
may be the part that was fuelling my passion for her—nor
female—which was making me feel like a loathsome lesbian, a
dyke, something I had never set out to be.

In my new female life,
I had crossed paths with my old female lovers a few times, but none
had ignited me the way Mary did, because what I had with Mary was
worth longing for, and the revisiting happened easily in my mind,
without having to want to get aroused forcefully. To think of Mary as
a first love was completely wrong, and misplaced, since she was the
subject of my entire transition to adulthood, not like a first soft
uncertain kiss that most of us are supposed to remember, but a
redefinition from what I was, through what I experienced with her, to
what I eventually became with others. She was the bridge between my
lives, two separate lives, lived in one lifetime. It was a
tantalizingly appealing thought, one of making her part of both those
lives. Maybe that would complete the elusive, bothersome quest for
naturalness. If I could have her now, I would love her in redemption,
cleansing away all of the perversity that I had committed upon her in
that year in Singapore. If I could do that, it may leave me redeemed
and mended, before I headed back.

This new twist of
redemptio
n
, why did it need the act of physical
lovemaking? I could simply confess my identity to her, wait for her
response, and if she accepted and understood me after I had
apologized, then that same redemption could be played out in words
before I left? Yes, it could, but only to the extent that an
unrequited love is doused by the useless words of a targeted lover,
with no avenue of physical union. My falling in love with Mary, for
the first time in my life, became a strange yet clear acceptance of
my new softness, keeping me awake well into the hour. I would hate
myself if it happened, becoming a dyke with the mother of the son
whom I had fathered. It wouldn’t happen because this time, I
would exercise control, leaving fantasies as such, without trying or
wanting to play them out, maybe savouring them secretly for a
lifetime, rather than killing them by making them come true.