Nearly a decade on, Yan Ling finds herself yet to be convinced. 3.
Cherie tosses her phone aside after seeing the gaudy invitation. Curling up on the couch, she shivers. The heating is still down. Michael used to be the one to deal with these administrative matters; it’s only now, in the aftermath of their separation, that Cherie realises how much she has been depending on him to fix the fused bulbs and leaky pipes in her life. The backs of her eyes are aching, but she feels the fog gradually dissipate in her head. It is then when the thought of Yan Ling emerges.
A narrow oblong of light streams in through a gap in the curtains, cutting through the darkness of the living room. As Cherie squints at the sliver of grey sky beyond the window, she recalls how she has felt the rising impulse to reach out to Yan Ling over the years—to apologise, to make amends, to reconcile with her. But something always held Cherie back. The longer she procrastinated, the harder it became, and at some point, it seemed to make no sense to try any more. They’ve each moved on with their lives, and the proverbial hatchet is as good as buried. Yet the upcoming reunion is a reminder of the time that has passed—time and space they could never have imagined going through without each other, once.
Forgetting the empty wine bottles by the couch, Cherie stumbles as she stands. She curses aloud as broken glass pierces her skin. But there is no one to hear her, for Michael moved out two months ago, together with their cats. At the sink, she splashes cold water over her face, then over the cuts on her feet. She flinches and wonders if Yan Ling understood, back then. That she herself had found too many reasons to doubt her father’s fidelity, long before Yan Ling came to her bearing the news. That Yan Ling’s news wasn’t actually news to her, but a frangible issue the rest of Cherie’s family chose to sidestep, believing that not acknowledging the elephant in the room would negate its existence, would make it go away. That her accusation reflected only her own immaturity. Instead of Yan Ling, she was the one who had been envious.
Water runs down Cherie’s neck, gathering in a damp, dark patch on the front of her faded yellow top. Ignoring it, her mind focuses on the faces of her past. Yan Ling’s parents, who were always there for her, from whom she received undivided attention, for which she had no siblings to vie with. Yan Ling’s father, a family man who showed his affection in subtle, steadfast ways—the antithesis of Cherie’s father, who had chosen to forsake his family. Yan Ling’s mother, whose love for and trust in her daughter were reflected in the autonomy she gave her to make her own decisions—the antithesis of Cherie’s mother, who never failed to project her daft ideals onto Cherie, from the ribbons her mother used to attach to her hair to the blasphemous act of naming her after some soulless character in a frivolous movie.
Cherie lets out a bitter laugh. She glances down and notices the half-eaten pizza on the countertop, the rounds of pepperoni greying with mould. All those years ago, she convinced herself that she lacked the words to explain everything to her closest friend. Now, she realises that the truth is something she can never bear to let Yan Ling know.
ALONE IN PUNGGOL
IT WAS AROUND the beginning of the new year, shortly before midnight, when Lilian first heard her neighbours’ voices. The night was dense with humidity. With the windows half-open, she was lying on the single mattress, drenched in sweat and ennui. Her eyes were following the shadows shifting across the ceiling as Schumann’s Kreisleriana, Op. 16 played softly in the background. At first, the voices were low, indistinct, like a murmur in the night. One that might have passed her by, had it not been for the momentum they gained, picking up speed and pitch, the pauses between them shortening into nothing, then overlapping. Lilian turned off her record player. A man’s rage. A woman’s resentment. A crash of glass, shattering into a million fragments above her head. Then—silence. That long silence, reverberating in the space separating them, was what impelled her to listen to the rhythm of their existence. *
In the weeks that followed, Lilian sometimes wondered if her neighbours were familiar with the Punggol area, or if they had moved there, like herself, from one end of Singapore to the other. Having lived in Jurong West all her life, she had initially found the northeastern part of the country strange, isolating. She hadn’t expected to feel so disoriented by her new environment, since her job as a freelance copyeditor required no daily commute and she stayed home most days, keeping to the same, banal routine she had had back when she was living with her parents. The space that once belonged to her in her parents’ flat had been taken over by her aunt and two young cousins. “It’s just for a while,” her parents had said of the farce. The plan was for her to move back after her aunt had sorted out her divorce and living arrangements. That was a year ago; Lilian was still waiting.
As February passed into March, Lilian became drawn to the tempo of her neighbours’ lives. The soprano of a baby’s woes, the thumping cadence of a toddler’s exuberance, the perennial scrape of furniture across tiles. They replaced the cacophony of renovation works that had persisted in the months prior to their arrival. Often, the drilling had got so deafening by midday, her toothpaste and facial cleanser would fall off the ledge and into the sink. Despite the din, she would remain at her desk, gripping a red pen in her hand as she excised stray apostrophes and amputated sentence fragments.
These days, Lilian rose when her neighbours rose, the infant’s hysteria punctuating the stillness of her sleep. She ate when they ate, the clinking of their crockery merging with her own. She stayed up when they stayed up, the rumble of their television permeating her evening solitude. Day after day, she listened to them sing happy birthday; she hummed along with them as she crossed out superfluous adverbs in instruction manuals, not questioning whose birthday it was that seemed to keep recurring. When they began bouncing a ball against her ceiling, she, too, got herself a small yellow rubber ball with which she harmonised her beats with theirs. At night, she stopped turning on her record player and opened her windows as wide as she could.
One evening, Lilian found herself unable to fall asleep. Over two months had passed since the night she first heard them. What had followed were consecutive nights filled with arcane voices, tangled in a perpetual duel. They wouldn’t cease, not until one in the morning. Sometimes even two, or three. But that night, there was nothing. The silence felt eerie in its unfamiliarity. The heat, infernal. Desolate, she lay coated in a film of her own perspiration, her fingers tracing the twisted scars across her stomach as she waited for the voices that never came.
Eventually, she learnt to expect these intermittent interludes. They rose and fell over her—the wild nights of mayhem and the sullen lulls. But that wasn’t the only thing she came to learn. Before long, she discovered that the man’s voice belonged to Damian, and the woman’s to Vivian. Lilian also realised how, when she stood before the gaping hole of the washing machine, she could sometimes hear their conversations, which they seemed to have a penchant for holding in their service yard. There, mere metres above where she stood, they would argue in grave, urgent tones. From time to time, she would catch snippets of their exchange with astonishing clarity. He’s only five, it’s normal for kids his age. She’s just a friend, how many times must I tell you that? I’m the one who birthed the child, not your mother.
For a long time afterwards, Lilian would continue standing there, staring at the abandoned pools of laundry around her feet, wondering what it was that was normal for children aged five, what it was about Damian that called his fidelity into question, what it was about his mother to have aroused such an assertion from Vivian. Lilian would then wonder when her own parents had begun talking about her this way, what follies and transgressions she might have committed to have induced such conversations, to have led to the demise of her relationship with her parents. Sometimes, she would become so lost in these thoughts, conjuring up a plethora of possibilities in her head, that she would find herself, hours later, still holding the same shred of fabric in her hands, standing before a washing machine whose workings she hadn’t yet fathomed.
Since she began living alone in Punggol, Lilian dreaded the days when she had to make the trek out to replenish her supplies. But now there was one thing that made the journey a shade less painful: a playground she would walk past en route to the provision shop. It was nothing like the playgrounds of her childhood, for what used to be her favourites—the sandpit, the seesaw, the rickety merry-go-round—were all not there. In their place were plastic structures and synthetic rubber flooring in shades so bright, it bordered on absurdity.
Most of the time, the playground was devoid of children when Lilian approached it, usually only occupied by a lone elderly woman who walked with a pronounced limp, doing some stretching exercises. But on the rare occasions children were there, she would find her heartbeat accelerate at the sight of a toddler making his way across a suspension bridge, or adults waiting at the foot of a red, looping slide. Having spotted them from a distance, she would reduce her pace, so subtly as to be unnoticeable to anyone else. She would then study each face, carefully, discreetly, trying to match them to the voices in her head. This endeavour would continue on her return journey—as she retraced her steps from the provision shop back to her apartment block.
In the lift with her bags of groceries, she would be especially attentive whenever someone pressed the button for the storey above hers. Often, it was just the limping old woman, who smiled at Lilian but said nothing. But once, there was a lanky man grasping a child’s hand; brimming with delirium, Lilian was almost certain she had finally identified the faces to those familiar voices, only to detect a misplaced emphasis on a final syllable as the man spoke, which at once rendered her pairing incorrect.
As the months went by, Lilian noticed her neighbours’ fury rising in volume and intensity. Night after night, there would be screaming, sobbing and the staccato of slamming doors. Discomfited, she would wrap her arms around herself, wondering if a hole would blast open in the concrete between them. Each time, lying there with her muscles taut, her hair plastered to her neck, she found herself perplexed by how the children could sleep through their parents’ distress. But no matter how heated it got, she could always count on the eventual return of that reverberating silence. By daybreak, the baby’s cries would pierce the air. Crockery would clatter. Birthday songs sung. The quotidian melody of the day would once again begin to play, like that of a faithful musical box, carrying no echo of the darkness that had transpired in the night.
One afternoon in September, a dog began to bark. Lilian recognised it as the high-pitched yip of a chihuahua, though she wasn’t sure if it was coming directly from the unit above hers. The yapping was frenzied and persisted for hours. Its shrill notes punctuated her night. Alone, the dog drowned out the voices to which she had become accustomed. Even the baby’s cries that usually ushered in the morning were not spared. As Lilian brushed her teeth before the mirror, bloodshot eyes stared back at her.
For the rest of the week, the yapping continued, unrestrained, as though the animal had gone berserk. She remained in bed when the baby woke, remained in bed when the family ate. She stopped humming birthday songs. She threw the yellow rubber ball away. She locked all the windows in the flat. She wiped the dust off her record player and turned up the volume by several notches. Still, the anxiety of the canine bled into her subconscious, pervaded her dreams—blurring the lines between what was real and imaginary. Befuddled, she found herself unable to focus on her editorial projects, despite her best efforts.
On Sunday evening, with several deadlines looming, she contemplated her options. Pressing the blanket over her ears, she was wondering if she could summon the courage to climb up the stairs and knock on their door, when she heard a familiar voice rise over the barking. She tore off the blanket. Then she heard it once more. Quiet! It was unmistakable. Damian’s voice. She leapt to her feet and pushed open the windows. Quiet! This time, it was Vivian’s. Despite their commands, the creature did not comprehend, refused to stop. Lilian returned to the mattress, where she lay listening to their futile orders, deep into the sleepless night.
Lilian is hunched in a corner of the service yard with a mass of fetid fabric in her arms. The laundry detergent has expired, but she doesn’t realise it. She is brooding over the four deadlines she missed last week when she hears the voices again. Her ears perk up. Her back straightens. In the past month, she hasn’t heard any of the arguments that took place above her ceiling, if they’ve taken place at all. It’s almost as if the maddening animal had drained her neighbours of their energies, leaving them so spent that they could no longer deal with the matters that used to hound them. Even their children haven’t wailed or brawled. All she has been hearing is the incessant screeches of the canine, resounding in her head.
But now the dog is gone. Instead, she hears the voices—rising, spiralling, fuelled by spite. A door slams shut—from the wind or a wrathful hand, she doesn’t know. The pile in her hands falls to her feet. They’re yelling now, no longer attempting to suppress their disdain. The profanities pelt down on her, the words too ugly to repeat. Instinctively, she wraps her arms around her scarred torso, bracing herself for the imminent impact.
Then scram! Two syllables, dripping with lethal repugnance.
She flinches. She cowers. She begins to tremble.
You—you’ ll regret it!
A crack. A crash. A loud thud.
Will flesh prevail over wood, glass or stone this time? Before she can answer, her phone begins to ring. She ignores it. It rings and rings. Without looking at the screen, she rejects the call. A few moments pass. Then the phone rings again. Again she rejects it. Yet again it rings. With all her might, she hurls it into the washing machine.
At once, the ringing stops, and a sinister silence ensues.
Lilian is climbing up the stairs. In her ears there is a ringing. She does not stop walking.
Lilian slips her hand through the metal gate and knocks on the door again. Still no response. She tries to open the gate and, to her surprise, it is unlocked. She tries the door. The moment she pushes it open, a putrid odour assails her nostrils. Vomit surges up her throat. Despite the humidity of the afternoon, a chill passes through her. Only much later, after the ambulance and police cars have arrived and left, would Lilian realise that wherever Damian and Vivian are living, it is not in the unit directly above hers. Only then would she begin to wonder if she has made everything up in her head. But now, she remains frozen by the sight of the motionless mass, decomposing on the stained tiles of the living room, never to limp again.
DIARY OF AN EMPLOYEE
4 May
ALL THE DAYS of my life before have only served to lead me to this day. I couldn’t be happier. My parents are overjoyed. Today, I can finally proudly proclaim to the world: I’m a permanent employee of The Institute! How I’ve toiled to achieve this aim. The long years of study and sacrifice. The rounds of interviews I had to go through before the offer finally came. But now, at last, I have arrived.
My first day went splendidly, though I haven’t had the chance to meet my Manager or any of the colleagues from my department. They’re all travelling for business, addressing critical, urgent matters. I can’t help feeling excited, imagining the day that I, too, will be granted the opportunity to represent The Institute and participate in meetings abroad. The time will come, of this I’m sure. Until then, I shall give my all and prove myself worthy.
5 May
I’m slightly embarrassed to put this down in writing, but before stepping into the office this morning, I made a stop at the café on the ground level of The Institute’s building. The one with the full-length windows, fluted furnishings and exuberant baristas who seem to know most patrons by name. As I waited in the queue, I wondered how many visits it’d take before they remembered mine, too. I ordered a long black. It seemed to be the most similar to my usual choice of kopi-o. When the barista asked if I’d like to have a loyalty card, I could barely contain my excitement. By the time I made my way up to the thirty-first storey, waved my employee ID by the scanner, walked to my cubicle (replete with a stunning view of the cityscape), sat in my Herman Miller office chair and took a sip of handcrafted coffee from the brown paper cup bearing the café’s name, I felt my sense of legitimacy instantly elevated. I’d seen some other colleagues yesterday doing the same.
6 May
I stepped into the office this morning with a second stamp on my loyalty card. There weren’t many people around when I walked by my Manager’s office, so I took a quick look inside. The door was closed, as he’s still travelling for work and will only be back on Monday. But I could peer in through the glass panels when no one was looking. There were shelves filled with books, files and awards. Framed family photographs stood on his desk. A whiteboard mounted on one side of the wall displayed three stick figures, accompanied by the words “I love you, Daddy”, written in a child’s script.
Although I have yet to meet my Manager in person, it was endearing to see glimpses of his professional and personal life merging within the space of his office. I can’t wait to work with him. He’s made such a name for himself in the industry, having accomplished feat after professional feat. I wouldn’t tell this to the rest of my colleagues, but even before I applied to The Institute, I’d already started following my Manager’s career trajectory—reading every report that mentioned his name, watching every interview he’s given, buying every book he’s authored, and devouring his insights. Now that I finally have the opportunity to work with him, there’s nothing more I could ask for. Four days until Monday comes.
