Often, Yulia also relented and allowed them extra time in front of the television. “Just ten minutes more!” her brother would cry out, his eyes glued to the screen. Yulia would then smile and walk away, leaving them in peace.
Increasingly, Lynette found that her mother’s absence during the week weighed less and less on her.
Time spent with the children gradually became the highlight of Yulia’s days. She enjoyed being with them. Somehow, it made her feel less alone. The children reminded her of her own brother back home, and she found herself caring for them as she would for her younger sibling. At times, she almost forgot about the circumstances that had led her here.
One night, after everyone had gone to bed, Yulia lay on the mattress, wide awake. Instead of closing her eyes and waiting for sleep to come as she usually did, she stood up and walked towards the wooden shelves, her fingertips tracing the spines of books that she would rearrange every now and then. In the day, she would see the children poring over them, as if they contained the great secrets of life.
Yulia couldn’t read particularly well in English, but that didn’t stop her from picking up a palpably thick volume. She paused for a moment to feel its weight in her hands, then flipped the book open. She turned the pages carefully, her eyes following the trails of words that ran across each page. The sensation of crisp paper between her fingertips felt comforting, as if soothing the sorrow that ran in her veins.
Two days short of her twelfth birthday, Lynette got her first period. She had just returned home from school when she discovered it—that unmistakable stain of reddish-brown against the pure white of her cotton underwear. It was only when she heard Yulia knocking on the door of the bathroom asking if she was fine that she realised how long she had been inside. Mumbling a reply, she washed her hands and stepped outside.
Their eyes met. Lynette didn’t have to say a word for Yulia to realise what had transpired. Immediately, Yulia went to gather the necessary supplies and guided her through her first steps into womanhood. By the time her mother got home that evening, Lynette was already in bed with the lights turned out.
That night, the women in the flat lay preoccupied in their beds.
Only one of the three was not thinking about the others.
Nearly a year passed before Yulia was allowed to have her first day off.
It was a Sunday, and she had arranged to meet Irma. Although it had taken so long before she could see her cousin again, Yulia had always felt comforted by the thought of Irma’s presence in the same city since the day she arrived in Singapore. Irma had suggested meeting at Paya Lebar MRT station, and Yulia appreciated the comprehensive instructions offered by Irma on how to get there.
When they finally saw each other, Irma called out Yulia’s name excitedly, rushing forward to embrace her. It felt surreal, as if they were both back in their village again—except they were now surrounded by concrete, token greenery and some curious, if not disparaging, stares. It took some time for Yulia to recover from her surprise before she wrapped her arms around her cousin, who looked somewhat different from how she remembered. “Irma,” she said, the shrill tone of her voice sounding foreign to herself.
For a while, they walked hand in hand. Yulia didn’t know where they were headed, but it didn’t matter. She was content simply to be with her cousin again. Irma eventually found a spot near a shopping mall and sat down, stretching out her legs. “Come, sit!” her cousin urged, before rummaging through her bag to fish out a selection of snacks—apples, cookies, packet drinks—and offer them to Yulia.
Soon, they were chatting and laughing like they had done in their previous lives. They exchanged anecdotes about their experiences working in Singapore, and took the opportunity to air their grievances too. Irma gave her advice on how to better manage her employers. “Smile and perform your tasks in a lively manner, even when you’re feeling tired or terrible. Don’t speak until you’re spoken to. When your employers get upset, always apologise even if it’s not your fault. But I’m sure you’ve learnt a thing or two on your own by now,” Irma said, squeezing her shoulder.
The hours flew by and before Yulia knew it, it was time for them to part. She held onto her cousin for a long while, even after Irma had released her grasp, as though Irma were a life buoy amid treacherous waters, capable of saving her life. Irma laughed and stroked her hair. “Don’t worry, Yulia, we’ll meet again. Next time, I’ll take you to meet my friends. They’re all very nice, and you’ll feel closer to home.”
Yulia nodded. She didn’t know anyone else here, and wouldn’t know how to spend her day off anyway.
Having recently started secondary school, Lynette was learning to come to terms with the simultaneous shifts in her life. Her blossoming body, her new school environment, her evolving interests and priorities. She was the only one from her primary school to have enrolled in her current secondary school. Not recognising anyone in the sea of faces on her first day, she had no choice but to learn to make new friends and navigate the complexities of her adolescence.
In such a transitional time, Lynette was secretly glad to have the steadfast companionship of Yulia. Lynette found herself sharing snippets of her day with Yulia as she prepared their meals or folded the laundry. Unlike her mother, Yulia always smiled encouragingly at her when she was talking, and knew to express disappointment or feign fury at all the right moments.
One evening, after they had finished dinner, Lynette went into the study room and sat at the piano. It had been some time since she last played. She had detested the way her piano teacher used to rap her knuckles with a wooden ruler as she spouted vicious criticisms about Lynette’s playing, regardless of how much or how hard Lynette had practised her scales and arpeggios. Shortly after her mother returned to work last year, Lynette managed to quit the lessons altogether.
But Lynette didn’t tell her mother that she actually enjoyed playing the piano; she simply hated the way it was taught to her. Holding her breath, she gently lifted the fallboard of the instrument to expose the ivory keys beneath. She played a note, then two. A chord, then a melody. At the sounds of the vibrating strings, her brother came running into the room. “Jie, you’re playing the piano again?” She smiled and called out for Yulia to join them.
When there were three in the room, Lynette began playing the one piece she knew by heart: Chopin’s Nocturne in E-flat major, Op. 9 No. 2. After some time, as the final notes reverberated in the air surrounding the trio, she caught Yulia’s gaze and whispered, “It’s my favourite one.”
The next time they met, Yulia was introduced to Irma’s friends. They were all her fellow countrywomen who were also working as domestic helpers. Some of them had been here for over a decade. Yulia couldn’t imagine being away from home for so long, and secretly hoped she wouldn’t end up doing the same.
Choosing a spot next to her cousin, Yulia joined the circle of women who had already begun several conversations all at once. One of them, a twenty-three-year-old named Sumini, was expressing her frustration over her employers’ behaviour. They were constantly giving her orders and dishing out commands, even in the wee hours of the morning after she had fallen asleep. They had also installed surveillance cameras around the house to monitor her every move. Every fortnight, she was made to also clean the houses of her employers’ adult children and wasn’t given any additional pay for it.
Another of Irma’s friends, Wati, began nodding vigorously. “It’s as if we’re slaves,” she cried. She began telling them about how her employers rationed her food, gave her a separate set of utensils to eat with and forbade her from sitting on the couch and chairs in the house. While the family enjoyed their daily feasts of meat, seafood and vegetables, Wati was allowed to eat only a single bowl of rice while seated on her stool in a corner behind the kitchen.
As another of Irma’s friends related her humiliating experience of being scolded by her employer’s child in public—“You stupid idiot,” he had jeered at her before running in the opposite direction when she tried to bring him home from kindergarten—Yulia thought about Lynette, her brother, Madam and Sir. She found herself telling the group that her own experience so far hadn’t been so bad. The children were quite close to her and she treated them like her younger siblings.
“Yulia, don’t be foolish!” Irma said. “You’re not part of their family and never will be. Don’t forget that. You’re just paid to do the job, and to do it well. Watch how they treat you if you make a mistake that upsets them someday.”
Yulia glanced at her cousin, her expression clouded over. She fell silent, and didn’t speak for the rest of the afternoon.
Later in the evening, as the group was dispersing and bidding their farewells, two young men approached them. One of them was Wati’s boyfriend, Sabbir, who was picking her up. The other was Sabbir’s friend, who was working at the same construction site as him. He shyly introduced himself as Kamrul. His eyes met Yulia’s and they exchanged a brief smile before parting ways.
Instead of finding boys revolting, Lynette began to develop an interest in them. In particular, she found herself drawn to one of the boys in her class. He was tall and tan, with thick eyebrows and waves of recalcitrant hair. From time to time, Lynette would catch herself staring at the gentle slope of his shoulders, the fluidity with which he swept his dark hair from his eyes. Thoughts of him followed her wherever she went. She would replay every interaction between them, however fleeting, in her mind, carefully analysing every word and parsing every sentence in search of hidden meaning.
One evening, after her brother had fallen asleep and Lynette was lying pensive in bed, Yulia knocked on her door and appeared with a bowl of freshly cubed mango. She set it down on the bedside table and glanced at Lynette, before asking what was on her mind.
There was a long pause before Lynette replied. “Yulia, have you ever had a boyfriend?”
“Yulia no boyfriend. Why? Lynette got boyfriend?”
“No! I mean, not now, but—well, there’s this guy in my class…”
“What his name?”
“Caleb,” she said softly, trying not to blush.
“Ca–leb,” Yulia repeated. “What Caleb like?”
“I don’t actually know him that well, but he seems funny and smart. He’s quite cute, too.”
“Lynette talk to Caleb?”
“Yes, sometimes—actually, not really. Just the usual conversations between classmates, nothing special.”
“Maybe Lynette talk to Caleb…”
