Chapter 5

You’re always so full of stunts! First day, you came to school sweating like hell; second day, you came to school with red eyes and today you came to school in a taxi without enough money in your wallet!” Chew Ling exclaimed after she had passed me the money. She would not have understood my life. To her, her mother had always driven her to school in, maybe a Mercedes or BMW or Lexus.

“I’ll pay you back tomorrow.” I said.

“You’d better. That’s my lunch money for the whole week!”

I was surprised that a rich girl like her had only twenty dollars for five days’ lunch. My mother gave me one hundred dollars every week for my breakfast and lunch. Chew Ling, the Cedar girl, got only twenty dollars a week?

“I’ll return it tomorrow-”

“Hey, your twin sister is here.” Chew Ling cut in.

I wheeled. There were still about ten minutes to flag-raising and Serene was marching towards me like a soldier marching to a war. She was escorted by two CHIJ students in blue pinafore whom I had never seen before. Those two bodyguards of Serene walked with big steps, as if trying to keep up with Serene’s pace.

“Shih Tzu, we need to talk.” she said.

“Linda, your nickname in your Secondary school is Shih Tzu?” Chew Ling started to laugh. “Do you know that’s a dog-”

“Shut up, Cedar.” Serene pointed her chin at me. “We should talk, shouldn’t we, Shih Tzu?”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I reckoned Serene must have spent the past two days in school rummaging around for deserted places in the school. She led me to a small space behind the canteen. There was no one there and we had to crawl under a tree branch to reach it.

“Shih Tzu, in this school now only I, a fellow RVian, know about your history. Your easy-going lifestyle. Your open-minded lifestyle.”

Do you really know?

“So, if you want me to shut up, you should shut up too. Do I make myself clear?”

“It has been clear since yesterday.” I said.

“I thought so too. You know something? Let me tell you my secret. From one RVian to a fellow RVian.” she leaned closer to me and once again, I could smell cigarette on her. Why had she not bothered to chew a sweet to kill off the smell? Or maybe she deliberately left it on to impress her friends?

“My secret, Shih Tzu, is that I don’t like you since Secondary school. Since Secondary One, when you came up to me and told me that you’ll be number one. I hated it when I remembered you. I hated your pitiful face, I hated your expressionless expression, I hated everything about you. You’re always trying to be fashionable, carrying this…” she read the words on my bag. “This Puma shoulder bag, wearing this white retro Adidas watch, this super passé Adidas sports band and these pink Converse shoes. Get a life.”

You get a life, Serene.

“Now that you know my secret and I know your secret, we’re even. Tip the teachers one more time Shih Tzu and your secret is exposed.”

“I didn’t tip-”

“And you’re saying that I’m wrong?” Serene roared. The smell was unbearably obvious. “Don’t challenge me. No prey ever challenges the predator.”

She then went off.

That was when I remembered the article in The Sunday Times I had read a year ago about JC girls bullying each other: It was all real.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

TGIF – Thank God It’s Friday – does not apply to me.

I never thank the man up there when it’s Friday since two years ago. In fact, I dreaded the weekends. Weekends will mean hours at home and hours at home do not consist of just television and sleep.

I pictured Chew Ling hanging out at VivoCity in the afternoon, Zen playing badminton in the evening and Serene smuggling her way into clubs. I wondered if all those schoolmates of mine would think of me: Staying at home, looking after my son.

Sometimes, in the middle of nothing, when I closed my eyes, images would flash pass me: My t-shirt being ripped off, my tears dropping, me screaming, the cries in the middle of the night and the number of slits on my wrist.

“No, dear-” I was saying as he began to explore the back of me with his right hand.

“Don’t you love me?” he had said, his voice a lot lower and softer than usual. I had liked that voice: Muscular with a poetic feel. People in school said that voice is sexy.

“Yes, dear, but I’ve said before, I’m not ready-”

“You’ll be ready if you really love me because I really, really…” he started to lower his voice so soft that I had to lean closer to his mouth to hear the last two words, “…love you.”

“No.” I pushed him away. All of a sudden, the room’s only sounds were his breathing and my breathing. I reached for the remote control: The silence was creating some sort of redundant ambiance.

“Dar, please-” he touched my hand. I pushed the buttons on the remote; they did not seem to work. “No, I’m going to get angry-”

He jumped on me. I was pinned to the floor like a wrestler pinned on the stage. I knocked on the floor three times. In wrestling matches, the attacker will let go when the pinned one tapped three times. But he stayed on, his hand grabbing on my breasts.

“No- let go –” I said. Word by word, I said, but he did not stop. He kept on grabbing my breasts and his lips were everywhere around my face. The kiss that was ever so familiar: it had turned foreign. Alien. Frightening.

“Dar, let-”

I could feel his hard crotch rubbing against me. I wanted to yell, but in front of me was this guy that I had been going out with for more than six months. He was so close to me and I dared not scream.

“Please-”

He stopped groping me and ripped my t-shirt up. Then he slipped down and began to aim the button in my jeans.

“No… no.” That was all I remembered saying and the only word that I could relate to this memory is drowning.

When I opened my eyes, I saw myself back to the present, my Secondary school textbooks substituted by JC notes, my mother sewing at the sewing machine and Channel 5 showing a movie that had been repeated for more than five times.

I had always hoped that those images – those moving images with emotions attached – were just a dream. But they were not; they were fragments of my memory; my past; an extension of my future.

Who am I?

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

If I have to compare my father and my mother, it will be fire and water.

I never understood what kept them together after so many years. My father is a workaholic and my mother frowns whenever she hears the word “work”. My father sleeps late and wakes up late, whereas my mother sleeps early and wakes up early.

The next Monday, ironically, at five in the morning, I found my father watching television in the living room. It was some soccer match between a team in blue and a team in red.

“So early?” he said when he saw me. He was almost ageless. The wrinkles strained on him premeditatedly, but that lean and fit built had taken ten years off his age. He was feeding himself with a large packet of potato chips that could take forever to finish.

“My school is far.” I said and ambled towards the kitchen.

“NYJC, eh.” my father said. That was another difference between my mother and him: He knew what L1R5 was for; he knew what books we did for Literature. Although he has only an ‘O’ Levels Certificate, he is a manager in a big shipping company and seldom finishes work before eight at night. “How’s the school? Big?”

“Yeah.” I said and went off to wash up. When I was done, he kept on asking me questions while keeping his eyes on the television.

I left home at six after waving my father bye. The match had ended and he was watching some documentary DVD, claiming that if he went to sleep now he would not be able to wake up in time for work. He asked if I needed a ride. He drove a Toyota Camry, one of the luxury cars from Toyota. I rejected his offer, saying that I was meeting someone. I did not feel comfortable sitting in a car with a man whom I should know very well, yet no words left for conversation.

There were more people at the bus stop today than yesterday. I had forgotten everything about Zinc until someone tapped my shoulder and a guy with gelled hair smiled at me, his hand holding on to the “Pocket Idiot's Guide to Getting Girls”.

“Hello. You didn’t call me? I’ve given-”

He touched me- kick – his – balls. It will be… convincing.

I looked down. His legs were wide opened.

Kick-

I lifted up my leg in one smooth feat. I was almost losing my balance when my shin touched his crotch. I screamed and when I heard screaming, I stopped.

He was screaming.

He had dropped his book to the side and laid on the ground, balling his body like a foetus. Both his hands covered his crotch and he was shaking a little every now and then.

I stepped back.

Damn you-

He was sweating and screaming at the same time. I turned and ran away as fast as I could.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I had skipped the Flag Day on last Saturday because I hated begging for money. After a week of torturing orientation games that were so unproductive, class finally began. It all felt like the first day of school again; people looking for their classes, meeting their new classmates and commenting on the bags that they carried. Junior College system has a weird habit of playing with our minds. We only get to know what class we are in after the orientation week and usually, more than a quarter of the students in the same orientation group will not be in the same class.

That was good news to me; I was imagining Chew Ling harassing her new classmates when I reached school on Monday. After our lecture, we were supposed to go to our classroom for tutorial. Chew Ling followed me and that was when I told her what class I was in. I was almost certain that we were going to be in different classes.

“0735.”

When both of us said the same number, Chew Ling yelled out in delight and I frowned in grief.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

When I told Mrs. Tee about what I did to Zinc, Mrs. Tee opened her mouth wide, muttered a “What?” and blinked rapidly. That was an expression I had never imagined from Mrs. Tee: It was like trying to picture Patricia Mok in an action movie.

I gave Mrs. Tee some time to digest the information. The impression of a forever-calm-and-helpful woman I knew as Mrs. Tee was gone; she was now undergoing some sort of mental tremor. I toyed with my fingers as she tried to string words into sentences.

“Linda, you knew I was kidding when I said that, didn’t you?”

“I didn’t follow your advice. I did it because I was…” I stopped. Trying to show you I am afraid of guys. “…scared.”

“You have every reason to.” All of the sudden, the calm Mrs. Tee was back like she was possessed.

“Yes.” I whispered. I had initiated this session with Mrs. Tee. I had wanted to talk to someone about Zinc.

“And do you think he’ll still come back tomorrow?”

I licked my lips. “Mrs. Tee, will he go… impotent?”

I expected a laugh, or Mrs. Tee covering her mouth, or excusing herself for a cough. But she did none of the above. “There are football matches when the ball rammed into guys’ crotches. There are accidents when men accidentally hit their crotches. They’re now fathers of many children.”

“But.” I stopped. I had kicked him hard.

“You’re worried, aren’t you?”

I nodded. I fished out a paper the size of a credit card and passed it to Mrs. Tee. “He gave me his name card yesterday.”

I could see Mrs. Tee’s eyes tracing the words on the card. Two dimples formed on her cheeks after that. “If you’re worried, Linda, you may want to call him and ask if he’s okay. He seems harmless to me.”

Are you crazy?

“That’s the funniest joke I’ve ever heard in my life.”

When I went back to the canteen, I was still clutching on to the paper. Two hours later, when I realized that I was still wondering if Zinc could move an inch or not, I decided to use a payphone to call him after school.

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