Lee Fang Ling
September 2007

Maybe I should have seen it coming earlier, when he did not call me last month. I did all the calling. Maybe he was tired, I convinced myself. Maybe he had forgotten, I told myself. Maybe he was occupied with some personal troubles, I thought. Maybe, so many maybes.

I should have seen it coming, when he started to talk less whenever we were together. He was avoiding my glares, and every look I darted at him was met with apprehension. When we started to meet once a week instead of the usual four to five times a week, I should have seen it coming, I should have asked him what had happened. But instead, I let my anger stepped over me, scolded him and thought that would change everything.

“I’m sorry.” He said, when he stood motionlessly outside the gates of my house. He had told me over the phone that he wanted to tell me something important. When I wanted to open the gates for him, he waved and remained outside, like I was a prisoner talking to a visitor.

“What? For being late again?” I stroked my nose. He is always late, be it for breakfast, lunch or dinner. “I’m used to it, superman. What is the thing that you cannot say on the phone?”

“I think… we should break up.” He said, his string of words breaking into two parts, like he was stressing the intention of his sentence.

When he said that, the first word that came to my mind was “joke”. He must be joking, for he always jokes. I wetted my lips with my tongue and replied, “Yeah, me too.”

His next few words came in stabs. “I’m not joking.” He said, and he must have meant it, for his eyes were away from mine again. Every word from him was usually accompanied by an emotion: But as he mouthed that, he showed no traces of emotion.

I opened my mouth and then bit the air that I had just inhaled. He apologized, again and again, again and again, but what I wanted to hear from him was not “I’m sorry”, but “I’m joking”.

It was after the five apologies he had made before he wheeled. His motorbike, that motorbike that I had hated so much, was parked near him. I took a deep breath, registered from my coma and then memories of us together flushed into my mind. He never jokes about stuffs like that: Never.

It was not a joke.

He had, when I shook myself back to reality, powered up his bike. I stared at the foreign scenario in front of me and said, “Come back, you stupid idiot!”

I pushed the button on my remote and the gates swung outwards. “Why? Please tell me why. It’s a joke, right? Right?” I took heavy steps towards him, hoping that he would just turn and tell me, hey, it’s the joke of the year.

But he did not. He eyed around like he was looking for something. “Stop right there!” I reached for his hand, the familiar touch that we shared countless times. He pushed me away gently, deep in thoughts, as if trying to remember something secluded from his mind.

“I’m sorry.” His voice moved through the night. “Forget me.”

“I can’t!” I yelled. Then the tears: They came.

“But I had.” He said. He had. He had forgotten. He had forgotten me, superwoman, Lee Fang Ling, the woman he promised to marry? The woman whom he loves – loved – so deeply? I took in deep breaths. He had once promised, seven years ago, that for every single millilitre of tear that I shed due to sadness, he would shed the same amount of blood. Promises: Are they created to be broken?

“I’m crying.” I said.

“I’m sorry.”

“You don’t remember your promise?” I thought, and realized that the thought had driven through my lips. I waited. Two breaths: That was all he took to think before settling down on his motorbike and putting on his helmet. “How about Superland? How about our promises? How about our time capsules? We can work things out, superman!”

Tears are such uncontrollable creatures. I tried taking in deep breaths, I tried not to blink, but they just came, spurred by the thought that he is leaving me, all of a sudden.

His bike roared. “Come…” I said, but my throat was choked with phlegm. As the bike rocketed forward, distancing away from me, I continued my sentence, “…back, you stupid idiot.”

And I wondered if he had heard my plea, my love, his love, our love, my pain.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I did not dare to bathe, for I was afraid that if I left my handphone alone, he would call and if I did not pick up, he would give up on me altogether. I changed into my pyjamas, put the phone on the table and stared. Everything on the table seemed to contain fragments of our memories together: That picture we took when we went to Japan together for our “honeymoon”, the little soft toy that he spent a hundred dollars to win at an arcade, the first Neoprint we took when we were sixteen years old.

Half an hour later, I used my house phone to call my handphone to make sure that it was working. Then I used my handphone to call my house phone to ensure its workability. Everything was fine; except that both the phones had not rung, and that was what mattered, because eight hours later, the phones still did not ring and I was still staring at my table: Fragments of our memories.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

“Kenny?” I said. My voice sounded hoarse.

“Yeah, what’s up?”

“I’m sick today, and won’t be coming to work. I’ve told my parents. I’ll call back later to tell you how many days’ MC I have.”

“Okay. Any appointments for you today?”

I ransacked my mind. There seemed to be one, but I said, “No, I don’t think so. Tell Hui Ying and Siti not to make any appointments for me for the rest of the week.”

“Okay. Are you okay?”

“No.” I said and hanged up without saying bye.

Then I grabbed my handphone and dialed the number that had been embedded into my mind.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

As I pushed the numbers on my handphone, a small envelope appeared at the top left corner of the screen. I cleared the numbers away and read the message. “Superman” appeared on the sender section, and four slicing words blinked at the contents section:

“Pls dun contact me.”

I nearly dropped the phone. I was just about to look for him, and he had just messaged me, telling me not to look for him? I closed my handphone, dropped onto the chair and looked at the line of decorations on my table again. Which single molecule is not a memory of him?

I pushed the chair away, stood up and reached for my wardrobe. For years, I had always defied his words, and I will do it one more time, and hopefully, a million more times.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

We were three years into our relationship then: There was no sign of any loss in love, and our relationship was as steady as a rock. We chatted with each other every night, and updated each other of our status almost every hour. Friends around me said we would be the first couple to get married among them: I just smiled through their comments, although I knew their remarks contained a certain tingle of truth.

We were walking towards my house after a movie. He had, as usual, parked his motorbike at my house, and would ride back home after walking me to my house. There was a weird silence from him as we neared my house, and when we were metres from my house, he halted and leaned close to me. I was expecting a kiss; but I felt breaths on my right ear instead.

“I just want to tell you… how much I love you.” He suddenly said, winked and struck out his tongue, his trademark action.

I put on my widest grin and wanted to face him, but he continued, “I will love you forever, but if one day… one day, if we ever break up, go to my room, pull out the first drawer on the right.”

I blinked a few times quickly and licked my lips. We were happy throughout the whole day, and this just came out of nowhere.

“What’s in there?” I was expecting myself to scold him, but in the serene night, I did not want to wake the neighbours up.

He then planted a soft kiss on my cheek, which dissolved the anger ringing within me. “Our memories. To remember you.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I did not take long to decide what to wear: A t-shirt and jeans complete with slippers would suffice. When I was in the taxi, I told the driver the name of the address and two minutes later, I throw ten dollars to him and sent Zhi Jie a message: I’m going to your house. When I pushed the doorbell, no one opened the door. After the second ring, his mother, an old and frail woman with thin peppered hair, opened the door. I had given her a nickname a few years ago: Milo. It meant “Mother-In-Law-Okay?”.

“Where’s your keys?” Milo said. I dug into my pocket and realized I had forgotten to bring his flat’s keys. I just gave her a wide forced smirk and walked in causally.

“Jie isn’t at home.”

“I know.” I replied. He would be at work now, shelving detergents or toilet rolls into the shelves at Boon Lay Shopping Centre’s NTUC FairPrice.

Milo was eyeing the television, biting her teeth as she blinked rapidly. I started for Zhi Jie’s room. Does Milo know? About what Zhi Jie had done yesterday? Zhi Jie is someone who always keeps his troubles to himself: Whenever he feels distraught, he will coop himself in his room and a while later, a rainbow will emerge after his rain and everything will be fine again.

The pictures of him and me, which used to be on his table, were gone. The poster of us hugging each other was no longer the wallpaper of his wardrobe. Every trace of our relationship was gone; just like that, in a night.

I knew where he would place them. In large heavy steps, I stomped to the storeroom and saw all the photographs of us jumbled in a white plastic carrier. Why had he wanted to shift our memories into a plastic carrier?

I dragged myself towards his table and with my shivering hand, I pulled out the first drawer on the right. I was expecting an old diary, or the time capsules that we had buried three years ago, or maybe just nothing. Or maybe, in the deepest realm of my mind, I was hoping that it is a slip of paper with the words “Superwoman, I am just joking!”. But it was none of the above.

There was a black Creative Mp3 Player, with a Sony earpiece connected to it. There was nothing else in the drawer. I reached for the Mp3 Player and lowered my eyebrows. An Mp3 Player?

“Are you okay?” Milo’s voice rang into the room. I jumped a step back and nearly lost my footing. Milo looked worried: Her eyebrows were shaped like a V. I nodded, held on to the Mp3 Player and closed the drawer. Then I waved bye to Milo and walked out of the flat, plunging the earpieces into my ears and pushing the “play” button. There was only one audio file in the Mp3 Player, and it was named “Our Memories”.

Next (3. Our Memories) >>>