Insomnia

By Tiffany Ong

A barricade of several large potted plants now stood at the place where he had landed. It was a neighbour’s idea, to give the dead some peace. 

From her window, ten floors above, everything laid in clear sight under the moonlight – the dazzling blue of the swimming pool, two neat rows of lounge chairs cleaned and ready for tomorrow’s swimmers, the scaly pebbled path winding its way round the condominiums. And there it was, that patch of red where he had landed. Though pale from all the scrubbing, it remained visible, especially under the moon like tonight. At the touch of the moonbeam, it seemed to pulse, glowing as if it still throbbed with his life.

Despite all the bleach used, the bloodstain refused to budge. Then word got around, that he was not at peace. A neighbour suggested hiring the professionals. And instead of just that patch, why not give the entire estate a ‘deep clean’? As this was something outside the purview of the estate’s management, everyone chipped in money for this special project, which involved not only a cleaning service with high-power jets and special soap, but also priests, monks, and imams. The initial plan was to have the service done not just in English, but also in Chinese, Malay, and Tamil – the four official languages of their country. Then someone asked what about Tagalog? Yeah, another said, what about Thai? What about Hindi? Not every Indian is a Tamil, someone else said. And don’t we have an Italian neighbour too? Someone living here is a Japanese? another added.  They could see that the meeting was starting to steer out of control. In the end, it was decided to be in English only – the majority won again. Anyway, it was a good idea, a neighbour hastily reminded them, to involve different religions, to be inclusive. To everyone’s relief, the meeting ended without further disagreement. 

She was the first to support the idea. Agreeing to it was important to her because being inclusive reflected the neighbourhood’s aspiration, and hers as well. She had said this with her well-practiced smile, an easy curve of her lips, always ready to put to good use. 

But there were things that she could never practice for. She had been meaning to tell her husband that she knew the boy. Knew him, as in, they had talked before. Many times although she wouldn’t tell him that. 

Leaving the window behind, she pushed open the door of the study, now her husband’s bedroom. He wasn’t home yet, and might not be for the night – third time this week, not that she was keeping tabs. Their marriage was beyond all that. 

***

Their friendship, if it could even qualify as one, began one month ago, when he saw her at her window. Exhausted from endless studying, he rose to stretch, his eyes catching a movement outside. She could well be just a long piece of cloth – formless, faceless, floating by her window, the cliched spectre of something unsettling. Squinting his eyes and putting on his glasses, he walked up for a closer look. Though scared and reluctant, the need to prove that it was all his imagination propelled him forward. And there she was, a thin wisp of a woman, her gossamer nightgown hanging loose around her skeletal frame. It was a human, no doubt, he could see her clearly now.

He waved at her. “You scared me,” he wanted to tell her, standing a hundred metres away at his window across hers. 

He didn’t know what made him do that, waving at a stranger. It wasn’t him to be friendly with people first. Being new in this country made him do such things, things that weren’t him. He felt silly, embarrassed even, when she didn’t reciprocate his hello. 

He was about to walk away when he saw an arm no fatter than a stick waving back at him. And that was how it all began, their nightly rendezvous, first at each other’s window, then below their condominiums, by the pool, when their neighbourhood, both their families, were in the stupor of sleep. 

***

Last night, they held a vigil for him. They stood by their windows, waving lights from their cell phones. All three blocks of flats were lit up, swirls of fireflies on every floor. She could almost believe it, that they were capable of flying up and carrying him away into the cloudless night sky. 

***

When he stood face-to-face with her at last, a mere metre separating them instead of the distant glances from their windows, he was overwhelmed by her presence. 

“Hello, I’m Esther,” she said, smiling, but her lips trembled as if resisting from the effort. They were shriveled and downcast, as if she had cried too much and too drained for speech. 

“I’m Jude,” he said, extending his hand, and was surprised by the feel of hers – hard and sharp bones, yet oddly fragile. 

“Jude” was the first English name he learned, picked up from a certain song his Amma had played on repeat during the afternoons when his Appa was at work. When she progressed from humming to singing along to the song, he had the impression that his Amma had mastered the language.

But at the customs, on the first day they arrived, he witnessed her cower as the officer thumped their passports and the stack of documents she had so diligently collected. Her shrinking form did not stop the officer from bludgeoning her with questions that his Amma couldn’t answer because she couldn’t understand him. 

So “Jude” became a lesson then, a usefulness now. He didn’t want his new friend to notice the foreignness in his real name, the many syllables that were going to betray the many miles he had come from. 

He knew the benefits of blending in. Whether or not he knew the art of it, he wasn’t sure. The first step was hovering, then you made your presence known by adding a word occasionally, chuckling at their jokes frequently. But being too close also meant giving them more opportunities to pick on you. They said he smelled because of all those funny foods his Amma cooked. The tongue might learn a new language, but never could it deny what it wanted to taste, they said. They said his head would one day fall off from all the head bobbles. 

Yesterday, he had somehow acquired a nickname. “Curly, come here,” they called out to him after class, beckoning him to join them in the field. So glad he wanted to be with them, it didn’t matter what they called him. But he soon understood. They said everything about him curled – his hair, the English he spoke. Then one of them said probably even his penis curled when hard, and they pulled down his pants and teased him till the answer showed itself.

He realised that it wasn’t true; the school wasn’t a safe environment. Maybe, being here, alone with her, in the thick darkness of the night and their quiet neighbourhood, it could. 

“So,” he said, pulling out a cigarette from his pocket. It was his Appa’s, grabbed from the coffee table before coming down. He had never smoked before, but he thought he ought to when meeting her for the first time. Also, he thought it should help to mask the body odour his classmates claimed he had.  

“Why are you always up so late?” he asked, straightening his back, straightening his accent, unfurling his words as best as he could. Already in his mind, he was telling her his – the many hours of studying that should earn him a place in the university, then a permanent place in this country. Or so his Appa said. It was why they came, for his sake. They had to be part of this country, her country, a place so sparkling with stability and security. But first, he had to speak proper English. 

“Too much coffee,” she replied. Then, she flicked his cigarette away, just like that. “You can’t fool me, you’re underage, I can tell,” she said, her lips no longer trembling, no longer trying. He was taken aback, by her sudden openness, her perceptiveness. At the same time, he was pleased. This seemed like a permission for him to be himself. 

“Sorry,” he said. The word came easily to him, it was one of the first English words he learned. The Rs had texture now, and he was pleased. He felt that they carried with them his sincerity. 

“Don’t start this with a lie,” she said, and that was how he knew she could be counted on. 

***

For some reason, they had his curtains removed, exposing the bareness within. Just an empty dark square of a window now, where a month ago, he had once stood and waved to her. Such was the indignity of the dead, a life once carefully curated and staged, now stripped clean.

No doubt that hers would be the same. Something so resolute might not be so terrible after all, she thought. It seemed simpler and easier, and she felt she already understood it well.

“Don’t worry, we’re in this together,” he said when she lost their first child. By the third time, he merely said they could try again. “If it is what you really want,” he added. What followed was a series of sex that ate them bare, and turned their marriage hollow. Before, it was the only thing that filled their lives, the possibility of having their wishes fulfilled. Then he began sleeping in the study, something they didn’t speak about but had both agreed on. There was no need to explain how too close a proximity amplified its absence. 

And that was when she saw him at his window, pacing up and down, each step heavy and lost. His shoulders bore the same heaviness. His hair was straggly. 

He had felt older, although from his physique and his eyes when she finally got to see him up close, told her he was not. 

She was expecting a lover, a nightly sin to prove to her husband that the problem wasn’t hers. But seeing him face-to-face, recognising that he was just a boy, someone’s lost son un-reclaimed, she had instead felt shame. 

Looking at his dark empty window tonight, she cried for the first time since he died. She had trouble knowing what the tears were for, if it was for him, their secret friendship lost, or for the friend she never was to him. Or, really, she was crying because with him gone, she was even more alone now. 

The tears didn’t make her feel any better, her impatience with him still unforgiven. 

It got tiresome, she admitted, and could she be blamed? Hadn't she been through enough? she tried to reason with herself. He couldn’t get it, and how could he, being so young. After all, he was from a different culture, race, background, and all that. This, she was slow to admit, as it seemed to finally reveal a certain bias she had of him all along. 

Shouldn't they be all the same? Pain. Loneliness. Instead, together, they had understood their loneliness in pain.

“Why is life here so hard?” she heard him asking her a night before he died. He had grown withdrawn, his eyes distant, his questions, she thought, were often rhetorical.

Their nightly meeting suddenly an obligation, and that night, she felt he had made her responsible for an answer. Fumbling, annoyed, she cast out some words. What do you know about life? was what she really wanted to say. 

Then he looked at her, kept looking. “I should go,” she said, and that was the last she saw him.

No longer would he be at his window, now so bare and black. Her gaze fell on the spot again, where he had landed. It was all futile, she could see. What a desperate attempt it was, those large green fronds could never camouflage the patch of red he left behind. 

Tiffany Ong has a Master’s Degree in Creative Writing from Royal Holloway, where she graduated with distinction.

She is an alumna of the Tin House Winter Workshop and was selected as one of the finalists for David Higham Associates Open Week for Under-represented Writers.

She is intrigued by stories told in parallel or multiple narratives as this is a true reflection of the world we live in, where everyone is multidimensional, and every voice deserves to be heard. One of her short stories can be found in Quarterly Literary Review Singapore.

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