Kiong’s shout echoed as he burst into the corridor. Then we were out, through the back door into the dirt road behind the dance hall where we ran and ran as though the devil himself was chasing us.
38
Ipoh/Taiping
Saturday, June 27th
It was the end of everything, I thought. I don’t know what possessed us, but we ran like children, Shin and I. As though we were ten years old and had been caught stealing mangoes from the neighbor’s tree. We raced down street after street until I didn’t recognize where we were anymore and doubled over, gasping, against a wall.
“You know, there’s nobody chasing us,” said Shin.
Kiong had done no more than stick his head out of the back door and yell, “Louise! What’s wrong?” And likely nothing would have happened if I’d stopped and talked to him. Kiong was quite reasonable; arguments between customers happened all the time, and the only person who’d been injured was myself.
“Does it hurt?” Shin examined me, looking for bruises. “I didn’t mean to hit you.”
“I’m fine,” I said, shrugging off his hand.
“I’m sure you are,” he said drily. “Anyone who can run half a mile is probably in good health. Why were you running anyway?”
Shame burned my cheeks. “I couldn’t bear it. The look on Robert’s face. And all of you showing up together.” The words, like a prostitute, still rang in my ears.
Shin sank down against the roughly plastered wall. My mother had drummed it into us that only beggars, drunkards, and opium fiends sat in the street in broad daylight, but there was no one around right now, so I sat down, too.
“Why’d you jump in front of him like that?”
“Because you were going to hit him.”
“He deserved it. Bastard.”
I grimaced. “Are you angry with me, too?”
“What do you think?” He gave me a long look.
I stared hard at a crack in the pavement. It looked like a map of the Kinta River. “There weren’t many options. Not ones that paid well. But I’m not a prostitute.” It was a terrible conversation to be having with my stepbrother, whom I might be in love with, I thought. I ought to keep a diary of all the worst moments in my life. It might be amusing in fifty years’ time, but not now. Definitely not now.
“I didn’t think so. Places like that are pretty careful with their girls.”
“How do you know?” I watched him from under my lashes, frowning.
“I’ve been to dance halls before. There are lots of them in Singapore.”
Suddenly, I was so annoyed with Shin that I could barely look him in the eye. “I suppose I shouldn’t have worried about telling you, then.”
He tilted my face up. “You were worried about me?”
Too close, I thought. He was much too close, and that casual touch disarmed me. With a jerk, I pulled away. “Not just you,” I said. “My mother, Mrs. Tham. And Robert, of course. From his point of view, I’m ruined.”
Shin’s voice was icy. “He’s an ass if he can’t tell you’re obviously a virgin.”
I was so humiliated that I didn’t know where to look. Ears scorching, my face blazing. I supposed I ought to be pleased that Shin had never doubted my chastity, since chastity was so prized in a woman, but the way he was doing things was so high-handed, I wanted to slap him. “It’s none of your business,” I snapped, jumping up.
Shin grabbed me by the arm, pulling me down. “Of course it is,” he said through gritted teeth. “I don’t like it. I don’t like you doing a job like that at all. It’s stupid and dangerous and you’re lucky that nothing’s happened—so far.”
“I didn’t have a choice!” How dare Shin tell me off, when he’d nothing to worry about other than studying and having a good time in Singapore? I buried my face in my knees.
Shin put his hand lightly on my head, as though he was afraid I’d shrug it off. “Why didn’t you write and tell me you needed money?”
“How could I, when you never wrote back?”
“That was because—” he bit his words off. Whatever it was—another girl, another world I didn’t know—he clearly didn’t want to say, and I didn’t press him. “I had a feeling you were doing something like this.”
“What do you mean?” My voice was muffled.
Shin shook his head. “Some sort of shady job. Mother told me about her mahjong debts, after the miscarriage. She said you were paying them for her by dressmaking, but