Shin must have noticed because he turned away. “She’s resting in the downstairs office—it’s best if she doesn’t climb stairs right now.”
My stepfather’s office was a narrow, gloomy room halfway through the long shophouse. He kept his accounts there along with a metal filing cabinet and a large black abacus. As we hurried through the dark shophouse, I said, “Why didn’t you light more lamps?”
“After the doctor and Auntie Wong left, my father put the lights out. You know how he is.”
I did know. My stepfather had a propensity for sitting in the dark, especially when he was troubled. I remembered again that terrible night when he’d broken Shin’s arm. Then, too, the house had been dark and silent.
“What did Auntie Wong say?”
Auntie Wong wasn’t related to any of us but had lived next door since before my mother and I had moved in. She was the neighborhood busybody, but she was fond of my mother.
“Apparently there was a lot of bleeding. She called the doctor. He was gone before I arrived, but it sounded like an early-term miscarriage.” Shin spoke deliberately, in a tone that reminded me that he was partway through his medical training. But this was my mother, not some stranger, and I ran the last few yards to the room and opened the door.
A single lamp burned on the desk, illuminating a makeshift pallet on the floor. My mother’s face looked paler than usual, her forehead high and bare, as though her skull was pushing its way through the thin veil of flesh.
Her hand was dry and cold, but she forced a weak smile. “Ji Lin, I told them not to worry you. I just felt a bit faint so Auntie Wong called the doctor.”
I squeezed her hand. “Did you know that you were pregnant?”
She glanced at Shin, embarrassed. Taking his cue, he quietly left.
“I didn’t think so. I’ve always been irregular, you know. Besides, I’m too old to have a baby.” She was forty-two. It was still possible; some of my friends had siblings who were decades younger.
“You need to keep him away from you.” Why couldn’t my stepfather leave her alone? I could barely speak, I was so angry. My mouth was filled with bitterness.
“Don’t say that. It’s his right. I’m the one who’s failed, not giving him more children.”
I bit my lip hard. There was no point berating her in this frail state. I’d have to find another way, and I thought again about how I’d wanted to poison my stepfather.
* * *
Later that evening, when my mother was resting and my stepfather had gone up to his room, Shin and I went out to eat. It was suffocatingly hot. Most places were closed already, but Shin took me to a roadside stall that served hor fun, wide flat rice noodles, in soup. We sat down at a rickety folding table, one corner of which was propped up on a brick, next to three men who were taking a break from an all-night mahjong party.
As Shin went to order, I listened with half an ear to the men discussing their mahjong debts. My mother, too, must have joined such parties to run up a debt of forty Malayan dollars. Thinking of the money made my stomach turn, and when Shin set a bowl of steaming sar hor fun in front of me, I could only stir it listlessly with my chopsticks.
He sat down opposite and began to wolf his noodles. Under the hissing carbide lamp, with its fluttering circle of moths, he looked nothing like my stepfather and I felt a surge of relief. I pushed my untouched bowl across to him.
“I need you to talk to your father.”
“About what?”
It didn’t seem right to discuss our parents like this, but I had to say it. “He has to leave my mother alone. She can’t get pregnant again.”
Shin’s face was pale under the bright white carbide lamp. “I already told him so when I got in this evening.”
“Will he listen to you?”
He shrugged. This conversation was just as awkward for him as for me. “I did tell him there were other options.”
“Like what? Visiting prostitutes or becoming a monk?” I stabbed a fish ball viciously out of Shin’s bowl. I didn’t care what my stepfather did as long as it kept him away from my mother.
“Like contraception.” He scowled to hide his embarrassment. “Anyway, you needn’t worry about things like that.”
“Even I know about French letters.” Or what they called the “male