Long, hot Christmas holidays stretched before us. And a conundrum.
Micky Lambert and I were eight, best school friends, and one another’s contraband. Ever since my mother had made an impromptu visit to his house, a few doors from mine, it had been taboo territory, the reasons obscure.
Three days before Christmas, Mum went shopping. “I’m going to Cheong Huat Mini Market. Back in half an hour.” Which meant an hour and a half: Mum would get distracted by the fancy tins of chocolates and butter cookies, the tinselly decorations and repellent cheeses which my father liked. She’d fret over whether our festive provisioning was up to scratch. “Don’t go anywhere,” she commanded. “Sit on your bed and read an Enid Blyton. Don’t do anything else.”
But out I crept, on my first-ever illicit social swoop.
I was vibrating with Christmas excitement, from my bare toes to the freckled knees below my shorts, to the top of my untidy head. My flip-flops flapped on the baking midday road, heat ribbons hazed upwards, and the crusty fake snow on Mr. Ong’s windows next door was entrancing enough to halt me for a long moment. I pretended that I was looking at real snow. I could imagine the momentous event but not really the snow itself. I pictured something soft and silky-smooth, not imagining that when I finally did get to hold some, it would contain harsh crystals and hurt my hands.
Someone was playing my favorite song, “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round The Ole Oak Tree.” I paused to sing along with a verse. Then back to business: towards Micky’s garden I snuck, past an unfamiliar peacock-blue convertible. No car connoisseur, I noticed its presence without absorbing details.
A Tamil gardener was shifting tattered coconut fronds, his bicycle nearby. Pale scaly ridges on his sun-blackened feet hooked my attention for an instant.
Past vermilion ixora blossoms I dashed, and the patio where Micky’s placid father Tony liked to read on days off, shirt removed, pate and belly round as freshly baked buns.
Past golden anthurium flowers I slipped, and a man’s shoe prints on the concrete around the house. Strange, I thought, but all that interested me was seeing Micky.
Behind ruby poinsettia blades I hid. I tapped on Micky’s window. His smile appeared, segmented by glass slats. Gentle gray eyes. More freckles than face. He opened the back door.
“Where is everybody?’ I whispered.
“Dad’s in Jakarta. On business. Marsha’s in there,” he said, pointing towards his mother’s bedroom. “She’s got a friend. Dunno who.”
A strange, heavy, herby smell clogged the air in the passage. We flitted through to the living room, where we watched Scooby-Doo in black and white.
Metallic squeaking cut through the soundtrack. A porcine sound. Our eyes asked worried questions.
A door clicked. Businesslike footsteps. Automotive acceleration on the road.
“OK, Marsha?” Micky called. No reply.
We needed the comfort of sweets and warm, motherly Sarimah, the Lamberts’ maid. Instead, in the kitchen, we found Marsha.
“I’ve given Sarimah the afternoon off.” From her stringy iron-colored hair to her lips, Marsha was a tousled smear. Her smudgy kohl eye winked. “I’m celebrating. Lovely greens.”
“But you don’t like veggies? Micky said.
“Rum one, this one,” Marsha murmured to herself. “Might have a temper.” She seemed to like the idea.
~
Three weeks later, Mr. Lambert came home unexpectedly, his flight to Hong Kong canceled due to engine failure.
His muffled concern rumbled the neighborhood out of its afternoon slumber. “When? Who? How?”
Shadows appeared in windows, neighbors’ ears agog.
“None of your business!” Marsha’s voice ripped through the air. “I don’t care what you think, you big flabby weed! You lardy bloody pumpkin! Of course I would. What else do you expect? You’re always as limp as a stick of bloody celery!”
Mum ordered me to play in my bedroom. “And put your fingers in your ears.”
I couldn’t fathom Mrs. Lambert’s choice of insults, but her tone was scorching my face tomato-red. I wished I could see the expression on Mr. Lambert’s moon of a face. Then I realized that, no, I was glad I couldn’t.
I slipped out of our house and went to offer Micky moral support. A suitcase was standing in the Lamberts’ driveway.
Marsha opened the front door, the gaze from her fading rainbow eyes evasive.
“What’s going on?” I asked Micky, once we were alone.
He shrugged. “Marsha’s been calling Dad vegetables.”
Mr. Lambert had vanished. A black-and-yellow taxi came. In climbed Marsha, without a backwards glance.
When it disappeared at the end of the road, I asked Micky, “Are you sad?”
He shrugged again.
We went into the kitchen for boiled fruit sweets from Sarimah.
~
Over a sunset drink a few nights later, I overheard Mum murmur, “Did you see her eyes? Surely it wasn’t Tony who did that? He’s so gentle, so jovial.”
Dad shook his head. “I’m pretty sure several people were, erm… rummaging about in the bushes. Savoring the cherries… Helping themselves to the harvest…”
“That’s enough, darling,” Mum said. Dad’s metaphors could spin out of control. “Honestly, that brazen hussy! Even trying it with you…” Mum stopped, catching sight of me.
“You’ve never had anything to worry about, dear. Not with any woman,” Dad said. “I don’t like the unkempt raccoon look, anyway. As for her taste for grass—pretty risky in a country like Malaysia. Potentially ten years in the clink and an enormous fine. I’m just thankful she didn’t land poor Tony in the nettle patch.”
Not for the first time, I wished I knew what my parents were talking about.
~
Micky and his dad moved to somewhere called “Essex.” A postcard of a Norman castle arrived. There was no return address.
