Singapore Noir

He found the bag on a crackled cushion in the back of the bus and inhaled the two burgers; his first and last meal of the day.

If only Ma had told him the truth.

He stared out the window at the spectacle of purpose on the street. People were busy, had places to go, things to do, goals to accomplish. He’d had it all too until Ma’s rape. The rape changed everything. The voices, his friends, had shown up that day.

The day that changed everything was an ordinary day, a sunny one. After school, he had headed to the East Coast lagoon as usual, spending the afternoon helping tourists and schoolkids carry kayaks and canoes in and out of the water. The tips were good.

Eddie headed home only after the last of the canoes was put away.

“Ma! Ma! I home already,” he’d called, as he entered their tiny ground-floor flat that sparkled on the outside thanks to his mother’s hot-pink bougainvilleas. Inside it was cool. His mother had found a discarded air conditioner at the school where she worked and spent a lot of money getting it repaired. Then she’d had it installed in Eddie’s room.

“Ma,” he called again, but there was no response. On the dining table was a sardine sandwich with onions, his favorite. He hated eating alone but the swim had tired him out. Once the sandwich disappeared, he waited at the door for her to come home. Generally she arrived by nine. But that day she was late, very late.

He had fallen asleep near the door when he heard it open hours later. Then he saw her, in the stark fluorescent light from the deck outside — she walked through the front door covered in dirt. Her white blouse was ripped and she was clutching at it in the middle, desperately trying to keep it closed. She seemed oblivious to him as she entered. He averted his eyes so she would not feel the shame of having her son look at her in this state of undress. His mind was racing. He quickly glanced over to see if she was bleeding; he could see no red.

He followed her to her room. “What happened to you?”

“Nothing, lah... nothing. Go to bed, Eddie,” she said very softly, “I’m okay.”

He wanted to protest. But he just stood there, unsure of what to do. She sat on the edge of the bed, the white sheets now stained with dirt from her blue cotton skirt and open blouse. She covered her face with her hands and he noticed her nails were chipped.

“Go to bed, Edward. I am fine. I mean it, go to bed. I am fine.” Then she stood up and ran into the shower. He understood. She was trying to wash away the sins of another.

Eddie went to the refrigerator. It was a wonder the twenty-five-year-old contraption still worked. Grabbing a packet of soursop juice, he sat down at their rickety dining table.

Had she been assaulted? Raped? What if it were rape? How would they ever get over it? This was not happening; it was like a scene from a bad movie.

He felt his hands crush the packet as anger flowed into his arms. He wanted to kill the bastard who’d hurt his mother. After all, he was the man of the house. He never knew his father, except through the pictures his mother kept around the house. He loved the one where his father beamed, holding his newborn boy. It was taken at the house when Eddie was just two days old. That was the last time his father held him.

His father’s death was a testament to the times they lived in, his mother often said. He worked as a bank teller — a disgruntled employee and a knife told the rest of the story. Just like that, for no reason at all, his twenty-five-year-old father had been stabbed. Their only solace was he died almost instantly.

After his father’s death, Ma seemed to forget everything except how to make sure that she and Eddie had enough to eat. She had no friends, preferring to spend all her free time with him. He was grateful that she was not interested in dating men. Unlike other kids in his school whose divorced parents were seeing other people, Ma seemed happy to be alone. She never seemed to need anyone besides Eddie.

Yes, he was thankful.

“You are like my tail, Eddie, always behind me,” she would joke.

He rarely left her side, even when other kids and even some adults made fun of him. “Let her go, Eddie, she has to work. You can’t be her shadow your whole life, you know — you have to be your own man,” they would say.

Ma worked shifts at the primary school nearby, doing anything and everything disgusting — the clean-up lady no one noticed. She cleaned the toilets, collected rubbish, and even mopped vomit, feces, and urine off the bathroom floors. He felt sorry for her when he watched her cry herself to sleep each night. Someday, he hoped, he could give her peace.

Even so, everything was perfect when it was just the two of them, Ma and Eddie. Until that day when Ma came home with ripped clothes.