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always around to protect her (when in truth, Sali had been given away to an aunt
shortly after she was born because of a fortuneteller's warning
that her moon and her mother's moon would collide otherwise,
and when this aunt, whom Sali had grown up calling her mother, had followed her husband, whom Sali had called her father,
from Malacca to Singapore, Sali was only three years old, and
that was the last time she had seen her grandmother). Malika
and I watched as her right hand fluttered up to Madam's peacock. She caressed the diamond feathers, and then, as if she
were innocently unaware of the blunt bulge straining in the fellow's pants, she let her fingers drop, coyly down her blouse,
touching her nipple underneath in passing.

    When Malika glanced up, she seemed startled to find me in
the mirror.
    Or perhaps I was mistaken about that.
    WHAT MALIKA REMEMBERED about Miss Shakilah had to do
with the two occasions on which Miss Shakilah had been at
Madam's house before. Once was when Madam's whole class
had come over at the end of the school year in 1973 (Malika
remembered the heavy rain cascading off the tiled roof of the
patio while the girls were serenading Madam with a song they
had written to the musical score of Top of the World, which was
popular that year and sung on cassettes by Karen Carpenter,
the one who later became very sick and died), and the second
time in 1979, also in December. That time, Miss Shakilah had
come alone, looking a bit different from the first time because
she was no longer twelve years old. By then, she had cut her hair
(she used to wear plaits), and she had lost a lot of weight (not an
ounce left of her puppy fat), and Malika would remember how
the seat of Miss Shakilah's blue dungarees had hung off her backside with enough room for two fried chickens, as she put it.
    Now, fifteen years later, Miss Shakilah didn't look so different from when she had left for America. (That was the reason
for her second visit to Madam's house. She was gone two days
later, on a late-night Pan American flight departing out of the
new Changi Airport and destined for the John F Kennedy
Airport in New York City, via Hong Kong and Heathrow. What
I've heard is that no one suspected it would be the last time anyone here would lay eyes on her for so many years, perhaps not
even Miss Shakilah herself. Certainly, her mother was expecting
her to come home during the summer holidays at first, and
when that didn't happen, Miss Shakilah's mother had told herself, and anyone who asked about it, that her daughter was just
busy with her studies and would return after getting her degree. Not even Miss Shakilah's closest friend since childhood, her
friend Rose, who had grown up with Miss Shakilah as if they
were sisters, knew Miss Shakilah's actual reason for staying
away, although because they had been so close, Rose did suspect it wasn't just Miss Shakilah's studies. Besides, Miss Shakilah
had received her first degree in 1983, and another one, her master's, in 1985, both in Fnglish literature, and still she hadn't
come home.)

    That morning, she was talking in the kitchen with Madam
until a quarter to seven, when Madam had to leave for school.
(Madam had been driving herself ever since the family chauffeurs retirement shortly after her husband's passing. This was
partly to save money, but also as Malika believed, Madam liked
the new feel of independence that came with driving her own
car. She had owned a driver's license since she was twenty-one,
which she had kept renewing over the years, mostly in case
there was an emergency and the chauffeur wasn't available. But
in all the years that Malika had been with her, Madam had
never driven her own car. Now she would take long drives by
herself, along the new highway to the airport, where she would
turn the car around and drive back. Malika thought it was
because that was the longest drive possible in Singapore without traffic jams, as