As good a name as any, I suppose.
Outside, they heard the light, quick step of Suraya’s mama. “Quick, hide!” she hissed, and the ghost now known as Pink quickly shrunk back down into his grasshopper form and hopped into the pajama pocket Suraya held open for him, just as the door swung open.
The woman took in Suraya’s bright eyes and feverish cheeks and pursed her thin lips. “What games have you been playing in here?”
“Nothing, Mama,” Suraya said. “Just drawing.”
The woman’s eyes scanned the room as if she were looking for something, and the ghost felt Suraya’s little fingers move protectively over her pocket.
At last, finding nothing, the woman looked at Suraya. “Well then. Time for bed. Go and brush your teeth, and wash your feet or you’ll have nightmares. Don’t forget to say your duaa.”
“Okay, Mama.”
The woman swept off back down the hallway toward the living room, where a stack of papers waited to be marked before a flickering television set. And there she stayed for a long, long time, never smiling even as the laugh track played artificial chuckles over the bumbling antics on the screen, her red pen scratching and scribbling busily as Suraya and Pink slept curled up against each other on her narrow bed.
“Tell me about my grandma, Pink.”
They were in bed, huddled up together as they always were. It was rainy season once again, and there was a constant, dreary night drizzle tapping on the window. In the darkness, Pink could just make out the outline of Suraya’s little head as she leaned against his shoulder.
Again, little one? She asked about the witch constantly; he was running out of stories to tell.
“Please, Pink.”
He sighed. Very well. He closed his eyes and called up memories of the witch, delicate as smoke wending from a candle flame. Your grandmother was a small woman, and round, and soft. She had no corners, no sharp edges to her. When she smiled, her whole face crinkled up and her eyes would disappear into two thin lines.
He did not add that that smile only appeared on her face after she had caused some mischief or other; he often edited these stories in his head before reciting them for Suraya, having long ago decided that there was no point presenting her with yet another disappointing family member. Between her strange, distant mother and her dead father, she had enough of those already.
Suraya smiled. “Tell me the story about the jambu again.”
It was her favorite. There was one day when a little boy was standing just outside your grandmother’s garden. Your grandmother had a big jambu tree, so big that some of its branches stretched beyond the fence. And the jambu themselves were miraculous fruits: bright red, crisp, juicy.
Pink could almost smell the sweet tang of the jambu tree in full bloom.
The little boy was staring up at the tree, his eyes round with hunger. Your grandmother had harvested most of the fruit, but there was one perfect bell-shaped jambu she’d left behind, right near the top—too high for him to reach. Your grandmother was hanging clothes on the line. She saw him staring up at her tree, and she knew what he wanted. But she herself was too small to reach the fruit, and too old to be climbing trees with her aching back and her quivering knees.
“So what did she do?” Pink could hear the laughing anticipation in her voice. She knew exactly what would happen next.
She waved her hand, Pink told her. She waved her hand, and one of the tree branches began to move.
Suraya giggled, then quickly stifled it before her mother heard. She was meant to be asleep.
Slowly, the branch made its way to that perfect jambu and plucked it with twiggy wooden fingers. Then it passed it to a branch below, which passed it on to the next, and so on and so on, until at last the lowest branch handed the fruit to the little boy, whose mouth hung open in shock and delight. “Thank you,” he gasped, looking first at the tree and then at your grandmother. “Thank you.” And in answer all she did was put her finger to her lips and wink at him before she went back into her house to get away from the hot afternoon sun.
There was a pause. From down the hall, they could hear the blaring of the television, the old sitcom that was Mama’s favorite: “SO NO ONE TOLD YOU LIFE WAS GONNA BE THIS WAY.”
Suraya sighed happily. “I always like hearing that story.”
I know you do. He never told her what happened afterward as he watched, hidden among the long blades of grass. The little boy bit eagerly into the jambu he had so longed for. There was a yelp of surprise and fear and a heavy, wet thwack as the fruit hit the ground, then retching and splashing as the boy turned and vomited into the bushes. The air filled with a foul, sour smell that lingered long after the boy had run off home, tears streaming down his face.
Pink didn’t tell her how much work it had been to bend that thick wooden branch, how it had felt to burrow into the hard sweetness of that perfect jambu and turn it into nothing but rot and ruin, maggots squirming through its flesh.
He told himself she didn’t need to know. That it didn’t matter.
“I’LL BE THERE FOR YOU,” sang the TV. “’CAUSE YOU’RE THERE FOR ME TOO.”
Beside him, Suraya had fallen asleep.
Three
Girl
FOR AS LONG as she could remember, it had been just the two of them: Mama and Suraya, rattling around together in the old wooden house that swayed gently in the slightest breeze. It had taken her a while to figure out that this wasn’t typical; that the families peopling her picture books and the brightly colored cartoons on TV usually had more than just two people in them.
“Where’s my daddy?” she’d asked her mother once. She was almost four years old then, still tripping over her words, fidgeting impatiently while her mother combed the tangles out of her hair and wrestled the unruly tresses into sedate twin braids. “Everybody else has a daddy. Mariam’s daddy drives a big truck. Adam’s daddy has a ’stache. Kiran’s daddy buyed her a new baby doll with real hair you can brush.” Her lower lip stuck out as she thought sorrowful thoughts about the injustice of not having someone who could take you for rides in a big truck and buy you toys (she was less sure about the desirability of a ’stache).
She felt Mama’s hands still for just a moment, hovering uncertainly near her neck. “He’s dead,” she said finally. “Your daddy is dead.”
“What’s dead mean?”
Suraya couldn’t see Mama’s face, but when she responded, her voice was as dry and sharp as the snapping of an old twig. “It’s when people go away and never come back, and you never get to see them again.”
Suraya mulled this over quietly, wincing as Mama’s nimble fingers pulled at her hair, sending tiny needles of pain shooting into her scalp.
The next day at her preschool, Mrs. Chow, whose stomach had been swelling gently for many months, was not there. The nine little ones under her care, Suraya among them, were told she would be away for a while, and that they would have a different teacher to mind them.
“Yes, Suraya?” Cik Aminah asked, seeing her little hand raised high in the air.
“If she doesn’t come back, she’s probably dead,” Suraya said matter-of-factly.
There had been a call to her home, and a discussion with her mother. It had not been the first time she had made such unsettling pronouncements in class; it made the other children uncomfortable, the teacher had said politely.