Maid In Singapore (12 page)

Isn’t that the
indelible mark of familiarity, when one starts picking another’s
mannerisms?

The inspector appeared
in a couple of minutes, walking towards where he had parked his car
earlier. I didn’t mention my suspicion, which was that the sexy
woman knew Jay, beyond the boundaries of a tenant-landlord
relationship. It would sound very silly if I had told him why I
thought so.

Inside the car, he
handed me his iPhone, ‘Mrs Kettlewood, I took some photographs
of the apartment. Can you please take a look at them, just in case I
may have missed anything that you may be able to spot, things that
your son may have left behind?’ He fired the engine, pulling
away from the apartment block.

I thumbed through the
pictures, perfunctorily, where I should have been attentive. I
couldn’t be attentive since the phone rang, silently, every now
and then, needing the officer’s attention all the while.

Officer Joe drove to
the People’s Bank, explaining his visit only when he was with
the bank’s manager. Till then, he was on his phone, attending
to other more urgent matters.

‘Can you please
help track the history and usage for this card?’ He took out
his cell phone, pointing to the zoomed image of a credit card on the
screen. The manager turned to his computer, after he had noted the
card details on a post-it.

‘I found this
card in the apartment; it had your son’s name on it,’ he
said, turning towards me, still pointing at the phone’s screen,
even though it had turned dark and sleepy within seconds. The bank
manager ’s keystrokes clicked rapidly in the background.

‘This card is
still active, Officer, and in good credit and payment condition, no
problems with this one,’ the bank manager swivelled his chair
around, picking paper regurgitated from the printer’s mouth,
from where it spewed. ‘Here are the card statements. You can
keep these, but I will need you to please sign a written request,’
the manager said, placing the statements in an envelope, handing them
over to the officer.

At the precinct, the
officer studied the statements, ‘It was used about four days
back at the Deli on 5
^th
Avenue. There are fairly large amounts of charges from
Thailand, at the Bangkok Hospital. We can find out more tonight, once
the doctors and the staff come in for the day,’ he said. ‘You
can come by in the afternoon tomorrow. I should be here. I am sure we
will have something for you by then. Please, call before you come,’
he added.

‘Thailand? Was he
there?’ I asked.

‘Yes, it seems
so, for a few weeks, by the look of this statement. Since all the
charges are physically swiped rather than on the Internet, he was
there. What he was doing there—I will find out in a day or so,’
he said, buzzing for this assistant to come in, a cue for me to
leave, which I did after thanking him, profusely.

Thailand, for a few
months, in a hospital . . . he must have fallen ill, not wanting to
tell me till he recovered.

It was the melanoma,
wasn’t it, the white part of him, the one that his father gave
him?

M
y
son
,
ho
w
wron
g
yo
u
ar
e
t
o
ru
n
an
d
shu
t
yourself
ou
t
fro
m
you
r
mother’
s
lov
e
. I would
have nursed him back to health, if he had let me have him.

At least his credit
card was alive, as few days back as four, rekindling a hope of his
well-being. It was simply a hope since I knew that a credit card can
be used easily by anybody, on anyone’s behalf.

Was he dead? But, that
did not add up either since the credit card was active and
un-tampered with, showing regular charges and payments. If it was a
fraudster using the card, he or she would simply max it out and then
throw it in the garbage, of course another person’s garbage.

Back at the ISKCON, in
the sanctum, I wept. The manager simply let me stay for another day,
leaving the sanctum open for me at night, going away, leaving me
alone.

I wished I had not made
the will and shared it with him the way I did, at least then I would
not be consumed by this overarching doubt that I had driven my son
away from me. I should have let things be the way they were between
us, cold and distant. That way he may not have turned his back on me,
doing whatever it was that he had gone and done, without me as a
confidant.

I, me and myself—I
had begun using those three words far more than a Krishn’ite
should.

What had Jay ended up
doing or being caught up with? I was about to find out, very soon, in
fact on the following day, since the officer was pretty much ready
with whatever it was that I wanted to know.

I did not call to check
if Officer Joe Brown was in, simply landing up after an early lunch,
announcing myself, ready to wait for whatever time it took for him to
see me.

He saw me in about half
an hour, not in an office, but in an investigation room, accompanied
by a lady, with a gaunt, un-smiling face, making the setting ominous.

‘Hello, Mrs
Kettlewood, this is Doctor Jane Kelly,’ he introduced me to the
lady with him; she, too, was wearing a police badge on her waist.

‘A doctor, what
kind of a doctor, like one of medicine?’ I asked, growing
alarmed with the gravity that had suddenly gripped the officer’s
voice.

‘Yes ma’am,
I am a doctor of medicine, more specifically, a psychiatrist.
Criminal psychology is my specialty, not that there is any crime
involved in this case,’ she added, seeing that I was growing
anxious with concern.

The officer cut in
gently ‘As regards your son’s stay in Thailand, it was
for a medical procedure, which he opted for voluntarily. We are quite
certain about it since we have spoken to the surgeons who performed
the surgery and the staff that cared for your son in Thailand.’

‘Is he all right,
what was wrong with him?’ Poor boy, he should have let his
mother care for him.

‘He is fine. I
mean . . .’ the officer was at a complete loss and looked at
the police doctor for help.

‘Mrs Kettlewood,
people can encounter identity- related questions anytime time in
their life . . .’ she began.

‘Fuck you both,
just tell me, just lay it out, what happened to Jay,’ I was
shouting with a tremble of lip and a widening of everyone’s
eyes.

‘Okay,’ the
police doctor moved closer to me. ‘Your son chose to change his
sex, in totality from being male to being female with a series of
surgeries to make the change lasting and irreversible,’ she was
holding my hand; the water spilt from the glass, tilted by my
loosening grip on it, gently flowing over my long woollen skirt and
onto the floor, as if I was incontinent and urinating, forming a
little pool in which my left foot was planted.

No one moved to tidy
up. I barely held on to the glass, preventing a crash, trying to pull
together what was scattered in my mind.

‘What,’ it
was not really a question, just an exclamation of shock. The officer
got me some more water, the police doctor handed me a pill, ‘have
this, it will help calm you down’.

I did so, starting to
cry in muted whimpers. In a minute or so I could speak again.

‘Where is he
now?’ I asked.

The officer moved his
chair close to mine, keeping his hand on my shoulder ‘He is
still right there at the apartment where he used to live. He simply
recovered from the surgery and started living in his own apartment,
as a tenant’.

‘But we have been
there, you and me, we went together—have you gone back and seen
him this morning?’ I was still crying, imagining my son in
drag, with a badly concealed stubble and an Adam’s apple
bobbing up and down underneath his make-up, hanging around with men
in a trans- bar with their palms on his thighs, their eyes on his
breasts.

‘Mrs Kettlewood,
the tenant who is living in the apartment is your son. He is
completely changed and transformed that is all,’ he said, very
gently.

‘You mean that
sexy woman I met and spoke to, is my son? What is her name? I didn’t
even care to remember her name.’ She had told me, but I had
thought it unimportant, not making an effort at memorizing it. At my
age, I have to make efforts to remember things. True, but it is also
true that the aged view the young and the beautiful as eyesores,
abhorrent, a reminder of what one can no longer be, fazing them out,
mentally.

‘Her name is
Eve,’ the officer replied. He had moved away, as I composed
myself.

‘Does she have a
second name, a surname?’ I asked.
Sh
e
. Yes, that
is what I had said, clearly knowing that I was talking about my
so
n
.

‘Costello, Eve
Costello,’ he added, never once letting his eyes stray from me.

Yes, the name, it came
flooding back like an icy wall of water, her name was Eve Costello.

‘How can this
happen? I mean, what is his legal status here?’ the logical
part with the questions started to surface inside me.

‘Legally, there
is nothing that stops an adult from undergoing a change of identity.
There are provisions for establishing new passports; social security
et cetera, as long as the documentation is done in advance. A decent
lawyer will find it as easy as child’s play,’ the officer
had come into his own, answering my questions with confidence. ‘He
is still not done finishing up the paperwork, which is why he is
using his old credit card, the last link with his old life; the bank
does not bother as long as the bills are paid.’

‘How can someone
transform to an extent that his own mother cannot recognize him?’
I turned to Dr Kelly.

Only a failed mother is
taken in by the disguise of her child, searching desperately for her
own, on that life-stage full of kids, all dressed and dancing in
shiny clothes, as if to evade search and inflict pain.

‘Physical
transformation is a reality, even in nature, and I don’t mean
some fish in the sea. There are humans, too, who are born to a
distinct sex but grow into another with time. Assisted by plastic
surgeries and a series of other medications, the change can be
dramatic, especially when a male patient comes in and wants to become
female’.

‘What do you
mean?’

‘The gonads or
the sex organs are easier to transform from male to female. The other
way round is less successful,’ she said, pencil twirling,
clumsily through her fingers.

‘You mean he no
longer has male sex organs?’

‘No, he does not.
I spoke to the surgeons myself,’ she said.

‘How can a
surgeon perform such ghastly disfigurements?’

‘Mrs Rashmi, I
must add that the physical transformation is probably easier to
accept. It is the mental and the psychological aspects that take time
and sometimes a heavy toll on the patient. Identity morph, is not a
simple matter of a man wanting to experience a female orgasm; it is a
far more cerebral longing, running deep in the psyche of a man.’

‘Why did he do
it?’

‘That is
difficult for me to answer, especially without sessions with your
son, and those I cannot have because he is now not himself. So the
answer to that question will at best be a conjecture.’

‘Officer, you
have to bring her in. I have to know what is going on in that head of
hers,’ I turned to Officer Joe Brown.

‘Unfortunately,
we cannot do that. We have probably overstepped already. There is no
reason for us to bring her in, and she hasn’t done anything
wrong,’ he said.

Dr Kelly cut in,
‘Probing, needling a person who has had a gender change can be
detrimental. If you try to pull
her
back, the damage, dealt on
both of you, may be irreparable. If anything, my advice for you will
be to help ease
he
r
into
he
r
new life,
rather than torment her with the past.’

She was tormenting me
with
hi
s
past; it was not the other way round—I
wanted to scream.

‘What do you want
me to do?’ I screamed.

‘Just go away for
a while, give
he
r
the time to settle back in, and then
take a measurement after a few years before seeing her again’.

Measu
r
emen
t
,
of what . . . his sexuality, calibrating his maleness or femaleness
as the months went by?

Later, outside, I just
wandered, a jumble of thoughts leaving me in unknown bus numbers,
stunned yet soothed by the journey, trying to head towards 5
^t
h
Avenue, straying often, in thought and in journey,
before settling on a bench by the Jackie Kennedy Onassis Reservoir—an
unnecessarily long- winded name, far too respectful for a woman of
dual last-names.

A silly self-longing,
having an unchanging name throughout one’s lifetime, isn’t
it? The image of the Ardhanaareshwari formed in the shadows of the
leaves and tree trunks beyond, half male and half female, dancing on
dead conformity, trampling it with its feet, even though it was
already dead.

Across the lake, Jay’s
apartment block stood still, as if pausing to enjoy the view before
uprooting itself and moving on.

A park warden
approached me through the shadows. ‘Madam, I can accompany you
to the bus stop or the car park if you like. It is getting dark,’
he said with concern.

I walked alongside him,
alone, past the apartment block, looking but finding no trace of the
gorgeous tenant while moving towards the ISKCON temple, thanking the
park-warden before disappearing.