The Black Isle (9 page)

One morning, Sister Nesbit interrupted one of my bookish communions to place me in charge of a new girl, a tiny person with a runny nose. She looked all of seven, though Sister Nesbit said she was my age, twelve, and a refugee from St. Hilda’s, whose rural setting had ill suited her.

The girl reached for my hand. It was like being touched by the paw of a dead rabbit, that was how small and cold her hand was.

“My name is Dora Conceição,” she peeped in a toddler’s voice. “I have a heart murmur.”

As soon as our headmistress left us, I snatched my hand away—I was too old for such sentimentality. Nevertheless, a well-intentioned comradeship was formed. Her isolation reminded me of my earlier self.

“Sister Nesbit told me you have no friends,” she said. “I was like you at St. Hilda’s. It was lonely for me there. Don’t you ever get lonely?”

“No.” I smiled. “I’ve got books.”

Dora Conceição was of Portuguese, Chinese, Indian, and Malay stock, “with a touch of Dutch,” she said proudly, which explained her wavy hair and milk-tea complexion—a custom, made-on-the-Black-Isle blend. But her genes had not imbued her with the sixth-generation native’s careless ease. She followed me everywhere like a lost puppy, her dolefulness contaminating my every joy. You see, I had worked so hard to evict my fear, to betray no trace of my weakness, and Dora Conceição was afraid of everything, especially things she could not see.

Her fearfulness might have been bearable in another, less “dirty” environment, but because our schoolhouse was so full of dark corners, locked rooms, and endless staircases, her whimpers tested my charity, over and over.

“I feel queasy,” she would complain as she ascended the stairs, clinging to the banister that in my eyes was slick with blood.

“Do you think someone died here?” she would ask me in the musty music room, exactly three feet from the ghost of a naked old crone standing in the corner, rocking herself back and forth.

“There’s nothing here,” I would say. “It’s just dusty, that’s all.” Or: “Maybe it’s those beans you ate.” Oh, the false denials I had to make. Eventually, she’d believe me. She had to.

 No such luck. A few weeks into being saddled with this inconvenient ward, I noticed that she’d begun to neglect basic hygiene. Every day now, stains appeared on the skirt of her blue pinafore—yellowish blotches that dried and slowly browned.

“You smell!” I told her at lunch one afternoon after a frustrating art class in which every apple I tried to paint turned out looking rotted.

To her credit, Dora did not burst into tears. She simply sat there on the canteen bench, her legs too pathetically short to touch the ground.

“It’s just that I am so frightened,” she said quietly.

“What’s there to be frightened of?” I shot her a bright grin. “Are you mad?” After the failure of denial, I felt shame was the key. The girl would be shamed into bravery.

“The rooms, the darkness, the entire school. Something’s not right.” She clasped the crucifix on her necklace and her eyes reddened. “I can feel it in my heart.”

“I thought you said your heart was defective.”

“My heart is very sensitive. I can feel things other people can’t. At St. Hilda’s, when I was in certain corridors, my heart would beat so fast. One time, I felt a cold hand brushing my hair.”

“This is not St. Hilda’s. We’re in the city, surrounded by thousands of people. You have to rise above that kind of superstitious nonsense.” I knew I sounded like Mother, but I had no choice. I was class prefect; I had to keep up some semblance of order. “What’s the matter with you?”

Her tears gushed now. I looked around to make sure no one was watching—a prefect who made the new girl cry was not likely to remain prefect for long. A few busybodies glanced over, but most of the girls in the canteen were busy eating their noodles and chicken wings and chatting. Nobody cared about Dora Conceição.

“I don’t like the toilet here,” she mumbled. The truth behind her smells was being unveiled. “There are things there…I just know. My heart can feel them.”

“Stop that. You are twelve years old—or so you say. Yet you’re so terrified of our school’s toilet that you’d rather wet yourself.” I clucked my tongue. “Gracious!”

“But there are—”

“All right, let’s go.” I pulled her to her feet. There was no other option. I had to perform the charade myself—take her to the haunted toilet and show her there was absolutely nothing to fear.

At the toilet, no other girls were present—no living ones, at any rate. Dora Conceição clutched at the door frame for dear life while I pulled at her blue pinafore. I had intended to coax her but my irritation resulted in this forceful tug-of-war.

“Come on, you cowardly custard! There’s nothing here!”

“I can’t,” she whined. “Oh, my heart…”

“Stop it!”

One of the naked women on the floor decided to writhe her way toward the entrance. I repositioned my foot so she wouldn’t brush against my ankle. Not that I would have felt anything.

“Why did you do that?” moaned my smelly protégée.

“Do what?”

“You moved your leg. Why did you do that?”

“I didn’t do anything. You’re being crazy again!”

Garnering my ruffian strength, I ripped her from the doorway and dragged her to the nearest stall. That little twig could really kick; my shins would be black and blue.

“Don’t! Please, don’t!”

I did it anyway. I pushed her into the back of the putrid cubicle and held the door shut from the outside. As she begged and yanked at the door, the lonely bare bulb began to sizzle and strobe, sending eerie flickers across the room. Thankfully, its buzzing helped to camouflage her yowls.

“Don’t come out until you’re done. Have some respect for yourself!”

I held the door until I felt her resistance fade. The poor thing had finally recovered her good sense. I washed my hands, stepped over the blue-gray bodies wriggling sluggardly on the floor, and went off to history class, proud that I’d accomplished a task worthy of my prefect’s badge.

After the final bell rang, the sisters were atwitter in the staff room. I felt their anxiety all the way from the library, at the opposite end of the building, and I couldn’t concentrate—on reading, on writing, on anything. As the emissary between the teachers and the flock, I knew it was my duty to investigate. I raced down the unlit corridor, flicking on the lights as I came through, straining to hear the words echoing through the building.
Scandal…reputation…Literacy Council
…

The nuns were gathered in the darkness, six senior teachers sitting around Mother Hen Nesbit’s desk, six junior teachers standing behind them. Lit by an oil lamp at Sister Nesbit’s side, the group resembled a cabal posing for Rembrandt’s brush. I clicked on the overhead light, and all eyes turned to me, squinting.

“This doesn’t concern you,” said Sister O’Hara, the old giraffe who taught reading. “Do go away. This is not the time.”

I looked for support. “Sister Nesbit?”

With an ominous sigh, my protector emerged from behind her gargantuan table. She walked up to me and placed a somber hand on my shoulder.

“Did you not hear Sister O’Hara? This isn’t the time, child.”

“But I’m a prefect! I’m not like the other girls.”

With quick fingers, Sister Nesbit unpinned the badge from my uniform. “Now you
are
.” There was a new hardness to her face that made her seem very English.

I was struck dumb by this unexpected robbery. Tears welled up in my eyes but I vowed to stand my ground. Sister Nesbit returned to her seat.

“The parents have been informed,” one of the young sisters reported, sniffing. “They’ve been told to collect her body from the mortuary.”

“Whose body?” I cried. “Who are you talking about?”

Not Dora Conceição, please. Not her.

Sister Nesbit’s chair screeched as she leapt to her feet. “That’s quite enough from you!” Her eyes were now red. “If you must know, a girl died in our school today—the new girl, Dora Conceição. Does her name ring a bell? I had
specifically
asked you to look after her, and you did not. She died because you
failed
to look after her…”

The world went pitch-black.

When I came to, I was in the sick bay. Sister Nesbit was at my side, kneading her rosary. She tenderly made the sign of the cross.

“I apologize for my harsh words earlier. It really wasn’t your fault at all, and I was wrong to suggest it was. It’s just that her passing came as such a terrible, terrible shock to us. I do hope you’ll forgive me.”

“How…What happened to her?”

“Dora had a weak heart…and it suddenly gave out. In the toilet, of all places. It’s probably more my fault than anyone else’s.
I
knew she was frail. But even I could never have imagined…I mean, the toilet!” She shook her head. “Sister Fernandez found her lying on the floor in one of the stalls. Curled up like a sleeping babe, Sister said, her thumb in her mouth. The poor, poor lamb. May her soul forever rest in peace.”

I wanted the whole world to fade away again. But consciousness refused to leave me, and I was sent home to Bullock Cart Water with tram fare and smelling salts, doubly bereft—robbed of my prefect’s badge
and
my self-respect. I knew I was to be blamed, of course. I’d been blind and arrogant.

At home, neither Father nor Li noticed the new empty spot on my chest, and it dawned on me that neither had ever registered my appointment in the first place.

The next few days at school were filled with prayers for Dora Conceição. The Union Flag was even lowered to half-mast. Girls who had never paused to give her the time of day sobbed into their handkerchiefs, as if they’d lost their favorite cousin, and Sister Nesbit announced she would install more lights in the toilet. Still, in the corridors, the dead went grimly on and on.

She
had joined the mournful chorus in the toilet, of course. I saw her in that damned cubicle every time, staring back at me with lifeless saucer eyes, her modesty setting her apart from the others. She wore her stained blue pinafore.

Being a good convent girl, I found something to be thankful for even in the midst of this tragedy. It was the fact that Dora, like her otherworldly colleagues, no longer possessed a mouth. My crime would go unreported.

Forgive me, Dora Conceição, for my sin of pride.

A few days later, Father returned home all smiles.

“I found a job. A real job.” He handed out parcels of hot, fluffy pork
baos
. One bite and I knew they were the good, meaty kind, not the usual ones stuffed with sauce and gristle. This meant Father was confident in his self-deceit. “I signed a contract. We will leave for up-country next week.”

Li threw me a skeptical look, then turned back to Father. “Up-country? But isn’t that all jungle?”

Father laughed and pushed another bun into his boy’s hand. “I’m going to manage a rubber plantation. It’ll be good to be away from the crowds, don’t you think? Fresh air, quiet. You want to grow tall and strong, don’t you?”

Li looked to me, hoping I’d say something.

“What about school?” I asked, though I was actually relieved at the prospect of escape. Ever since Dora’s death, all I saw at St. Anne’s were ghosts; the living had become mere shadows.

Father snorted. “You can read and write, can’t you? That already puts you ahead of three-quarters of this population. Besides, it will do you good to get away from those nuns before they start suckling you on the blood of their saints. I don’t want you growing strange whiskers.” He smiled, pleased at his own formulation.

In the end, we had no say. At twelve, Li and I were still dependent on Father—we were his property. We began to pack up our things. It was a testament to our poverty that this task did not even take a whole afternoon.

A week later, our window was shaken by a loud rattling. I looked out and saw one of those rogue taxis I’d once been terrified of, a seven-seat carriage soldered over a Ford T chassis. They were known as
mosquito buses
because of their buzzing engines and unorthodox flight paths. We hadn’t ridden in one since the day of our first arrival. Going places was done by rickshaw or on foot—everything else was deemed an extravagance. The driver was a skeletal Malay, his hand already perched over the horn, acting out the stereotype that his people lived to honk.

Father was in good spirits and unusually garrulous. “I’ve hired Ahmad and his bus for the whole day.” He clearly relished the idea of hiring a
bus
. I admit I was charmed. “On the way up, we’ll be passing through the city. I want you to set it to memory because in a few years, we’ll be back here to conquer it. I promise you!”

Although he probably didn’t understand Shanghainese, the Malay driver smirked—a silly man’s hubris sounds the same in any language—and stomped on the gas.

With Bullock Cart Water vanishing behind us, my mood lifted. So long, bad dream! Farewell to old chains!

Without warning, we zooted past the liveried doormen of the legendary Balmoral Hotel. Our driver jumped the curb to bypass a Rolls-Royce, nearly running over the foot of a rotund Scot. The man cursed us in a pungent brogue. We—especially Father—cackled. Ahmad replied with shrieking Klaxon honks.
Ah-ooh-gah! Ah-ooh-gah!
Out the back of the cab, we assessed the legendary Balmoral as its ostentatious bulk shrank to the size of a postage stamp.

Li gripped a handrail and arched his neck for a better look. As if voicing my thoughts, he whispered, “Not so grand after all.”

Our driver disregarded the stop hand signal from the Sikh traffic policeman at the junction of four busy roads, and our near-collision with a crowded trolleybus was celebrated with yet another tooting of the horn.
Ah-ooh-gah!
We hung on tight to every fraying hand strap, giggling nervously. D’Almeida Place, where the wealth of the Isle was made, flew by our eyes. Goliath bunkers in imported stone flanked by Corinthian pillars, impossibly tall eight-story office buildings fused to one another, all christened with names familiar from adverts for rubber tires and fox furs: Jervois, Sohst, Guthries, Fraser, Dunlop, Firestone…
Ah-ooh-gah
! Lying between the biggest buildings were vacant lots, waiting to be assigned future lives as hotels and brokerages.