MATCHBOX

Curling gnarly fingers around a remote control, Maya used her forefinger to switch off the ceiling fan in her windowless room.

     At least this was a whole room.

     There was a time Maya was the mistress of a whole house.

     The door opened. Puffy eyed and red cheeked, Salomé must have been crying all night. Her father in the Philippines had contracted pneumonia. In the blink of an eye, he was gone. She bent to pick up the bedpan and walked into the en suite bathroom.

     That stench had to offend. Such was the indignity of old age.

     Maya closed her eyes.

***

     A young couple were about to board the P&O liner, The Chusan, in Madras, India. Maya studied the intricate bridal henna design on her hands. Was she doing the right thing following this almost-stranger she’d married a month ago to seek a new life on the western coast of the Malay peninsula?

     “Maya-Maya,” he called out. The elders had giggled at his peculiar manner of speech. But in those gold flecks of his irises, she’d recognised his tenderness. All would be well.

     She blushed when he whispered, “Too-too beautiful an illusion.”

     It took her a week to find the word to describe the single-storey house assigned to them in Hargreaves Circus on the island of Penang. It had to express the serenity in her being, showcase the stunning backdrop of a hill, and promote the busy activity of the fauna in their garden. In the end, she came up with a simple one: home.

     And here, in 1972, she gave birth to their only child.

     “What do we name her?”

     “Swarnalata,” Ram replied. When Maya blinked, he said, “I thought about it for a long-long time.”

     Maya smiled bright and happy.

     With ‘swarna’ meaning gold, the child was nicknamed GG.

     This carefree child basked in her father’s love. Her ferocious temper was only placated whenever Ram told her one of his fanciful tales, usually after dinner. Dinner proper, however, was often fraught with tension.

     “No wasting,” Maya pleaded daily. “Millions in India are starving,” she would add, knowing full well that they rolled their eyes when her back was turned.

     The happiest of their many celebrations was the day GG married her sweetheart from law school. There was no celebration four years later, when GG chanced upon her husband and his secretary trading sexual favours in his swanky Singapore office. Maya rushed to the island nation and helped her child move to Kuala Lumpur where GG soon became the country’s foremost corporate lawyer.

     One sweltering January a year later, Maya stepped out onto the veranda expecting to see Ram with some Hokkien Mee for their lunch. Instead, a squat policeman stood in front of her. Officious, he focused on his shoes when he said that Ram died on the spot when he was hit by a bus. Then, he handed her two packets of noodles and left. In the kitchen, Maya poured the noodles into a ceramic bowl. She carried the back to the veranda, sat in Ram’s planter’s chair and ate every morsel. No wasting; millions in India are starving.

     Thud!

     Maya began to recite the Gayathri mantra.

     This is the end. Seven long and lonely years without you, Ram.  

     Her world went black.

     When she opened her eyes, she was looking up at a fluorescent tube light.

     “Mama. You’re awake.”

     “How long?” Maya whispered and turned to look into GG’s eyes.  

     “Ah! You’ve been asleep for three days,” GG said. Apparently, when their neighbour heard her fall, she’d rushed over to find Maya curled into a foetal position and unconscious. She called for an ambulance and then GG. Mercifully, Maya had responded to treatment and was now on the road to recovery.

     On a sunny morning, three months later, an ambulance dropped off Maya at GG’s condominium complex and a new carer GG hired – the rotund Salomé – opened the door to a posh unit on the third floor.

     “Mama, this is the best option.” Her daughter said that night. “And my flat is next door. Problem solved.”

     She was a problem? Pulling the gossamer blanket to cover her being, Maya sensed that she was never going home to Penang.

***

     Maya rubbed the grit in the corner of her eyes before opening them.

     The shrill ringing of the telephone startled her. It rang another five times before Maya answered the call.

     “Where were you, Mama?”

     There it was – that concern in her daughter’s voice.

     “Don’t forget. Today is the day for the Pfizer vaccine, yes?”

     Maya’s eyes widened in disbelief. She’d forgotten.

     “I can’t come. Only two passengers in the taxi. Salomé will follow, okay.”

     “Yes. Yes,” Maya said, a little breathless. Then she heard the words her daughter said, seemingly to someone else: “Such a burden, I tell you.”

     Maya threw the phone’s receiver aside.

     An hour later, Maya slipped out of the flat, not wanting to trouble the grieving Salomé.

     At the taxi stand, Maya lifted her head to the sky and felt the heat of the mid-morning sun on her face. Suddenly, she heard a familiar voice. Maya opened her eyes. He was there, on the opposite side of the road. His smile was as dazzling as the dancing flecks of gold in his eyes. When he opened his arms, she heard him say repeatedly: “Maya-Maya, come home.”

     Maya ran to her husband and into the path of a speeding taxi.

This is an edited version of a short story by the same name which won the 2022 H.E. Bates Short Story Prize. It is part of a collection called Tapestry of the Mind and Other Stories (2024) and is published here with permission from Penguin Random House SEA.