Planes

I remember when I first told Mei that I was going to church. It was during my university summer break and she had taken some time off from her lunch hour to meet me. We could have met over food I guess, but I felt like I had to see her as soon as possible. I was on fire. Boundaries were arbitrary. I had found Jesus. I ran towards her and, in an MRT station overflowing with harried office drones and too-cool-for-school schoolchildren, gave her a huge hug.

“Mei, I think I’ve found the meaning of life!”

“Oh no, David. Don’t tell me. You read some inspirational book about happiness again.”

“Even better! Paul brought me to his church camp. I accepted Christ!”

“Oh, David. That’s worse and you know it.”

It was here that I stepped back, slightly stung. The human figures seemed to run by us, in between us, in slow motion. I caught a glimpse of a blue pen, perfectly placed, slotted into the pocket protector of one of the men pushing past us. The ink was bleeding, slowly, onto his shirt.

“Look, sorry, but it’s the easy way out, don’t you see. How can you let someone else tell you how to live, without first figuring it out for yourself?”

The memories of what happened later are slightly fuzzy to me now. God knows I’ve tried to recall what I said to her, and what we did after that. Did we eat lunch like we were supposed to, agreeing to disagree? Or did I leave for home in a fit of childish anger, disturbed at the easy insouciance I read into her every word? Perhaps it didn’t matter after all. What I do remember was that I had a sudden urge to take Paul, eyes ablaze with heartfelt conviction, and thrust him upon Mei, hoping to dazzle her into silence with the brightness of God’s glory. My own flame had flickered, but I wasn’t ready to let it die yet. Maybe we did eat together in the end.

—

Mei and I went back a long way. We knew each other from when our memories became misty. All I can remember about the first few times I met her was that our mothers used us as implements in their subtle wars with each other. I always imagine what kind of conversations they would have about us, as they sat watching us play in the park near my old house.

“Ai yo. My Ah Mei ah, always eat so little. Don’t know why she can still grow so tall. Your David, does he eat a bit only or a lot?”

“OK lah, he’s growing slowly. Soon he will be tall and big. At least he is playful, look, so lively. He is a good boy.”

Mei fulfilled her mother’s superficial wishes by growing far too tall for her self-consciousness to fit her body. And I, despite being the lively one, never could match her. We were quite the pair of misfits. She was always quiet and shy. I was the loud one. We never really spoke a lot when we were younger, but we remained friends even as our mothers, driven apart by time and jealousy, stopped meeting each other.

Nonetheless, we attended the same primary school by parental consensus, an austere cement building which has long since been demolished. I might have said that the first day of school was a milestone in our friendship, had it been more significant to Mei. It was a cold blue dawn. I had just cheerfully waved off my mother’s frantic fussing, eager to make friends and explore a new world. I found Mei at the pavement just outside the gates. She was crying silently. I tried to ask her what was wrong but she refused to say. She wouldn’t budge. I stayed with her for a long time, until one of the prefects came and wrote our names down in his blue book. My mother locked me out of the house that night.

It was no use bringing this up to tease her, as I found out over the years.

“David, I really don’t remember. It was sweet though; I’m sure I would have appreciated it. I can’t imagine what I would’ve been crying about though.”

I was in secondary school and in my mock heroic phase. My British accent twanged.

“Begone, you ingrate! If you did, it would surely have been etched in your memory. What a tale of chivalry you would have told your grandchildren! Ah, well, some things are just not meant to be.”

I can see myself turning and running, galloping off on my wild steed. Hark, the wild witch beckons! My gallantry is wasted on the likes of you! I ran off to my anxious mother, and heard Mei’s exasperation fading off into the distance.

“Why are you always like that!”

Time was like sand slipping between our fingers, and before we knew it, we grew up.

We would meet every once in awhile, sometimes to catch up, sometimes just to talk about things, and sometimes to do nothing at all. Months could pass before our next meeting. And at other times we saw each other daily for a week or so. Such unpredictability seemed natural to us. We were just like that. I like to think that we took comfort in each other’s willingness to accept one another for who we were and who we could be. Without the need for aimless talk about the best places to go drinking and how our families were getting along, we managed a friendship that in the eyes of many of our other friends seemed to withstand the test of time. But of course, it wasn’t so much time we were testing as each other.

I saw her grow from the child weeping outside the school she was too afraid to enter to a quietly confident young woman. She saw me, a thoughtless, careless boy, turn into a man far too conscious of his failings. She saw me become a Christian. I sometimes wonder how much I’ve truly changed. What would Mei say if I asked her? In the quiet of my heart, I find myself afraid to hear even her imagined answer.

I’m afraid to hear her say that she didn’t really know who I was at all.

—

Worship always happened before service. I always wondered why it couldn’t be the other way around. I guess worship helps to ease people into the right frame of mind. Then we’d be receptive to the sermon later. So when I stepped into church that week, slightly late, panting, I knew exactly what I was supposed to feel. Worship had started. It was time to praise the Lord. Some days, knowing what to feel made me question the veracity of my feelings. That day wasn’t one of them. That day, I knew that God was all and all was God. I knew with all my heart that Jesus was the saviour of my souI. I knew I was loved. I knew that I was damned if I cried, damned if I didn’t. I brushed away the thought. We are one in communion, I insisted, as the music swelled to a crescendo. Here, I was safe.

The sermon, rather unsurprisingly, was about salvation.

“When did Jesus’ work on the cross end? Did it end once He arrived on earth in the form of a human? When He died on the cross? When He rose again?”

I yawned. To my credit, I did feel like I needed to know the answers. Deep down in my heart I knew that beneath this set of complicated and seemingly bureaucratic questions lay the key to the answers I was looking for. I just couldn’t focus. I watched the parishioners around me as they strained with whiplash intensity at the pastor. I noticed that the old woman sitting to the left of me was wearing a jarringly bright yellow dress. She suddenly turned to me and flashed an equally jarring smile. I’m pretty sure I smiled back. As long as it wasn’t a daydream.

Days later, during cell group, I stared hard at the first question in my Bible knowledge quiz. My eyes scanned the lines over and over again as I tried to sort my thoughts out. I tried not to blink and counted the seconds ticking off on the wall clock behind my studious bible study group. I managed 15 dry ticks. Finally I read the question aloud, hoping that, like God, my vocalizations would speak the answer into being.

“What was God’s purpose in creating the world and man?
a. I Don’t know, only God knows
b. To do His will and obey Him
c. To glorify Himself
d. In order to save it
e. For His pleasure in the enjoyment of His creation”

I stared at the paper for what seemed like an eternity. The air conditioning chilled me to the bone. I tried to daydream. I left the question blank. The quiz had 26 questions. I had one hour. I left early. Paul called me later, probably worried that I hadn’t said goodbye, but I must have missed it because I was tired.

—

One day, many days later, Mei and I met again.

I had graduated by that time. My life had, up until then, seemed like an endless treadmill of following orders and doing the right things. Even when my church told me that the treadmill was all in my heart, and that my heart could be changed, I still stuck to what my mother kept telling me year after year after year. She was the pastor that no church could match. She told me to reach for the skies. And reach I did — I graduated with first class honours. I remember thinking at the ceremony that my mother probably felt more satisfaction than I did. I remember deciding not to invite Mei. I thought my mother would be upset by the sight of the daughter of her estranged friend.

So when Mei asked me out for lunch soon after, I made time for her. I was eager, hoping to tell her about my plans for a job, my applications, my dreams, what God was showing me in my life. I knew that she probably also had something to tell me. We operated on a kind of need-to-know basis, but deeper. She wouldn’t have asked me out to sit and eat if the news wasn’t big.

We sat in the crook of a small cafe I had introduced to her. Rays of sunlight streamed in through the windows, reflecting the bits of dust that settled on the floor. I noticed how dirty it was. We sat in silence for awhile as I inspected the table that squeezed in between us. A few inches of wood suddenly stretched to infinity. I contemplated the patterns of the falling dust.

“I am going overseas to work, David. I think it may just be the fulfillment of my dreams. My flight leaves soon. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier, so many things have been going on.”

“Oh no, don’t apologize. That’s wonderful! I’m so happy for you, Mei. Tell me when you fly off and I’ll be at the airport.”

“I am going to France, David.”

I stared down at my salad. I suddenly remembered that the people in France ate snails. I imagined a French man with soiled hands, tending a garden of lettuce. The funny thing was that the leaves of all the lettuce heads were full of holes. The garden wasn’t meant for cultivating lettuce — it was for growing snails. I saw a French woman stirring a soup pot, like thousands of other quaint European housewives. Only the pot was not full of clams, but full of snails. I suddenly saw Mei stirring the pot instead. I blinked. Mei was stirring her clam chowder.

—

Just a few hours later I found myself turning and twisting in bed, in an agony of hot and cold. I cursed the cafe’s air conditioning. I moaned damnation at the salad, which must have been improperly washed. I was sure that pesticide was coursing, glowing green, through my veins. I was certain that I would die. I shivered, and with pale hands tried to swaddle myself in blankets in an attempt to deceive myself into thinking that I had become a baby again, pure, clean and unborn, suspended in amniotic fluid. But I couldn’t; drafts of monsoon season air wormed their way through holes in my manmade womb. A wisp of ice curled around my toes. I flinched. This must be some sort of punishment, I thought. It might have been minutes or days later that I drifted off into the clammy sleep of the uneasy.

I saw Mei, dressed in a tight electric-green tube top and skinny jeans, dancing around my bed, menthol cigarette in between yellowed fingers. She looked like she was having the time of her life. Her lips were car-paint red. Tears were streaming down her face. They were the same shade as her lipstick. I knew, then, that that anorexic plastic surgery party animal was who she wanted to be, and she would be it the best she could, once she left the strangling confines of her country and her mother. Ah, mothers. How could I fail to see them? Hunchbacked, half-blind, terrible twins, each desiring that their child be the better child, the smarter child, the most enviable child. They sat next to my bed, mouthing chants and blessings upon their only baobei progeny. Droplets of ink started raining down, mixing with their pious tears and my own sickly sweat. I tried to scream but my mouth was stuffed with paper.

“Boy ah, boy ah, boy ah, wake up! Boy ah, boy ah!”

Chubby, slightly drooping jowls. Hair permed and dyed and teased to the height of 1980’s fashion. Horn-rimmed glasses overwhelming beady eyes that shone full of unconditional love. Mother. I mumbled a reply, the sleep-fuzz in my mouth threatening to choke me.

“Boy, I went to Dr. Wong for you. I told him your symptoms already, he gave me medicine. You ah, never fall sick one. Why this time? You have a job interview on Tuesday and one more on Thursday, you must get better soon.”

“Ma, how can he possibly give you medicine without me being around?”

I saw a flash of the kindly doctor, whistling a familiar tune, fluffing up the pillows for my mother, unwitting participant in my smothering.

“Never mind never mind, he give me means he give me. Don’t ask so much. I have boiled some soup for you already, I put it here on your dresser table OK? Must drink ah. Must eat your medicine. Good boy!”

She left, her Dior J’adore lingering in the room as if to make sure I followed her well-meaning orders.

—

I remember back when I was trapped in the clutches of National Service, my mother and I had a huge argument, possibly the worst quarrel I will ever have with her. I was a clerk, several rungs of respect lower than the lowest recruit, but at least I got to go home every night when the rest of the guys were confined to double-decker beds and 10 p.m. lights-out curfews. Yet, I had chosen to stay in camp for days on end, going home on the weekends with the rest of my friends.

Everybody thought I was crazy, not least dear Mother. How she screamed in indignation that I was drifting away from her, I was an ingrate, leaving her lonely and lost at home. Without an object of affection to occupy her heart, it seemed, she would have to turn into a monster in moisturizing mask and curlers, sobbing at the cruelty of life in front of the television.

“Why must you always tell me what to do? I have listened to you all my life. All my life. Which school I went to, which tuition centres I applied to, sometimes even, even, what clothes to wear. I drink your vile soup every night. I haven’t met Mei in months. What more do you want from me, huh, what more?”

“How can you say that to me? Do you know how painful this heart is? All my life I only have you. You know your father ran away when you were just born, and I have to take care of you by myself for so long? Do you know how I am bleeding, here, but you cannot see it? I want the best for you but you see nothing. How can you say that to me?”

I would have cracked my mother’s glass heart more, I believe, had I not met Paul and joined his church camp.

I measured out thick, sickly-sweet syrups and inspected the clinical buffet of multicoloured pills fraternizing in my hand. I drank the soup, black and bitter, sadomasochist’s coffee. I found myself remembering for days afterward the taste of Dr. Wong and my mother, mingling in my throat.

—

“Mei, promise me this one thing.”

She looked at me quizzically. The day had arrived. It was just me and her at the airport, no friends, no family. We were standing slightly too far apart. The only accompaniment to our last words was the sound of bags unloading and the departing footsteps of crumpled businessmen.

“Promise me that you won’t turn into some foulmouthed, SPG skank. And promise me that you will never buy anything in electric green.”

“David, what on earth are you talking about? I hate partying and you know I only swore that one time. But you asked me for two promises. What if electric green becomes the new black?”

She allowed me to see her smile, quickly and quietly.

“You have to promise me something, too.”

She paused. I suddenly saw the small girl, neat pigtails guarding her soft oval face, tears streaming one by one down her cheeks, mouth clamped shut in the disavowal of her own presence.

“Never stop believing, David. Especially not because of me.”

It seemed like the airport had turned to glass. I felt like I could see planes overhead, angling their way up into the clouds. I caught a breath of cold stratosphere.

“I always thought you disapproved.”

“I was wrong. Everyone’s entitled to their own search for truth. And I’m not saying this just because your friend Paul calls me an aggressive atheist.”

I suppressed a snort as I saw Mei in my mind’s eye, dressed in a black velvet robe, broom by her side, requisite wart on her nose, burning bibles and cackling in the secrecy of her boudoir.

“Yeah, yeah, he still does.”

Mei frowned as if not fully daring to say what was on her mind. She shook her head slightly, her gentle curls patiently taking in the harsh morning sun.

“David, something has changed in you these last few years. I think Paul would like to call it humility, but I’m not sure what it is exactly. I puzzle over it sometimes, wondering why I make so much out of seeing it in you. The way you blinked when I laughed at you after you told me the meaning of life. The way you wiped your mouth after your salad the other day. The way you look right now.”

I stared at my toes for a long time, searching for the right words to say. I looked up, into the face of the girl who for the longest time made me feel like a stranger in my own skin. Finally my mouth opened, the sounds slipped out.

“Mei, will you sit here with me awhile?”

She stayed until a flight attendant called out her name over the intercom in the detached urgency of an immaculate professional.

“Last call for passenger Mei Lim, Mei Lim. Your flight is departing in five minutes. Mei Lim, please.”

I could almost imagine the stern woman behind the voice, lips pursed, writing down Mei’s name in a little blue book. Mei turned to me and smiled again. Then she was gone. But I could still see her plane, rolling off the runway, striving for the sky.