Free Shadow Theatre by Fiona Cheong

me, standing so close now that I could
see, for the first time, what angmo hair was like, downy like an
animal's. It would be like touching an animal, I thought, while he
was introducing himself. Like gently stroking the breast of a
canary, a bird so used to living in the cage, if it were to be set
free in the morning, by sunset it would be dead.
    That's what I've heard, about the canary.
    "Jason Hill." He had stretched out his hand, so what was
there for me to do but shake it?
    So I shook his hand, his palm fleshy and heavy and slightly
sweaty.

    Since this fellow was the first foreigner ever to come up and
introduce himself to me, I was a bit wary, wondering what he
wanted. Usually, foreigners went for other types, right? Not
someone like me. I wasn't sexy enough for most of them, and
definitely not pretty enough. Even those who came here to the
East, as they put it, hunting for a Chinese wife, even they passed
me up. Those ex-army types. Foreigners all wanted someone
who looked like Shak, or Serena Chan (who, by the way, had
bought the house next-door to Ivan Anthony a few years after
we were out of school, and now the two of them had something
hot and secret going on, which all the neighbors knew about),
or Isabella, if Isabella weren't a Sister. This was how they were,
the angmos. Not so different from Chinese men, the traditional kind. Even if, mostly, they were looking for wives to stay
barefoot and pregnant, as Shak used to say, when she was in her
feminist mood, even so, the wives must be sexy. Or pretty. At
least one or the ocher.
    I don't remember how he got around to it, the fellow. One
minute he was telling me his name and saying, "You're Rose Sim,
aren't you?" and shaking my hand, while I looked past him to
where some teenagers were coming into the library, four or five
of them piling in through the revolving door and almost getting
stuck, and the next minute, he was asking me if it was true there
was a baby ghost following Shak around.
    His exact words were, Is it true your friend's being followed
by a baby ghost, the woman who lives in America? Shakilah.
Did I say her name right?"
    He hadn't said it right, so I pronounced it for him, and he
tried to imitate me, but his accent seemed to get in the way.
Still, it was better than his first attempt, so I didn't correct him
again.
    Also, I didn't know what he was talking about. A baby ghost.
Following Shak around? I knew at once it must have been Chandra
who had passed the rumor on to him. But where had Chandra heard it? I was sure she hadn't started it herself, because I had never
known her to have the imagination.

    "Rose? Do you mind my asking you?"
    More teenagers were coming into the library, and the
revolving door kept swinging around in a zigzag pattern of sunlight and shadows.
    We were near the bookshelves on the left side of that main
floor, in the PN section. I remember because of the bougainvillea outside the windows, flourishing so bright pink against the
glass. (The windows were closed because of the air conditioning, which was also why so many teenagers used our library,
because not many of the smaller branch libraries were airconditioned in those days.) I remember I had a cart with me, so
I must have been reshelving books when this Jason fellow had
come up and started talking to me. I could feel the metal handle against my fingers, and I could see, when the revolving door
slowed down, outside the air was moist, the heat shimmering
over the cement steps and the sago palms at the edge of the
library garden.
    Sometimes the evocation of a spirit is enough to bring it
near, you know, but there was nothing. I saw and felt nothing.
So I asked this Jason fellow why he wanted to know about the
baby ghost.
    "You have a lot of ghost stories," he said. He smiled, his eyes
bluer than the sea, I noticed. "You Singaporeans, I mean. You
tell a lot of ghost stories. Every Singaporean has a ghost story
in the family