Free Maid In Singapore by Kishore Modak Page B

that you gave me,’ she added.
    So our money had gone
towards looking after our child, a small-big justice.
    ‘We went to Cebu
and lived with my uncle, a kind man, a fisherman who accepted us and
let us be with him in the fishing villages. Rafael goes out to sea,
now that Uncle has become old, but I don’t want him to waste
his life fishing, I want him to go to the university’.
    Rafael Kettlewood,
gliding in his skiff on the South China Sea, casting his net and
bringing in a living for his family; while Jay Kettlewood enjoyed a
lawyer’s life on Wall Street, it was a new mental image, with
two boys instead of one, with sea added to an urban skyscraper
landscape. They did not mix and remained separate in my mind.
    On the lawn in front, a
fight broke out over a contentious stumping, two boys rolled on the
makeshift pitch, lashing out at each other.
    ‘I know I will
fail, but I will try till I fail,’ she whispered, wistfully.
    ‘Fail?’ I
simply asked.
    ‘Yes, fail. There
is no way of plucking Rafael from the fishing village and planting
him in the university. Even if I could make that much money, it would
be tough. No one from the village thinks anything beyond the sea.
It’s either fishing or entertaining the tourists that have
appeared in the recent years. There is no life beyond that,’
she explained.
    ‘A life on the
sea is not a bad life, it is clean and can be happy,’ I said.
    ‘You are right,
and he will take care of me when I am old, our home is enough for us,
but I want him to break out so that his children have a better chance
at making an education.’
    Jay would not care for
me; I would die alone here in the flat, my body waiting for his
arrival, to hurriedly conclude my rites before the final passage. It
did not really bother me.
    ‘What does he
usually catch,’ I asked with a smile. I don’t know why
that thought popped up, type of fish my son harvested. Son or
grandson?
    ‘Spanish
Mackerel, Ski-Jack, Grouper, Snapper- fish, Blue Marlin, Mahi-Mahi,
Silver-fish and so many others,’ she replied, almost in a
litany, with a smile.
    I gathered courage
before asking her ‘Who is Rafael’s father?’
    I had spoken the boy’s
name, uttered it from my mouth, and imbibed him by mere utterance.
Sight acquaints, but does not internalize subjects the way speech
does, like just now, when the tip of my tongue had touched the roof
of my mouth, before carrying the sound, ‘Rafael’, through
my breath, accepting him, leaving him internalized.
    ‘I don’t
know, mum, I also don’t care, I will take care of him,’
she replied, shutting her handbag.
    The boys on the lawn
had resumed their game, scruffier and evermore determined, a little
pace bowler charged in from the far end of the lawn, almost from near
the lily pond beyond.
    ‘You do not care,
but I do. Who do you think is his father?’ I asked with
authority—after all she had been my maid and that flavour of
relational dominance remained.
    ‘Swear on Jesus,
mum, I don’t know,’ was all that she said, and I believed
her because she would not have used the Lord’s name, unless
cornered.
    ‘I want to ask
you, how did it happen, I mean I saw you with sir so I know, but what
about Jay?’ the dam of inhibitions had been broken and my
questions began to flow, gushing through the sluice, relieving the
pressure created by their build-up over time.
    ‘Same way, mum.
Just like sir,’ she was looking down in shame.
    Krishna, my inner voice
cried, had Jay also inherited his father’s perversity? If Mary
was to be believed, it certainly seemed so.
    ‘How many times
did you do it with Jay?’ I asked.
    ‘A few, but it
was a long time back and I am sorry it happened that way,’ she
grabbed her bag, crying as she rose, moving away, in grief.
    On the lawn, the
winning team celebrated with hugs and back slaps while the losers
held their little heads low, the pace bowlers arms resting stiff on
folded, buckling knees, in tired submission as they left