Episode Three: The Young Male Leaves the Pride
For two weeks now time had pursued him relentlessly, an anxious, endless ouroboros of daylight and nightfall, and Nick found himself cataloguing—extensively, meticulously—every one of his waking hours, fearing the hours of sleep during which time gained on him. Each morning was a new day, one less day. At the breakfast table he watched his mother drink her coffee; he watched his father butter toast. He felt an urgent need to capture the mood, the atmosphere: the angle at which sunlight slanted through the window grilles, the morning breeze through the kitchen windows that stirred the beaded curtains in the doorway, the crisp diction on the 24-hour news channel playing faintly from the living room. Every beautiful, tiny, everyday moment he had previously taken for granted he now clutched to with desperation.
He had felt a certain somberness while packing his suitcase: the brand-new thermals for the child of the equator, spicy sambal and chili sauces in anticipation of the homesick tongue. There was a sorrow in the sorting of old photographs and birthday cards, picking what he would take with him, already missing what he could not. It was silly—with modern telecommunications, it would be like he’d never even left home. His great-grandparents had survived on letters mailed by sea; the internet would serve him fine.
He had not been able to fall asleep knowing he would be leaving in the morning, and now he sat up in bed to squint at his clock. It was too late to get eight hours in. The next best thing, he supposed, would be to fall asleep at all. Nick swung his legs off the top bunk and shimmied down the ladder in the darkness, his muscle memory faultless from years of repetition. His brother was asleep on the bottom bunk—his baby brother, once afraid of heights, now 15 and already the tallest in the family. Someday soon his brother would outgrow their childhood bunk bed, and by the time Nick returned he would find it already replaced, never to be seen again. He patted the wooden bedframe. For years he had campaigned for separate twin beds, and now the imminence of his success saddened him.
He felt his way slowly out his bedroom and towards the living room, turning on the television and using its blue glow to locate the remote. He was hoping for a panel show or a cartoon, something comforting to pass the time, but it seemed that he was too early or too late. He flicked through the channels: a rerun of a daytime soap opera, an old black-and-white film, a home-shopping program. At last he found a nature documentary about lionesses. He liked lionesses. The narrator’s calm, pleasant voice was lulling, and he thought he could recall, faintly, a presentation, a felt lioness, well-thumbed note cards. He turned on the subtitles and dropped the volume to a whisper. He seemed to have been just in time to catch the beginning.
Episode One: Welcome to the Pride
“My favorite animal,” Nick said as he slid his worksheet under the overhead projector with dramatic flourish, “is the lioness.”
On the vinyl projector screen a lioness, cut out of a piece of khaki felt, loomed threateningly, white felt teeth bared in a red felt mouth, intimidating in every way except for her googly eyes. “Lion prides are matriarchal,” he began. “That is, they are in fact run by lionesses. Lionesses are—”
“Lionesses are for girls,” Derek shouted from his seat at the back of class. “Boys like lions.”
Nick had seven note cards of presentation content painstakingly copied from reference texts in the library, and he could probably fill just as many note cards about his animosity towards Derek. He glared at him now. “That is not a scientific observation,” he said.
“Lions are the kings of the jungle,’”Derek said. “They fight. And kill. They’re cool.
Lionesses are useless lions… so if you like them,” he sneered, “you’re a pussy.”
Nick wasn’t sure what that meant, but he could feel the force, the venom, with which it had been hurled. He shuffled his note cards mindlessly, nervously, not looking at them. A single note card, any card, would easily provide plenty of facts with which he could rebut Derek’s point—but it didn’t feel like that kind of argument. Instead he looked Derek dead in the eye from across the classroom and said, calmly but loudly, “Fuck you.”
This was exciting new linguistic terrain for him, and he wished then that he’d had the foresight to practice it in anticipation of its use—his own words, over-enunciated, seemed to carry none of the casual insolence he had heard from the older kids shouting it to each other in the park. He had not really understood what it meant, either, except that Aunt Sheila had expressly forbade him from repeating it, so he knew it had to be a good one.
Pronunciation aside, it had, indeed, been a good one—Derek and Nick spent the rest of English stood in opposite corners of the classroom, and when the period ended they were summoned to the teacher’s table and made to apologize to each other and shake hands. Nick wasn’t the least bit sorry—lionesses were indisputably the heart of the lion pride. Derek was annoying, and stupid, and wrong, and ignorant, and after the boys did the apologies and the handshakes they immediately mouthed their respective profanities at each other again.
King of the jungle was an undeserved title, Nick thought, mulling over the facts he had collected. Lions fought to protect or take over territory, living fast and dying young. They hunted, but not to feed the pride. Lionesses, however, understood teamwork, and collaboration, and all the multisyllabic words on the motivational posters around the classroom. They hunted together and had the higher success rates to show for it. They brought the kill back to the pride, where—injustice of injustices—the lions got to eat first. It simply wasn’t fair. The lions did not build the pride, they just stormed in, fought the existing lions, killed the cubs so the mothers would have cubs with them instead. Lionesses, however, were cool—they formed a sisterhood, all lionesses were equal, and they would even look after the cubs in the pride that weren’t their own. In that way they reminded him of his aunts, the way they would cook dinner for everyone when the extended family gathered at his grandmother’s house on the weekends. He liked lionesses.
Lions were different though. During the weekends when they descended upon his grandmother’s flat, shoes were kicked off and left in a haphazard pile by the front door, a puzzle to solve later. It never bothered them, but if it bothered you, feel free to tidy up; they were big men, living for big moments, and could not be burdened with the trivialities of daily life. They opened newspapers and grumbled about politics and the stock market, and even as Nick milled about the living room none of them would talk to him. He was, after all, only a child, sitting on the floor, standing in the doorways, watching these men on their soft thrones embroidered by calloused female hands worn rough with domestic labor.
They bemoaned the state of the world, the way society was going, today’s youth. “Spoiled,” an uncle pronounced with contempt. “Soft. They have it too easy. Now they won’t do anything properly.” He closed the broadsheet carelessly, its pages misaligned, then bent the paper lengthwise and tossed it onto the coffee table. It landed in a crumpled heap, knocking a coaster onto the floor. Nick watched, waiting. His uncle didn’t pick it up.
Aunt Sheila picked the coaster off the floor and replaced it on the table. Nick was happy to see her—if she was at his grandmother’s house, she would take him to the park. This unspoken arrangement had begun when his baby brother arrived, earlier than expected, and he was having a difficult time adapting—his mother would be in the guest room feeding the baby, and his father, debating an uncle on some geopolitical issue or other, paid him no mind. He had pouted and sat by the front door alone, staring at his grandmother’s money plant growing by the parapet in the shared corridor. It was his aunt who had found him eventually, and she sat down beside him. The plant, too big for its pot and makeshift trellis, had begun its ascent up the corridor wall, the variegated leaves along its vines edging their way into the sunshine. Would it grow to the roof, he wondered. It seemed possible that with enough sun and water, it could go on growing forever.
“Hey,’”Aunt Sheila said at last. “You wanna pop outside for a bit?”
He whipped around to look at her. The oyster of the world beyond his grandmother’s flat—a few blocks of flats painted in a similarly dull color scheme of rust and ochre, an abandoned primary school, a small community center across the road, and the park on the hill—was all hitherto unexplored territory. Granted, not a very big oyster, but attractive in his circumstances. He nodded eagerly. Aunt Sheila stood up. “Let’s go, then,” she said, mischievously kicking away the shoes that had been left on top of hers. “I promise we’ll have fun.”
Aunt Sheila was as good as her word. On sunny days they visited the park, and on rainy afternoons they went to the tiny library in the community center. Together they would walk through the neighborhood, its bakeries and scent of hot, fresh sweet breads and pandan waffles, the old-fashioned minimarts selling newspapers and soap bubble toys. Sometimes they stopped by the ice-cream freezer to pick up something cold for their walk up the hill to the park; Aunt Sheila would buy him the ice lollies that his parents never allowed him to get, the kinds with the artificial colors that turned his tongue fluorescent. In the evenings she herded him safely back over the zebra crossings and up the elevator to his grandmother’s flat, where his mother would be waiting for them. He hadn’t realized it at the time, but when he came home at the end of the afternoons out with Aunt Sheila, he no longer resented his brother for taking up his mother’s attention.
It would be time for dinner, then, and the extended family would gather around the long marble table. His aunts had slaved away all afternoon, a team effort, and now plates of hot food, good food, covered nearly every inch of the table. Dinner marked the start and end of the evening, and in this way the Sundays passed—ordinary Sundays, run-of-the-mill Sundays, nothing-special Sundays.
Episode Two: Time
Recall the scene of the table being set at dinnertime. The table normally seats six but seems now to expand infinitely, making room for all. The small kitchen is alive with movement, chatter, the rhythmic clink of tableware, the warmth and aroma of homemade food cooked with love. Hear the resonance of porcelain spoons against porcelain rice bowls, the bright clink as each bowl finds its place around the table. The electric rice cooker on the countertop beeps, finally. Lift the lid and wisps of steam rise; the fragrance of jasmine rice fills the room.
Dinner is ready, now.
The serving dishes are laid out on the dinner table: whole fish braised in a glossy sauce; vegetables crisp and bright, stir-fried in aromatics; hearty herbal chicken soup in a painted earthenware pot. Marvel in, delight, praise—the unvarying response to a compliment about the food is simply a reserved smile and an exhortation to eat more, eat more.
In reversed order of seniority everyone invites everyone else to eat, and so they do. How fortunate are those able to share in this meal, this labor of love, for all the feasts in the world—lavish or grand or celebratory, made with pride but not love—will never replicate the pleasures of these ordinary Sunday family dinners.
~
The kitchen is quiet now. Unoccupied, even the air has acquired a stale, forsaken quality. The fridge, emptied and unplugged, does not hum. The marble dining table has been put away, the tablecloth draped over it sun-worn and sticky. Lift a corner of the drapery. Consider whisking it off to set the table legs straight, to lay the marble tabletop flat over it. Its surface will need a good wiping, too. The marble is green and white streaks cut across with brown veins, except it’s not marble, of course, it was never marble, only a laminate.
Reconsider opening the table. Let the corner of the tablecloth fall. What good is opening the table? Today is Sunday, but there is not to be a dinner here tonight; there has not been one in a while. Where does it all go, time? It slips out of pockets, falls through the gaps between the sofa cushions, lies safe and warm and forgotten amidst lint, crumbs, loose change. Time, that untouchable gazelle, off at top speed, slipping deftly from beneath an outstretched paw. No barricades to stop time, no restraints to slow time; we will lose, we will always lose, because when it comes to time all we can do is lose it.
The sky is gauzy pink and orange at evening’s approach. Isn’t it beautiful—or sad— how the sun never sets the same way twice? Look out the familiar window, the unchanging sight of the flats opposite, their lit windows, their laundry hung out to dry on bamboo poles.
No one is privy to all of the little, private tragedies that play out unspoken behind the squares of windowpane.
Lionesses are majestic, elegant, apex predators, rulers of the savanna. They are egalitarian; they are affectionate. They are smart and brilliant hunters. They are wounded easily by the horns and hooves of prey. They are susceptible to diseases. They are shot at and poisoned by poachers, farmers, trophy hunters. Their greatest threats are anthropogenic—habitat loss and its associated pressures. The lionesses dwindle in numbers, the cubs grow up, the pride splits.
In the living room, dust spirals in the last fading rays of sunlight; out in the corridor, the plants pots stand empty, only dried earth and withered leaves. It is time to go. No one visits this old flat anymore. Of those Sundays long past, nothing remains—no photographs, no recipes. No one thinks to preserve what they assume will last forever.
Episode Four: On His Own, Now
Nick’s flight goes perfectly smoothly until, in between films on the inflight entertainment system, he looks out the window. The vast cloudless skies throw him for a loop. He lowers the window shade quickly.
He had pushed his luggage trolley through the departure gates earlier, then looked back at the friends and family he had left behind in the departure hall. His mother had been cheerful, wishing him good luck, and as they spotted each other from behind their respective sides of the glass departure gate she smiled brightly, waving him off like it was his first day of school, like they would see each other again in only a few short hours. It reminded him of how she used to pick him up—tiptoeing to be seen in the crowd of parents and caretakers, a big wave so he could spot her. God, he’s not going to cry, is he? He hadn’t even cried on his first day of school. You can’t cry now, Nick tells himself, don’t cry don’t cry don’t cry. He doesn’t even realize how shallow and fast he’s breathing until the elderly woman next to him is telling him to take deep breaths, it’s okay.
“First time?” she asks. He nods, even though it’s not true.
“Flying is horrid, isn’t it?” she says, smiling. “You’re doing well.”
She tells him to drink a little water, and so he does, one shaky sip. He feels the water cold on his lips, in his mouth, down his throat, and something about the sensation is calming, somehow. He drinks a little more, and the woman bends to grab the purse stowed under her seat.
“Here,” she says, “this always helps me when I fly.”
In her palm is a little bag of lozenges—colored stripes across the paper packet, a large logo across the front. Nick doesn’t like them, but he recognizes them immediately. The minimart across the road from his grandmother’s house had them stocked in every flavor, the boxes displayed in rainbow order across the glass cabinet that doubled as the checkout. These minimarts were the same across every neighborhood: sleepy, nondescript, a place for homemakers to squeeze in a chat while they picked up soy sauce or a loaf of bread, grateful for an adult interaction after a day of Teletubbies. In time the minimarts would be displaced by large supermarket chains moving into the neighborhoods, but right now, as the woman shakes a lozenge into his palm, the stripy packet crinkles, it rustles, it resurrects the old minimart full-color in his mind’s eye.
Nick sits beside his aunt on the bar stools in front of the glass cabinet, listening to her chat to the shopkeeper. They are friends from school, and Nick wonders which of his own classmates will grow up to run a minimart. Aunt Sheila’s friend didn’t have a choice, so he supposes it probably depends on whose family is already running a minimart. The round leather seat he is perched on has been worn soft and shiny with use, and he can feel a strip of gaffer tape along the piping. The ceiling fan in the corner swivels languidly, left to right, right to left, and in response the thin tearaway sheets of the lunar calendar hanging on the wall flutter, still, flutter, still.
He puts his elbows on the surface of the cabinet and rests his face on his palms. The conversation is light laughter and conversational shorthand the way only old friends can; Nick, barely on the fringes of understanding, is restless but knows it would be impolite to show it. In his experience, time simply must be suffered. Life seldom moves fast enough for a six-year-old.
He looks out the shopfront. The leaves on the trees lift and flutter in the wind; as the breeze moves through them, momentarily exposing their light undersides, the trees seem to shimmer. The weather is fair, well-suited for an afternoon at the park. They shouldn’t still be sitting here—the afternoon is so short, and their conversation is so long. He wants to race up the hill, wants to kick his legs out on the playground swings as high and fast as he can go, king of the world.
But Nick, slow down, don’t go so fast, what’s the hurry? In a different time he will drive past the minimart again before it closes for good. It’s the same one, or perhaps not—it seems smaller, somehow, the signboard faded, paint flaking off its outdoor display shelves. In his parents’ car, they drive past the neighborhood park, too, everything the same except the boy in the backseat, grown up or just about, not on the way to his late grandmother’s house but leaving Aunt Sheila’s wake. Brief, bright bursts of lightning split the sky; rain drums incessantly on the roof of the car. It is a bad day, the worst day for an afternoon at the park, and as Nick gazes out the window it comes back to him unbidden: rain, rain, go away.
He has not been to the park in a long time, and he is ashamed that he has not thought of it more often in the intervening years. There it is, unchanged, through the sheets of rain—the paved stairs winding up the hill, lined on both sides with large rocks and frangipani trees, the pink and white flowers in perennial bloom. The car rounds the curve in the road along the park.
He sees a lioness near the base of the hill, in the shadow of the foliage. She sits at rest, her front paws splayed in front of her, serenely surveying the landscape. They make eye contact through the rain-streaked glass of the passenger window, or perhaps Nick only thinks they do. She blinks her large amber eyes.
He wrenches himself backwards as the car hurtles on, straining to get another look. He scans the terrain, desperately trying to make out shapes and shadows half-remembered from childhood—the kingdom to which he can never return. The car is moving too fast. The silvery moonlight falls upon the hillside. It is only a grey featureless savanna in the thunderstorm. He rubs his eyes—no lioness. Then the park is entirely out of sight.
Now Nick puts the mint lozenge on his tongue. The menthol burns with an intensity he associates with heat, and he is immediately tempted to spit it out. He shifts the lozenge around his mouth, knowing that if he just sits with the discomfort it will eventually come to pass. He closes his eyes and returns to his grandmother’s neighborhood, where he is running towards the park, clattering noisily over the steel drain covers on the pavement. He has to stop before the last traffic island, because he is not yet allowed to cross the road by himself. The sun is hot on his back. He turns around, shielding his eyes with his hands. Come on, he calls, rocking back and forth on his heels. He is impatient, fettered when all of the world is just out there, and he cannot wait until he can finally explore it all on his own. Aunt Sheila, always sparky in memory, pretends to gather up the skirt of her dress to run; her orange dress is luminous in the sunlight.
Sabrina Lim Fang is a Singaporean writer primarily interested in the short story and its form. Her other interests include reading, visual art, and cats. Her short fiction has been published in The Rumpus and 3:AM Magazine.
Header photo by liyastock, courtesy Shutterstock. Photo of Sabrina Lim Fang by Si Ying Lu.
