Though I Get Home Read online

  Her hands slapped the front door. She floated upright. The fear ratcheted up, doubling, tripling, infiniting. She pushed down hard on the handle and unleashed water everywhere. It tackled her by the legs, forcing her forward like a mob into the yard, then flattened her so it could trample on top and race ahead faster, gathering rage.

  Her ears popped when she resurfaced. The front yard was a filthy swamp with random islands of bald dirt rising above opaque sludge. Her clotheslines were still cinched tightly to a tree trunk on one end, but the other drooped, trailing off into the marsh, offering hope and help to whomever might fall in.

  It took her almost a minute before she noticed she wasn’t alone. Her neighbor, Mrs. Rao, was in her own front yard, soaked to the skin. She was bent over, examining something Isa couldn’t make out over the low wall separating their two houses. Isa scratched her own skin. It itched from the flood, lukewarm indoors but cooling now, the wetness not so much crusting on her skin as growing into it, melding and putting down roots.

  Mrs. Rao’s hair was plastered to her skull, streaks of scalp showing. A drip of water fell from her forehead.

  “Texture macam yogurt,” she announced as Isa splashed closer, referring to the mud. “Milo yogurt.”

  “Hmm,” Isa assented. She surveyed the damage in her neighbor’s yard. A rattan stool with rigid strands unfurled and sticking out like broken springs, and rock-hard sofa squares covered in flowery fabric. An old boom box stranded nearby, a glistening rectangularity.

  That night, tossing on a motel bed, Isa dreamed of Gong Gong, strumming an abacus like an instrument, smiling the whole time.

  Kuala Lumpur was no London. Hell, come to that, it wasn’t even Shanghai or Singapore. Sure it tried hard enough; there were things like Berjaya Times Square, the world’s largest something or other built by a French company, and Tribeca Kuala Lumpur, “a contemporary expression of downtown living.” Cyberjaya answered to Silicon Valley. But no: it was like buying counterfeit Gucci and Prada, just not the same at all.

  At least her sublet was in the heart of this wannabe metropolis. Isa watched a sliver of skyline beckoning between two office towers across the street. Her mother had just called, and Isa had let it go to voice mail. She didn’t feel like explaining for the umpteenth time why she’d chosen to move by herself to KL when there was a perfectly fine spare bedroom in her mother’s semidetached unit.

  “It’s just for a while, until they restore my place,” Isa’d said.

  “How long?”

  “One month, maybe two.”

  “Wah! Must be expensive! How come must take so long?”

  “The flood did quite a bit of damage, Mum.”

  “You won lotto meh? Come stay with me lah! I cook for you!”

  But no, Isa had preferred to interpret the flood as a sign. She’d been ready to leave her job anyway. Bigger things awaited, she felt sure of it.

  She reached for a laptop on the dining counter, which was positioned only a few feet from the front door. The studio was undeniably small. She planned on living frugally and alone for a while, so the size suited her.

  On the laptop’s screen was a colorful poster. While exploring KL, she’d seen a paper copy tacked to the trunk of a streetlamp, but that one had been stripped of its vibrant colors by tropical heat and humidity. The poster called, in English and Malay, for a congregation of citizens. It prophesized the biggest peaceful demonstration against governmental corruption and injustice the country had ever seen.

  Isa felt vaguely ashamed. She had read in the newspapers about rampant corruption at the top, of course, but living in a small town had somehow removed all urgency from the topic. Taxes kept rising, while the ringgit kept dropping. More and more people had been arrested for dissent (called “sedition” by those in power). In Taiping, these events had seemed as remote and immovable as the mountains, always there, bringing rain or blessing fair weather as they wished. It had never occurred to her that she could do something about it. But now that she was in the heart of the action, she could feel the restless power of the people crackling like static in the air. She wanted to hum along with it, tune into the frequency.

  She got up early the day of the protest. She was ready. There was a chicken floss bun in the fridge and a new orange shirt laid out at the foot of the bed. It was hours still until the protest. On the internet, a rumor was going around that the government had ordered a shutdown of LRT and monorail lines. It seemed silly, hoping to thwart protesters by taking away public transportation that was infuriatingly unpredictable to begin with. She sneered. Yeah, that would make angry people shrug and go home all right.

  The orange shirt was one she had picked out at random in a pasar malam. It was several shades off from the “official” orange modeled by organizers in posters, really more persimmon than tangerine. But with a bandanna tied around her forehead, there could be no doubt who she was with.

  When she was still a secondary school student, then Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad had vowed that Malaysia would become a developed nation by 2020. She had been impressed back then, awed that one man could make such a grandiose promise and be responsible for dragging a whole nation to the peak in his wake. Now there were only a handful of years left until the deadline, and one dollar from neighboring Singapore was worth more than three ringgit. They were about to default on that mad boast, and Isa realized that there had been nothing wonderful about one man staking a whole country’s honor in such a spectacular way. She felt that Mahathir had signed away some inexpressible thing that belonged in part to her. Somehow, it fell upon the citizens to feel sheepishly ashamed.

  She chugged a whole cup of coffee and regretted it. What if there were no bathrooms? She might have to hold it in for hours and hours.

  One last look at the event invite for walking directions. A mouse scroll brought into view a photo of a sinewy young man. Isa felt a twinge looking at the face of the movement, his hair spiked and his arms crossed. So young. Years younger than she was, and they were calling him the hope of the nation.

  Foreign and local commentary alike were predicting crackdowns. If things get desperate, run—that was what she had read in her brief research on what to do during a demonstration.

  Outside, it was relatively cool, really quite a nice day for a protest. At least heat stroke was one less thing to worry about. Otherwise there might be more martyrs than expected, suffocated by halos of soaked cheesecloth air and shrouded in auras of sticky, weighty sweat. Isa walked along the edge of a tar road, staying in the shade thrown by tall buildings: banks and business towers and corporate plazas. The streets were unusually deserted. Afraid of looters, shop owners had shuttered their businesses for the day. The weather was so fine, though, that the scene did not seem sinister, nothing like a zombie movie. As she got closer to the designated congregation point, she fell in with others wearing orange, mostly young or middle-aged people of all races, and now and then a senior citizen. At least the seniors all seemed to be with companions, probably neighbors or family. But she’d seen an ad for fortified milk recently that had a CGI depiction of old bones snapping readily. It made Isa worry for them. She looked at one protester, layers of wrinkles barely holding up his cheeks.

  Her steps slowed. Somewhere ahead, the vanguard she couldn’t see had crawled to a stop. Overhead a helicopter buzzed by. Media? Police? To them the protesters must have looked like an accordion, the center packing into itself as more and more people shuffled in from the two opposite ends of the congregation point. Isa looked at a few people crossing the two-way road toward where she was standing. A sudden impulse made her want to push through the bodies and jostle her way to the middle of the road, onto a narrow divider overgrown with weeds stirring in the breeze. She wanted to skip along the divider, balancing herself, and clear this can of sardines. It could be a shortcut of sorts to the heart of the protest. But too many layers of people hemmed her in. It was probably safer being crushed like this anyway, she thought—strength in numbers. There wa
s no reason for her to feel uneasy.

  The crowd inched forward a bit more, and she saw them, the police, standing out in deep navy and some sort of helmet and gas mask combo. The respirator-helmet was bright red, just a little bit orange under the sun’s glare. The back of the contraption read “POLIS.”

  Many protestors looked expectant. Some seemed grim. At least—she looked up at the sky—it certainly would not rain today. Funny that she’d come to inspect clouds so minutely, never having been one of those kids who pretended that clouds looked like dogs or cars or whatever. The clouds looked nothing like anything. They were useful skybound tools that could offer a glimpse of the future.

  A speech started somewhere down the road. From the quality of the sound, someone was using a handheld megaphone. Isa stood on tiptoe to see better, but everyone else around was also agitating to be witnesses.

  “Demokrasi!” a man close behind her shouted abruptly, interrupting the speech and making her jump. She felt her heart thrum. There were isolated cheers and echoes in response to the outburst, but the majority seemed intent on listening to the unknown speaker. It must be the very young man featured on the poster.

  “Tanah tumpahnya darahku!” the voice projected, tinny. “This is the land on which our blood is spilt!”

  “Our blood! Yes! Our country!”

  Now the full force of the crowd could be heard. Sharp whistles and a blended roar traveled up and down the road, creating such a thick, substantial atmosphere that Isa felt she would be able to crowd surf on top. She was still unconsciously on tiptoe, smiling, not because she wanted to see better, but because she really did feel buoyed. This was right. Everything was right. She was here, and she mattered, and they would have to listen.

  She matched every inch gained by those ahead, shuffling her feet along. They all wanted to be closer, hear the young man better.

  “Where is our money?” he roared.

  “Who gave Leonardo DiCaprio Marlon Brando’s Oscar?” he demanded.

  “Why does the PM’s wife have so many handbags? Whose money paid for Miranda Kerr’s jewelry?”

  “Ours! Ours! Ours!” everyone chanted.

  “Make them explain! This is our country, not theirs, no matter what they say. When they say you are not patriotic, you say you are! Because you love Malaysia”—cheers—“you do not tolerate those who are greedy and want to suck the country dry. We love Malaysia! The PM does not love Malaysia!”

  “He does not!” screamed the crowd.

  “Let’s make him explain! Tell us where our money went!” the youth’s voice cracked. Isa’s heart soared. They would now wind their way through the streets of KL until they reached the royal palace, where they would submit a petition asking the prime minister to step down. They had been assured it was a respectfully worded document.

  The procession snaked for maybe three hundred feet, then convulsed. She tripped into the person right ahead. Behind her, the wall of humans started jostling, food atoms in a microwave.

  “Hey!” she cried out, shoved off-balance again.

  “Merdeka!” someone shouted.

  “Merdeka! Merdeka!” Different sections of the crowd picked it up.

  “Demokrasi!”

  A loudspeaker whinnied from far off, then a different voice came on, not the youth. “Everyone! Friends! Do not provoke. Do not push the police! They are allowing us to walk peacefully to the palace. Stay on the path!”

  Smattered booing. Isa tried to keep pace as well as she could, stepping on others’ shoes a few times. Suddenly the crowd ahead of her loosened, blank spaces appearing like in a slinky stretched. A cheer rose from behind, then everyone rushed forward, sweeping her along like so much flotsam. She hurried her feet and thought of the flood, feeling suspended in some thick jelly medium, legs paddling uselessly in place. The crowd veered sharply. Then chaos. Some people screamed for them to stop and go back the way they’d come, while others shouted the imperative to push forward and show the country what people power looked like.

  When the nets of tear gas whirred over her personal piece of sky, Isa ran. Those who had buoyed her up had scattered. The loudspeaker had ceased; no more instructions from voices high and thin in their effort to carry. She ran blindly and immediately started choking, stumbling onto one knee. She had not cried during the young man’s passionate speech, but tears came hard now, government chemicals turning her body on itself.

  She was on both knees. Not fair, she kept thinking. My tears are supposed to be for me, to cry for my country swooning to ruins. It shouldn’t be like this. I haven’t even cried for my father yet.

  A hand hauled her up by one armpit. She sucked in a big gulp of air in surprise and pain. Her body rose, hacking and choking, against her will. She was shuffled lopsided down the street, away from the advancing tear gas trucks. She tried to lift her head to see how far away the enemy loomed. She couldn’t; she was puking dry toxic air. A damp shirt met her outstretched hand. Someone gloved her hand with their own and helped clamp the shirt over her nose and mouth. She struggled. The hand became a vise. Soon she realized she felt better. The soggy shirt was acting as a filter, keeping out some of the poisoned air. What was it wet with? Drain water? Rain puddles? Sweat? Spit? Urine?

  The trucks closed in. The arc of their discharge sagged and swelled, sagged and swelled, gaining ground. In another moment their ejection would splash over her.

  Isa’s handler changed directions. They had been limping along the traffic road, taking the same path the trucks took, trying to outrun them. Now they swerved, making a diagonal cut to get off the streets, heading toward a row of shuttered retail shops.

  “Help! Tolong! Open!” It was a man holding on to her, and he had a deep voice. Close to her nose, a fist started banging on the shutters of a watch repair shop, the pounding reverberating through her body. She tried to lean less against the man propping her up.

  “Please go away . . . I’m just a poor shopkeeper! Please lah, I can’t help you!” came the muffled reply through rusty shield-like shutters.

  They tried a few more shops, the sound of metal meeting fist punctuating their noisy attempts to breathe. Once, the fist slowed, came off the shutters, and shook itself around like a wet dog. She shrank. The man cursed.

  At last a kedai runcit lifted its gate. Isa stumbled in, shoved from behind. The Malay shopkeeper looked at her with pity visible even through tear-blurred eyes.

  She was steered toward a plastic stool. “Breathe,” a woman whispered. Isa felt a swell of gratitude, and more tears came. “Thank you,” she whispered back.

  The shopkeeper brought water. She looked up into his face. It was wrinkled at the ends of both eyes, but perfectly smooth everywhere else. She took the shirt off her face and shivered, inexplicably smelling the crispness of a sunny winter morning. She scanned faces to find the one who had gotten her away. A man, thin limbs, thick square eyebrows, nodded. Isa offered the shirt to him.

  “It’s not mine,” he said.

  Isa knew she was lucky. There had been arrests at the protest, people roughed up. The authorities had managed to sink their claws into the young face of the movement, who’d been held for days, then unceremoniously released. Since then, there had been no word from him, which was unusual. The movement issued statements saying he was recovering, but word on the internet was that the police had broken him, snapped his spirit like fragile old bones.

  Isa wondered what had been done to him. She imagined beatings, psychological tortures, and threats. Would she have held up in his place? How long? She tried to imagine, measuring her own worth. Which was the one that had gotten to him, physical or psychological?

  She felt surer about withstanding any mind tricks they might play on her, so it would probably be something physical that would make her succumb. But she had read that women could bear much more pain than men could. On the other hand, there were things, physical things, which could be done to women that were not usually done to men.

  Isa shuddered. She ab
andoned the thought exercise and got up for water and food. Her throat felt forever parched these days.

  Carefully, she spread open a greasy bundle of newspaper and banana leaf to reveal the nasi lemak wrapped within. Then she groped for her mouse and nudged the coconut rice aside to make way for navigation. She’d started feeling paranoid out there alone, so here she was, in the safety of her own place, ready to learn more about the secrets her government was keeping from her.

  She clicked on five articles, started four, and finished one. They were all about a recent scandal that would have made Malaysia, once again, an international laughing-stock, if only the international community actually cared enough about the country to pay attention. The Federal Court had reaffirmed Anwar’s sodomy conviction. It was ridiculous! Amazing enough that they had gotten away with locking up a deputy prime minister and opposition party leader for six years—six years!—over a charge like unnatural sex, of all things! Now it seemed there was a legion of shadowy, disposable young men waiting in the wings, ready to emerge, spread themselves wide, and swear, hand on Quran, that they had been sodomized by Anwar, thus giving the government another excuse to throw Anwar in jail. It would never end! They had found the perfect “crime,” one that could never be conclusively proven but that could be used to jail someone on the weight of false testimony alone, time and again.

  Isa heaved an oily sigh. Even that hurt, air sanding down her windpipe. She refreshed the news page, wanting the distraction of new outrage. The page loaded in fits, and before it was even done she’d caught two words that made her feel like her heart was making a run for it through her bowels. What was this? “Isa Sin,” her name. Why was she a top featured article? Frantic flashbacks to the day of the protest brought no answers—she had not done anything to draw attention to herself; as far as protesters went she had been average, even subpar, needing the help of others to escape the tear gas trucks. She had not incited anyone. The only sounds she had made were gasps for air. She hadn’t been one of those leading charges against fences of policemen either. What could it be?