Chapter Six. the Legend of Gertrude Khong
CHAPTER SIX
THE LEGEND OF GERTRUDE KHONG
By the time of the cremation, Adeline’s tolerance for rejection had been scraped clean.
“Fuck off,” she snarled when Tian tried to approach her afterward.
The Butterflies behind Tian witnessed all this.
Good, she thought. She let them watch as she got into Genevieve’s car, to return to Genevieve’s fancy house. She didn’t need them.
But she regretted it bitterly upon being alone again in the Hwangs’ guest bedroom, and certainly regretted it bitterly now, putting on her uniform again.
It had been three days of being back at school.
All of it had passed like a waking dream, an endless and indistinct routine of getting dressed and sitting through classes.
Her teachers were talking about the new “O” level exams, about entries into pre-university.
All Adeline could think of was the second night of the funeral, when she had found Tian smoking on the grassy slope behind the parlor.
Tian had asked if she was getting enough rest. Adeline had asked why she wasn’t playing cards with the others. “I was winning too much,” Tian replied casually. It had been impossible to tell if she was joking or not. “You smoke?”
When Adeline asked to try, Tian had extended the cigarette between two fingers, the end glowing. Adeline put it between her lips and inhaled. Smoke shot straight down to her lungs and she coughed all the way through it, Tian barely holding back laughter.
Adeline turned down another hit, but she’d sunk onto the patch beside Tian, and Tian hadn’t told her to go away.
Unlike all her sickly well-meaning teachers, Tian hadn’t even tried to talk to her.
Had simply reached over and squeezed Adeline’s knee with warm fingertips so familiar Adeline jolted.
Tian made to withdraw, but Adeline clutched her hand there instead, digging her nails in while wet breaths started to stutter up her throat.
Tian said nothing up till Adeline composed herself and let go.
She then continued to say nothing, just lit up another cigarette and let Adeline be there in silence.
Time had passed in markers of Tian’s clicking fingers brushing small spurts of fire onto new sticks, a slow bright rhythm.
For the first time since she’d seen her house burning, Adeline felt calm.
Pek Mun had eventually arrived, looking for Tian.
Tian seemed reluctant to leave, unconvinced that Adeline should be by herself.
Chafing at Pek Mun’s presence, Adeline dismissed her curtly.
It had turned out to be the last moment they were alone, and like the cremation she’d regretted it moments later.
Adeline’s comb snagged. She yanked at it. Caught on some tangle, it didn’t budge. She yanked harder, and felt a sharp pain in her scalp a second before the plastic cracked in her hands.
There was a knock on the door. “Adeline?” Cecilia, no doubt all ready to go. “Mommy says you should come eat breakfast before the bus comes, you’re running out of time.”
“Okay,” Adeline called back. She squeezed a broken half of the comb in her hand. The teeth dug into her palm. She squeezed harder, until she started smelling singed plastic, and then she dumped everything in the bin and started braiding her hair.
With a new bag that didn’t feel like hers yet, and new shoes that hadn’t been broken in, Adeline passed the white marble bust of Mother Marguerite at the school gates and braced herself for another chapel session.
As if the morning was conspiring against her, when they all filed into the pews, Adeline somehow ended up next to Elaine.
She and Elaine kept their arms pinned to their own sides as they mumbled through the hymns.
The Marias hadn’t harassed her since she’d come back.
They would jump on an absent father, but apparently dead mother was where they drew the line.
Her other classmates had been equally rabbity all week with guilty pity and awkward friendliness.
Adeline would rather they have just gone on avoiding her, as opposed to their harried I’m so sorrys and we’re all here for yous—or worse, attempts to give her a hug.
“We’re praying for you every morning,” Surya Mohanan had told her fervently.
That was almost worse. Who cared for some abstract Father when there were gods bestowing power right here?
Her fire belonged to a god that her mother had channeled in her own flesh.
After the service Adeline ditched her classmates to go to a dustier part of the school behind the chapel, treaded mostly by custodians.
Here, beside a disused water fountain, there was a narrow stairwell, and ten steps up those stairs was a door that girls claimed had been there since the school’s founding.
Never mind that the original building had only been one schoolroom with no stairs to speak of; the door was ancient-looking and led to the highest point in the school, so all sorts of girls made it special.
Most recently, the revivalists had claimed it for their meetings.
Since they were here three times a day—these days praying for her, apparently—Adeline hadn’t come up here in a while.
Here was where the fire of God was spreading through the youth, here was where the nation would begin to be transformed, here and other clock towers across the country, a generation suddenly coming to life—Bishop Lim could go on and on, almost bringing himself to tears.
Adeline didn’t know if the bishop knew what this place had been associated with, before the Marias took it over.
Until a few years ago, the older girls told the younger ones that the clock tower was where a girl called Gertrude Khong had killed herself.
Climbed up the maintenance ladder to the roof and jumped onto the lawn for the groundskeeper to find her.
Reasons why depended: she was pregnant, she was being bullied, she had failed her exams, she was having an affair with her math teacher, she was murdered, she was tormented by a demon.
It didn’t matter now. The Marias had probably cleansed all that unpleasant history with their boundless love and grace and the sheer beauty and kindness of their sweet spirits.
But aside from the Marias and aside from Gertrude Khong, it was a place Adeline liked to sit. She’d stumbled upon it years ago and liked watching the road below through the clockface. Something about the room always hummed to her, a latent energy that had not changed regardless of its reputation.
She was missing first period geography, but Mrs. Soh wasn’t allowed to be angry at her because her mother had died.
Lighting her fingertips and passing the flame from one finger to the next, more out of habit than anything, Adeline thought about her mother again, this time about how maybe she wouldn’t be dead if she’d been less weak about fire.
If her mother had not abandoned it then it would not have come looking to devour her, the fire would not have killed Adeline if she’d been in that house because she kept it close to her at all times, that she and Adeline were meant to be impossible together, forever, and now she was just—gone.
Adeline kept thinking of Tian, summoning fire like blinking.
That was how you held it. Not letting it swallow you, catch onto your hair, cook your skin.
“You can’t keep missing class.”
Adeline crushed the fire in her fist, blood pounding in her ears for one beat and then two before she felt ready to look up at Elaine. She was not in the mood to deal with the Marias now.
But strangely, Elaine was alone. She was standing imperiously in the doorway, yes, but En Yi and Siew Min were gone.
Adeline couldn’t remember the last time Elaine hadn’t been flanked.
“What do you want,” Adeline said flatly.
Elaine hesitated. “Spit it out. Where’s your friends?
They finally realized your money isn’t worth your personality?
They realized you were dragging them down?
I heard they hang out with Tan May Soon when you’re not around. ”
May Soon was Elaine’s vice head prefect; her mother was a semi-famous actress, and she was always bragging about invitations to star-studded events.
Elaine’s face reddened. “I was going to offer you condolences. You bitch,” she added in a rush, stumbling over the words as though they’d built up for so long but weren’t quite used to being out.
It was embarrassing for her, really. Adeline could only be amused.
“You kiss your boyfriend with that mouth?”
“Don’t talk about my boyfriend.”
“You’re the one always making your ugly boyfriend wait at the gate for you and talking about him where everyone can hear. He’s an ACS boy, his father is a minister, he’s a swimmer, he has a giant—”
“As head prefect,” Elaine almost shouted, “I was going to offer you support—”
“As head prefect.” Adeline couldn’t hold back the laugh. “Why are you here, anyway, if you’re so guāi? Did your mother die, too? Did she finally see you and get a heart attack?”
Elaine stomped her foot so loudly even Adeline was jolted.
She stormed right up to Adeline and bent down so they were eye to eye.
Adeline had to look up at her, and that truly terrible haircut, and the way anger blotched her cheeks and almost brought her to life.
“I take it all back,” Elaine seethed. “I’m glad your mom’s dead and your dad is a loser, you horrible—”
Adeline didn’t find out what she was, because she kicked Elaine in the knee. Elaine staggered backward as Adeline got to her feet, but with surprising quickness, she recovered and flew at Adeline.
Adeline jerked back too late and Elaine’s nails raked across her face. Her cheek split, blood gushing over her chin. As Elaine backed away, shocked at the sight, Adeline hit her right back.