Another hot day, Mei Li sighed as she walked under the shade of a line of jutting roofs. She yawned into her hand and, as she did so, bumped into the shoulder of an old bent woman. She turned to apologize only to recoil on seeing the pair of sunken sad eyes staring back at her. Bowing her face away in shame and confusion, she scuttled along the path, winding her way through the oncoming crowd.
A partially completed dam loomed ahead, like a yawning monument of men lost during its construction. Mei Li shivered as the thought crossed her mind then quickly she crossed the busy double lane road and ran up a flight of steps on the other side, leading to the tailoring shop she worked in.
On seeing her dart into the shop, the owner Madam Loi called out, “Ooi, Mei Li. Sew this up now!” and threw down a bundle of cheap black cotton cloth into a basket.
Mei Li immediately took a seat in front of the sewing machine next to the basket, picked up the bundle and began to align the pieces of cut fabric together. It was a woman’s blouse and pants, she saw.
“No need to spend so much time on it,” Madam Loi said. “As long as it covers the corpse decently, it should be alright.”
Mei Li looked up in shock to stare at her employer’s turned back. Then she fixed her attention on filling the bobbin with black threads. Maybe the family of the deceased was poor and she didn’t have anything decent to wear, she thought to herself. Twenty minutes into her sewing, she was done, for it was only a simple assembly without darts or fancy trimmings.
She stood up and made her way to the edging machine. Madam Loi yelled, “Why do you need to edge it. It’s for a corpse.”
Mei Li timidly returned to her seat and sew on five cheap pressure buttons down the front.
“Please give my pants an elastic band at least,” a voice said.
Mei Li looked up and beheld the old woman she had bumped into. She smiled reassuringly but the old woman only had eyes for the clothes. Mei Li looked over to the back of the shop and saw that the owner had gone into the storage room. She quickly cut out a strip of elastic band and strung it into the folded edge of the pants while keeping one eye on the door at the back. The old woman sat down on a stool across from her. After Mei Li had tied off the band and shook the clothes free of cut threads, a well-dressed, middle-aged couple walked into the shop.
The woman called, “Towkaynio, is the order done?”
Madam Loi came out from the back, looked to the folded bundle of clothes and turned to her customer. “Yes, Mrs Ngui. Of course it is done, like I promised you. It is only a simple order after all,” and she picked up the blouse to flourish it before her.
The man frowned. “There must be a mistake.”
The woman said, “No, there is no mistake.”
He turned to her and asked, “Why do you want your mother to wear that for her funeral. You said you want to send her off looking her best.”
“That is exactly what I am doing. She and father were poor nobodies, and each time we had an argument, she dared to tell me that I should be thankful to have experienced their life of poverty. Believe me, I am so thankful now, I am dressing her like a beggar.”
“She is your mother. There is nothing wrong about her reminding you of the simple life now and then.”
The woman turned to face him. “She wouldn’t shut up about it. She even talked about that life as though it was a badge of honor. She humiliated me in front of my friends.”
The man shook his head in disbelief. “And now you want to humiliate her.”
“I just want her to know how life would be like in hell if she has nothing, that is all. She should be proud of it.” When the man turned his shocked face away, she shrugged and took a purse out of her leather handbag. “How much do I owe you?” she asked an attentive Madam Loi.
“$20 for the workmanship and $5 for the fabric.” Madam Loi received her $25 with both hands outstretched then she told Mei Li to roll the clothes into a black plastic bag. The couple left, but the old woman stayed behind. Mei Li reached down into a basket and took out the next bundle of cloth.
“That will be a pretty blouse,” the old woman said.
“Yes, the cloth is beautiful.”
Madam Loi yelled, “Mei Li, stopped talking! I pay you to work!”
Mei Li turned her eyes down and shrunk behind the sewing machine.
The woman said, “That is alright. I can talk and you only need to listen.” She didn’t talk for a long while. Once Mei Li finally finished putting the blouse together and had sewn on the edges, she said, “You should have that blouse.”
Not daring to squeak, Mei Li shook her head.
“But you should. The owner doesn’t want it anymore. So you should have it.”
The phone rang. Madam Loi picked it up and said her usual greeting. As she listened her smiling face began to frown and soon she was shouting into the receiver. “What do you mean you want to cancel the order? The work is done. You have to pay.” She paused, then shouted, “Aiya! If you cannot afford, you should not come to my shop!” and she slammed the phone down.
“Mei Li,” she said, “throw that yellow blouse away.” The young worker nodded and did as told. She picked up the next bundle of cloth. It was then that she realized that the old woman was no longer there.
However, she was waiting for Mei Li downstairs when the young girl came down that night. She asked, “Would you like to have tea at my house?” Mei Li hesitated. “It is not far,” the old woman insisted, “I promise that my daughter will drive you home after that, and give you anything you want.”
Mei Li was not convinced but she did not want to hurt the woman’s feelings so she followed her down a side street. After only a yard or so, she opened a door in the wall and held it open. Mei Li stepped into a foyer of marble and gaped wide-eyed at the cloud of crystal chandelier hanging down from the ceiling. But as her eyes went down to the floor beneath it, she screamed, for upon it, lying in a pool of blood was the middle-aged man who had come to the shop and a young teenage girl.
From a side door the woman her employer had called Madam Ngui emerged. She stared dumbfounded at Mei Li then looked down at her own bloody hands. She whined, “I didn’t mean to do it. It was her. She had come back looking for me. When I hit her, my husband tried to stop me, and I hit him. I swear; I only hit them. I don’t understand why there is so much blood.”
“Who is the young girl?” Mei Li asked from behind her hand.
Mrs Ngui approached the bodies then stepped back in horror with both bloody hands covering her mouth to stifle a scream. Her knees buckled and she sat down on the floor. “My daughter,” she whispered. Then she crawled on her knees towards Mei Li. “Please you must help me. Please… I didn’t do this. Please, help me.”
Mei Li stepped back and pressed her back against the front door.
“Please help her,” the old woman said. “It does not matter that she hates me, she is still my precious child. Please help her weather this curse that she has brought down on herself, on her family.”
Mei Li gazed into the anguished face of the old woman then turned to Mrs Ngui and said, “Please wash and change. I will call the police after that and tell them that we had witness two men dressed in dark clothes run out of your house. I will tell them that you had asked me to come to the house to repair some of your dresses.”
“Thank you, thank you,” both women said.
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