Circuit Breaker

Your memory is a vinyl record, and each swirl of the turntable wears its grooves down. Over time, the needles scratch the record’s waxy surface. Your psych professor from college used to say that you never really hear the same song twice - not from vintage records baring their B-sides in corner antique shops, nor from your memory of a memory, or at least, that’s what you remember he said.

⁂

You pull down your face mask as you shut the taxi door behind you. Now that you’ve been away for a few years, the mid-afternoon sun strikes you with a sharp freshness. You look up at the straggle of HDB flats overhead. There is the stillness you recognise that shuffles through the heat and its long, undulating corridors. When you were five and came here every day with your mother, you would head for the lobby at the foot of the apartment block. You would wait patiently as the lift ground to a begrudging halt, stopping only at odd-numbered floors like a child skipping two steps at a time.

The ripe bite of incense fills your lungs. You step through the sheltered walkway where plumes of wreathed flowers line both sides in muted yellows and pinks. At the end of the aisle, a small pavilion sits at the heart of the estate with white canvas sheets draped across the balusters. You remember why you’re here. Closer to the pavilion, you hear the gravelly screech of plastic on tile. Someone is standing in the sea of folding tables and stackable chairs. She waves. You lift both hands to replace your mask, stringing its loops easily around your ears. There is a thermal scanner beside you, so you dangle an outstretched palm - these days it is instinctive, like the telltale beep that follows. The lady approaches you, wearing a plain T-shirt and dark khaki shorts. Even under her mask, you recognise the upturned eyes and catch the splash of acne across her cheeks. Big Sister, you say in Mandarin, as the low hum of Buddhist sutras enfolds you into its lull.

⁂

You saw her on Friday nights. Around ten o’ clock, you’d hear the bone-dry rattle of a turning lock and see Big Sister wrapped in the glow of the doorway. You liked her the least of the three Ng sisters. Everyone else made time for you - even Third Sister when she wasn’t on the phone - but Big Sister was hardly around. Years later, you’d reason that the eldest daughter in the Ng family had other priorities than the five-year-old boy her mother babysat for the neighbours. Back then all you knew were the long days Big Sister worked in a bakery with her husband, and the buoyant scent of bread that lifted her through the Ng family’s three-room flat when she visited. One night, you stayed up to watch cartoons and heard Big Sister come out of the shower. As she settled lightly on the couch, you noticed coin-sized webs of red and purple edging down the lengths of her sides. What’s that, you asked. Big Sister said nothing as she reached for the TV remote, but you kept staring, and eventually she tilted her head. Kisses, she said as she ruffled your hair. Meanwhile, the TV blared its late-night carousel of Hanna-Barbera cartoons and overwrought prat falls. The warm, toasty notes that trailed Big Sister had been replaced by the heady sting of supermarket soap. From? you asked. Tom twirled his whiskers, pouncing towards a doe-eyed Jerry. Bread and butter, she said, turning to the TV with her sinewy fingers clutching her arms.

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It’s better now, Big Sister says as she shows you inside. She tells you that a month ago the maximum capacity for wakes was only ten people but now the restrictions had been relaxed. You nod politely. Bold, red X-marks are taped on the pavilion floor, ossifying rows of tables and chairs in their place. Safe distancing? you ask. The relatives sit in a circle to fold offerings for the rites - already the tabletops overflow with ingots of murky gold and silver joss paper. It is a blueprint for grief you recognise from your grandparents’ funerals. This time, the masking-tape arrows at your feet resemble a factory line, but Big Sister is already presenting you to the others. As Second Sister rises from her seat to greet you, her silver glasses sit too low on her aquiline nose. Your shoulders lighten as she thrusts a packet of soy milk into your hands.

⁂

When Second Sister cleared her driving test on the third attempt, the Ng family decided they would go for a test drive the same evening. Big Sister was still at the bakery, and so the rest of the family squeezed into the Honda sedan with Third Sister holding you tightly in her lap. At first the vehicle throttled in jerky motions as Second Sister wrestled with the biting point. Her father chided her good-naturedly, and you felt this nervous thrum in your chest that you usually got before a movie started. We’re moving! Third Sister announced brightly when the car pulled out of the parking lot and began slow, meandering orbits around the neighbourhood. Looking out the window, you saw vehicles overtaking the car, then your kindergarten, then the reservoir with the glassy-grey surface. The family kept telling Second Sister to go faster but her face was beaming the whole time.

When your parents picked you up after, you told them about the joyride. Your mother furrowed her eyebrows as you gushed about how Second Sister’s car was the slowest on the road. Your mother told you not to do that again. Your father nodded as he cleared his throat and declared that new drivers were always the worst. Your parents’ steely faces made you feel like you’d told a family secret. You would not mention how everyone had egged Second Sister on to take a detour to the car wash on the way back - as far as you knew, the car hadn’t looked very dirty. Still, you watched the high-pressure jets smashing against the windshield as Second Sister parked the car in low gear and began inching forward. Are we safe? you shouted over the roaring outside. I rolled up all the windows, Second Sister laughed in the rearview mirror. You wished you could have stayed in that car with the kaleidoscopic colours darting in and out the windows like a celebration.

⁂

Have you eaten? Mama asks as she joins your table. She pulls up a chair next to Second Sister and you notice that Mama’s glasses are identical to her daughter’s — the same set of too-tight, oval crescents seem to be swaddling their faces. You’re never around when I call your mother, she says flatly, but then you never knew Mama to be a sentimental woman. Her hair is the same trimmed bob with leafy curls on the sides but there are more grey streaks now. You say you’re back because of Covid. Second Sister mutters that it is much safer here in Singapore and there is a precipitous hush at the table. Three years ago he had his first stroke, Mama continues, as your gaze falls on the framed portrait at the other end of the pavilion. Fresh chrysanthemums adorn both sides with a panoply of seasonal fruit at its feet. Do you want to see him? Mama rises from her seat. You’d always assumed that the Ngs would be here in this sleepy estate with the old Honda sedan. When your parents eventually moved you to a condo on the other side of the island, you’d said you would visit. Now you are right behind Mama as you gingerly approach the altar. You try and fail to remember the contours of his face, but with the mahogany casket before you, you see that the family chose an old photo where the man in the center smiles broadly at you. He wears a large-striped shirt with flared collars so common in neighborhood coffee-shops. The veneer of the casket is oddly smooth against your fingertips, but something catches in your throat. You look directly into the face of the man you called Ji Zhek - godfather, it is the only word in Teochew that you know.

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In those days, childcare centres were a luxury for parents who worked full-time. So your parents asked around the block for a babysitter, and that’s how on weekdays you started staying with Mama and her husband, Ji Zek — namesakes of faux affection with room for your real parents. Mama was a homemaker with three grown daughters, the youngest of whom had yet to graduate from secondary school. Ji Zek was a lorry driver, and like most kids, you thought that was the best job in the world. You liked to imagine Ji Zek at work, one hand on the wheel and the other slung out suavely with the window rolled down. Mama must have told him about the Hot Wheels collection you kept in a used chocolate tin. One day when he got home, he called you over - usually Ji Zek would set his keys down and grab a can of beer from the fridge. This time, you rubbed the sleep from your eyes and saw a miniature electric car in the living room - about waist-high, fully motorised and painted a deep, lustrous red. You stared at its shiny plastic grille and sleek racing stripes, ignoring Mama’s disapproving tongue clicks. Want to try? Ji Zek had a ruddy smile on his face.

Soon, you were behind the wheel in your sports car, trawling steadily along the void deck downstairs. You were even slower than Second Sister but felt the electric joy of an actual steering wheel in your hands. After your first lap around the pavilion, you were bold enough to ask Ji Zek if you could drive on the road, but he only laughed and shook his head. So you tore up the footpaths at full speed instead, weaving past pedestrians on a placid weekday evening. Of course, you were so caught up that before you knew it, you’d veered into a foreign part of the neighbourhood. Years later, you’d marvel at how small the estate was, but back then you’d never even gone past the pavilion by yourself. So you looked around nervously, hoping to catch sight of Ji Zek. No one was on the footpath. You were almost in tears, like on your birthday in school when your parents had been late to pick you up. But then you heard the loose shuffle of sandalled feet, and saw the striped polo you knew so well behind a big angsana tree. He waved. You honked back to reply, and more playful honks would follow as the sunset heaved a deep lilac across the sky.

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You must be tired, you say after completing the circuit around Ji Zek’s casket with Mama. I shouldn’t keep you. Second Sister insists it’s not a problem, we’re taking turns and Third Sister went upstairs to rest before you got here. There is a wistful look in her eyes and it tightens the band you feel around your chest. Call us sometime, Mama says, and then you are turning away from all their worn, masked faces and back in the sheltered walkway where you came, dialing a Grab on your phone. You pull down your mask - the air is sweet this time, with hints of jasmine from the familiar grassy knoll that borders the estate. Once, Mama had found you in tears before your parents’ big move. First, she’d looked at the cleanly-hewn pieces of Third Sister’s vinyl record on the bedroom floor. Then she glanced up at you - it was still some time before Third Sister returned from school. Mama picked up the black, glossy shards, handling them delicately like splinters. With cracks streaking rapaciously across the rim, the vinyl grooves on each fragment looked muted and dull. You followed Mama breathlessly as she stepped into the kitchen, which had a clear view of the pavilion below. Outside the air was still, cradled by soft ebbs and flows from the banks of the nearby reservoir. With all of her strength, Mama flung the jagged half-moons from the window. For a few moments the shards floated languidly in the air, suspended. Mama and you looked at each other, the pieces landing noiselessly on the grass, side by side as you remember.

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“Circuit Breaker” was the official name for Singapore’s 2020 Covid-19 lockdown.