The Storm We Made by Vanessa Chan

Author:Vanessa Chan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: S&S/ Marysue Rucci Books
Published: 2024-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CECILY

Bintang, Kuala Lumpur

1937

Eight years earlier, British-occupied Malaya

To no one’s surprise, Bingley and Lina Chan reintegrated into society with ease. With what Cecily assumed was the former Mrs. Yap’s money, they attended social events at The Club and the resident’s house, and hosted their own parties, entertaining senior British officials at their large and rather modern-looking house. It was startling to Cecily how short the collective memory of the British was.

“A year ago, no one would talk to her!” Cecily complained to Gordon. But Gordon loved them, Fujiwara-as-Bingley especially, greeting the couple like old missed friends. Cecily flinched at every party when Gordon bounded up and bellowed at Fujiwara; she watched how Fujiwara smiled thinly without his eyes, tolerating Gordon’s worship. If Gordon only knew, she thought, her body taking her back to the day Fujiwara had slammed her against the wall. She thumbed a fading bruise on her wrist that he had inflicted and felt a prick of pleasure.

The Brits seemed to love Fujiwara too. As Bingley Chan, Fujiwara was all easy smiles and none of the awkward moroseness for which she knew him. Instead, he performed a self-deprecating humor that made her cringe.

“Mr. Chan, have you seen my wife anywhere?” she heard a British administrator say at a crowded event one day.

“Well, no, my good sir, these eyes are too small to see anything clearly!” And together they laughed uproariously.

He gave them permission to use him as the butt of their jokes, and that made them respect him. Here is a man, they seemed to think, who looks like one of them but thinks like one of us. Here is a man who allows us to give voice to the things we know we should be ashamed of but don’t want to be ashamed of. Cecily wondered at the damage that would do to one’s soul, to allow others to chip away at you, past the layers of defense, to gain acceptance. Even now, as the respected wife of a senior administrative official, she saw groups of white wives stop talking when she approached. Sometimes they would make snide comments about child-rearing.

“Did you know,” Mrs. Landley, wife of Alistair Landley, a midlevel manager, said breathlessly, “that they let the girls bleed their monthlies all over the house?”

“Did you know that they let their children run around naked till they’re teenagers?”

“Did you know?”

For Fujiwara to make himself the object of ridicule to gain admittance into what Cecily thought was a poor excuse for a society made her heart splinter for him—how much of himself he had to give in pursuit of his ideology, and how much of himself did he even have left to give? She did not want to feel pity, but she did.

Lina seemed completely at ease in her new role as a society doyenne. Cecily watched her wearing dresses that were as pale as her skin. She looked like a beautiful ghost floating through the throngs of people who delighted in greeting her. British officers, the

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