CHAPTER ONEDEVOTIONS
1972
Adeline stared at the back of Elaine Chew’s head and thought about setting God on fire.
It would be an inconvenience to the chapel, which was still fairly new—the stained glass had only been put in a decade or so ago. The small organ, however, had allegedly been playing hymns for St. Mary’s Girls since Mother Marguerite St. Moreau and her Sisters of St. Maur had been sent over from Paris in eighteen fifty-something to bring faith and learning to the neglected girls of the Straits. The nuns hadn’t been alone in their mission: their Anglican counterparts had arrived soon after bearing the protestant face of God, and some century or so later the St. Mary’s girls were constantly competing with the various Methodist Girls’ schools for devoutness, preening status, and rich husbands plucked from the swim team of the Anglo-Chinese Oldham’s boys.
Nurturing said devoutness, the Secondary Four cohort of St. Mary’s turned the pages of their hymnals and sang as the organ ached on. Adeline Siow was squeezed on the pew between Surya Mohanan, who was half-heartedly delivering a decent rendition of “Amazing Grace,” and Ooi May Woon, who was passionately giving a terrible one. Adeline, who also couldn’t sing but at least didn’t try to inflict that fact on others, studied Head Prefect Elaine Chew’s faux sweetheart bob in front of her and imagined lighting the strands like wicks.
Adeline would never actually do it, of course. But when she wasbored she started wanting to burn, and her imagination needed something else to feed the restlessness in her veins. It was very easy to imagine that being Elaine, given that Elaine was a preternatural bitch. It was either her or the hymnal, so fragile and flammable—and then from there wouldn’t the entire chapel catch, with all the wood that was in it? It was inadvisable.
Recently, though, the devotions around St. Mary’s had been getting more impassioned. There was a group that now met three times a day in the clock tower, where they prayed loudly in an incomprehensible babbling language, from which they came down holding hands and looking smugly serene. Bishop Lim was more excited than Adeline had ever seen him in ten years. He was calling it a revival, said that young people were suddenly coming to God in schools all across the island. Once, while singing just like this, a girl had burst into tears.
The organ player played the last ponderous chord, putting an end to May Woon’s singing and finally allowing the girls to sit for the sermon.
Adeline gave the bishop a few droning minutes before realizing that today would be one of those sermons about modesty and womanly virtues. There had been a sharp uptick in these themes for this final year of secondary school, when the girls had all gotten their periods and were preparing to go either to work or to pre-university—with boys!as some of her classmates liked to titter about—and thus had to be urgently impressed upon that the nature of a St. Mary’s girl was godly and steadfast, and crucially virginal, like their patron.
Adeline corkscrewed in her seat, catching her form teacher’s attention. “Mrs. Wilson,” she whispered, widening her eyes, “may I use the restroom?”
The ancient Mrs. Wilson, who Adeline was convinced must have been around since Marguerite herself set her chaste foot on the bank of the Singapore River, sighed and waved her off. Adeline jostled past Surya’s knees, earning a hiss of annoyance, and slipped out to freedom.
The chapel restroom had a broken tap and permanently wet tiles, and the lights emitted a fly-encrusted buzz, but it was empty. Adeline locked herself in the stall closest to the entrance. The other one was said to be haunted, but unfortunately, this stall had a presence almost worse than a ghost. Someone had thrown away their pad badly, and the bin had congealed blood on the lip. Behind the door, an abandoned wet PE shirt sweated on the hook. The cubicle smelled like rot.
That didn’t matter, either. Alone at last, Adeline snapped her fingers, and flame sparked on the tips.
The heat radiated all the way up her veins, pulling her senses into the flickering orange. Her nails turned gold as she let the fire settle over the whites. She breathed with it, reveling in her own indestructability and the feeling that she could do absolutely anything right now. Or, perhaps, that she couldnotdo anything—that her surroundings remained unscathed only because of her benevolence, and weren’t they lucky, then, that her mother had taught her restraint?
She and her mother shared the same ability, if it could be called that. Her earliest memory was her mother lighting candles during a blackout, the little orange pulsing in the fire’s heart.See, don’t be afraid, it is light.
“A-a-deline.”
Adeline startled and extinguished the flame. Was chapel already over? She’d lost time. She often could, if she let her focus drift. Yes—her watch had jumped twenty minutes and there were three pairs of feet outside, about to bang on the door.
Adeline yanked the door open, making Elaine Chew stagger forward with her fist falling through thin air. “All three of you?” Adeline said. “Scared you’d get lost?”
Since joining forces in primary school, the Marias had crawled upward through the hallowed halls of St Mary’s as a catty, three-headed beast, named less for the hallowed school halls and more fortheir three-part rendition of “Tonight” at their Primary Five talent show. They were dedicated members—leaders, even—of St. Mary’s own revival, but Adeline had known them long before they became so pious. Kwa En Yi had the habit of puking her guts out in this very toilet for that paper-flat stomach; she was netball team captain and self-proclaimed future Singapore Girl, by virtue of said stomach and her long deer legs. Wang Siew Min, whose hotshot lawyer father had monthly lunches with the prime minister, was the doe-eyed, big-haired beauty queen who aspired to never work a day in her life. Then there was Elaine Chew, the inexplicable ugly sister to two Cinderellas: richer than both her friends combined but newly pimply and aggravating, drunk on the power of her striped tie and booking card.
“You missed all of chapel. Mrs. Wilson asked us to find you. Tummy issues?” Elaine added caustically. Generations of Chew wealth did not show in her manners. All of them would only learn to hide their cruelty better; Adeline could see them all in ten years, fat kids on the hip, having afternoon tea to talk about all the women less fortunate than them.
She reveled in hating them for the next decade. “You would know about toilet troubles, wouldn’t you?”
To her deep satisfaction, Elaine still flushed, even though she had to have known she was walking into that one. Elaine had been Adeline’s first real friend when they first started school. Enough such that, at one of their sleepovers, Elaine had confessed to being a chronic bed wetter.I’ve never told anyone that before, she had said.It’s so embarrassing.
Adeline shrugged.I’ve heard lots of people do it. But compelled to trade a confession, she almost told Elaine about her fire. She thought—fervently—that Elaine might be awed, despite what her mother said, and then she would have someone who wasn’t her mother to share this secret with, and it felt like the most importantthing in the world then, having a conspiracy with another girl. But in the end Adeline got spooked.I don’t know who my dad is, she had said instead.I never had one.
Elaine’s eyes widened—it seemed like an acceptable transaction. They became closer friends: Adeline taught Elaine to do her hair. They traded erasers and stickers and had each other written down on the first page of their address books. Adeline even helped Elaine draw hearts on those damn invitations for her ninth birthday party, because she was inviting Siew Min and En Yi—even then, the Beautiful Ones, the kinds of girls you could see would be blessed with legs and cheekbones and figures once puberty bestowed itself upon them—and wanted the cards to be perfect.
But at the party, Adeline overheard Siew Min and En Yi making snide remarks about Adeline not having a father. She had the dawning realization that she had become the conspiracy, the currency to be traded. It was also then that she had the other dawning realization that Elaine was a two-faced cow. She ate the birthday cake, took her goody bag, and then in art class the next day, dumped an entire bottle of Elmer’s into Elaine’s French braid.
The common enemy of Adeline had been all the Marias needed to form a blood pact for the rest of their years. Elaine, victorious, successfully ingratiated herself with En Yi and Siew Min. They started calling Adeline Xiao Siao,little crazy. Elaine caught her stealing her fountain pens, so Adeline poked her hard in the arm with the evidence.Stabbedwas the word their form teacher used, while whipping Adeline’s hands with the wooden ruler, but it wasn’t Adeline’s fault the sharp point had been out. Then the Marias had spread a rumor that Adeline kept dead birds in her bag, so Adeline had gone to the wet market before school, bought freshly severed chicken heads, and threw them, still leaking, into Elaine’s locker. Elaine’s scream was worth Adeline getting offal on her shoes. No one could even prove she’d done it. ButXiao Siaohad carried onthrough secondary school, and the Marias found all sorts of things to tell everyone about her, and Adeline often, as today, spent worship envisioning them on fire.
“What’s on your shoes?” Siew Min said now.
Adeline looked down and realized her issue-white shoes were speckled with ash. She had to shuffle back through her memory to recall: the flames on her fingertips not being enough, grabbing a wad of toilet paper instead to burn into the toilet water at her feet.
“Were you smoking?” Elaine demanded, almost gleefully. She was already reaching for her booking card, a row no doubt already saved for Adeline’s name. The demerits and suspensions practically glittered in her eyes.
The unfair lot of life: how they could all wear the same starchy white blouse and hiked-up blue pinafore, tie their hair with the same dark blue ribbons, and yet around the Marias Adeline still felt like she existed the wrong way. She’d been born in December, early and jaundiced, too eager, so her mother had made the decision to hold her back a year at school, making her one of the few girls now turning seventeen. Adeline didn’t think it had done anything except give the Marias ammunition to tell everyone she had brain damage.
