Joss and Gold

Six

Six Wen ,he hearo that p""", had requeMed and received a date for the civil wedding, Gina screamed so loudly that Li An ducked. "Bloody nosy idiots!" she screamed. "You all think life is so easy, just go get married, everything comes out right. My father will disown me if I marry a keling-kwei, a Tamil devil. He cannot even tell the difference between Tamil and Punjabi! How can I live with Paroo? I am Chinese. How to hold my head up? My brothers and sisters will jeer at me. All my friends in town, I'll be dead to them. You and Ellen have your own lives to live, you can't take care of me all the time. What am I going to do without my family?" Paroo sat beside her, his elbows on Ellen's dining table and tears sticking to his lashes. "Oh, never mind," Gina said, kissing his shoulder. "I know Ellen and Li An put you up to this. They're my best friends, but they don't know our problems. We'll think of something, I promise you." "Maybe if you come to my house and my mother meets you she will like you," Paroo said in a forlorn voice. "My mother is usually a nice woman, she is very nice to our relatives. She will not treat you badly." "You don't know my father! He would kick me out of the house if I brought you home. He's already a Confucian, daughters are no good anyway, and if I bring home a Punjabi, CROSSING forget it! I'm disowned!" Paroo must have heard this argument many times before, for he hid his face in his hands and wouldn't say a word. Finally Li An left, indignant at their cowardice. She would tell Ellen her interference had done no good. She was washing her hands of the two; they could do whatever they wished as far as she was concerned. But it was Ellen who called her the next morning. "Oh God," she said. Li An had never heard Ellen distraught. "Gina and Paroo. They took sleeping pills. In my flat. The police just called me. I'm going over to the police station. Oh God!" "What happened to them?" Ellen's sobs seemed to shake the receiver. "Gina's dead," she wailed. "She's dead. She killed herself." That fool! Li An thought angrily. Into the mouthpiece she said, "Do you want me to come over? I'll wait for you at your parents' house. You're not going back to your flat now, are you?" It's strange, she thought. I should be crying, like Ellen. Instead she felt strangulated, as if Gina had placed an invisible bag over her head and she was choking. Ellen didn't know how long the police questioning would take. Her father was insisting she talk to a lawyer first in case there were problems with the families suing her. She didn't know what was going to happen in the next few days, and would call when they could meet. Li An had no tutorials to give that day. The morning stretched on as she found herself wandering between the library and the lounge. The library was crowded with students, although it was still months before the final exams. Groups of young men stationed themselves at the entrances to the different buildings, staring at the young women as they walked to their lectures. She was safe from these public intrusions. Less than a year separated her from the senior students, but she was a tutor, had passed into the forbidding company of teachers, and had taken on their properties of privacy and power. How alone she was! There was no one she could share her feelings with, no one to talk to about Gina and Paroo. Ellen had forgotten to tell her what happened to Parao. Was he dead? 43 JOSS and GOLD Didn't he take the sleeping pills as well? Where were their bodies? Who was going to tell their parents, Gina's large family clustered in the Chinese school in Johore, and Paroo's nice mother probably grinding her curry paste this morning? Would they be buried together? That was unlikely. Each family would blame the other's child. If my son hadn't met your cheap dishonorable daughter. Ifmy daughter had not met your...