Literary aficionados, budding writers, pensive poets, ardent artists and passionate photographers: the Singapore Writers Centre invites you to fill up this space with your works!
Send us your prose pieces (not longer than 2,000 words), poetry, artworks, photographs…etc. Include your name, age and a short introductory paragraph on yourself. If you would prefer a pseudonym, please also indicate that in your mail.
Email them to swc_info@bookcouncil.sg and we will feature them!
Washing Powder
Ivan Ang, 27
It was just the washing. And what goes into it. Between the low-suds washing powder and that hateful liquid detergent. Nothing cleans like powder: incomparable washing power compacted into a tiny sphere that mixes with water and produces this nice whitish liquid of saturated cleanliness. Surely this comes natural to every person. No, apparently not. No, it was just the washing.
Start of the day would be putting on a nice floral skirt matched with immaculate white shirt, finished with a spiffy white jacket. She combed her hair straight. She Looked at the mirror. She paused for a bit. She began tying her hair into a bun and fixed a clip on it. She looked at her reflection again. A little too severe, she concluded, but figured it was for the better.
She walked out the room in time to see her husband coming out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped round his waist. Time has taken its toll – what was once a hard tanned body is now softening up, like a baby’s. He grinned stupidly at her. She smiled weakly back. She told him that she won’t be working on Sunday. They could spend some time together. He nodded. Like a puppy. A puppy with puppy fat. She chuckled at that thought.
She reported to work, she was lucky not to have spent the night at her workplace. She wasn’t placed on night duty. It was about time too. She was on the night duty roll for the past one week. It was that time of the year. Lots of people were coming in, few were checking out.
Maybe he didn’t really understand. Low-suds powder is the most sensible and logical option. It takes a woman to understand. What can men do? What can they do but moan and throw up on you when the time comes. He was insistent that he was right. He knows washing more than she does. Times have changed, we are moving into a new era, why was she still stuck in the past? She wasn’t stuck in the past. What was wrong with using low studs? What was wrong with washing powder? He stared at her incredulously. He departs shouting: Why was she raising her voice over washing powder? If it was so important to her, she can use it all she wants, not like he cared. Mumbling: which freak concerns herself so much with washing powder anyway? It’s just powder. She hears him.
She took a good look at the record book. There were several movements today. People transferred from one location to the other. There were a lot more transferred to the prime location today. She looks at her watch and looks up: it was her turn to stay for Night Duty tonight. She looks at her colleagues who smiled and nodded at her before rushing off to attend to a call. She adjusted her coat to the increasing cold. She looked at the record again. It was going to be a long night.
The phone rang. She reached for it. She eyes moved left and right as she took in the details the caller gave. She hung up and ran to the designated room. Her other colleagues were already there, each trying to do her best to prevent the worst from happening. She took a quick look at the information flashed on the screen. She weighed her options. It was out of her hands. She shouted for her subordinates to call her superior. It was out of her hands. This was the sixth one in the same week. She felt this dull throbbing in her gut. She hasn’t been able to get rid of this feeling since she began work. She looked into his eyes; reflecting like mirrors.
She stood rooted. He was already in the living room turning up the TV volume in an attempt to shut her out. It was just the powder. She knows this, yet she cannot explain the uncontrollable rage in her welling up forcing her into action. She felt her face – it was hot to touch. She was flaring up. She grabbed the four pound liquid detergent bottle, walked to the living room and flung it at the plasma TV. Regret, anger and sadness hit her the very moment the bottle left her hands. The bottle took a trajectory before smashing into the face of the plasma TV. The ferocity of impact threw the TV off its balance and it smashed into a gooey mess on the floor. The impact, the sound and the state of his precious plasma TV on the floor completely bummed him. He stared at the mess on the floor before turning around. She looked back at him with angry eyes tainted with tears of regret and relief.
It is not that we didn’t try. We do. All the time. There are forces out that the move beyond our sphere of control. But of course we can try again tomorrow. Tomorrow, tomorrow and tomorrow. It is good that we live this deluded belief that whatever it is, it will be better tomorrow. She filled out a portion of the form and handed it to her superior who took it without looking at her. It happens, her superior said. Not like this is new to you, right? She didn’t answer him. She gave a brief nod and went on with her task. It was lunchtime, but she hadn’t the mood to eat. She sat down. Phone rang. More bad news. And it goes on.
He stared at her with an impossible mixture of disbelief, anger, sadness, guilt and incredulity. She stared at herself and saw nothing but a twisted image of herself festooned with fragments of what she thought she was. She met his glare. He doesn’t speak. His glare was deafening. She looked madly around, looking for an explanation. There is none to be found – not in shattered self or in the mess she calls home. This was supposed to be a beautiful day. She staggered out of the living room and back to the kitchen. Yes, she had to return to the washing. Of course, that’s it. She needs to do the washing. Why didn’t she say that?
He was saying something at last. She couldn’t hear him. She looked around again. Where was the low-suds powder? She saw him approaching. She looked at his eyes. The same reflective eyes that she found herself staring into so often from the past seven years. She threw a bottle of liquid detergent at the TV. Why? Who was to blame? Liquid. Suds. Eyes. Where is our tomorrow? Where is my tomorrow? He was coming close. Face angry and bewildered.
She looked around again. Nothing to be found.
Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.
She ran. And out of the kitchen window she flew.
You OK? A colleague asked. She was just feeling worn out. She was losing the ability to keep herself happy. It seemed so simple, but where can happiness be found? In the pay you are getting of course! Her colleague said laughingly. She looked at her. You are a Staff Nurse! What can be making you unhappy?! She looked away. More than you’ll ever know.
He stared at the emptiness in front of him. Numbness spreading, coursing through his entire being. She was there a moment ago. And then… He never felt such silence in his life. Where has all the noise escaped to? In a snap, he ran to the window. He looked down. She was there, in a pond of incarnadine. It had to be her, though all semblance have been lost to the gravity. Neighbors from his block and the block across were all looking at her and then at him. Horrific eyes. Accusing eyes. You pushed her the eyes said. His heart sank with fear and misery. She was gone, but he’s still there. He moved back from the window. He walked slowly away. Hands over mouth, covering the madness that was about to escape from him. His eyes wet. He stood still. Lost. He trembled on the spot before sanity returned. He picked up his cell phone and made a call. It was all over.
They all came to the wake. Nurses from the hospital who loved her for her leadership and her dedication. The news of her suicide was kept from the press. No one really needs to know – it was bad for the hospital and for the nurses-to-be. He knows the rumors, that he drove her to it. Maybe he did. Maybe he did not. Did it really matter now? For what it’s worth, he found more reason not to use washing powder.
Comments
The Pin Up page is not just a showcase of talents. We aim to be an interactive space for budding and established writers to bounce ideas off one another. If contributors are willing, established writers and publishers will give some constructive comment on the submitted pieces.
Aaron Lee on Washing Powder:
I enjoyed reading this short story. The author is a thoughtful writer with the ability to structure a plot skillfully. I was impressed with the parallel narratives that converge at the end. The tone was consistent and the narrative style was evocative yet somehow understated, nearly sterile (which was fitting for a story about a nurse and washing powder). It was a good choice to have the “low suds” washing powder form the ostensible subject of the story—it was an interesting metaphor around which to explore various themes, and this was executed to good effect. In that sense the washing powder could represent orderliness in a chaotic world, conscience, or memory, or hope for a better tomorrow.
The tenses in the narration are inconsistent—if deliberate, this technique was well used to a disquieting, schizophrenic effect that mirrors the desperation of the protagonist and her turbulent inner world. But I found it ultimately distracting and I consider that the story could be improved by using a consistent tense.
Aaron Lee was born in Malaysia in 1972. Educated in Singapore, he became a Singaporean in 1996. In 1992, 20 of his poems were published in the anthology In Search of Words (VJ Times, 1992). Since then his poetry has been appeared in anthologies, magazines and newspapers, as well as performed on radio and television for national broadcast.
Aaron has won numerous poetry prizes including the first prize in the National University of Singapore's Literary Society Poetry competition in 1995 and 3rd prize in the nationwide New Straits Times-Shell Poetry Competition in Malaysia in the same year. His first book of poetry A Visitation of Sunlight was selected to be one of 3 books to launch a new publishing label for quality contemporary Singaporean literature, Ethos Books. The collection won a National Book Development Council award in 1997.
A lawyer by profession, Aaron is also involved in theatre and promoting literature in Singapore. In 1999 the title poem of his book was selected for the "Poems on the Move" programme, an initiative by the National Arts Council to bring poetry to the public on mass transit.
