AUNT MEI YING LOST HER RIGHT EYE to the blunt end of a rice ladle wielded by her husband during a violent argument eleven years ago. She claimed she did more damage to him when she kicked him in the groin and called him a weakling. My uncle hated to be thought of as less than a man, which was exactly why she went for the kill. And yet Aunt Mei Ying didn’t leave my uncle; they continued to love hard, and madly, until he died, somewhat ironically, of testicular cancer, three years ago.

     ‘He had many good qualities,’ Aunt Mei Ying said at his wake, tears flowing freely from her one good eye.

     I have always admired my Aunt Mei Ying for her ability to see more with her one eye than most of us in the family can see with two. To my third uncle, who gambled too much, she admonished: ‘Why do you do this to your wife and daughters? Stop before it’s too late. Otherwise, you will have nothing left but regret. Think. Think carefully.’ To a recently widowed younger aunt, she put a hand on her shoulder and spoke softly: ‘Cry now. Cry hard. Know that you will be stronger, later. You are a woman.’ To me, at a family gathering to celebrate our grandma’s seventy-fifth birthday, Aunt Mei Ying said: ‘Leave him. Leave him now. He is bad for you. Open your eyes. See him for who he is.’

     She had led me to a corner of the packed living room, away from all the noise, the loud chatter, held my arm, her eye piercing mine. I tried to draw back; the scooped-out hollow of her missing eye was relieved only by a mish-mash of flesh that was at once fascinating and frightening. Her grip on me tightened. ‘You cannot pretend everything is okay. I can see what is happening and it is bad. Do you understand? You have to leave him. You must leave.’

     Aunt Mei Ying loosened her grip as I struggled to respond, searching for words, a plausible story, excuses, but nothing came out. In the end, I sighed and stepped away from her. ‘I’m okay. Everything’s okay.’

 

* * *

 

The first time Eric hit me, he punched me in the face and knocked me out cold. I woke up a few hours later, bones stiff, and my head throbbing in pain. Eric had passed out beside me, lying in a pool of vomit that was congealing on the floor. His fists were clenched, the knuckles on his right hand already bruising. He claimed he didn’t know what he was doing, that he was drunk, too drunk to know what was going on. He broke down in front of me, threw his face into his open hands, and cried. He reached out, throwing his arms blindly around me, holding me as if his whole life depended on it. He begged for forgiveness, tears streaming down his face, his voice dry and hoarse. As I looked into his eyes, I saw something new, something raw, like an exposed nerve, bloodied, pulsating, and it terrified me.

     He tried his best to stay sober, and for a while, maybe a week or so, he didn’t touch a drop. It made him irritable and restless. I could hear him in the living room, prowling about, switching the television on and off, the loud blare of discordant music, voices and mechanical laughter reaching me in the darkness of the bedroom. I could hear the glass – vodka? gin? whisky? – striking heavily on the glass side-table. Pulling the bed-covers close, I listened cautiously for any movement or sound coming from the living room.

     In the morning, exhausted, I took the scissors from under my pillow and put them back in the sewing basket in the dresser drawer before going into the living room to clean up the mess, trying not to disturb Eric, who was slumped unconscious on the sofa. It was heartbreaking to see him so helpless, so lost.

 

* * *

 

‘If you ever hit me again, I will kill you,’ I said. It was a lie, and he knew it, and soon he would hit me again, and I’d let him.

 

* * *

 

Eric broke my arm when he slammed me against the wall. Aunt Mei Ying came and took me away. She didn’t let me pack anything of importance or necessity. Like Lot’s wife, I looked back at the apartment and felt forlorn, a crumbling pillar of salt.

     ‘No. You will not go back.’ She dragged me away as if rescuing me from a raging fire.

     ‘But …’

     ‘No. You will not see him again. He is no good for you. He is a bastard! Can you not see?’

 

* * *

 

For two months I stayed with Aunt Mei Ying in her sparse two-bedroom flat in the aging neighbourhood of Ang Mo Kio. Time passed slowly, and gradually my fears began to fade. Aunt Mei Ying fed me well, made sure I had everything I needed, and gave me space and privacy to think, to recover, though I could feel that her eye never really left me, as if waiting for me to falter or fall.

     Finally, and I knew he would, Eric turned up, hammering on the door, screaming, ferocious, like an angry bear ripping apart a tree. I put my hand on the cool surface of the spare bedroom door and held my body still, the air in the room charged with a suffocating tension. Aunt Mei Ying’s voice was firm, even, in control. ‘She is not going back with you.’

     ‘You fucking bitch! Let me see her. I need to see her!’

     I could feel the front door reverberating with another round of kicks.

     ‘No! Go away! She will never see you again. I will not allow it.’

     Eric raged like a tempest. Aunt Mei Ying did not yield. I opened the bedroom door a crack and could see her facing the dead-bolted door, a stout defender. Then, just as suddenly as it began, the storm died away. Eric’s delirious shouting ceased.

     Aunt Mei Ying tapped on the bedroom door a few minutes later. I was

     still standing behind the door, immobilised with fear. ‘I’ll cook dinner now. Will you help me, please?’

 

* * *

 

‘Why didn’t you leave Uncle Seng when he poked out your eye?’ I asked Aunt Mei Ying as we sat at the dining table breaking the long leafy stalks of cai xin into smaller pieces in preparation for dinner.

     ‘He was a good man, that’s why,’ she said, before putting the cai xin into a big ceramic bowl. She broke another stalk with a soft crunch. I could see she was thinking, maybe trying to recall something from the past.

     ‘But how did you know he was good?’

     ‘He was very sad over what he did, taking out my eye. He didn’t mean to do it. He didn’t want to see me afterwards. He didn’t know what to say.’

     ‘I didn’t know that.’

     ‘He locked himself in the house and wouldn’t come out. He wouldn’t see anyone. I was in the hospital, but someone told me what was happening. He stopped eating, wouldn’t eat for two whole weeks. Two weeks. Such a long time to go without food. When I got out of the hospital and went home, what I saw pained my heart. He was so skinny, nothing but bones. I think he lost almost thirteen kilos. When he saw me, he tried to stand, but fell down. Then I knew he was a good man. Then I knew it in my heart.’

     Aunt Mei Ying sighed, looking out the kitchen window. ‘He was so weak. He couldn’t even stand. I held him up, I held him so he wouldn’t fall.’

     She broke a stalk of cai xin with a crisp crunch, put it into the bowl, got up and took it to the kitchen. I listened to the rush of tap water as she washed the vegetables and clattered around the wok.

 

* * *

 

I found many ways to justify Eric’s violent behaviour. He had an emotionally distant father who disciplined first with his fists, and then with the stinging whip of silence. Eric’s job as a coffee-shop helper meant he was subjected day in, day out, to the humiliation of often rude and hostile customers who looked down on him and his menial job. After a while, I didn’t bother with the reasons anymore.

     If he had a bad day at work, I’d stay out of his way, slipping out of the house to buy something I didn’t need at the mini-mart or just hang around under our block of flats. Sometimes I’d just wander around the housing estate, walking from street to street, waiting for the hours to go by, waiting for him to pass out.

     If my timing was not perfect, I’d come back and find him at the height of his drunken craze, and things would become unavoidable. The best I could do was to try to contain the damage. A few slaps on the face could be easily camouflaged with thick foundation. Likewise for the cuts and bruises on the arms, thighs or legs. Punches to my chest and stomach were okay because they were not visible. At times, I found myself unconsciously directing Eric’s attention, and punches, to these parts of my body. After exhausting his anger, he would totter into our bedroom and slump on the bed, dead to the world. Then I’d begin my night work of repairs, with copious application of ointments and rubs to my body and face.

     It is funny how one can slowly get used to anything; sooner or later, I think, indifference does set in, like a stranger taking over a house.

 

* * *

 

Sometimes I have dreams that stay in my head long after I’m awakened by them. In these dreams, I become a different woman, a woman of many parts that pull in every direction, each crying for dominance, significance, each offering ability or strength beyond the usual means.

     Courage normally takes centre stage. I remember drawing out a long knife, plunging it deep into the massive beast-like body of Eric, gushing Niles of blood.

     We fight, we rage; our sweat-glistening bodies entangle like a coil of tightly wound rope, snapping, releasing, grinding, my feet struggling to stand firm on slippery ground, my heart thumping like crazy, fuelling my arteries with new blood.

     As my strength grows, Eric’s wanes. I push on, seizing every opportunity to overcome, to subdue. When he blinks, wiping away the blood from a deep cut on his forehead, I plunge my knife into his eye and gouge it out. Then I swing around and, with a clean slice, remove his head. He crashes to the floor like a mighty tower.

     I hold his head above me, blood pouring from it, baptising me. I lick my lips, savouring the sweet victory, the goodness of it.

     In other dreams, Eric holds up my severed head, which swings from the hair bunched in his closed fist. I gnash my teeth, filling the air with livid growls. I look down at him, my thoughts draining away fast, and meet his eyes, daring him, taunting him. He laughs, his eyes closed in deep merriment, and his laughter washes away all other sounds, like a flood sweeping everything before it.

     More and more, when I wake up from these dreams, I can feel every muscle in my body stretched achingly taut, and my fingers still tingling from the grip of an invisible knife in one hand, the weight of an imaginary head in the other.

 

* * *

 

‘You must decide,’ Aunt Mei Ying said. ‘If you decide to go back, I won’t stop you. You’re an adult, old enough to choose.’ She stood in the doorway of my bedroom, looking in at me. Three months had passed.

     ‘Maybe he has changed,’ I said.

     ‘You don’t know that.’

     ‘I just know,’ I replied, finally meeting her eye. We stood facing each other in complete silence, in mutual frustration.

     ‘Go then. Go now. But you don’t know what you’re doing. You think he has changed, but he will never change. You are blind, but I can see. I see you hopeless, hurt by him, but you don’t want to learn from your mistakes. I won’t stop you. Go.’

     ‘Aunt Mei Ying, please understand …’

     ‘I can’t understand. You are a smart girl. Why do you want to go back?’ She was exasperated; I could hear it in the strain of her voice.

     ‘He’s my husband, I know him; he will change. I know he will …’

     Aunt Mei Ying opened her mouth, but restrained herself, biting back the words. Her forehead was creased with deep furrows. The fluorescent light overhead cast a deep shadow in the hollow of her missing eye; I saw a mysterious void and felt my whole being drawn towards it.

     I finished packing my bag. She stepped aside. I slipped past her and left the house.

 

* * *

 

I enter the flat and see Eric lying on the sofa, looking listlessly out the window. His attention shifts to me, but he doesn’t seem to register my presence. I could have been just a passing shadow in the room. He brings his cigarette to his mouth, takes a deep drag, puffing out a cloud of smoke that obscures his face.

     I walk up, stand in front of him, throw the bunch of house keys on his chest and say: ‘So now what?’

     Eric jerks up from the sofa, brings his hand to my neck, his fingers closing around it. He tightens his grip, choking the air out of me. I try to pull his hand away but his hold is too strong.

     He rams me against the wall and puts his face close to mine, hissing, ‘If you ever leave again, I will kill you!’

     I spit at him. My spittle is strung across his eyes. With his free hand, he wipes it away and strikes me hard across the face. Once, twice, three times. I taste blood as it fills my mouth, the sting spreading across my face like wildfire. I spit a ball of blood in his face, and try to dig my fingers into the whites of his eyes. He flinches like a rat caught in a trap and drops me to the floor.

     On all fours, I crawl to the kitchen, escaping, breathless, my vision blurring.

     I feel a sharp tug on my scalp as he pulls my hair, then a rain of punches land across my head and back. I fall flat and hard on the floor. Eric drags me by the hair to the kitchen windows. He throws them open and hoists me to my feet. He tries to push me out the window.

     ‘No, please, Eric, no …’

     I grab hold of his body and lock my arms around his chest. His muscles are tense – hard, as if cut from marble. He tries to pry open my arms, but I hold even tighter, whispering, ‘Eric, no … no … no, Eric …’

     He puts up a fierce struggle, but slowly his body begins to surrender.

     I desperately seek out his eyes, and for a very brief moment, I glimpse the old Eric, the one that I had loved and lost, many years ago, recalling our first night in the flat and his embrace and kiss, such a long honest kiss. ‘This is it. Our own home. Ours. Finally.’

     I drop my arms and Eric stumbles away from me.

     He leans against the side wall, his face a mess of tears and blood; it is a face I know by heart. I look into his eyes, so blank and sorrowful, and can’t find anything but a consuming emptiness, a dark lake, impenetrable. He looks straight at me and I know he doesn’t see me at all; he’s gone, his mind has slipped away.

     I struggle to my feet, stumble to the kitchen. From a cupboard under the sink, I take a paint-smeared bottle of turpentine and a box of household matches. I limp back towards Eric. I empty the bottle over his legs. Eric wears a look of incomprehension, an almost-childlike curiosity, and cocks his head to one side. The liquid glistened like a fine layer of molten gold on his powerful calves and thighs. I strike a match and toss it into the pungent pool around his bare feet. Orange-blue licks of flames jump with agitation, like a net of trapped fish.

     Eric’s face registers, slowly, what is happening and he leaps up, pushing his body away as if trying to escape his burning legs. I step aside and watch his dancing, gyrating figure, the flames flapping like flowing incandescent robes around him. The air fills with the oleaginous smell of burning flesh, not unlike pork left too long on the barbeque, thick, sticky, savoury. I wet my lips out of reflex.

     Eric gives up and collapses. I go up to him now and take off my T-shirt, beating out the flames. Tiny bits of wet flesh come off with each stroke, spattering all over the kitchen floor. By the time I’m done, the lower half of Eric’s body resembles an amateurish watercolour painting with garish dips, smears and swirls overlapping, melting into one another, a frightening, ravishing flesh-scape. It looks soft, raw, pliable, a torment, and I sit staring at it, unable to break away.

     My hands are splotched a numbing red, my skin prickling with a rude burning sensation. I can see Eric’s chest rising and falling, and I place my hand over his heart. He is still alive.

     Maybe this time it will work. Maybe we can start over again.