The Storm We Made

by Vanessa Chan

To Cecily, it had felt like a dawn of a new age. But her hope for a better colonizer was short-lived.

Gordon and Cecily’s mother had hoped that the whiteness in their blood would supersede the brownness of the skin, that if they waited and served their British masters patiently enough, their European lineage, faint as it was, would be recognized by the white men, that they would be elevated above Malayans of other races. But no matter how hard they scrubbed at their skin to get to the lighter layers, no matter how well they formed their vowels around the English language, no matter how loudly they said their surname, no matter how hard they tried to be the right kind of civilized, they remained, in the eyes of their white imperialists—less than.

Was that all it took for him to ensnare a woman—kindness? If so, how weak a sex they were, how gullible, she thought,

Jujube wondered about the ways in which girls and women performed for men by always knowing what it was men wanted and how it was they wished to be comforted, always engaged in the ongoing calculus of figuring out what sides of themselves they should show to a man and which parts of their grief were too unbearable for him.

How dare he, she thought. But to Mr. Takahashi, she performed the rites of the grateful girl, the girl who would listen to a man’s relief and joy, subsuming her own breaking despair.

“These men, they don’t deserve us, you know?” Cecily said. “We do so many things for them that they can’t see.”

Cecily wondered if the only reason to endure frustrating men was to become friends with their better wives.

And just like that, Jujube resumed the mundanity of her life, even as the Jasmin-sized pit in her chest threatened to choke her alive.

Still, Jujube couldn’t trust herself to believe any of it was true. It was too much to hope for anything these days, and besides, things would never be the same. Even if the Japanese left, half her family was gone. What would a postwar life be without Jasmin and Abel? Would their family continue to exist in the horrific silence of their present, creaking around like tired apparitions in their own home, weighed down by the footfalls of their sadness? There was no more normal for Jujube. She did not know how to go home.