8
Monday 22 February
10:07 a.m. Orson just sent me a weird-cute GIF of his face superimposed onto a gigantic mandarin orange to wish me Happy Chap Goh Mei. “Chap Goh Mei” in the Hokkien dialect refers to the fifteenth night of Chinese New Year; it marks the drawing to a close of the Lunar New Year celebration. It is also celebrated as the Chinese Valentine’s Day for many Malaysians and Singaporeans (because one day of torture was not enough). In this part of the world, there exists a “fun” Chap Goh Mei tradition, where single Chinese ladies throw perfectly good mandarin oranges with their names and phone numbers written on the fruit into a body of water, where they would usually be scooped up by eager gentlemen who may or may not be looking to score a free supply of vitamin C. The origins of this custom are obscure—to foolish die-hard romantics. There is little doubt in my mind that some crafty Southeast Asian mandarin orange cartel came up with this idea as a means of getting rid of their surplus stock at the end of the festivities for profit instead of letting them rot in a landfill; certainly it also makes their lives easy should they wish to pick out the single womenfolk for their trophy wives. Sleazy capitalist bastards.
Anyway, what was I saying? Ah, yes. Orson and the Giant GIF. I thanked him and he immediately messaged back to say that he was in Jakarta on a work trip and couldn’t make Wednesday for lunch but hoped to reschedule our date to the following Thursday, and that he would miss me.
I was disappointed that we wouldn’t see each other this week, but flattered. The last person who told me they missed me was my online grocer. Who says you can’t find nice ones on Sponk.
Thursday 25 February
8:20 p.m. Urgh. Am finally done with another bloody closing.
When I had sent all the documents to the client, I shakily stood up from the desk I had been crouched over for four hours straight and took stock of the damage: my eyes were burning and out of focus; I think I lost a tooth in my coffee; something smelled of warmed kimchi and I was pretty sure it was me (maybe that was why Suresh had taken to working in the library today?). My rib cage hurt from the too-tight sports bra I was wearing instead of a proper one, because I’d run out of clean lingerie. I’ve been eating takeaway salad (OK, fine, so they were fried spring rolls and not salad per se, but there’s radish in there so that counts toward my five-a-day) for lunch and dinner from that Vietnamese deli downstairs for three effing days straight and have slept a total of sixteen hours in the last four days, in my office.
On days like this I fantasize so hard about quitting that I actually have heart pangs. Just like Suresh, my plan wasn’t to go to law school to become a corporate lawyer. I had ideals once. I was passionate about human rights. After graduation I paid my dues and put in some time at Slaughter & May, but just as I’d begun a new position as a legal adviser for a small nonprofit helping trafficked women in the UK, my father got really sick and I had to get what my mother called a “real job” to help defray their living expenses, instead of “wasting my expensive legal education.” So I did what I had to do: I went back to Slaughter & May, cap in hand, and got my old job back. Some of that money went toward paying part of Melissa’s tuition, since she was in the middle of an expensive British degree in architecture and needed to get the best grades she could instead of working part time and getting just a second-lower-class or third-class degree. No way were we going to do that to her.
I guess I’m the reason she was able to meet Kamarul in her third year. This has always made me feel a little guilty toward my mother, not because I condone her casual racism (“You can be friends with them, but you can’t date them!”), but because, since I’d borne the full brunt of the financial fallout (cancers are expensive when you don’t have good insurance!) and downplayed my mother’s mental breakdown after my father’s passing in the misguided belief that Melissa shouldn’t suffer remotely any more than could be helped, my sister never knew the full extent of how bad things had gotten. My mother recovered thinking Melissa hadn’t cared enough to return home after her degree was done a few months after my father’s death, embarking instead on a gap year with Kamarul. They’ve been inseparable since.
Anyway, the rough patch my family found itself in, emotionally and financially, is somewhat over and I could quit and work somewhere else as I had intended to before I had to move back—only I can’t. I don’t know how to anymore. The money at my job is more than anything I’ll make elsewhere; I have little savings in my bank account because of my father’s illness and a mortgage I can barely afford (I might have been a little too aspirational with the posh address I’d chosen), which is fine, just as long as I have a job. Plus, I can’t give up now: I’ve half-ruined my eyesight on pages of document review, sucked up to too many people, sacrificed too much of my youth and identity, listened to far too many lectures from my mom about languishing in the purgatory of mediocrity. It’s no longer a choice; too much hangs in the balance. I have to become partner.