If I Could Tell You by Lee-Jing Jing

Ah Tee will want to help. I mean, there’s no one else to send him offerings. No family or anything.
    How do you know this? I’m sure they–
    He shook his head, he was the only child, there was no one left.
    Just think of it as a favour for a friend. We burn some offerings for him, ask for good luck. Nothing wrong with that.
    I shook my head. We weren’t friends. No one was friends with Ah Tee, not that I knew of. He was just the guy who brought us our beers when we sat at the coffee shop on Sundays. He brought us our bottles and opened them and gave us our change and happened to live in the same building as the rest of us. That was all he was. I wanted to say this but the words sounded bad, even in my head.
    Wong? he said.
    See how, okay? I have to go. Dinner at home getting cold.
    I waved bye and walked towards the lift. The lift doors were already shutting when Ah Meng yelled across the car park.
    Call you tomorrow to confirm, okay? he said.
    I waved one last time, meaning, okay, we’ll see.
    MEI Ling was at the door when I got home, holding a book open and standing on her tiptoes. Papa, can you help? she said.
    I motioned for her to wait and looked briefly at the textbook. Mathematics again. She’s always having problems with math.
    Have you tried hard enough? Try again.
    I did, but I don’t know how–
    Think, think. Are you stupid? I said and shook my head.
    I could hear her mother in the kitchen and I thought about going in and telling her what I saw. What Ah Meng said. Ask her if she heard about Ah Tee, how such a thing could happen right here, in our building. But I already knew what she would say. Um. Hm. Ya. She would shake her head, clicking her tongue all the while, sounding like a gecko in the wall. The ones that you can hear but never see. That is all she says when I bring something up. A few mumbled yesses, clicks and the shaking of her empty head. When she starts talking though, about the neighbours, her brothers and sisters, and about what happened in the past, she can talk my ear off. All those words about people I didn’t know, about things I didn’t care about. She would go on until I stopped her by walking away or putting on the TV.
    Sometimes I think Mei Ling is like her mother, that she might grow up to be like her, but someone would comment that she looks so much like me and I would remember that she has my blood. Sometimes I think that might be good enough.
    Okay, I said and walked over to Mei Ling, putting my hands to my back and stretching while I looked over her shoulder.
    Read the question, I said.
    Alice has 28 apples. Ben has 3 more apples than Alice. Clark has 2 less apples than Ben. How many apples does Clark have? she said.
    This girl, good at reading but not so good with numbers. I said, it’s a simple question, don’t know how to do?
    I sat down next to her and started. It’s simple, I said, first, tell me who has the most apples here, and who has the least?
    WE didn’t talk about it over dinner. It is not something I want to think about at the end of a working day. Such bad luck, just when the taxi business was improving. When the news came on that night, I grabbed the TV remote, ready to switch channels when they start to talk about Ah Tee. I sat waiting for it to come on during the half hour but it never did. Afterward, I wasn’t sure if I was relieved not to hear more about it, or disappointed that they had left it out. I guess it was much too ordinary, I thought. Like reporting a car crash, or an elderly person passing away from pneumonia. Too common — people jumping from apartment buildings. Now, they are starting to jump in front of oncoming trains, even while commuters stood around on the platforms minding their own business or reading the paper, unaware that their day was about to take a turn until the sound of it, a thump and a scream from someone who caught the flash of movement, drew them out of their own heads and into the moment. The first suicide had been