The Demon You Don't See
Evening bruises the sky - nightfall is quick here. Mak used to caution us to stay indoors at this time, especially with the west wind blowing off the Straits of Melaka. “Ini masa hantu,” she’d say. The time of the spirits. A chill wind stirs the leaves, pimpling my bare arms. There is a banana blossom hanging almost to the ground, swollen and purple, suggestive of violence. Each tree fruits only once, then dies, birthing a new shoot to take its place. The villagers will be angry with me for taking the blossom, but Sarimah loves the heart of the flower.
I pull my father’s keris from my sarong waistband, and muttering the incantation, deftly behead the flower off the tree. It is a good one, long as my arm. “Ah,” I draw in a sibilant breath. I’ve pinked my forearm, the bite stinging. I should be more careful.
Immediately, the smell of frangipani coils around me.
“Sarimah,” I say, looking for her in the gloom. Lanterns outside the kampung houses wink in the waters of the Straits.
“This is our life blood,” Mak used to say. “Hormat dia.” Respect it.
Sarimah emerges from the thicket. Her sarong paints itself onto her legs, long and lithe like the sambar deer the men hunt for our annual feast.
She clucks her tongue, “You have hurt yourself, let me see.” She reaches for my arm. I pull it away.
“I’m so clumsy,” I chuckle, to soften it.
“Yes, you get that from Mak. She’s so clumsy.”
“Was, Imah. She was clumsy.”
Imah laughs, like water tripping over stones. “I forget so easily.”
It troubles me, the way she talks of Mak, like she knew her at all. Mak died in childbirth with Imah. It is true, she was clumsy, but Imah can only know this from Ayah’s stories.
“Don’t be jealous, Kak,” Imah says. My feelings write themselves on my face.
My gaze falls. “Let’s get this bunga pisang home before anyone sees.”
“Let me carry it, Kak. Your arm needs attention.”
“I’m okay,” I pull the flower away from her.
She doesn’t say anything, just follows.
At home, I find an old sarong to tear into strips, and I bind my forearm tight. It stings, and the pressure is uncomfortable. I bind tighter, to hold it all in.
Sarimah is busy peeling away the thick outer layers of the banana blossom, and she finds the heart, white, creamy, swollen with purpose. It seems to beat in her hand like a live thing. I put it in the steamer.
On the batu giling, I grind chilli, garlic and ginger, working the stone rolling pin back and forth to avoid looking at Imah. The piercing smell makes my eyes water. As the blossom steams, I make sambal, adding belacan, foetid and earthy, to the ground ingredients.
“Sedap,” Imah says, her tongue poking out to taste the air like a snake. Her teeth flash at me, glinting like diamonds, and her eyes crinkle with unvoiced laughter – they’re deep and black, like the night. She is breathtaking, just like Mak. I take after Ayah, our father – mine are simple, serviceable features.
I put rice, sambal, and the steamed heart of the banana blossom on a plate for her. The fingers of her right hand come together in a little bud, gathering the food together. She brings her hand to her mouth, dropping the ball of food in neatly. As she chews, a dimple peeks from her left cheek. I have the exact same one. A comma on our faces, both separating and joining us.
Imah came seven years after me, after many miscarriages. She was Mak’s little miracle. Mak would spend hours rubbing her belly, singing old lullabies, lost in a daydream. When the time came, Mak laboured for hours, pushing hard against something that didn’t want to let her go. Imah’s face was blue and engorged, the cord coiled around her neck like a python. Of course the midwife focused on the baby. We didn’t notice the pool of red bathing Mak, turning the floor into a slick ocean, until it was too late. She ebbed away, just like a wave returning to the Straits.
Imah finishes the meal, then emits a little burp, placing her fingers over her lips - the ultimate compliment.
The women of the village fed her, bathed her, played with her when she was a baby. “Cantiknya,” they’d say, admiring her perfect black hair, her rosebud mouth, her chubby fingers. All I could see was Mak, like Imah had leached her essence and taken it for herself. I would scold myself for my thoughts. She was just an innocent baby after all; but sometimes I would catch a knowing glint in her eye, or a calculating frown, and I would wonder.
She had a way of dimpling at people, pleading ‘tolong’ in a voice like bells. Our friends and neighbours would unhesitatingly do anything for her. I spoke with Ayah about it – “she’s too demanding, Ayah, you must say something”.
Ayah would wave me away, “She is just a little child who has lost her mother, have some sympathy.” I felt his words in my gut, like a twisting knife. I had lost my mother also.
When she was five, her playmate fell, skinning her knee. Imah dashed to her, wiping her tears, crooning a lullaby. But then she put her mouth straight on the girl’s knee and began sucking. The girl giggled at first, thinking Imah was trying to help, but soon her face paled, and she yelped in pain. “Imah!” I pulled her off. She wiped a smear of blood off her lips and went inside, a bland expression on her face.
Ayah merely laughed when I told him the story. He said kids do strange things all the time, and I should stop worrying. But I had my doubts. I remembered the story Mak had told us, about the Pontianak, a blood-sucking demon, preternaturally attractive, formed from a still-born foetus. Ayah gave an irritated sigh, calling me superstitious. Had I forgotten that it was Mak who had died, and not Imah? But the image of Imah’s blue body, still and unbreathing was frozen in my mind.
“I’m still hungry,” Imah pouts.
Imah is always hungry, but not for food. I spend my days cleaning and cooking, and my nights with Ayah, mending his nets, or preparing fish for drying. Except when he goes to the headman’s hut, for the weekly meeting. Like tonight. Imah spends her days exploring – at first just our village, then the surrounding ones, but soon the town called to her with the clamour of engines and the shouts of the street vendors. It isn’t seemly, but she won’t listen to me. Even Ayah tells me to stop being so old-fashioned when Imah beseeches him. She returns with her hair undone, the buttons of her baju askew. The villagers whisper like snakes when she walks past.
There’s an “Assalamualaikum,” at the door in a halting tenor. It is a voice I know well. “Walaikumsalam, Imran,” I say, welcoming our neighbour. We have known each other all our lives. We played in the mangroves catching mudskippers and pulling leeches off each other. After Mak died, there was no more playing. Imran comes over now and again, though probably not to visit me.
“Do I smell bunga pisang?” he says.
I fetch a plate for him, and load it. He loves my cooking. As I hand it to him, our fingers brush. It sends a hot pulsing up my injured arm, and I pull away. When we were younger, we’d touch each other frequently, unself-consciously. He’d crouch next to me, linking fingers, pointing out crab holes, or he would intertwine our legs while swimming in the Straits. Imah walks towards him, exaggerating the swing of her hips. She places the tips of her fingers on his upper arm. “All that hard work suits you, Imran,” she says. He has filled out - ropey muscles crawl up his shoulder and around his neck. His face is clean and clear, like his features have been carved with a knife. Imah is so obvious, and yet he cannot avoid beaming at her. “Yes, Imah, come out with us sometime!”
“Me? On a sampan? Fishing?” she trills. “I wouldn’t know what to do.”
“I would,” my voice is like lemons.
“Oh of course, Kak, you are much more practical.”
Imran finishes his food, and thanks me while washing his hands. With that little waver in his voice, he asks, “Would you like to, um, go for a walk?”
Imah clasps her hands together as if she has been offered a great gift. “That would be wonderful.” But I don’t miss the side glance she gives me, and she doesn’t miss the patch of colour on my cheeks. I busy myself with the dishes, clanking them together. The detergent feels rough and dry on my hands. They leave without saying goodbye. When I’m done, I go outside. The night air hangs low, pressing the breath back into my lungs. My skin feels hot, too tight. Suddenly, a shriek pierces the sky, loud and bright. It is to my right, close to the water. I can hear a scuffle, then a groan – Imran, surely! I check that my keris is in my waistband, and run to the shore. The sandy ground feels brittle underfoot, but I run on, neatly avoiding tree roots. I’ve run this path all my life.
On the shore, I see them on the ground, twisting like worms. For a moment I am frozen, but then Imran calls out, his breath coming in ragged gasps. I run, drawing Ayah’s keris. Imah’s teeth glint in the moonlight, pointed like daggers. She is about to sink them into his neck. He arches away, but she has her knees clamped around him. His sinews bulge and strain. She hasn’t seen me. Keeping to the shadow of a coconut tree, I creep towards them. She must be stopped. Without hesitation, I bury the keris into the back of her neck. It is the only way to stop a Pontianak.
Imah stares at me, blankly. “Kak,” a mere whisper. And she collapses.
“What?” Imran shouts. “What have you done?!” He cradles her. And that’s when I notice. His pants are around his ankles, his tumescent penis waving like a pennant. Her buttons are undone, her sarong hiked up around her hips.
“But…” I say. “She was about to…”
“About to what?!”
I turn Imah over, to show him her fangs, the Pontianak stigma at the back of her neck. But there’s nothing. Just her still, still body. “Imah?” I stutter hauling her onto my lap. Imran tries to pull me away, but I brandish the keris, and he backs away.
“Imah! Wake up! I can make more bunga pisang!”
But she is gone. Her blood – her bright, red human blood – drains to the Straits, home to Mak.
Sumitra Singam is a Malaysian-Indian-Australian coconut who writes in Naarm/Melbourne. She travelled through many spaces, both beautiful and traumatic to get there and writes to make sense of her experiences. She’ll be the one in the kitchen making chai (where’s your cardamom?). She works in mental health. You can find her and her other publication credits on twitter: @pleomorphic2