Serena
Serena waltzed into our sitting room, wearing a combination of colorful sari and silk scarves wrapping around her head and neck. She held her imaginary partner, eyes half-closed, dreamily and gracefully, letting herself being led across the long, shiny wooden floor. The sun rays of the early afternoon streamed through the open windows, her flowing sari billowed like sails, caught the dappled sun light, as she twirled, dancing insistently into our quiet, dull existence.
We stood by the windows, a whole row of us, wearing our worn, dull hand-me-downs as we gazed with wonder at this gauzy fairy-like figure who danced with abandon, ignoring the creaking of the floor or the fact that the room was lopsided, leaning down the eroded slope, ready to be plunged into the abyss.
My mother, Ah Yee, sat in a rattan chair, shoulders hunched as her eyes followed her, paying particular attention to her dance steps. The only and the last time she danced or was made to dance was in her wedding reception. Everyone cheered as her husband dragged her around the floor, half embarrassed and out of breath through the effort. She felt awkward, not as graceful as this apparition in her sitting room. She could not remember how she came to know Serena. Was it in one of the dinner parties that she attended with her husband through his work?
The breathless dancing figure finally slumped down next to Ah Yee, reaching out for her hands, pulling them up to her lips and roughly kissing them as a guttural throaty noise issued deep from her chest through her mouth, completely out of synchrony with her graceful performance. Serena was a tall, dark, flamboyant Eurasian who often came in the middle of the day unannounced, dancing her way into our sitting room; the waltz, the cha-cha, the rumba, the samba… wearing colorful sari, silk scarves or skin-tight jeans and stiletto with pointy-heads. Bands of bangles surrounded her wrists, strings of necklaces and beads hung from her neck, and dangling earrings adorned her ear lobes, gypsy-like. Both finger and toenails were painted bright red. Thick dark eye shadows contrasted with her deep blood-red lipstick and pink rouge which she painted on her cheeks as two perfectly round circles like a clown.
This time the dance she chose was the waltz.
Born deaf and mute, when she opened her mouth, a husky, raspy noise emerged from her throat as she gestured wildly. Adam’s apple bobbed up and down prominently on her thin swan-like neck. Despite her feminine outfit, her Adam’s apple betrayed her sex.
She then turned around and took a good look at us, my mother’s brood of seven children, tickling us, poking at our bellies, and making us laugh. By now Ah Yee had asked my oldest sister, Fong, to pour her a drink of water from the thermos; and serve some water melon seeds if we happened to have them. Her meager budget did not allow her to have any form of expensive offerings. Serena would always invite us to partake of her food but we were fully aware of the warning stare of my mother: Don’t you dare take a bite, these are for Serena. I held onto the hem of my skirt, brought it to my mouth, and shook my head but deep inside I wanted some water melon seeds.
She took off her high heels and ran after us making us shriek with delight, the sort of thing my mother could not and would not do as she always had a baby in her arms to care for. When she caught one of us she held us tightly in her death grip, making a point to smudge our faces with her make-up; red lipstick and black eye shadow as she showered her kisses on us and growled, pretending to be a monster. Often, she succeeded, as this was always accompanied by her deep, guttural voice, coming deep from within her lungs and throat. When all was quiet, she took out a compact mirror from her handbag, screwing up her eyes while she took a close look at her face and proceeded to clean and repaint it. She had never combed her hair, at least in front of us. She wore a wig of long dark curly hair trailing gently off her shoulders and her back.
The all-knowing Fong told us that Serena was a cross-dresser and earned her living entertaining in bars and theaters. I was five years old then and was impressed by the extent of her knowledge. My brother, Buen, like all boys, insisted on seeing for himself and several times he attempted to pull down Serena’s skirt to take a peek; setting off a series of wild gesticulations and husky protestations from her. While Ah Yee admonished Buen, it did not stop him from persecuting her. Despite this, Serena continued to grace us with her presence. Her visits were a welcoming, refreshing interruption in our mundane life where entertainment was scarce. She enjoyed our company and never asked for any payment. Ah Yee could not afford it anyway.
Our inability to sign meant we could never ask her about her family, where and with whom she lived, her intimate feelings, love, and relationships. Did she ever feel lonely? Did she pay us periodic visits because she sought the closeness of family, companionship, and friendship? Did the brief time she spent with us suffuse her with the energy and closeness that she would need to face her world of entertaining others, dancing to make them laugh with joy while she would never hear the sound of their merriment.
As a child, I loved Serena’s graciousness and gracefulness, and in constant awe of her ability to overcome her disability to earn an honest living. In my mind she would continue her joyous dance, entwining her life with those of her audience; perhaps she would never feel alone despite the silence.
The Payphone
Lucy Loh’s beeper rang, she jumped. An unfamiliar number appeared on the screen.
She was speeding down the highway, after finishing her medical rounds at the hospital and was more than halfway home.
There were rare occasions when her beeper rang on her way home and she had to turn around heading back to the hospital to tend to some patients.
Was this one of those emergencies?
There would not be a payphone for another ten miles. She could not answer her beeper until she reached one. This was before the smartphone became so common that it enabled everyone to have the world in the palm of their hand.
She drove with a lead foot and finally reached the toll booth, veering towards the small parking lot where a lone payphone booth stood like a sore thumb among scattered weeds sprouting through the cracks of the tarmac. This payphone was like a friend to her over the years of traveling this stretch of the highway, she had entered its bosom plenty of times to answer her pages.
She yanked at the squeaking door. The glass panes were grimy, becoming more translucent over the years. Dropping a dime into the coin slot, “Hello operator, Dr. Loh here. I was paged a few minutes ago, could you connect me to whoever called me?” Well, actually more than a few minutes ago, she muttered under her breath.
After a long pause, “Hi, Dr. Loh? We couldn’t reach you so we called Dr. Judge.”
The mere mention of Dr. Judge’s name sent a shiver down Lucy’s spine. Jane Judge was the director of her department and her boss. She would hear no end of complaints from her about not answering her beeper in a timely manner. “Mr. Johnson has a high fever and is delirious. We needed to know what we should do.” The voice at the other end said.
“Sorry, I was on the road and just found a payphone to return your call.”
She heard the operator say, “You have two minutes left.” She fumbled in her purse for more dimes.
“Don’t you have a cell phone?”
“No,” she was going to add that Jane Judge did not wish to pay for her on-call doctors to carry a cell phone but decided not to. Now that Jane herself was called on her non-on-call day, she might think twice about getting the on-call doctors a cell phone so her days off would not be disturbed. But would that ever happen?
#
On Monday, Jane summoned Lucy to her office, “I was called this weekend because you didn’t answer your page?”
“It took me a while to find a payphone.”
“That’s not a good excuse.”
“I have been thinking that our department should assign a cell phone for the doctors on-call.”
“Only the administrators carry a cell phone,” Jane replied.
Lucy thought it made no sense for personnel without responsibility for direct patient care to be given a phone paid for by the hospital.
“Shouldn’t our department get us a cell phone when we are on-call?”
“If you wish to, you should buy your own.”
“Would our department pay for the phone calls?”
“The hospital only pays for the administrators,” Jane replied.
Was it fair for those who received top pay to have free phones and a free payment plan? Doctors like her who were on the frontline taking care of sick patients were paid a pittance, and yet they had to buy their own phones and pay for the calls. What if Mr. Johnson had a life-threatening illness and needed attention right away, wouldn’t a cell phone save his life?
That day, she did not win the argument and continued to be on-call without a cell phone, always praying that her beeper would not ring until she was close to a payphone.
One evening she was stuck in a bad traffic jam, nothing moved. Her beeper rang demanding attention. She gripped the steering wheel, steeling herself not to honk. A tunnel slowly swallowed the train of cars snaking home during rush hour. In the dark tunnel, there would be no payphone for sure. Even a cell phone would not help her now, there would be no signal.
By the time she got off the highway and drove down an exit, it had been over an hour since her beeper rang. She found a phone booth sitting on a buckled red-brick sidewalk. Parking her car illegally, she sidled into the booth.
“Oh, Dr. Loh, what took you so long?”
“Traffic jam.”
“The pharmacy refused to release the antibiotic we need to treat Dr. Judge. Only you, the on-call doctor, could give the OK.”
“Who did you say is the patient?”
“Dr. Jane Judge, your boss.”
“What happened?”
“Didn’t you hear? She was badly injured in a car accident, swiped by a truck on the highway.” Was that why there was a traffic jam? Lucy’s heart sank. She could have approved the antibiotic over an hour ago if she had a cell phone. “Are you still there? You need to approve the antibiotic ASAP before the surgeon would take her to the OR.”
In the ensuing days, Lucy rounded on Jane in the surgical intensive care. The paramedic found her wedged under the steering wheel, with a death grip on her cell phone, the hospital-issued cell phone. Jane did not wake up from her coma. Her head trauma was too extensive. After a month in the intensive care unit, she was transferred to a rehabilitation center.
Whence the next time Lucy squeezed into the phone booth to answer a call, she whispered to the payphone, “Thank you.” for saving her life.
If she had a cell phone, she would have answered the call while driving, her beeper always demanded her attention on a busy death highway.
Then she heard an urgent long honk.
Looking up, she saw a truck flattening the toll booth, came barreling towards the phone booth on the parking lot.
Originally from Penang, Malaysia, I attended Wellesley College on a full scholarship, paving the way for me to become a doctor. I am a Harvard Medical faculty physician. In 2005, I left my position as a professor of medicine to dedicate time to humanitarian work: in HIV/AIDS in Africa and to provide disaster relief all over the world, during wars, famine, and natural disasters, including the Ebola outbreak, the Syrian, Rohingya refugee crises, Yemen, and the COVID-19 pandemic in New York and the Navajo Nation. I am a three-time recipient of the President’s Volunteer Service Award. My work has appeared in Science Speaks, MedPage Today, Balloon Literary Journal, Literally Stories, Vine Leave Press, and others. I am the author of Lest We Forget: A Doctor’s Experience with Life and Death During the Ebola Outbreak, Into Africa, Out of Academia: A Doctor’s Memoir, and The Girl Who Taught Herself to Fly.
Aloka 