‘Oh please do not worry about us, doctor, spending your heart upon us … we stayed because we discovered some relatives in Singapore and they entreated us to linger the night.’

‘Oh well …’

‘They may be coming here for a visit. So much trouble for you, doctor, all these people, but then you are so kind, it is like a big family here …’

Vanity pampered, weakly I replied: ‘Of course your relatives are welcome.’

Then I went to the kitchen and told Cookie quite firmly that from now on we would eat no more butter, not even with toast.

A little girl, shy and quiet, fifteen to look at, though Ah Mei said she was nearly eighteen, with sweet oval face and stubborn eyes and hair waving softly to the shoulder, padded on naked feet upstairs, following Ah Mei, and was introduced to me as Ah Mei’s sister-by-affection, Golden Orchid.

Golden Orchid was the daughter of Ah Mei’s mother’s sister. Not her real sister, but her bond sister, sister by love. Ah Mei’s mother, when young, worked as rubber packer in a Singapore factory, sewing the smoked sheets of rubber into square packages bound by jute cloth. There she became a member of a sisterhood. Many such exist in Malaya, women banded for protection and self-help in societies, as men are. There is the sisterhood of amahs, those of the long black braids of hair pulling their bony heads back, always dressed in white tops and black silk trousers, neutral as worker-bees; there is the confederacy of women carriers, those who build roads and carry bricks and lumber, in their uniforms of black cotton with the red bandannas upon their heads. There are many others, bound by vows as nuns, vows taken in the temples before the goddess All-Compassionate or other deities; or lovers of each other, living as husband and wife, adopting children to their coupling; but all binding by affection, which is as strong as ties of blood, and often stronger.

The bond between Ah Mei’s mother and Golden Orchid’s mother had been strong enough for them to drink wine together, vowing that Heaven might fall to pieces, and the earth consume itself, before their affection for each other should perish. And then Golden Orchid’s mother married one man, and Ah Mei’s mother married another; came the war, and they parted. Ah Mei’s mother hid in the jungle with her children during the war, existing in a clearing on yams and tapioca, and looking for protection to the jungle guerrillas, the People Inside. And now, in Singapore (said Ah Mei), they had found Golden Orchid. And so, of course, Golden Orchid was really her (Ah Mei’s) sister, and could she stay here for a few days? I said Yes.