This post was originally published on murderiseverywhere.blogspot.com.
‘What are those?’
‘Those orange fruits? I don’t recognise the plant.’
‘Smell familiar?’
[sniffs] ‘No… can’t smell anything–‘
‘Some kind of fruit. Wonder if they’re sweet.’
‘Take a picture and do Google search.’
‘Okay, I got it – oh and it’s poisonous. Very poisonous. Don’t touch it!’
‘You’re the one who touched it first!’
‘How poisonous? Touch and feel itchy poisonous or touch and die poisonous?’
‘Doesn’t say– but there aren’t any bodies around so–‘
‘Maybe the poison leads to laryngospasm and an agonising death within twenty-four hours so none of the victims managed to tell anyone about the orange fruit they touched…’
No, we’re not murderers, just old school friends who hadn’t met up in years, and I’m the only mystery writer. But getting together with J and C made me realise how long ago my curiosity and love of exploring the world both widely and minutely got stirred up.
We were six years old when we first met. This year, we’re turning sixty-four and it’s C’s first visit to Singapore in twenty years! (If she keeps to this schedule we’ll be in our 80’s by the time we meet again!)
We were about 12 years in this photograph, which feels several lifetimes away. I wonder where everyone else in this photo is!
Our original plan was to walk around Chinatown looking at Yip Yew Chong’s murals–
but being Singaporean, we started with food at the Maxwell Food Centre—
And a sudden thunderstorm persuaded us to stay put and talk. Which was by far the best thing we could have done, I think.
It’s funny how we remember the same spaces and people but perspectives just slightly off. And that applied to how we remembered each other too— and the strangeness of ‘seeing’ yourself through someone else’s eyes both and, at your own memory anchors, seeing your childhood self through adult eyes. It made me realise how much my old school memories are filtered through the lens of who I was back then.
They might not appreciate this, but at times it felt like we were old dogs, encountering old litter mates and thrilling to the awakening of long forgotten and even longer beloved scent markers.
It was the perfect time to meet too, in the luminal space between Easter Sunday and the Ascension, with the reminder that we’re all still works in progress.
Another thing that’s making me feel simultaneously younger (relatively) and older (responsibilities) is my father-in-law moved in with us last week.
It’s a joy to have him. He’s a cheerful 90 year old who loves challenging our neighbours to guess his age, then laughing proudly when they get it wrong and “announcing “Ninety years old! And I still climb stairs without a stick!”
But it just made it even more special to have some irresponsible girl time.
And, maybe, discover a new source of poison in Eve’s Apple, the unusual orange fruits that caught our attention.
The flowers are more familiar:
Eve’s Apple or Forbidden Fruit (Tabernaemontana dichotoma), has poisonous latex, fruit and seeds. It’s part of the dogbane family, which includes one of my favourite trees, the frangipani. You can see how similar their leaves are.
I’m guessing the names come from colonialists linking the beautiful but toxic fruit to the biblical Eve. It’s a reminder that we three Singapore born girls only met and became friends thanks to the mission school mechanism set up by the colonialists, and we’re probably seeing each other—and the rest of the world—through its filters!