A Barefoot Story

Dylan Chan

I was born in the belly button of the world, where everything was warm and wet. The red soil raised delicate flowers—tiger orchids, Venus fans, bottle brushes—and regardless of the hour, the grass never let go of its dew. All hands were clammy, and all closed-toe shoes were dank as a limestone cave. Nowhere was a chapped lip, a dry eye, or a dry day.

Anyone who is born in the belly button is taught early the legend of its discovery; he grows up with that age-old yarn just as he grows up with the patter of the rain, the feeling of sweat in his hairline, and the odors that waft about the wet-markets—dried fish, black vinegar, jasmine rice. As a toddler, I was introduced to the legend by way of a picture book, and having learned of it through drawings, it remains in my memory more as colors and textures than characters and plot. Nevertheless, I can still tell you how it spins. 

Sometime in the thirteenth century, a Malaysian prince was sailing across the South China Sea, riding the trade winds ever forward beneath a spotless sky. Then one day, without warning, the blue above turned gray and the still water below turned turbulent. Violent gales tore his sails into strips and shreds and whipped the sea into a frenzy of rise and fall. His boat filled up like a bathtub, the stern began to sink, and the prince, who had inherited land, gold, and power, realized that fortune and luck are not one and the same. In a fit, he lobbed his bejeweled crown into the sea, hoping that the gods would accept his royal title and flatten the mountainous swells in return. And the exchange worked. As soon as the headpiece touched the water, the storm passed, the clouds parted, the boat returned to a state of good repair, and last in the list of interventions, an island appeared—a low bump on the distant horizon. Once near to the shore, the prince-no-longer caught sight of a lion at rest on the beach, golden mane bathed in light from the slanting sun. It was then that he decided upon a name for this miracle island, this mass that divine hands had crafted from the flat expanse of the sea: “Singapura,” Malay for “Lion City.”

Skip a few centuries ahead to the year 1800 and leave the realm of folklore for the facts of history. The British, the Dutch, and the French have set out to add new oriental territory to their empires, and the imperial mission has guided their ships to Southeast Asia—to Singapura, Java, Sumatra, and Indochina. The Dutch seize Java and Sumatra, where nutmeg, coffee, pepper, and thousands more spices and flavors hide in the overgrown jungle. The French carve up Indochina, where the rubber trees are tall and the seaside lagoons yield salt. The British choose to pursue prizes different from the rest, position not products. They take Singapura for its strategic location at the mouth of the Mallaca Strait, the narrow waterway through which all other European ships must pass. They teach the locals English, erect neocolonial palaces, and rechristen the island “Singapore.” For 140 years, the belly button serves, begrudgingly, as their key to the East-West trade.

Then, come 1959, the winds change their course. The locals rally to break the colonial cage. Some riot, others organize. Some campaign for a communist future, others for a capitalist. Fearing the advancing Red tide, the British bolster the free-market camp and issue Singaporeans a conditional agreement: if you can throw the communists overboard, we will jump ship too. A few years of secret hits and political imprisonment ensue until, eventually, the communist voice is nothing but a pipsqueak. On August 9th, 1965, the anti-Reds elect a leader of their own and pull the Union Jack from the statehouse flagpole. The South China Sea swallows yet another crown—this time that of the British.

I was born in June of ’98, two months before Singapore’s 33rd birthday as an independent state. Within our respective contexts, we were both infants—one recently separated from mother, the other from motherland. This, in part, might explain why I felt so close to the island, and thoroughly believed that it felt close to me too. We were both growing, changing, evolving—me in the measures of height and weight, Singapore in the metrics of economics: GDP, foreign investment, housing starts. Of course, as a kid, I knew nothing of those numbers, or what economies were. But I noticed the cranes, the lorries, and the restless downtown skyline, which annually gained a new tower or two. I saw a coastal marsh near my house disappear under layers of sand and dirt, one of many government projects aimed at pushing the boundary of the land farther out into the sea. I hung around the construction workers who spent their lunch hours half asleep in a park down the block from my bungalow, and watched them as they napped under the banyan trees, or chatted over the phone in tongues I could not speak—Bengali, Tamil, Bahasa. 

Down in the belly button, we boys avoided shoes like we avoided cough syrup, especially during monsoon season. Whenever the downpour stopped, dozens of little feet would come out to drum on the wet pavement. From every bungalow and semi-detached house, out came the shoeless soles, the carefree boys, the joyful shouts. This was the storm’s outro of sorts, the song to tie the whole album off. My brothers and I would always rush into the street and join the other kids, eager to be notes in the after-rain progression. Ryan made the loudest sounds. He had six years on me, and his feet were three sizes bigger. Ethan was the second child. He had a passion for the upside-down, so when the adults weren’t watching, he’d throw his hands onto the concrete and point his heels towards the clouds. Then the wind would blow, or Ryan would sling gutter water at the exposed part of Ethan’s stomach, and there would be a fleshy thud as he landed horizontal, unhurt, and happy. I had the smallest feet, and they made pathetic sounds. There was nothing I could do to raise my volume but wait for my bones to grow, and this I understood. Usually, while all of the neighborhood kids and my brothers ran around, I’d go off alone, sit in a sidewalk puddle, and listen.

Listen to the slap of young skin on drenched street, the short, pinched cry that follows a scraped knee, the chuckle of one boy after seeing another fall, the whiz of a car as it turns the corner and speeds by, sending kids onto the sidewalk and throwing water into the air as gravity-defying raindrops. 

Our neighborhood was full of textures—things rough, soft, and slimy—and our heels knew them better than the gutter knew the rain. Green lichen, beautiful to eye, hand and toe, crawled across the concrete courtyards. It lingered in driveways like my father’s childhood friends did after long dinner parties, lingered like Chu Man, Hussein, and Khai. My brothers and I treasured the fungus, and believed that some spirit had given it powers. After every rainy day spent outside, we carried the lichen’s olive pigment back home to the bungalow on the bottoms of our feet and anointed the white carpet with its color. My mother did not understand and would get upset. 

In the corner of our muddy lawn, which was separated from the street by a nylon fence, the soaking earth bore a miracle: a rambutan tree. The tree itself had no capacity to excite or to captivate, but the little fruits that dangled from its spindly branches did—bright red, covered on all sides with thick spines, rubbery to the touch, the size of a glass eye. During monsoon season, angry squalls from the South China Sea would shake the trees and throw the glass eyes at our bedroom windows. In the morning my dad would sweep the fruits up and give them a mass burial in the storm drain. 

Those winds that made the trees bend, whenever they arrived, blew me back in time, threw me into the images on the glossy pages of my picture book, placed me at the prince’s feet, on his sinking ship. And not without logic, for the gales that battered my house and scared me to death were the same that wrecked the prince’s boat and compelled him to offer the water his crown. My island was as humid as his, my rainy season as long as his, our winds in the same direction, our days both spent barefoot.

One October night as I lay in bed, I heard a commotion in the master bedroom—thunderous shouts and hushed voices as guilty as the eye of a hurricane. The argument slipped out of their room and into mine, and the words were too tempestuous and hasty for my ears to make sense of. The outside world, however, was pin-drop silent. Not the rain’s echolalia, nor the sound of kids at play. Awoken, Ryan tried to open the door, then resorted to banging on it, and then after a half hour of punching, collapsed at its base, defeated. The thunder kept up all night and through the morning. It kept up for the rest of the month.

I suppose that every kid, at some moment in their childhood, learns that there are some forces that cannot be reasoned with, or fully understood. 

My father was at work when my mother gathered us in the living room and told us to put on our shoes. She had our passports in hand, and spoke with that soothing hush all mothers can effect, that calming coo of milk, honey, and chamomile: get ready, get ready, get ready. Ryan was old enough to know what was going on, so he refused. He ran out to the lichen and sat on it, hoping that it would protect him. Ethan and I hid in the gutter and covered our feet with rambutans to keep the shoes away. But neither defense worked, and our heels were soon in sneakers.

We took a taxi to the airport. I remember the faux-leather seats, and how they stuck to our thighs and arms. I can tell you nothing of the cab ride other than that.

Twenty-four hours later, I was in a narrow apartment in Alphabet City eating pizza with an uncle I had never met. An ineffectual October drizzle pawed at the windows, and the only notes I heard were car horns and sirens. Everyone on the street wore shoes. And there were puddles, but they did not long for my toes or my hands. These puddles were filled with sad miscellany, and wanted to be left alone.

On one of those first days in New York, I ran to the corner of the block and knelt over the iron grate of a storm drain. Ear close to the cold metal, I heard the cadence of rushing water. Deep below the concrete, below the cars, and below the shoes, the after-storm sonata was in full swing. I wanted to pry the grate open and plunge headfirst into the sewer. I wanted to crawl through the bowels of the city, flashlight in hand, in search of the tube that would lead me back home.

Fall rolled over into winter. I still hadn’t heard much from my father, but I knew that he was somewhere back in the belly button, standing alone under the cumulonimbus clouds. Beneath the rain. No umbrella. And here we were, torn from our damp hole and stored away in a dry downtown walkup. Severed, sealed, sent. 

It was like trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle, but without the edge pieces, or the slightest idea of what the final image ought to be. We spent hours cross-legged on the peeling floorboards, trying to match cause with effect. Blame shifted back and forth like a buoy caught in a fickle current: was it him…was it her…was it us?

But there was no answer. Only aftermath. So my brothers and I looked up, shrugged shoulders, and chalked the events up to the weather. We blamed the wind, the rain, the clouds—and then closed the case.

~  ~  ~

I saw a homeless man hobbling on knock-knees and twisted ankles down 8th Avenue the other day. He was screaming profanities at the sky—cursing, ranting, and flailing—as if the pastel blue above was the source of all his anguish. I looked on from a café window, feeling at once vexed and engrossed. And then I remembered. 

Perhaps his anger was not misplaced.