The elevator door opens and immediately I think, Mr. Tai doesn’t look so good. He’s sweaty and shaking. I have an urgent desire to push him back into the elevator, press the button and get him out of here. He forgets to bring his suitcase into the apartment so one of the maids runs to grab it before the elevator doors close behind him. Mrs. Tai is looking at him quizzically. He says something in Cantonese and she looks at me with her “Take the children” face. I gladly take Angelica and Rupert into the nursery—it’s already past their bedtime—and begin the routine of bath, pajamas （“No not those pajamas! I don’t like those ones anymore. I’m not a baby!”）， book （“I want this book! I don’t care which one Rupert wants. I’m not a baby!”） and bed. When Mr. Tai comes into the nursery to say good night to Angelica and Rupert, Mrs. Tai is behind him, crying silently. I hope they will go away quickly. They’re scaring the children and he might have the Plague. He probably doesn’t, surely he doesn’t. But if he does, he might give it to Rupert and the risk of that makes me feel sick. That night, he and Mrs. Tai have a big fight. I don’t understand what they are saying as they always argue in Cantonese but the next day when I take the children to the kitchen for breakfast, I see that Mr. Tai is nailing wooden planks across the elevator. The sound of the hammer makes me flinch and Rupert keeps asking me what is going on. As I take the children back to the nursery to eat, Mr. Tai turns around and says in a crazy voice, “No one is to enter or leave this house.”
For the first time since I arrived in Singapore, my vulnerability here feels poisonous. I can’t rip the boards off. I can’t leave, I need this job. What am I going to do? Where would I go? What if the Plague ruins my life here? I hadn’t thought the Plague was going to be a problem in Singapore. I’ve heard about it. My mother has been e-mailing me about it, but Singapore is the safest country in the world and they shut the borders to foreign citizens. I thought I would be untouchable like the rich people are, but I’m just the help. I’m nothing to them.
Over the next two days we wait, and wait and wait in an odd pretense that everything is normal. Dressing as normal, eating breakfast as normal, playing with the children as if any of this is normal. We’re locked up in the apartment and I don’t know whether it’s scarier to be in here or out there. After two years as a nanny for the Tai family, I’m so used to being quiet and unquestioning that it didn’t even occur to me that I could just . . . leave. As I walked through the lounge first thing this morning, I saw that one of the cooks, Davey, was leaving. He had used knives and his hands to force off the wooden boards Mr. Tai had nailed across the elevator. He asked me if I had seen Mr. Tai today. I said I thought he was still in bed. “In that case,” he said and took the Ming vase that sat on the mahogany table by the elevator.
“Take care of yourself,” he said as the elevator doors closed.
I waved good-bye to the closed doors and thought Davey was stupid for leaving. As if a vase is going to save him from the Plague. He’s the one who should want to stay in here, not me, although the thought hovers around me that the Plague could already be inside the apartment. My throat tightens in fear for Rupert.
I walk around the huge living room, trying to breathe slowly, trailing my fingers along the glass panes that make up one wall of the apartment. When I first started working for the Tais I thought this room, this whole apartment, was the most unbelievable thing I had ever seen. All I knew before I arrived was that a family in Singapore had chosen me from the agency’s books. I didn’t know that Singaporeans are obsessed with having Filipino nannies because we are seen as the best. I just knew it was better money than I could make at home and the hours weren’t too bad. I was nineteen and didn’t know any better.
The moment I first met Mrs. Tai I knew she was challenging. The woman at the agency who hired me warned me it would be a shock. She said it was easy to feel resentful at first when they complained about how hard their lives were and talked about wanting more money, more jewelry, more everything. I nodded and thought Okay, lady, but I didn’t get it. Not until I got here and they had more money than I had ever seen in my life.