In 1958, Lai Mei Lin, 28, becomes the first
Chinese woman promoted to Senior Clerk in the
Colonial Education Office, her name printed in
the Straits Times under “Merit over Race.” That
night, she sleeps in her new HDB flat at Tiong
Bahru Block 78—her first home not rented from a
kampong landlord. By morning, her promotion
notice is gone. The office claims it was “a
clerical error.” She refiles. It vanishes again.
The building’s caretaker, a Malay man named Pak
Hassan, watches her with wet eyes. He never
speaks, but leaves a plate of kueh lapis and a
sprig of kemboja by her door every Friday. When
she asks why, he bows and says nothing. That
night, she hears the taptaptap of bare feet on
the ceiling—not from above, but from below. The
floorboards breathe.
The HDB flats were built over the old Muslim
burial grounds near Bukit Timah Road. The
government bulldozed the graves in ’56, claiming
“progress needs space.” But the spirits did not
leave. They cling to the cement, to the pipes,
to the women who climb too fast. The rule: no
one rises if the dead are ignored. The second
rule bites when she finds her mother’s old kopi
tiam receipt tucked in her desk drawer—dated
1942, written in Jawi, with a smudge that looks
like a handprint. Her mother never left Kampong
Bahru. She died before Mei Lin was born.
Mei Lin files a third promotion. The next day,
the water in her flat turns black. The taps drip
salt. The children in the corridor stop playing
when she walks past. She visits the mosque at
Kampong Kapor. The imam gives her a small
leather pouch—“For the ones who were not asked.”
She hangs it by the door.
On the fourth promotion attempt, her name
appears in the gazette. That night, she wakes to
the smell of burnt incense and jasmine. A woman
in a white baju kurung sits at her kitchen table,
eating kueh lapis with her fingers. No face.
Only the shape of sorrow. The ghost does not
speak. But Mei Lin feels it: her ambition is a
knife in the earth. The dead are hungry. The
ghost points to the ceiling, then to Mei Lin’s
chest.
She withdraws her application. The next morning,
the promotion notice is back—on her boss’s desk,
in the name of a Malay clerk who died in the
Occupation. The ghost’s handprint now glows
faintly on Mei Lin’s wrist. She does not cry.
She packs her things. Takes the pouch. Walks out
of Block 78 without looking back.
Three weeks later, a new family moves in. They
hear the tapping. They laugh. They say it’s just
the pipes.
Mei Lin opens a small tuition centre in Tampines.
She teaches girls how to write essays. She never
mentions HDB. She never sleeps in highrises
again. But every Friday, she buys kueh lapis.
And leaves it on the steps of any new HDB block
she passes.
