The Catherine Lim Collection (51 page)

So, given stark poverty on the one side and
flowing money on the other, the bride trade continues and Bina’s little baby
sister Ameena, just now toddling barefoot outside the house but already showing
promise of the same startling beauty as her sister, will have to endure the
same fate.

According to the Chinese, the Goddess Nu Kwa,
during the time when the heavens and the earth shattered, quickly came to
repair the damage, using coloured stones to patch up the skies and the four
legs of the great turtle to support the earth. Indian records tell us that if
the Goddess Devi were to close her eyes even for a second, the entire universe
would disappear. According to the ancient Akkadians, it was the Goddess Mami
who first placed life on earth, by pinching off 14 pieces of clay, making seven
of them into women, and seven into men. Mexican records tell of the Goddess
Coatlicue, who gave birth to the moon, the sun and all other deities. The
Australian Aborigines explain that it is to the Goddess Kunapipi that our
spirits return upon death, remaining with her until the next rebirth.

The testimony to woman’s power is for all
time, whether scratched on clay, chiselled in stone, inked on silk or printed
on paper.

(From The Woman’s Book Of Superlatives)

“An easy operation,” my friend had said, by
way of calming my fears, because I had confided in her the nightmares that
started coming as soon as I had made the decision. That was about eight years
ago. I saw myself sliced open and my women’s fecundity, a bunch of soft golden
eggs, pulled out and squelched up. I would wake up panting in terror and once
woke Larry who stirred, grunted and rolled over to fit snugly into any
receptive curve of my body, as he liked to do when asleep. I think I had six of
these nightmares, each more horrendous than the last; in the final one, I hung,
like a plucked chicken from the ceiling, my raw insides being slowly enticed
out by gravitational suasion, until someone (a nurse, I think) walked by,
looked up and matter-of-factly stuffed them back.

But the reality was far, far removed from
the nightmare.

“You mean it’s all over?” I asked. I was
still groggy from the anaesthetics, but felt not the slightest pain.

“Yes, it’s all over,” smiled the nurse.

“Can I go home?” I asked.

“You need to rest a day here, and then you
can be discharged,” said the nurse.

Of course, Larry and I did not want to talk
about the operation which could not have been a very comfortable subject for
discussion, but we had talked, weeks before, of the subject that had made the
operation necessary. It had begun with Meng’s failing to get into the
kindergarten of our choice, the best kindergarten in Singapore. Larry was
furious. The principal had told him that Meng was 122nd on the waiting list. It
was highly regrettable parental negligence not registering him in that
kindergarten as soon as he was born. Now he was three, and it was too late.

“I don’t want the same thing to happen to
the boy when he reaches school-going age,” said Larry grimly. I knew he had in
mind the best primary boys’ school in Singapore for which parents would have
offered immense bribes, but since this was not one of the normal channels for
cooperation, they had to resort to other measures.

The surest one was for the mother of the
child to undergo sterilisation at a government hospital and produce proof
thereof, upon which the school, having been previously briefed, would
immediately enrol the child. This measure was in line with the government’s
goal to achieve national prosperity through strict population control:
Singapore women were alarmingly fecund and Kandang Kerbau Maternity Hospital
had the dubious distinction of registering one of the highest birth-rates in
the world. A slew of birth control measures, including aggressive sloganeering,
public haranguing, employment disincentives and income tax penalties, appeared
not to work. Then somebody hit on the brilliant idea: If parents wanted to send
their children to the established premier schools of Singapore, the mothers
would have to produce sterilisation certificates. For Chinese parents put such
a high premium on the education of their children, especially their sons, that
they would be prepared to lose an arm and a leg to secure all the opportunities
they could for the sons’ advancement in this world. So what was the loss of a
pair of ovaries? The population control policy worked like a dream.

I handed over a copy of the sterilisation
certificate to the school principal, Larry was very pleased, and our son Meng
got into an excellent school of our choice where he did extremely well so that
each time he came back with school prizes and glowing report cards, Larry
beamed and patted him and gave him expensive presents, while I congratulated
myself on the wisdom of my decision.

I wished, though, that other problems in our
marriage could have been just as easily solved. Consider: Husband gets angry
because Wife is showing too much interest in her career. Wife goes for
operation to remove ‘Career Gland’. Husband complains Wife does not love him.
Wife goes for operation to put in ‘Love Husband’ gland.

There is no point going into the problems
now. They are so complex and yet seem no more than accumulations of the most
appalling trivia that they defy analysis. It is best to cut through this
marital Gordian knot by simply settling on incompatibility. About 10 years
after the operation, when I was 36, we decided that things were not going too
well and like many couples before us, we thought to give our marriage a second
chance by going on this extended holiday, sometimes coyly referred to as the
‘second honeymoon’.

A tour of Bangkok and Manila could be
managed despite our busy work schedules; Larry got ‘special’ leave from his
company (he said his boss was very understanding) and I managed to get what is
known as ‘no pay leave’ from my company.

Now I confess, to my embarrassment, that the
holiday did not have the desired effect and that shortly after we returned, we
decided to separate. I further confess, with some self-reproach, that in spite
of the very lavish treatment during the 10 days of the tour – Larry took me to
the best hotels, most expensive restaurants, most exclusive shopping areas in a
frenzy of spending to reclaim lost marital ground – I remember nothing of this
second honeymoon.

Except two small incidents, and very
inconsequential ones, at that.

We were in a hotel in Bangkok, certainly one
of the best in the city and one highly recommended by a business associate of
Larry’s. Alas for the futility of a hotel’s expenditure of effort and money
upon indifferent guests like myself! I sat in a corner of the hotel foyer,
absorbed in thought, waiting for Larry who was supposed to meet me there,
impervious to the blandishments of hotel chandeliers and floral extravaganzas
and thick carpets.

“Ma’am.” The small voice made me turn round.
I saw a young Thai girl standing in front of me and holding something out to
me. It was a scrap of paper, a receipt, whatever, which must have dropped out
of my handbag when I had earlier opened it to pull out a piece of tissue. She
was a very pretty girl, about 14 or 15 at the most. I took the piece of paper
from her and was wondering whether to offer her some money and how much, when
she turned and walked back to join a small cluster of young-looking girls like
herself sitting quietly in a corner. They looked like they were getting ready
to go on a trip, and waiting for someone to herd them into a bus or van. They
all had the lustrous eyes and hair and burnished skins for which Thai women are
famous.

“Who are they?” I asked one of the hotel
attendants, a young man who called himself ‘Tommy’, spoke good English and
seemed more sociable than the rest.

“Virgins,” he said. “Virgin prostitutes.
With good proof. Their price is much higher.”

I puzzled over the contradiction in terms.

“Where are they going?” I asked.

“To Hong Kong,” he said “The next group
arrives this evening, to replace them.” I would have liked to know more but
decided not to engage the friendly, young man in conversation that could prove
embarrassing. Besides, Larry would not approve. I remembered that Grandfather,
when he was already 72, still demanded virgins from the pool of bondmaids in
Grandmother’s household, for the act of defloration conferred upon an aging man
great powers so that he rose from the de-virginised body revitalised.

I saw the girls being herded into one of the
hotel vans by a tall dark man. The girl who had returned me the receipt saw me,
smiled and gave me a look which I returned – a strange look that established,
in some indefinable way, a small bond of affinity that said, “We are going to
meet again.”

I did not tell Larry about the Virgin
Prostitutes.

“Ma’am.” It would appear I had got into the
habit of dropping things from my handbag. This time it was in Manila, in a busy
shopping centre. The woman who was probably in her 20s had one child on her hip
and another by the hand, and it was this child who, prompted by the mother,
shyly held out the air ticket I had dropped. Larry was aghast at my
carelessness; he took over the air ticket for safekeeping in his wallet. I gave
the child some money, and the mother smiled and began talking to me. “You from
Singapore?” she said cheerfully. “I got a sister working in Singapore. She
earns good money.” Filipinas were pouring into Singapore to work as domestic
servants, but not before they had given a written undertaking to the Government
that they would not get pregnant.

I don’t remember what I said to her,
probably some inanity about the beauty of her country and the friendliness of
the people. Then she gave me a look, and I swear it was that strange
affinity-establishing look again which sent a little thrill through me.

“We are going to meet again,” it said, and I
said, “Yes,” before Larry hustled me away. From that moment, the three of us
had become curiously linked as a trio in my mind, three women who by no stretch
of the imagination belonged together: myself, a 37-year-old woman executive
from Singapore with a Master in Business Administration degree from British
Columbia University, she, the child-woman prostitute working in a Bangkok hotel
and the other she, a young housewife from Manila with two small children,
envious of her sister who had come to Singapore to work as a maid.

“How was the second honeymoon?” The slyly
good-natured question would have elicited a totally inappropriate reply: I met
a little girl prostitute in Bangkok and a young Filipino mother in Manila, and
now we seem to form a sisterhood and I am puzzled as to why.

The divorce was as amiable as any under the
circumstances; we shared rights to Meng, for whose sake we had delayed the
divorce until after he had finished the all important PSLE examinations which
he passed with flying colours. Even before the divorce had come through, I was
already seeing Y, and to this day, Y is branded by my family and Larry’s as
being the one single rogue factor in the otherwise happy equation of our
marriage. I got the house, the car, a sizable bank account – but oh! I would
have given up all these, indeed, 10 times all these – if I could have got it
back. But they said the operation was irreversible.

The puzzlement disappeared as soon as we met
again, and I recognised both instantly. There we were, the three of us, in the
clinic waiting for the doctor’s nurse to call us, sitting facing each other,
our respective pieces of paper in our hands. I with the Sterilisation
Certificate, hoping against hope that it would not daunt this doctor from
attempting to reverse the operation and give me back my womanhood, she, the
Virgin Prostitute holding her Virginity Certificate and waiting for a renewal
before starting work in a Singapore hotel, and the other she, holding the
Certificate of Non-Pregnancy now invalidated by the small swell beginning to
show and hoping that it would be sufficient justification for a quick abortion.

We were a band of women whose sexuality had
been reduced to pieces of paper signed by men.

We are the Paper Women.

It was thanks to the Goddess Ukemochi that the
people of Japan always had food to eat, for from her came the abundance of the
rice in the fields, the animals in the mountains and the fish of the rivers and
seas. One day, the great Amaterasu sent her brother, the moon God Tsuki Yomi,
to serve Ukemochi in her heavenly palace. Now this was a great insult to his
pride. Arriving at Ukemochi’s palace, he was presented with rice, fish and meat
in a great banquet, but he refused the food, insisting that Ukemochi had
vomited it out of her own body. Then his anger became very great indeed and he
took out his sword and murdered the Goddess Ukemochi. So gentle and magnanimous
was the goddess that even as she lay in death, she continued to bless him with
abundance: from her stomach came rich harvests of rice, from her head came
horses and oxen, from the black silk of her eyebrows came the threads for the
weaving looms. When the Great Amaterasu heard of the murder, she was filled
with rage against her evil brother and banished him from the heavens. He began
to be ashamed of himself, and repented so deeply of the dishonour of his act
that he remained hidden in his shame.