The Catherine Lim Collection (6 page)

“Mother, I’m here. See, I’ve brought some
food for you,” said Angela brightly, going into her mother-in-law’s room, where
the old woman sat on her large plank bed, the bun of hair at the back of her
head loosened, combing the long, scanty strands with a wooden comb.

Angela put the tiffin carrier on a small
table beside the bed, and proceeded to dismantle the tall structure, tier by
tier, to show the delicious steaming food cooked specially for the old one by
Mooi Lan.

“Pigs’ trotters with ginger,” said Angela.
“Mooi Lan doesn’t cook it as well as you, but it’s not bad this time. Chicken
and mushroom soup, fried prawns – ”

“So much food for only the three of us,”
murmured Old Mother. “You shouldn’t have gone to all that trouble.”

Angela would have liked to have said,
“Please, Mother, don’t give all this good food this time to that gluttonous Ah
Kum Soh and her idiot son who is greedier than a pig,” but she contented
herself with saying, emphatically, “Mother, I told Mooi Lan to cook this food
specially for you. It’s meant for you. You haven’t been eating well. You must
build up your strength again.”

“Thank you. You have a kind heart,” said Old
Mother who had stopped combing and oiling her hair, and was tying it back into
a bun at the back of her head. The conversation would have ended then, so
little had she to say to this daughter-in-law, but Angela’s cheerful good
humour persisted, and the pigs’ trotters, chicken and mushroom soup and fried
prawns were dragged back to serve for the niceties of discourse. She described,
in detail, how Mooi Lan had prepared them, how the capable servant girl had
gone to market specially early to get the really fresh prawns she had reserved
the day before, for the prawn seller would not wait beyond a certain time, so
popular were his prawns. Old Mother listened politely, repeated “Thank you” and
“So much food. You shouldn’t have brought so much food,” and then was silent.

The niceties could be stretched no longer,
and Angela soon fell silent too, thinking, for the hundredth time, that her
mother-in-law was certainly a very difficult old woman. Why couldn’t she be
like Mee Kin’s mother? It had nothing to do with education. Mee Kin’s mother
was illiterate too, but she was prepared to learn and move with the times. She
already knew some English words, she got along superbly with the younger
generation, even the grandchildren. She had, long ago, abandoned the solemn
drabness of the bun of hair at the back of the head for a simple, neat shingled
style that combined nicely the decorum of age and the need to keep up with the
times.

A shingled style for Old Mother? She could
never suggest it. The old one would recoil in horror.

Then – what a relief! – a new subject
presented itself, leaving behind the exhausted remnants of pigs’ trotters and
prawn markets. It dragged back to life a conversation that had flagged, dropped
and died, and made the visit less intolerable.

“Ah Tiong and Gek Choo’s son; is he all
right now?” asked Angela, knowing that Old Mother had visited Gek Choo in
hospital, a few days after the birth of the baby. She herself had gone on the
very day itself. The baby was unwell. Born prematurely, he already awaited an
operation that the doctors wanted to perform to correct an intestinal
abnormality.

“I’m not sure, I never saw the child. The
doctors kept him in a separate part of the hospital,” said Old Mother. Angela
wanted to ask, “Is it true what I heard? Ah Tiong went to Old Father’s grave to
pray and make offerings, because of a frightful dream he had just before Gek
Choo gave birth. Is it true?” But she refrained, sensing her mother-in-law’s
reluctance to talk.

She said, “I’m going to see Gek Choo
afterwards. I’ve got some small gifts for the baby and the little girls.” Old
Mother said nothing, and Angela continued, “I wish you could come to Mark’s
birthday party, but I know that your health is not very good now, and you need
a lot of rest. Mark will be disappointed that his grandmother won’t be able to
attend.”

The extent of the hypocrisy startled her
now. She would not recount this to Mark, but she would laugh over it with Mee
Kin, Dorothy and the others, for they too sometimes flattered their old in-laws
outrageously, being so anxious to please.

“Mark’s birthday,” repeated Old Mother, “I
almost forgot.” She said ‘Ah Muck’; the pronunciation was offensive, but not as
offensive as Chinaman’s imitation of it, imitation with malicious intent to
cause embarrassment to the boy.

“I almost forgot,” said Old Mother, and she
got up slowly, with effort, from the large wooden bed, and shuffled to a
cupboard. Angela watched, and she was back in a minute with a small red packet,
the gift money inside.

“For Mark. For him to grow up tall, to be
good in his studies, to be good and obedient to his parents,” said Old Mother,
handing over the packet and chanting the good wishes in ritualistic monotone.

“Thank you – there’s no need, there’s really
no need,” said Angela, receiving the packet nevertheless, and ready to return
the money, twice over, in some form or other. It made her uneasy to receive
gifts of money from her old mother-in-law for herself or for her children.

The visit was at an end. Old Mother made to
get up to empty the gift food into her own containers and return the tiffin
carrier, properly washed, but Angela said hastily, “No need to do that, Mother,
no need. I can collect it another day. And get Ah Kum Soh to wash it. Don’t do
it yourself. I suppose she’s gone out for her mahjong?”

Old Mother said, ‘Yes,’ and Angela concluded
that the idiot one was out with her. Thank God for that – the less she saw of
him, the better.

Old Mother again made to get up, to
accompany her to the door, but she said, “No need, Mother. You go on resting.
I’ll go out myself.”

She peeped into the old dark room on her way
out. Her eyes picked out desolate shapes of abandoned old chairs, jars, pots,
and in a corner, a massive, carved four-poster bed, the ferocity of the carven
dragons or serpents or whatever on the posts softened by the desolate masses of
cobwebs.

What a creepy room, she thought and hurried
past, not wanting to look again upon the scene of decay and death. Her eyes
fell on the blue-and-white altar cups and jars again; the photograph of the old
man with the small piercing eyes and stiff wispy beard jutting out on his chin
seemed to compel her attention. She looked up, met the eyes and looked away.

She left the house hurriedly, glad to be out
in the bright sunshine again and returned to her shining Toyota Corolla.

The visit to Gek Choo, one more visit, and I
shall have done a lot for today, thought Angela as she drove off.

The lift had broken down, so she had to walk
the seven flights up to the flat. She panted, wiped off the perspiration from
the forehead, looked into the little mirror in her powder compact to make sure
her make-up was all right and resumed her climb up.

Who would believe, she thought, as she
looked at the dirty walls scrawled with graffiti and the corridor railings with
the paint peeling off, and stepped quickly aside, out of the way of a group of
noisy, dishevelled children playing about along the corridors – who would
believe that a couple worth more than a million dollars, with five small
children, would live in a place like that?

It was people like Chinaman and his wife
that Singapore ought to be ashamed of – people loaded with money, renting out
their luxurious properties and staying in Government-subsidised flats meant for
low-income people. Chinaman had bought the flat in his wife’s mother’s name –
he could never have gone on to buy those two valuable properties otherwise.
Chinaman calculated his every move well. He and Gek Choo were always
complaining that their flat was too small, yet had no intention of moving. The
reason was plain: they would not have Old Mother. Well, the old one had decided
to continue staying in the wooden house with Ah Kum Soh and the idiot one, so
the question of which son she would be staying with never arose, mercifully.
Angela’s sense of relief was tangible; it translated into a continual flow of
gifts of food and money to the old one. The new house was being built: She had
got Dorothy’s cousin, one of Singapore’s most creative architects to design it
for her. They sat down for many hours discussing the special features,
especially the separate wing for the old in-laws, should the need arise. “A
separate wing,” Angela had said, “with its own entrances and facilities, such
as a kitchen. I will get them a servant to cook for them and keep the place
clean, but it will be quite separate from the main house, see? Then we won’t tread
on each other’s toes, see?”

But the need had not arisen. The old
father-in-law had died, and the old mother-in-law preferred to remain where she
was.

“I shall visit her often,” exclaimed Angela
in an exuberance of good humour, when the matter was settled to everyone’s
satisfaction. “I shall make sure she has good food to eat, and that the
irresponsible Ah Kum Soh does her work properly.”

She had tried to get the troublesome woman
and her idiot son to return to their relatives after the funeral, but Old
Mother had shown displeasure, and so she had desisted. Anyway, even Ah Kum Soh
had her uses. She played mahjong all the time, but she was Old Mother’s
preferred companion. And it was yet another malady of her mother-in-law, in her
old age, to dote on the idiot foster-son.

What a horror – a born imbecile – and Angela
wondered, with a thrill of shocked fascination – if the new son of the black
sheep of the family would also become an imbecile? The premature birth, and now
the operations that had to be performed. She had heard of old parents’ arms
reaching out for vengeance beyond the grave. Oh, how frightful.

The baby was home from the hospital already,
but Gek Choo said, would have to be taken back for regular checkups. The
doctors would decide when to carry out the first operation.

She spoke quietly, matter-of-factly, after
having thanked Angela for the gifts for the baby and her four little girls.
Angela was all effusiveness as she carried up the child, a weak, soft tiny
thing unlike any of his healthy, lovely sisters.

The triumph of having the long yearned-for
son at last must have been considerably diminished for Chinaman and his wife.
But right now, Angela was all genuine concern as she held the pitiful little
thing in her arms and suggested that if they had any problems with the doctors
at the hospital, they could let Boon know, for he knew the top brass there.
Things were often more speedily and efficiently done this way.

Gek Choo thanked her again in her
matter-of-fact, tight-lipped way and ensured her that everything was going on
satisfactorily. She looked wan and tired; Angela took furtive looks around her
and saw that the place was in a mess. Some of the hooks had come off one window
curtain; it sagged horribly on one side. There were cups and glasses unwashed;
the youngest girl was wearing a dress with a torn sleeve.

For God’s sake, Angela wanted to say, give
up that miserable cashier’s job at the bank, you and your husband don’t need
the money, stay at home and look after your children, and get a proper servant
to keep the place in presentable condition. She knew Gek Choo had a Malay
washerwoman who came in three times a week to wash the clothes and do the
cleaning up. Every morning, an elderly woman from the tenth floor came down to
pick up the youngest girl before Wee Tiong drove the other girls to school or
kindergarten, and Gek Choo took a bus to the bank. But what would happen once
the maternity leave was over and someone had to take care of the baby?

It was on the tip of Angela’s tongue to ask
about that frightful dream before the birth of the baby, and the subsequent
visit to the old man’s grave, but she desisted, knowing that Gek Choo would
laugh a little, frown a little and then change the subject abruptly. But the
matter of the servant – this she had to be sure about; as a concerned relative,
she had to ask, “Who will take care of the baby when you go back to work?”

Gek Choo said she was able to extend her
maternity leave; meanwhile the elderly woman taking care of Chwee Hwa was
looking around for a suitable person for her.

“Can Mooi Lan help you? Her mother may know
a lot of people. She lives in the tiny ulu village in Johore Bahru and there
are bound to be many women there looking for work.”

“No. Thank you very much for your kind
offer. But I think we’ll be all right.”

You’re afraid, thought Angela with some
malice, that you may have to pay the same wages that I pay Mooi Lan. Won’t that
make you and Husband Abacus recoil in alarm? But if you look for one yourself,
you may be lucky enough to get her for a pittance – a half-witted village woman
or someone from an orphanage or delinquent girls’ home!

Gek Choo was repulsive, but the four little
girls charmed her. They were very pretty little girls with very lovely hair and
complexions. The two eldest were in primary school; they spoke to her
unabashedly about what they did in school, and called her ‘Auntie Angela’ in
their sweet little girl voices. The third was in kindergarten; she was the
prettiest, with enormous eyes and long lashes, and Angela liked her best of
all.

The exuberance of the little girls as they
crowded around Angela and their endless chatter caused even Gek Choo to relax,
smile and request the youngest one to sing a song for Auntie Angela. Chwee Hwa
was three years old, but she stood straight and tall in front of Angela and
with adult solemnity, sang a song in Mandarin.