A Yellow House

by Karien van Ditzhuijzen

  Mama continued talking to Dad, her back to me. ‘But you know, what if she does have a boyfriend? Or gets into some other kind of trouble? What about the security bond?’

  ‘She can have a boyfriend. Why not if she’s divorced? She’s a grownup.’ Dad came to a halt, as if something had occurred to him. ‘Would we really lose the bond if she gets pregnant? I thought you said we got insurance against that?’

  This bond thing was new to me, and I made a mental note to ask Aunty M about it – but then I realised with a shock I couldn’t do that now. I had betrayed her. I was alone again.

  ‘Yes, we’ve got insurance,’ said Mama. Then, ‘No. I’m not sure. I’d need to check the policy.’

  ‘What would be the point of insurance if it didn’t cover that?’

  Mama sighed. ‘I don’t know. Why do they make it so darned complicated? I’m trying to remember. I think they changed the rules for the security bond. I think we only lose it if she goes missing. Disappears or something. I’m not really sure. Cynthia says we’re legally responsible for her, and that’s why she has to stay at our house so we can keep an eye on her. She says it’s definitely not allowed to let her stay anywhere else.’

  ‘I wouldn’t take any advice from Cynthia. I’d much rather go with what the MOM website says,’ Dad argued. ‘Why on earth would Aunty M go missing? She has a good job, right? Why would she risk that by disappearing?’ He went on, ‘Do you know what I think? I think MOM couldn’t care less where Aunty M sleeps, as long as she keeps out of trouble. They keep the rules vague so people don’t understand. It makes them insecure so they take fewer risks and lock up their maids just to be on the safe side. Let some urban myths go around on social media. So civilised.’

  Mama’s eyes started to bulge. ‘Oh, don’t get all Ang Moh on me. Does it feel good, being so superior? Your country is doing much better! You just want to close up all the borders and let nobody in. Britain for the Brits. Talk about an isolated island. At least we keep the causeway open for people who want to work. And we’re honest in what we promise.’

  Dad turned back to the TV, and pushed the play button. ‘Do what you like. I don’t think you want my opinion at all.’

  ‘Thanks for nothing. Don’t act like I’m a monster just because I want to be careful. I mean, Cynthia says…’

  Dad interrupted: ‘Why do you even listen to that woman? You hate her. You’re not a little girl anymore, you don’t need her approval. I can’t understand why you want to be friends with someone like that, with how she treats you, the things she said about your mother…’

  Mama’s eyes became teary. ‘Why on earth do you bring that up now?’ She marched out of the room, just like I’d imagined doing, and slammed the door behind her.

  Dad seemed suddenly to remember that I was sitting there. He looked shocked. ‘Sweetie, you mother… You know she’s still hurting, right? We need to be understanding when she acts like that. And try to be nice to her.’

  I could have pointed out that he was the one who hadn’t been nice, and that perhaps he should start by being home more, that that would be very nice, not just for Mama but all of us… But I felt I’d said enough already that night. Without Aunty M and Mama I needed to stay in Dad’s good graces. So I just nodded and we went back to our film.

  Aunty M slept at home that Saturday.

  20

  Dad was home and excited. Today was Opa’s birthday. We were going to call him on Skype at 7 pm – evening for us, morning for them. I had made Opa a drawing and Chloe had poked at a sheet of paper with some crayons too.

  Opa and Grandma were sitting in front of their computer wearing broad smiles. Dad and I sang Happy Birthday, Chloe humming along and waving from Dad’s lap. Afterwards Opa and Grandma asked about school, about my friends. It was easy to pretend life was great.

  They were nice, but they were never going to replace PoPo. How can you have a real conversation with two cameras, a second’s voice delay and a little sister who always screams through everything you want to say? And Dad was always there too when we Skyped.

  Grandma didn’t understand anything about me, not like PoPo had. Last summer we’d spent a few weeks in their cottage in Kent, and the year before we’d gone for ‘a proper British Christmas.’ The tree, food and presents were good, but it was way too cold to really enjoy it. There wasn’t even any snow. It had rained most of the two weeks, and my cousins and I spent our time on the PlayStation.

  With PoPo gone, it felt like we were unconnected, floating in space. Our concrete, glass and marble condo didn’t help. And at international school, instead of asking each other ‘Where are you from?’ we asked what our ‘passport country’ was. We learned about our different cultures, all those represented at the school. Only one country was blatantly underrepresented: Singapore. Real Singaporean kids had to go to local school, the government said. I was only allowed to go to the school because I had two passports.

  When we’d had to dress up for World Day, I’d had no idea what to wear. Dad suggested an English football kit, and laughed at my horror. But PoPo had bought me a Singapore Airways stewardess outfit, and the batik sarong kebaya had fitted me like a glove. Mama had beamed and hugged me. ‘You’re my Singapore girl.’

  But when I looked in the mirror I wished I had the sleek black hair and poise of a real Singapore girl, not the mousey frizz my mixture of genes had produced.

  Aunty M hadn’t spoken to me since that night at the table, other than necessities like ‘Here is your lunch,’ or ‘Pick up your shoes.’ I was glad. She was a terrible person. But she was also my link to the aunties. They were my friends now, and I missed them. Helping them gave me a purpose; it was my lifeline.

  As for Aunty M, a question kept buzzing around my head like an annoying bee. I struggled to hate her without at least knowing the answer. Remembering the anger in her eyes the last time we’d spoken, I’d been bracing myself to ask it. One afternoon, at the table for after school snack, my growing unease finally forced the question out.

  ‘Aunty M,’ I said, ‘Why did you leave Nurul when she was four?’

  She looked straight at me. ‘Not just Nurul. Adi too. He was only two.’

  Two was not much older than Chloe was now. A baby, really. How? Why? Just for the money?

  ‘How could you do that?’

  Auntie M went to the kitchen and started rummaging in the cabinet under the sink. Just when I thought she wasn’t going to answer she came back and sat down in front of me. She was silent for a minute, then started to speak.

  ‘Their father was not a good man. We separated. I did try to make it work for a while, more than a year. I had a job in a factory, a noodle factory. But it was not enough. Nurul was about to start primary school and she needed uniforms, books, pens. Adi needed milk. My ex-husband did not give us any money. He remarried very fast. He does not care for my kids anymore.’

  She paused. I said nothing, not wanting to interrupt her thoughts.

  ‘A friend of mine had gone to Singapore to work. From her salary she built a nice house, a stone house. She painted it yellow. Nurul thought it was so pretty, the yellow house. She wanted a house like that too. I felt like a bad mother, that I could not give her a house. A yellow house.’

  Aunty M studied her nails.

  ‘Many women in Indonesia go abroad. In my village, some people have nice houses. They work in Hong Kong. Dubai. Qatar. And Singapore. Only a few stay behind, you can see; they are in bamboo huts. The roofs leak in the wet season, the wind blows through slatted walls. Stone houses are better. But, on Java, there are not enough jobs, and the pay is low. So we leave. We remit the money back home. This is how we do it in Indonesia, same like Philippines, Myanmar. We work in other countries and send the money back. Sometimes the men go, but mostly the women. The women need to provide. I came to Singapore to build a yellow house for my daughter.’

  What Aunty M told me made me forget about the hate. I asked, ‘So, in Indonesia, it’s the women who have careers
?’ Mama would like it there, I thought. ‘What do the men do?’

  ‘Yes, a career as a maid. Super career. The men work abroad too, but it is difficult for them. There are not so many jobs. Some in construction, but they prefer Indians and Bangladeshis for that. Men can’t do domestic work.’

  ‘Won’t do domestic work,’ I echoed Mama. ‘Well, cleaning, anyway – although Mama doesn’t like that either. And Dad is a better cook than Mama.’

  Aunty M laughed. ‘But they would never get a work pass in Singapore. Do you know anyone with an uncle instead of an aunty?’

  We both cracked up. ‘It would be so cool,’ I hiccupped.

  ‘Well,’ Aunty M continued, ‘My friend told me I should go to Singapore to make money for my girls. For their food, their education. She put me in touch with her agent. My mother took the kids.’

  ‘Did you ask them what they wanted? Nurul and Adi?’

  ‘Sayang, they were four and two. How did they know what they wanted? Nurul wanted the yellow house, did she not? How else could I build it?’

  I was fairly sure Nurul hadn’t realised the house came at such a price. But I didn’t say that.

  Aunty M continued: ‘I am their mother. It is not about what they want, but what they need: food, school, and a safe place to stay.’

  So I asked, ‘Did you build the house?’

  ‘What house?’

  ‘The yellow house.’

  Aunty M broke into a smile. ‘I have enough savings now. Building will start soon.’

  ‘Cool. Can I visit when it’s finished?’

  ‘Of course you can, sayang.’

  I hugged Aunty M. I sucked at hating. She hugged me back, but something in her expression made me think she hadn’t yet forgiven me for something.

  Now I knew why Aunty M had left Nurul and Adi: to build the yellow house. She hadn’t left because she didn’t care, she left because she did. It was hard to wrap my head around this; it was wrong, but she’d meant well. To forgive her would not only give me peace, but all her lessons and companionship too.

  Forgiving my own mother was much harder. Why did Mama need to go back to work when Dad was providing for us? I had a good school and plenty to eat. We had a house already, even if it was a stupid condo. But I suddenly knew that what I really, really wanted was a yellow house. A yellow house just like PoPo’s blue mansion, with a garden and a lotus pond. Most of all, I wanted Mama to want it for me. I wanted her to understand me.

  After our reconciliation, I asked Aunty M what had been happening that week. She told me she’d heard from Julia, the aunty with the rash. A week after we’d seen her, Julia had told her employers that she really needed to see a doctor. Eventually, they’d given in – Julia was given more cream and a week to find a new employer. A week to find a new job would have been a challenge even without a disgusting looking rash. After the time was up without luck, Julia was sent back to the Philippines. She was better and she kept texting Aunty M, saying that she needed a new job.

  ‘What am I, an agency?’ Aunty M complained.

  21

  Every other Sunday Aunty M went to the helpdesk. On her day off she’d go shopping, to the cinema, or have a picnic with friends. Sometimes she’d just spend the whole morning in her room. Maybe she was on the phone or her laptop; I wasn’t allowed in her room on a Sunday, so I didn’t know. If I passed her in the hall on Sundays she would barely greet me, as if I didn’t exist. It hurt. It was like she only cared on workdays.

  Mama was in a foul mood again. She hadn’t got the Myanmar job and she was furious. ‘Because I’ve been away so long, he said, people don’t know me anymore in the company. I need to “up my profile” first. Seriously? I’ve worked there for over a decade. They say you lose your brain when you get pregnant, but I remember all these stupid people perfectly well.’

  Dad agreed, but there was nothing he could do. He tried to cheer Mama up the way he usually did, trying to take her mind off things. He started planning Sunday outings again – the zoo, the beach, museums, Gardens by the Bay. Maybe the thing I hadn’t said, the one about him being there for Mama and for all of us, had reached him telepathically. He still needed to be away a lot for work, but he tried to make up for it by making what he called ‘quality time’ for us at home. We all had to join in, and like it too. Or at least pretend. Mama wasn’t always good at that.

  ‘Remember what PoPo used to say?’ Dad asked one Sunday at breakfast, ‘About eating wind?’

  ‘Eating wind?’ I said. What on earth?

  Mama laughed. ‘You mean makan angin. A Malay expression.’

  I was glad to hear Mama laugh. She usually looked so sad whenever PoPo was mentioned that I didn’t dare bring her up. I worried I would forget her and she would cease to exist.

  ‘Yes, that one. Where you go out for a stroll – the park, seaside, anywhere. I love that saying. In England, we say go out to get fresh air. But then again, the air is fresh in England.’ He paused. ‘Here nothing is fresh, apart from the air conditioning.’

  I didn’t remember PoPo talking about eating wind. I liked the expression. I was hungry for fresh air. It might blow away some of the stuff in my head.

  ‘There isn’t much wind in Singapore,’ Mama commented. ‘All those high rises, they block everything.’

  ‘True. But there must be somewhere. What’s that place, the one behind “Satay by the Bay”? The place where everyone flies kites?’

  ‘Marina Barrage?’ Mama said.

  ‘Yes, exactly. That field on top of the building. Let’s go there. We can have satay afterwards.’

  Wind and satay. That sounded promising. ‘What’s a barrage?’ I asked.

  Mama said, ‘It blocks the sea from the Marina, I think.’

  Dad shook his head. ‘That’s rather simplistic.’

  Mama looked grumpy again. ‘Ok, you explain it.’

  Dad put on his teacher face. ‘You know how Singapore needs to store water, right? We have so many people for such a small island, and we can’t just rely on imports from Malaysia. That’s why we have all the reservoirs – McRitchie, Seletar, Pierce.’

  He’d dragged us around McRitchie reservoir in the boiling sun just a few weeks before, giving us the same lecture. So yes, I knew.

  ‘Singapore is full of rivers, but they all flow into the sea. The Singapore River now flows into the Marina reservoir instead. It’s closed in by land reclaimed from the sea and the barrage. Water from the rivers can flow out when the reservoir is full, but when there’s a dry period they close the sluices. That means the water level in the bay is always the same.’

  Dad’s paramount idea of fun was sharing the entire history of something. I wasn’t sure if he researched everything secretly on his phone before he made plans, or just knew all these things already.

  ‘You see, Maya, Singapore likes to control things,’ Mama added, ‘So the government built this dam.’

  ‘You have to, if you live with so many people in such a small space. That’s why this country works,’ Dad said.

  All this boring talk made me long for wind more than ever. ‘Are we going to fly a kite?’ I asked.

  ‘We don’t have a kite,’ Mama said.

  ‘Well, we can always watch,’ said Dad.

  ‘And there’ll be satay,’ I added.

  ‘Stay,’ cheered Chloe, and that decided it.

  Mama’s laughter had given me courage to mention PoPo, so in the car I told her and Dad about PoPo’s brothers’ kite wars. Mama had never heard the story before, and Dad said he was tempted to try it, sneaking up on others, making the kites of the barrage really fly. Mama looked at him sideways from the passenger seat, as if to say don’t even try it.

  When we arrived at the barrage the parking lot was chock-a-block. We weren’t the only ones keen to eat some wind. I stepped out of the air-conditioned car and felt the sweat form on my skin. Mama put on her sunglasses, and grabbed hats from her bag. ‘Maya, Chloe, hats on. This sun is lethal.’

  I coul
dn’t feel any wind yet, but above us the sky was dotted with colourful shapes and figures.

  ‘Look, that’s a giant octopus,’ Dad said.

  ‘And there, a Minion kite,’ I pointed.

  We walked around the barrage building to find the part where we could make our way up to the roof, where the kiting took place. I looked through the glass walls and saw huge pumps inside.

  ‘Look, there’s a visitor centre,’ Dad pointed. ‘We can learn all about the barrage and the water.’

  ‘Weren’t we here to makan angin?’ Mama said. ‘I didn’t dress to go inside in the cold. Anyway, you taught us everything already this morning. I have a better idea.’ There was a playful gleam in her eye. ‘There’s a kite shop over there.’

  ‘Yes, a kite! I want a kite!’ I yelled.

  Dad gave in. ‘Ok, let’s get one.’

  I was allowed to pick, and I chose one that looked like a giant yellow butterfly. It had a long green ribbon tail. The lady from the shop helped us put it together and tie a string to it.

  The barrage building was something special. It was oval, all glass, steel and concrete, with a hole in the middle bigger than a house, as if the building were wrapped around itself. The roof was made of grass, a large field that caught all the wind that blew from the sea towards the city. To get there, we had to spiral up a winding grass slope. When we reached the top, Dad and I stood there for a minute, facing the entire skyline of Singapore.

  It was amazing. Then and there I understood that new things in Singapore could be beautiful too. Dad was right: this country worked, even if it was in a roundabout way.

  There was the Marina Bay Sands building, the flagship of Singapore’s skyline. Even though it had only been there a few years, I couldn’t imagine the city without it. It looked like a surfboard positioned atop three skyscrapers, a sky boat lined with palm trees. I knew it was a hotel, and the palm trees were for the guests to lie under as they lazed around the pool. It had won many prizes, as had the Supertrees and Flower Domes of the next-door Gardens by the Bay. They would have been made, of course, by foreign workers, and Dad had told me the architect was American; but someone in this country must have come up with the idea. Someone here had made it happen.