A Yellow House

by Karien van Ditzhuijzen

  Aunty M said something I couldn’t hear.

  Moe Moe continued. ‘But not so bad job. Food is good. I have my phone, my off day. Ma’am is away a lot, so no problem me.’

  A tickle rose up from my stomach, and I burst out in a coughing fit. Aunty M looked up startled, and now it was Cat that pulled my hand, tore me away. We ran to the swings and sat on them, barely moving. Under Cat’s silence I could hear her processing what we’d heard, trying to make sense of it all. I wasn’t sure whether she was thinking about the aunties, their phones, Rung Vang, or that other thing, that thing that made something shift in my stomach. A few times it seemed like she wanted to say something but wasn’t sure where to start. When she finally spoke, it wasn’t about the aunties but about Jenny.

  ‘That Jenny, she is such a bitch. Did you know I saw her on my first day at school? I was waiting at student services, and the lady who worked there introduced us, and said we were in the same year, and were sure to become good friends. As if. When Jenny found out what class I was in – not with her, thank God – she said there was a cockroach in that class. That’s what made me want to know you.’

  I said nothing and started swinging. I didn’t want to talk about Jenny, so instead I asked Cat what she thought of Run Vang, and Jenalyn, and Jinky. Cat said that as she was not allowed a phone either, she understood exactly how they felt. We talked a long time. The aunties were treated like little children. And aside from Run Vang, they weren’t children at all. Just before she left, Cat said: ‘We need to do something about that Jenny.’

  Cat was like a dog with a bone, she never let go, and the determined look in her eyes left me feeling somewhat uncertain. Anxious, excited – or perhaps both. I wasn’t sure what to say, so I just said goodbye.

  28

  Mama and her friend Lisa were drinking tea in the living room on Saturday afternoon. I sat there too, reading a book.

  They were talking about schools. Lisa’s children went to a Singaporean school, unlike me. I was glad I went to my school, as Singaporean primary schools had this final exam called the PSLE. It made the kids stressed out of their minds. Mama said that it was of paramount importance – if you didn’t do well on the PSLE, you wouldn’t get into a good secondary school, and if you didn’t get into a good secondary, you wouldn’t do well in your O levels… Or was it A levels? Or B levels? I wasn’t sure. But whichever one it was, if you didn’t do well, you wouldn’t get into the right course in university. How would you ever get a good job? A good salary? A career? Singapore as a country was highly successful, and that success started at school, with hard work.

  Mama always stressed the importance of a good education. Singapore parents were like that, and, international school or not, my mother was still Singaporean. And Dad supported her.

  Her friend Lisa sighed at the sight of me reading.

  ‘How relaxed does she look? Is that for her school reading?’

  Mama looked up. ‘Erm, library, I think. Maya reads everything. All the time.’

  ‘I wish my kids read more,’ Lisa said. ‘But there’s simply no time. Max has tutoring now for both maths and Mandarin. And Julie for English. The PSLE is breathing down our necks.’

  ‘Aiyoh,’ my mother said. ‘You are so kiasu. The PSLE is not for two more years.’

  ‘One year, for Max,’ Lisa said. ‘I can’t not do this. Everybody else has tutors. They’ll miss out if they don’t.’

  Ugh. Homework was bad enough without tutors. I flipped a page in my book and then turned back again, since I hadn’t read it.

  Mama said: ‘Sometimes, I think we should switch Maya, and some time soon. The results in the local system are much better than those in the international ones. Did you see that last ranking? Singapore scoring top in the world in education! Maybe we made a mistake. Costs a ton too, that school. She’ll never get into a good local secondary if we don’t switch her now, in time before the exams. She would still have time to prepare for the PSLE.’

  I stopped pretending to read altogether. Switch schools? I’d never thought about that possibility, not without moving to another country. I pondered. I could be free of Jenny, of the morning bus hell. But the tutors? The homework? The PSLE? And what about Cat?

  Julie always complained about the school work, and whenever my mother tried to set us up with a playdate, she wanted to, really, Lisa said, but no time.

  Mama stared at me, so I buried my eyes in the book.

  Lisa laughed. ‘You are more kiasu than you think. But that Ang Moh husband of yours, will he agree?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s a good school she’s in. I don’t know which local primary I’d get her into now. And it’s a lot of work, for me too. You know, it’s different for you. You are independent, you work part-time. You can coach your kids. Who will coach mine? The maid? She is relatively literate, for a maid, but still. My job is more than full-time. I teach her by setting an example.’

  As an afterthought, she added, ‘No, she can do the IB diploma. It’s very robust too. And she can always go to university abroad if she needs to. We can afford it.’

  I buried my face deeper in the book. I wasn’t sure what an IB diploma was, but it sounded ominous.

  ‘Yes,’ Mama added, ‘Maya can stay where she is. It’s just her Mandarin. It’s absolutely rubbish. I don’t know what teachers they have, and what they do. I don’t have time to check her work every day.’

  ‘Get a tutor,’ Lisa said.

  Panic struck. No way. If it was a new school, and no bus with Jenny, I’d take the tutors into the bargain. But not both. Jenny would have all sorts to say on that matter: stupid cockroach, can’t do it alone. Obviously Jenny’s Mandarin was perfect – but she was PRC, mainland Chinese, from Beijing; she spoke it at home. Her dad had a thick accent in English, so bad I barely understood, and he’d often tried to speak to me in Mandarin, expecting me to understand. Jenny’s mother spoke English well – she could pass off for Singaporean any day. I was only a quarter Chinese, and that was Peranakan Chinese, so why did I have to learn stupid Mandarin anyhow? Peranakans spoke Malay.

  A tutor would make me study, where now I managed to mostly get away with pretending. My eyes were pinned on the same line, the one I hadn’t read for the last ten minutes.

  ‘I might,’ Mama said, her eyes sweeping over me and then to the kitchen. I could see her heart wasn’t in it. With a bit of luck, she’d forget about this whole conversation.

  First I got Aunty M. Now she wanted to give me tutors? What next? Was she going to send me to boarding school?

  With her friends, especially those from school or university, Mama could suddenly be kiasu, afraid to lose out on anything from an education to a must-have bag. But when her friends left the house, the attitude went too, or most of it. When she spoke to Dad, she sounded like a different person than when she spoke to her friends. She would agree with him on the international school system, no nonsense; and the funny thing was, both of these Mamas seemed real. It wasn’t as if she wasn’t sure who to be, like I was, but as if both versions, although contradictory, were a part of her. They did tear her in the middle though.

  Her career always stayed top of the list, being the one thing Mama really feared for. She’d never used to be that bad. Once, she’d come home from work happy, tired but energised, speaking about her day enthusiastically. I hadn’t minded her working then. But after PoPo died, Chloe was born, and she’d had her extra long maternity leave, something had snapped. Career-monster-mama took possession. Why did she have Chloe? If it was just me, she might have had enough to give, but it seemed as if there were not enough of her for the job, husband and two daughters. Some days, she went from quiet to crazy and shouting at us,

  then back to withdrawn.

  Where had the real Mama gone? Was she still hiding somewhere in the monster’s stomach? Sometimes we saw a glimpse. But anything could set her off – Aunty M baking a nice cake, or cleaning the fridge without Mama asking her to; things that were supposed to be
good, so I didn’t understand why they made Mama furious. She tried to keep it on the inside, of course. Even Mama knew you couldn’t get mad at someone for baking a cake.

  My education came and went in Mama’s mind, from the top of the list to falling right off the bottom. Her haphazard interest in my future seemed closely related to her stress-at-work-levels. It was the one positive side effect of her going crazy, and I happily read my books and neglected my schoolwork. As for Dad? He must have disliked this Mama too, since he was home so little that year.

  29

  Cat came to my place often, hoping more research could be done, or better yet, that she could join us on a case when we were called out. She said she wanted to be a researcher, but she was more action than contemplation.

  We spent some time gossiping about Jenny, joking that she and her brother were little devils, with teeth as big and sharp as the monkeys in her garden. Cat wanted to plan revenge, but every plan we came up with was as impractical as it was imaginative. I was secretly glad, and steered the conversation away from Jenny and back to our research. We begged Aunty M to take us somewhere interesting.

  ‘Sayang, I can’t make someone call me. Nothing happening today.’

  Lately a lot of the casework Aunty M did was on the phone, via Whatsapp and Facebook. Not many domestic workers could meet up during weekdays, and we’d seen them all around the condo. Aunty M was starting to become more and more organised in the way she went about helping them. You could see a difference in her attitude too, especially when we were home alone or at the playground. She no longer had that meek, downward-looking gaze most domestic workers had. I started to understand what Mama had meant when she said that her career defined who she was. Aunty M had become more and more defined by her second job, which gave her more and more confidence. She rarely mentioned her children, and I figured she put all her energy into helping other people, to help her forget about her own problems. I knew that trick from experience. If she was still upset she hid it well; outwardly I had never seen her more poised and self-assured than she was now. But most of that poise disappeared as soon as Mama came home. And she still had her day job to do. Today that meant cleaning out the fridge, with no time for us.

  Cat and I brooded for a bit.

  ‘Can we go to the playground, maybe we can find something to do there?’ I asked Aunty M.

  ‘It is too hot, it’s all in the sun. Why not go swimming?’

  Cat sprung up. ‘Yes. Let’s.’

  She had monkeys and snakes, but not a pool.

  We put on swimsuits. Mine was a bit tight on Cat, but she didn’t care. When we were stood there towel-wrapped, Chloe piped up, ‘Sim, sim.’ She toddled to her room to grab her own suit.

  ‘She’s so cute,’ said Cat.

  But I took the swimsuit out of Chloe’s hand. ‘You can’t go. You know that, only with Mama.’

  ‘Why not?’ asked Cat.

  ‘She can’t swim yet. Mama doesn’t trust me to take care of her. You need to hold her all the time, so it’s annoying anyway. She can stay with Aunty M.’

  ‘Can’t Aunty M go in the pool with her?’

  I hesitated a moment before I answered. ‘Aunty M can’t swim.’

  I didn’t dare tell Cat the real reason Aunty M wouldn’t, couldn’t, take Chloe in the pool. There’d been a massive row. Mama was upset, and Dad was furious and had wanted to storm the management office. What had stopped him in the end?

  Aunty M had been mortified when Mama had suggested she could take Chloe and me swimming. ‘Ma’am,’ she’d said, ‘I don’t think it’s a good idea.’

  ‘Sure, Chloe will love it. It’s so hot. And I really need to finish some work, so you’d help me a lot if you would just take them off my hands for a bit. The pool is lovely. Cool.’

  ‘Ma’am –’ Aunty M had tried again.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I can’t swim.’

  ‘Oh, of course. You wouldn’t, not in central Java.’

  I thought about Aunty M’s lake, the cool volcano mirror where she’d spent her childhood weekends. Why was she lying?

  Aunty M had stared at her feet.

  ‘Never mind. You can go in the baby pool, it’s not deep. Just make sure Chloe doesn’t go anywhere near the big pool. Maya is a good swimmer. She’ll be fine.’

  Aunty M had turned red, seemingly shrunk, her chin to her chest.

  Mama had sighed. ‘What else?’ She rolled her eyes. ‘Of course. Stupid of me. You don’t have a bathing suit. Never mind. I have plenty. We’re about the same size.’

  She went to her room and came back with an old black one-piece. ‘Here you go. You can keep it. Is it ok?’

  The silence hurt my ears.

  Mama hit her forehead. ‘I forgot, you’re Muslim. Is it too revealing? You can wear a shirt over it, if you like. Oh no, no clothes allowed in the pool.’

  Aunty M looked up, a deeper shade of red. ‘No ma’am, it’s ok.’

  ‘Well then. That’s it.’

  ‘No, ma’am. That’s not it. It’s just, you see, it’s not allowed.’

  Mama’s eyes had grown big. ‘What do you mean, not allowed?’

  It turned out there was a sign by the pool saying maids weren’t allowed to swim. Mama went berserk, saying it was a crazy, archaic rule, and that Aunty M should just go and send any guards that complained her way.

  ‘No ma’am, I’d rather not.’

  Mama called Dad and he was angrier still, saying it was ridiculous that maids weren’t allowed to swim, and that Aunty M had to swim for the safety of his child, and would they rather Chloe drowned? What if she fell in, could Aunty M at least jump in to save her? I could hear him talking right through the phone, that’s how loud he spoke. ‘She’s a resident here, right? She might want to do some laps on her Sunday off, and why not?’

  He said he would visit the management office when he got home, but maybe he forgot, for I don’t think he ever went; or perhaps it was Aunty M that stopped him. The shame had dripped from her downward-pointing chin, her eyes smaller than I’d ever seen them. Aunty M was never asked to swim again.

  So when Cat turned to Aunty M, I felt the heat creeping into my face. ‘Cat,’ I said. ‘Let it go.’

  Aunty M kept her cool. She took Chloe’s hand and said, ‘I’ll take her to the playground.’

  Later, as we floated together on a lilo, Cat asked me what that had all been all about. When I told her, she reacted exactly as I’d expected. I let it flow over me, off the lilo into the blue chlorine of the pool, hoping Aunty M was out of earshot.

  But afterwards, she targeted Aunty M directly. Aunty M smiled one of those special smiles, the ones she’d once used a lot on Mama. There was a mixture of pity, deference, sadness and contempt.

  ‘Just leave it. I don’t mind. I don’t even like to swim. Too much chlorine in the water. It’s not good for your skin.’

  ‘It will bleach you,’ Cat said, guessing correctly that Aunty M liked whitening creams.

  ‘No. I don’t want to make trouble.’

  ‘You help all these women, how come you don’t want to fight for yourself? Make a stand?’ Cat said.

  Aunty M got uncharacteristically annoyed with Cat. ‘It is easy for you to say. I could lose my job.’

  I felt worried. This was the type of trouble I didn’t want, the type where I had to pick a side.

  Uncertain, I pitched in anyway. ‘But Aunty M, Mama and Dad agree that you should be able to swim, don’t you remember? They wouldn’t fire you.’

  ‘I know, but there’s more to it than that. I have other things to protect. Let’s leave it. Please,’ Aunty M said firmly.

  ‘Ok,’ Cat shrugged. But to me she said, ‘For now.’

  I wasn’t sure whether I hoped she’d forget about it.

  When we were changing, Cat started again. ‘Maya, you need to learn how to do stuff. You can’t just keep observing and making notes. Aunty M wants to be careful – alright; but you need to force your parents to act. This
swimming thing is completely unacceptable.’

  I tried to argue with her, but I wasn’t sure how. I mean, how would I know what the right thing to do was? And how to have the courage? I was saved by the bell, or more accurately, Aunty M’s phone. The swimming pool slipped from Cat’s mind. We had bigger fish to fry.

  It was Maricel. She had a new neighbour, who had a new helper who was locked inside. Maricel had been shouting to her over the wall, but hadn’t got much of a response. Cat’s eyes twinkled.

  ‘She does not speak any English. I tried Tagalog too. Then I tried apa kabar, terimah kasih, the only words of Malay I know, but I don’t think she is Indonesian.’

  ‘She might be Burmese,’ I said. ‘Let’s get Win.’

  I grabbed my red notebook, and noticed that Cat pulled one out of her backpack that was exactly the same. We all went to Maricel’s house, and trooped onto the balcony. Maricel had set a chair next to the wall facing toward the neighbours’ balcony. Win climbed onto it. Her head did not reach anywhere near the top of the wall. I looked around. All the aunties were as short as Win. The tallest on the balcony was Cat. We all stared at her.

  ‘Dutch genes,’ Cat mumbled. ‘They gave me a lot of milk growing up. You should see my dad.’

  ‘How old is she?’ Maricel whispered.

  ‘Eleven,’ I whispered back.

  Cat climbed on the chair. The tip of her nose reached the top of the wall. ‘There’s no-one here,’ said Cat. ‘Hello!’ she yelled.

  ‘Shh,’ said Maricel, ‘I don’t know if the employer is there.’

  Cat turned to us. ‘Actually, we should get my dad. He’s really tall. And he speaks Burmese.’

  ‘Really?’ I asked. I was impressed and piqued at the same time. What was he, Superdad?

  ‘He used to study snub-nosed monkeys in Myanmar, before I was born.’

  ‘No. You promised not to tell your parents. You can’t.’

  Cat had promised she wouldn’t tell her mother and father to avoid the risk of them telling mine. She was my friend, and I needed to be able to trust her. I swallowed the tickling on my tongue and kept still. We heard a sound on the other side of the wall. Cat tried to peek over again, but was a few centimetres short. Win called something out in Burmese. There was a reply, unintelligible, but still. I looked at Win, but she shook her head.