by Carissa Foo
Nestled in the bed, she lay comfortably, overcome with gratefulness for the home. It was true, she had many issues with Management, she abhorred some of the nurses and kitchen staff especially, but the home afforded her and the women freedom to be who they wanted to be without the scrutiny of their loved ones.
Cheryl thought of Choon Eng, Mrs Rohan, Loudspeaker Leow, Judy Chua, Siew Eng, Felicia, Poh Choo, Oi Leng, Gina and Gracie Koh…women who, if not for this place, would have nowhere to go. Women like herself and Cheng Hong would have been cut into slices by their very own hands.
What of Cheng Hong and her afflictions? Cheryl lingered on the thought of her. If they had more opportunities to chat, if she came down to the dining hall more often, they could perhaps be friends who had a fair foundation based on their conditions of ugly wrists and weak hearts.
Cheryl felt herself sinking further into the softness of the sagging bed. Even though they did not have meandering conversations, and almost always haggled over TV room rights and the karaoke microphone, the women had a common understanding that they were in the home together—for as long as they lived. Leaving was not an option, they understood this.
When they were granted admission, they were sworn into a sorority of reclusive and cantankerous women. Signing the indemnity and declaration forms, they had pledged loyalty to the holy circle of trust ringed by the picket fences of the home. No one had to explain themselves; their histories were unimportant and made terrible dinner conversations. Some women were quieter than others; some, like Loudspeaker Leow and Judy Chua, were more rambunctious and angry. Some of them were widows; a few were divorcees. But majority of them were mothers. Some were mothers without children, some were mothers left here by their children. Most were, by now, disenchanted by motherhood.
What men like Adam did not understand was that motherhood was not for every woman. Because she could not find maternity in her heart, Cheryl had to figure it with her mind. Breastfeeding, changing diapers, telling bedtime stories, childproofing the house, blowing on hot food—these did not come naturally to her. And she thought it was disgusting to feed Clare with the food that she had cooled in her mouth, the bits she had chewed up and spat on the plate. The doctor and Adam told Cheryl that she needed time to get used to the idea of motherhood and she should be patient. But it wasn’t just time. The idea of nursing was repulsive to her. So, yes, Adam was right; her mother was right. Her way of mothering was unnatural. Motherhood was unnatural to her too.
What more did they want from her? Born in 1965, she was the nation’s child; its poster girl; the sign on the female toilet door; the F in the NRIC. She was her mother’s last resort, a hope for her crumbling marriage, a surrogate for her stillborn; she was Adam’s wife and the love of his life. They took her mind, her heart, her life, and they had taken her womb. Child of God or not, her mother had told her to keep the baby; Adam pleaded with her. She would have said no. But no, nobody asked her what she wanted. If she were honest back then, would it have made any difference? To her? To Adam? To Clare?
Love was the panacea. It was supposed to bind them all together. A bloody love, love that was from within, flowing in the veins, connecting all of them. They call it family. Adam and Clare were family. And the baby too. Adam, Clare and the baby, she repeated to herself. Adam. Clare. Baby. She said louder with increasing bite: “ADAM, CLARE, BABY. ADAM! CLARE! BABY!” She spat them out, name by name, until the words attached themselves to the corners of the room, until her breathing shortened.
Cheryl turned to her side, and turned again. Her eyes scanned the room and stayed on the bit of the ceiling where the slender scarlet cord hung steadfastly. Did Rahab think she was going to be part of the royal genealogy when she tied the red rope to the window? Did it really matter who our foremothers were—harlot or Pharisee? Cheryl thought of her mother, the godly woman who seldom withdrew the rod of discipline; the lacerated face that was resting somewhere in Mrs Rohan’s lawn. She was family; thick blood banded them together. But Cheryl must not let her mind go there; she must not call out her name. The trouble with her mother was not the remembering part; it was the forgetting. Cheryl could still see her head shaking, the rotan with the pink hook in her hand flailing in the air, the croaky voice screaming, “You’re an abomination!”
She turned again, this time with more effort, unable to elude the scene that was replaying in her mind. She saw the wooden stick raised and lurching forwards, striking once, twice, thrice; the skin turning more crimson with each whip. Her arm was pulsing, the skin flashing red, as if it had a heart of its own, separate from the benumbed muscle caged in her chest.
Thud! The rotan struck, and struck another time. Her arm was steady like a shield, pushing against the force of each stroke, refusing to be broken by the stick-thin adversary. Although Cheryl could not help the tears that were running down her cheeks, her arm was faithful.
At last the end of the rotan was fraying; some splinters were left in the swollen skin. Then the rotan was back on the wall, and it did not hurt any more.
“You’re not an abomination,” Cheryl whispered to her bruised arm, gently smearing aloe vera gel over it. Curled up under the study desk in her room, she heard the voice wailing, “God, how come she is like that? God, deliver us from our sins!” It was quiet for a moment, then it would start again, “God, why? Oh forgive her!” She begged on. “Lord, she knows not what she has done!” The intercessions were loud and grating, and after a while it was just noise.
When the room darkened, Cheryl crawled up into the bed. She held the white rabbit to her chest. “We’re not an abomination,” she said to Doraemon, pulling him to her right side. “Do not fear, for the Lord is with us,” she told Ultraman, whose hands were held together as if giving benediction. She pulled the duvet over her head and mumbled a short prayer into the palm of her unhurt hand, wishing that God would listen this time. She squeezed her eyes shut and secretly hoped tomorrow won’t come.
Cheryl had a bad night, and the next day was worse. She remembered waking up in the morning to the sound of the telephone ringing and her mother shouting in the living room. When she opened her eyes, she saw that Doraemon’s pouch was stained and the bedsheet was red. Her arm was sore and her tummy hurt a lot. The feelings that had inundated her that morning seemed to have diffused into the present. Cheryl’s arms were stiff and heavy; the hurt from the beating was resurging.
Many things happened that morning. It was the first time Cheryl felt a sudden drop in energy from the loss of girlhood, a mood-sapping lethargy that only women understood. She remembered what she had learned in Sunday school the week before and immediately associated her predicament with that of the Israelites who were slain at Mount Sinai just after God had delivered them. The sharp descent from high hopes to the lowest of valleys, the fall from grace—what she knew in her head and memory she experienced with the entirety of her body that morning. It was also the first time she realised that the happiness she wanted could make her unhappy because it was not her own. Happiness was not free. It was society’s, it was her mother’s. So Cheryl would rather the lesser happiness. It seemed better for her to be unhappy, because while nobody was eager to plunge into the profundity of grief, preferring the don’t-ask-don’t-tell approach, everyone wanted to partake in joy. Happiness had to be shared. Grief, on the other hand, was singular, and could stay unstirred for years.
How odd to be happy and sad at the same time, Cheryl thought, replaying the events of that morning. She was happy when her mother told her that she did not have to go to school any more, then it pained her to think that she could not see Sarah again, more painful than the swollen lines on her arm, and later still, for many years ahead, sadness prevailed. From that day on, her feelings were muddled up, her thoughts were confusing, her entire life was a mess.
Even now Cheryl wasn’t sure what to feel about herself and about the unfinished letter that was sitting on the table. She wanted to go back to it but her shoulders had stiffened; her fingers would
not wiggle.
Cheryl Dada tried to lift her head from the pillow but she could not feel her neck. Her body was tense and resistant, not seeming to belong to her. She knew she ought to be disturbed by this sensation or the lack thereof, but she could not make herself care enough to pull the scarlet cord or push the knob on the side of the bed.
Instead Cheryl Dada thought about all the things that mattered to her. She had wanted a normal family and the love that would assure her that there was still a unit of good in the world. She tried to do the right thing and made sure her new family was nothing like the one she had had: a father who had died before she could call him Pa and a mother whose life’s mission was to forget that she had a daughter—and it wasn’t like that at all, thankfully. But it wasn’t better either. She could not bring herself to love Adam; and Clare, who preferred women, was moving away to Toronto. For most of her life Cheryl Dada wanted love and she almost had it. She also wanted expression but there was no one to talk to. Suddenly impassioned, she let herself admit that all she really wanted was Sarah.
She saw her hands tightly clenching the fabric of her pinafore. Sarah would not look at her; her eyes were cast down, fixed upon the concrete floor. She would have darted out of the cubicle if not for Cheryl who was backed up against the door, Cheryl who had hurt her with the arrow of shame.
Cheryl shut her eyes to see Sarah in the blue uniform still. She was sullen, embarrassed, perplexed by the restraint that she misunderstood for revulsion. And rightly so, for Sarah, who was only acquainted with the tickling sensations of the heart, could not have understood the moderation of feelings that Cheryl was learning every Sunday.
So when Cheryl started weeping, her tears falling between their cheeks, Sarah pulled away from the reluctant lips to see in the eyes of her favourite friend an expression of pain. The eyes that would narrow when her fingers reached deep into her were tearing up and would not stop. It was an expression she could only associate with the look on the faces of those who had done something wrong and irrevocable, like her mischievous brothers who were frequently caned by Ma, or schoolmates who were made to squat in the field for playing truant; and Sarah felt guilty by association, by looking at Cheryl.
Joy infected with shame was something the prelapsarian youth did not understand. It was either flight or fondling for her, and since Cheryl was reticent, Sarah withdrew reactively; her hand slipped away from under her friend’s dress and backed into the desolation of her own pocket.
In those few moments, the girls stood motionless, their eyes no longer gazing into each other’s. Between them was a great vastness and Cheryl knew no amount of words would draw them close. At last, as the bell for the end of recess came and went, seven seconds in total, Cheryl threw herself out recklessly into the shadows of the fateful afternoon towards the cataleptic figure. The bodies, one boyish and the other delicate, folded into each other. The hems of their blue dresses joined. The teenagers held on wordlessly. In the silence, the things that could neither be uttered nor asked wove round them and pulled them closer, before finally wisping away.
Cheryl peered a long moment into the room. If I had said something, she thought; if I had persevered. Would it have changed things? And then she thought: if only they had the words for what they felt…
But now that she knew what the words were, what could she possibly say to change things? The letter was writing its conclusion in her mind with pleasantries and clichés. Happy National Day! Write to me often. When are you coming back? Are you mar— The words that would express what she really felt were left unmanned in her heart, going in all directions but unable to be articulated.
It wasn’t just love, Cheryl contemplated, and stopped trying to turn in the bed. She gave in to the stiffness of her body, hoping inaction would afford her the energy to focus on the memory of Sarah. Surely not everything has to do with love. Whatever it was—friendship, the intimacy between women, puppy love, infatuation, true love—she never gave it a chance. What tragedy implicit in the affection was never enacted. Her regret was not trying hard enough, not trying at all. She told herself that she could not have done anything even if she wanted to, that she was too young, that she was born in the wrong time, that it was her mother’s fault. All of that was true, and Cheryl wished she could be persuaded by the facts. But the only bit of the story that kept clawing at her was the one about her walking away from something that actually mattered to her. It seemed she was always thinking about that.
At 13 she had surrendered. She went into hiding when she should have hit back, silent against her wants, thinking that her feelings would somehow go away—with a boyfriend perhaps, and more assuredly with Time—not knowing that obedience meant complicity. She had walked away from something that she would never discover again. From then on her life seemed to be a search for different sorts of emotional attachments to make up for the deficit. She tried the softball team, she tried to make friends, she tried men. She waited. And when the opportunity came to rebel against all that her mother stood for, Cheryl took it right away. She knew she had ripped out her mother’s heart but she revelled in her mother’s pain. Never had she felt closer to her: it was a necessary agony, one that allowed her to sympathise with her mother, for it was only via sympathy that she could feel something for the woman who had given birth to her.
Cheryl thought she had won. Then the pregnancy happened. Then the wedding. At 20 she was still in debt. She was still losing, losing more—for this time she had given her flesh and blood away which from conception was no longer hers. It was a Dada: the family’s signature imprinted on the baby’s left cheek. All these years the debt was chasing her nonstop, reminding her of the night she crouched in her room, the night she took him in, the night the baby arrived.
“My God, what have I done!” she burst out, and tried to hold in the beads of tears forming underneath her lashes, although her hands could not move, could not dry her face. Cheryl wept for herself, silently and alone in the room, mourning the amputation. She thought about all the missed opportunities and indecisions that had shaped her life. “My God!” she exclaimed, as the last of her tears fell to the pillow.
But, but maybe, she thought, just maybe there is still time. At 51 I still can— Those nights…those nights are nothing compared to tonight! Maybe I have done what I can undo, she thought, her eyes agleam with a faint light.
If at 13 she had been more firm with her mother, just like how she was with the staff about the table decorations and menu, things would probably pan out differently. If her mother were here in the room, she would say to her, “No, I don’t want to go to another school.” She would have told her mother that there was nothing wrong with her. If at 13 she had said no to her mother, things would be different. She would still be single, still searching perhaps, but definitely more fulfilled than now. She might have even finished school and gone on to do a Masters like Clare did.
But her mother was gone. “She’s gone to be with the Lord,” the quaking voice had said over the telephone. Gone, it said; not asleep. Not raptured, as her mother would have liked.
Cheryl thought of the things she had forgotten to tell her mother. That she wished her mother had had a miscarriage the second time around so they could all have been spared from this freak show; that she wished she wasn’t like her. She might have told her that she lost her virginity and married out of spite because she did not want to be that fucking white flower. She might have apologised to her mother, but for what? No, she did not regret not being there when she died. No, she did not regret sending her to St Mary’s. It was a holy place where old folks said grace before meals and had prayer service every other evening. If anything, Cheryl regretted not having sent her there earlier. She should have done so the moment the symptoms were showing. It was a lesson learned in the hardest way. Unlike her mother, she would not allow herself to die without dignity. Symptoms or not, hereditary or not, after her mother’s death Cheryl felt a distinct and urgent necessity to find a place of her own an
d, lo and behold, Elderflower Nursing Home on Avenue 7 had vacancies. So she checked in as soon as she settled her mother’s funeral and finances. The sale of her mother’s flat had fetched her some money that bought Cheryl a permanent room in Elderflower. It was her decision; it was for her best. And Adam and Clare did not have to feel bad about her living in the home. Just like she did not have to feel bad about her mother.
Cheryl wished she cared more. She wished she felt something but she could not bring herself to follow Adam and Clare to the hospital. There was not enough anger, bitterness, sympathy or anything strong enough to get her out of the house. She felt nothing for her mother.
But what Cheryl really wanted to tell her mother, even though she could never say it out, was that she understood. That she knew why she had done what she did. Like Cheryl, her mother had been clueless and young, pregnant at 20, half-hearted about marriage, feral in old age, forever grappling with the inconsistencies of life. Cheryl had chosen differently; but she could have easily done the same. Her mother had gone before her and tried one route, so Cheryl knew not to follow. The woman had stuck it out; she stayed as long as she could till the end. But back then Cheryl did not know better. Now she saw the routes clearly: both ways led to the same place. She understood that her mother had tried. And that was good enough for Cheryl.
Thinking about these things, Cheryl became keenly aware of how bogged down she was. Her body had become heavy, lodged in the bed. It was as if her blood had thickened and her organs were bricks. Was it the protracted effect of the medicine? She blew out a long breath and the ceiling seemed to breathe back at her. Something was pressing on her eyelids.
Grounded in the bed, unable to move, she was some solid object with a leaden heart, limbs and parts like blocks attached to the body by a carpenter. If life were metrical, she was feeling it now, all 51 years of dead weight and more. The albatross on her chest was here to stay, its talons dug deep. This must be what it feels like to be antique, Cheryl Dada thought, as she gave a big yawn. At least she could still feel her face.
