Old fool, she thought. You started telling your old fool’s stories and now you’ve made one son angry and the other confused. When will it end?
Chapter 16
“We should go to the police, he deserves to be locked up,” said Angela angrily. She held the crying girl in her arms.
She would relive the girl’s night – or nights – of terror many times in her imagination. The drunken lurching, the use of force in full view, of six or seven younger siblings huddled together, pretending to sleep in the dank darkness of the atap hut, the whimpering protestations of the mother, pale and weak, just home from the hospital after giving birth.
“No!” The eyes dilated with horror, pleading. “No! No!”
Police investigation would mean shame, loss of his job, loss of her job, misery all round. “No, mem. Please, mem, no police.” The pleading of the mother was pathetic.
“How many months now, Sharifah?” asked Angela gently. “Three or four,” said the girl, now no longer sobbing but sitting quietly, eyes on the floor. “Not too late,” said Angela to Mooi Lan. “It can be done. You told me your sister had it done in her fourth month.”
“Why don’t you ask Doctor? He should know. He’s a doctor,” said the girl, not wishing to talk about her sister.
“No. I won’t involve him in this. It’s too nasty. I’ll see what I can do at the government hospital.”
Only months later was Angela able to tell Mee Kin, and only then because Mee Kin said, “You’re lucky to have such a faithful washerwoman as your Minah. Mine steals and tells lies.”
“Oh, you don’t know the trouble I’ve had from her,” said Angela with a sigh, and then she told the story. Sharifah was well again after only a week and went back to work. She had herself gone to see the wretched man – given him a severe lecture, and threatened police action should anything like that happen again.
She had not told Boon. He would have disapproved of her action; he frowned upon anything that smacked of scandal, even if it were only remotely connected to him or his household – understandably, Angela explained, because of the possible offer to stand as Member of Parliament. A politician had to be ever so careful. Nothing even hinting of impropriety. So she had not told him, but had gone ahead with her actions, compassion again guiding her conduct. “I’ve arranged for Minah’s ligation,” she told Mee Kin with a sigh, “and I hope that’s the end of trouble from that drunken beast.”
Mee Kin said, “You were very brave to go to him. Suppose he had gone berserk and hacked you with a parang? Don’t smile, Angela, that’s a possibility. You can’t tell with these people.”
“I’m not stupid,” said Angela and smiled again. “He’s not the dangerous sort – only a drunken lecher. He was smiling and apologising profusely all the time I was there, scratching his armpits. I wasn’t afraid. I know the type.”
While Minah was at home recovering from the birth of her baby, Sharifah came over to take her place and do the washing and daily mopping.
Mooi Lan took her aside. She asked in whispers, glancing to see that Angela was not around. “What was it like?” She giggled.
Sharifah looked down, pained, red-faced. “Have you slept with men before?” she persisted. “I had a boyfriend,” said Sharifah after much coaxing. “But he left me when he found out.”
“Did you sleep with him?” The girl did not answer. “Was he handsome?” The girl smiled faintly.
“He was good-looking. He looked like Hussein Ali.”
Hussein Ali was a well-known star in the Malay TV programmes.
“Dr Toh is very good-looking, isn’t he?”
“I don’t know,” said Sharifah, and she turned her back to Mooi Lan, not wanting to talk any more.
“I think he’s very good-looking,” said Mooi Lan, taking a cookie from a cookie jar and munching it.
She leant on the kitchen table on her elbows, her arms brought close together, and she looked down with sly satisfaction at her young firm breasts, pushed together almost into bursting roundness by her arms. She smiled again.
Chapter 17
It was the third time that Mooi Lan had swept the floor that day. That was four times altogether including the first sweeping in the morning by Sharifah. Mooi Lan went down on her knees and picked out, one by one, the stray strands of thread where these had become entangled in the soft tufts of carpet and could not be reached by broom or vacuum cleaner. The girl picked them up patiently, rolled them into a ball, dropped these into the dustpan and resumed sweeping.
Angela apologised – apologised for the old one’s untidiness. Another malady of dotage – the endless making of patchwork blankets that left trails of thread and small pieces of cloth all over the floor. She was making a patchwork blanket presumably for Wee Tiong’s son. She had made a patchwork blanket for each of her grandchildren.
Crude, hideous things, thought Angela; the three patchwork blankets for her three children had lain in the camphor linen chest for years. They simply could not go with the furniture and pictures and colour scheme of the children’s bedrooms.
Angela watched Mooi Lan sweeping up the tiny bits of thread and cloth, and realised that since the old one’s arrival, the girl had become less communicative, even sullen.
I really must get someone to help out with the work; she’s finding it difficult to cope, thought Angela. She had raised Mooi Lan’s wages on the very month of Old Mother’s arrival, but she knew wage increases made no difference to Mooi Lan. The girl had been with them four years now, and had become part of the family. It would be extremely difficult to replace her.
“Who turned off the flame? My medicine isn’t properly brewed,” said Old Mother sharply, going into the kitchen where an earthen pot bubbled with black brew, emitting a strong pungent smell. She looked accusingly at Mooi Lan.
“Who turned off the flame?” she demanded again. Mooi Lan said nothing and continued washing some plates at the sink.
“You are very disrespectful,” she said severely, shaking a finger at the girl. “You show no respect to an old woman.”
She lit the cooker gas-ring again and left the kitchen. In a few minutes, the black brew bubbled over, spilling down the sides of the earthen pot and on to the white gleaming top of the cooker. Mooi Lan ran out of the kitchen to call Angela.
“Her brew’s spilling over, but she won’t let me turn off the flame,” cried the girl with restrained exasperation. “I’ve just cleaned the cooker, but the stuff is spilling again.”
Angela got up in weary vexation and turned off the flame; the bubbling ceased, but the cooker top was a mess. She called Old Mother who was upstairs in her room, in a voice shrill with irritation. “Mother! Your medicine’s boiled already! It’s spilling over!”
Old Mother came down slowly. Mooi Lan cleaned up the mess again. The smell of the obnoxious brew lingered in the kitchen for hours.
“I wonder why she keeps brewing and brewing,” cried Angela in exasperation. “Does she take all that nasty stuff? What’s it supposed to cure?”
“She gives Michael some of the brew,” said Mooi Lan slowly. “I’ve seen it with my own eyes.”
“What – ” almost shrieked Angela. “She makes Michael take the nasty stuff – whatever it is – without consulting me? How many times has she done it, Mooi Lan? Why didn’t you tell me?”
The girl remained silent, and grew more sullen. Angela understood what she was going through, with the old one in the house.
“Mother, you have been giving Michael your Chinese medicine,” said Angela with great restraint. “Why do you give him the medicine? What illness does he have?”
“The boy is unwell,” said Old Mother. “The medicine will cure him of his illness, strengthen him.”
“Mother,” said Angela with a patience that surprised herself, “Michael’s father is a doctor. He knows what Michael needs. We have the necessary vitamin pills to make him strong. Don’t trouble yourself in the future. Let me take care of Michael.”
“
The herbal brews – what were the ingredients? What had poor Michael been ingesting?” She remembered having seen the contents for a brew, wrapped in pink paper – dried weird things that looked like bits of bark, dried flowers, worm casts. She remembered Boon had told her – in the communicative days of courtship – that his mother once cured the swollen, infected ear of a neighbour’s child by putting a cockroach’s fresh entrails into it. Ah Siew Chae, an old servant now dead, stemmed the flow of blood from a deep cut in her son’s foot by applying joss ash on it.
And the baby mice – she had been told about the baby mice by Old Mother herself, and for a long time, the mere recollection of the incident made her want to run to the bathroom. The idiot one had fallen from a rambutan tree and had sustained injuries to his back. Old Mother sought a cure for him. She gave him small pellets of salted vegetable leaves and told him to swallow each - swallow, not bite. Each pellet was really a new-born furless mouse wrapped round with a salted vegetable leaf. The idiot one swallowed six baby mice in all, and, according to Old Mother and Ah Kum Soh, never had any backache since.
Old Mother’s herbal brews were in her very house, swallowed by her own son! It was inconceivable, intolerable.
Angela fought back angry tears.
“You go into Michael’s room when the boy is asleep,” said Mooi Lan slyly, “and you look at what he’s wearing round his neck.”
Angela turned the key in the boy’s room softly and walked to the sleeping form curled up foetally. She had with her a tiny pencil torch which she used to search for the offensive object. She gasped, then with great energy, easily removed it from the boy’s neck by snipping off the red string. The little metal cylinder rolled off the bed. Angela bent down and picked it up quickly, and removed the red string from round her son’s neck. She held the object tightly in her hand, breathing heavily. The boy stirred in his sleep, moaning a little. “Oh, my poor Mikey – ” She wanted to hold him close, but left the room instead, panting with agitation. She paused, wondering whether to fling the hateful thing back at Old Mother or simply throw it away. She decided to get rid of it by throwing it into the garbage bin in front of the house.
“How horrible, how horrible,” she repeated. “Poor Mikey. No wonder he’s like that. I wonder what other charms she’s got for him. I must do something about this.”
Getting to be a pig-sty, as I predicted, she thought in weary resignation as she passed Old Mother’s room and peeped in to see a massing of boxes and paper bags on the floor. Why ever did I bring her here? She’s a real thorn in my side, a huge thorn that goes deep into the flesh.
She passed Mark’s room and heard him practising for the National Speech contest. The serpent has bitten, she thought bitterly. Its tooth goes deep and the poison spreads all round.
Chapter 18
If she forgot about that dream – or was it more than a dream, was it a vision of some kind? - the bed would be a source of pleasure, not terror.
There it had stood, in the master bedroom, a masterpiece of craftsmanship and impeccable taste (the silken maroon bed-curtains had caused those handsomely carved creatures on the posts to stand out even more impressively). But now the workmen were here, to take it away to the home of a Mrs Daisy Perez – probably some vulgar rich woman who would clutter the bed with garish silk cushions. The cheque for $5,500 did nothing to still the pain. Angela instructed Mooi Lan to keep an eye on the workmen and see that they did not spoil the wallpaper in the bedroom or knock down any potted plant or ornament on their way down. Pained beyond expression by the loss of the bed, Angela retired to the spare bedroom, where she sat down heavily on the bed, wondering what explanation to give Mee Kin or Dorothy when they came and found the bed gone. The dream – it was definitely more than a dream – Angela put the blame squarely on her mother-in-law and that weird old servant Ah Kheem Chae, now dead, and then the dream had lost much of its terror. Her mother-in-law had told her this story – it must have been in the early years of her marriage before the old one developed the habit of long bouts of sullenness, broken only by querulous complaints. Her mother-in-law’s grand-uncle was very rich, the richest man in a town in China. He had insatiable lust, and had to have a woman in his bed every night, well into his 75th year.
All the numerous maid-servants in the big stone house with the three courtyards, he had deflowered at one time or other, except the old or the ugly, pock-marked ones or the ones known to have disease, for Grand-Uncle was meticulous about his health. He had his three wives brew cleansing herbs for him to ingest or soak in, and one night, in bed, he took a 14-year-old virgin by force and she died of the pain and shock. They removed her bleeding body and buried her quietly, but her ghost returned to haunt Grand-Uncle repeatedly. He became impotent, then mad, then one night, hacked the bed to pieces. It was a massive, carved, four-poster, but he asked for an axe and chopped it up. After that, he was more subdued, but died shortly after, in his 77th year.
Angela forgot the context in which this piece of family history was unravelled; perhaps her mother-in-law wanted to share with her her contempt for men, for had she not always called her husband the ‘Old Devil’, ‘One-who-is-accursed-with-short-life’, ‘One-who-is-more lecherous-than-the-farmyard-rooster,’ the last being a condemnation of his having two mistresses at the same time during a period of relative prosperity.
Angela could not remember the context, but the details stood out vividly, screamingly; the torn body of the 14-year-old haunted her imagination ever afterwards. Once she asked her mother-in-law whether there was any picture of the grand-uncle. There was none, but Angela eventually tracked down an album of old, yellowing photographs belonging to her mother-in-law’s relative. When shown the picture of the grand-uncle, she gasped, “He looks exactly as I imagined him to be – obese, flabby, even down to the mole with the long hairs drooping from it. Now how on earth did I think of a mole with long hairs? It’s weird, isn’t it?”
Boon said she must have seen the photograph somewhere before, she insisted that was not possible. She became excited,
she wished there were a picture of the 14-year-old bondmaid to match with the girl in her imagination, but of course, bondmaids had no photographs.
“She was a pretty, slight girl with hair parted in the middle and worn in two long plaits, one at the back and one always falling down her shoulders in front. She had big soft-looking eyes, rather like Mooi Lan’s, and a small mouth. On the night she was torn to death by the pain and fright, her eyes were even larger, they couldn’t close her eyes for a full hour after death.”
“Darling, you’re morbid, you ought to be a writer of crime fiction!” teased her husband and Angela laughed with him.
“My elder sister,” said the mournful Ah Kheem Chae (again Angela could not remember when it was she had told the story), “my elder sister was murdered just a few minutes after she was born. A baby girl, they said. That’s no good. There was the tray of ash in readiness on the table, in case it was a girl; the baby girl, naked and squalling, was lifted, taken to the tray and her face turned into the ash. A short struggle, and it was over. They wrapped her in rags and buried her, not in secrecy of night, but unashamedly, in the openness of daylight. Another girl, said the neighbours sympathetically, for they too had smothered, or seen smothered, baby girls in their time. When my mother gave birth to me, somehow she didn’t want me killed. She said, ‘let’s keep this baby girl. Throw away that tray of ash.’”
It couldn’t have been on a carved four-poster like this. It must have been on a plank bed with no mattress, and a block of wood for a pillow. Or there was no bed; the woman panting and heaving, probably squatted over a basin of warm water on the ground. Then why do I connect this atrocity with an antique bed? Angela thought, puzzled.
The day the antique bed arrived from the restorer’s workshop, she was delighted. “It’s worth a small fortune,” cooed Mee Kin surveying it with envy, and Angela said, “No. How can I ever think of selling it? It’s such a beauty!” She let her
fingers feel the richness of the carved posts, trace the scales on the serpent’s bodies.
And then the strange dreams.
She heard the 14-year-old’s moans of pain as the old but lusty body heaved on her. She heard, saw the red rips of pain in the 14-year-old flesh, saw the small fragile body fall limp to the floor, saw her mother-in-law come in to remove the stained sheets; how did Old Mother come into the picture? Grand-Uncle lay panting on the bed, in naked corpulence. He let out a loud guffaw, scratched his armpits in easeful indolence – he seemed then to be wearing a sarong and singlet. It was that drunken lecher, Minah’s husband.
“Come,” he said, pulling Sharifah to the bed, “come.” The girl whimpered, powerless. The short, sharp gasps of pain mingled with the sensual grunts, and then he dissolved and reformed before her very eyes. Now he was her father-in-law lying on his back, abusing her mother-in-law and hitting her on the head with his walking stick, and then he was Minah’s useless husband again, scratching his armpits and sucking his teeth – no, he was the lustful Grand-Uncle with the mole and the long hairs drooping from it.
The blue-striped Arrow shirt that she had herself bought for him – the voice, the laugh – it was Boon now; she saw her own husband on the bed with the 14-year-old bondmaid, but she was giggling, not moaning in pain. They were propped up on the elbows, close to each other; he touched her breasts, pushed together by her young firm arms into bursting roundness as she moved closer to him, still propped up on her elbows. She giggled – Angela recognised Mooi Lan’s peculiar giggle – an improper one for women, her mother-in-law used to remark – a kind of low, sensual gurgle. She saw the two of them locked in pleasure and then she heard them conspiring in whispers. “Let’s kill the child; let’s smother her in the tray of ash,” and with a deft flick of his hand, Boon turned the newborn infant’s face into the ash, and quietened her at last. Then the giggle again.
The Catherine Lim Collection Page 10
