The Catherine Lim Collection

by Catherine Lim

  Angela persuaded, then finally gave up. Mooi Lan followed her to the door, in uneasy apology.

  Maybe there’s hope still, thought Angela. I’ll wait a while, then try again. She had got used to Mooi Lan; she couldn’t do without her. The girl was discreet about the family secrets; a new servant might trumpet things around, and that would be intolerable.

  Angela went a second time, three days later, with Boon. She told Boon to help her in persuading the girl to return. Mooi Lan flushed a deep crimson. She fidgeted, and looked about to cry again.

  “Come back, Mooi Lan,” said Boon. “The children need you. We need you.”

  She returned with them.

  Chapter 21

  “You have come again,” said Old Mother. “You look thinner. Don’t you have enough to eat?” The old man stood still and said nothing.

  “I prepared such a lot of food for you, yet you are so thin,” remarked Old Mother, referring to the recent Feast of the Ghosts during which she had offered a whole suckling pig, steamed chicken, a huge slab of roasted pork and heaps of pink buns.

  “I know why you have come,” said Old Mother. “You have come because you see me being badly treated by the younger generation. You yourself did not treat me very well when you were alive, but at least now you care, and can feel sorry for me.”

  The ghost began to heave and sigh in distress.

  “I know, I know,” said Old Mother bitterly. “He says he’s coming back, but he never comes back. He does not think of his old mother any more. His letters get fewer. He has forgotten his promise to his mother. He has a foreign woman; of what use is a foreign daughter-in-law? She will not

  put up an altar for me when I die.”

  The ghost began to talk; he talked in a soft rasp, difficult to hear. Old Mother strained her ears with impatience. “Do not worry. Ah Siong will come back. He has given up the foreign woman. You will not have a foreign daughter-in-law. Ah Siong will come back and take care of you.”

  “You said that the last time,” said Old Mother, reproach in her voice. “You told me that the last time, but he never came back. He will come back only when my body is already in the coffin,” she ended bitterly.

  “You will have to endure many more hardships,” said the old man, and he looked pityingly at her.

  “Hardships! Hardships! Haven’t I endured enough?” said Old Mother peevishly. “I’m 71 years old, with a head of grey hairs. Am I to suffer more hardships at the hands of the young?”

  “You will have more sufferings,” repeated the old man. “Enough!” cried Old Mother angrily. “Is it not in your power to help me, to protect me from the snakes around? You are quite useless, as you were in life. Be gone!” She shouted imperiously, and the ghost left.

  “Mummy, Grandma is talking to Grandpa’s photo again,” said Michelle. “I couldn’t understand what she said, but she sounded very angry, and then she cried.”

  “Never mind about Grandma, darling,” said Angela. “She’s old and unwell and does funny little things.”

  Mark stayed in school every day as long as he could. He did his work in the school library. “I dread to go home,” said the boy when his mother asked him. “I dread to go home because I see Grandmother always talking to Grandfather’s photo. It’s morbid. She talks in her sleep. I can hear from my room.” There were other things that vexed the boy, but he was reluctant to mention them to his mother: Michael’s tantrums, his mother losing her cool, her complaints to his father, the tensions that any visit of the idiot uncle was sure to generate.

  Angela knew. She agonised inwardly. “Oh, I’m so sorry, Mark. But what can I do? I’m surrounded by all these troublesome people, so what can I do?”

  Mark moved to the spare bedroom, to put more distance between himself and his grandmother, for she was beginning to walk as well as talk in her sleep. She moved around in her room in the middle of the night, like a restless, trapped animal.

  “Grandma, look,” said Michael, going up to her and showing her a tooth which he had just pulled out. Then he opened his mouth, to reveal the cavity where the tooth had been, clean, unbloodied.

  “I pulled it out myself,” he added proudly.

  “Come,” said Old Mother, taking him back to his room. When they were there, she made him stand straight, with his feet placed very straight together. She bent down, pushed them together to make sure they were in a perfectly straight position.

  “Now throw your tooth under the bed,” she said, which Michael did immediately.

  “There!” said Old Mother. “Now the new tooth will grow straight and even with the others; you will have nice, straight teeth.”

  “Grandma, why do you talk to Grandpa’s photo?” asked Michael.

  “Your grandfather comes to talk to me,” said Old Mother. “He knows I’m very sad and he comes to see me, but he is not of very much help.”

  “What does he say?” asked Michael.

  “He doesn’t talk very much,” said Old Mother. “I wonder whether you still remember him, Michael? He never talked much when he was alive. Such people are called ‘those-who-have-gold-in-their-mouths’. They are afraid that if they open their mouths to talk, the gold falls out, and others come to pick it up.”

  “Remember you once told me a story about a man who picked up a lot of gold from a well?”

  “Did I? I’ve forgotten. I’m getting very old. Look at all my white hairs.”

  “Would you like to hear a story about a king who touched things and made them turn to gold?”

  “All right, Michael. Tell me your story.” The boy sat beside his grandmother and told not one but several stories, his face animated.

  “I shall tell Uncle Bock these stories when he comes.”

  “You’re a good boy, Michael. Come, I’ll take you to Grandfather and you repeat the words after me.”

  Old Mother took Michael to the altar. She stood behind the boy, both arms encircling him and both hands holding his up, pressed together in a gesture of supplication before the old man’s framed photo above the altar.

  “Grandfather, make me grow tall and strong. Make me a good boy. Make me do well in my studies.”

  The boy repeated every word, slowly, reverentially.

  When Angela came downstairs, she stared at the sight of the old one moving Michael’s clasped hands up and down, up and down, before the photo. There was a big joss-stick in an urn on the altar.

  Angela wanted to scream.

  Chapter 22

  “From now onwards, when I hear the telephone ring for me, I’m going to tremble,” said Angela. “Really tremble in anticipation of further agony.”

  The first had been the call from the distressed Mooi Lan. Happily the girl had now gone back to the old routine, losing none of her efficiency, thank goodness. She was quieter, less her old self. But she retained her sensitivity to the varying moods and needs of the various members in the family – which maid-servant could be counted on to do that? There would have been trouble if she had not adeptly intervened in the case of Mark and the packet of joss-sticks. For some totally inexplicable reason, the old one, who was beginning to wander aimlessly around in the house, had left a packet of the joss-sticks on a table in Mark’s room. Mooi Lan’s sharp eyes had detected the offensive object and she had quickly run in, removed it and returned it to the old one’s room before the boy returned from school. And there was the occasion when Boon returned home, somewhat wan and dispirited; Angela was away for a mahjong session at Dorothy’s, and Mooi Lan prepared a cup of hot Bovril for him unasked. She later told Angela that she was nervous about asking him what he needed but had hit upon the right thing with the Bovril for he drank it – drank all of it and asked for another cup. Poor Boon, thought Angela with a slight twinge of guilt, but thank goodness I have Mooi Lan.

  And now, when she had barely recovered from the distressful events of the past month, when she had steeled herself sufficiently to keep down her exasperation at the sight of the old one still endlessly brewin
g the nasty stuff in the kitchen, still working on the futile patchwork blankets, the trouble had started again, once more the brutal assault on her nerves.

  “Angie,” said Mee Kin on the phone. “Come over to my house. Right now.”

  “What on earth’s the matter?”

  ‘It’s your mother-in-law.’

  “I should have known. What’s she done now?”

  “It’s best you come over right now.”

  Mee Kin was at the driveway to intercept Angela’s entry into the house, to caution and warn. The old one had been wandering in Orchard Road; she had apparently taken a bus, wanting to go somewhere, then got down in bewilderment at Orchard Road. It was most fortunate that Mee Kin had seen her from across the road – a car had narrowly missed her, and someone had screamed and pulled her out of the way. Mee Kin had dashed across and guided her to a coffee house for a cup of hot coffee, but she was weeping so loudly that Mee Kin had to take her out again. She managed to get a cab; the old one did not want to return to Angela’s house, she kept muttering about a snake being there, and she wanted to return to the old house to be with Ah Kum Soh and the idiot foster-son. Mee Kin thought it best to take her back to her own place and then let Angela know.

  Angela felt the angry tears pricking her eyes. The poison had spread: it could no longer be contained in the home. It had broken through and spread abroad. How would Boon feel? How would Mark feel?

  “We saw your grandmother wandering about Orchard Road, like a destitute. She was weeping and wiping her nose on her sleeve. She was almost knocked down by a car.”

  Fortunately, it had been Mee Kin. Mee Kin could be trusted to be discreet. But Mee Kin was likely to tell Dorothy, Dorothy was likely to spread it a little further. Oh, the shame, the shame of it all. “You’d better go about things calmly,” warned Mee Kin. “She keeps muttering to herself, and any scolding is sure to upset her.”

  “I’m past scolding anyone,” said Angela wearily. “And I’ve no intention of upsetting her. She’s upset me enough. She can’t go back to that wretched house in her state of health and mind. And I hear that the irresponsible Ah Kum Soh has turned the place into a gambling den – one of these days I shall have to do something drastic. Oh God, why does she continue to be such a thorn in my side?”

  Angela asked Mee Kin not to tell anyone. She, on her part, would tell no one, not even Boon. She would drive the old one back, placate her yet further, continue to endure. What else was there to do?

  “I wish the house were ready,” she said. “These stupid contractors delay and delay. I had to goad them on with the work. And I made them rip off one whole section of the patio and re-do it. I tell you, even when you have the money to build a house, you suffer endless heartaches. The separate wing is coming up nicely. I had a look at it yesterday. Quite separate. Oh, Mee Kin, how sick I am of everything. Why can’t she be like your mother?”

  Mee Kin’s mother happened to be there; when Angela walked into the house, she saw the nice, affable old lady talking in soothing tones to the old one. Old Mother sat in a chair sullenly, eyes red-rimmed, the seams in her old face much sorrow-deepened.

  The picture of true pathos, thought Angela bitterly. Portrait of old white-haired woman ill-treated by children and grandchildren.

  The extent of derangement was greater than Angela suspected. Mee Kin accompanied them home; she sat at the back, trying to console Old Mother in her ineffectual dialect, while the old one began a stream of incoherent abuse. “A snake is hatched. It will bite and then I shall say, ‘serves you right’. I warned you and you never listened to me. I know you won’t do it, it will still be your improper coffin that I shall lie in. He came again and for the fourth time he said, ‘Don’t let them put you in that kind of coffin, as they did to me.’ They will dash my ancestral altar to the ground – who knows if they will put one up for me at all? An old useless woman. The foreign hairy one. What does she know? She has bewitched Ah Siong and he’s now a foreigner, like her. He was ill, he nearly died and I brought him back to life, saved him from the pond devils that were threatening to drown him. And he writes and says he’s marrying the foreign hairy one.”

  The tirade was in itself frightening; it became macabre when it was mixed with laughter – genuine, cackling laughter of deepest amusement. “I made him the walking tin-cans, and he was satisfied at last! Poor boy! Everybody was walking along on tin-cans – Plock! Plock! Plock! – and laughing and he came crying to me and said, “Ma! Ma! I want to have the tin-cans, too!” Well, there weren’t any – I actually bought two tins of condensed milk – I put the milk into a jar and then forgot about it! Forgot about it, imagine, such an expensive thing. The old devil, if he knew, would have scolded me for extravagance, but the stuff had turned mouldy and I could save the bottom part. But the boy had the tins. I got a long stout string and tied the tins together, and then he began to walk about – Plock! Plock! Plock! – he was so happy – ” Old Mother chuckled to herself.

  Angela said, under her breath, “Do you think she needs to be committed? She’s raving mad,” and Mee Kin answered, also under the breath, “You must let Boon know, Angie. It’s serious. You can’t let her go on like this.” They reached home. Mooi Lan kept out of the way.

  Angela did not tell Boon; he was scheduled to go on a trip that was likely to improve his chances of being selected. Minister himself had been hinting of it.

  “I think she was just being difficult and perverse,” Angela told Mee Kin a few days later. “She appears all right now, although she still hurls sarcastic remarks at Mooi Lan, but the girl’s learnt to take everything in her stride now, and to ignore her, for my sake. She was perfectly normal when Wee Tiong and Gek Choo called. I was extremely annoyed with them as I’d told you. Ten thousand dollars. They had the audacity to say I made $10,000 out of that wretched antique bed. I snubbed them right and left after that. Then they called. They ate humble pie and they called. And I’ll tell you why.”

  The baby boy was ailing. A temple medium consulted by Gek Choo’s mother had said that the baby must be given away in adoption – in name only if necessary – to a person who was blessed with prosperity and who was bom in the year of the Dragon.

  “I suppose their search was fruitless and they had to come to me,” cried Angela, made doubly triumphant by the capitulation of the enemy and the attestation to her prosperity. “I’m not one to take revenge. I agreed immediately. So now I’m Godmother or foster-mother or whatnot to the boy.” She had undergone the simple ceremony of having her wrist tied to the baby’s by a piece of red string blessed by a temple priest. It was highly amusing, but it seemed the baby improved immediately. The unusual twist of events had stemmed Chinaman’s rancour somewhat. “But a leopard can’t change his spots. He still twists his neck about in that horrid way and I can sense the sarcasm in his tone. But as I’ve told you, I feel for the baby boy. After all, he’s my nephew – sort of.”

  Old Mother slipped an ang-pow into the baby’s vest, and the ceremony was over.

  It wasn’t the Season of Ghosts yet, but she took it in her head to prepare a feast for the old man’s ghost. A huge amount of roasted pork and steamed chicken and pink buns were put on the altar. Angela fretted about what to do with such a large amount of food that the children would not touch, that Mooi Lan would not eat a morsel of because, though she still cleaned the altar and swept Old Mother’s room, she dissociated herself from everything else belonging to the old one. The pink buns went to Aminah who gratefully took them home to her children in a paper bag; the meats went to Muniandy’s wife who had again appeared at the door with the baby on her hip and the pot-bellied, scabby boy at her side.

  “I must say your powers of endurance are remarkable, Angie,” said Mee Kin sympathetically.

  “I’ve become inured to everything; there’s no choice,” said the other. “Better to have her being nonsensical at home than outside. I dread to think of what could have happened that day in Orchard Road. Peace, peace, that’s all I ask.
Even if it means stretching my nerves taut.”

  Mooi Lan was having a nap; Angela was out shopping, which accounted for the idiot one slipping in and going straight to Michael’s room. Old Mother saw him and was happy, repeating, “Ah Bock, you’ve come to see me,” but the idiot was eager to see Michael whose voice he had heard. He bounded upstairs gurgling, and the boy laughed to see him, calling, “Uncle Bock! Uncle Bock!”

  “You’d better tell Uncle Bock to go away,” said Michelle gravely, coming out of her room on hearing the commotion. “Mum won’t like it; Mark won’t like it either, and he’s coming back from school any moment now.”

  But the idiot one and Michael were already running downstairs hand in hand. They pranced about in the sitting room with wild whoops of joy.

  Michelle watched, a little nervously; she clapped a hand to her mouth in a gasp of alarm as she saw Mooi Lan and Mark walk in simultaneously. Mooi Lan was awakened from her nap by the uproar, Mark had just returned from school and was about to go upstairs to his room. The idiot was swinging Michael, his arms encircling the boy from behind. Both were shouting with exuberance. “Again, Uncle Bock! Again, again!” screamed Michael and the idiot, gurgling, lifted him up with a mighty heave, swung him in an arc that felled, among other things, in its path, the trophy for the National Speech contest. It crashed to the floor, the golden statuette, and lay in three pieces, golden head detached from the body, the plaque with Mark’s name fallen off from the base and lying face down.

  Mark rushed up, white with rage. He stood over the symbol of effort and victory, now destroyed, speechless, fists clenched.

  Uncle Bock was about to heave Michael for another swing, still gleefully chortling, when Mark strode up and delivered a stinging slap across the face of his younger brother. At the same time, the tears sprang to his eyes.