“False! False!” Gloria heard a rough rasping sound, and saw an old man – yes, it was the old father-in-law, resurrected from the dead again. He knocked off the bottle of holy water from the idiot’s hand and then knocked him resoundingly on the head with his walking stick.
“False!” he shouted again and was echoed by a babel of voices. “Let the gods destroy what is false,” and then a multitude of gods, some looking like warriors with their ferocious eyes, eyebrows and beards and their armour with a myriad swords sticking out, and some old with white eyebrows and beards and some with faces like monkeys and pigs – all surged towards the altar and broke everything on it, amidst ferocious yells.
“Please – ” screamed Gloria, but it was a scream in the head only, so nobody could hear it. Old Mother, her grey hair still streaming about her face, came closer, touched her forehead. Gloria tried to break away from the touch, from the near contact with the old livid, blotched face moving closer to hers, but she seemed tied to the bed. Escape was impossible.
“Jesus, Mary, Joseph – ” she muttered weakly, and this time, the old father-in-law turned savagely upon her and rasped, “Away with your false gods! They will not allow you to put up an altar to your dead father-in-law or mother-in-law? Of what good are they then?’ The statuette of Saint Theresa already lay broken, smashed; the old man hurled out the window whatever was left of the picture of the Christ Child and His Mother.
“What’s going on?” came a loud voice, and Gloria was relieved to see Father Xavier. “Why are you doing this?’ he demanded as he saw a god with the monkey’s face grab a holy candle and dash it to the ground. A chorus of derisive voices greeted them, and then the gods chased Father Xavier out of the room.
Gloria, fixed to her bed, saw her rosary beads around the neck of the idiot; a god clad in gold and silver paper wrenched them from him and flung it away.
She felt a multitude of hands on her body, on her belly in which the child was, as yet not ready to stir. Her voice came back all of a sudden, and she let out a piercing scream. With a mighty effort, she wrenched herself from the bed, and ran out, fell, and then all was, mercifully, silence, darkness.
“She’s now recovering in hospital,” Angela told Mee Kin who sent flowers and presents to all Angela’s relatives when they were in hospital, insickness or for childbirth. “A neighbour heard her scream and rushed in to find her on the floor outside her bedroom. Old Mother was in her own room. She was combing her hair, seemingly unperturbed. It seemed, as she told Gek Choo, that she had heard moans in Gloria’s room, and thinking the girl was ill, had gone in to offer some of her Chinese pills. The idiot foster-son was with her at the time. Poor Gloria, sick and feverish, must have been terrified at the sight of them. She must have mistaken them for ghosts or something like that, for she was delirious on the first day in hospital, and kept screaming about my dead father-in-law and a whole host of devils attacking her.”
The girl was now under sedation, but she continued to weep silently. Wee Nam who had been urgently recalled could not bring himself to tell her about the miscarriage. The poor girl needed all her strength to recover. Angela visited her every day, heavy with a sense of guilt at having contributed to this tragic outcome. Towards the old one who was now back again in her house, she could have nothing for the moment but the deepest resentment: “Why does she cause trouble wherever she goes?”
Chapter 28
The plan was simple, and would make for much good all round. Mark would get the rest he needed and freedom from the disquieting influence of his grandmother, her mental faculties now badly deteriorating. Besides, Mark deserved a reward for having done so well in school. Boon needed a rest; indeed they all needed a rest. The six-week long tour coincided neatly with the end-of-year school vacation, and by the time they got back, the new house would almost have been ready. The tour would take them to the places that the children, ever since they were small, had been hankering to go to, because some of their classmates had been there – Los Angeles, San Francisco, Disneyland, Hawaii.
Mooi Lan with some persuasion and money might be induced to endure the old one a little longer. That wretched Ah Kum Soh, despite her irresponsible behaviour, could be asked to stay to be a companion to the old one. Even the idiot one, if Old Mother so wished, could be allowed to come and keep her company.
“I don’t want to go,” said Michael with resolution and Angela’s heart sickened, sickened at the thought of the old troubles starting all over again. She got Boon and Michelle to persuade him; it was no use. The boy remained resolutely silent, and only once said in a tone that left little for argument or persuasion, “I want to be with Grandma and Uncle Bock.”
“Thrash the boy,” Angela almost said to her husband, anger mounting, but she knew it would be of no use. It might make matters worse.
It was impossible to go off, leaving Michael in the house. In the end, Angela decided to stay behind, while Boon, Mark and Michelle went. It was a wrenching decision. It made her retire to her bathroom, to cry, in the manner of bitterly disappointed children.
“I love all my children in the same way; no one is a favourite,” she used to tell her friends, but in the privacy of her thoughts and feelings, she firmly believed this was not possible. She had tried so hard to be close to this very difficult child, but he had spurned her mother’s efforts all the way; how could she love him as much as she did Mark or Michelle? The resentment on more than one occasion had shaped itself into a wish. If only he had never been born, but it was a wish too horrifying for expression, and Angela suppressed it each time it had shaped itself.
The weeks of waiting for the return of the others were not as difficult as she had anticipated. The old one spoke less and was in her room most of the time. There was an occasion when she came out and spoke sharply to Mooi Lan, shaking her forefinger at her and calling her a snake, but Mooi Lan simply ignored her, much to Angela’s relief. Mooi Lan was at last learning how to handle the old one. Angela sent Mooi Lan home for a two-week rest; she felt the girl needed it, after the harrowing experiences of the past few months. She took leave from work, and found to her surprise that housework need not be a chore; she managed the cooking and house-cleaning superbly, helped by Aminah. The washerwoman was in tears again, having discovered the true nature of her daughter’s work. Sharifah had lied to her, had told her that she was working for a European family, at three times the wages she was getting from the last household. Angela tried her best to comfort her.
“What can you do? How can you stop her? Besides, she gives you money every month, doesn’t she? At least she thinks of her younger brothers and sisters.”
And the planning for the new house was pure pleasure. Angela had bought or borrowed from her friends stacks of glossy magazines on house decoration; she had a clear idea now what she wanted every room in the house to look like. Even the separate wing – she would spare no effort or expense to make it beautiful and comfortable, for, she told Mee Kin and Dorothy, the old one would not be there long, and it could later be converted into a comfortable den for Mark, or separate quarters for guests and entertainment.
Michael gave no trouble. He went to his grandmother’s room often; it was painful to see that another little metal cylinder on a red string had replaced the one she had thrown away, but this time, for the sake of peace, she would let things be. Such a state of affairs could not go on forever. Old Mother was now going to be 72.
The idiot one came on a few occasions and Angela had to make sure that he did not make himself a nuisance. The trophies were now in locked glass-cases; it was easy to keep the idiot relatively harmless by plying him with food for he often felt sleepy after eating and dozed off.
Michael seemed to be in a more cheerful mood. For weeks, Angela could not help thinking as she looked at her younger son: Because of you, there is no proper family holiday. You are both difficult and selfish. But the boy had passed his exams again; that ought to be balm enough.
The return of her family fro
m the tour was one of great joy and relief to her; she wanted to see them again so badly. They looked well, happy and refreshed, especially Mark. He had grown very tall in the past few months; he was even taller than his father. In a few months he would sit for the Merit Scholarship examination. Angela never had the anxieties that other mothers suffered for their sons and daughters before examinations, for she had full confidence in him, and he had never disappointed her, not once.
Chapter 29
“Once there was a snake,” said Old Mother with vehemence. “It was a small snake, but it had sharp teeth and a lot of poison in its bite. Now this snake lived under a stone in a village. It came out one night and drank the water from the village well. The next morning, the well-water was contaminated by the snake’s poison, so that all the village women could not put in their buckets. They went away angry. They wanted to kill the snake, so they went to the chief in the village. He saw the snake, curled asleep under the stone, but it was such a tiny, harmless-looking snake that he said, ‘No, no, I can’t kill the snake. It looks so small and weak.’
The next evening the snake went to the rice-fields. Why it went there nobody knew. But a lot of poison leaked out of its body. One by one the rice plants died. Now, the men who had spent so much time and hard labour planting the rice were very angry. They went to the chief of the village and said, ‘Kill the snake. First it poisoned the water in our well. Now it has poisoned the rice in our fields. Kill it.’ Now the chief thought, ‘This snake has gone too far. I let it go the first time, but this time, I shall kill it.’ So he went to look for the snake, but alas, it was no longer under the tree. It had escaped.”
“Perhaps it knew the chief was coming to kill it,” said Michael. “Did they kill the snake in the end, Grandma?”
“I don’t know. It’s difficult to tell, and now I don’t remember things very well,” she said. She lapsed into muttering. Michael put his head on her knee, and she stroked his hair. The smoothness and coolness of the jade bangle again touched his cheek, and he looked up to examine it closely. “Almost all green now, Grandma,” he said. “Except for this little white speck here, and another one here. See?”
Angela looked in briefly, to see the boy talking animatedly to the old one. The deterioration was more rapid than she had thought. Her room was a shambles; it smelt foul too.
It won’t be for long, she thought in self-comfort.
“Will you allow that snake to serve your husband, to go near him, to bewitch him?” It was frightening, to be accosted by the old one like that. Angela was in her room, reading; the old one stood in the doorway, her hair let loose. Even from that distance, Angela could smell the sweaty staleness of her clothes.
“Mother, do not be worried about such things,” said Angela calmly. “Rest and get well. You haven’t been well lately.”
She got up and guided the old one downstairs to her room; she had been given a room downstairs, to save her the trouble of climbing the stairs.
When the house is ready, thought Angela, I shall see what arrangements there need to be made. If necessary, Mooi Lan may have to go. I can’t bear all this nonsense and stupidity much longer. Just a month or so more – and all my troubles will be over, or at least the major part of the troubles.
Chapter 30
“Let’s go and visit Ah Kheem Chae,” said Old Mother. “She lives in the House of Death in Sago Lane. I knew I would go to that place at some time in my old age,” she added bitterly. “But Ah Kheem Chae’s already dead, Grandma,” said Michael. “Mother said she went back to China and died there. Nobody cared for her there. She should have remained in Singapore.”
“Ah Kheem Chae! Ah Kheem Chae!” The recollection, dimly, of the old grey-haired one who once brought him in from the rain and put a jacket on him, caused Ah Bock first to clap his hands excitedly, then frown, as more dim images crowded his mind and he struggled to put them in an ordered pattern.
“Let’s go to the House of Death, to the House-where-the-old-await-death,” said Old Mother. “Ah Kheem Chae is there, she’s waiting for me; I’m joining her. You’ll see, I’m joining her.”
“All right, Grandma,” said Michael.
Mooi Lan was later to be scolded by the anguished Angela. How could the three of them have got out of the house without her noticing? The old one slow and doddering, the idiot slobbering and probably creating a great commotion, Michael who ought to have been in bed, with that dreadful fever and due for his next dose of medicine. How could the three of them have got out without being noticed?
“I saw them,” a neighbour later said. “I saw them, they were going in the direction of the bus-stop. I thought it was rather unusual, Michael in his pyjamas, they were laughing a lot. Somehow I didn’t think at the moment to have warned you.”
Fool, thought Angela with great irritation but she merely smiled wearily at the neighbour and said nothing. Her annoyance with Mooi Lan mounted.
Now the neighbour had seen, the news would spread, there would be gossip, speculation by hateful neighbours.
They had taken a bus and then walked a long distance to the House of Death in Sago Lane.
It stood among a row of decaying houses, derelict, in the shadow of taller buildings. The walls, doors and windows were blackened with age.
Old Mother mounted the dark staircase followed by the idiot and Michael. It creaked beneath them, ready to give way. At the top of the staircase, they saw a darkened corridor, with rooms on either side. An old man in a pair of khaki shorts tied with string lay outside one of the rooms, on a mat that had frayed to a segment. He propped himself up weakly on his elbow to look at the visitors, his deep sunken eyes pools where misery overbrimmed. The idiot gurgled at him, while Michael looked on with awed fascination.
Old Mother walked resolutely into the nearest room.
“Where’s Ah Kheem Chae?” she demanded, but nobody knew. The old ones there, fragile in the shadow of death, merely looked at the visitors silently. “Ah Kheem Chae,” said Old Mother, going up to an old woman, with a scalp bare except for a few stiff strands hanging down to the nape of her neck. But the woman was not Ah Kheem Chae. Ah Kheem Chae was already dead, dead and buried in her native village in China, or as someone had said, had tried to return to Singapore and died on board ship.
The idiot, fascinated by these new surroundings, looked around with dilated eyes of wonder. The room was dark; some light pierced through a broken pane in a window. It was dark and cheerless and was filled with old crates, newspapers and rags. One side was stacked with them: a small wooden table was cluttered with flasks, chipped cups and plates, enamel bowls and spoons. An abundance of worldly possessions, but the old men and women sat in the shadows, detached and waiting for death. Old Mother put her hand into her blouse pocket, brought out wads of dollar notes and – distributed them laughing. The idiot pranced about, chortling with glee, seized some of the money and gave it to an old man with sticky secretion encrusting both eyes. He received it with both hands and broke into a toothless chuckle. Michael, exhilarated, reached into his pyjama pocket. He was surprised he could find money in his pyjama pocket. He took out the money and gave it to the idiot who promptly threw it into the waiting, cupped palms of an old woman in a patched black blouse who had quickly hobbled up, cackling thanks.
Michael clapped a hand to his mouth. He was wont to do that whenever he was very excited and happy; he was very happy now. Old Mother said, “Let me tell you a story. Who wants to listen to a story?”
“Me! Me!” cried Michael, and the idiot echoed, “Me! Me!” The old ones had come out of the shadows and gathered in the little pool of light in the centre of which stood Old Mother.
“Listen, can you hear a bird outside? It’s saying Tee-tee, tah-loh? Tee-tee, tah-loh? I’ll tell you a story about this bird.” Nobody heard the bird, but they listened, entranced. “There was a very wicked woman who had two sons. One was her real son, and the other her step-son. She loved her real son and ill-treated the step-son, giving him hal
f a bowl of rice at the most everyday and making him wear clothes that were so patched. The original cloth was no longer to be seen. Now you would expect the natural son to follow his mother’s footsteps and ill-treat the step-son. But this boy had a very good heart. He loved and pitied his step-brother, who was younger by a few years, and sometimes, unseen by the mother, slipped him a handful of boiled rice or cabbage. The wicked woman was intent on getting rid of her step-son. She hit upon an evil plan. She called the two boys together and said, ‘I’m going to give each of you a handful of maize seeds. You must plant the seeds in the ground and make them grow. The one whose seeds do not grow will have no food to eat for ten days.’
So this wicked woman gave her natural son good healthy maize seeds and her step-son maize seeds that she had secretly boiled so that they would never grow. So the natural son’s maize seeds sprouted into healthy plants, the step-son’s seeds withered and died in the ground.
‘Aha! No food for you for 10 days!’ said the evil woman, and the boy, saddened by the failure of his maize seeds to sprout, and thus pining away in sadness and hunger, soon died. The evil woman secretly buried him in a dark forest and returned to tell her own son that the boy had wandered off and died somewhere, it was no use looking for him.
‘Tee-tee, where is my tee-tee?’ asked the boy in great sadness, which made his mother very angry.
‘I want to die too, and become a bird and look for my tee-tee,’ said the boy. ‘Don’t be a fool!’ said the mother. But it was too late. The boy suddenly died and was transformed into a bird.
To this day, it goes in search of the brother, crying out in its agony, Tee-tee, tah-loh? Tee-tee, tah-loh?”
The Catherine Lim Collection Page 15
