The Catherine Lim Collection

by Catherine Lim

  The pictures were spread around her on the floor, ready to be sorted out and pasted in the big book with the creamy pristine pages. Some old Christmas and New Year cards lay nearby, held down by a pair of scissors, the remains of a large collection that by the transforming power of scissors, paste and crayons, became dazzling daisies, roses, stars, moons, bells, fruit, bows, rainbows, Chinese dragons, puppy heads, kitten heads and perfectly shaped human hearts to be commandeered for whatever decorative purpose their creator intended. The best of the cards had been put aside for the supreme honour of servicing the book’s title: letters laboriously traced upon them, carefully cut out and then put together proclaimed “FAMILY JOY by TEO PEI YIN” in uncompromising columns and blocks of purple, red, blue, pink and gold.

  Across the heaven of a pastel blue page flew Tinker Bell and Peter Pan hand in hand, shedding a million tiny silver stars, ingeniously fashioned out of discarded chocolate wrapping. Blue page, yellow page, mauve page: the colours provided matching backgrounds, thus blue pages were skies and sparkling water, yellow were golden chicks, buttercups and blond children, mauve were Victorian ladies in soft dresses and parasols and hyacinths in bowls. She enclosed the pictures with whirls and whorls of colour, selecting carefully from a range of 24 pens in a box that a classmate had agreed to lend her for the day.

  But these, despite the opulence, were preliminaries only, to lead to the true theme of the book, the joy of the family, for evidence of which Pei Yin had amassed a roomful of glossy magazines, advertisements, posters, tourist brochures, calendars, postcards, greeting cards. The Prince and Princess of Wales with their two sons in the garden of their country home, the Cosby family in a laughing entanglement of arms and legs, a sunny family on the beach with their dog wearing a red cap, cut out from a Qantas Airlines poster – the happy families repeated themselves down the pages, culminating in a picture of the Holy Family, St Joseph and the Virgin Mary with their hands prayerfully clasped while they looked upon the Baby Jesus in the hay, radiating light. Beneath this picture, Pei Yin had copied, in flawless script, God’s own impassioned rhetoric: “If you ask your father for a loaf of bread, will he give you a stone? If you ask him for an egg, will he give you a scorpion?” It was Mrs Tan’s favourite quotation.

  The scorpion’s poison as yet lay outside the pale of the happy family pictures; it would have been incongruous cast in the midst of so much brightness and hope. For Pei Yin’s happy talk and laughter these days as she cut and pasted, drew and wrote, re-drew and re-wrote, were based on the hope of securing the glittering prize of prizes in the school competition – a silver trophy, with the name of the winner engraved. Hope sang, hope whistled a happy tune which subsided into anxious silence as a shadow, long and purposeful, fell across the page bordered by red Chinese dragons. Pei Yin did not look up; she continued the pasting, while the shadow moved and shifted and finally settled in a dense patch on top of her.

  “Ai-yah, what beautiful pictures you have, Little Pei Pei!” said the father, bending over and smiling broadly. “And what beautiful handwriting! You are a very clever girl, Pei Pei.”

  What happened? she thought. He was supposed to be at a relative’s house that evening; that was what he had told Mother. The persistent warning from Mother and Older Sister not to be alone in the flat with the father now shaped into fearsome reality: they were alone, and neither Mother nor Older Sister would be back for some time.

  “What are you doing, Little Pei Pei? Tell Father what you are doing.” He squatted down beside her, his arms hanging amiably between his legs, his face close to hers, but his hands were as yet untouching. She shrank into herself.

  “Why are you afraid of your father, Little Daughter?”

  She had frozen into immobility, a pink and blue bird limp in one hand, the scissors in the other. He stood up and she broke out of the immobility to put both bird and scissors on the floor, get up quickly and run into her room. Bolting the door, she sat on her bed, panting. She began to cry.

  She heard him moving about, then saw his shadow from under her locked door.

  “Little Daughter, I’ve brought you a present, would you like to have a look at it?”

  Never receive gifts from strangers, both Mother and Older Sister had warned. Never receive gifts from fathers.

  The shadow lingered, then moved away. She lay still on her bed, worrying about her uncompleted Family Joy Project scattered on the floor. The metal gate clanged. Mother was home! Pei Yin got up quickly to rescue her project. Outside her door stood a box of magic colouring pens – and there were 36 of them. Pei Yin gasped. She had never seen such a magnificent array of colours. Reject the gift. Never receive a gift from the enemy. Pei Yin stepped over the box and let it lie there. The next morning, when she woke up and opened the door to have a look, it was gone.

  Mrs Tan allowed extra time for the completion of the project. The silver trophy stood in a glass case on the wall in the school assembly area and inspired last-minute feverish activity. The generous classmate who had lent the box of magic pens was generous no longer in the new momentum of rivalry. Pei Yin fretted over her inability to put the finishing touches to the last few pages; she pleaded and the classmate who had stolen a peep at Pei Yin’s work and then recoiled in horror at the meagreness of her own, snatched up the precious box of pens, removed herself to another corner of the classroom and tried frantically to make up for lost time.

  I must win the trophy, thought Pei Yin, looking around for a similar box to borrow. Mrs Tan, at the door, called to her. She turned round and went pale with fear, for the father was standing there too, a crumpled shirt over his singlet and not even properly buttoned, and an old pair of khaki trousers over his pyjama trousers. In his hands he held, shyly, the box of 36 magic pens.

  “Say thank you to your father, Pei Yin,” said Mrs Tan sharply. “He’s come all the way to bring you these lovely pens for your project. Where are your manners?” She felt sorry for the man, shy, poor, uneducated.

  Pei Yin said ‘Thank you’ tremblingly and received the gift. She would not tell Older Sister about this. Mrs Tan later said, as she observed her using the pens to complete the project, “I’m rather surprised and disappointed in you, Pei Yin. I thought you knew better than to treat your father in that way. He must have spent a lot of money on those pens. And then to take the trouble to come all the way.” The man would have come by bus or bicycle; such as he could not afford a car, such as he spoke no English, had bad teeth and deferred to daughters who were ashamed of him.

  And then Mrs Tan had an idea. Its relevance, indeed necessity, for any meaning at all for the programme that she had initiated in the school in her capacity as Counsellor, was so obvious she was ashamed it had never occurred to her before. She announced to the girls that she would give them one more day for the submission of their various projects for the Family Joy Competition; they cheered.

  “There’s something else I want you to do,” she said, and the cheers subsided into attentiveness. “I want you, in the true spirit of this competition, to dedicate your project to your daddy.” No cheers, but some faces lit up with daughterly affection, and continued to be attentive for more instructions.

  “I want you,” said Mrs Tan in the confident glow of a job about to be very well done, “to take your book home to your daddy this evening, tell him what it is about and say you have done it for him. As proof that you have actually done what I told you, because some of you are naughty girls who don’t follow all instructions,” here the girls giggled, rather liking that description of themselves, “you are required to get your daddy’s signature on the last page of your book, and also whatever he may wish to write. It does not matter if it is not in the English language,” she added.

  Someone asked, “Can I ask my mummy to sign too?” and Mrs Tan said, “Yes, if you like. But it’s Daddy’s signature that I want. And I want all of you to tell one another in class what your daddy said and did. We’ll have a nice sharing session.”

  Pei Yin h
ung around nervously and anxiously, waiting for her mother to leave for work; Older Sister had left much earlier.

  “Aren’t you going to school?” said her mother. A classmate was coming, she said, to meet her in a short while and they would go to school together; she needed help to carry some things borrowed from Teacher for her project. Her mother took much longer to finish her coffee; Pei Yin fidgeted, ready in her school uniform, her school bag bulging with things, her Family Joy book in a separate large paper bag.

  Alone in the flat with the father at last, her heart thumping so wildly she thought she was going to fall down and be very sick, she took the book out of the paper bag and slowly walked to the father’s room, stopping by the door. He was in bed, reading a Chinese newspaper, and at the sight of her, he sat up and pulled off his glasses.

  The spasm of surprise over, he said, “Eh, Little Daughter? You want something?” Biting the ends of his spectacles, he studied her with the rare pleasure of an unobstructed view: no hunched shoulders, no turning away. She continued standing at the door, wanting to speak to him, not finding speech. A situation of unspeakable promise, he realised, had presented itself to him, and for a moment he was struck dumb by the sheer wonder of it all. But he soon scrambled out of bed, knocking down spectacles and newspaper and went to her at the door.

  “Little Pei Pei, you want something. What can your father do for you?”

  She pushed towards him the book, beautifully bound and redolent of roses and hearts, and asked for his signature.

  “Ah, you want me to sign this beautiful book?” he said, and the book took on the fresh aspect of an accomplice.

  “Come, come, put it on the table here and I’ll find a pen,” and he led her into the room. “Where’s my pen? Where are my glasses? I must put on my glasses so that I can write my name properly in my daughter’s beautiful book!”

  It will all be over and done with soon, thought Pei Yin with desperation. The harder part was to come. It was a necessary condition for the competition, Teacher said, and they were to talk about it during the sharing session in class.

  Pei Yin with new resolution moved up to the father and put her arms around him. “A kiss too,” said Teacher. That would make Daddy so proud and happy.

  “Ah!” he said, dizzy with the wondrousness of the turn of events, and determined no wondrousness should distract flesh from its long-awaited purpose.

  He said, hoarse with urgency, “I’ll sign afterwards,” and lifted her to bring to his bed.

  ***

  “Pei Yin, whatever’s the matter with you?” cried the startled Mrs Tan for there stood before her a ghost, wild-eyed and white, the blood drained completely from her face, her mouth opening and closing in little animal noises. “Pei Yin, what’s the matter? Are you ill? Is it the project – ” And it was precisely at this moment that the girl realised she had forgotten to bring the book; her precious book was at that moment lying on the father’s bed.

  “My project,” she gasped and began to look around wildly.

  “My project, I forgot to bring it!” She began to scream hysterically, from a further onslaught of that darkness that had enveloped her as she stumbled out of the room, running blindly into a wall before she found the open door, and again as she rushed into the bathroom and struggled through the raw pitilessness of sweat and blood and slime. Choking, she had tried to spit out the poison, but the scorpion had bitten too deep for that.

  She threw herself upon the floor, crying dismally, and Mrs Tan caught hold of her and with the help of another teacher, carried her to the school lounge where they put her in a large comfortable chair and tried to soothe her. She continued crying, in great sobs that wracked her little body, while Mrs Tan held her, stroked her hair and patted her gently till the sobbing subsided.

  “Don’t worry about the project,” she said soothingly, “You can bring it tomorrow, I don’t mind at all. Don’t worry,” and wondered about the larger agonies, beyond any school project, that this poor, sensitive, overwrought child was privately suffering. She was convinced they had to do with the father, and she wondered, for the hundredth time, about an education system that distanced articulate English-educated daughters from their fumbling illiterate fathers. If guilt was part of this strange child’s hysteria, it was no bad thing.

  “I have to get my book, or it will be ruined! Please let me go home to get my book!”

  The child was becoming hysterical again, and had to be soothed afresh. Somebody brought a hot drink. Mrs Tan, putting her arms tenderly round the poor girl, drew her attention to the clouds that could be seen through the window, amassing with dark power. “See how dark the sky is. See those black clouds. It’s going to rain. So you can’t go home, or you will get wet and catch cold. It doesn’t matter if you can’t hand up theproject today. It doesn’t matter at all. It will make no difference to the competition whatsoever, see? I know how hard you’ve worked at it. Now take this drink and you’ll feel much better.”

  The rain came down in torrents. Pei Yin watched it with dull, resigned eyes, and Mrs Tan went on talking to her in a soothing voice.

  “Try to get some sleep, dear,” she said. “Everything will be alright, so you mustn’t worry. Okay, Pei Yin?” The rain continued to fall in thick ruthless sheets. Mrs Tan, leaving Pei Yin’s side for the first time that strange afternoon in answer to a call, stared in amazement at the visitor standing at the entrance of the school office in a puddle of rain water. He had apparently come in the rain in a hurry, for he had on only a singlet and pyjama trousers, now totally wet and clinging to his undernourished legs. To Mrs Tan’s first astonished question about how he had got there in the rain, he shyly pointed to an old bicycle leaning against a dripping tree near the school gate, and to the second question about why he was there, he pulled out of a paper bag the book, but no longer recognisable, for the rainwater had scrambled all the colours into a streaky, brownish mess. A sodden page fell out and the father, laughing nervously, bent to pick up the Holy Family and put it back into the book.

  “My daughter forgot to take this to school, so I’ve brought it,” he said simply, and then was gone back into the rain.

  Mrs Tan stood for a while, holding the soggy mess, and her eyes filled with tears as she watched the father, a tiny figure now, pedal away in the rain.

  “Pei Yin,” she said as she returned to where the girl was sitting quietly in the chair, “I’ve got such good news for you.” The girl, suddenly noticing the book, frowned, started up, rushed forward to grab it and gazing upon the desolate remains, sat upon the floor once more and sobbed in the infinitude of woman’s sorrow.

  “It’s okay, it’s okay,” said Mrs Tan, awed by the power of what she had just witnessed. She picked up the girl and held her close. “We’ll not worry about the competition any more, shall we? Anyway, it isn’t that important, is it? We’ll just forget about it.” The good news was not just for the girl alone; it was for all daughters and fathers, and she, in the work to which she had committed herself, would be its humble bearer.

  For The Gift of a Man’s Understanding

  Let me tell you the story of nanna, the great goddess of the ancient Sumerians. So beloved was she because of her power and wisdom that every year, her High Priestesses received, in her name, streams of devoted men bringing gifts of wheat and fruit, fish and animals, to lay at the goddess’ feet. Every year too, there was the Ritual of the Sacred Mating, that is, a High Priestess put to the test young men aspiring to be appointed the year’s Shepherd or Damuzi, True Consort of nanna. And this was how the ritual went: her body, freshly bathed and perfumed and wrapped with her breechcloth and robes, her eyes glowing with kohl, the High Priestess invited the aspirant to prove himself on her bed, to test his fitness as the sacred consort. He, trembling with anxiety, would he led by her to the bed, and she would remind him, even as they were about to climb on to the silken pillows, that even though his gifts of fruit and honey, herbs and plants, flesh and fowl were the best of all, and even tho
ugh his youthful beauty was unparalleled, he had still not passed the ultimate test:

  Only when he has shown his love

  When he has pleasured my loins

  And I his, on my bed,

  Will I show him kindness

  And appoint him Damuzi

  The Chosen of Inanna’s Lap.

  (From The Woman’s Book Of Superlatives)

  “Good morning, Mr Ong. There’s something I would like to talk to you about, if I may. It’s very important.”

  “Sure, Mrs Lee. Do sit down.”

  “Mr Ong, I hope you don’t mind, but I’m going to be extremely frank.”

  “No, I don’t mind at all. Please go on.”

  “I’ve been thinking about the matter for a long while, Mr Ong, and in fact have been quite unhappy about it, wondering what I should do. I thought it best to discuss it with you, rather than with my husband.”

  “You’ve made me very curious, Mrs Lee. Just what is this matter that’s making you so unhappy? And so very nervous. Your hands are trembling. Can I get you a hot drink or something?”

  “Oh, no, thank you, Mr Ong, that’s very kind of you. You see, Mr Ong, you see, I ... I ... ”

  “Yes, Mrs Lee? Don’t be afraid. Do tell me what’s troubling you.”

  “Mr Ong, I’ve been working for you now for six months, and I want to say what a very good and generous boss you’ve been – ”

  “Surely that’s not what’s troubling you, Mrs Lee? Do get to the point. We haven’t got all morning, you know. There’s the Meyer letter we must do this morning.”