by Yangsze Choo
She sighed. “I would like to ask you a favor.” My ears pricked up, but it was strangely innocuous. “Do you think you could spare me that ribbon in your hair? I was thinking of matching it to make a new baju.”
“Of course.” I pulled the ribbon loose. It was nothing special. The color was a common pink, but who was I to gainsay her? She grasped it with a hand that trembled.
“Are you well, Auntie?” I dared to ask her.
“I’ve had trouble sleeping,” she said in her small, feathery voice. “But I think it will soon pass.”
As soon as we were ensconced in the rickshaw, Amah began to scold me. “How could you behave like that? Eating so much and mooning around—I couldn’t tell which was larger, your eyes or your mouth! They must have thought you a goose. Why didn’t you charm her, tell her clever stories and flatter her? Cheh, you behaved like a kampung girl, not the daughter of the Pan family!”
“You never said I was charming before!” I said, stung by her remarks, though I was secretly relieved she had been helping in the kitchen when I took my extended walk-around.
“Charming? Of course you’re charming. You could cut paper butterflies and recite poems before any of the other children on our street. I didn’t tell you before because I didn’t want you to be spoiled.”
This was typical Amah logic. But she was bursting with gossip from the kitchen and easily distracted, particularly when I told her about Madam Lim’s request for my ribbon. “Well, it’s a funny thing to ask. She hasn’t had new clothes made for months. Maybe when the period of mourning is over, they’ll arrange a marriage for the nephew.”
“He’s not married yet?”
“Not even betrothed. They said that the master should have arranged an alliance for him earlier, but he held back because he wanted to make a better marriage for his own son.”
“How unfair.”
“Aiya, that’s the way of this world! Now the son is dead, they feel guilty for not doing so. Also they probably want to get another heir quickly. If the nephew dies there’ll be no one left to inherit.”
I was somewhat interested in this story, but my thoughts roamed back over the afternoon. “Amah, who looks after the clocks in that house?”
“The clocks? One of the servants, I should think. Why do you want to know?”
“I was just curious.”
“You know, the servants say that Madam Lim is very interested in you,” she said. “She’s been asking lots of questions lately about you and our household.”
“Could it be about the ghost marriage?” For some reason, the piles of funeral effigies rose to my mind and I shuddered.
“Nobody knows about that!” Amah was indignant. “It was a private conversation with your father. Maybe he even misunderstood. All that opium he smokes!”
However much Father smoked, I doubted that it had clouded his understanding that day, but I merely said, “Madam Lim has been asking me questions too.”
“What sort of questions?”
“Whether I have a sweetheart, whether I’m betrothed yet.”
Amah looked as pleased as a cat that has caught a lizard. “Well! The Lim family has so much money that perhaps a good upbringing matters more than family fortune.”
I tried to point out to her that it seemed unlikely they would pass up this chance to acquire a rich daughter-in-law in favor of me. It also didn’t explain the unease I felt around Madam Lim. But Amah was happily off in her own daydreams.
“We should show you off more. If people know that the Lim family is interested in you, you may get other marriage offers.” Amah was so shrewd in some ways. She would have made an excellent poultry dealer.
“We’ll buy some cloth tomorrow to make you new clothes.”
Chapter 3
That night, I went to bed early feeling tired and overexcited. It was hot and I tugged at the wooden shutters. Amah did not like me to open the windows too wide at night. Something about the night air being unwholesome, but when there was no monsoon it could be stifling.
When the oil lamp was blown out, the moonlight slowly strengthened until the room was filled with a pale, cold radiance. The Chinese considered the moon to be yin, feminine and full of negative energy, as opposed to the sun that was yang and exemplified masculinity. I liked the moon, with its soft silver beams. It was at once elusive and filled with trickery, so that lost objects that had rolled into the crevices of a room were rarely found, and books read in its light seemed to contain all sorts of fanciful stories that were never there the next morning. Amah said I must not sew by moonlight; it might ruin my eyesight, thus jeopardizing the chance of a good marriage.
If I were married, I wouldn’t mind if my husband was like the young man I’d met that day. Endlessly, I replayed our brief conversation, remembering the tones of his voice, the quick confidence of his remarks. I liked how seriously he had spoken to me, without the avuncular condescension of my father’s few friends. The thought that he might share my interests or even understand my concerns caused a strange flutter in my chest. If I were a man and found a serving girl who pleased me, no one would stop me from buying her if she was indentured. Men did so every day. It was far more difficult for women. There were stories of unfaithful concubines who had been strangled, or who’d had their ears and noses sliced off and were then left to roam the streets as beggars. I didn’t know anybody personally to whom these atrocities had happened, but I could not meet this young man or, worse still, fall in love with him. Even my father, lax as he was, was unlikely to allow a match with a servant.
I sighed. I barely knew him, it was all hope and conjecture. Though if I did marry, my husband was likely to be a stranger to me as well. It was not necessarily so for all girls of good family. Some families had an early betrothal, others entertained often enough that young people could meet and even fall in love. Not our household, however. My father’s withdrawal from the world meant that he had sought out no friends with sons and had arranged no match for me. For the first time I began to fully comprehend why Amah was continually angry with him on this subject. The contrast between the realization of his neglect and the fondness I had for my father was painful. I had few marriage prospects, and would be doomed to the half-life of spinsterhood. Without a husband, I would sink further into genteel poverty, bereft of even the comfort and respect of being a mother. Faced with these depressing thoughts, I buried my face in my thin cotton pillow and cried myself to sleep.
That night I had a curious dream. I wandered through the Lim mansion though all was still and silent. It was bright, but there was no sun, merely the whiteness that comes from a fog at midday. And like a fog, parts of the house seemed to vanish as I passed, so that the way behind was shrouded in a thin white film. Just as I had that very day, I passed through artfully planted courtyards, dim corridors, and echoing reception rooms, although this time there was no distant murmur of voices nor servants moving about. Presently, I became aware that I was not alone. Someone was following me, watching from behind a door or peering through the balustrades of the upper level. I began to hurry, turning down passage after passage as they began to resemble one another with a dreadful sameness.
At last, I came into a courtyard with a lotus pond, very much like the one I had visited that day, although the flowers here had an artificial air, as though they had been stuck into the mud like so many sticks of incense. As I stood wondering what to do, someone sidled up beside me. Turning, I saw a strange young man. He was grandly dressed in old-fashioned formal robes that came down to his ankles. On his feet, curiously short and broad, he wore black court shoes with pointed toes. His clothing was dyed in lurid hues, but his face wa
s quite undistinguished, being plump with a weak chin and a smattering of acne scars. He gazed at me with a solicitous smile.
“Li Lan!” he said, “How I’ve longed to see you again!”
“Who are you?” I asked.
“You don’t remember me, do you? It was too long ago. But I remember you. How could I forget?” he said with a flourish. “Your beautiful eyebrows, like moths. Your lips, like hibiscus petals.”
As he beamed, I was struck by a lurch of nausea. “I want to go home.”
“Oh no, Li Lan,” he said. “Please, sit down. You don’t know how long I’ve been waiting for this moment.”
As he gestured, a table appeared laden with all kinds of food. Boiled chickens, melons, candied coconut, cakes of all possible varieties. Like his clothes, they were intensely and unappetizingly pigmented. The oranges looked like daubs of paint, while a platter of pandan cakes were the sickly hue of the sea before a typhoon. Piled up in rigid pyramids, this largesse looked uncomfortably like funeral offerings. He pressed me to have a cup of tea.
“I’m not thirsty,” I said.
“I know you’re shy,” said this maddening creature, “but I’ll pour myself a cup. See? Isn’t it delicious?” He drank with every evidence of enjoyment.
“Li Lan, my dear. Don’t you know who I am? I’m Lim Tian Ching!” he said. “The heir of the Lim family. I’ve come to court you.”
The queasiness continued to build until I felt light-headed.
“Aren’t you dead?”
As soon as I said that, the world contracted as though it had wrinkled. The colors muted, the outline of the chairs blurred. Then, like the snap of a gutta-percha string, everything was back the way it had been. The white light shone and the food on the table positively glowed. Lim Tian Ching closed his eyes as though pained.
“My dear,” he said, “I know this is a shock to you, but let’s not dwell on that.”
I shook my head doggedly.
“I know you’re a delicate creature,” he said. “I don’t wish to distress you. We’ll try again another time.”
He tried to smile as he faded away. I was forcing myself awake with all the will I could muster. It was like struggling through a mangrove swamp, but slowly the colors bled away until, gasping, I was aware of the moonlight spilling over my pillow and a numbness in my hands from where I had pressed my forehead.
I could hardly sleep the rest of the night. My body was covered in sweat, my heart racing. What I really wanted to do was to go down the hallway and crawl, like a child, into Amah’s bed. I used to sleep next to her when I was small, and the pungent smell of the White Flower Oil she daubed on her temples against headaches comforted me. If I went now, however, Amah would be worried. I would get a scolding and she would force all sorts of nostrums on me. Still, the loneliness and terror I felt almost drove me to disturb her until I remembered that she was an incorrigibly superstitious woman and any mention of Lim Tian Ching would upset her for days. Toward dawn, I finally fell into an uneasy torpor.
I meant to tell Amah about the dream, but my fears seemed less consequential in bright sunlight. It was a result of dwelling on the Lim family, I told myself. Or eating too much rich food. I also didn’t want to admit to Amah that I had been thinking about husbands before I went to bed. The whole encounter with the young man who fixed clocks made me feel guilty.
The next evening, I went to bed with trepidation, but there were no dreams and so when a few more uneventful nights passed, I put it behind me. My thoughts were, in any case, more concerned with another. Try as I might, they kept drifting back to my conversation with the clock cleaner. I thought about how knowledgeable he had seemed, and what a pity that such a man should be a servant. I wondered how it would feel to run my hands through his cropped hair. When I had a free moment, I studied the angles of my face in the small lacquer mirror that had been my mother’s. Growing up, my father took little notice of my appearance. He was more interested in my opinions on paintings and the liveliness of my brush calligraphy. Occasionally, he mentioned that I resembled my mother, but the observation seemed to give more pain than pleasure and afterward, he would withdraw. My amah seldom praised and often found fault, yet I knew she would throw herself under an oxcart for me.
“Amah,” I asked her some days later. “How was my mother related to Madam Lin?”
We were walking home after buying material for a new dress. Somehow Amah had found the money for it. Embarrassed, I couldn’t bring myself to ask from what private store she had scrimped this unnecessary luxury. All amahs put aside their wages for their retirement. They were a special class of servant sometimes known as “black and white” because of the clothes they wore: a white Chinese blouse over black cotton trousers. Some were single women who refused to marry, others childless widows with no other means of support. When they became amahs, they cut their hair into a short bob and joined a special sisterhood. They paid their dues and banked their money there, and in return after a lifetime of working for others, passed their old age in the Association House where they were fed and clothed until the end of their days. It was one of the few options for a woman with no family and no children to take care of her in her dotage.
I suspected that Amah had been raiding her own savings for me. It was shameful. If our family really ran out of money, then she ought to look for another position. Or she could simply retire. She was old enough to do so. If I married well she might come with me as my personal maid, just as she had come with my mother upon her marriage. Now as I glanced at her tiny form trotting beside me, I felt a surge of affection. Despite her exasperating strictures, which often made me wish to escape her control, she was fiercely loyal.
“Your mother and Madam Lim were second or third cousins, I believe,” she said.
“But Madam Lim talked as though she knew my mother.”
“Perhaps. But I don’t think they were close. I would have remembered,” she said. “Madam Lim was a daughter of the Ong family. They made their money building roads for the British.”
“She said they played together as children.”
“Did she? Maybe a couple of times, but she wasn’t one of your mother’s close friends. That’s for sure.”
“Why would she say such a thing, then?”
“Who knows what a rich tai tai thinks?” Amah smiled suddenly, her face wrinkling like a tortoise. “I’m sure she has her reasons, though. The servants say it isn’t a bad household. Of course, they’re still in mourning for the son. It was a great loss for them when he died last year.”
“Does she have other children?”
“Two other sons died in infancy. There are daughters by the second and third wives, though.”
“I saw the third wife, but not the second one.”
“She died four years ago of malaria.” Malaria was a scourge for us in Malaya, a constant fever in people’s veins. The Malays burned smoky fires to keep the disease away, and the Hindus garlanded their many gods with wreaths of jasmine and marigold to protect them. The British said, however, that it was borne by mosquitoes. Thinking about insects reminded me of the Third Wife and her glittering jeweled pins.
“The Third Wife looks difficult,” I said.
“That woman! She was nobody when the master married her. No one even knows where she came from. Some town far south, maybe Johore or even Singapore.”
“Do the wives get along?”
Only rich men could afford many wives and the custom was b
ecoming infrequent. The British frowned on it. From what I heard, it was the womenfolk, the mems, who were most against it. Naturally they disapproved of their men acquiring mistresses and going native. I couldn’t say that I blamed them for it. I too would hate to be a second wife. Or a third, or fourth. If that were the case, I would rather run away and pledge my life to the Amah Association.
“As well as you could expect. And then there’s all that vying to see who can produce an heir. Fortunately for Madam Lim, she seems to have been the only one.”
“And the son, Lim Tian Ching, what was he like?” I shivered despite the heat of the day, remembering my dream. Amah usually avoided speaking of him, but I thought I would see what I could worm out of her today.
“Spoiled, I heard.”
“I think so too.” I blurted this out without thinking, but she didn’t notice.
“They said he wasn’t as capable as the nephew. Aiya, no point discussing him. Better not speak ill of the dead.”
Chapter 4
Amah’s foresight in preparing a new dress was proven right when a few days later I received another invitation to the Lim mansion. This time my father was invited as well. In honor of the upcoming Double Seventh Festival, it was to be a musical gathering with a private performance for family and friends. There were not many public venues for entertainment that women of good family could repair to, so from time to time soirees were held at home. Amah had often told me about how the main courtyard in our house would be cleared and how my grandfather hired men to build a temporary stage. Needless to say, such occasions had been nonexistent in recent years, so I was much excited at this prospect. My father had consented to go. Master Lim had been part of his previous circle of business contacts, and their relationship, though sporadic, was still cordial. Truly, I wasn’t very certain with whom my father was still in touch. Sometimes he surprised me.
