A Yellow House

by Karien van Ditzhuijzen

‘Sure, in your own time, take it easy. It’s not as if the bus will be here in ten minutes. Ah, wait, yes, it will be! And you’re not even dressed!’

  With every word the volume and pitch went up. But I knew it wouldn’t become really bad until the yelling stopped. That happened after I’d taken that one bite.

  ‘Eat. Your. Weetabix. Now.’

  I swallowed angrily. ‘I am eating already.’

  ‘No, not already. You didn’t do it already for the last fifteen minutes! You only did it just now. Already? You are nowhere near all ready!’

  She started a tirade about how eating one bite of Weetabix in ten minutes was perfectly normal, sure, while I tried not to listen and slowly ate a little bit faster.

  She pulled the bowl from under my nose.

  ‘Hey! I didn’t finish yet.’

  ‘There’s no time. Bus comes in five. Get dressed.’

  She did my pigtails after I’d dressed, and she did them roughly. When I looked into Mama’s eyes it was not her staring back, it was the Mamamonster. A Mamamonster who would scream me into getting dressed and my hair brushed in under four minutes. The Mamamonster wasn’t sensible. She knew no patience.

  ‘Stop, Mama, you’re pulling my hair!’ I screamed.

  ‘If you’d hold your head still I wouldn’t have to,’ she said, pulling harder.

  In the mirror, I could see her thoughts puffing in angry red clouds from her ears: I will pull your hair, your ears, till there is no scream left in you, I will kick you flying over the balcony, I will box your ears till they pound more than mine.

  But she didn’t. Mama must have reached into the depths of her soul to drag out her last ounce of self-control. She growled, shoving me into the hallway: ‘The Bus. Is. There. Shoes! Now!’ The last word was spoken in her deepest, darkest voice, all those terrible thoughts shining from her piercing eyes. ‘Now! Or….’

  The silence that followed was the scariest. I was half-afraid she’d hurt me, but she just turned away. Afterwards, huddled in my corner at the back of the bus and hoping no one else would have a go at me that morning, I tried to tell myself it was the pig-boss’s fault Mama was like this. Mama had needed PoPo to keep her sane, and now I needed to become a feminist to help Mama. I hadn’t had any proper conversations with her since the one about Ah Feng, and I felt guilty.

  If she made it home in time, Mama always made up for breakfast at bedtime. She and Dad aimed for one of them to be there for the bed time ritual, the tooth brushing, the tucking in, and, most important, story time. Mama was more relaxed in the evenings, although I suspected her of wanting to get me to bed quickly so she could sink into oblivion in front of the TV. I asked Mama to tell me her own stories instead of reading from a book, like PoPo had, but she would make something up that lasted less than a minute, and involved a princess of some kind that rebelled against her prince, demanding the crown for herself. Dad’s stories would be even shorter and, even when not broken up by his ever-present phone, they didn’t really make sense. Often he resorted to silly jokes and tickling, but that was good too.

  Falling asleep was difficult for me. There was so much to process, and after Mama or Dad left, I would tell myself PoPo’s old stories again and again, remembering and embellishing. Now that I had a friend, I needed even more to make sure not to forget about PoPo. The stories about her past had helped me become who I was; they gave a backdrop to my own confusing life that she and I would chew over together. Chronicling events, characterising strange people, exaggerating or condensing, it all helped me make sense of the things I saw.

  Occasionally, there was a night when neither Mama nor Dad were there, and Aunty M would put me to bed. Aunty M knew how to tell a story. Her stories flowed between Indonesian folk tales and people we both knew, condo children, aunties. She stirred them all up into a fantasy world that exceeded even my imagination. She tried to include lessons to be learned; sometimes it worked, but often the morals got lost somewhere along the way.

  Aunty M told me about Kanchil. He came from Indonesia and was famous there, Aunty M said, like a movie star. Kanchil was a queer creature, a cross between a mouse and a deer, small, swift, without horns but with teeth that pointed from his snout like tiny daggers. Kanchil’s English name, mousedeer, was less inspiring. I’d thought he was a fantasy made up by Aunty M until I saw the real thing in the zoo. It would have been a big disappointment, if the little creature with its pencil legs and black bead eyes hadn’t been unspeakably cute. I stared at it for a long time, unbelieving, while it stood defiantly chewing some large green leaves. The noise of approaching footsteps scared the shy creature into the bushes. He wasn’t what I’d expected from Aunty M’s daredevil Kanchil at all.

  Kanchil might look funny, small, and insignificant, Aunty M said, but he was renowned for his cunning. All the stories about him showed that.

  Kanchil was friends with Tiger. What a friend he was, that Tiger, always making plans to eat Kanchil.

  ‘Why would he be friends with someone who tries to eat him?’ I asked.

  ‘That is a very good question,’ Aunty M said, but gave no answer.

  I nestled down in the pillows, eager with anticipation.

  ‘One day, Kanchil was walking in the wood, and Tiger passed by. Tiger snuck up on Kanchil from behind, and seized his hind leg in his mouth. Mousedeer was stuck.

  ‘“Good morning, breakfast,” Tiger said, speaking through teeth clenched around Kanchil’s tiny paw.

  ‘“I’m not breakfast,” said mousedeer.’

  Kanchil spoke in Aunty M’s squeakiest voice. Tiger, on the other hand, had a deep growl.

  ‘“Of course you are,” said Tiger.

  ‘Hopping on three legs, Kanchil turned to Tiger’s big yellow eyes.

  ‘“Friend,” he said, “I wouldn’t eat me if I were you.”

  ‘“Why not?” asked Tiger.

  ‘“You don’t want to make the king angry,” answered Kanchil.

  ‘“The king? Why would he care?”

  ‘Kanchil shrugged his free shoulders. “He gave me an important job today. I have to guard his cake.”

  ‘Kanchil pointed his nose at a disc of buffalo dung lying nearby.

  ‘“A cake!” Tiger exclaimed.

  ‘“Yes, a cake.”’

  By then, I’d figured out what was going to happen, but that didn’t make me want to hear what followed any less.

  ‘The Tiger growled. “Oh. Can I have a bite?”

  ‘“No, cannot. The king will have me killed.”

  ‘Tiger laughed, almost letting go of Kanchil’s leg. “And I’ll eat you if you won’t.”

  ‘Kanchil pretended to think long and hard. “Ok, take a bite. But you need to let me go first. I want to be far away in the forest when the king finds out.”

  ‘Tiger needed his mouth anyway to eat the cake, and he gingerly unclamped his jaw. Kanchil sprinted off.

  ‘Tiger went to smell the cake, the musky, dungy odour wafting towards him as he approached. Tiger realised he’d been tricked. But the forest had closed behind Kanchil. He was nowhere to be seen.’

  The stories were beautifully simple. Every time, Kanchil outwitted enemies that were bigger and stronger than him, seemingly without effort. ‘We should be like him,’ Aunty M twinkled. ‘Small and smart is better than big and strong.’ She tickled the soles of my feet, gave me a kiss on the forehead, and tiptoed out of the room.

  ‘Aunty M,’ I called after her. ‘Is Mama the Tiger?’

  Aunty M stuck her head round the doorpost. ‘No sayang, Mama is your Mama. Your Mama loves you. She’d never eat you.’

  I assumed the Tiger must be Jenny. But cockroaches weren’t smart, cute, or brave like a mousedeer. Aunty M looked at me and smiled, her eyes warm in the half-light that came through the crack of the door.

  Aunty M seemed friendlier after that, as if she started to forgive me for the thing I didn’t understand. It made me wonder whether she’d ever told Nurul and Adi these stories. Maybe over the phone? I wou
ldn’t have minded if she had. I would have liked it, in fact. Then I thought of Mama. How would Kanchil deal with a Mamamonster?

  27

  A new person appeared at the playground. Cat was the one who spotted her. She nudged me and laughed: ‘Is that a boy or a girl?’

  He or she had short hair and a slim, gawky body. He or she wore plain shorts and a green shirt. I asked Aunty M, who seemed to think it obvious.

  ‘Who is that? Run Vang. She’s new. She lives on our floor, actually. She’s from Myanmar.’

  Just another aunty then, I thought, and lost some of my interest. I knew so many already. Cat was for some reason intrigued by her, and hung about to see if she could talk to her. But Run Vang didn’t look very approachable. She sat apart from the other aunties, even from Moe Moe, who was from Myanmar too and was chatting to another of her countrywomen. Moe Moe still came to the playground with Harry, leaving Jenny at home (or with Meena, for all I knew).

  Run Vang, the boy-girl, hovered in the corner, mostly glued to her phone. She tapped furiously away at it, switching from serious looks to bursts of giggles. Then she took out her headphones and started to watch a movie. She had a little boy and a baby in her charge, but didn’t seem interested in them. She rocked the baby’s stroller with her foot. The boy had run away as soon as they arrived and was scampering between the slides, the climbing frame and the seesaws with the other little ones.

  Khusnul arrived with the toddlers and Snoopy in tow.

  ‘Aunty Khusnul,’ I said, ‘can we play with Snoopy?’

  ‘Sure,’ Khusnul took a ball from her bag and handed it to me. It was a bright yellow plastic one, with little blue bones embossed on it.

  I threw the ball and Snoopy fetched it, bringing it back for a pat and a fondle of her frizzy fur. I threw the ball towards Cat now, and Snoopy ran over, barking her high-pitched yap. But Cat looked the other way, pointing at the boy standing on top of the climbing frame yelling, holding on with one hand and flapping the other as if he were flying. Weaving his legs through the bars of the frame, he released his second hand, spreading his arms like wings.

  ‘Is he going to fall?’ Cat asked.

  Behind him another boy climbed upwards, challenging for the top position.

  The aunties were looking too, Jenalyn pointing and flustered. We all looked at Run Vang, who was still on her phone.

  The boy was starting to swing down, dangling from one leg, bending backwards and using his hands to defend his top spot.

  ‘He will fall,’ Jenalyn cried, and ran over; but Cat beat her to it, grabbing him just as he started to topple. She hoisted him down and dragged him to Run Vang, who finally looked up.

  Cat shouted at Run Vang, who glared back, not understanding the fuss. Moe Moe and her friend, who’d been watching from a distance, came over and took over the shouting in Burmese. Run Vang stuffed her phone in her back pocket. She grabbed the boy and with an angry look pushed both him and the stroller out of the playground.

  Cat walked back to the benches. ‘She’s just like my sister, that stupid girl. Always on the phone.’

  I was a bit apprehensive that Cat was stepping in like that, and looked for Aunty M’s response; but she didn’t seem to notice Cat. Instead she mumbled something about Run Vang’s irresponsible behaviour.

  Jenalyn nodded. ‘It’s true. We should teach her. Someone took a photo of my friend when she was on her phone at the playground, and put it on Facebook. Everybody saw and her employer was furious. Now the employer took her phone.’

  Cat grinned, and asked Jenalyn if she could borrow her phone next time they saw Run Vang. Neither of us were allowed phones yet.

  ‘No,’ said Aunty M, ‘don’t. It’s nasty to expose someone publicly.’

  Moe Moe adopted the look of a schoolteacher. ‘No need. I show her,’ she nodded. ‘That girl, she better not here.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Aunty M asked.

  ‘She only fifteen. How can she do job? She no responsible.’

  ‘Fifteen?’ Jenalyn said, ‘How is that possible? How did she get her work pass approved?’

  ‘She has passport says she already twenty-five,’ Moe Moe said. ‘Passport fake.’

  ‘Really?’ Jenalyn said. ‘But that’s ten years more.’

  Khusnul shrugged. ‘Mine is false too. It says I’m thirty-four, but I’m only twenty-eight.

  ‘How long have you been in Singapore?’ Cat asked Khusnul.

  It had taken me a long time to join the conversations of the aunties, and even now I rarely did so unless they spoke to me first. And here was Cat, diving straight in.

  ‘Ten years. When I was nineteen, I first came. So I had to buy fake passport, so I was twenty-three already or I could not get the work pass.

  ‘In the Philippines, you can’t get it so easy,’ Jinky pondered.

  ‘It was, maybe, two hundred,’ Khusnul said.

  Moe Moe added, ‘In Myanmar, easy too. All the girls have. Agent gets it for you. They tell you no problem.’

  She looked at Run Vang again. ‘This one, you can see she teenager. Giggling. Always on the hand phone.’

  Cat laughed. ‘Like I said, just like my sister. When she babysits me, she acts so stupid.’

  Aunty M looked dismayed. ‘She is a child herself, how can she look after children? The employer should take her phone.’

  ‘Maybe they don’t want,’ Jenalyn pointed out. ‘Mine want me to bring my hand phone everywhere. When my employer calls, I make sure to answer, otherwise I will be scolded.’

  ‘Mine too,’ Jinky said. ‘I think we need our hand phones.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Khusnul, ‘But some employers are not like that. They give no off day, and no hand phone. They say, no phone during work hours. But we work every day, every hour. You know, my sister, she came to Singapore this year, she is not allowed hand phone, not even Sundays. They took it from her. She has two kids, she needs to call home. I passed by when the employer was away, and gave her a phone. Now she can text me. Call her husband. But she needs to hide it.’

  Jenalyn giggled. ‘She is just learning how to become naughty, haha.’

  Cat said, ‘It’s ridiculous. That’s stealing. She should call the police.’

  Aunty M shook her head. ‘It is not that easy. Who knows which side the police will take? She would risk her job.’

  Cat wanted to say more, but I nudged her to stay quiet.

  ‘Yes,’ Khusnul said, ‘you don’t know with the police. My sister is very nervous now. What if the employer find the illegal phone? But what choice she have? If she does not call her husband, how can she check on him? And her kids?’

  Moe Moe said, ‘If I had phone in first months, maybe they send me back Myanmar. I was still learning. The work. The stress. Maybe better no phone?’

  But Jenalyn said, ‘No. We are not small kids they can control, or can confiscate what we have.’

  Moe Moe didn’t have enough words to fight this battle. I suspected Cat wanted to say more, so I whispered into her ear: ‘Let’s just listen. It’s research, right?’

  Grudgingly, she stayed quiet.

  Jinky pitched in instead. ‘Most Singaporean employers are considerate.’

  ‘Are they?’ Jenalyn asked. ‘I think they are selfish. Every move we make they want to control, especially us talking to others.’

  Jinky said, ‘Rules is rules. We want the job, we should just obey. Especially if we are newcomers.’

  Jenalyn stood up from the bench and walked to the climbing frame, where her little boy was trying to perch dangerously on the top again. ‘Some treat their helper like a garbage!’ she yelled over her shoulder.

  Jinky shook her head. ‘Why can we not be considerate a bit? Patient. I had issue with previous employer. She did not get angry because I talked to her nicely. You know, the conversation depends on how you deliver your words. You must talk to her about your rights, and at the same time you must make her feel that you still respect her as your employer.’

  Jen
alyn grabbed the boy and carried him to his stroller under her arm. ‘You are too nice,’ she said. ‘We have a right to complain if they are treating us wrong.’

  Jinky answered, ‘Better stay in Philippines if you come here and keep complaining, ate. It’s not right, but they do that because some of us abuse the use of our phone. It affects our work performance. Some of us are addicted to social media.’

  Moe Moe said, ‘Like Run Vang.’

  Aunty M and Khusnul laughed. ‘Like Run Vang.’

  Jinky and Khusnul left, leaving me and Cat without Snoopy, or a reason to sit there and play. We made ourselves small.

  ‘How old are you?’ Aunty M asked Moe Moe.

  ‘Me?’ she replied. ‘Me thirty already.’

  ‘How long have you been in Singapore? Is this your first employer?’

  ‘Three years. This is first employer. Ma’am very difficult first. I never understand. My English, not so good. She very strict. Now I know how to do, it is ok.’ Moe Moe looked pensive. ‘You know, the problem is not the ma’am. She is away a lot.’

  ‘What is the problem then?’ Aunty M asked. She gave me a sidelong look, and I realised she knew I was listening. But she kept talking. ‘Is it sir? Does he look at you bad?’

  Moe Moe shook her head. ‘No, sir ok too. It’s the kids. They mean.’

  Now Aunty M turned to me. She was quiet for a minute, then turned back to Moe Moe. ‘What do they do?’

  ‘Girl, she always talk back. Stupid maid, bad maid, I’ll tell ma if you don’t give. She not allowed chocolate on the bread, but if I don’t give she lie to Mama about me.’

  I cringed in my crouched position next to the bench. Cat punched me on the arm, and looked like she wanted to say something, but I put my finger to my lips. We needed to hear the rest.

  Moe Moe continued, ‘But the boy is the worst. He bite me.’

  ‘He bites you?’ Aunty M exclaimed.

  Moe Moe raised the leg of her shorts to reveal a purple mark on her thigh.

  ‘How old is that boy?’

  ‘He five already. I showed my ma’am, but boy says he did not do. Girl told Mama I hurt myself because I stupid, I always bump things.’