Ministry of Moral Panic

by Amanda Lee Koe

  Make no mistake—for what she’d wanted wasn’t the man, wasn’t his smile. What she’d wanted was to be of use to him. It was unclear if Zurotul herself could draw such distinctions, if she would draw such distinctions. For Zurotul, love was still that all-consuming passion and deference. It was straightforwardness, but it wasn’t stupidity. It was easy, but it wasn’t loose. Not every girl from the village was like this, but Zurotul was special. Just one well-played smile and she could be yours forever; the tragedy was that you might never even know it.

  After Wati left, a few of the maids, Zurotul included, were selected to be given special training in assisting in the daily care of the elderly or bedridden. The owner of the agency had read in the papers, not too long ago, of the impending silver tsunami—he’d thought this a melodramatic way of referring to the ageing population—and was trying to carve out an early-adopter niche for Happy Maid Employment Services Pte Ltd.

  This is how you clean the soiled behind of the bedridden.

  It was a gender-neutral life-sized dummy, the type Red Cross Corps practise CPR on, and they had smeared its durable elastomer bottom with something brown and pulpy, but it didn’t smell. Zurotul remembered the sharp stink of the village hag with the sleepy sickness in the west end of the village, who had lived in the shrine secreted behind heavy vegetation. You could smell her from a mile away, and because no one ever went near, the village hag, in her solitude, took on mystic properties. Her mystique was of the variety that went untapped—she did not predict droughts or favourable crops, nor dole out poisons or folk remedies.

  Right before she left her village for the city, Zurotul was compelled to pay the village hag a visit. She stumbled through thick vegetation and saw a king cobra two feet ahead of her, just as the decrepit hut came into view. It rose and spread its hood. Zurotul dropped to her knees and lowered her head, as her mother had told them to, as children. When she raised her eyes, the cobra was gone.

  She entered the hut and the smell was unimaginable, even for someone like Zurotul, who bathed in a river where, further upstream, another village defecated into the same river.

  She persisted without holding a hand to her nose—it seemed so ill-mannered. The village hag was lying on a rotting plank of wood on the floor of the hut, partially in her own faecal matter. It was obvious she was dying. There were septic wounds on her legs that black flies had already begun descending upon.

  You came, the village hag said, eyes closed.

  Zurotul was trying not to cry. She wished the village had devised a system of care for the hag, or that someone had stepped forward to call on her. She tucked her legs under her and reached out to hold the hag’s hand, already cold.

  I’m sorry, she said.

  Don’t be, the hag said, smiling toothlessly, I’m glad you came.

  How did you know I was coming?

  I’ve known it since the day you were born, the hag said, squeezing her hand weakly. Nether blood on a full moon will win his heart.

  She would never remember it, but this was where she’d seen the look on the husband’s face: it was the look on the village hag’s face as she was dying. It wasn’t that Zurotul had forgotten the village hag’s dying face, only that the two—the Chinese husband and the village hag—seemed so far removed that she would never think to draw the correlation. Their faces both read: this is out of my hands; life is out of my hands.

  What no one had told Zurotul was that when she was born, the village hag had passed the crude bounds of her familial longhouse, hatched with branches, and demanded a drink of water. Because she was toothless—her mouth a small, mirthless black hole—and her breath exceedingly fecund, Zurotul’s older sister, then seven, who was not learned in the unspoken hierarchies of the village, had squealed in horror and refused her.

  The hag had looked delighted as the guileless girl skipped away, as if it were a welcoming overture. She spat on the ground—her spit an alarming shade of sorrel—grinned at the retreating back of the girl, hitched up her scraggy skirt, and climbed the three steps into the longhouse, where Zurotul’s mother had given a final unmedicated pelvic push, expelling Zurotul, a mess of flesh, bone, membrane and bodily fluids.

  It must be a disconcerting sight for a simple village woman—freshly out of labour, pain still searing, vagina gaping, sister having just disjointed the umbilical cord connecting her and her child—to see the village hag, whom everyone knew to trade capriciously in black magic, appear in view between her thighs from the vantage point on the floor. Following which, the demand of her newborn’s placenta, which her husband handed over ingratiatingly, and the instantaneous consumption of this bloody gob that had been a hidden skin inside of her for three quarters of a year.

  The smacking sound of the village hag’s lips—recall that she was toothless—and the blood on her hands as she approached mother and newborn. Raising her hand, as the mother cringed, the words that fell from the village hag’s lips:

  She will be made for love.

  Love Is No Big Truth

  1.

  There is no such thing in the world, as I cannot live without you; you cannot live without me. The earth spins. Time passes. Rice is eaten. What is there to disprove?

  He left me a year after the accident that left my face misaligned. A public bus rammed into me, at the bus stop across the wet market. The cuts of chicken and vegetables in my red plastic bag fell to the ground, and the last thing I saw were the tomatoes rolling out onto the road, turning quickly into red pulp under car tyres.

  When I woke up in the hospital after surgery, the first thing he said was, Why were you so careless?

  And I knew that what he meant wasn’t I could have lost you. What he meant was how much this would cost him, for the operation and the hospital stay.

  2.

  No, our generation, we don’t do divorces. We’re the make-do generation, the one that went through the war. We ate sweet potatoes three meals a day, and that was when we were lucky. When I told my daughter this years ago—she was complaining about my cooking, too bland—she said, If I had to eat sweet potatoes for three meals a day, I’d die.

  So even when you can’t make do any more—finally he said to me, I can’t get off on that, referring to my misaligned face—what you do is to leave the surface intact, even as you tunnel far beneath the soil. He said it as if I were the one looking to be pleased sexually.

  We’re still legally married. He didn’t even have the courtesy to move out, even when he brought her home. She was over the hill; heavy make-up over wrinkles, sparkly jersey over love handles, a Szechuan accent. He didn’t have enough money to attract the younger ones. Anyway, he only managed to get her because that was the year he could get his savings out of his CPF.

  I moved out in the end, to save myself and my daughter some face. That woman was hanging her soiled, lacy red bra and panty set in the common toilet. Drinking the tea I prepared. Using the chipped floral mug that was my daughter’s.

  3.

  I wasn’t.

  He had been my only sexual partner. I don’t know about him. I was only eighteen when we were married.

  I never had an orgasm. It wasn’t so irksome, before my menopause, sex. We saw it as part of a wife’s duty to her husband—isn’t it? Maybe because I’ve never had an orgasm, I won’t understand. What you don’t know, you can’t crave.

  No, I would never try to touch myself. No, it doesn’t arouse my curiosity, not now at least. And before, I always saw it as something shameful—but we had to do it to carry on the line. You had to do it for your husband. Always for someone else.

  I’d never even held his hand. I don’t know what was going on in my head, that first night. The only thing I remember: it hurt, but I didn’t bleed. He was concerned—he asked me if I was sure I was a virgin, and I said, Heavens, yes. He wanted me to swear it on the honour of my family name and my mother’s deceased soul. I wanted to slap him, but I swore instead, because if we were going to start it off on the wrong foot, it w
ould be difficult to live together. Pride is not difficult to swallow when you weigh the odds. I’ve always been level-headed.

  There was no such preparation. To pop out a baby the next year was something so unexpected, even after carrying it for nine months. Not knowing how to care for it. They say motherhood is instinctive. I think it’s a lie. But repeat it long enough and all the women come to think it’s true, come to be able to take care of this kicking, crying thing that came out of them.

  We were watching a Hongkee movie called Kangaroo Man one weekend afternoon on TV, when my daughter was young. The lead character was carrying a baby to term in a pouch on his leg. When the plot became clear, my husband reached over for the remote and turned the TV off. I said, It’s just a movie. He said it was disrespectful, that it would impart the wrong values to our daughter. We didn’t argue. We just sat in silence and stared at the black screen for some time, all of us still thinking about the Kangaroo Man.

  As an Asian wife you learn to hold your tongue. Your husband is always right—it isn’t worth the fight. Sometimes, when I lost my head for just a bit and retorted, he would say, Who puts the rice on the table? Shut the fuck up. Perhaps it’s different now that ladies hold down jobs as well. I don’t know—is it any different?

  4.

  The last time I saw him was at our daughter’s wedding. That was about five years ago—two years after the accident, a year after he left me. We sat together, because we’d not told anyone, much less the in-laws, about our estrangement—why make things difficult for your child? I’d rather suck it up, like a sponge over some lard grease.

  We didn’t speak to one another, only smiled congenially—if a little stiffly—in sync, at the relevant moments. His hairline had receded further, and when we were served shark’s fin soup in small porcelain bowls, he started unscrewing something in his hands under the table. When everyone was making the most banter, he slid the bowl towards him and emptied the untouched soup into a small thermos.

  I turned to him.

  It’s for her, he explained, coarse complexion reddening slightly. She wasn’t happy I would be attending with you. Said I had to bring back the shark’s fin.

  As he stowed the thermos in his bag, I couldn’t stop laughing. I’d never laughed so hard my whole life. I was always restrained, but something in me broke. Our in-laws turned towards me, bemused.

  What’s the joke? My daughter’s father-in-law asked affably. He looked from my face to my husband’s.

  Men, I managed, through my laughter. Women.

  When I got home, I lay down without removing my make-up or my banquet-going dress, and began sobbing. Was that bastard going soft with age? He would never have done something like that for me, not even in our salad days. But then again, we never had a courtship.

  No, it wasn’t jealousy, because jealousy is love and even then I was certain I had no more feelings for him—if I even had any to begin with. Companionship through time, I suppose, but not love, I don’t think.

  It was competitiveness.

  Sport.

  5.

  We grew up on the same lane. We went to the same Chinese school, and we both stopped studying after Secondary Two, me to help out at home, him to tend to his father’s vegetable store at the market. Neighbours, schoolmates, occasional playmates. This was the only reason why we got married—proximity and the elapsing of time—and this was a good reason in its time. Isn’t that laughable? My uncle—whose care I came under after my parents died—said we’d spent too much time together, and that I was already devalued in the eyes of other prospective suitors.

  The marriage was decided upon over a dim sum dinner downtown at which neither he nor I were present. Eating out at a restaurant was extravagant for kampung dwellers like us, but it was necessary: both sides wanted to show that they could afford it.

  An almanac was consulted, a date set. My uncle and his father shook hands, as if sealing a favourable barter. If my mother had still been alive, the mothers might have smiled reservedly at each other, housework on both their minds: His mother: Now I’ll have a daughter-in-law to clean the house. My mother: Now I’ll have to clean the house on my own.

  6.

  There was no romance inherent.

  And the funny thing was, the lack thereof didn’t strike us as strange. When I say us, when I say we, I believe I speak for a good number of women my age. Go ask them.

  Romance was only the stuff of the movies.

  We paid fifty cents for this on a monthly basis, to see it transpire between Lin Dai and Kwan Shan on the big screen, weekly if we could afford it. We tied handkerchiefs to the seat to mark them as taken when we went outside to get kacang putih.

  We never went with our husbands. We went on our own. It was female bonding more than anything else. We were separate beings, but we sighed at the same parts, laughed at the same parts, cried at the same parts. After the credits rolled, under the dim lights, you could seek out the gaze of another woman and find understanding there, and feel less alone.

  I’ve never seen the world, never known anything else, everything I know is from the movies. This has been my solace, my self-betterment through the decades. From fifty cents to eight dollars, from kacang putih to popcorn. The year I turned fifty-five, joy: half-priced movie tickets for senior citizens. Once a year, I beg my daughter to help me with the computer, with the internet, to help me purchase a box set of one of my favourite directors. These box sets are my pride and joy. I dust them daily—Tsai Ming-Liang, Zhang Yi Mou, Hou Hsiao-Hsien. Sometimes, the shipping costs more than the box set, and I sit on the decision of the purchase for weeks. When I ask her to help me locate the item again, my daughter is very irritated. I save up for these box sets. I use only one square of toilet paper when I go to the bathroom. I walk back from the market rather than take the bus. Things add up.

  I cry at almost everything I watch. Sometimes I feel like I’m not sure if I’ve truly grasped the movie, but it always teaches me something. I’ve learned so much from the movies, from eloquence to embitterment. Florid expressions of love and tragedy in the Chinese language, poetic monologues unseemly for a woman like me. The stall owners at the market rib me, half-jokingly, half-admiringly, say I speak like a woman of letters. I reply, in a jesting tone lest they think me proud, Who knows? The opportunities that were given to us in our day short-changed our destinies. Maybe you’d have been a philosopher, the vegetable stall woman says as she adds an extra carrot into my bag. Like Confucius. She’s been giving me something extra ever since the accident—a tomato here, a carrot there, watercress. I want to tell her things add up. Confucius believed that women’s place was below men’s, I say. Our lot in this life, she says, shaking her head. Next life, I tell you, I want to be born a man.

  7.

  Do I feel alone now?

  Every single day.

  Not too long ago, I was trying to catch the eye of every older man around. At the void deck, at the supermarket, at the neighbourhood park. I wanted someone in my life again. After a long time, one day, someone looked back at me. The moment our eyes locked, I felt a deadweight tiredness in my bones. When he stood up from the park bench and walked towards me, I fled.

  A relationship means exhaustion. Entrapment. I haven’t the energy for the eventuality of it. Love is no big truth.

  There was a point when I was lying down so much, I forgot to bathe for days. I forgot to eat. My daughter would come visit me—she stays with her in-laws, they have a terrace house—and she would fan her nose when she talked to me, asking me to eat the rice sets she’d bought. She started speaking to me in English, though we’d always spoken in Mandarin, though she knew I barely had a handful of English words. But always, in a few hours, she would leave. Even if I didn’t eat, even if I didn’t bathe.

  After some time, I began bathing and eating whenever she came. Not to make her feel better, but to make myself feel better. Because if the situation were somehow reversed, I would never leave. I would make her better. They wo
uld have to rip me from her bedside.

  I threw my bed away. Depression is easy when you have a bed.

  I’m well now. The floor makes for good sleep.

  8.

  Does it seem curious now, that as a child, I thought you could die of a broken heart?

  I’d never even seen my parents speak to one another, except at dinnertime. My mother would say, Dinner’s ready. My father would grunt. Then we would eat. I thought my mother hated my father, but when he died, she jumped into his coffin.

  It was the night of his funeral, whilst the priest was leading us through the rites. It took three uncles to pry her out of there. She left nail marks on the interior wood, and she smeared my father’s make-up—the flesh-tone foundation the undertaker puts on, the lip colour.

  My uncles found her in the river three days later. The word that went out was: here be a woman who loved her husband that much. The truth was probably that my mother had been so defined by the existence of my father that when he died, she couldn’t see anything else before her.

  She thought that she had to die with him. She knew nothing about Indian brides on funeral pyres. He’d closed his fist around her, she’d let him, and then when he died there was so much white space of possibility around her, she couldn’t breathe.

  9.

  The first morning I woke on the floor, these words were in my head, as if someone had left me a note under the door in an anonymous hand: loneliness is freedom.