by Carissa Foo
Cheryl searched the woman’s neck for some sign of divinity and faith. A pendant, a crucifix or talisman, or perhaps a yellow string tied around her wrist. One must have some belief in a higher order in such situations. It is the only viable support system. Both Mrs Rohan and Poh Choo had converted to Catholicism for this reason. Because once the affliction is full blown, the afflicted is unreachable. And if anything could reach out in absolute and abject solitude, it must be God.
Unfortunately there was no necklace or bracelet. Perhaps she had something sewn in her gown or fastened to her chair. Cheryl would have continued with her search but a nurse intercepted; her hands gripped the wheelchair handles tightly, whisking the woman away from her.
Feeling guilty, Cheryl wanted to shout out an apology to her, but the words that came out strung a prayer from memory: “Lord, touch this life which You have made, now and forever.” She was about to follow up with a prayer to assuage her guilt but was yet again interrupted by a familiar face.
“Good afternoon, Cheryl!” shouted the man in a white suit.
“Hi, John,” Cheryl Dada shouted back. And regretted it immediately.
The rotund man with a full head of blonde hair was waving to her. She was not used to seeing him outside, in public or in the crowd. They usually met in his office, a cream-painted room with a long black sofa and green armchair. There was also a desk that he never used.
The man walked clumsily towards her. His face grew bigger as he came closer. Without his spectacles, his eyes looked larger and more blue.
“How are you?” he said, leaning down to speak to her. His breath smelled of onions.
Cheryl stood very upright, and held in her breath.
“I’m going to get some flowers,” she said, looking to the wall behind him, averting the blue eyes.
“Grand! What are you getting—roses or sunflowers?” The cheery voice was detached from the expressionless face.
She said hesitantly: “I was thinking…maybe lilies.”
“How interesting!”
He was doing it again, she thought, picking apart her words rather than listening.
“I don’t think there are lilies,” John said with a wave of his hand. “But that’s an interesting choice. We’ll discuss that next time.”
No more next time, Cheryl was inclined to say. She did not want to see him; she did not want to go into that room. She hated how he watched her body slump or lean back, how he commented on her every word and gesture. His thin silver glasses rested so low on his nose that when he looked at her, his blue eyes were divided—half normal and half enlarged. He would say to her, “How are you?” when she entered his lair. “How’s your week?” “How’s the day going?” The worst of his greetings was “You’re all right?” Cheryl never knew what the appropriate answer to that was. “Good,” or “Okay,” she would say awkwardly, her reply based on the weather. Regardless of what she said, John would always have a follow-up question ready in his mind—a motivation speech, a sheet of paper for her in his green folder. He also had something to say when she was quiet or restless in the sofa that was sometimes still warm from the previous person. Sometimes she could smell the person even after she was gone. Like how she knew Cheng Hong from block B had been there because she could sniff out the jasmine tea scent. When she tried to confirm this information with John, he turned it around and asked her why she felt the need to know. The conversation after that became about control and the need to let go of things. All she wanted to know was if Cheng Hong had been there. But John had to go on for another hour before allowing her to go home. This must be what it meant to make a mountain out of a molehill. Even if she did not show up, John would still be able to write a report and make something up. That was his expertise.
“Well—” The voice broke the silence. “You’d better get going then,” John said brightly. “See you later!”
What did he mean by later? Did he know about the party? Remember my party, Cheryl wanted to say; the more the merrier, she tried to convince herself.
Cheryl let out a big smile, relieved at his departure. Why do ang mohs talk so much? she thought, watching him return to the crowd, his sandy-haired head above the rest, bobbing along. He did not have to walk over to her; she wished he hadn’t. She needed her space. What else did he want? His words resounded in her mind: “We’ll discuss that next time.” No, she should have rebutted. There was not going to be a next time this week. They had already met once. Ang mohs just don’t get it, she thought, pressing against the group of nurses that were coming towards her. (One had said, “Hi, Mrs Dada!” “Hey,” Cheryl responded quickly, albeit distractedly.) All those busybody questions… What was the point of getting to the problem when there was no getting out of it? Might as well keep quiet. What was the use of talking? Talk is cheap—did he not know this? Silence is golden—did he not learn that in med school? Maybe they didn’t teach that in England, she thought. “How are you?” he would ask before the session. “How are you?” he would ask midsession. “How are you?” he would ask at the end of the session. Not well, obviously. Why did he think she was there? For fun?
John talks too much, she mumbled, walking on. He was always rattling on about England, about behaviour, about feelings. Why did a big man like him keep talking about such stuff? Why did he keep wanting to talk about life? Was life not evident enough? It was for her.
For what it was worth, John told good stories. If only he would stop throwing out big words that she did not understand. There was something about effect—or was it affect? CBT or DBT or PPT—Cheryl liked how they rhymed so nicely. There was also SRT. CBT was her favourite: it was code for drawing. But the real highlight of the sessions was John’s educational stories. He was the English version of the Professor Tortoise who knew everything. Occasionally, on some Fridays, he would wear the pair of dark round-framed glasses that made him look even more like the tortoise. Professor Tortoise was Clare’s favourite cartoon character, second to Dexter. Clare always liked the smart ones. But no, Cheryl must not tell John that.
John had a lot of stories about England. Sometimes she wondered why he was here when he was such a patriot. He told her that Scotch is exclusively from Scotland and whisky is spelled without the “e”. He also said the north of England has a lot of white people and they speak a dialect called Geordie. She asked if it's a dialect like Teochew but he said no. Geordie is English with a funny accent. “The vowels are flatter,” he said. Instead of mum, it’s mam in the north. And it’s not up, it’s ooup. OOOOUP. High ooup in the sky.
John was not like them—the northerners. He did not speak Geordie. “I speak the Queen’s English,” he once told her. Jonathan Thomas Pitts was born in a place called Cornwall, which was the southernmost part of the country. He said he went to Eton, then to Oxford. “Like Cameron,” he said with pride. But the only other British celebrity that Cheryl Dada knew was Mr Bean.
From him Cheryl learned that the Republic of Ireland is not part of the United Kingdom but Northern Ireland is. Also part of the United Kingdom is Scotland, the northernmost part of the country, although it has its own flag and currency. John said that Scotland has the best water and brews the best tea; that water in the midlands and South England is hard. Cheryl never knew water could be hard—surely he didn’t mean like ice? He also told her that tea with milk is an English thing. Back home they call it white tea, not teh. The English use proper milk for their tea; not milk powder or condensed milk. He said no self-respecting English would drink tea strained from a sock; but if it only costs a dollar, why not? When she asked him about teh-o, John said the correct term is black tea. But the woman at Toast Box gave her a look of disdain when she had asked for black tea, so she stuck with teh-o. Sometimes she would order teh-o-kosong, but she refused to drink teh.
Tea with milk, she thought sardonically. So particular for what? For really, English or Chinese, white or black or yellow, a cup of tea or teh, then and now, with or without milk; John sitting in his armchair, she
at the edge of the sofa, the table between them—was that not the nature of harmony? People existed together precisely because of differences. Same, but all different, she thought. Same brains; different minds. But difference is difficult to talk about, so we harp on being the same. We are one people, one nation, one Singapore.
Harmony, Cheryl Dada reflected on the word. Huh…mourn…nay, she thought, walking to the end of the corridor. Racial huh mourn nay. Or yay. If such harmony existed, it was an enforced one. Racial Harmony Day, for one, was perfunctory and preventive rather than celebratory. In the name of harmony, many things were forced. She thought reminiscently about having worn a kebaya to some gala; it had been a tough decision, a toss-up between the Peranakan garb and a cheongsam. Both were just dresses, neither particularly significant to her. But since her grandmother had worn a kebaya once or twice, and given that the SIA uniform was tried and tested, Cheryl went with it: a jade and gold batik sarong; a mint blouse that was much lighter than it looked, probably due to the translucency of the material, was ornamented with a butterfly brooch with emerald eyes and wings. The whole thing wrapped her tight; she could barely walk properly, taking small steps in those heels— Was she wearing heels?
The thought jolted her. Heels with the kebaya? They must have been in an irresistible shade of green, otherwise she would not have gone against the tradition. It was more like her to wear Mama’s hand-stitched sequin flats.
In retrospect, Cheryl regretted some of the green. Green used to make her feel closer to her Peranakan roots. She thought it was the cultural colour—the colour of pandan, Nonya kaya, petai, lemongrass. When she was younger, she’d make it a point to wear something green whenever possible, that she might be reminded of her roots.
Nothing harmonious about the kebaya, Cheryl began again, arriving at the end of the corridor. What did it mean—this display of people wearing their differences on their skin? What about people of the same colour outside but different insides? Harmony swept real differences under the rug. Harmony is bad for those who are different from people like John, she thought as she stepped out of the therapy centre. All difference behind her: nurses in blue and green; elder women in gowns; sleepy faces; droopy faces; grouchy faces; faces damp with sweat; faces with tubes taped to their skin; her own face pale and wrinkled. She, Cheryl Dada, who used to be distinguished, was now like them, another face in the crowd, a mere statistic. She was one of those old folks living harmoniously under one roof.
V
The corridor opened into a veranda. Cheryl Dada felt as if the place were larger than its form, as if each pillar extended beyond the wooden roof, as if all the stone tables were semi-excavated fossils from another time; the world, she felt, had become boundless and the air was let in. Finally, the afternoon breeze was gathering, eddying round the four corners of the veranda.
Near the edge of the veranda was a lime plant that Cheryl often picked from. Since her mission today was to get flowers, she would only look, take inventory of the ripe limes and leave them for tomorrow. The outdoor ceiling fan blew directly on the waxy leaves; and they trembled, as though the rays of the sun were dancing on them.
No limes today, Cheryl Dada reminded herself, hands in her pockets, as she walked along the pebbles that lined the edge of the wooden floor. Her head brushed against the drooping leaves of the purple and white orchids that were hanging from the wooden beam above. They looked wrinkly and sad, high up and far away from the periwinkles and ixoras. Cheryl had heard from Juwel that Vanda Miss Joaquim was tough to grow, more difficult to care for than the normal orchids. Something about it being a hybrid flower and requiring heavy fertilising.
Why bother? she thought, leaning against the corner post. Now that they were leathery and limp, was it worth the trouble and effort? Nah, they’re not worth it, thought Cheryl Dada, straightening her ailing back. Not the wilted, old ones. Why bother with the dying flowers?
Cheryl Dada preferred cactuses. She had bought a round, thorny one from IKEA on her last home leave. Cactuses are resilient, bloom on neglect, and are easy to maintain. Fuss free and evergreen, they’re plants for the minimalist, for those who want some life in the house but ambivalent about exactly what kind of life. Cheryl Dada could vouch for the cactus; she had one sitting on her windowsill and it was indeed thriving in an unostentatious manner, without fertilisers or much water, without any of those froufrou stuff like colourful pebbles or gnomes. Andes—she had named it—was surviving as well as it would have in the desert. Andes was ugly: it had no leaves and was prickly, but it was going to last for a long time. And that was the most important thing—that it would last. Cheryl Dada liked Andes very much; she adored a simple life with little expectations and less strife.
Pursuit; empty pursuit, she thought, feeling a mild breeze on her face, and turning round as behind her an orchid pot fell to the floor. Another one bites the dust; the exposed roots, the scattered soil and ceramic shards, and pigeons wobbling on the veranda. Life and death, thought Cheryl Dada. What’s lost? she said, ponderingly, gazing at the silhouettes of the trees; she thought about her mother’s dream, of her first child, the primeval promise that her last could not fulfil. She must have been disappointed, thought Cheryl Dada; her whole life had circled around her child like a vulture, nudging her to pick up the leftovers of her unfinished dream, and she had said, “Why can’t you be more sensible? Why can’t you think about me?” But look where all that thinking had got her? Nowhere. Cheryl walked over to the pot of purple orchids hanging from another beam. Hope, she thought, rests in death.
Betterment is a myth, she now realised, tingling all over, replaying in her mind the scene in her bedroom: the night she chose Accountancy over Literature—how her mother had weighed up the pros and cons for her and handed her the application form, and she thought about how her life could have easily turned the other way—no calculating, no marrying. Cheryl Dada reached for the smallest flower in the hanging pot and, pulling it towards her, broke the bud from its stem; “If only!” she said, but it fell to the ground.
If only Cheryl Dada could have it all over again. She would have been strong, as a kid strong enough to do PE and jump ropes. She would have enjoyed zero point and hopscotch. She might have been, if she could start over, more athletic like Sarah, with her angular built and slender legs. (How she ran! How free she was!) She would have been, if she were 13 again, more opinionated—interested in debating and Speech and Drama; fought with the neighbour’s boys who laughed at her pigtails and shot frogs at them with her catapult. She would have run, yes she would have run with Sarah across the field in the rain—shirtless and barefoot—screaming at the top of her lungs. She would have jumped into drains and bushes to forage for saga seeds and keep them in tiny glass jars for Valentine’s Day. Like Sarah, she would have been brave. She would have insisted that she had done nothing wrong, that the form teacher was crazy, that they were just kids playing in the toilet cubicle. But she was never that kid whom Sarah was. They’d never be those kids again.
Looking at her hands that were blotched with sunspots, Cheryl Dada had the strangest sense of being unified, of two warring natures conjoined without confusion. Blue veins crawled over the skin that had lost its sheen. The backs of her hands were like badly-stencilled porcelain ware waiting to be broken, as though longing to return to its potter’s hands. Yet when she held her palms up, the skin was soft and supple as clay. The heart line, still trident, was engraved when she was 13.
“Ah Le next time zor tai tai.” The words of her grandmother attached themselves to the lines on her hand.
Cheryl remembered: the knobbly fingers, the tickling sensation, the Teochew-ridden English. Mama must have been about this age when she began falling ill. Cheryl could still see her slumped in the rocking chair, her hand motioning her to come closer. Mama had this smile and warmth that was seldom seen in the old ladies around here. She would say, “Ah Le, come here. Come sit beside Mama,” then grab Cheryl by the nearer hand and examine her palm. Mama’
s hands were gigantic and puffy. Her rings, like binds, were holding the fingers in check, lest they exploded.
She was about to cry, she felt. Instinctively, Cheryl reached for the pendant that was tucked inside her shirt and traced its edges. Mama had given her her emerald ring but it was too large to fit any of her tiny fingers—so Cheryl had worn it as a pendant since. Mama sold the gold rings and her favourite purple jade ring, but she kept the wedding band. As her health began to deteriorate, the family’s wealth shrinking accordingly, even the last ring—her only memento of Ah Gong, aside from a couple of black-and-white photographs—seemed to be slipping away. It was only with the help of a piece of tape wedged between the ring and her shrivelling finger that the tarnished silver band did not come off. Without most of the rings, Mama’s hands appeared naked.