by Carissa Foo
“Control,” she uttered. The word toddled round the square room and came back to her devoid of meaning. Control was abjured when she let Adam slip the ring on her finger, which was now bony and swelled up at the joint; a pale strip ran around it, reminding her of the promise, her duty, a manacled life. I am Daughter. I am Wife. I am Mother. I am Grandmother, thought Cheryl Dada; the titles twisting into an invisible cord coiled around her neck, tipping her head up so she could look ahead and concentrate on the future. Was this the future her 13-year-old self had imagined? Ageing and arthritic, all alone in her room. A future without literature, except the seven books on her shelf that were foxed and dusty. She was quite done with the want to read more, write poems. That did not matter to her any more. Not when she was 51.
Supine, Cheryl raised her hand in the air, and peered through the spaces between her fingers, her eyes meeting the light emanating from the ceiling. As if beckoned by the bright presence, she closed her eyes and let out a long sigh of contentment. Her head sank deeper into the pillow. It’s true what they said: a woman must have a room of her own. For Cheryl Dada it was the room on the fifth floor.
Cheryl rolled over to the edge of the bed to retrieve the small mirror from the drawer of the bedside table. Still lying down, she lifted the mirror and looked expectantly into it. The narrow face in the polished glass was dignified, with eyes fixed intently on her. She thought she would look older, more wrinkled, more sunken and indeed she was all of that, but the woman was above all serene, so serene that the marks of age receded. Chin slightly raised, the face revealed a resilience often confused with rebellion. Her jawline defined and eyebrows arched, there was nothing tentative about her. (She blinked slowly, revealing a twinkle in the round watery eyes; a fleeting glimpse of the girl who used to believe in the superstitions of religion and love.) Her hair, very much grey, fell into a luxurious sprawl across the pillow; it was a sagely kind of grey. Her lips, a deep red, were defined. Hers was a beauty without much makeup, a modesty that was incorruptible. If the woman in the glass looked haggard, it was because the necklace hanging loose round her neck revealed a thin throat. She made a mental note to wear a scarf to the party.
Cheryl Dada thought herself quite distinguished. More beautiful than the rest of them, she thought amusedly, shaking the mirror in her hand. She was tempted to say that she was the best-looking woman in the home. The other contender in her opinion was Cheng Hong but she was always in her room, allowing few to adore her natural beauty. Then again how would she know—what was the best? There were no explicit guidelines or judges to make the call. What is this elusive Best? In pre-U she was taught that the best is yet to be. The school’s motto was a reminder that success in any form would not be final, that one must constantly strive to be better. “Our times are in His hand,” said Browning. In Him who saith, “A whole I planned.” This whole plan Cheryl assumed would manifest itself when she graduated. But even with straight As, she did not feel like she was the best. She had no idea what His plan was—whatever the best was.
When is Best going to come? Today, or tomorrow? The day after tomorrow? Is it always going to be a thing of tomorrow? Best is 30 years too late today. It’s as much a myth as betterment, thought Cheryl Dada decidedly. To be better is what we tell ourselves so the Best is kept far away. Striving, striving, striving for the best made her tired and old. It’s the whole hoping-is-living thing all over again. Hope has a funny way of creeping back into one’s life. Looking once again into the mirror, she said to herself: “You are who I was: Cheryl Dada. And I am who you never wanted to be: Cheryl Dada.”
Leaving her own face as eagerly as she had gone to find it, she put the mirror down on the bed. The clock on the wall read 6.10. It was time to change into the dress and pick out a suitable scarf.
Cheryl pulled herself up slowly. Sitting on her bed, she stared at the table, the foolscap paper, the pens lying around, the beige carver chair. This was where women became themselves, she thought—women who wrote alone in the room. She felt the letter in her pocket and the gravity of its words. She turned it over and over, raised her face towards it to trace the edges with her lips. After a minute or two Cheryl rose, walking over slowly to the table in her camisole, the red-stained letter in her hand, the murmurs of her feet rubbing across the marble floor.
She imagined, as she made her way towards the chair, what she might say to Sarah, and briefly entertained the thought that she might draw instead to avoid the intimidating precision of words. Two hands joined, from wrists to fingertips. No rings, no lines, no need for dimensions. Above her the fan was whirring as though in disagreement.
Cheryl sat on the low cushioned chair and placed the letter in the furthermost corner of the table. Flipping to a clean page on the foolscap pad, she scribbled a few lines, then scribbled some more. Love gives hope so how can we not be drawn to hope? She paused. I cared for you in a simple way. Pause. I’m sorry. Another pause. If it were up to—
Mrs Dada looked up, distracted; the tip of the pen was still on the page. In front of her was a wall decked with mostly photographs, some Polaroids hanging in a cluster and two postcards of the Niagara Falls.
There was a younger version of herself in a wedding dress with her mother standing beside her; the space between them had been erected as if to accommodate any last-minute addition to the picture. Cheryl leaned in to inspect her mother’s face, but as soon as she began parsing the face, it became blotchy and holey, its contours melted into mush. At last she watched as the face dissolved and lost its shape, only the bulbous eyes pinned to the wall, watching, terrorising the lone woman since God knows when. She felt the menace, a sudden chill in the air. The eyes staring at her, unblinking.
Almost hysterical, Cheryl sprang off the chair and reached for the face, to rip the photograph off the wall; with determination and force, she dug her nails into the taunting face, scratching its eyes until the features became unrecognisable. Then both hands wrested the face from each other, half of her mother cast out the window, the other half crushed in the tight fist and chucked into the bin.
“Ah!” she gasped. Even in a room of her own, she was not left alone. Slouching against the windowsill, careful not to tip over the pot of cactus, Cheryl looked warily at the wall, her eyes scanning the remaining pictures. Nothing was amiss. She wondered if the Blu Tack would leave marks on the wall. Management said the room must be left in the state it was when she first moved in. But what could they really do when she was gone? She was no Lazarus, no coming back from the dead to give back a clean wall.
Finding the surroundings safe, Cheryl allowed herself to relax in the chair again. She had not realised that there was so much of Clare in the room: photos of Clare in her Tumble Tots shirt; Clare in diaper, on fours; Clare in diaper again, holding the telephone to her ear; Clare dressed up as a sheep in the nativity scene; Clare shaking the hands of some ang moh; Clare playing the piano; Clare wearing her softball glove and Crescent Girls’ jersey—DADA 12; Clare at the zoo posing with Ah Meng; Clare at her 21st birthday party with people Cheryl did not recognise; Clare with a mortarboard on her head, the tassels blocking her eye from view; Clare with a tarantula on her shoulder; Clare in a diving suit, silver fish swirling around her; Clare in a beanie and scarf, sitting on a sleigh; Clare with a baby in her arms.
Cheryl examined the photographs, her finger feeling the tiny faces, the tanned faces, to find solidarity in each one as she saw semblances of herself in those fat cheeks, the round longing eyes, the collarbones visible beneath the thin shirt. It was strange to her that every photograph contained a bit of herself in it.
“Wah, pretty ah, your daughter. Same face leh,” said the cleaning lady whenever she came to tidy the room; the other residents said the same. Only now was Cheryl Dada beginning to understand what people were saying. She used to think the girl looked more like Adam but it was really just the dimple on the cheek. Truthfully, Clare was nothing like her father; she did not inherit his compliance and contentment. And pe
rhaps it was for the best. Cheryl conceded that it was true: Clare was so much like her, except that she was courageous.
Seated comfortably, Cheryl fixed her eyes on the photograph of Clare having breakfast with Ah Meng. The girl has no bone of fear in her, she mused smilingly, admitting to herself after 30 years of nonchalance that Clare had been an accident she was now thankful for. And perhaps, because she was an accident, Clare learned to cherish the life that she had stumbled into. It seemed she had cried all her tears and sadness out when she was a baby, and that from the time she was a toddler she seldom shed a tear. She would fall from her tricycle and not cry, accidentally bite into a chili pod, wince and still would not cry. Once she almost drowned in the swimming pool and when Cheryl pulled her out Clare merely coughed and hastened to hug her mother.
Happy was her dominant mode. Cheryl did not understand her happiness but a cheerful child was easier to take care of. “Why is that girl always smiling?” her mother used to ask her. Because she took all of my hope, Cheryl wanted to say, but stopped herself. For she was guilty of the charge she had brought to her mother; she too had drained away all of her mother’s hope.
Tracing with her thumb the wide grin that spread across Clare’s face, Cheryl Dada was filled with hope. Yes, mother and daughter looked alike, but Clare had a different spirit. There wasn’t for Clare, as there was for her, what she thought of as the worry of being left alone, cast out by the world. “I don’t give a fuck, Mum,” Clare had said repeatedly, and that was how she lived her life.
Cheryl pulled the chair closer to touch the photograph of Clare in her yellow and green jersey. MUM, WE WON! WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS… WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS… The letters in black ink lined the white rim of the instant film. She had acquired a tan and her hair was already short. Must have been secondary three, Cheryl deduced from the piercings on her ear, and wiped away the grime on the photograph to get a better look.
The three earrings dangling from her ear and the one sticking out of her nose had got the girl into trouble with the discipline mistress in school. It also caused a cold war between Clare and Adam that lasted for weeks; Clare refusing to talk to him, Adam withholding her allowance. Cheryl stayed clear of the father-daughter conflict. She was the parent cheering on the side line, occasionally handing a $10 note to Clare. She would not chime in, though she knew Adam was desperate for support and validation; her silence had undermined him time after time. The truth was that Cheryl thought herself incapable of mothering. Why, it seemed but yesterday that she herself was little more than a girl in secondary school.
She thought they both had no right to decide what was good for Clare. Even Clare could not have known what was good for herself. No, not at that age. So Cheryl recused herself, either absent in person or spirit, when it came to making decisions, mostly unhelpful in parenting, choosing indifference so that she was the least influential in shaping Clare’s life. She would have wanted that for herself too, for her mother to have left her alone.
Without Cheryl’s meddling, Clare had turned out to be champion indeed, unconcerned about what her father and everyone else thought, only remorselessly following her instincts. It seemed to Cheryl that humans sometimes needed to be elemental—that is, to let go of civilities and considerations of consequences. She could not do it; she was not savage enough to confront her primal needs. But Clare, the pitcher with the most home runs on the team, trusted herself to deliver her thoughts and wishes with ferocity and defended what she stood for even when the odds were stacked against her. So that was what it meant to not give a fuck about anything but oneself.
What is she hopeful about? Cheryl thought, and her thumb glided over to the next photograph and paused at the edge of Clare’s lips. Hers was a smile without teeth, the right amount of cheekiness, the kind that accentuated the fullness of the lips. She looks good in red, Cheryl thought wistfully, referring to the lipstick Clare had put on for the graduation photoshoot. Cheryl also thought that Clare did not need the red to accentuate her smile. Be it Ah Meng by her side or a tarantula on her shoulder, she would still be smiling. It was incomprehensible, her having no fear whatsoever.
Even when she was a foetus, Clare did not give a fuck, Cheryl thought, remembering the day at Mount Alvernia, the day of the reveal. She propped herself up and arose from the chair, suddenly breaking into a chuckle, as she recalled how the doctor had told her that the baby was a boy, then said it was a girl; that he had mistaken her finger for a penis.
The thought of Clare giving men the finger when she was just the size of a grapefruit amused her now, but back then having a girl was the second worst possible news Cheryl had received in three months.
At first she could not believe it even though all three sticks had two lines and her period was late. But there was no use doubting the doctor’s report that so thoroughly mapped out the future for her. She was to quit school and stay home.
Cheryl Dada waited for a long time. She kept on waiting but anticipation and excitement never came. Was the thing in her belly really the miracle of life? She had heard so much about the baby’s first kick but when it happened it felt like a scene from The Fly. Horror! Horror! “Oh God, please take it away!” she cried out in the hospital toilet. “Please! Just this one time, please!” she begged. It cannot be, it cannot! She was not yet an adult; she was still in school! Oh how she screamed in the cubicle, lifting her head as far back as she could, trying to get her eyes away from the bump that was her belly.
Did other women feel the same? she wondered, turning her attention to the photograph of Clare and Baby Cheryl, who was just a couple of days old here, swaddled in a green polka dot blanket. It must be that she had not one maternal bone in her. Eight months passed and still she felt no motherly instincts.
Cheryl gave up on waiting. She knew she could not love what she did not want, neither could she give her life to it, so she decided to do the bare minimum. She would meet the baby’s physical needs—comfort and hunger. It was always fed, powdered, cleaned and dressed; but Cheryl would not coo or sing to it, never consciously. Many times she reminded herself that she would give what she could but no more, because what is given is given away. Motherhood isn’t the same as martyrdom. She had seen her mother give when she had nothing to give and take back what she had given. The whole business of giving and taking made her miserable. If a mother’s love was that, Cheryl wanted no part in it. She wanted to be nothing like her mother.
Clare wasn’t like her mother either, she thought with relief and gratitude. Unlike the women in her family, Clare would survive the world and its injustices. Cheryl walked around the room, from the table to the bed, pausing at the wardrobe to brush her hand against the red dress for tonight’s party, then walked around some more, thinking about Mama the matriarch; her mother the Nonya who had married outside the community, who used the blender instead of the lesung; and she, Cheryl, the third generation one-quarter Nonya who could not speak Malay. Clare did not care about being part Peranakan and was unburdened by its demands. She only liked the part of the culture where women ruled the family, but attributed the female reign to runaway fathers and men of poor health. It was the lack of male presence, not independence and defiance, which had earned her grandmother the titular head of the family. Peranakan matriarchy, Clare would tell her mother, was an insidious form of domesticity that pretended to empower women within the home so as to keep them away from potential freedom outside. She said the Little Nonya was the Malayan Angel in the House.
Standing in the middle of the room on the top of the home, Cheryl wondered if she was one of those angels that Clare spoke against. The thought of having soft feathery wings was somewhat pleasing to her. Though she seldom understood her daughter’s criticisms, she admired her passion. Clare was outspoken and always teaching her new words like “butch”, which means a type of masculine woman, and “trans-”, which she explained means “across”. Like how Cheryl was at present trans-ing her room to get to the bed. Adam, however, did not appreciate
Clare’s insights as much as Cheryl did, choosing to interpret her tone and indignation as disrespect.
He was seldom interested in Clare’s ideas, Cheryl thought, as she reached to touch the velvety sheets of the bed. He wasn’t intelligent enough to argue with her either. For a quick moment, Adam’s face, which often deepened into a disapproving frown when Clare spoke, flashed before Cheryl. She tried to shrug it off, quickly resting herself in the bed.
Cheryl knew some part of him came very near to resenting them for not living up to his expectations even though it was not in his nature to be bitter. He thought himself more saintly than that. Adam’s world was rosy and strait-laced; his vantage point was higher than Cheryl and Clare’s. He could not see the world the way they tried to explain things to him.
In his eyes both daughter and mother had failed him. Adam would never confront her but he blamed Cheryl for Clare. What mother brings a child into the world and leaves it? It was unnatural; she was unnatural. He said she was carrying her womb in her head. He said being a mother was a heart thing, not a mind game. He said all of that with an inflection used by accusers. Of course, Cheryl knew that. There was nothing fun about pregnancy, childbirth or sex, for that matter. She was not playing games when she refused to nurse the baby. She was also not pretending to sleep when it kept crying in the night.
The memory of the accusation nailed Cheryl to the bed.
“Not all women are the same,” she whispered to herself, pulling the blanket to her neck as the evening breeze settled in the room. “Today is my birthday. I am not who I was last year. I’m not who I was before coming to this place.” Cheryl was calm. The air was cool, and the room was peaceful.