This Is Where I Won't Be Alone

by Inez Tan

  But then I collected their exams on Friday and found more:

  11. The name “Singa-pura” derives from the story of Sang Nila Utama catching sight of a wild Lee Kuan Yew.

  48a. In 2032, Singapore became the first country in the world to implement Lee Kuan Yew throughout the entire public transportation system.

  56c. The treaty between Chief Minister David Marshall and the British colonial government granting Singapore partial internal self-governance was signed on Lee Kuan Yew.

  79. The five stars on the Singapore flag represent Lee Kuan Yew, Lee Kuan Yew, Lee Kuan Yew, Lee Kuan Yew and Lee Kuan Yew.

  I was sitting at my desk, making extra big Xs in red when my friend Sharifah came by my desk, holding her tablet. “Have you been putting them up to this?” she asked.

  14. The process by which a solid turns into a gas is called Lee Kuan Yew.

  18. In the following experiment, one possible explanation for why the metal ball bearing was not attracted to the nail is Lee Kuan Yew.

  23. Digestion begins at Lee Kuan Yew.

  “How curious,” I said.

  “And did they perform that ridiculous skit for you? ‘I will get up’?”

  “It’s based on an actual speech he delivered over forty years ago,” I said. They deserved a bit of credit for that. “In 1998, when he was defending his decision to continue on in Parliament after he’d stepped down as prime minister, he said, ‘Even from my sickbed, even if you are going to lower me into the grave and I feel that something is going wrong, I will get up!’” We’d watched the video together in class. Grey-haired, but throbbing with energy, the man had also said, “Those who believe that after I have left the government as prime minister, I will go into a permanent retirement, really should have their heads examined.”

  “He’s certainly made an impression on them,” said Sharifah. “When I walked into class today, they said, ‘Miss Sharifah, Miss Sharifah! Do you how many languages he learnt so he could speak to his constituencies? Miss Sharifah, did you know that he donated ten million dollars to help children learn both English and their mother tongue?’ Those cheeky monkeys. I know they’re just trying to waste time at the beginning of class.”

  “They’re acting out to vie for your approval,” I said. “How else do they know to relate to authority?”

  “You’re as bad as they are.”

  “It’s for their own good.”

  Another colleague, Joseph, stomped over, tablet in hand. His large square glasses had fogged up in the air-con, which made him look even more impassive than usual. Sharifah says he and I should date because we have so much in common. It’s hard to tell when she’s being sarcastic. The girls think we’re meant to be. Two of them are writing a play about it. Whenever they see me come into the classroom, they throw themselves over a ragged notebook on their desks, convulsing with laughter. I saw the notebook one day when I was waiting in their classroom for them to come back from science lab. I’m pretty sure they left it out on purpose, open to a particularly juicy scene:

  MR JOSEPH WEE: Cheryl, there’s something I’ve wanted to say to you for a long time. I’m madly in love with you. From the moment we met, I knew I wanted to stay forever by your side.

  MISS CHERYL LIM: Oh, Joseph!

  MR JOSEPH WEE: (sings) Every word I say is true. This I promise you.

  (They fall into each other’s arms. Curtain. END OF ACT II!)

  We actually have gone on two dates. Both were horrible. On the first, we saw a movie. On the second, we saw a movie and ventured to grab a bite at Toast Box. A mistake. We awkwardly gossiped about the principal for a while, and then Joseph leaned forward and said, “I like how passionate you are about your subject. I’ve always felt that way about mine. When I was our students’ age, I was solving quadratic equations for fun.”

  “My God, you’re damaged,” I said, and an uncomfortable pause hung in the air while both of us waited to see if the other was going to laugh. “Okay,” I said after a minute. “When I was their age, I cut out photographs from my Social Studies textbook and pasted them into my diary. I remember I had Maria Hertogh with her adoptive mother, Che Aminah binte Mohamed, families relocating after the Bukit Ho Swee fire, a British nurse ladling out soup to a line of local children during World War II, and Zubir Said, the guy who wrote the national anthem.”

  “And that’s what you loved doing?”

  I hesitated. I spend so much time with my mum that I forget what it’s like to talk to someone candidly. I could have said that our country’s history meant so much more to me than a few afternoons of girlish scrapbooking. I’d always wanted to know the people who’d been here before me, shaping the world I found myself in today. I felt I owed them something. Beyond that, I felt it would be a terrible thing to forget them. I didn’t even know who “they” were— they were as much the collage of faces from the cover of my P4 Social Studies textbook as the ones who weren’t pictured at all—and I knew I was being irrational. Still, I wondered what they would they have thought of me. Not even my mother knew I still had those photos tucked away, and I wasn’t sure why I’d told Joseph about them. I chickened out and deflected. “I just saved them because they looked nice. I remember admiring Zubir Said’s smart white shirt.”

  Joseph raised an eyebrow at me. I returned his gaze. He backed down first, with a self-conscious glance down at his own shirt, which was blue. Both of us picked up our pork floss toast and looked away.

  I suppose those dates weren’t that bad. At most, they were inconclusive. Dear Diary, I might have written, he’s what I most detest, but he also sees right through what I most detest about myself (the evasiveness, the cute act). Sometimes I can’t stand him. Other times I think his influence is just what I need. So maybe I do like him??? It’s like seeing a mirror image of myself and not knowing if I’m repulsed or entranced. But I never think things like that. Never.

  Now Joseph leaned over my desk to show me his students’ latest exams. In the space provided for the students to work out a problem sum, one had written a mini essay: Lee Kuan Yew was called in to solve the case of the missing x. Who could have had a motive for committing such a horrid crime? Did any of the suspects have an alibi? Was no one above suspicion? Was it even possible that x had wanted to disappear all along? “I will get to the bottom of this,” swore Lee Kuan Yew. “I will not stand for any crimes to be committed in our harmonious and meritocratic society!” He called on Singapore’s best detective, Inspector Lola Pang…

  So Lola was behind this too. Of course the others would follow her lead.

  “Well?” said Joseph.

  “It’s quite creative,” I said.

  “They’re not supposed to be creative. They’re supposed to solve for x. Besides, it’s disrespectful to the man.”

  “Is it? They’ve been singing his praises. You should see what they do to people they don’t like.” Sir Stamford Raffles had really gotten it this year.

  Joseph scowled. “Don’t fool yourself, Cheryl. You know they’re mocking him. You’re always too soft on them. You shouldn’t be encouraging them to put down something they know is wrong just to be funny.”

  “I’m not encouraging them to do it.”

  “Regardless,” he said crabbily, “you need to tell them to stop.”

  “That will certainly encourage them,” said Sharifah, trying not to smile.

  “Shall I arrest them for sedition while I’m at it?” I asked.

  “You’re their teacher,” he said humourlessly. “You think of something.”

  That night, my mum and I went out for dinner. We fought our way to the front of the queue for the bus, and we fought our way to get into the queue for the restaurant. None of this was strictly necessary, but whatever we do, my mum has to lock horns with other people to get any satisfaction. It makes her feel alive. She got to complain some more about how slow the flying food service robots were and how small the portions had become, which put her in quite a good mood. For the grand finale, we foug
ht aggressively over the bill. “I’m working now, Mum,” I said loudly. “Let me get it.”

  “Save your money,” she snapped. “Your children may need it for their education.”

  At home, my mum presented me with a small durian cake and I acted surprised, as though I hadn’t seen the box appear in the refrigerator yesterday or smelled it every time I opened the refrigerator door. It was a wonderfully pungent cake—our open carton of milk had already absorbed some of its flavour just by proximity. She cut us a finger-thin slice each. “I appreciate you spending your birthday with your old mum,” she said. In the same neutral tone of voice, she added, “I suppose you didn’t have a date or anything else planned.”

  “I was thinking of watching this year’s Lee Kuan Yew special on Channel 5.”

  “Aiyoh,” she said, despondently. “Even my friends don’t watch those.”

  “My students have been fascinated by him.” I use my students as an excuse for a lot of what I do. Being tired, being lazy, being busy, being childish. In fact, they probably make me better than I would be otherwise. I expected a sharp retort from my mum along those very lines, but instead she looked deep in thought. We sat on the sofa and I projected the documentary onto the wall. My mum also unfolded the ironing board and did the ironing, because she always has to outdo me.

  The authorities made a different documentary each year, for release each March 23. Yes, I was born the very day Lee Kuan Yew died—23 March 2015. I don’t mean to imply that I feel a special connection to his ghost or anything like that, just that I’ve always been conscious of having been born into a different era. In the past, our leaders fought their battles to determine what we were not. We were not a British colony. We were not a communist state. We were not part of Malaysia. The struggle now has been to define what we are. Adolescence—we can relate to that, especially those of us who haven’t quite figured our way out of it yet.

  The programme covered all the major milestones: his education at Cambridge; the formation of the PAP in 1954; winning every election; banners of the familiar red lightning bolt set in a blue circle; his cabinet all dressed in white, to symbolise their freedom from corruption; his tears on national television when Singapore separated from Malaysia; delivering the annual National Day Rally. There were clips of him shaking hands with Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Kofi Annan, Hu Jintao, Angela Merkel. That all seems so long ago—before China annexed Taiwan and Japan, before self-driving cars, before the first chipfeed was implanted in a live human subject, right here in Singapore. The girls complain endlessly about having to memorise dates and facts; when they turn 21 and their brains have stabilised enough for their chipfeeds to be implanted, they’ll be able to look up anything they want just by thinking of it. I tell them that there’s a difference between retrieving information and knowing how to use it, and that’s why they’re in school. Another thing they complain about is that what they learn in Social Studies doesn’t affect their daily lives, and therefore it must be irrelevant. They think they are their own little individuals who sprang forth from nothing and made a new world at their birth. But they are absolutely a product of their history. None of us is exempt from that. And the sooner they learn to accept it, the better.

  The documentary, nearing the end, reviewed Lee Kuan Yew’s retirement from the position of Minister Mentor in 2011, a post he’d created for himself. He voluntarily stepped down from every position he ever held; no one could have made him go. Then the programme jumped ahead to his death. Crowds gathered at the Padang and around Marina Bay. Some people queued for over 12 hours to leave cards, flowers and stuffed animals at the designated memorial sites. More attended his funeral than the camera could capture, a slow procession in heavy rain.

  My mum was getting emotional, which she rarely did. She didn’t look particularly sad, but it was as though an invisible wall had been lowered for a while, enough for you to feel what she was feeling instead of having to deduce it from conflicting signals. I asked, “Did you find out before or after I was born?”

  “Before,” she said, briskly running the iron across one of my skirts. “I was in the hospital by then. The nurse I liked came in. I remember the look of shock on her face. She said, ‘Lee Kuan Yew just passed away.’ That’s when I felt that I was going into labour.” She gave a short laugh. “Or so I thought. Actually you didn’t come out for another few hours. But you felt what had happened. I felt you feel it.”

  She cleared her throat.

  “When I was younger,” she continued, “I was very angry at him. In his early days, he tried to make less-educated women have fewer babies, because he felt that their children would contaminate the breeding pool. He didn’t believe people were equal. He did a lot of good anyway. But so did every person who worked hard to make a better life for their family and themselves. Every single person.”

  “Thanks, Mum,” I said, before things could get really soggy. “I love you too.”

  “Good,” she said. “Enough of this. Let’s watch something else.”

  We put on Gone with the Wind and ate the rest of the cake together. She patted my hair.

  “You’re still young, you know. And pretty. You’d be even prettier if you put a little effort into your appearance, like Scarlett.”

  “You don’t have to be nice just because it’s my birthday,” I said. My mum believes in being tough on me. She’d wanted me to win a scholarship to Oxbridge or an Ivy League school. Doctor, lawyer, Indian chief, so the children’s rhyme goes, but all I managed was to gain admission to the National Institute of Education. Each night that I received a rejection letter, she steamed a pomfret—my favourite—clearly meant for the celebration of better news. I remember looking down at one round expressionless eye. The pomfret lay flat on one side, its underbelly a dull white gleam, its fins like tattered grey sails hung stiffly over the edge of the dish, bent by the pot my mother had cooked it in. Her cooking was never bad, but those were the worst meals I’d ever eaten. I’ve hated pomfret ever since; it’s just as well she’s never prepared it for us again.

  Eventually I was happy enough about my results, but it wasn’t enough for her. Nothing ever was. Her displays of kindness, even the passive-aggressive ones, weren’t the real her. But I liked it when she was nice, all the same.

  On Monday morning in 4J, I had a speech prepared. “Girls,” I began, “there is something we need to address.” About half of them looked scared. But a handful were grinning at one another, having already guessed what I was going to say. “I have been hearing from other teachers that you have been writing ‘Lee Kuan Yew’ as an answer on your exams, even outside of Social Studies.”

  “That’s because Lee Kuan Yew is always the answer,” said Lola.

  I fought the urge to reply, “Lee Kuan Yew is not always the answer.” Never accept a fight on their terms. “Well,” I said, “it just so happens that that’s something we’re going to question in today’s lesson.”

  I sent worksheets to their tablets. “Close your textbooks, you don’t need to look at them. I want you to answer the following questions without mentioning Lee Kuan Yew or the government.” I gave Lola a hard stare, but she missed it, looking down at her tablet, seemingly befuddled. “Everyone’s answers will be different,” I went on. “Write down the right answers for you.”

  My name is:

  In Singapore, the most important people to me are:

  My favourite place in Singapore is:

  My favourite food in Singapore is:

  My passions are:

  One day I hope to work as: because:

  I have a part to play in helping Singapore because:

  One historical event that affects my life today is: because:

  I am proud to be a Singaporean because:

  The girls were making confused noises. They are quite funny when they get like that. I walked around the room, checking on them. Lola raised her hand.

  “Yes, Lola?”

  “Miss Lim, what if I have to put the government
for one of my answers?”

  “Which one?” I said, humouring her.

  Lola pushed back her chair, stood up, held up her tablet with both hands and read, “One day, I hope to work in the government of Singapore because I have strong leadership skills, I want to make a difference, and I think it is time that Singapore had our first female prime minister.”

  Every girl turned to look at her. She held their gaze unwaveringly. There was almost an aura coming off her, from her messy ponytail down to her battered canvas shoes. She was serious. And I felt a twinge of sadness. Someone like Lola would never be prime minister. She was a free spirit. She had not yet learnt to dream within her means.

  “You can put that down if you really mean it,” I told her.

  “I do,” she said matter-of-factly, and went back to her work.

  Towards the end of class, the girls projected their responses onto the back wall. I told them to spend the last few minutes reading what they’d all written, and recording similarities and differences. I stood behind them, reading too. I was still taller than most of them, though that would change before they left this school. Their answers were good, if occasionally rote or sanctimonious, but they had the rest of their lives to work on them. A few responses were rather creative, to use Joseph’s much maligned word. Was I just afraid of his being right, or was this really an improper use of class time? Was I too soft on my students? A good buzz of conversation filled the room, with everyone orderly and on task. As it was in this place we lived. But maybe I was fooling myself again. There was always something stirring: the growing disparity among income groups, anti-immigration murmurs and constant spillover from the unrest in other countries, near and far. Maybe we lived in more radical times than I was willing to acknowledge. Maybe it would be time, soon, for another dramatically decisive leader. Someone cut from a new kind of cloth. As I looked at the girls, I had the strangest feeling suddenly. I was afraid to turn around in case Lee Kuan Yew was behind us, watching. Of course, he wasn’t.