Miss Seetoh in the World

by Catherine Lim

  ‘We will not be attending your creative writing class anymore,’ said Yen Ping tearfully. Mark revealed that his mother was already making plans to transfer him to another school.

  Yen Ping revealed that the angry woman had made a visit to her parents, at their drinks stall in Siah Street Market, and delivered an ultimatum: if their daughter persisted in distracting her son from his studies, she would take the matter to the Deputy Minister of Trade and Business who could revoke any business licence at very short notice. After she left, Yen Ping’s mother gave her daughter a sound scolding.

  ‘Why do you have to get mixed up with those rich, snooty people? Their world is not our world!’ Her father said, ‘Stop seeing him, we have our pride.’ They were saving up to send her to a university of her choice. All she had to do was to study hard and get good grades in the exams.

  Maria thought that the entire ugly affair was saved only by the purity of the two young people at its centre. They were like two radiant spirits standing on a vast expanse of seashore, untouched by the detritus all around. Mark and Yen Ping said, ‘Miss Seetoh, we want you to know that we have enjoyed and benefited from your creative writing classes, and that our feelings for one another will always be the same, despite what is happening,’ then turned to look affectionately at each other and moved closer for the merest contact of fingers. She had to pull them down from the high clouds of their love to the hard realities on the ground.

  ‘How will you continue to see each other? There will be risks.’

  Again they looked at each other. The resourcefulness of pure, young undeterred love could not be underestimated.

  ‘We have thought it over,’ they said. ‘We accept that we can’t see each other as much as we want, but we have ways. Besides, we can always write to each other.’

  Ways? Maria thought of secret meetings in ice-cream parlours, that she and Kuldeep Singh had dared, and in the Botanic Gardens where she had seen the young couple, in school uniform, unabashedly locked in each other’s arms at the top of a grassy slope, then rolling down together in joyous laughter.

  She was taken aback to be so decisively included in their scheme of secret love.

  ‘Miss Seetoh,’ they said, ‘would you be able to give us private tuition in English language to prepare us for the exams? We could go to your place once a week.’

  Private tuition to do better in the exams was the best stratagem to make even cautious and suspicious parents throw all caution and suspicion to the winds. She could already see Mark and Yen Ping, looking as pure and innocent as ever, seated side by side at a table, holding hands under it while she tutored them. Parental threat from both sides was clearly drawing them closer to each other and too close to an edge far more dangerous than hers because they were so young.

  Maria suddenly remembered the incident, so long ago, of her two classmates, both aged sixteen, who were forced to get married when the girl got pregnant.

  The reliable alarm bells in her head rang loudly on their behalf, and she said, ‘Perhaps we should all sit down and have a good talk one of these days. I see problems.’

  ‘Yes, Miss Seetoh,’ they said, adding, ‘we trust you.’

  Yen Ping said, blushing deeply, ‘Miss Seetoh, I know what you’re thinking. But Mark and I are not like that. We’ve talked things over. Our plan is to study hard, get good university degrees and then get married. Our parents would have no objections once we prove that we are really serious about each other and our future together.’

  Maria could only give each a hug. ‘Bless you,’ she said, the tears coming into her eyes. She noticed they came too easily these days.

  ‘So you have only distress stories to tell,’ said Dr Phang. They were once again parked in the dark isolated spot outside the Botanic Gardens. By now completely attuned to each other’s mood, they were assiduously avoiding even the slightest possibility of conflict or tension; he made no demands and she asked no questions.

  There were always her stories – from school, from home, from the realm of pure imagination – to sustain the neither-here-nor-there state which had its own piquant pleasure. He said, ‘My turn to tell a story,’ and asked whether as children, they had a common fear experienced by all Chinese children exposed to the terrifying pantheon of gods in the mythology of their ancestral cultures before the moderating, calming effects of Christianity, the common religion of conversion.

  It was the terror of the mightiest god in the pantheon whose supremacy was embodied in his name – Tua Peh Kong – whom children remembered as the largest, most decked-out statue with the most elaborate altar in temples that their mothers or grandmothers took them to.

  Maria said, her eyes bright with happy recollection, ‘I remember the Tua Peh Kong in the White Heaven Temple that my Por Por used to take me. I would hide behind Por Por and peep at the ferocious eyes, the black beard, the glittering warrior costume, the sunburst of swords on his back.’

  Dr Phang’s Tua Peh Kong was seated on a gold throne, one booted foot on a pile of screaming demons, like a bunch of writhing earthworms. As a boy, he would wake up screaming from nightmares of Tua Peh Kong which continued even after the family converted to Christianity and formally denounced the superstitions of their forbears.

  The best part of the story was in the connection with the great TPK.

  ‘The happiest coincidence of initials,’ smiled Dr Phang. ‘Have you ever wondered why the prime minister is seldom referred to by his real name – Tang Poon Kim? Singapore’s Tua Peh Kong sits astride his throne, striking terror in all hearts. He makes use of the Thunder God to hurl the bolts of his fury against his enemies and throw them into disarray. If V.K. Pandy leaves Singapore and returns to India, that will be the sixth dissident to flee from his wrath.’ Maria thought, now I know why I’m so much attracted to this man. It was not only his good looks and his charm, but his position as a maverick, like herself, remaining in the system, yet out of it in spirit, taking delight in cocking a snook at the powers that be.

  She said, her eyes sparkling, ‘I challenge you when you next meet up with TPK to tell him about his godly status.’

  ‘I already have,’ he said chuckling. His canny charm must have been even more finely calibrated to the great TPK’s mood; the austere prime minister, it was said, was not without a sense of humour in private, albeit a wry one, and it was no bad thing to catch him at a moment when he was in need of some light diversion and tell him, ‘Sir, Singaporeans say you’re Tua Peh Kong; their children and grandchildren down the generations will know you only by those fearsome initials!’

  The great TPK might even have let out a smile before resuming the task of tapping on Dr Phang’s brains for this or that national project.

  Maria said, by now all delight, ‘If I write a book, any book, it must have a place for Tua Peh Kong. His image will be a blend of our respective childhood nightmares.’

  He had never seen her in such a light mood. He swept her into his arms and whispered in her ear, ‘Well?’

  Let’s go to bed. Let me take you to bed. Shall we? How about it? Would you like to come up and see my etchings? The wording of a proposition, if clichéd or crude or stale, might dismay the romantic woman. This man dispensed with them all by a single bold, rising inflection. Heady with the light-heartedness of the evening, after an extremely vexatious day, she responded with her own aplomb,

  ‘Alright, we’ll not keep the silken bed waiting. Now I’m going home to my plain one – alone.’ She could see his broad smile in the enveloping darkness; it remained through the ensuing flurry of serious suggestions.

  He would be going on a trip overseas, in a fortnight’s time, with a team of colleagues for a conference in Europe; he could go earlier, or return later, on his own, and meet her in a hotel in London or Paris, whichever suited her. Meanwhile, he would be too busy to see her.

  Twenty-Five

  A fortnight of eager anticipation that was betrayed by a light step, a flushed skin, a secret smile. The marks of a woman be
ing in love surely had to do with the anticipation, or recollection, of the first kiss, the first nakedness together. Sometimes while having a cup of coffee by herself in an open café, she would look in pleasurable idleness at people passing by, singling out women betrayed by those chemical manifestations, whether walking by themselves or beside their lovers, never their husbands, oblivious to the rest of the world. The element of secrecy always sweetened the anticipation.

  Once she was in a taxi that screeched to a sudden halt in front of a dreamy-looking girl who was playing with strands of her long hair, gently twirling them round her forefinger. When the taxi-driver leant out of the window to scold her, she merely glanced at him and continued her serene, smiling walk across the road. Maria watched with amusement.

  The taxi-driver turned around to remark, ‘Thinking about her boyfriend, that’s why. These girls, they think, oh, my darling, oh my darling, when I see you again? When you make love to me again? They are very big danger on the road, I tell you!’

  Maria asked, ‘Have you ever felt like this in your life?’ and he replied, with a roar of laughter, ‘Aiyah, so, so long ago. When just in my twenties. She was ronggeng dance girl from Thailand. Very pretty. So-oo sexy!’

  ‘Did you marry her?’

  ‘What, no, lah! How can. My mother found me girl from her hometown in Malaysia. Married now for thirty-two years! Two sons, two daughters, five grandchildren. Ha, ha, ha!’ The taxi passed a small street where outside a rundown coffee shop, a number of elderly men sat on red plastic chairs round old wooden tables. ‘Miss, look at the old ah peh there, drinking coffee,’ he said. ‘You know what? They are sixty, seventy years old, yet dreaming of young sexy mistress! One ah peh, seventy-five, found young girl from China. Suddenly he look younger, in love, have sex. But only one year. She took all his pension money and went back to China!’

  ‘Well, has it happened yet?’ asked Meeta and Winnie, and the moment she said, ‘Soon, soon,’ she regretted it for the two women, incorrigibly curious, would now be impelled by their own kind of anticipation to call her constantly to check.

  Brother Philip said astutely, ‘Maria, these days you are forgetful. It can’t be the bad kind of forgetfulness since it comes with all those smiles.’

  She thought, ‘No, I can’t bear to tell him. He might lose all respect and regard for me.’

  He kept his promise to take her to the Blue Moon Lounge in another attempt to find Maggie; it too was fruitless. Brother Philip said, ‘I think they’re lying. Maggie’s mother was probably peeping from behind some curtain and wondering if we were from the anti-vice squad.’

  She found a note from Maggie in an envelope addressed to her at St Peter’s. It said: ‘I know you and Brother Philip trying to find me. Don’t waste your time. If you really want to see me and make apology for what you have insulted me and my sister, meet me at the Chantek Café on Slim Street at 7.35 tomorrow evening. Do not bring Brother Philip. Do not be late. My boyfriend will pick me up at 7.40 for dinner and take me for important appointment in town. If you not punctual by 7.45 latest, I will be gone, and I will not see you again. Maggie.’

  There were the marks of proud assertiveness of her new position of power as the one being eagerly sought – the terse language, the laying down of precise conditions of time and place of their meeting, the reference to a boyfriend at her beck and call.

  Brother Philip said anxiously, ‘You think it’s safe for you to go on your own? It will be rather dark. And I’m not sure what the new Maggie is like, back in her world that she’s been keeping secret from us.’

  ‘Bless you, dear Brother Phil,’ said Maria. ‘I’ll be alright. And I’ll tell you all about it.’

  As it turned out, when Maria next turned to Brother Philip for advice and help, Maggie’s matter would take second place to a host of others that threatened to engulf her. Now, in a mood of the kind for which the language of romance drew ridiculously extravagant comparisons with blue sky, blue ocean, billowy clouds, eternal birdsong, she walked airily into the Chantek Café at precisely the appointed time, looked around and saw no Maggie. She knew, with certainty, that the girl had arrived in time and must be hiding behind a shop façade somewhere to make her wait. She waited a full ten minutes, after which she saw Maggie enter the café and approach her. The signs were not promising. The girl’s face bore the same intense anger as on that day when she had fled from the creative writing class. But she was determined to be conciliatory all the way; if she was going to make any mistake now, it had to be one on the side of kindness and forbearance.

  She said, ‘Maggie, I’m really, really sorry. I can explain,’ and the girl said, with a toss of her head, ‘Okay, you explain. I listen.’

  Apparently, Maggie had no interest in any explanation; she had long since come to her own conclusion about the incident and had called the meeting purely to unleash her fury. Again and again, she accused Maria of making fun of her and her sister Angel, at a time when she needed the help of the teacher she trusted most to help her through a crisis. Again and again she said, ‘Miss Seetoh, how you can do such a thing to me?’

  ‘Maggie, stop, for goodness’ sake, you have to stop and listen to me,’ cried Maria, grasping her hand, as if that could stop the torrent of words coming out of her mouth.

  She said angrily, ‘Don’t touch me!’

  ‘Maggie, why do you bring in Angel? There surely is some misunderstanding. I was only reading out your story to the class. I’m so sorry if we laughed. We were not laughing at you, Maggie, only at the funny story. This has happened many times in our creative writing sessions, remember?’

  She saw Maggie’s eyes suddenly fill with tears. ‘Miss Seetoh, I tell you the tragic story of my sister Angel, how we both desperate, how I have to protect her and keep her in the canteen till I go home with her, and instead of help us, you make fun of us, and encourage whole class make fun of us! Even if my sister got killed, you all will laugh and make fun of her!’

  ‘Maggie, what on earth – ’

  The girl was mad; she was talking incoherently. Nothing could be more disconnected than the hilarious story she had written and the tragic one she was revealing now. Only one thing was clear – the deep distress connected with the younger sister whom she loved so much. Maria would ignore the incoherence and concentrate on helping the poor girl unburden her heart. She reached out for Maggie’s hand which once again moved away abruptly.

  ‘I say not to touch me,’ said the girl. ‘Miss Seetoh, you stink. I thought you are best teacher in world and I can trust you and share secret with you. Now I know you are like all the rest. Only laugh and make fun of me and my sister. Look down on us, like we are dirt.’

  Maria said very slowly and calmly, ‘Maggie, I really don’t know what you’re talking about. Why don’t we calm down and you explain everything to me. Tell me about Angel and how we can help her.’

  ‘Too late,’ said Maggie haughtily. ‘Now I depend on myself, not anyone in the whole world. Angel is safe now. I find a place for her to stay because I can find work and earn money. If I depend on world to help me, Angel by now raped and I kill my father and don’t care if police come after me and lock me in prison!’

  Suddenly the picture of Maggie’s dark mysterious world began to shape, and its connection with the strange story of Uncle Joe and the dismemberment, to emerge. It was still an unclear picture; what stood out with certainty was the girl’s need for help, disguised as a proud insistence on a full-blown apology in a public place.

  Maria said, ‘Maggie, I just can’t tell you how sorry I am for upsetting you that day. I was so wrong. Will you forgive me?’

  The girl stood up, by no means mollified. ‘Miss Seetoh, I go now. We are not friends any more. I was so happy before because I trust you and you trust me and you even tell me secret about the diamond ring, I the only student that day in the searching group. But now everything change, Miss Seetoh. I don’t want to depend on anybody. I will work, make money and give Angel good education. She
will go to university. Then nobody will harm her. Goodbye, Miss Seetoh.’

  ‘Maggie, wait, please wait – ,’ but the girl had disappeared, as quickly as she had that day when she ran out of the classroom. Maria cursed under her breath. ‘Dammit, there’s a limit to how far I’m prepared to go, even for you.’

  ‘Go and find out more from Auntie Noodles,’ said Brother Philip.

  It would only be much later that Maria understood how the need to disguise pain in a story could distort the disguise beyond all comprehension. Auntie Noodles told a story of incredible anguish that Maggie had confided in her. Maggie and Angel never knew their real father, the man they called father was their stepfather, one of several men in their mother’s life, one of whom could be Angel’s real father, making the girls only half sisters. It was a pitifully tangled web of relationships sometimes discovered in dysfunctioning households visited by counsellors anxious to help. The father who held odd jobs and had tattoos of dragons on both arms often came home drunk; for as long as Maggie could remember, he had tried to molest her as soon as her mother was out of the house. When she threatened him with a knife one evening, he simply transferred his attention to her young sister whom Maggie protected fiercely. There was a dangerous one-hour period when Angel would be home from school and be alone with the drunken man; Maggie solved the problem by making her sister go to St Peter’s and wait for her in the canteen. At night they slept huddled together, Maggie’s ears ever alert for the rattling sound of the doorknob, the sight of the lurking shadow under the door. Her dream was to get her G.C.E. O level, find a job and remove herself and her sister permanently from the dark, perilous world of her parents. Her mother cared little about what was happening; after her work at the Blue Moon Lounge, she sometimes came home and joined her husband in his beer-drinking, sometimes laughing merrily together, often quarrelling loudly and throwing things at each other.