Miss Seetoh in the World

by Catherine Lim

  As soon as the wedding cards were sent out, Meeta’s habitual caustic remarks ended. She submitted sullenly to the reality that Winnie now had a man in her life, whereas she had lost all prospect of one. She wanted to have no part in the wedding preparations, saying stiffly, ‘I’ll attend the wedding dinner, that’s all. I can’t stand all that noise and fuss from her. She thinks she’s the only one in the world who’s getting married!’

  Her pride recoiled from the thought that friends could be whispering to each other about how Meeta Nair was behaving towards Winnie because of jealousy.

  ‘Me, Meeta Nair, jealous of Winnie Poon? Don’t make me laugh!’ she said to Maria, and there and then decided to dispel all such notions: she would give her housemate the most expensive wedding present of all, a pair of sapphire earrings that Winnie had once seen in a jeweller’s shop and liked very much.

  Winnie had whispered to Maria, ‘Meeta’s behaving strangely, but I understand. I told her not to be serious about Byron. He’s been avoiding her.’ It fell to Winnie to do something which she said was the most difficult thing in her life. Byron had called her with a message: ‘Please tell your friend and housemate Meeta to stop harassing me! I’m fed up with her. Tell her in exactly these words.’ Winnie recruited the help of Maria.

  ‘I’m too nervous,’ she said in a hushed voice. ‘You don’t have to say anything, Maria. Just be with me, to give me support.’

  To their surprise and relief, Meeta received the message calmly. ‘Oh, life goes on!’ she said breezily. ‘The bastard thinks that he’s God’s gift to women! Tell that cock to stop thinking the sun rises every morning to hear him crow! Hee, hee!’

  At Winnie’s wedding reception which was held in a hotel, Meeta was silent and surly-looking throughout, curling a disdainful lip or rolling sceptical eyes each time the much enamoured bridegroom professed his love for his bride in his speech.

  ‘Listen to him,’ she muttered, ‘All that drivel about eternal love and everlasting devotion. Why can’t he be more original? Gives me the goose pimples.’

  At one point she turned to whisper to Maria who was sitting beside her, ‘Let’s see how long all this cooing of the love birds will last. Until her money runs out.’

  Maria said, ‘Hey, Meeta, come off it! Today’s Winnie’s big day. Why don’t we do this – think all the nice things about Winnie and Wilbur, and all the nasty things about the men who have left us in the lurch. Then we go out and get drunk together!’

  Humour could not save the situation for poor Meeta, unable to cope with the sudden good fortune of the housemate who she presumed would go through life depending on her for advice and guidance in matters regarding men. She left the party very soon after, complaining of a headache. Winnie never looked happier or prettier; the services of a professional make-up artist and dress designer had transformed her beyond recognition. Part of her happiness must have lain in the triumphant thought: ‘It’s Winnie the Blue, Winnie the Blur who’s got her man after all, not you two clever, smart-talking women!’

  They were, for the third time, in a parked car in the lovers’ haunt outside the Botanic Gardens.

  ‘I missed you, Maria,’ he said, and would have attempted to pull her towards him except that he sensed a new mood and purpose. ‘What is it?’ he said gently.

  He could accommodate any female mood, humour any female whim. The rehearsed words remained locked in her throat.

  She could have begun, ‘I can’t take it. The jealousy will destroy me,’ and he would have simply swept her into his arms with his usual easy smile and laugh of dismissal; she would have aborted the rest of the prepared speech and lain contented against this warm, reassuring, handsome, smooth-talking, very dangerous man.

  ‘Hey, you’re crying,’ he said and wiped her eyes. He would of course not risk asking her the reason for her tears. Silence was golden, a rich lode he could continually mine to manage women.

  They were silent for a while. ‘Tell me a story, my Sheherazade. You have so many stories to tell.’

  With his other women, he could have said, with the same gentle, reassuring voice, ‘Tell me about your Bangkok trip.’ ‘Tell me about your plans to move to a new apartment.’ ‘Tell me about your new Persian cat.’ Tell me anything so long as we don’t start those tedious explanations and arguments.

  She said, ‘Alright,’ and felt a surge of new purpose strengthening her for the last story she would ever tell him:

  There was a woman called Sheherazade, actually only a pet name given to her by her lover. She lived in Singapore in a small apartment in Ang Mo Kio, which he visited whenever he could get away from his wife or business associates. He loved her because he enjoyed listening to her stories, to the melodiousness of her voice, her habit of gesturing with her small pretty hands as she told the stories. Like her namesake, she postponed the telling of the ending of each story, causing her lover to be in a frenzy of curiosity.

  ‘Please, please, please,’ he begged like a wide-eyed child wanting to know what happened next, and next and next. ‘Tell me what happens in the end.’

  ‘No, I will only tell you on your next visit,’ she said, thus cleverly making sure he would never leave her. Like Sheherazade’s enthralled story listener, the wicked sultan who kept postponing her execution to hear the ending of each story, he came again and again to see her in her Ang Mo Kio flat, without of course, his wife’s knowledge. But there was one story whose ending she wanted so much to know – their story. How would it end? Would he leave her? Would he divorce his wife, as he sometimes hinted, and marry her?

  One day he told her, rather awkwardly, because he knew she would be very upset: ‘This is my last visit. I’m leaving you. I’ve found another woman.’ She was aghast.

  ‘No, no,’ she said. ‘Another woman? Does your wife know?’

  ‘That’s beside the point,’ he said, ‘For she’ll never find out. Besides, I love this woman very much. I’ve given her a special name – Pearl. In fact, I think I can’t live without my Pearl.’ She began to cry, and he tried to comfort her.

  ‘These things happen,’ he said. ‘But we can still be friends, can’t we? I may still come to my Sheherazade to hear her wonderful stories, who knows? But for the time being, this is absolutely my last visit.’

  She said, her face by now all splattered with tears, ‘Please come one more time. I will prepare a special dinner for you. Our last supper, a last story, then a last goodbye.’

  ‘Alright,’ he said. So he came for his last meal with her. It was such a delicious meal, of his favourite abalone and mushroom soup, beef noodles, deep fried prawns and the most succulent vegetables, that he felt drowsy afterwards and fell asleep in his chair before he could ask her for her story. A tantalising little thought had occurred to him, just before he fell asleep: ‘She will withhold the ending, to make me come again, the clever little thing. But no, this will positively be my last visit!’

  As he lay sleeping in his chair, emitting the gentle snores of deep, comfortable sleep, she went into the kitchen and brought out a large knife which she pressed deep into his heart, killing him instantly. As he slumped in the chair, his blood coming out in large pools and spreading rapidly on his shirt, down his trousers and on to the space around his chair, she knelt down beside him, looked at him and said sadly, ‘You had no idea, my dearest, how our story would end, had you?’

  There was a short silence as Dr Phang, startled by the story as by the earnest, urgent manner of its narration, cast about in his mind for a suitable response without losing his equanimity. His first thought was, ‘She is not her usual self. I must be careful.’ It was a situation he had never found himself in, but he would not be caught unawares. He would not ask any questions as that would only provoke the impossible questions of hysterical women; he would not make light of the story as its strangeness seemed to demand a serious response. In a few seconds, he had decided on having recourse, once again, to his usual reaction to an angry, accusing woman – a two-fold strategy of
deflecting the accusation and pacifying the accuser. Through the marshalling of all his resources of mild persuasion and tender caressing, he would draw her back into a state of calm, smiling mutuality. Looking at the pale taut face beside him and grasping her hands, Dr Phang said with all the gentleness he could muster,

  ‘Dear, don’t get upset. Come here.’

  Maria broke free from his arms. She said, ‘I never want to see you again because we can’t go on like this. If I have an affair with you, we’ll just end up hating each other.’

  That was as close as she could get to verbalising the brutal truth that she had earlier set out at great length in writing. Affair. They had always avoided the word with its messy connotations. He made one last attempt.

  ‘Dearest, we love being with each other – that’s all that matters.’ The word having been uttered, its repetition came more easily.

  ‘If I had an affair with you,’ she said earnestly, ‘it would always have to be shrouded in secrecy and remorse and guilt. Don’t you see?’

  He had no answer, so he made certain non-committal sounds and continued to try to take her into his arms.

  There had to come a point, even for this supremely self-confident man, when the truth would sink in and he would understand that the game was over. He withdrew, no longer smiling, and sat still in his seat, looking out of the window into the darkness.

  ‘I had no idea,’ was all he could say. It was not in his nature to resort to the crude peevishness of the rejected male’s parting shot, ‘When you grow into an old woman and lose all your attraction for men, you will look back with regret upon this day of missed opportunity.’ But he felt the urge to regain a little of the wounded pride by saying drily, ‘That was the most spiteful story I’d ever heard. Spitefulness doesn’t become you at all, my dear.’ Then he started the car engine, and drove her home without a word. When she got out, he said, with a return of the affable smile. ‘Well, goodbye, Maria.’

  ‘Goodbye, Benjamin.’

  It might have comforted her to know that throughout the rest of his drive back, he gripped the steering wheel so hard that his knuckles stood out like hard, white stones, and that he muttered ‘Damn’ a few times under his breath. And it might have comforted him to know that as soon as she entered her bedroom and locked the door, she threw herself on the bed, covered her face with a pillow and sobbed silently.

  She did not even want to read the daily papers because occasionally there was something about him, usually about his work in the Ministry and the conferences abroad. But about three months later, as she was watching TV and listening to the news presenter, she learnt that he had been sent to Germany on a posting as Singapore’s ambassador.

  Thirty-One

  When she was a little girl of about seven, a neighbour’s child one day came over to play with her, attracted by her several dolls, boxes of beads and a plastic tea-set. Later that afternoon, she went to her mother crying, ‘My Snow-White’s gone! Mee Mee’s stolen it!’ The neighbour’s child must have hidden the doll under her dress and gone home with it.

  Anna Seetoh was at that time in the fervid stage of preparing for her conversion to Christianity, when its doctrines and tenets had never been more appealing, ready to flush out every vestige of the old religion and sweep her into a new bright world of hope, purpose and meaning.

  ‘What?’ she said to the crying child standing before her holding a large basket containing three dolls and a space where the fourth should be.

  Maria again howled, ‘Mee Mee’s stolen my Snow-White!’

  Anna Seetoh said, ‘We’re going to Mee Mee’s house right now.’ To the child’s puzzlement, she said, pointing to the remaining three dolls in the basket, ‘Pick one. We’re bringing her along.’

  Maria chose her favourite, a cloth doll called Sayang, with a large head and black wool for hair; in the privacy of her little secret space under a table or behind a door, she would often whisper to Sayang her dreams of becoming rich and happy one day, with a room of her own.

  ‘Alright,’ said Anna Seetoh, as she and Maria stood before Mee Mee’s mother who was wondering about her daughter’s frantic efforts to hide behind her back. With the formality of tone required in a religious ritual, Anna Seetoh commanded her daughter, ‘Now give that doll to Mee Mee.’ Maria stared at her mother. Then all was pandemonium as the full injustice of the command sank in: she had not only lost Snow-White but was about to lose her favourite Sayang to the thieving Mee Mee.

  She screamed and made a rush at the frightened girl still hiding behind her mother, shouting, ‘Give her back! Give my Snow-White back!’ Anna Seetoh managed to pull the beloved Sayang out of her arms and hand it to the thief who was too frightened to take it and continued clinging to her mother who could only say, ‘What – what –’ in great bewilderment. In the end, looking both confused and worried, she held the cloth doll in a limp hand and watched Anna Seetoh stride out of the house dragging the crying Maria with her. Out on the road, her mother said soothingly, ‘One day Jesus will reward you. He sees everything.’

  It would be years later that she understood the reason for her mother’s strange behaviour that day. Anna Seetoh had taken to heart the biblical message of unlimited magnanimity that God enjoined on all the faithful: you give your neighbour not only your spare cloak but the very one off your back. For a while after her conversion, she gave the message literal application – giving a neighbour two bowls of rice flour when she had come to borrow only one, giving a beggar standing outside the church a dollar and then turning back to drop another into his begging bowl.

  The breath-taking scope of the charity of the new religion was new for Anna Seetoh; its call for patience and endurance in suffering was not, being simply an extension of the traditional stoicism that she had inherited from an elderly relative who used to talk to her very seriously, even as a child.

  ‘I never learnt anything from your mad Por Por; it was God’s mercy that I had your Second Grand-aunt to teach me to be a good person.’

  The aunt had instilled in her habits of quiet endurance under the greatest privations, because, she explained, it was a woman’s lot in life. Women were born to endure. ‘But Sky God hears and sees everything,’ she would say, pointing a serene finger to the sky. Sky God’s handmaiden, Kuan Yin, the Goddess of Mercy, would never ignore women’s cries.

  When Anna Seetoh converted to Christianity, it was a simple switch of alliance from the merciful goddess to the gentle Virgin Mary.

  Maria had often marvelled at her mother’s strength in coping with the many adversities in her life’s journey, and concluded that but for her religious faith, she would have been utterly crushed half way through that dolorous vale of tears called other names by her ancestors. But the relentlessness of her god in testing her was not done yet, even in her ageing years. In obedience to his wish, she was making preparations for a new life that would surely call for greater sacrifices; she said she was going to live with Heng and his family in Malaysia and take care of them. They would be in a small town with a church called, very significantly for Anna Seetoh, the Church of the Mother of Mercy. For she had had a dream in which the Holy Virgin had appeared to her and assured that all would be well; Heng would be converted, become a good Catholic, live a good life, and by his example lead his wife to the church too. In the dream she saw the little autistic grandson cured and kneeling, bright-faced, at the altar with all of them and even receiving Holy Communion.

  ‘Then my life’s work will be done,’ said Anna Seetoh with tears in her eyes, ‘and I will die in peace.’

  If she had failed in bringing her daughter back to the church while alive, she would succeed in her new role as heavenly intercessor. In her saddest thoughts about her impossible daughter, she had clung to the brightest hopes. Por Por, being too old and beyond anyone’s capacity to change, was beyond the pale of her help.

  There was something that happened years ago which had made her give up hope of converting her mother. It was a small en
ough incident: Por Por refusing to throw away a small, chipped porcelain dragon that Anna Seetoh’s prayer group had identified as a Satanic object, emanating evil that was spreading in the house. When Maria came to Por Por’s defence and actually took over the ornament for safekeeping for her, the two were permanently ranged with the arch-enemy himself beyond the power of earthly help. There was enough filial piety in Anna Seetoh to pray for at least a peaceful death for her mother: who knew what miracle the Merciful Mother of God might work even at the deathbed of an old difficult woman past all hope?

  Anna Seetoh said, ‘Maria, there’s something I’ve got to ask of you,’ and she knew it had to do with the hard realities of financial contingencies, which even her mother, lost in heavenly schemes, would be forced to face at some time.

  Apparently, it was a request that Heng had coached her to present very carefully, argument by reasonable argument: since she would no longer be living with her, Anna explained slowly, Maria would be saving on both the cost of maintenance as well as the monthly allowance. Would she then be so kind as to disburse a sum, a once-and-for-all payment, to enable her mother to begin her new life in Malaysia?

  The wily deviousness of her brother once again stung her into a sharp reply, ‘Of course you will continue to have your allowance, Mother, as long as I have a job. How can you think otherwise?’ She added reproachfully, ‘And of course I’ll give you whatever you need for your new life in Malaysia.’ In her mind, she was working out some quick sums: would she have enough in her bank account to sign a cheque for exactly the amount she had paid out to her brother for his half of the flat? In her mind, she was already making the washing-hands gesture of final severance; any remnant of unease still attached to the inheritance would be cleared away, like a piece of dirt, a stain.