My Madam accuses me of things in the future. She accuses me of terrible acts of filth that I might do if I am allowed out. It is a strange joke as I have no money to do anything. I have no friends because I am forbidden to speak to anyone and I have no phone to arrange these dark meetings. My Madam shouts about sex and having babies and that it’s for my own protection because I am too stupid to know what is good for me and there are men everywhere that will take advantage of that stupidity.
And if I get pregnant then I will get sent back in shame.
No money, no reference.
Just a single, shamed girl, and another mouth to feed.
MADAM EUNICE
134 Sabre Green
A strange thing happened at Mahjong this week. The afternoon started out perfectly normally with the girls arriving full of gossip and wearing new outfits. Little Ping’s nails were very long and freshly lacquered, ‘Russian Red’ she called it, and Joyce has a new Prada bag. Her husband has had a significant promotion recently and she talks about it at every opportunity, as she should.
My own husband is a politician and works for the government. He deals with many foreigners and my role is very social. There are cocktail parties, dinner parties and soirées. Women glitter like frost in a weak winter sun and talk rather too loudly. The men are unconcerned and generally use the occasions as an extension of the office. The older Singaporean man is very traditional whether he is Malay or Chinese by extract.
Our role in Chinese culture is complicated. The western press always latches on to the most negative of images. Bound feet, submission. Girls as unwanted burdens. It is true that girls were seen as a great weight on the family until they were married and in my grandmother’s time, unless you were from a wealthy family, you would generally go from being an unpaid servant in your parents’ house to being an unpaid servant in your husband’s. The great change for us came during the Communist years. The distinctions between men and woman became so blurred that women for the first time were able to study and work alongside men. Mao even elevated women to positions of political power. It was very liberating. So Mao is still viewed with great affection by the older generation. The peasants mutter about him, of course, though they mutter about everything: there is a distinct divide between rural and urban Chinese. It is a vast country and westerners forget that. Even the indigenous people change rapidly from the Great Steppes near the Russian border, where the peasants are wind-whipped and sunburned, to the softer southerners near the coast. The Americans don’t have these exact distinctions. They all look the same: big, fat, fair and greedy. I find it terribly ironic that they are ready to espouse so many causes; although they may be here for a while most of them have otherwise never even travelled out of their own state. This is what gets my goat about foreigners. It’s obvious they disapprove of us here. They don’t understand our ways and start to try to change things. We all chuckle along because the Singaporeans don’t give a fig for what a westerner thinks. Your contract is up and you are gone back to the United States, or to Europe, where everybody can bleat about their rights.
You have rights if you can win them.
You have to push and shove and barge and bite for your rights.
Then you deserve them.
There is no point trying to make everybody equal. Darwinism is the only biological imperative that makes sense. Before I had Philip and Bernard I lectured in Eastern Cultural Affairs at the university. I enjoyed it tremendously and there are times when I yearn for the uncomplicated life of an academic. There might be some vicious political manoeuvring in the background, but the research aspect always soothed me. Coming to my senses in a darkened library after hours of reading and thinking was oddly comforting.
But back to the ‘odd thing’. Little Ping had been so full of excitement last week about the fortune teller that I was surprised that she now seemed so reticent to speak to me. She kept changing the subject and Joyce was particularly wittery. In the end I had to bang my glass down and insist, as politely as possible, that they share with me, their oldest friend, what was going on. Joyce looked at Little Ping and Little Ping looked at me. Little Ping reached over and grasped my hand and squeezed it.
‘I don’t want you to worry, I’m sure it’s nothing. Stupid fortune tellers! What do they know?’ Joyce nodded enthusiastically.
‘For goodness’ sake!’ I said. ‘Why would the fortune teller say things about me? You went for help with your infertility.’ I lingered over the last word just to make sure Little Ping knew exactly where she was in our pecking order. Little Ping shrunk back a bit, as I knew she would, and withdrew her hand.
‘He talked about you, Eunice,’ Joyce muttered. I stared hard at Joyce until she looked away and then glanced at Little Ping. Both women looked genuinely frightened. The situation was becoming uncomfortable and, as ever, my discomfort translated into anger. I rang the tiny bronze bell that was on the table beside me, and the maid approached unseen from the shadows.
‘Brandy,’ I snapped.
‘Yes, Madam,’ the girl replied. ‘Do you want glass, Madam?’
I just stared at her. I know it’s unfair but I can’t help it. I want to lash out and I’m too concerned for etiquette and gossip to do it to my friends. Lisa faded away and I returned to the present.
I took a deep breath and looked sweetly at Little Ping. ‘Tell me,’ I asked, with a touch of a smile playing about my lips.
As the wretched story unravelled I began to feel the first twinges of doubt. Apparently, Little Ping had indeed queued for two hours in some odious HBD to have an audience with Lim Chew, who is famed for his predictions, but the man refused to talk about her at all. Instead, he insisted that a woman called Eunice was under a curse. Demons had been summoned and she was the target. Her life was in jeopardy as was her husband’s career, and their place in society was under threat.
This charlatan ‘knew’ that my husband was a politician and little details about our lives that he couldn’t possibly have known without ‘spirit guidance’. Even though my first instinct was to laugh it off and make fun of Joyce and Little Ping for believing such fairy tales, a chill descended to the bottom of my spine and squatted there. And though Joyce and Little Ping agreed to laugh it off too, I could see disquiet skitter across their faces, which seemed suddenly etched by centuries of belief and fear about demons and evil spirits. I called them peasants and responded sharply that sophisticated Chinese women do not become affected by legends and gossipy old fakers. After that we drank brandy and coffee and all became more intoxicated than we should have, but there was a tension in the air now. Something had been spoken about, and it is well known that once something is acknowledged it can become real.
Later, after Joyce and Little Ping had teetered to their cars and their drivers, who sat waiting impassively, I felt the chill again and wrapped a shawl tightly around my shoulders. I sat outside in the cooling dusk and tried to relax, reassuring myself it was a degree or two of body heat lost due to the alcohol. The over-indulged Labrador from three doors away began its nightly performance, and oddly I took comfort in that dull bark. I thought to myself, all is right with the world, Eunice. You have nothing to fear. It’s an infertile woman’s fancy. But still, even as I repeated the mantra, it occurred to me that I was clinging to it in a state of sudden desperation, that the clammy shiver at the base of my spine was a dark foreboding. My thinking began to spiral. Had I burned enough offerings for our ancestors at the Hungry Ghost festival? Was I too harsh on Little Ping in the company of other women? Too harsh with my children and not obedient enough with my husband?
I began a rigorous inventory of my actions over the last month, pulling my words and deeds to pieces. And as I racked my memory I began to rock as I would a child and found a brief comfort in it. As I rocked and muttered, I became aware of Lisa standing just inside my field of vision and I turned sharply.
‘What?’ I snapped at her as if she were a Karanji stray.
‘I clean car now, Madam?
’
I dismissed her with a nod but before she disappeared, like the long shadows on a mountain at dawn, I could have sworn I saw the twist of a smile tug at her lips. I can’t be sure but I’m almost certain that the little miss was enjoying my discomfort.
LUCILLA
19 Sabre Green
Tonight I go out with a friend of my Ma’am’s. His name is Connor and he is Rory’s nanny in Scotland. He is a good-hearted man and makes me laugh. I was sure he was gay, lah! But no, he just sounds it. He has big green eyes that are hidden behind glasses and big whiskers that come down the side of his face. He is also from the mountains and he keeps asking me to marry him.
It was Halloween last night and all the children from the neighbourhood dress up and go round doing trick or treat and collecting candy. I took Rory round with his little pumpkin basket and my Ma’am and Connor dress up like vampires and scare the children until they squeal like bats. They are very comfortable together, almost like they are related. Ma’am says Connor is part of her heart family.
Yesterday, I tell Ma’am I want to work for her always and Ma’am sighs and says she wants so much more for me and that I am too good for this job. And I say, even when I get married, please I work for you? And my Ma’am hugs me and says, you can stay with me forever if you like. You are my heart sister. And we both have tears in our eyes.
My Ma’am doesn’t mind me using the family’s cutlery and bowls. Not like a Chinese employer once, who gave me a bowl identical to the dog’s and expected that to be that.
I can hear Rory hovering at the top of the stairs, too scared to come down in the pre-dawn shadows.
‘Morning, Lucilla,’ I hear a little voice pipe.
‘Morning, Rory,’ I reply. His little figure come slowly down the stairs. He is clutching his favourite soft toy, Sheepy, and sucking on his binky. ‘Wait, Rory, I put light on for you.’ And he waits until I can light those tricky stairs for him. Wooden and knife hard, they would be unforgiving to a falling child. Once he is settled in front of the television to watch a programme and wake up, I stumble towards the kitchen again and make his favourite ‘chocomilk’. This is the only way Ma’am and I can get him to drink milk. The milk in Asia is very different to milk in Scotland, my Ma’am says wistfully. The cows range on green land up mountains and by rivers. The herds are huge and very expensive and their milk and beef win prizes and are full of Scottish goodness.
This milk is from Thai cows. Skinny, fawn-coloured, rib-showing, sorry excuses for cows that graze on stubby grass gnawed right down to the earth. They do their best, poor beasts. They are treated with contempt by the farmers who only know about survival and feeding their families. I wonder to myself what conversations these animals would have with each other if they ever met. Their lives are so different and yet maybe they would have some experiences that were the same.
I have been having bad feelings lately. Feelings when my mouth goes dry and my fingers become shaky. My dreams of my village have been very frightening. In these dreams it is very dark and a black storm is making itself known. The villagers are inside their shacks, trembling and cold. All the lights are out and as I walk through the village my neighbours hiss: Get in, get in! She comes, she comes. And I know who comes because I can see her in the jungle shadow. There is a smell of rotted things and evil. Even in dreamland I can feel death spreading out from this thing. All Filipino children are told of the Aswang. In some stories she is a witch or a vampire. In others the figure is more flimsy, less solid, but the fact that she is demonic in some form is never questioned. The Aswang comes out at night and she feed off innocent people. If you dream that a person you know is attacked by the Aswang then that person is in great danger and their life could be threatened. Now in my dream mist swirls around my ankles like in a western thriller and as I walk to my parents’ house the air grows colder and I begin to shiver. My skin is clammy, and although I want to turn and run and hide my face in my grandmother’s skirts it is impossible. I am stilled with fear, until the spirit pushes me towards the house. It is dark but I hear a faint sucking sound like a dog lapping at cold mountain water. My father lies on the floor a few feet away, his head broken and the blood, oh! the blood. Everywhere. He is pale and lifeless. I push the heel of my hand into my mouth to stop the scream that lies in wait. Edging further into the room I see my mother, in the arms of the Aswang, who holds her like a lover. My mother wears the faded green shirt that she bakes in and a skirt of yellow flowers. Her legs drum gently against the dirt floor. Mama, I whisper, too scared to run at the demon and tear her away from my mother’s neck. The Aswang turns to face me, and smiles, showing sharp bloody teeth. Teeth stained with my mother’s blood. The witch rolls her eyes at me and laughs. Then I wake up sweating, shaking and with a terrible ache in my head. I lie on my bed with my face in the pillows that Ma’am brought me. I feel sick. My stomach churns with dread. I crawl to the kitchen, still early enough to be bathed in darkness, and fill a glass with water.
MA’AM LESLEY
35 Sabre Green
I replace the card that Ralph has scrawled to Jocelyn and heave myself off the bed. I don’t feel particularly upset and that surprises me. The overriding sensation is relief. Sex has been such a complicated affair for so long. I’ve never felt pangs of desire when reading risqué books or felt a stirring in my loins if something X-rated appears on television. The idea of pornography is bemusing. I have never used sexual oddities to stimulate me, but I can relate to why people would.
It all boils down to the simple fact that all I really want is an uncomplicated life. In a novel I would be the granite-faced housekeeper. Not the one from Mandalay – too much passion; but the solid, uncomplaining and dark-skirted figure whose presence is unnoticed for the most part. I would move silently through a dark house, gently guiding the other servants towards what was for the greater good and attending some austere house of God on the Sabbath. I would watch grim, slate-coloured clouds gathering over the house and grounds and cross myself with relish. I would be respected but avoided, with the taint of the religious novice about me.
I would eat my meals away from the other servants not because I was being snobbish, but because I cherish my privacy above anything else. And the others would recognise that and not think ill of me. I wasn’t born to be lady of the manor. I’ve been beaten and bullied into this role like an overstuffed matron squeezing into a corset from her youth.
Most people long to just be.
I long to do.
Although each day seems to meld and flow almost invisibly into another, I am aware that I’ve received no post for a long time. No letters or cards, packets, or even property adverts which, in Singapore, are relentless. As I’ve mentioned, the house phone too is silent. Perhaps Ralph doesn’t bother with the house phone any more. I stopped asking Ralph ‘difficult’ questions some time past. And any questions at all a few months ago.
His violence towards me has become habitual. I don’t think he means to hurt me but my ongoing incompetence is too great a disappointment for my husband, and each sight of me solidifies this disappointment further. A stone of abject failure cracked and hardened by ebb and relentless flow. I only wish he would refrain from striking me in front of Jocelyn. She enjoys my humiliation and there is nothing of sisterhood in her. Rather she is a single battleship, primed and ready to defend. She has spirit, woman, Ralph would snarl at me when I ventured to suggest Jocelyn was rude even when extended the utmost courtesy. And so I have left the subject of Jocelyn alone and she has risen and contorted and threaded herself through my life like beautiful but merciless bindweed. The balance in the house is changing and I need to be careful or I might lose my footprints in the shifting sands.
‘What are you doing?’ Her little-girl voice breaks over me like a black sea. ‘You get out, this my place, get out, GET OUT!’
And get out I do, although I am thoroughly pulled, pushed, slapped and cursed as Jocelyn shoves me out and onto the kitchen floor. Red faced, she screa
ms and screams and I am mesmerised. Swollen with fury and panting with the effort of dislodging a great lump from her bedroom, her tirade lasts some minutes. Finally, she slows and a sly cast shadows her face.
‘You clean kitchen floor to say sorry or I tell Mr Ralph.’
And that is that. The seminal moment between us and how it might go for the next hundred years. I have a choice. I can stand up and brush myself off and tell her to pack her things. She is leaving. I will phone the agency, in front of her, and tell them I am very dissatisfied and I want her out of my house immediately. I can ring a friend and discuss the horror of the situation over gin and tonics.
But what friend?
I do none of those things. Instead, I stare up at her and simply reply, ‘Yes.’
‘Yes, what?’
I hesitate, feeling myself on the brink of something extreme, like diving off a cliff hoping the wind will catch and spiral me down to the ground like a hopeful seed. But I am tired, so very tired of this pretence. Perhaps it is time to take a step back and just see where it takes me.
‘Yes, Ma’am.’
Our eyes meet again and she nods once. ‘You cook tonight. Or I tell Mr Ralph.’
I am surprised to feel a smile on my face.
I know and understand this place. It is where I have longed to be. And as I clean the kitchen floor, methodically and beautifully, I think about dinner and what I might cook. Some women have a talent for clean and tidy. I am one of them. I can put a household in order with the artistry of a blacksmith. A blueprint appears in my mind of where best to put things and where to store the leftovers and it all fits together like a dynamic puzzle. I write a list. Beef Wellington, with a ruby port jus, followed by chocolate mousse, and I dredge my memory for a suitable sombre red that Ralph will approve of. I trudge up the stairs to my bedroom. I am fat and unfit and sweating like a racehorse.
Bitter Leaves Page 5