In the Philippines what happens is we go to an agency, and they represent us in Singapore or in Arabia. I wouldn’t go to Arabia. Already I have heard that two maids have lost their heads and many others are beaten for small things like not bowing low enough. There is no comeback if you get into trouble and no help either. Most of the girls who go to Arab countries are Muslim. They have to wear the veil and be totally obedient. Worse even than Singapore – the Arab employer is even worse than the Chinese employer. Here at least there are some employment laws that protect parts of us. The bric-a-brac parts, odds and ends that don’t really add up to anything for anybody except the government, my Ma’am says. Many maids do not read well and cannot check if what their employer tells them is right. My Ma’am never makes me sign anything without reading it first to me. She goes through it slow so I understand her words. It is not always what it says that I don’t understand, just that she talks very fast sometimes and we laugh about it. At the agency in Manila the contract I sign says what I am entitled to. Cellphone, day off, breaks from work and a good wage. This contract I am signing seems good. It gives me some freedom and guarantee I can contact my mother and father.
This is what happens when I arrive in Singapore. We go through customs and immigration with our representative. She doesn’t talk much but does answer our questions. When we are led outside we are met by the agency owner who gestures to a filthy van. Inside it smells of sweat and smoke and something else. I can identify it as evaporated fear. We huddle in the back like frightened mice trying to make conversation to help us feel comfort.
‘Where are you from?’ I ask the young girl who is trying to be bright and brave beside me.
‘My name is Clarita, from Manila. I live with my parents and we need the money.’ She shrugs as if all this is to be expected. ‘I am going to work hard and marry a nice western man. I’m still young and pretty. They like us like that.’
I smile encouragingly. ‘I hope it works out for you, just remember to read everything before you sign it.’
Another shrug. ‘I don’t read well. But I have other talents,’ the girl says, thrusting her tiny breasts out towards the setting sun. Her laugh is like a wind chime. I notice that the two men watch her carefully, as if memorising her for later. She is so young with the innocence of youth that can believe, I am invincible. The world is mine.
I know the world is not hers. I know this world will crush her within a few weeks.
The agency owner who looks like the devil with black hair that sticks up and red, red lips like bloodstains shouts often, banging her hand on the steering wheel for effect.
‘You will not talk!’ she shouts. ‘You keep quiet and speak when we tell you!’
We exchange looks because we are unsure what to do. This is what I expect but her attitude still shakes me. Even Clarita looks nervous. Her brashness disappears for one moment. Away from our families, most of us for first time. We are paralysed with anxiety. One girl who I learn is called Ana has left her babies behind and milk leaks onto her blouse. She probably paid 600 pesos for the cheap, flimsy thing to impress in the big city. She cries silently rocking her head from side to side. I reach out quietly and take her hand and squeeze. She squeezes my hand back tightly but her weeping continues.
We drive for what seems like a long time. The adrenaline is wearing off and I can feel myself shivering. I have such foreboding about this place. I cross myself quickly and say a prayer to St Jude. The sky is streaked with purple clouds as dusk settles on Singapore. It is a wondrous sight so I try to point it out to the other young women to raise their spirits. Grey faces and swollen eyes turn to the skyline and try hard for a smile. It is clear we are facing a harsh time. I do not know if we will be taken to a brothel and forced to work. We are at the mercy of the woman driving and the granite-faced men she has watching us.
The city flashes with artificial light. Buildings tower above us and there is a scattering of people on the streets. I see Chinese women who look like dolls tottering towards bars and Bangla men in groups whooping and chatting like noisy cubs. I see a handsome western man, even in the dark his blonde hair shines like the gumamela flower. He is tall and confident and is much older than his girlfriend. I am amazed to see that he is holding hands with this tiny Chinese girl. She looks self-satisfied and haughty. As we pass them she looks into my eyes and draws her index finger across her neck. I rear back in shock at this violent gesture from such an innocent-looking girl.
After that I keep facing forward and pray silently for protection and peace. The van changes direction and from the position of dying sun I think it must be north. The roads are smooth but the driving is haphazard and we are flung backwards and forwards against each other and the seats, which prompts sharp cries. One of the granite men cuffs the girl nearest to him across the head as easily as yawning. After that we practise silence.
The van pulls up by a large house in a very tidy neighbourhood. Even in the darkness I can see how clean everything is. Not a blossom or a banana leaf out of place. I wonder who is responsible for this cleanliness because it still has not occurred to me that there are thousands of maids who rise early and continue to work constantly to keep this Singaporean fantasy alive and that I am about to join them. Struck by the strict and regimented look of this street I think to myself that I much prefer the wild and bedraggled beauty of the jungle around my village and the mountain streams that cascade down slab rock and the vines that weave into pools of pure cold.
We are pushed out of the van and made to stand in line in silence. I see a flicker of movement from the corner of my eye and turn my head to see a slight girl, Indonesian probably, cleaning a car. Her movements are practised and silent. She catches me looking and nods at me. Somehow the gesture gives me a little hope and I turn up one corner of my mouth in reply.
The wrought iron gates swing open with a gentle thud and we are herded through them and up a driveway towards a wooden door at the side of the building. We are pushed into a small area which I realise is the laundry room. Ten of us squeezed together, nervous and fretful, realising that our situation is very hazardous. A few straw mats litter the floor and large containers of water are dotted about. It smells of women and fear. We are lined up roughly against the longest side of the room.
‘Passports and phones,’ Devil Woman barks.
Silently we hand over our documents and phones, our links with our families.
‘Please, Ma’am, when can I have my phone back, to contact my babies, please?’
Devil Woman’s response is to reward her with cobra stare.
‘This your phone?’
‘Yes, Ma’am.’
The silence threatens to drown us as it stretches out. At last, Ana whimpers and Devil Woman responds by dropping her phone on the floor and pounding it with her foot until it shatters. Plastic and rubber skitters across the floor.
‘Now you won’t miss it, lah. I do you big favour.’
I see that Ana is frozen with anguish and panic. This throwaway cruelty is to become very familiar.
‘You sleep here. Too late to eat now. Too much food make you lazy. My name Madam Joo. You call me Madam. You work here every day until we get you jobs. You work very hard or I send you back to Philippines. I keep your passport and phone. Safer that way. Also the law.’
Of course it is not a Singaporean law at all but it is Madam Joo’s law. She is our lifeline and our deity and our keeper. She is very convincing and I have no doubt any one of us who defy her will be dealt with harshly. We settle down for the night and sleep a little, especially the village girls who are used to mats and earth floors. When we need to relieve ourselves we knock on the door tentatively and when nobody comes we squat over the sink in shame. The heat builds up in the tiny room very quickly and the stink of our waste makes the humidity even more cloying. The fragrant frangipani from outside have no place here. Cockroaches run up and down the walls but the drone of mosquitoes sends me into a reluctant sleep.
The nex
t morning most of us are awake by the time the banging on the door starts. Up, up! she shouts. Banging the surfaces all the time. We are pushed out of the door and down a corridor. Another tiny tiled room opens to the left. All of us are shunted into this room.
‘Take your clothes off. Shower now. Dirty dirty. If you use toilet only flush after four girl use. No flush after every girl. No waste water. Go to jail!’
If we take too long she bangs at the door and tell us to hurry.
Always Bang! Bang! Hurry! Hurry! Many years later when I watch a film about a prisoner of war camp I am rendered dumb by the similarity. The same shouting and the same daily humiliations.
When I first tell my Ma’am the beginning of my story she cover her mouth with her palm and cry as if she is in pain. My Ma’am feels things very deeply. She explains to me about the Holocaust. About the terrible suffering of the Jewish people and other ‘undesirables’ during the reign of the Nazis. She tells me that the guards used to harass the inmates like that in the death camps. Camps, she tells me, where men, women and children were worked or starved to death. Or were selected for the gas chamber and burning. I listen to Ma’am in silence and then we both weep for different things and the same things.
Sometimes now I still fall asleep with in my ear the shouts of Madam Joo and in my head the memory of those men with their sour breath and their roughness and the blood trickling down my thighs onto the cracked tiles and my innocence lost in a careless brutal moment.
MA’AM LESLEY
35 Sabre Green
I haven’t ventured out of the house for a long time. Jocelyn has always done the shopping and everything has quite miraculously appeared where it should. I can’t remember when I stopped caring about what I looked like or indeed what Ralph did or didn’t do but for the first time I have a sense of purpose.
It is desperately hot. One of those Singapore afternoons when the sky burns with blue and the humidity sticks to your lungs making breathing difficult. Large as I am, it is even more of a struggle for me, and I find I have to rest several times in the shade of a banyan tree. Sometimes, I wish we lived in Fiji where fat women are idolised. I suppose I could lose weight but I just haven’t the energy. I know that sounds odd but it’s nothing to do with being lazy. I feel so low sometimes that I just want to lie in a darkened room, go to sleep and wake up years later. I imagine waking in a room covered in thick cobwebs. I stagger to the mirror, collapsing several times because my muscles have wasted, but when I study my reflection I am beautiful, slender, with taut facial skin that radiates with vitality. When I realise that Ralph has abandoned me I experience an intense, almost orgasmic surge of euphoria. I am free. Then a door will bang somewhere and I am jerked into the present with all the finesse of an unstable blancmange.
I have brought a bottle of water with me and gulp at it. When I set off on this adventure I had planned for the shops being a twenty-minute walk away. That would be twenty minutes for a person who isn’t carrying an extra four stone, but I am determined. I want to prove to myself that I can still do normal things. And even though I must cut a comical figure struggling down the concrete pavements being passed by grandmothers and the tiny birdlike women, I keep going.
Entering the shopping mall is a harder task. I panic at the thought of so many people at once, but caution myself that if I focus on the task in hand I can achieve this. If you are not used to social interaction, if your world has become so reduced in size so that peering through the curtains is how you stay in touch with people, then shopping malls are terrifying things. The noise for a start seems deafening. We live in a very quiet area. One of those throwbacks to 1950s Singapore. A gentle, green enclave in the middle of an urban catastrophe. Even taxi drivers have trouble finding it and you have to shout, Jalan Lempeng, Jalan Lempeng, at them. For some reason the Chinese don’t become offended by shouting. They seem to relish it, even approve of it.
Even though there is much I don’t understand about Chinese culture there are parts of it that I really do enjoy. So much of it is jolly and proud. No one worries about making too much noise and red is prominent. Berry, crimson, terracotta, blood-orange, cherry, brick, scarlet, auburn, fire. I love them all. My favourite lipstick that I have but never wear is shockingly, wonderfully, unapologetically red. A sinful red. I don’t wear it because Ralph told me I looked like a leaking Marseille whore. After my marriage Ralph took exception to make-up, boxed up my Chanel lipsticks and Laura Mercier foundation, my fragrant, comforting Sunday Riley cleansers and a huge palette of Mac eyeshadows, and dumped them next to our bins.
The sliding doors open and I catch the most magnificent wave of air conditioning which offers enough relief from the heat for me to push through the doors to the icy mecca beyond. I heave a sigh of pleasure as my skin starts to pucker with a sharp chill and it is delicious. I walk through the mall to the end past the little pop-up stalls that sell everything from painting-by-numbers sets to dumplings to impossibly small underwear. The Asian children are adorable and I love watching them running about like turbo butterflies. I can only do it for so long before a lump in my throat warns me that I shouldn’t dwell.
Wandering through Cold Storage I notice a surprisingly large amount of western foods and become unfashionably joyful at finding a Waitrose cheddar stocked amongst the Australian cheeses. I reach into the chill cabinets for flaky pastry, a large cut of beef, some foie grass, two bars of very dark chocolate, some cream (Australian) and free range eggs. I slip an extra big bar of Dairy Milk in for me. I speculate I will need some fuel for the long slog home. But chocolate never tastes as good here. I think it’s the heat or the excess sugar. It melts so quickly you don’t get that rich sensory experience in your mouth.
Singaporean malls are not lush, fluid experiences but sharp and harsh. Electricity rages through the floors, powering the AC units and the pulsating lights, and hiding is impossible. The pop-up stalls are filled with traders shouting and gesticulating. I have a fierce hunger for gentle, cheerful hours spent around the Fishponds Farmers’ Market in Bristol, which hums with a silent language that I understand perfectly. But I pay for the shopping and congratulate myself that for once I am part of the greater world. The cashiers are cheerful and polite as they pack all the grocery bags and lift them into a trolley which I wheel out into the purging heat. I head for one of the sky-blue Comfort cabs that wait passively outside. I gesture, the driver nods in agreement and pops the boot, waiting stoically as I heave the bags into the stifling space. Only a very few cab drivers will actually help you with the shopping; most are content to watch.
The journey back is uneventful; I direct him through the roads until we hit Sabre Green. I notice with some surprise that Ralph’s car is already in the driveway and feel wrong-footed at this sudden change in routine.
As I push my way into the house I hear giggling from upstairs and then Ralph’s meaty guffaw. I feel my jaw clench painfully but I resume unpacking, stopping from time to time to swig gulps of icy water from a bottle in the fridge, and I realise that I am excited. For the possibilities of tonight. Perhaps, at last, I can show Ralph that I’m not just an obese and totally inept past-it wife. That there still might be some use in me after all. I lean on the kitchen counter and smile to myself.
The click of heels on the stairs and the laughter that follows are ominous and I stiffen with worry. My husband and Jocelyn appear together in front of me. She is wearing one of my Alice Temperley dresses, an empire-waisted one that dazzles with sparkling stones, and she is weighed down with my jewellery. I don’t mind this so much except that the pearl earrings in her lobes were my grandmother’s.
Without thinking I hold my hand out and demand them back. Jocelyn looks outraged, but Ralph is incandescent. He walks away and returns a few seconds later with his father’s old walking stick. And he sets about me with a routine I am familiar with. Long, swishing thuds on my back, avoiding the kidneys and short, sharp lashes on my face and shins. The pain is an excruciating almost tender thing li
ke when you’ve a terrible toothache that has gone on too long and you can begin to identify the different types of pain through throbs to hot lances of agony, then the sudden retreat before it starts again.
‘Please,’ I murmur. ‘Ralph, please, not my grandmother’s earrings.’
Jocelyn’s giggling is the last thing I remember.
I don’t know how much later, but these are the next things that I know: that I am on a morphine drip and I have concussion. That my jaw, miraculously, was left alone – I don’t think it would have survived another beating. Ralph comes to see me in hospital only once to explain the rules. As he towers over me, the nurses mistaking his attention for love, he makes it quite clear what he expects. I will not speak about this to the medical staff. I can say I fell down a short flight of stairs at home after one too many. After that, I am very much alone, and instead of using the time to get stronger and seek help I feel my resolve draining away with the saline drips. I am asked about my injuries but in a brusque way, and the nursing staff are polite but not comforting, and there are moments when I wish I had died.
After ten lonely, painful days I sign my discharge papers and sit on the hospital bed, a Gucci suitcase that I don’t remember buying at my feet, wondering what to do.
The truth of it is I have nowhere else to go except for ‘home’.
Clutching a bag of opiate medicines I return to my house of pain.
SHAMMI
12 Pasir Ris Terrace, Tampines
I wish I could wake without this ache in my heart. Something feels broken, bent, disconnected. I’ve become uninterested in my welfare. Day after day I feel myself becoming more numb; even the slaps from the children do not hurt as they once did. The humiliation burns less bright now.
This Madam is very fussy and she expects high standards. Before, she had two maids to do all the cooking, cleaning, washing, looking after the aged grandmother who also has a memory disease. Care for the children, put them to bed and feed them. For these two weeks it is just me.
Bitter Leaves Page 7