‘Shammi, Shammi?’ Ebony Ma’am questions. I am overcome with my possibilities. I am overcome by Shammi. An inelegant girl poised for life. The grace and state of my rose-chipped future in place like mosaic.
MADAM EUNICE
There are so many ghosts here. That is my first impression. Hazy, desiccated husks that move around stickily, slightly out of focus like an eye with a displaced lens. They haunt the corridors and bedrooms, the recreation room and the doctors’ offices. And they visit me in my room to try to mock me. But I know their stories now and these ghosts have colourful, murderous pasts. We aren’t here for kicking the dog. Ours are beastly, dreadful, Straits Times front-page deeds. And yet, in this house of shame, in this warren of lies and badness, I feel safe. I don’t have to pretend to be the slicked-back, capable, glacial Asian warrior, a terracotta mother crumbling from the inside. I am a monument to blessed relief.
I have a pair of pyjamas. They are lilac with tiny jade flowers, homage to the jade figurine that I became when I stopped listening. Once you remove yourself from the aural world it all simplifies. Turn off the chatter, the voices, and the agony of the hum. Only a true introvert or the mad will appreciate the pain of noise. And am I mad? Possibly. It is certainly the consensus. A psychotic break of some sort brought on by a hormonal imbalance. I toss my head at the allusion to the menopause. That is more insulting to me, as a woman, than the brooch of madness they have pinned to my chest. I believe most conscientiously in my haunting.
And I won’t betray it just to be able to leave here. I refuse to simper like the old trout in the next ward. Chun Tao is a peach past her sell-by date, but she’s still game. Her face is an ornamental koi pond. Generally murky with vivid slashes of colour. She wears a deep red, waxy lipstick that seeps into the lines around her mouth like blood poisoning. But her eyes glitter blackly from sockets that are shrinking into death.
This is different from the last time, certainly more serious. Last time was baby blues and now it’s murder. But they can dress it up how they like; it was self-defense when all is said and done. Of course, I have repeatedly told them this. There was no trial so I was unable to defend myself. I was diagnosed and sectioned back into the care of the Woodbridge Hospital in Buangkok which is now the much more formal ‘Insititute of Mental Health’. This hospital was founded in the nineteenth century, and in true Asian style, because we don’t do over-embellishment. A cow is a cow. A lunatic is a lunatic. It was named the Insane Hospital and then changed to Lunatic Asylum, which I respect more. Why dress up this place with woods and bridges? Most of us are never getting out. Most of us don’t want to.
I’ve stopped my children coming here for obvious reasons. That is all I want to say about them.
There is a smell that pervades these corridors. They reek quietly of abandonment, shame, disease and days-old Bok Choi. The food is foolish and inept, mush for sloppy minds. They should feed us hard edges to make us crisper. The drugs are making my brain feel like a trampoline. The regime or protocol they have chosen performs a dance of death in my head. I resist atrophy. I refuse to concede. The mice that squeak about at night might very well work for the ministry of state security. A lot of the ghosts think that. There is more paranoia here than in a Korean general’s medal tally. I laugh at that but it is an ugly sound as if I have forgotten how to externalise myself. I don’t want to be noticed like Chun Tao, her tragic skin leaving a trail of crumbs in her wake. Don’t follow the crumbs. Bad things happen when you follow the trail. Just ask Chun Tao’s maid. She can tell you stories of needles and acid. Except she can’t.
Or Ying Ying. I’ve no idea about the authenticity of her name but everybody calls her that. It’s soft, gentle and sounds like a female panda. Except her favourite trick is to smear shit on her hands and then wipe them on the faces of as many people as possible. Something bad happened to Ying Ying. Rumours and legends abound in here. Some say she was a North Vietnamese spy and was tortured by the Americans, others that she was gang-raped by some border drug-mules caught in a heavy rainstorm and sheltering in a cave that Ying Ying stumbled upon in the dark. All I know is that she doesn’t like to be touched and it’s not good to look her fully in the eye. Like all wounded animals she reacts with shocking violence.
I nurture the climate of avoidance in here. Although you get used, shockingly quickly, to the grunts and screams of this monkey house, I would still rather have isolation. I find the doctors incredibly frustrating. They have no variation on a 1960s model of treatment, which is very drugs-based. Group therapy is pointless but they push it relentlessly. Even I pretended catatonia from time to time to give myself some breathing space. The less people believe my story the more sharp edges I develop.
To aid the recovery I’m not the least interested in, my doctor has painstakingly told me that the fortune teller never existed. That he went personally to the HBD I described and interviewed the taxi driver that I had ridden with. The taxi driver completely denied ever seeing me after studying my picture minutely for three minutes. What would a stupid pig-faced man from farmer stock understand about the machinations of my mind?
I’m cultured, educated and a delight in social circles. I will not have the last twenty years stripped away from me over the demise of that useless woman. Soiling my soul with my efforts to support my husband. If I could just pop home I could use my secret papers and pictures as leverage. Not that I want to.
But that pantu! Not a word from him, and the only letter containing notices of impending divorce. The irony is metal on my tongue. It is a bride’s scold, it is bound feet, and it is she-ganado xiuchi. When I think of him I ask the little girl to seek him out with her black eyes and maw for a mouth. Sometimes I ask her to move something in the house. Sometimes I ask far worse. So far she has refused.
There is a Japanese cast to her eye and I wonder where she goes and whom she tortures when I can’t see her. What keeps her here close to me? At first I was relieved that the child turned up. I asked questions, demanded answers and eventually threw things at her. Now I just gain a subtle comfort. I like to think that she is perhaps an ancestor come to advise and protect. But the malice in her eyes and the twist of her mouth make me doubt it.
I still have my jade figurine. I found it in my hand when the police roused me. And slipped it into my crotch for safekeeping. It is only three inches tall but, as our culture dictates, gold is valuable and yǒu is invaluable. My little sculpture is an heirloom from my grandmother. A lotus flower, from the Quing dynasty and carved by a delicate hand. The top half is a vivid green but the bottom is a milky white. When I was a child I liked to imagine who had carved it and to whom it had been given. My grandmother would tell me the story of its inception, when I was ill, to soothe me.
A young craftsman had been commissioned to make the treasure for a very rich man. A mandarin who was as powerful as he was wealthy. His cruelty was legendary and celebrated. Many peasants worked hard on his land and, for sport, he would ride through the fields picking out young women for his sadistic pleasure. On this particular day a plain young woman whose demure and diffident posture inflamed his lust caught his eye. He sent a message to her parents to expect a cart to collect their daughter the next night. The parents were distraught but too frightened of the merchant to refuse. The mother counselled her daughter to be obedient and stay silent on all matters of pain and she would survive the night. The daughter had a secret love, the young craftsman who had been commissioned to make the jade figurine for the merchant. When he heard of the merchant’s plans he carved the means of escape in tiny detail deep into the leaves of the lotus and sent it to his love via a crane that he had tamed. The young woman obeyed his instructions before the merchant’s henchmen could collect her and they were able to run far away to safety.
In retribution the merchant murdered the girl’s parents and nailed their bodies to planks that remained there until even the carrion birds turned their beaks away in disgust. When the girl heard the news, her heart tore into tin
y pieces and her tears filled with pain that turned the jade white at the bottom of the figurine as a symbol of her lack of filial obedience and her selfishness. Distraught and racked with guilt, she threw herself from the highest mountain she could find to atone for her sin.
I revelled in the beauty of this tragedy when I was younger. Snuggling into my grandmother’s bony frame I swore to myself I would be obedient to my parents and my future husband. And I kept that promise.
We Chinese are very keen on paying blood with blood. Sometimes it is the only way to get closure on a difficult situation and our stoicism as individuals is deemed a cultural virtue. In the face of hardship and lean times the China man will work his fields harder and eat smaller portions. Shortage and need are very familiar figures to the farmer peasant; without them they do not thrive. I have always admired this desire for hunger and restraint. Like the stick girls in Ward Three, it takes a very real discipline to train yourself to refuse nurture. I haven’t eaten enough for twenty-five years and I’ve come to realise that I also thrive on less.
My environment is not ideal or aesthetically pleasing but it provides a cradle of safety. There are no obstacles. No acts of revenge. Time actually passes smoothly. There are no choices and no responsibilities. It is restful, in the main, and my only frustration is the child and my inability to engage her. I’ve ceased mentioning the girl to the doctors who raise eyebrows and talk about breaking through my psychosis. Sanity is hard work and thinking too much makes me anxious.
I clutch my figurine and repeat my grandmother’s story until I self-soothe enough to stop rocking.
Of the robed figure I have neither seen nor heard anything, and the air still streams around me and the clattering mass still belches and curses. The acute and unbearable beauty of feeling time stop has never returned. I am bereft without its truth. Sometimes I think he was a motif of my life. The jealousy of Little Ping in corporeal form, or my traitor husband’s lust, perhaps.
It is strangely relaxing not to have a plan. I am not puzzled about my future. Futures in places like Woodbridge are precarious, mercurial things. They are best not tackled too often. The doctors never mention them and we don’t think to. Why would we where the present is permanent and psychotropic drugs contain us so masterfully?
Best to avoid bloody images from a past that are blurred and water damaged. Staying in the present is safer.
A ghost wanders in to gibber at me. A nurse to advise that group is starting. And I take my time. Consider my options.
And the day she returns is a day of ambiguity. The snow falls heavily outside my window and the palm trees are coated like iced macaroons. I see a deer grazing in the grounds, eyes alert and gleaming with cold, each breath released in a plume of chilled smoke. Nostrils snort angrily against the ice that threatens to form there. Jade statues have appeared overnight and glow with cold, suggestive of seaweed sculptures in the depths of a northern ocean. I haven’t felt weather cold for many years and am entranced. My pyjamas are scant comfort against the chill but I am beyond caring and barely feel it. Even my little ghoul seems friendlier today. Perhaps it is because I am compliant and happy to follow where she leads.
Up, up, up we go – ascending an intricate spiral staircase that I was unaware existed before now. The higher we get the colder it becomes and my body starts to feel sluggish. I notice piles of snow heaped in the corners of the staircase as we ascend, and icicles of differing sizes hang dagger-like from the cornices and ceilings. A large wooden door appears around the next corner and the little golem pushes it open to reveal a snow garden, high above the hospital. It is a replica of what I could see from my cell window and I hobble forward, my legs becoming blue and useless in the freezing temperatures, towards a statue of a sea monster. It is magnificent and I turn to include the little girl, but can’t see her through the snow that is being whipped up by a wind that has never seen the Arctic.
I stagger sideways and find myself nearer to the ledge than I had thought. My poor feet are mottled ice colours and marbled with freezing blood. And the gale howls with malice, pushing and shoving me nearer to the edge of the roof.
It is how I imagine drowning to be. When a wave sucks you under and traps you on the seabed. Every time I try to suck in a breath it is snatched away from me by the cruel wind. I am exhausted and unable to do anything but shove feebly back at a force I can’t see or fathom.
When the push comes it is almost gentle. A tiny hand in the small of my back forces my balance and quite suddenly I am in the air. Flying like Yuki-Onna, the snow woman, my hair streaming behind me and my skin glowing like alabaster and for seconds I am flush with love. For this ice world and my children. I hope they will remember me in their dreams and when they travel to frozen places, and keep my death warm in their hearts when they drown their own children in love.
And that my memory will be more than just of a brittle woman who failed to understand her fragile nature and who will perhaps be thought of with some kindness when darkness falls and the cicadas begin their choral works.
No pain. No pain at all. A blinding cold and heavy eyelids defeat me and my last, tiny smile is for a child with bleak eyes and terror for a mouth who stands beside me like a sentinel.
LUCILLA
19 Sabre Green
I’m walking the dog in the little park opposite the house tonight. Rory is with me on his blue scooter. He hurtles towards hard surfaces with no fear. A smile of the thrill of it plastered on his little face. I nod and kumasta other helpers. Some can talk, others motion with their eyes that Chinese employers are nearby. It is the way of things. Rory scampers towards the slides and swings. Look, Lully, look! my darling boy shouts as he attempts a grand gesture of a leap or bound. The other children look so pale in comparison to his ruddy, western complexion. If I took him home to my village he would be adopted by every mother there. I think Rory would like the mountains and streams. We have fish there and they nip and dart in the moonlight. We could waggle our feet in the cold mountain water and squeal. Eat bananas from the trees and name all the new goats. I think my darling would really enjoy that.
I sit by the other helpers and nod to the moans and groans about employers. I have nothing to add and instead fix my gaze on Rory. Some of the Chinese children are refusing to play with him and I feel my hackles rise. It’s a good thing Ma’am isn’t here. She doesn’t stand for that sort of behaviour and strides towards the children, eyes blazing and skin flushed and talks quietly to them until they leave ashamed and sheepish.
She is a warrior when it comes to her child. Rory shrugs it off. He is secure in the love of his parents and the innocent assumption that the world adores him too. It is a good way to grow up. He is kind for his age, gentle even with insects, but brutal with his Lego bricks.
I will miss this park. I will miss this routine. If you have very little control in your life then routine is comforting. I will miss the rain trees and the Asian doves. And I will miss my Ma’am and Rory the most. I don’t want another employer but I’m unsure about Europe. I don’t feel it is right in my heart. One might call it instinct. I must talk to my Ma’am about it. She will know what to do and give me options. There is freedom to be had in choices if you are lucky enough to be given them. Most maids are unable to even trace the word let alone benefit from its meaning. They are unused to liberty and are anxious about the larger boundaries. I suppose I am just like them, really.
Afraid of the larger boundaries.
Rory is charming the other helpers. They adore him because he makes exaggerated gestures of chivalry. He will bow slightly and say in a loud voice, after you! And the Filipinas giggle and pinch him gently. Sometimes Ma’am comes to the park with delicious treats that she has baked herself. Brownies oozing richness or shortbread, sweet and melt in the mouth.
The Indonesian and Myanmar maids sit apart usually. They are not encouraged to mix or socialise and usually their employers circle them like hyenas, alert for any weakness or infringement. These girls are hol
low-eyed and listless. They watch the children play with faces devoid of expression from months of hard work and lack of food. Their employers, the ones who choose village girls precisely for their naivety and circumstances, take advantage of their willingness. They come to Singapore warm-skinned and light of mind and leave raped by poverty and ill-treatment.
I always try a tentative smile at them. Sometimes, the delight at receiving some positive attention imbues the faces with the most wonderful light. Gold and green suffuse their round, beautiful faces and their eyes close with joy and I get a glimpse of the village girl surrounded by family and love and I’m filled with a bitter sweetness. Not like eating chocolate and salted nuts together. But the sour–sweet taste of pickled plums, cloying and sharp with no respite. Other times, they just stare or drop their faces. Sadness haunts their eyes and hopelessness turns their bodies into elderly versions of themselves. Lack of hope ages them more surely than time could ever hope to.
I shake my head to rid myself of this malaise that seems to sink into my pores. I try a smile out on my face and search for Rory. There he is, balancing, on high, arms thrown wide, face to the sky. My darling is exhilarated by his life, the moments, the possibilities, the genuine joy of being five and free. I hope I have children. Filipina women make wonderful mothers. It is our gift from God, a talent as important as being able to paint or speak well to a crowd. We are changing the future within our wombs. The life we bear grows and shapes and directly impacts the universe. Nothing is really more important. Perhaps men have always been jealous of this gift. What other reason could they possibly have to treat women with so much hate and suspicion throughout history? We have paid for their collective guilt for centuries. And we have paid in blood and pain and disgrace. We have picked ourselves up time and time again and succeeded in surviving.
Bitter Leaves Page 22