My mother is one those rare gems in her generation who can be utterly honest about her background.
‘They always found out where we lived, and then they’d come and make trouble for me. Very domineering, your pa’s ma. So was my mother and Uncle Kim Hock’s mother. Nonyas are all like that.’
‘Looks like it runs in the family, Ma. Are you going to be like that when we marry someone you don’t like?’ my sister teased her.
‘Don’t you worry, girl. Why do I want to sit at home to control my children? Sudah-lah! Waste my time! I’d rather go travelling with your pa. My dressmaking business, that’s enough to keep me busy.’
My mother, in her late sixties, has turned into a regular modern Singaporean grandma. One of those who tog up in leather boots and jeans to do line dancing at the community centre. You’ll never catch me doing that! She’s come a long way, my mother. From despised second wife in conservative Penang to admired grandma with a dressmaking business in modern Singapore. That’s the kind of success you never read about in The Straits Times. Who would tell the reporter? Anyway, I was going to tell you another successful love story, but my mother is the better storyteller. Let her tell you about Uncle Kim Hock and his wife.
My Mother’s Version
When Kim Hock was born, such a big to-do it was! After six daughters, finally a gem! A son! My god! His parents were so happy. They named him Kim Hock, meaning ‘golden prosperity’. But he was a sickly baby, our Kim Hock. Pale skin, dark curly hair, prone to fits and fevers. They nearly lost him when he was three months old. So his mother, my aunt, took him to the temple. They were Taoist, not Buddhist. They gave him to the gods for protection. The medium of the Ninth Prince of the Jade Emperor pierced his baby ears.
‘He’s got to wear earrings,’ the medium said. ‘Must also take a girl’s name. Call him Noi Noi.’
What to do? Kim Hock had to take a girl’s pet name to fool the spirits into thinking that he was a girl and not harm him. Don’t you laugh, girl. That’s what we believed in those days.
My aunt dressed him in frills and lace till he was six, you know, the poor boy. When he went to primary school, the boys used to call him Ah Girl! In good fun, lah. It’s not like the brutal taunting in the schools nowadays. Nooo, in those days in Penang and Singapore, when we were growing up, we really believed in names and spirits. Better not laugh at other people’s beliefs. Some mothers made their sons wear earrings till they were in their teens. In those days boys didn’t want to wear earrings but their parents forced them to. Nowadays boys want to wear earrings and their parents forbid them to. It’s an upside-down world. Seesawing like fashion. Even our religious beliefs have changed.
In those days people really believed that they could pull the wool over the spirits’ eyes with a girl’s name. Yes, we really believed in those days. Why do you think there are so many Chinese boys with names like Pig, Dog or Horse? They only changed names when they entered secondary school. Then Pig, Dog or Horse became Jimmy, Frankie or Elvis Presley. They changed their names when they changed themselves. Don’t laugh. Our names give us our identity. Change your name and you change your identity and destiny. I’m not joking. Kim Hock should have changed his name back to Kim Hock when he was a grown-up. But no, his mother, so scared to lose him, insisted on calling him Noi Noi even after he got married. And so he remained Noi Noi. Mild mannered and adoi! So fair some more, and utterly obedient and filial. At least on the surface, lah! He never went against his mother and she doted on him. Spoilt him rotten. When he had to wear his first pair of shorts to attend school, he threw an almighty tantrum. He stamped his foot and refused. But by then his father, my uncle, had had enough.
‘You’re a boy! Wear shorts! Wear trousers!’
A big quarrel erupted between my aunt and uncle.
‘He’s my heart, my life. If anything happens to him, I hold you responsible! Let your ancestors know that! He’s their only grandson!’
‘Yes! Their grandson! Not their granddaughter! Let him wear trousers!’
Noi Noi was trussed into trousers. He wore them at school like a punishment. The moment he came home from school, he wore his sarong.
He was very smart, I tell you. He did very well at school. He even sat for the Senior Cambridge Examination, and passed with flying colours, as they say. It was a very prestigious exam in those days. Not like your ordinary O level these days. My uncle threw a big feast. He was a court interpreter, a very high post in those days under the British. See. Look at this photo here. Can you see the slim young man in a white suit? That’s Kim Hock. See how he’s surrounded by his six sisters? This photo marks the height of the family’s glory. Before the war. Before the Japanese bombed Singapore. Before the soldiers took my uncle away. They never found his body, you know. People said he was shot because he worked for the British.
The family suffered during the war. Truly suffered. Before the war they’d owned several houses. After the war they were left with that one house in Irvine Road where we rented a room. Before the war they also had a car and a chauffeur. Pak Hassan used to drive Kim Hock to school. My uncle had planned to send him to England for further studies. Then the war destroyed all his plans. Kim Hock’s eldest sister died in the last year of the Japanese Occupation. His sister’s baby was stillborn. Another sister hanged herself. Raped by unknown assailants, people said. That happened in the second year of the war. The third sister joined a Buddhist nunnery. The other three got married. So Kim Hock was left with his mother, a poor widow by then. Poor by their standards, lah. They still owned the house in Irvine Road. My parents owned nothing.
Since he was the only son, it was his duty to marry. The continuation of the family line rested on him alone. His mother chose a girl from a poor family. Her name was Gek Sim. It means ‘heart of jade’. Very appropriate name for her, if you ask me. Jade is a very hard stone. Translucent but not transparent. We never knew what she was thinking about. That Gek Sim was a closed book. Her father was a store clerk, her mother a housewife. Eight daughters and two sons. Ten children. Gek Sim was their eldest daughter.
‘So her parents were very grateful to me,’ my aunt used to boast. ‘They almost went down on their knees to thank me. I could get a girl from a wealthy family for my Noi Noi. But listen, a girl from a poor family is more obedient. And she was born in the year of the Rat. Noi Noi was born in the year of the Ox. Rat and Ox—a good pair. And their horoscopes matched. If I’d known she would turn out like this, I wouldn’t have even looked at her.’
My aunt blamed the temple priest for the match. But she herself was to blame. She’d forgotten our ancient stories. The humble rat was a clever little thing. Instead of being the last, it became the first creature to reach heaven on New Year’s Day when it jumped onto the ox’s nose during the race to heaven. It stood up on the ox’s nose and stretched its body forwards. That was how the rat became the first animal in the Chinese zodiac.
Anyway, Noi Noi was nineteen when he married Gek Sim, sixteen. Aye, they married young in those days. My aunt was a terrible mother-in-law. She ruled the house in Irvine Road like those matriarchs you see in Cantonese opera. Poor Gek Sim. She had to learn how to do everything my aunt’s way. Nothing pleased my aunt. I tell you, girl, if Gek Sim had been from a rich family, I don’t think my aunt would have been so hard on her. Once, she threw a whole pot of chicken curry onto the floor because she didn’t like the way Gek Sim had cooked it. The poor girl spent the entire morning on her knees scrubbing out the kitchen. For a week she had to cook and eat curry for breakfast, lunch and dinner till she threw up. When her buah keluak chicken stew was too watery, my aunt caned her. Oh ya, she used the cane on her daughter-in-law. Mothers-in-law could do that in those days.
‘Chi-la-kak!’ she cursed. ‘You bring no silver and no gold! No manners and no cooking skills! The gold on you, who gave you? All from me! Your father can’t even afford a gold chain. Now I ask you for buah keluak. What do I get? Didn’t your mother teach you to cook? Do you cook like thi
s in your mother’s kitchen? Were you cooking to feed pigs? Maybe your family eats such watery stews, but in our family we don’t even give it to the servants! No, no! Throw it away! Tomorrow I go to my daughter’s house to eat! Lucky I’ve daughters who can cook!’
Another time it was the laundry.
‘Yao siew! Accursed one! Look at my kebaya blouse! You call this ironed? Look! Look at the creases! Aye! Mother of god! It’s torn at the armpit!’
‘Ma, it was already torn a bit when I washed it.’
A slap landed on her cheek.
‘That will teach you to answer back! No breeding. In your parents’ house you can be rude. But not in my house! My kebaya is torn. It’s hand-sewn embroidery and lace. Your father’s salary for one year won’t even be enough to pay for it! Not that I’ll ask him for the money. Got so many daughters to feed and marry off.’
Gek Sim did not cry. She did not complain to Kim Hock. She did not run home to tell her mother. Her mother still had seven daughters to marry off. How to tell her? Gek Sim kept things in her heart—that most treacherous chamber in a woman’s body! And her heart grew hard. She plotted against my aunt. But she was such a sweet wife to Kim Hock, I tell you. In the end he turned completely against his mother. Didn’t even cry when my aunt died. Not a tear. But when Gek Sim died, he threw himself on his wife’s coffin and clung to it. Had to be pried away and sedated. He was like a madman. Kept calling her. Calling her name. Of course, people started to talk, lah. Who wouldn’t? You don’t cry for your own mother but cry for your wife. And they died only one day apart. So many rumours, I tell you. People said his mother’s spirit killed his wife because she was jealous. They even said Gek Sim’s body turned black in the coffin. That she’d foamed at the mouth. But I don’t listen to all this gossip. Kim Hock loved his wife. They were a very loving couple. Strange but very loving to each other. Always talking and giggling together. Do you remember, girl? You don’t? Maybe you were too young then. Lucky thing, we’d moved out of their house before all the bad things happened.
My Version
I remember things differently. I was six when we moved into 61 Irvine Road, somewhere near Joo Chiat in Katong. It was a corner house at the end of a row of town houses. One of those colonial Straits Chinese two-storey houses built before the war. Worth one or two million dollars these days. Dark green tiles with pink roses framed its windows. You can’t find these ornate tiles any more unless you go to the antique shops in Malacca.
The house was deep. It had three sections. The sitting room in front had the morning sun and the family altar. The middle section was the gloomy part. Gek Sim’s bedroom was next to the staircase. The only window in that part of the house was in her bedroom, so the hallway leading to the kitchen was dim and gloomy, even though the door to the kitchen was always left open. We children were told never to close that door. ‘And don’t you touch the broom hanging on a nail behind it.’
The third section of the house was the kitchen and courtyard. That was where Tommy and Johnny, Uncle Kim Hock’s boys, slept at night. His wife, Gek Sim, was called the Landlady. I don’t remember Mother ever referring to her as anything else, even though she refers to her as Gek Sim when she tells her story. Gek Sim was always the Landlady. Uncle Kim Hock’s mother was White-hair Granny. People said her hair turned white after she found out that her son wore his wife’s clothes and sarong. Yes, he wore her clothes. I’ll tell you about it later.
I was scared of the Landlady. She had a loud voice. Not softly spoken at all. She could swear profanities as loudly as the men. My mother seems to have forgotten what a shrew Gek Sim was. All our relatives knew that she was a timid little mouse when she first came into the family. Over time, she turned into a termagant who fought with her mother-in-law. No one dared to speak up at the time. You know how relatives are: ‘Hands-off, don’t interfere, not our business.’ Then when the person is dead and gone, they start yakking: ‘Should’ve done this. Should’ve done that!’ I can’t stand them.
There were three bedrooms upstairs. We lived in the front room. Mr and Mrs Tan, both teachers, rented the other room at the back. Mother said that Uncle Kim Hock had to rent out two of their rooms to settle his wife’s gambling debts.
Next to the stairs, between the two rooms, was a third room, small, dark, windowless and padlocked. White-hair Granny lived in that room. She locked the door whenever she went out because she didn’t trust Gek Sim and Uncle Kim Hock.
I saw her emerge from that room one morning, frail and white-haired. She didn’t notice me even though I was standing right outside our room. I stood very still. She shuffled past, silent as a ghost, dressed in a blue batik sarong and a white kebaya blouse. In my memory she wasn’t the fierce mother-in-law that my mother describes in her story.
I waited till she’d gone downstairs. Then I hung over the banisters and stood on tiptoe to peer through the narrow slits in the wood partition that separated the stairs and the sitting room. I could see the top of her white head. She was saying the Buddhist rosary: ‘Nam-mo-nam-mo-nam-mo … mercy, mercy, mercy, Lord Buddha.’ Over and over again, she chanted ‘mercy’ while softly hitting a red wooden block.
‘I’m fighting the evil one in this house. My life is a war. My prayers are my weapons, arrows to pierce the evil one’s heart,’ she told my mother.
My memories of our stay in that house are disjointed. I was only five or six. Such a long time ago. I remember I was not allowed to go downstairs to play. So I played on the landing and the stairs. One day I discovered that if I lay down flat on one of the steps, I could peer through the banisters into the kitchen at the end of the dim hallway. And that was how I spied on Uncle Kim Hock and the Landlady late one night.
He was wearing his wife’s sarong while doing the ironing. I swear it was bright pink and lime green with a pattern of flowers and leaves. And the blouse that he was wearing was also pink! Not a pink shirt, mind you. A pink blouse with a bit of lace. And red clogs on his feet. No, lah! It’s not my imagination. Nothing wrong with my memory and imagination. I can remember the scene to this day. He had a cigarette dangling from his mouth and his wife was laughing. Seated on a chair, she was puffing a cigarette, just like him, and laughing at something he’d just said. It was very strange. They were behaving normally yet Uncle Kim Hock was wearing his wife’s clothes. She was wearing a black sarong knotted above her breasts. Her bare shoulders gleamed like a hard slab of brown lard under the naked bulb which hung above them from an electric cord in the ceiling. She was a big, fleshy woman. Next to her, Uncle Kim Hock looked slim and slender. I couldn’t hear what they were saying. They seemed to be sharing a joke. Then they stopped. White-hair Granny had walked in. She looked at them.
‘Noi Noi!’ she cried out.
Then she turned and started to climb the stairs. I was so startled that I fled into our room and hid under the bed.
‘Girl, what’s going on?’ Mother asked.
Just then, White-hair Granny came into our room.
‘That witch! She’s turned my son into a woman. My Noi Noi is wearing her clothes and doing the ironing,’ she sobbed. ‘A manager of the biggest pharmacy in town and he cycles to work. To save money for her. I’ve no face any more. How can I face my relatives? My son! My son cooks and washes at home like he’s the wife and she’s the husband. That witch doesn’t lift a finger. And I’ll tell you another shameful thing—she gives Noi Noi fifty cents as pocket money every day.’
‘No, Auntie!’ I heard the shock in Mother’s voice. ‘You’re imagining. That’s just enough to buy a bowl of noodles.’
‘You don’t believe me? Just look at the table in the sitting room tomorrow morning. Look before Noi Noi leaves for work. You’ll see two coins: twenty cents and fifty cents. The twenty-cent coin is for Johnny. He goes to school. Tommy stays home. A bit slow, that boy. My poor, poor grandson! I swear she’s sold the boy’s brain to the devil to spite me.’
I was a curious child. The next morning I looked at the table. Sure enoug
h, there were two coins. Then I sat down near the doorway to wait for my school bus. Uncle Kim Hock came out of his bedroom. Dressed in his white shirt and white trousers, he looked like one of those clerks who worked in the Colonial Civil Service. I could smell perfume on him. His face was smooth and clean-shaven. He took a coin. I glanced at his feet. He was wearing dark velvet slippers instead of a man’s black leather shoes. Now, I know that we wear all sorts of things to the office nowadays but black leather shoes were the standard footwear for men working in an office in those days. Johnny came in. He took the twenty-cent coin.
‘Dad, I’ve to buy a writing exercise book today.’
Uncle Kim Hock dug into his trouser pocket. He took out three ten-cent coins and handed one to Johnny.
‘Thanks, Dad.’
Then Uncle Kim Hock saw me. He smiled and patted my head, but my eyes were fixed on his dark purple velvet slippers.
‘A strange way for a manager to dress, if you ask me,’ Mother said.
‘Don’t interfere. None of our business,’ Pa said.
‘But his mother is my aunt. She says he swallowed his wife’s spittle. He’s under his wife’s thumb. She wears the pants now and he wears her sarong and embroidered kebaya blouses. Adoi! My aunt doesn’t know what to do! She suspects he’s been charmed. Said he must’ve drunk her breast milk and spittle. That’s why he listens to her and acts so … so strange. He used to be such an obedient son, you know. My aunt would say do this, he’d do it. Do that, he’d do that. Now he doesn’t care what my aunt says. Doesn’t even talk to her. He’s truly drunk his wife’s spittle. Listens to everything she says.’
‘Maybe yes, maybe no. I listen to everything you say. I left Penang because of you. People think I’ve drunk your spittle too,’ Pa laughed.
Mother flung a pillow at him. They had a pillow fight and I joined in.
‘We should move out,’ Mother said on another day.
The Man Who Wore His Wife's Sarong Page 5