In 1965, when I was in the Girl Guides, I met Joyce Lee and Julie Nazareth. They were the adopted daughters of Miss Lee and Miss Nazareth, teachers in Upper Paya Lebar Girls’ School. Miss Lee, tall and slim, with straight black hair knotted in a bun at the nape of her neck, taught Maths. Miss Nazareth, plump and maternal with a short frizzy brown perm, taught English.
‘And you live together as a family in the same house?’ I asked.
Julie heard the surprise in my voice.
‘Ya, we’re a family.’
Her dark eyes challenged me. I said nothing more. Miss Lee was Chinese. So was Joyce, her adopted daughter, although Joyce looked Eurasian to me. Julie was Indian like Miss Nazareth. Two single women and their adopted daughters. And they were a family. They lived in the same house, drove to school in one car and went home together after school.
‘Anything wrong, Pearl? Why so quiet?’
‘Nothing wrong,’ I lied.
I was always lying in those days, you know. I couldn’t say what it was that was bugging me. Not straightaway anyway. The next Saturday, after our Girl Guides’ meeting, Julie and Joyce took me home for tea.
‘Mummy, this is Pearl.’
‘Good afternoon, Miss Lee.’
‘Hello, Pearl.’
‘And this is my mum,’ Julie said.
‘Hello, Miss Nazareth,’ I said.
Over tea, scones and jam and bubor cha-cha, the conversation somehow got round to family and what a government minister had said in the newspapers.
‘That Mr Chan Soo Beng in the Prime Minister’s Office. He defines a family as one man, one woman and their children,’ Miss Lee told us.
‘Oh yeah, absolutely. People whose parents have died are orphans, not family, don’t you know?’
Miss Nazareth buttered a scone and handed it to me. I couldn’t tell if she was serious or joking.
‘What about widows, Mum? By his definition, widows and their children are not families either,’ Julie said.
‘Or … or,’ Joyce jumped in, ‘what about one grandma, one unmarried uncle and the children of his dead sister? Is that a family?’
‘Of course not, silly!’ Julie scoffed. ‘According to Mr Chan a family is one man, his wife and their children!’
‘Jeepers, such a broad definition! That should include everybody in Singapore! What about us, Mum?’
There was a pause. Then Miss Nazareth said, ‘Some families are born; some families are made.’
‘But ours,’ Miss Lee looked at Joyce and Julie, ‘is especially cooked. We selected our ingredients.’
We laughed. I caught myself wishing that Miss Lee or Miss Nazareth had adopted me instead of two illiterate amahs. Class and education clouded my young mind.
In 1975 I graduated with a BA Honours degree. The night before the graduation ceremony I put on my gown and hat for Yee Ku and Loke Ku. They were not attending the event.
‘You’re sure you don’t want to come?’
‘No need, no need. Just seeing you in your gown and square hat is good enough for us,’ Loke Ku said.
On my part I didn’t try to persuade them to attend. They would be out of place in the university auditorium.
‘Here, Kwai Chee. Let me iron your gown.’
‘No, no, Yee Ku, don’t fuss. I’ll do it myself.’
‘Take a taxi tomorrow,’ Loke Ku said. ‘I’ll call for a taxi. Don’t rush. Go early.’
‘I know. I know. Please. I know what to do.’
They got up early the next morning to offer thanksgiving prayers to the gods. Loke Ku walked me to the taxi stand. Yee Ku, too old and weak by then, stayed at home.
‘Yee Ku is cooking your favourite dishes tonight. Abalone soup and stewed mushroom with chicken.’
‘Can both of you just stop fussing over me? I don’t know what time I can come home. My friends and I are going out to celebrate. After all these years of studying, we need a break!’
I jumped into a taxi and drove off.
In 2000, years after my two mothers had passed away, I was the writer-in-residence at the University of Iowa.
Laura Jackson, the editor of the university’s press, took me home to meet her family. Her partner, Kathleen, was a nurse. Over dinner they told me how they had felt something for each other since they were teenagers. In their late twenties, after years of muddled thought and struggle, they committed themselves to each other with their families’ blessings. I thought of my two mothers then and, suddenly, tears came to my eyes.
‘A bit of dust,’ I said. I caught myself denying them once again like St Peter before the cock’s crow. That evening things came full circle. I was introduced to Laura and Kathleen’s two daughters: Kelly, four, and Sally, three.
‘The girls are half-sisters. They share the same biological father.’
I looked from one to the other.
‘A very good friend of ours,’ Laura said, ‘donated his sperm to us.’
‘You’re pulling my leg.’
‘No, we’re not,’ Laura smiled. ‘He even signed an agreement to give up his rights to the girls. I wanted to be a mum real bad. Kathy and I, we wanted a family. We asked Carl. He’s our best friend. Oh, he’s married. Got his own kids. He agreed to help us. One afternoon in the bedroom downstairs here, he did what he had to do. I was upstairs, lying in bed, waiting. He handed Kathy the bottle. She syringed his sperm, rushed up the stairs and squirted it into me.’
‘It was a success. Laura gave birth to Kelly,’ Kathy said. ‘Watching her breast-feed Kelly, I realised that I wanted the experience of giving birth—to be a mother.’
‘One year later we asked Carl again. My god! We owe that man big!’ Laura laughed.
‘This time it was Laura who rushed to take the syringe upstairs to me.’
‘Nine months later Kathy gave birth to Sally,’ Laura added. ‘Giving birth to the girls bound us as a family. Kathy stopped work to look after our two daughters.’
‘So your daughters have two mothers.’
‘She’s my Mummy Laura!’
‘Mumsy Kathy!’
The two girls shrieked and leapt into their mothers’ laps.
‘Isn’t that wonderful, darling? You’ve got two mummies to love you.’ Laura hugged the girls.
A lump rose in my throat.
‘Hm, well, I … er … I’ve two mothers too.’
That evening I did what I couldn’t do all those years in Singapore. I told Laura and Kathy about Yee Ku and Loke Ku. As I talked, my body grew light. My heart expanded and I saw what I’d failed to see before. Yee Ku and Loke Ku lived together for more than fifty years. If that isn’t love, commitment and fidelity, I don’t know what is. Theirs was a more lasting relationship than many marriages today. That night, for the first time, I was proud of them—and grateful.
Two strangers, unrelated to you by blood, take you into their midst because your parents have died or don’t want you or are too young or too poor to take care of you. So two strangers take you into their midst and give you a new life. How do you ever say thank you?
That night I remembered them. When Loke Ku came home once a month to stay the night, she would sit in her cane chair on our tiny balcony that overlooked the back lane. Yee Ku would sit in her canvas chair. After dinner they sat, fanning themselves with a palm leaf fan while I cleared the table. They did not look at each other. They did not speak. But they were connected. An invisible cord bound them as it bound me to them, two old amahjieh, sitting on the balcony above the back lane, insignificant and irrelevant in modern Singapore. Yet this image of them, rising like a pale moon above the rooftops of the shophouses in Jalan Besar, had held me all these years.
I had dinner with Kathleen and Laura several times. They choose to live in Iowa City because the university town recognises their relationship as legal. The church also welcomes them as a family. Iowa City, the city of writers, is an oasis in a hostile desert. The rest of Iowa isn’t like this. In Des Moines, the capital, the pastor of a church and his fol
lowers burnt the US flag in front of the statehouse when I was there. They wanted to demonstrate their condemnation of gays and lesbians. Last Christmas Laura and Kathleen sent me a photo of their family. Kelly and Sally, now aged nine and eight, are in school. And I, the daughter of two mothers, wish them well.
6
The Cleaner's Son
In memory of Sister Susan Chia, R.G.S. (Religious of the Good Shepherd)
1
1 April 1986. Ah Gek rips the page off her Chinese calendar.
Another day gone.
‘Hoi! Get up! Drink this,’ she holds out the bowl of hot soup, but the heap on the bed makes no sign that he has heard her. ‘Hoi Kow Kia! Sit up!’
Not a muscle moves. She feels like pouring the soup on his head. A grown man lying on her bed day after day. This is the bed she had shared with his father since the day they lived together as man and wife. They had paid a bomb for it. Had to get a loan from the Bai-yi. Wouldn’t have been able to set up home without the Indian moneylender’s help. When they moved in here, she had just been sacked by the Chias. Mercy, Mother Mary! What made her think of such painful things this evening? Ack! The past is past!
‘Hoi! Get up!’ She shouts at her son again.
His face, half covered by the blanket, is turned to the wall. An unwashed smell of decay and vomit hangs over him. The air in the tiny two-room flat is foul; the window is shut again. He must’ve gotten out of bed to close it when she was out. There’s been no fresh air in the flat since he came crawling home
sick as a dog.
‘Hoi! Kow Kia! Get up! I made you ginseng soup with chicken. Get up and drink it! Won’t kill you! It’s been cooked over a slow fire for three hours. So don’t waste my gas. Get up! Get up!’
‘I didn’t ask you to do it, Ma.’
The weariness in his voice makes her blood boil. He can’t even muster enough strength to contradict her. She would rather that he fights her than lie down like a sick dog. ‘Sit up, will you!’
‘Leave me alone.’
‘How can I leave you alone? How can any mother stand here and watch you like this? Look at you. No strength. No work. No money. Day after day, you sleep. You’re wasting away. You’ll die if you don’t take care!’
‘If I die then I die, lor.’
‘You think it’s so easy to die? If it were so easy, I would’ve died long ago! When you and your sisters left me, did you think I didn’t want to die then? You think I want to live and see my son like this day after day? If you want to die, don’t die here. Go and die somewhere else. Not here. Not in my home. I don’t want to wake up one morning and find you dead. Don’t you dare give me this pain! You’ve given me enough heartaches already.’ Her eyes are welling again, but her voice is sharp and hard. ‘I’ve had it up to here. If you want to die, go and die elsewhere. What I don’t see, I don’t care. But as long as you’re under my roof, you will get well. Get up! You hear me? Up! Up! Sit up!’
She yanks off his blanket. His hand flies up. She drops the bowl. Soup splatters all over the floor. She swears at him. Vows she will never cook him another nourishing soup again. He struggles to sit up. Watching him, she is both furious and relieved. Relieved that he still has some life in him. His arms stick out of his singlet like two matchsticks. He has lost so much weight. Today he looks even thinner than a week ago. His rapid weight loss scares her.
She goes into the kitchen. Returns with a pail and rag and starts to mop up the dark liquid with quick, angry moves.
‘Twenty dollars, twenty dollars worth of ginseng! My sweat and blood only to mop it all up!’ She twists the rag over the pail, twisting the cloth to squeeze out the thick brown soup while he watches her from his bed. ‘I’m wringing out my heart. That’s what I’m doing! Mop and clean! Mop and clean! All my life! From the time I was eight I’ve had to mop up other people’s mess. My Pa’s drunken vomit! My Ma’s gambling debts. Your uncle’s shit! Your father’s spit! And now you! My own son…!’
‘Quiet!’ A violent coughing shakes him. His hoarse raspy voice cuts her like a glass shard. ‘Please, Ma. I …I need … rest.’
The dripping rag in her hand she looks away, his plea booming in her ears. Her irritation ebbs and subsides. Guilt washes over her. She has wanted him to get well quickly so he would leave her apartment. She, his mother, wants him to leave. Flushed with shame, she gathers up the fragments of shattered bowl, wipes the floor, and goes into the kitchen. She throws away the porcelain shards and rag. Fills a pail with water and returns to mop his room and the tiny hall where she sleeps on the floor these days now that he has taken over her bed in the room. A mother is always a mother. She can’t bear to let him sleep on the floor like before although he had said he didn’t mind sleeping on the floor. Before he and his three sisters left her, all four of them had slept on the floor in this room, just big enough for their foam mattresses which they rolled up and pushed under her bed each morning.
Agh! Why is she going back to the past again? That was when they were children. Things have changed. She mops and cleans the kitchen before she goes to bed, and takes out the aluminium pot and steamer for tomorrow’s cooking.
2
4.30 a.m.
She is up before the alarm goes off. She switches on the light in the tiny bathroom and glances at the cracked mirror hanging from its rusty nail on the wall. Her face framed by a mess of grey hair is crisscrossed by a latticework of lines. Two deep channels run from her nostrils to each corner of her mouth. Lines, and more lines cross her cheeks and forehead. Aye, this is what a husband and four children can do to a woman. They leave lines across your face and belly like a farmer’s plough. Ach! Enough! Leave such thoughts alone. She runs a comb through her hair and ties the strands with a rubber band. She has no money to waste on hairdressers and foot massages. Not like her neighbour, Mee Sua Soh. But thank God, at her age, she can still squat over the toilet bowl. Thank you, Mother Mary for blessing me with good knees, she mutters and washes her hands at the sink before she takes out the dough and turnip filling from the fridge to make soon kueh dumplings.
Fresh steamed soon kueh is her specialty and the people in the office love them. She pushes open the kitchen window to let in more air. Then she lights the gas stove to boil water for the steamer and starts kneading the dough, picking up speed as she kneads. When the dough is ready, she takes a small lump, flattens it between her palms, cups it to form a shallow shell and fills it with a spoonful of the pork and turnip she has cooked the night before. Then she folds the shell into a half moon pressing and folding the edges together to seal it before slipping the dumpling onto the steamer’s tray and take another small lump of dough to make the next dumpling. On and on she works like an automaton as the clock ticks. She keeps an eye on the steamer, ready to take out each tray of dumplings as soon as it is cooked.
The kitchen is hot and cramped, barely big enough for a stove, a small fridge, a sink and some shelves that Kow Kia’s father had nailed to the wall when they first moved in. They were lucky to be able to rent this one-room flat in this Bukit Ho Swee estate from the Public Housing Board. Back then thousands had to wait for years for a home of their own. She was only seventeen, and already pregnant with Nancy, their first child when they married. The day they moved in, Kow Kia’s father, oh dear, he was so very eager and he … and her eyes light up as they gaze into the distance. It’s so embarrassing to think about it after all these years but she still remembers how he…ah… how he had lifted her up and carried her into the flat. Just like the ang moh newly weds in the American movies. Laughing uproariously he threw her on to the bed and … and they did it. Again and again that first night of their married life. They were so happy then. Not a care in the world.
The wok hisses. A cloud of steam rises from the steamer when she lifts off the cover. She takes out the tray of suon kueh, sprinkles fried onions on the steaming dumplings and packs them into the styrofoam boxes. Six suon kueh per box. Twenty boxes. One hundred and twenty pieces of suon kueh each mo
rning. At forty cents a piece, that will be forty-eight dollars. Minus thirty or so for turnip, pork, chilli sauce, sesame oil, soy sauce, fried onions, gas and bus fare, that leaves her with eighteen dollars. Let’s say fifteen dollars a day. Ten days. One hundred and fifty dollars. Not bad. Not bad at all. Blessed Mother Mary, look kindly on me. Let me sell off all the suon kueh today. Have mercy on me, she prays in the Teochew dialect in the way that old Granny Chia and Father Edmond Tay had taught her during catechism classes.
Can Jesus understand Chinese, Granny? She had asked.
Don’t worry, lah, girl. Granny Chia had laughed. Jesus and Mother Mary, they can understand everything. Whatever language – Teochew, Hokkien, Malay not just the English tongue of the angmoh.
She had followed the Chia family to the Catholic Church in Au Kang where most of the Catholic Teochew families used to live. At first, she did it just to get out of the house. Then she was amazed to see so many Chinese people praying in a way that was so different from her parents’ praying. All the women wore a veil on their heads in church. Granny Chia and Mrs Chia wore black lace veils, and the four Chia girls had white veils. They each carried a little black book called a missal and a rosary with a silver cross. They looked so pretty and elegant on Sundays that she longed to be like them. Granny Chia bought her a white veil and taught her to say the rosary. Mrs Chia even took her to the Church of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour in Thomson Road for the novena service every Saturday and prayed for her conversion. Aye, those were the wonderful days of her youth. Her employers were generous and kind. She ate what the family ate, worked hard and never gave them any trouble. Granny Chia and Mrs Chia had their hands full looking after six children. The four girls were five, seven, nine and ten. And the twin boys, Peter and Paul, were newborns.
At sixteen, she was put in charge of the kitchen and the ordering of provisions for the family. She could order anything as long as she told Mrs Chia or Granny. They trusted her. And she never cheated them. She did all the cooking under Granny Chia’s supervision. The family was pleased with her, and Mrs Chia bought her two new dresses for church and increased her pay to fifty dollars a month the year she met Kow Kia’s father.
The Man Who Wore His Wife's Sarong Page 7