The Man Who Wore His Wife's Sarong

by Suchen Christine Lim

  Carefully, she wraps the extra pieces of fried fish and pork sausages in sheets of tin foil and pushes them to the back of the freezer behind the Tupperware boxes of frozen pork, prawns and fish. No one will bother to look into the freezer. On Sunday, her day off, she will take the bus to Lucky Plaza in Orchard Road and pass the package to Ramos and Roddy, and they will pay her.

  * * *

  Sarah runs into the kitchen waving an envelope.

  “Glori-ah! Letter for you! From Japan. Can I have the stamps?”

  “Later, later. Go and play.”

  The girl runs out. Hands trembling, she tears open the envelope. She sits on the floor in the alcove of the kitchen beside Tita Flora’s suitcase, and stares at the two photographs. She brings the letter to her nose and inhales its sweet fragrance. The letter is written on pink perfumed paper with a border of tiny flowers in pale blue. Dearest Mama. Her eyes start to brim. Nine months and eleven days after she’s run away, Suzie writes, Dearest Mama, how are you? I am well. I am working in a hotel in Tokyo…Dearest Mama. Dearest Mama.

  “Gloria! Sarah says you’ve a letter from Japan. Do you have anyone working there?” the ma’am asks her after dinner.

  “Yes, ma’am. My eldest daughter.”

  “Oh. Is she working as a maid too?”

  “No, ma’am. She’s a secretary in a big hotel in Tokyo.”

  She takes out the photographs as proud proof of her daughter’s new status.

  “My daughter graduated from high school.”

  “Oh. Very pretty girl. Did you say she’s a secretary in a hotel?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And she’s dressed like this?”

  Something in the ma’am’s question has poisoned her eyes. Her sight is maimed. She stares at the photos. She can no longer see her daughter. Instead she sees a young teenage girl in a bright red negligee reclining on the large bed. A bright red sunny smile plastered on her face. The other photo shows her in a black mini skirt and high-heeled black leather boots outside a grand-looking building with bright lights and Japanese men in the background.

  “It’s her bedroom, ma’am,” she insists, barely able to control the tremor in her voice as she thrusts the photos back into the envelope. No. She will not tear out the stamps for Sarah.

  * * *

  One year, eleven months and twenty-nine days later.

  “Mummy, where’s Gloria?” Sarah asks licking her fingers clean.

  Linda has ordered in home delivery of two large pizzas, three orders of garlic bread and salad for the children.

  “Gloria has gone shopping, dumbo,” John reaches for the largest slice of pizza. “She’s flying home tomorrow.”

  “I will miss Gloria, Mummy.”

  “Don’t be daft, Timmy. Miss her? For what? We’ll get a new maid soon.” Pause. Then, “Right, Mum?” John turns to her.

  “Yes.” Linda gives him a bright smile. It’s so seldom that he calls her ‘Mum’ that she’s willing to overlook his comment about not missing the maid. But it’s not right. She’ll have to correct him later.

  “It’s okay, Timmy. You can miss Gloria a little.”

  “I’ll miss her a lot, Mummy.”

  “Then you’re stupid!”

  “Mummy!”

  “It’s okay, Timmy. Kor-kor John is just teasing you.”

  “But it’s stupid to miss the maid. They always leave. I don’t miss any of them!”

  “John, that’s enough,” George says.

  The boy stuffs his mouth with garlic bread and ignores his father and the rest of the family.

  “It’s okay, John, if you don’t want to miss anyone. Here. Have another slice of pizza.”

  She pushes the pizza box towards him. The boy makes no move. She rises and hands him a slice of pizza on a plate.

  “Thanks,” a pause, then, “Mum.”

  Sarah giggles. George smiles. Ack! She’s worrying too much as usual. John’s just a bitter boy ever since his mother left him. And there are all sorts of stories about wicked stepmothers. George said that she shouldn’t force the pace; let things happen naturally. But she likes to nudge things forward a little. She glances at the clock.

  “Da, it’s nine o’clock. Gloria’s not back yet.”

  “Don’t worry. It’s her last night in Singapore. May be she wants to paint the town red. Didn’t you go with her to close the joint account, and she withdrew all her money?”

  “Ya. That woman has saved quite a bit. Nine hundred and ninety something. Times that by thirty pesos. How much is that?”

  “Hey, you’re the one who works in the bank,” George laughs and turns on the tv to watch the news.

  “Thirty-one thousand six hundred and forty-five peso,” John announces.

  “Not much for two years’ work,” George turns around.

  “Not much here but a lot in the Philippines. Luckily I asked her to open the account. She sent quite a bit of money home. So many children. Ten. She’s packed two large suitcases. She muttered something about opening a stall. What they call sari-sari.”

  “Did you check her bags?”

  “What? You think she might’ve squirreled away some of our things to take home to sell? I gave her all the children’s old clothes and some of yours and mine too. But I’ll check her bags tomorrow before we leave for the airport. If I check tonight, she can still re-pack while we’re asleep. If a maid wants to steal, she’ll find ways to do it. What can you do? She lives with us, and we’re not home all the time. Hey. You three! Go to bed! This is adult talk. Go to bed! Brush your teeth! If she’s not back by eleven, I’m going to lock the door and go to bed.”

  “What time did she leave the house?”

  “After lunch. I gave her the day off. She said she wanted to buy gifts for her family.”

  “If she’s not back by midnight, we’ll call the police and report her missing.”

  “You think she doesn’t want to go back to the Philippines?”

  “How do I know what she wants? I just don’t want to lose our deposit at the Manpower Ministry if she goes missing.”

  “I hope she doesn’t get into an accident or something. The next maid we get must be younger and unmarried.”

  “Aha! Not scared she might seduce the Sir?”

  “George, be serious. You don’t joke about such things, okay?”

  “Hey, read the papers. The media is always biased against us. They always highlight the man doing the seducing. What about the woman, eh? A young maid.”

  “Okay, enough. You go and quarrel with the media about it. I’ll get a fat and ugly one for us. But young and single. Not another mother.’

  “You’re the one who insisted on an older woman and a mother.”

  “I know; I know. My mistake. Have you seen Gloria with Timmy before I put a stop to her hugging and kissing? She likes to cuddle my darling.”

  “Our son likes her.”

  “It’s not healthy. All this hugging and pawing! That’s why I stopped her from bathing Timmy.”

  “Ahhh! A case of maternal jealousy.”

  “Shut up, George. I don’t like maids to hug and kiss my kids. I can do that myself. I told her before. Chinese people. We don’t like strangers to kiss and hug our children. She said Filipinos do it all the time. I told her I don’t care what she or other Filipinos do back home. But in my home, I set the rules. I don’t want the maid to hug my kids.”

  “Aye, women and mothers!”

  “Sexist!” She throws a cushion at him. George ducks. He clicks the remote and switches on the tv. She switches it off.

  “I want to talk. Did you hear John call me, Mum, just now?”

  A tired “Yes, I told you he’d come round if you give him time.”

  “Ya, claim credit for it. You think it’s so easy to be your son’s stepmum? I noticed a change when I stopped Gloria from hugging the two younger ones. I mean just see it from John’s angle. He’s the oldest. Already he sees himself as the outsider. The other two are my own, and
what does the maid do? She’s always hugging Timmy, and Sarah when Sarah allows it. I know she misses her own kids. I’ve heard her telling Timmy about her ten children.”

  “Okay, what? What’s your point?”

  “The point is that John felt better after I stopped Gloria from hugging Timmy and Sarah. He’s eleven. Too old for Gloria to hug him. But he’s still a child and feels deprived. Seeing the maid hug the other two and not him makes him feel even worse about being my stepson. Got it? So, no hugging except by me. I’m the mum who hugs all three of them. I hug John whether he wants it or not. Just to show that I treat him as my own. And you think I’m acting like a jealous …”

  “Come here.”

  Her husband wraps his arms around her and plants a wet kiss on her lips. The phone rings. George picks up the receiver.

  “Yes. Yes. That’s right. Please wait a sec. I’ll check with my wife. Is her name Gloria Antonia Bernadette Santos?”

  “Yes. What’s wrong?”

  “Shhh! Yes, she’s our maid. Okay. Okay. We’ll be there in half an hour.”

  * * *

  It’s almost two in the morning by the time they are home again. They were silent throughout the ride home from the Tanglin Police Station. Linda clasps and unclasps her hands. George had told her expressly not to say anything or ask any question until they got home. He didn’t want a scene. He handled everything at the station. But the moment he shuts their front door, he sits down beside her, and they confront the bovine face of their maid.

  “Sit down, Gloria. Take the chair opposite us. Now take out your handbag. Show us how much you have in there,” she begins.

  The woman empties the contents of her purse on to the dining table.

  “Count your money.”

  They wait till she has finished.

  “How much do you have? Come on. Tell us. How much do you have inside your purse? You’ve just counted the money. How much?”

  The brown sullen face wears a sheen of sweat and oil; the dark eyes are averted; they would not meet her eyes.

  “I’m not budging until you tell us, Gloria.”

  The woman looks at her, stupefied.

  “I mean it, Gloria.”

  “Three hundred and twenty-eight dollars and seventy-five cents, ma’am.”

  “You have three hundred and twenty-eight dollars in your purse, Gloria. More than three hundred Singapore dollars! Why the hell did you have to steal? Why did you do such a stupid thing on the eve of your departure? Tomorrow you will be charged. Do you know that? Tomorrow, you will go to jail and miss your flight! Sir will forfeit his deposit with the Ministry of Manpower and I don’t know what else will happen to you! You’re a fool!”

  She feels the pressure of George’s restraining hand as she stares into the stupid woman’s eyes till shame makes the woman look down.

  “Put your money back into your purse, Gloria,” George says. “Where were you when you were caught?”

  A long silence. Then she mutters, “Scotts Shopping Centre, Sir.”

  “The police told us that the security guards searched your bags and person. They found two bras unpaid for, two packets of AA batteries, a transistor radio and three shirts for men. All not paid.”

  “I was going to pay, Sir.”

  “Don’t lie to us, Gloria!” she yells. How good it is to yell at the cow! She’s been bottling up her anger all the way from Tanglin and up the East Coast Expressway till they reached home. “The guards stopped you at the exit! If you were going to pay, you should’ve been at the cash counter! What were you doing at the exit with all the unpaid goods? Ha? Tell me!”

  Again she feels the press of George’s hand, retraining her.

  “The police have impounded your passport. Tomorrow we have to take you to the subordinate court where you will be charged,” George tells the brazen liar. “You know that in Singapore, shoplifters are jailed. Depending on how seriously the judge views your case, Gloria, you could be jailed for one or two weeks. Do you understand? We will not bail you out. You will miss your flight home tomorrow. We have already paid for this flight. If you want to go home after serving your jail sentence, you will have to pay for your own air ticket. Do you understand?”

  The woman nods; her eyes are dumb as a cow’s waiting for the butcher’s knife.

  8

  Retired Rebel

  I worked for twelve years with the British army, but I didn’t look up to the British even then. In fact, I looked down on them. I was a rebel, I tell you. “Don’t talk pidgin to me,” I told the Brits. “You want to speak to me, speak proper English,” I said. In those days they thought we locals couldn’t speak English. I gave it to them proper. When I was a fresh recruit, every time my corporal wrote on the board I had to get up and correct his spelling. I would erase his words and write them again with the proper spelling. After a while he got really embarrassed, you know. “Jimmy,” he said to me, “I speak. You write on the board what I say.” Those English soldiers! They only know how to spell their own names, nothing else. Can’t write. Can’t spell.’

  She could see how his eyes still shone with the fire of his youth as a young Asian in the British army. He reminded her of her father back home after he had had a drink or two. Cheap beer bought from the sari-sari store loosened her tatay’s tongue, and he would entertain friends and family with his exploits as an odd-jobman for a company that worked for the Americans in Subic Bay.

  ‘I had my schooling at St Joseph’s, you know, where the Christian brothers really taught us how to read and write. So we could hold our heads high. Once, I got a sergeant real hot. I was a corporal by then. The other corporals had been complaining to me about him for a long time. “Wait, wait,” I said to them. “Don’t do anything yet. Give him rope enough to hang himself first.” Then one day my chance came. We were in the mess, playing scrabble. The English corporal was teaching us how to play. Then the sergeant came in. He went up to the English corporal. “You’re wasting your time teaching these locals,” he said to the corporal. I got up at once. I told the other corporals to leave me with the sergeant. Then I gave it to the bugger. I said: “I’ve lived with you chaps for years. Slept in the same room with you, eaten with you. But I’ve yet to see an English soldier get up in the morning, brush his teeth, wash and have breakfast. You chaps just go for breakfast the moment you get up and eat without brushing your teeth. You English taught us the word hygiene, but I don’t know whether you can spell it. It’s h-y-g-i-e-n-e.” I spelt it for him. I tell you, his face went all red. “If you don’t like it here, you can leave,” he said to me. “Not so fast,” I answered. I pointed to my stripes. “I’ve signed up for twelve years,” I said to him. “You’ll need a court martial to take them off. But you can fight me in the ring, fair and square,” I told him. Back in those days I was a rebel, I tell you.’

  He paused. There, reflected in her eyes, was the champion boxer he had once been. He had represented his division in the army’s featherweight category, holding his own in the ring against those Irish and Nepalese boys. Great boxers! Those were wonderful times. Not wanting her to see how pleased he was, he returned to his sandpapering, smoothing the edges of the wooden stool he was making for little Jason, rounding its corners. He moulded his palms over the wood and inhaled its sweet fragrance. His hands were still strong hands, used to dirt and grease, but of late they had found a new destiny.

  ‘Didn’t the sergeant give you trouble later?’ he heard her ask, and without looking up he drawled, ‘Nah,’ closing his eyes as he cupped the piece of wood in his hands like a woman’s breast.

  ‘You would have been in big, big trouble, Uncle, if this had happened in the Philippines.’

  She held out a mug of his favourite coffee, sweetened with condensed milk. As he took it he noticed how brown and thin her arms were. She was a slip of a girl, younger, much younger than his daughter. Still holding onto his piece of sandpaper, he took a grateful gulp of the hot brown brew and glanced at his watch. Nearly noon. He had bee
n there all morning.

  ‘Time for Jason’s lunch soon, Uncle!’

  When he turned round, she had already gone into the kitchen to prepare the boy’s meal. He followed her with his mug of coffee, careful not to get in her way as he continued yarning while she cooked. He could tell that she was listening even as she clattered and washed and stirred, bustling between the fridge, the stove and the sink. Every now and then she glanced his way, nodded her head and smiled. Never once did she interrupt him. She just smiled and nodded to show that she was listening.

  ‘You always go on and on. You think people are so interested in your stories, ah? You just don’t know when to stop,’ his wife had complained many times. Well, bull to her. If it wasn’t his storytelling, it’d be something else that she’d find fault with. She was never happy with him. Never! If he were at home, she’d be complaining about the noise and mess he was making. “Why so much sawing and cutting? What are you making? Sawdust everywhere! What are you making, huh?” How would he know? Let the wood answer her. The answer was in the wood. If he was out, she would complain that he was never home. If he stayed at home and read the papers, she would insist on talking to him. Talk, talk, talk. All day long he heard nothing but her grumbling about this neighbour and that neighbour. He was drowning in her voice. No one could edge in a word.

  ‘Why don’t you do tai chi? Good for health, you know. What about line dancing? Old Tan and that Eddie Lim join their wives for dancing and karaoke. Want to join them?’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  Walking with battalions of retired men and women, all chattering like mynahs and crows in trees, was not, as the Brits would say, his cuppa tea.

  ‘What happened to the sergeant?’ Maria broke his train of thought.

  ‘Oh, the sergeant? That sergeant was eventually transferred out of our unit. The local corporals thought I had had a hand in it. They really looked up to me then, I tell you! So I kept quiet when some of them asked me.’