The Man Who Wore His Wife's Sarong

by Suchen Christine Lim

  He crouched on his haunches and gazed at the thick round log for a long while. What was happening to him? Here, in the quiet of the apartment, he could feel the presence of the stranger in him, his other self that had long been buried underneath years of work and the hours he had spent on the factory floor, crawling under dirty vehicles. At weekends, following his wife to markets and shopping malls, meeting relatives and his buddies on feast days, festival days and other public holidays, frittering his life away with mindless chatter and hours of inane activities. What was the sum total of his life? Eat, fuck, sleep, wake up, eat, work, eat, sleep. O God, let it not be too late. Not too late. Now that he was retired, he must get to know his Other. Who was this stranger who had been living under the skin of the tractor repairman? Through the calm steady gaze of this strange Other, he stared at the shape embedded in the wood. He marvelled at the grainy texture of the tree trunk, the shape of line and curve, the feel of grain and knots, the sensation of colours and patterns before him. He was the lover worshipping his beloved with the gaze of a man who could sit all day long studying what he’d loved all his life. He looked out at the empty sea and back again, alternating between wood and sea till all he saw were the lines and shape of his beloved in wood. Then he took his hammer and chisel and knelt before her, poised between fear and courage. Did he dare? This stranger, his Other, wanted above all else, after all those years of scrutinising grease-covered, dirt-encrusted engines and undercarriages of trucks, to chip at a block of wood and see beauty emerging from the chisel in his hands. How could his wife and daughters see this Other when they had branded ‘retiree’ on his forehead?

  Heck them! He placed his chisel against the wood, and brought his hammer down.

  9

  Usha and My Third Child

  Hae— hello, Auntie. C— can I help?’

  ‘Hi, you must be Usha.’

  I gave up the struggle with the video tape recorder, and straightened my back. Tired of processing bank loans, I’d signed up to do a counselling course. Twenty-nine years dealing with money, time to deal with the heart.

  ‘Can you fix this? This machine won’t obey me.’

  ‘N— no problem, Auntie. Th— th— the plug is loose.’

  ‘Oh.’

  I recalled the notes in her case file. Usha Thiagarajah: age seventeen, stutters when nervous, excited or angry. Second of three daughters. Mother, forty-six; father, forty-eight; both parents are factory operators who work shifts. The three girls were looked after by their grandmother until they were in their teens. Usha’s stuttering used to irritate her mother no end. She was slapped and hit whenever she stuttered during her primary school years. Her mother would send her to her room and not allow her to watch tv. Her father did not interfere. Her grandmother tried to protect her. There were frequent quarrels. Under her grandmother’s protection, Usha did fairly well in school. In her last year in secondary school, a Chinese boy befriended her. Subsequently they went to the same church and polytechnic.

  ‘It’s ok— okay now.’

  Usha adjusted the mike and the rest of the recording paraphernalia. She led the way into the counselling room. There were two armchairs with a table in between. The recording mike was on the table. Usha showed me to my seat. Then she sat down with a teddy bear resting on her belly, looking like any other teenage girl. Fresh-faced and innocent. You can’t tell these days. They seem to get younger and younger, these girls in trouble.

  ‘Hi, I’m Mrs Vivienne Chua. Is it okay if I video-tape our first interview? Sister Mary has explained things to you, am I right?’ I handed her the interview consent form. ‘A standard requirement. Please sign here.’

  The girl looked fifteen, with her hair bunched up in a ponytail, held by a pink rubber band. A pair of heart-shaped gold studs in her ears. A gold stud in her nose. She was wearing an oversized tee shirt over a pair of blue shorts. She didn’t look like she was ready to be a mum.

  ‘Sister Mary said you’ve been staying at the centre for the past three months.’

  ‘Th— three m— m— months and t— two days,’ Usha corrected me.

  I asked about her mother.

  ‘Mm— my mother came to visit yesterday. Fir— first time.’

  ‘You mean your mother didn’t visit you for three months?’

  ‘My … my auntie came.’

  ‘Do you know why your mother didn’t want to come?’

  Usha hugged her bear. Her voice dropped. I leant forward in my chair.

  ‘Sh— she said I … I shamed her. She got to h— h— hide from our re— relatives.’

  ‘Do you keep in touch with your family?’

  I shouldn’t have asked that. She’d already said her aunt visited. Ask open-ended questions. Don’t be interrogative, I reminded myself. I had to bring her round to talking about her feelings, perceptions, yearnings and expectations—a requirement of my course.

  ‘I phoned ho— home every day. But my … my mother cr— cr— cried and cried. Scolded and scolded. Talk— talked so long. The bat— bat— battery on my phone ran out.’

  ‘Are you comfortable at the centre?’

  ‘O— o— okay, lah. Four p— persons share one … one room.’

  I asked about sleeping arrangements, diet and how the work was shared out at the crisis centre, which took in abused foreign domestic workers, abused wives and children, and unmarried mothers. There were twenty-four women and six children staying at the centre. Four mothers and their children had run away from violent husbands and fathers. The rest were maids from India and Indonesia who had been beaten, scalded, molested or raped by their employers.

  ‘Pe— people here he— he— help each other. S— sometimes the … the mothers got to go to … to … to court. We … we look after their children.’

  ‘Breathe in slowly.’ I encouraged her to relax. Her stuttering decreased.

  ‘Padmini, my roommate, she was raped. I tell her, if I were the judge, I’d chop off that thing from all rapists! Make them rubbish collectors. For … for life!’

  I winced. ‘Oh dear, I’m sure you’re not that barbaric, Usha.’

  ‘I wanted to make Padmini laugh. The women here, they cry all the time.’

  ‘Maybe they need to cry. Do you cry sometimes?’

  ‘I’m not like them. Don’t want to be like them.’

  My eyes rested on her already protruding belly. The girl had cheek. And arrogance. Didn’t want to be lumped with foreign maids and runaway wives and mothers. ‘But you’re living here, Usha. You’re one of them.’

  ‘I … I … I not like them. I can … can go home after my … my baby is born. They … they cannot go home.’

  I bit my tongue. She didn’t want to be seen as a helpless abused woman. I had been careless by not picking up on her clues.

  ‘Would you like to tell me how you came to the crisis centre?’

  ‘I took a … a … a bus and ca— came on my own.’

  ‘Oh. You came alone. It must have been difficult.’

  She was silent for a long while. I placed my hand on hers. She held the teddy bear tightly against her breast. Her eyes shut to block out the bright lights, switched on for the video

  taping.

  ‘I … I went to the … the polyclinic. My boyfriend. He di— didn’t want to go in. I wen— went in by myself. The nurse t— t— took my height, weight and all … all … all that and asked me to … to go pass urine. When I came out, I … I put the cup on the … the counter. I went out to … to tell my boyfriend. He didn’t want to co— come in. The … the doctor said … said I was pregnant.’

  ‘How did you feel then?’

  Another long silence. Her eyes remained closed.

  ‘My boyfriend. He … he said his … his family wouldn’t accept. I got to … to abort.’ She opened her eyes. ‘So I came here, lah!’

  Her sudden change of tone threw me off balance. She smiled.

  ‘The mothers here, they say I must think happy thoughts. Sad thoughts no good for my
baby.’ Her hand stroked her belly.

  I didn’t know how to respond to that so I said, ‘I heard from Sister that you went for a scan at the hospital. Is it a girl or boy?’

  ‘Boy.’

  A dreamy look came into her eyes when she said ‘boy’ in a tone that was touchingly tender, her lips shaping the word, giving it a wholesome roundness. I could almost see the baby boy in her mind’s eye. It upset me. Seventeen years old. No skill. No job. No husband. How was she going to look after her baby?

  ‘Usha, have you thought about what you want to do after your baby is born?’

  ‘Li— live one day at a … a time, Sister said.’

  She could say that as long as she was staying at the centre. What about after that? The interview wasn’t going well. I was not able to probe her deeper. I needed to get her to talk about her feelings.

  ‘Usha, do you want to talk about why you’re feeling lousy today?’

  Another long uncooperative silence.

  ‘Usha, you seem to be remembering a lot of things inside you. I just want you to know that it’s okay if you don’t want to talk. We can just sit here quietly. It’s all right.’

  She hugged her bear tightly and closed her eyes. That was how our first interview ended.

  The next day I slipped the tape into my video player. Yikes! My face loomed up on the screen. Usha’s back was towards the camera. My voice was loud and clear. Hers was almost inaudible. I rang the crisis centre.

  ‘You’ve been had!’ Sister Mary giggled.

  I wasn’t amused. That girl had hijacked my interview. Idiot! How could I have been so naïve? She’d taken advantage of my dinosaur technical know-how, sat me in the seat facing the video cam. Humph! Got to be careful with her.

  At our second interview Usha was upset. She’d shouted at her parents earlier, and had refused to say who the baby’s father was.

  ‘Not important, what! I must think of my … my baby. They asked me to … to … to … go home. I don’t want. Home is ver— very noisy. So many people talk, talk, talking all the time. My grandmother talks. My mother talks. My fa— fa— father shouts. My au— aun— auntie shouts.’

  ‘Take a deep breath, Usha. Breathe in slowly. Now breathe out slowly. Count to ten. One, two, three …’ Usha inhaled. Her breast heaved with the effort to calm herself.

  ‘What did your parents say?’ I asked.

  ‘They asked me this, that, that! Mother asked. Father asked. Auntie asked. Till I got so … so … so confused.’

  Since they’d found out the sex of the baby, Usha’s parents had changed their minds. They’d stopped lamenting that she’d brought shame to the family by not going for an abortion. Now they were pressing her not to give the baby up for adoption. Her parents wanted to take the baby home.

  ‘My … my … my father wants to put his name down as … as the father. He … he’s mad. It’s my … my … my baby. My baby. I … I want to keep him. Do … do what’s best for him. If … if giving him to other pe— pe— people is best, then I … I … I give him up.’

  Tears filled her eyes. She closed them to shut out the noise in her head and heart.

  ‘Yes, he’s your baby. No one can take him away from you unless you want them to.’

  Usha’s dark youthful face stayed with me all week. When the third interview came round, I called the centre to say that I had a cold. My head was heavy. Seventeen years old. Shame tinged my cheeks. My face felt warm. Is this what counselling trainers called ‘a trigger’, a word or event that rakes up your suppressed memories?

  At seventeen this girl was taking responsibility for another life. She wanted her baby. At forty-seven, fifteen years ago, I had refused to be responsible for another life.

  A quarter to seven. I took a taxi to the General Hospital and checked in. I’d chosen this time so that Dave would think I was going to work early in the morning. I’d often leave the house before seven so that I could be at the bank by eight to clear my backlog of work. The nurse at the ward gave me some forms to sign. Under the heading ‘Reasons for Termination of Pregnancy’ I’d scribbled ‘Obeying govt. orders to stop at two.’ The nurse smiled. For a brief moment, looking across the counter at each other, we were fellow conspirators who understood each other. Women tired of being told what to do—how many children to have and the penalties. Ah, the penalties! You would lose your place in the queue for public housing. If you had a third child, you were moved to the end of the housing queue and had to start all over again. And I had wanted then to move into a five-room flat as soon as possible. For the sake of peace. For the sake of my mother and two brothers living with us. Another penalty was that your third child was not allowed to go to the school of your choice even if his or her siblings were already in that school. A slew of such policies had hit us in the 1970s when Dave

  was unemployed.

  ‘I’m between jobs! Is this how you support your husband? Telling your mother that your husband is jobless? Bloody hell.’

  ‘Dave is freelancing,’ I told my mother.

  ‘Sama-sama, lah! Dia tak kerja! The same. He’s got no work!’

  ‘You tell your mother I was gracious enough to let her and her two sons live with us.’

  ‘Lu gasi dia tahu! Jangan lupa! You tell him not to forget. I don’t live here for free! I cook. I wash. I clean house. I look after his daughters. Go ask lain orang! Ask other people how much it costs to get a maid!’

  Dave and my mother talked at each other. Their words in different tongues sliced through me. My widowed mother could not afford to live on her own with my teenage brothers. And I? I could not cope with another child.

  My memory of that morning at the General Hospital is hazy. Lying in a room with pink walls. A fan whirring above me. By evening I was well enough to go home at the usual after-office hour. I told no one about my visit to the hospital. No one. Not even Dave whom I divorced two years later.

  Today is Mother’s Day.

  Today, Usha Thiagarajah, aged twenty-one now, graduates as a nurse. She will work in Mt Alvernia Hospital. Her son, half Chinese, is in nursery school. His grandmother, Usha’s mother, looks after him.

  Tonight, my two daughters will take me out to dinner.

  Tonight, alone in my room, I will remember my third child.

  10

  Big Wall Newspaper

  In one minute’s time, the electric bell will bong. The hungry horde will rush down the stairs and out through the school gates. But I’ll be here, waiting for the Sengkang Kid. Thanks to the Auntie brigade this loo is clean and dry. That’s how it is in our elite Saints’ schools. We take pride in having a clean loo. And that’s why the loo is the best place to have a fight. There’s a clear space between the sinks and the urinals; and no teacher comes into the boys’ loo. This block is deserted after school. There will be no spectators this evening. No smart-ass loudmouths to cheer him. It will be a clean fight between the Sengkang Kid and me. Not that I want to fight him. I don’t like to fight. But that Kid tore up my Big Wall Newspaper.

  I had written about the fight that the Kid lost after the soccer game last week. That got him so pissed he sent a fist towards my face, but I ducked. And all that punch and weight fell hard onto the floor. That got him madder. He swore to kick the hell out of my smart-ass face. This morning, he tore down our wall newspaper and showed it to the P.

  Mr Harry Koh hit the roof when he saw the headline. Inside my pocket now is the P’s note I’ve got to take home and show to my mom; my mom who pats her son on the shoulders each time he brings home a report card filled with A’s and B’s. These grades make her feel good. These grades make her feel her life is still worthwhile, and her divorce has not affected her boy. This note will make her cry tonight.

  * * *

  ‘You’ve got nothing better to do? So many other things happened in school. Why didn’t you write about them?’

  ‘This is news.’

  That was his father’s dictum: Dog bites man. Not news. Man bites dog. News. Of
course, she understands why a young female teacher crying in front of her class is news in an all boys’ school. But did he have to write about it and publish it in his Big Wall Newspaper, as he calls it?

  ‘What happened in that Secondary Four class was none of your business! You didn’t make this up, did you?’

  ‘Mom!’

  His eyes have that mix of fear and defiance that you see in a young dog when it’s cornered. His tone is accusatory.

  ‘You are the one who taught me to tell the truth.’

  His face wears the look of a sullen mule. His voice is hoarse; it’s changing fast. Soon he’ll speak like a man. She wants to hug him and throttle him at the same time. Pride and annoyance surge through her. He’s just fourteen and he’s started a school newspaper. She reads his Principal’s note again.

  You are requested to attend an urgent meeting tomorrow at 8 a.m. sharp. Your son’s abuse and violations of … The note reels off a list of Wai Mun’s offences: fighting, vandalism of the school’s notice board, putting up notices without the Principal’s permission, publishing a school newspaper without the Principal’s permission, making a teacher cry. The punishment is a public caning. Should his parents object, they are advised to take their son out of the school.

  Her hands are trembling a little, just a little. Her son is not a criminal. Her first impulse is to protect her boy. Her second is to seek ‘damage control’. But what can she do? Vandals and errant students are caned in Singapore. But a public caning for a school boy? Even the most hardened vandal is caned in private in the prison. Not in front of an audience of a thousand students in the school hall! What will Richard say? For a fleeting second, she thinks of phoning him. But what’s the point? He won’t speak for his son. He can’t even speak up for himself. O, God! What should she do?