The Man Who Wore His Wife's Sarong

by Suchen Christine Lim

  ‘Because you were afraid to change school.’

  ‘Good grief, Mom. Did you think so little of me then?’

  ‘No. You know I didn’t mean that. I was proud of you, son. I wanted you to change school because I couldn’t stand that bully of a principal.’

  ‘I wanted to handle it myself. I didn’t want to have it on my record that I’d to quit school. Like I was expelled. Besides, I reckoned that bullies die. Eventually. Like all of us. Dad said, ‘All tyrants have to die some day. All that the young have to do is to stay put and wait’.’

  ‘Did he say that?’

  ‘He did. He even wrote about it in one of his articles. Write, he said. Write to keep the flame burning. It is Rajiv’s mantra now. That guy’s a bum but he’s one of the best reporters in ST today.’

  Mom is silent, thinking.

  ‘Don’t you see, Mom? Dad was right. Rajiv and I are still writing today. Huat’s into internet publishing. Where’s Mr Koh?’

  Mom almost falls off her chair, laughing. ‘Who was it who said, lose a battle, win a war?’ she giggles. ‘Oh, this is absolutely my best birthday dinner ever.’

  But I take that with a pinch of salt. Mom’s humour has always been a bit off tangent. She taught literature before her retirement, and her favourite Shakespearean character was the Fool in King Lear.

  ‘So you did go and see your dad. How come I didn’t know?’

  ‘I didn’t tell you.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Another thing I didn’t tell you. Mr Koh coached me in maths for my ‘O’ Level.’

  ‘And you didn’t you tell me that either?’

  She wanted to know everything in those days. But she could only guess at what her son must have gone through during those difficult years. An only child torn between his parents. Was it her fault that he’d hidden from her his visits and consultations with his father and others? Was she too clingy? Too possessive? A divorced parent clinging to her child, afraid of losing him? I can see these thoughts racing through my mother’s brain. To distract her I tell her about Dad.

  ‘Dad said happy birthday to you. I spoke with him this morning.’

  ‘How’s he?’

  ‘He’s recovering from his op. He wants to continue his freelance writing. And he’s learning to blog, he says.’

  ‘Hmmm. Good for him. Did you tell him about Susannah?’

  ‘Not yet. You’re the first to know that your son’s getting married.’

  Mom’s eyes light up at this. Although she will never admit it, she wants to come first in her son’s life.

  ‘I’m proud of you, son.’

  ‘And I’m proud of you, Mom.’

  11

  The Tragedy of My Third Eye

  My third eye popped open when Linda’s father spat on me and robbed me of my childhood forever. That little tyrant lorded over us in Primary 1A because she could speak English so well. Standing in front of us, her proud little face tilted upwards, she tossed her curls, gave our teacher a sweet smile and recited, ‘Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall …’

  Her voice, clear as a bell, held me spellbound as I sat in the back row of the class, my mouth a little open. Like the other little girls, I yearned to be like her. I, who couldn’t speak a word of English, hoped some day to also be touched by magic and recite ‘Humpty Dumpty’ and a host of other nursery rhymes in English.

  ‘Doesn’t Linda sound just like little Alice in “Alice and the Toy Soldier”?’ Miss Wang purred.

  I looked at the floor and kept my eyes down. After the first few weeks of primary school, I quickly learnt never to look up when a teacher was talking. That was one sure way of avoiding punishment. If I had looked up, Miss Wang would have caught my eye and asked me a question. Then I would have been unable to answer her, and so she would have had to punish me. I couldn’t say any of the English words which seemed to flow out of Linda like water from a tap. When Miss Wang pointed to the letters of the alphabet—say, the letter A—an entire repertoire of English sounds whooshed out of my head. How do I say it? Air? Aye? Arr? What?

  Miss Wang waited and coaxed. Then she tapped her ruler and pointed to the little black squiggle on the chart.

  ‘Come on. Say it. What is it? How does it sound?’

  But my mouth refused to open. I looked down at my feet.

  ‘Come on. Try. We don’t have all day.’

  And still no word came. My head was a dark emptiness even though the sun was shining outside the window. I shut my eyes. I didn’t want my tears to seep out.

  ‘Who can tell Ping-Ping what this word is?’

  I remained standing for the rest of the reading period.

  I hated school. It had turned me into a dumb mute. Except during recess. And I couldn’t read. I couldn’t sing. I couldn’t spell, couldn’t count and, worst of all, I couldn’t recite those blasted English nursery rhymes which Miss Wang inflicted upon us each morning.

  I wanted to run away. The grown-ups had cheated me. Mother had lied when she said school would make me clever. School made me stupid. I was a clever girl before I came to school. Grandma had said I was smart. My teacher in the Chinese kindergarten had also said I was smart. Why did Mother send me to a place where I became stupid? I asked myself this question each night when I lay in bed alone after Mother had locked me up in our bedroom. Am I clever only when I’m with Grandma and stupid when I’m not with her? Did Grandma lie? Did she cast a spell on me as

  Mother claimed?

  I could recite my Three Character Classic primer from page one to the last page, in Cantonese, without once looking at the book. I could sing arias from The Patriotic Princess, Hua Mulan and Madam White Snake. Everyone listened to me in Grandma’s house when I sang. I could tell Auntie Jen what to do when I waved my sword and threatened to chop off her head. Grandma called me her clever little princess. But in Primary 1A of the Convent of the Holy Infant Jesus, Miss Wang called me ‘stupido’. I brushed off my tears. I would not cry. I would fight. Princesses are brave and smart like Princess Chang Ping.

  That night I shut my eyes tightly against the darkness and reached out to grasp the magic of the universe, like the Monkey King who journeyed with Tripitaka, the holy monk, in Journey to the West. He was the greatest fairy spirit, that Monkey King. He could change himself into anything and change his voice to speak any language. I prayed that I could change my voice from a Chinese voice to an English one.

  ‘Pay attention in class. Learn to speak like Linda,’ Miss Wang said.

  Silly cow. How could we? Oops! Who was that? Who said silly cow inside my head? I quickly stopped the smile from spreading across my face and bent down, pretending to tie my shoelaces. Was that the Monkey King spirit in me?

  My eyes followed Miss Wang all day. I saw how she asked Linda to answer questions or recite poems in class. Not only could Linda Tan recite English nursery rhymes, she could even sing English songs like Down By the Station. Miss Wang loved her. I knew that because I counted that she smiled at Linda more than ten times yesterday. She said, ‘Thank you, Linda, that was very nice.’ To the rest of us she yelled, ‘Who’s talking? If I catch anyone talking again, I’ll send her out of the class!’

  When Miss Wang was not in class, Linda took out her little blue book and pencil. She wrote our names in the book if we didn’t listen to her. Then she would show it to Miss Wang and we would be punished. Because of this, everyone wanted to be Linda’s friend—everyone wanted to be part of her gang.

  Well, maybe not everyone, which was why, one day during recess, her minions made us stand in a line in front of their princess in class.

  ‘We’re playing slave and enemy. This big finger is for slave. This little finger is for enemy. Choose. Which finger?’ Her Royal Highness looked at us.

  We looked at one another. No one spoke. We waited to see who would have to choose first. Mugface, the biggest and ugliest girl in class and Linda’s most devoted slave, singled out May Yin, my best friend.

  ‘Touch this finger and you
’ll be Linda’s slave. Touch this little finger and you’ll be our enemy. Understand or not?’ Mugface demanded.

  I understood the words ‘slave’ and ‘enemy’. Sister Josephine had told us stories about slaves in the Bible, like that slave, Daniel, who was thrown into the lion’s den but the lion didn’t eat him because, like the song said,

  ‘He had faith in all good men,

  and for that faith, he was willing to die.’

  I didn’t know what the words meant, but I could remember the music and the song, and I knew what a slave was. But why do I have to be a slave or an enemy? Why can’t we be friends? I wanted to ask Linda but I didn’t have the English words then and she couldn’t understand my Cantonese.

  ‘Which finger? Quick, choose, lah!’

  May Yin looked as if she was going to cry.

  ‘Choose!’ Mugface barked at her.

  Linda stood like a stone princess, with her two fingers pointed at my best friend’s throat. Instinctively May Yin’s hands were clasped in front of her chest. Her face was flushed.

  ‘Quick, lah! Choose!’

  Like the tongue of a snake, May Yin’s finger darted out. It flicked Linda’s forefinger and retreated. Desperately I tried to catch her eye, but May Yin refused to look at me.

  ‘One slave!’ Linda sang and moved on to the next girl.

  ‘Two slaves!’ she sang.

  ‘Three slaves!’ Mugface and the others added.

  ‘Four slaves!’

  And it went on. I began to edge away. Please Monkey King, please make the bell ring. Please, please, please, make recess over soon. My heart was pounding so fast that I almost couldn’t breathe, but I dared not move away any further. Mugface had seen me. She walked to the door and stood at the doorway of the classroom. I looked out, hoping that a teacher would walk past, but no one did.

  ‘Your turn.’ One of Linda’s slaves poked me in the ribs. Except for May Yin, who looked downcast and forlorn in the corner, the rest of the slaves were eager for me to join them. ‘Your turn, Ping-Ping! Choose, choose!’

  Linda stuck out her two fingers. ‘Which one?’

  I gazed at her two daggers.

  ‘Quick, this one or this one?’

  ‘If I be your slave then what?’

  ‘Stupido, you didn’t hear what I said? You go and line up and buy food for me during recess. Then you obey me and do what I tell you.’

  The girls pressed forward.

  ‘Quick! Choose!’

  The gang closed in.

  ‘Big or small finger?’

  ‘Quick, lah! Choose!’

  Linda glared at me. ‘Choose!’

  My little finger touched her little one.

  The girls gasped.

  The bell rang.

  No one spoke to me after recess. May Yin, who sat next to me, was dumb. I knew we were being watched. I nudged May Yin. I played tap with my pencil when the teacher was not looking. I drew a funny face on a piece of paper and pushed it across my desk to May Yin. But she didn’t even dare to look at it. After school, no one spoke to me.

  I tried to catch a cold or fever the next day, but nothing happened, even though I had covered myself from head to toe with a blanket. I dared not tell Mother. I was afraid she might cane me.

  The next day it was a little better. May Yin and I drew pictures and exchanged drawings under our desks. Linda had ordered everyone not to talk to me, so I was glad when we had to recite our nursery rhymes. That was the only time I could open my mouth and say something.

  On the third day I couldn’t bear it any longer. I ran off to play with the Indian girls. They were lucky. The two Indian girls in our class were not included in Linda’s game because she didn’t like them. They could speak English better than her, even though they didn’t know how to sing English pop songs. Satvindar Kaur became my best friend. Together with that other girl, Param, we went out to the saga trees during recess to collect red saga seeds to play kuti kuti, and the wonderful thing was that Satvindar and Param talked to me in class.

  They weren’t bothered by what Linda said or what Linda did. Not even when Linda glared at them. When she saw us together, Linda’s eyes grew dark. All day long her eyes followed us and got darker and angrier whenever she looked in my direction. Several times during the day, she shot poisonous darts at me. ‘Don’t look!’ She even scolded those who looked at me. The Chinese girls in class, even my former best friend, pretended I wasn’t there.

  But I don’t care! I don’t care! My little heart sang. Playing kuti kuti during recess was so much better than queuing up to buy noodles for Linda Tan, or running back and forth to fetch things for her, or playing only those games that she wanted to play.

  I might be only six and a half, and a ‘stupido’ in Primary 1A, but I would rather be an outcast than a slave.

  Linda and I lived in the same neighbourhood, down the same row of town houses and dilapidated shop houses. Each evening our trishaws dropped us at the top of the lane, and we would walk home from there. One evening I was trailing Linda and her minions. They were giggling and glancing back at me every now and then, talking loudly about lice and cow dung. I pretended I couldn’t hear them. They walked, four abreast, blocking my way whenever I tried to walk past them and move ahead.

  ‘Something white is crawling in her hair.’

  ‘And she smells!’

  They giggled and held their noses.

  ‘Ooh! She smells!’

  I ignored them. We were approaching Linda’s house. Their laughter grew louder. I saw Linda’s father, a spindly man in a white shirt and striped pyjama bottoms, emerge from their house and stand in the middle of the pavement, waiting for her. Linda ran up to him. As he bent down to take her school bag, she whispered something in his ear.

  He looked up and fixed his stern eyes on me.

  Just as I was walking past him on the pavement, he spat.

  ‘Pui! You! So proud for what? Why don’t you friend my daughter?’ he hissed in Hokkien. ‘You know what kind of woman your mother is?’

  I could only gaze at the dark patch on my convent blue uniform where his spittle had landed.

  Out! Out! Out!

  I scrubbed my thigh till the flesh was red and raw, but the spot where his spit had soaked through my school uniform and touched my flesh was still burning. I scrubbed harder and harder. In desperation I applied more soap, turned on the hose and pointed it at the contaminated spot. Little rivulets of red ran down my leg where my brush had broken the skin. Soon my socks and shoes were soaked and streaked pink. But I didn’t care. His question was jangling inside my head. My ears were burning. I could feel that they had turned red and raw like the spot on my thigh.

  I hated Linda’s father, but I hated my mother even more. What kind of a woman was she to invite such comments from a man like Linda’s father?

  She became my mother just two months ago! It was she who had yanked me away from my grandma, the one and only person who loved me the most in the whole wide world! Before that she had always been Ah Koo, my aunt. Now she was my mother, but inside my six-year-old heart she was still the woman who’d forced me to live with her. Wicked witch! I vowed never ever to love her. Only my grandma was worthy of my love.

  ‘Nooo! I don’t want to go! I don’t want to live with Ah Koo!’

  ‘Mama. Call me Mama.’

  ‘You’re not my mama!’

  She pushed me into the room and locked the door. I banged on it till she came in and caned me without mercy. She stopped only when I stopped yelling.

  I never cried again, at least not when she could hear me or see me.

  She made me empty the chamber pot every morning. I had to be careful not to spill any of the urine in it when I took it out to the communal toilet down the corridor of Kim Poh’s tenement house. If she were really my mama, she’d be like Janet and John’s mummy in my English storybook. Janet and John’s mummy baked cakes for them, kissed them goodbye and good night and tucked them into bed. In the morning she he
lped them to put on their coats and took them to the baker’s, the grocer’s and the music school where John played the violin and Janet played the piano.

  Mother never did any of these things. She slept till noon and was never awake when I got up to go to school. Every morning I could hear Mrs Lee in the room across the common passageway. I could hear the murmur of her children’s excited voices as she made breakfast for them while in my room, dimly lit by a small bedside lamp, I climbed onto a chair to reach for the hot-water flask. I brought it down from the shelf and made myself a cup of Ovaltine, which I drank with a biscuit for company. After breakfast I took our chamber pot to the communal toilet, a hut, away from the main house where we lived. No one ever dared to go to the toilet in the middle of the night because a ghost lived there. After I had cleaned the chamber pot, I brushed my teeth in the communal bathroom before returning to our bedroom to dress for school. All these things I had to do as quietly as possible so as not to awaken the sleeping dragon, and every morning when I drank my Ovaltine, tears would inevitably fall because I missed my grandma so very very much.

  ‘Ping! What are you doing? Turn off the tap! NOW! Are you stupid or what? Look at you! Dripping wet! Strip off that uniform!’

  The urchins flew into the communal kitchen like flies to a dead cat. Watching other children being scolded or whacked was great entertainment in this house of a thousand lodgers. All the urchins loved it, which was why I despised them. I despised them all.

  ‘What were you doing? Tell me! Did you fall down at school?’

  When I remained silent, Mother yanked the blue pinafore over my head and unbuttoned my white blouse. She left me standing in my white panties. The hooligans hooted. ‘Naked!’

  ‘What’s there to laugh about? Go away!’ Mother yelled at them.

  They fled, screaming, ‘Naked! Ping’s naked! Naked!’

  At that moment I hated Mother more than I detested the hooligans.

  ‘Take off your socks and shoes! Hurry!’

  I pulled them off.

  ‘Into the bathroom! Now!’