The Man Who Wore His Wife's Sarong

by Suchen Christine Lim

  But I liked Mr Khoo. He was the one who introduced the novena to Mei and me. Before that I knew nothing about Our Lady and the novena, even though I went to a convent school.

  ‘It’s very good. Go for nine Saturdays. Don’t stop. Must go all nine Saturdays. Pray to Mary, the mother of Jesus. You’ll gain an indulgence, and your wish will be granted.’

  ‘Mr Khoo, what’s an indulgence?’ I asked.

  ‘Hm, I learnt that in catechism a long time ago. Can’t remember what Father Paul said. In the Roman Catholic Church the pope can grant an indulgence. When we die, we go to purgatory because we’re all sinners. But if you have an indulgence, your time in purgatory will be reduced. Something like that.’

  ‘Ah so! An indulgence is like a special passport! Get you to heaven faster!’ Mei laughed. She laughed a lot in those days before she met Mr Wong. ‘That’s why your wife goes to the novena every Saturday. You need a lot of indulgences!’

  ‘Ya, ya, I need. I need.’ Mr Khoo’s face was flushed.

  Now that Mei had fallen in love with Mr Wong, boyfriends like Mr Khoo had stopped coming to our house.

  I switched on the air-con and bedside lamp. Mei’s room was cool and perfumed. Thick maroon velvet curtains were kept drawn to keep out the sun during the day. Musk, rose and all sorts of mysterious scents emanated from the bottles lining her dressing table. There were jars of creams and lotions, boxes of powder, rouge and eye shadow, and lipsticks and hairbrushes. Her dressing table had three mirrors, with two side mirrors that folded towards the centre so that you could see not only your front but also your profile when you put on your make-up. Her drawers were crammed with boxes filled with rings, bracelets, trinkets, necklaces and earrings. All fakes, of course, except that these were not the cheap fakes sold in the pasar malam or night market. This was expensive costume jewellery that cost fifty or more dollars a piece. I opened another drawer. It held her scarves and shawls; a third was filled with her bras; and a fourth held her panties of satin, silk, lace and nylon so sheer that you could see through them. Red, black, purple, pink, green and blue panties with matching bras. Some were just itsy-bitsy pieces of silk. I couldn’t see how they could cover anything. But, oh, I did adore those itsy-bitsy panties! Each was like a forbidden fruit—rich, ripe and luscious. How I loved the feel of cool silk against my warm skin.

  I locked her bedroom door. Then I did an unspeakable thing. I wore one of Mei’s red panties. A flaming red pair. I pulled it over my dull white cotton, and lay down on Mei’s king-size bed. Her peach-coloured satin bedsheet was smooth and cool against my body. I looked at myself in the mirrors. There I was, lying on my back, reflected in the three mirrors of the dressing table on my right. On my left, the full-length mirrors of Mei’s wardrobe displayed my reflection. A thrill coursed through my lanky body. I felt heady and reckless. Like I had drunk a shot of whisky. What with the perfumes and the red satin sheen on my butt, I watched myself preen and stretch out a languid arm as I lay supine among the satin sheets. A seductive flat-chested Cleopatra reaching out to her Caesar. Each reflection in the mirror was a fragment of my body.

  Is this how Mei sees herself with a man? In disembodied fragments?

  I jumped out of bed, pulled off the red panties, unlocked the door and dashed into the bathroom across the landing. I stripped and threw off all my clothes. Turned on the tap. I didn’t know what I was washing off but I needed a shower.

  To this day I can’t bear the sight of red panties or sleep on satin bedsheets. They smell of moral decadence.

  One night—no, one morning—it must have been after three o’clock when a taxi drew up outside our gate. Our porch light came on. From my window upstairs I watched Fah Chay run out to help a dishevelled Mei out of the taxi.

  ‘Todaaay … I’m not com-ing hooome!’

  ‘Shush! Shush! You’ll wake up the whole neighbourhood, Miss Mei!’

  ‘Wake up! Wake up, worrrld!’

  I saw my father march out to give Fah Chay a hand.

  ‘Nooo! You leave me alone! I want to walk! Walking alooone is meee!’

  Mei belted out the lyrics of a Mandarin pop song as Father hauled her into the house. I hurried downstairs. My father’s face was angry and grim.

  ‘The taxi picked her up near the Chinese cemetery.’

  ‘What was she doing there?’ Mother asked him.

  ‘Why don’t you ask her yourself?’ Father looked as if he would explode when Mei suddenly threw up all over him. ‘Ugh! Take her away! Take her!’

  He stomped upstairs and I heard the sound of running water as he washed himself. Fah Chay crushed some newspapers and started to mop up the mess. Vomit was everywhere. Mother made Mei sit down.

  ‘Here! Drink this. Thick black coffee. People go to the cemetery to get lucky numbers from the dead. What were you doing there? We were worried sick. Mr Wong called so many times. “Where’s she? Where’s she?” I kept telling him I didn’t know. You should’ve told me. He was very sorry for what he said. You shouldn’t have forced his hand like that. Are you going to get drunk each time you quarrel with him? This is no way to carry on. If he could marry you now, he would. That’s what he said. Believe you me! I want you to marry him. He’s good for you. But you’ve got to give him time to talk to his mother. He’s her only son. Why did you go to the cemetery at night? Anything could’ve happened.’

  ‘I went there to scold my bloody ma!’

  ‘What’s this got to do with her? She’s dead.’

  ‘She abandoned meee! If she hadn’t, I might’ve gone to school and become somebodiii! Now I’m nobodiii! Wong’s mother doesn’t want a nobody as her daughter-in-law. If I were somebody …!’ She threw up again.

  ‘You’re drunk.’

  ‘Who says? I not drunk! I die!’

  Mei slumped into the armchair, tears streaming down her cheeks.

  ‘I die.’

  ‘Fah Chay, make her a cup of ginger tea.’

  ‘I’ll do it, Mother.’

  ‘You! What are you doing here? Go back to bed. Kaypoh. Busybody!’

  A week later Mei asked me to accompany her to the novena service at the Thomson Road Catholic Church.

  ‘But Auntie Mei, you don’t understand English. The service is in English.’

  I wasn’t keen, you see. At fourteen I was acutely self-conscious and fearful of what my friends would say. How could I go to church with a dance hostess who wanted to ask the mother of Jesus to help her catch a man? It wasn’t right.

  ‘You don’t know English, how are you going to pray to Mother Mary?’

  ‘I pray to her in Cantonese, lor! She’s a god, what! She should know all languages. Kuan Yin, Goddess of Mercy, is from India. She understands us Chinese.’

  What else could I say?

  On Saturday morning I watched her put the finishing touches to her well-made-up face. Her red lips were a contrast to the green eyeshadow above her eyes. As she brushed her shoulder-length hair, I was suddenly reminded of another Mary in the Bible, the woman (was she a prostitute?) who washed Jesus’ feet with her tears, dried them with her hair and anointed them with fragrant oil. An extravagant gesture that earned her the disapproval of the righteous men around Jesus. I didn’t want to be judgemental like the men. I was determined to be nice. But it was hard work being nice.

  ‘Squeeze, girl. Push ahead. Push.’

  The church was packed. Mei bulldozed her way through the crowd, her bouquet of pink roses held high above her head.

  ‘To the front! I want the holy water to fall on me when the priest does the blessing.’ To my horror she hissed in broken English, ‘Exicue me! Exicue me!’

  I didn’t know where to hide my face.

  There was standing room only. Those who could not find a seat stood in the aisles between the pews, fanning themselves with their hymn books and blocking the way. The ceiling fans were whirring furiously above the crowd that had squeezed into the church, but it was impossible to disperse the heat and humidity rising from this mass of
humanity. My tee shirt was soaked. I hoped no one would recognise me. If they did, I would pretend that Mei was my aunt. But I would not introduce her. She was not the kind of woman you could introduce to your classmates and say, ‘Meet my aunt. She’s a lawyer’ or ‘My aunt, she’s a teacher.’ I wanted to turn back, but Mei refused to give up.

  ‘Exicue me, exicue me!’ she pushed down the crowded aisle.

  Like a hapless sampan, I was towed along.

  ‘This is even worse than the Kuan Yin Temple in Waterloo Street, I tell you! But at least no burning joss sticks here. In the temple the women don’t care if their joss sticks singe your hair. Church is better. We just bring flowers.’

  She placed her bouquet of roses reverentially at the foot of the statue of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour.

  ‘Look at all these baskets of flowers. She must have answered many prayers. A very powerful goddess, this mother of Jesus!’

  We squeezed ourselves into a pew, forcing those already seated to make room for us. Then Mei fished out her rosary beads with a silver cross dangling at the end of a silver chain. She held the glass beads in both hands and bowed her head like the old lady next to us. I couldn’t resist asking, ‘Auntie Mei, you pray to Kuan Yin. Now you pray to Mary. Is this okay?’

  ‘Why not? Mother Mary and Kuan Yin, both are merciful, what.’

  The front of the church was like a stage. Four boys came out in their red and white vestments. They lighted the candles on the altar, genuflected and stood at the side.

  ‘So cute! They look like girls. Are they boy priests?’

  ‘No!’ I was horrified at her ignorance. ‘They’re altar boys. They help the priest.’

  ‘Oh, I thought like in Thailand where boys become monks for a while.’

  ‘No, not like that. What are you praying for?’ I asked so that she would stop making stupid remarks. The woman next to me was smiling. She must’ve overheard what Mei had said.

  ‘I’m praying for marriage, what else?’

  The choir burst into song.

  I was relieved. Then the priest entered, resplendent in his green and white robes. The congregation stood up. Mei and I followed. I tried to pray, but I was distracted. Mei was holding her rosary and hymn book, pretending to follow the singing, pretending to the people around us that she could read the English words. Her hymn book was open at the same page as mine. She could read numbers, but not words. A grown woman unable to read. How sad. My finger traced the words of the hymn we were singing. I too pretended that she could read. Not because I was kind. More because I didn’t want her to embarrass me. I felt exposed. Like I had worn the wrong dress for church. One that showed too much flesh. Any minute now someone might point at me and say that I was a fraud. I was hot under the collar. I felt the piercing glance of the woman behind us.

  The next Saturday we went again. Every Saturday, rain or shine, I had to go to the novena service with Mei. The moment the service began, Mei’s eyes never left the altar. She was held spellbound by the priest and his colourful robes.

  ‘Last week a Chinese priest in white and red. This Saturday it’s an ang moh priest in green and white.’

  ‘He’s Irish,’ I said, appalled that she didn’t know.

  ‘So you like church?’ Mother asked her.

  ‘Yes, I like. Two more Saturdays. Then my wish will be granted.’

  ‘Not will be, Aunti Mei. It’s may be,’ I stressed. ‘Wishes aren’t granted that easily. If that were so, every student would pass their exams with flying colours.’

  ‘But I have faith,’ Mei declared.

  She enjoyed the hymn singing, the genuflections and the ritual blessing at the end of each service. When we sang, she glanced at my hymn book. She turned a page when I turned. Her mouth opened and closed like a goldfish when the congregation sang. Looking at her, no one would’ve guessed that she couldn’t follow the service, which was conducted entirely in English.

  On the ninth and last Saturday Mei surprised me. She sang the hymns with great gusto. Her voice was louder than the rest. When we sang the chorus of the Ave Maria, her ‘áve, áve, áve Mariaaa’ crescendoed. Her voice trilled and fell with the music of the organ as her eyes swept upwards to Our Lady in the stained glass window above the altar.

  Such devotional pretence! I was irritated. I didn’t like the way she was drawing attention to us. People turned to look at her. Could she have memorised the English sounds without understanding their meaning? Watching her, I teetered between admiration and condescension. She was bold. She believed. And she was singing as if she knew the words.

  When the service ended, Mei genuflected. She daubed a copious amount of holy water on her forehead before we left the church.

  ‘Now I will wait for my sweetheart’s mother to accept me. I’ve been to church. I’ve been to the temple. I’ve prayed to Eastern and Western gods.’

  ‘Won’t they clash?’ Mother teased her.

  ‘Clash? What clash? Can you explain, my dear sister? What clash?’

  Mother was stumped. She was a devout Taoist who prayed diligently to the Jade Emperor in heaven, the Goddess of Mercy, the God of Prosperity, the Earth God of Longevity, the Kitchen God and the entire pantheon of ancestral gods in the religion of our forefathers. She believed that the just would be rewarded and the wicked punished in the eighteen layers of Chinese hell. ‘Don’t lie. If you lie, the horse-headed guard will cut off your tongue when you die!’ That about summed up my mother’s religious faith.

  When I was five or six, she punished me with the force of the Thunder God. Her justice oozed out of the end of a cane which she had bought for one dollar at the market. When I was eight, she said I was too old to be caned. I had to kneel under the table instead. For hours I knelt under the dining table till my legs were numb. No, I would not apologise. I would rather kneel and die under the table, which was covered with a tablecloth that reached to the floor. In that dark space underneath, I learnt to escape my mother’s threats of Chinese hell.

  She had sent my eight-year-old soul plummeting down its eighteen levels. Each level was like one of those depicted in the garden of Haw Par Villa. When I closed my eyes under the table, the horse-headed guards came. They took me to the level where liars, pretenders and hypocrites had their tongues cut off. Next, we descended to a lower level where murderers had their bellies slit open. Then the bull-headed guards removed their guts and intestines. Further down another level cheats, loan sharks and charlatans were flung into a cauldron of boiling oil. Then wife-beaters were whipped. Next level. Robbers had their hands chopped off. Level by level, the horse-headed guards guided me till we reached the level where the ungrateful child was judged. I opened my eyes. I could not go on. It was too terrible to contemplate.

  I sought for ways to escape my mother’s hell. At age eight I did the smartest thing that a child of my intelligence could do, a child who studied in the Convent of the Holy Infant Jesus. I ran into the school chapel. I beseeched Michael, the archangel, the slayer of the serpent and Satan, to save me. I became a Catholic at age eight. I told no one about it. It was my secret. I pledged loyalty to the Christian god and Michael, his archangel. My powerful archangel, my guardian angel and all the other angels in Christian heaven could now be summoned to fight against my mother’s horse-headed guards and bull-headed guards in Chinese hell. Hail Mary, full of grace …

  ‘Mother Mary can understand meee! Both Mother Mary and the Goddess of Mercy will understand! Now I’ll just wait for Wong’s old ma to accept me, lor!’

  How simplistic, I thought. At age fourteen I was proud of my ability to think and reason logically and objectively. School had trained me well. I knew where to draw boundaries between Eastern gods and Western gods, and I knew such out-of-bounds markers like ‘don’t have sex before marriage’. Mei had mixed up her gods and boundaries. She’d failed to distinguish between true gods and false gods. My mother, on the other hand, was very clear about what was what.

  ‘Taoist heaven is different from Chris
tian heaven. If you die a Taoist, you go to Taoist heaven. If you die a Christian, you go to Christian heaven. It’s logical. You cannot mix. You’re my daughter, girl. If you convert and become a Catholic, you’ll never see me again when we die. I’ll be in one heaven and you’ll be in another heaven.’

  ‘So there are boundaries even after we die, ha? Like borders between countries?’ Mei laughed.

  ‘Why not?’ My mother was very firm. ‘Heaven must have borders. If not, how to keep out the bad souls?’

  ‘Sometimes I ask myself, you know, is there an English heaven? Where is the Chinese or Malay heaven? What do you think, girl?’ Mei turned to me.

  I was stuck. In catechism class we were taught that heaven belongs to the believer. The division between the believer and the nonbeliever was very clear. Nonbelievers with good hearts burn in purgatory until they accept Christ or until God takes pity on them. Of course, this doesn’t make sense to me now but in those days, when I was fourteen, I was peeved when Mei challenged me.

  ‘How would I know if there are boundaries or not?’ I hated it when I was put in a spot. ‘Do you know, Auntie Mei? Do you?’

  ‘I know.’

  The certainty in her voice caught me by surprise. ‘You know what?’

  ‘I know there’s only one boundary in heaven. The boundary between a good heart and a bad heart.’

  ‘Yeah, like you know everything!’

  I was not only peeved, but also jealous. That answer should have come from me. It was brilliant.

  ‘How do you know?’

  Mei pointed to her head. ‘Got brain.’

  ‘Pity you didn’t go to school.’

  That silenced her. She stopped smiling. I was ashamed of myself. I had hit her below the belt. I apologised.

  ‘Who needs school anyway?’ She laughed and dismissed my apology. ‘I need oysters. Have you ever eaten fresh oysters?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Come, I’ll take you out for an oyster lunch. Your reward for nine weeks of novena friendship!’