The Man Who Wore His Wife's Sarong

by Suchen Christine Lim

  I knew then that our friendship would last more than nine weeks.

  ‘Go on. Eat as much as you like.’

  ‘They look expensive, Auntie Mei.’

  I felt very grown up. The waiter at the restaurant in the Grand Ocean Hotel had brought us a silver platter of grey shells shimmering with translucent jelly, topped with slices of fresh lemon. I was ecstatic. Fresh oysters were a rare delicacy in Singapore in the Sixties. Ordinarily, we ate tiny oysters fried in oh-luak with egg and spring onions.

  ‘Relax. I earned three hundred dollars last night.’

  ‘Wow! You dance only and you get three hundred dollars.’

  ‘Hey, girl. You think it’s so easy, is it? Try it. Make some fatso with gold teeth dance. He lumbers like a water buffalo. But you’ve got to make him think he’s dancing like a prince! Then glue a smile on your face. Laugh. Laugh at his silly jokes. One ear in, one ear out. But, ah! When he greases my palm …’

  Mei’s laugh had the tingle of cut glass. Sharp and brittle.

  ‘What if you don’t like to dance with him?’

  I seized the chance to ask about her work.

  ‘Don’t like, also must pretend to like. If I say no I don’t want to dance, word will get around. Soon people won’t ask me anymore. In my line of work if you don’t dance, others will. They cut in. You’ll lose business. Then what do you eat?’

  ‘So it is a business?’

  ‘More or less. Profit and loss. I lose if people don’t pay. Sometimes these men, they refuse to pay! Pretend only. They act drunk. So I got to let them go.’

  ‘But why? It’s not fair.’

  ‘Life’s not fair, girl. Cannot offend these guys. If they make trouble, then how? Worse, they might scar my face. Pour acid on me. Yeah, such things happen in the nightclubs.’ She smiled when she saw that I was shocked. ‘That’s why I want to marry Mr Wong. Then I’ll be safe, lor!’

  She squeezed lemon juice onto the oysters. I did the same. She showed me how to use a tiny fork to pick the oyster out of its shell in the proper way. The cool jellied flesh slipped down my throat. I felt decadent, and troubled. I was gorging on oysters, paid for with money earned dangerously. I wanted to ask her why she didn’t try to work as a maid, a salesgirl or a ticket seller in the cinema. Such respectable jobs were open to those with little or no schooling. But Mother had drummed into my head never to be rude, and that meant not asking adults such awkward questions.

  The waiter brought us tall glasses of fresh lime juice and ice. I’d finished the half a dozen shells. Mei asked him to bring us more oysters despite my protests.

  ‘Aiyah! My work is not that bad, lah! Eat!’

  The blue sea shone and sparkled beyond the wide bay windows of the hotel. Splinters of sunlight danced on the bonnets of the cars parked outside. The tarmac in the car park steamed in the hot humid afternoon. Inside, the restaurant was cool and air-conditioned. I relaxed, pleased that Mei had brought me to a classy restaurant with tables covered with a starched white tablecloth and plush red velvet seats. Mother said one could always tell whether a restaurant was classy or not by its tablecloths. Cheap restaurants use plastic or leave their tables uncovered.

  ‘A glass of water, please,’ I said to the waiter hovering attentively near us. Mei’s eyes twinkled. My Cantonese was imitative of the rich well-bred girls in the Hong Kong movies. ‘Thank you so much.’

  I held my glass delicately with my little finger sticking out. An affected gesture. It was my take on upper class gentility—just stick your little pinkie out when holding your glass. I was imagining what rich girls would do in a classy joint when Mei hissed, ‘Psst! Mr Wong has just come in. On your right. Carry on talking but tell me what you see. Keep talking. Can you see him?’ Mei lowered her eyes. ‘Tell me who’s with him.’

  ‘A man and a woman.’

  ‘Are they holding hands? He must be seeing some other woman.’

  ‘Oops! Uncle Wong has seen me. He’s waving.’

  I raised my hand in a tentative greeting.

  ‘He’s walking over. They’re all walking over.’

  ‘Hello, hello!’

  ‘Hello! What wind blows you here?’ Mei pretended to be surprised.

  ‘The lunch wind! Meet my sister, Anne, and her fiancé, George. Miss Pak Mei.’

  They asked us about the oysters.

  ‘Oh, very fresh. Sea fresh, straight from the sea, the waiter told us. You must order and try some, Miss Wong.’

  ‘Oh really? They do look fresh, don’t they, George?’ Mr Wong’s sister had a soft nasal voice but, although her Cantonese speech was well modulated, it was spoken in an English-educated voice. I disliked her at once. She sounded patronising.

  ‘Do you like oysters, Miss Pak?’

  ‘Oh, ya, ya! Oysters! I’m crazy about oysters, Miss Wong. Can I call you Anne?’

  She glanced at her brother.

  ‘Please do, Miss Pak.’

  ‘Just before you came, Anne, I was teaching my niece here how to eat oysters with a fork. She’s never had oysters before so I thought I’d show her. Show her how to eat them without using her hands. So important in good society not to use one’s hands for oysters, you say right or not? So important to know these things if you want to eat in good restaurants that serve Western food, right or not? Can’t use chopsticks all the time. Ha-ha!’

  Mei was talking too much and too fast. Anne and George nodded and listened; they were courteous and polite, but they stuck stubbornly to bland comments on the food and the hot humid weather. I wished Mei would stop talking. She was too loud for the quiet restaurant. Heads had turned to look at her.

  ‘Did you know that these oysters are flown in daily from Australia?’ Anne turned to me.

  But before I could answer Mei said, ‘No wonder they cost a bomb! And this girl ate more than a dozen!’

  ‘Please, it’s my treat,’ Mr Wong laughed. He turned to the waiter. ‘Put it on my bill. Anne and George have just returned from Australia. They were in Melbourne. They graduated from the university there.’

  ‘Wah! Are you doctors or lawyers? No wonder you can pay for our lunch!’ Mei giggled.

  I looked at my shoes and wished there was a hole I could sink into.

  ‘No, Miss Pak,’ George corrected her. ‘We’re opticians. I’m working in my father’s shop, Bright & Clear.’

  ‘Oh my! I know that shop! I must go there and make my sunglasses. You must recommend me a good pair and don’t charge me a bomb! What about you, Anne? Are you working too?’

  Anne’s eyes appealed to her fiancé and her brother. I could tell that she was appalled by Mei’s familiarity.

  ‘Anne is going to work with me after our marriage,’ George said.

  ‘Oh, when? When are you marrying? You must let me know. I must come and wish you happiness! Congratulations! Congratulations! Big wedding dinner, eh?’

  ‘No, no, my sister and George want a quiet wedding.’

  ‘Oh, when? Where?’

  ‘We really mustn’t keep you and your niece from your lunch.’ Anne put an abrupt end to Mei’s questions. ‘Goodbye, Miss Pak.’ She turned and walked back to their table.

  ‘See you later.’

  Mr Wong gave me a wink and patted me on my shoulder. But he must have meant it for Mei who was overjoyed that she had met Anne. When we reached home, she told Mother all about the meeting.

  ‘I made a very favourable impression on his sister. Very lucky, ah. I know that Wong usually takes his family to the Grand Ocean Hotel for lunch on Saturdays. I was hoping to bump into them. Maybe meet his mother, you know. But the old lady didn’t go. Just his sister and her boyfriend. But never mind. Wong brought them over to our table. That gave me a lot of face.’

  I felt used. So Mei had more on her mind than just giving me a treat.

  ‘If his sister accepts me, it’ll be easier to bring his mother round. Let’s see what my darling Wong-wong says when he comes tonight. His mother is called Wong Tai. I shall be called Mrs Wong. How
does that sound to you?’

  Mei’s eyes were bright like a child’s.

  ‘It sounds very good, Mrs Wong!’ Mother teased her.

  Mei handed her an envelope.

  ‘What’s this? Why so much?’ Mother counted the fifty-dollar notes. ‘More than six hundred here. It’s … why, it’s a thousand. Mei!’

  ‘Just to thank you, Sister. I’m giving Fah Chay something too. I gave all of you a lot of trouble that night I was so drunk.’

  ‘Aiyah, Mei, we’re family.’

  Mother stuffed the envelope into her handbag.

  I was glad to get out of the sun and into the shade when I returned from school. I stopped in the doorway to allow my eyes to adjust to the sudden dimness. The three lethargic shapes in the living room barely noticed my entrance. The Rediffusion was switched on. Mei, Mother and Fah Chay were engrossed in another episode of Wuthering Heights retold in Cantonese.

  Mother, pen in hand, had stopped tallying her accounts as she listened. She had started a tontine group recently to help my father because one of his businesses had failed yet again. Mei was lying on the sofa with a wet towel over her eyes while Fah Chay, eyes half-closed, was seated on the cool tiled floor with her back against the wall. Her face carried the scars of smallpox. A peasant from the Tung-Koon District near Canton, she had big hands and feet. She was not the sort of amah who was prized for her good looks, but for her willingness to work hard. Her favourite saying was, ‘With two hands and two feet, I won’t starve.’ When her parents arranged for her to marry the idiot son of their landlord, Fah Chay eloped with the help of an aunt. She was eighteen at the time. Since then she had opted for the single life in Singapore.

  ‘No need to depend on others. I depend on myself. One life. One journey. One step at a time to the next life.’

  The voice of the housekeeper in Wuthering Heights sounded like Fah Chay’s voice, the voice of a plain-speaking Cantonese peasant woman. Looking back on that afternoon, I realise now what I didn’t at age fourteen: female independence comes in different shapes and sizes. Our amah had a mind of her own.

  I tiptoed past the three of them, and sat down at the table to have my lunch. As I ate I listened to the Bronte story of love and passion with two ears. My English ear remembered the accents of the Yorkshire moors while my Chinese ear heard the Cantonese voices coming from a secluded mansion somewhere in the depths of rural China. There was no Singapore voice. It hadn’t emerged yet. It was still enmeshed with the voices of traditional China, the China that taught and demanded unquestioning obedience and filial piety. Mother switched off the Rediffusion when the programme ended.

  ‘Mei, aren’t you going to call him yet?’

  ‘What for? He’s still his mother’s filial son. She says sit, he sits. She says run, he runs.’

  ‘Aiyah, Mei! You’ve got to see it from Wong’s point of view too. His old ma owns all the family assets. His hands are tied. Unless you don’t mind marrying a pauper. Can’t you just wait? Listen to what he has to say first before you quarrel with him, can or not?’

  ‘Can! You keep asking me to marry him, but his mother said no. What’s there to quarrel about any more? That filial son should please his mother. Go and marry a virgin. Not me. I’m a lump of dirt! People pick me up and put me down. He picked me up from the roadside. That’s what he said. Why do you think I went to the cemetery, eh? If my witch of a mother had had a heart, I wouldn’t be the shit I am today! She sold me, her own flesh and blood, to a prostitute. Why do you think I ran away? I ran away before they could do anything to me. I ran away. At least give me some credit for that! I lived on the streets for months. How else could I live? Yet I’ve learnt to sing and dance. I made my own way from that miserable hole, Telok Anson, to this city, Sing-gah-pore! Wong knows all that. Why doesn’t he have the guts to tell his mother? Oh damn it! I said I’m not going to cry! I will not! I will not cry!’

  She ran upstairs and shut herself in her room. That night Father had to call the ambulance. Mei had taken an overdose of sleeping pills. She was rushed to the General Hospital.

  ‘That’s when she found out that she’s expecting. She’s had so many abortions and miscarriages she never thought that she would conceive.’

  ‘She’s sure it’s Wong’s?’ Father asked.

  ‘If not Wong’s, whose? Who else has been sleeping here these past six months?’ Mother retorted.

  My father was silenced.

  Ming Li was born in August, just before National Day. Mr Wong took his mother to the hospital to look at his newborn daughter. When Old Mrs Wong saw the baby, she said, ‘Bring them home. Mother and child.’

  But there was no wedding. No wedding dinner, no white gown or wedding cake. Only a few friends and relatives were invited. We went as Mei’s family. My father was strangely quiet. He held my six-year-old brother’s hand when we went in to see the baby.

  ‘Aiyah! No wedding dinner, never mind. More important is the tea ceremony,’ Mother consoled Mei. ‘When you kneel in front of Old Mrs Wong and she accepts your cup of tea, she’s accepting you as her daughter-in-law. That’s the custom and tradition. Even the court accepts this tea ceremony as a sign that you’re married. Right or not?’ She turned to my father.

  ‘Humph!’

  That night my father went out and came home drunk. I heard Mother berating him in their bedroom. Oh god, they’re at it again. I glanced at my watch: 3.15 a.m.

  Our house was strangely quiet without Mei. Money was in short supply again. One morning I looked out of my window and my heart sank. Our landlord was back, waiting at the gate. Mother was furious.

  ‘Must we always rent out rooms to cabaret girls to make ends meet? Don’t you ever marry a rich man’s son!’ she yelled at me as though it was my fault that Father couldn’t pay the rent. ‘Rich men’s sons are useless! Spineless!’

  ‘Shut your gap!’

  Father marched downstairs, got into his car and drove off. He had dismissed his chauffeur a month before.

  ‘Useless! Helpless! Spineless!’ Mother screeched after him.

  I went outside to tell the landlord to come back another day. He handed me an eviction notice instead. My father owed him six months’ rent.

  Mother hit the roof. Sobbing into the phone, she managed to extract six months’ rent as a personal loan from Mei. I don’t know what my father said that night when Mother told him about it. They had a huge row.

  I was preparing for my O levels that year, so I ignored the comings and goings of my parents. Some days my mother’s eyes were red and swollen. She phoned Mei each time we needed money to tide us over to the following month. Father started coming home later and later. My brother and I hardly ever saw him.

  Then one day Fah Chay resigned. Mother could no longer pay her.

  ‘I’m very sorry to go, but I’ve got to think of my old age. I have to work and save for the day I cannot work. Take care of yourself, girl. Study hard. Your mother has a hard life. She comes from a poor family like me. Your father’s family was very rich in Malacca. His parents didn’t like your mother’s family. They disowned your father when he insisted on marrying your mother. So they left Malacca and came to Singapore. When you were born, your grandaunt on your father’s side sent them money regularly. Then she passed away, and there was no more money. That was when they rented out the room to Miss Pak Mei. So study hard, girl. Look after your brother.’

  In 1969 Father’s business collapsed.

  ‘Got to go to Jakarta. Urgent business,’ he’d told Mother.

  He didn’t come back. He went missing for months, hiding from his creditors. When the landlord evicted us, Mother called Mei several times but with no success. Either she wasn’t in or she wasn’t taking Mother’s calls any more. One day when she called again, Mother discovered that the line had been cut.

  ‘That’s gratitude for you! After all that I’ve done for her, what thanks do I get?’

  ‘A few thousand dollars,’ I wanted to say but didn’t.

 
; Mother cried when we moved into a tiny three-room flat in Queenstown. Our world had suddenly shrunk to three small rooms. I missed our garden and trees.

  We kept to ourselves. Father, who had returned by then, was listless, thin and worn out. His dreams of opening a nightclub and a grand restaurant—no, a chain of restaurants—had crashed. The odour of failure and bankruptcy clung to him. His friends and colleagues avoided him. No one seemed to have any work for him. Not even a clerical job.

  ‘With two hands and two feet, we won’t starve. That’s what Fah Chay said.’

  Mother pawned off her jewellery. She bought an oven and started to bake cakes. She hawked them door to door. My brother and I learnt to take orders over the phone. The work of baking, packing and delivering was backbreaking, especially during the festive seasons like Christmas and Chinese New Year. But we had food on the table. One day Mother came home and shouted at Father.

  ‘Oi! I got you a job!’

  ‘What job?’ My father hadn’t worked for a long time.

  ‘Never mind what job! You know how to drive, right or not?’

  Mother arched her brow, a sign that she would not brook any excuses from him. She was now the de facto head of the family. Her kueh-kueh and cakes were bringing in a small but steady income.

  ‘The bus company is recruiting drivers. I asked the men at the bus interchange. “Very easy to apply,” they said. Just bring your driver’s licence and identity card. Driving is better than sitting at home. You’ll rot if you don’t work! Right or not?’

  So my father became a bus driver. If he had any regrets about the work, he kept them to himself. He was a sad, silent man who sat in front of the tv when he was not working. My mother’s temper had a short fuse in those days. She nagged and scolded and made him work even on his rest days.

  ‘Oi! Help me. I’ve only one pair of hands. Pack these cakes in the boxes and take them over to Mrs Lim in Tiong Bahru! And take the bus, not taxi. All that I make will not pay for the taxis you take every time you deliver my cakes!’

  My father did as he was told. I felt sorry for him then, and hated my mother for her harsh words.