by You Jin
He had to go to the hospital twice every three days, but no amount of injections or medicine could bring about a change in his condition. Unbeknownst to me, the Saudi Arabian doctor had not prescribed him the right medication, so of course there was no hope of his situation improving.
Once, I cooked fish porridge for him and took great pains to get him to eat. When he finished eating, I carried him like a treasure to the bed for his nap, wrapping him snugly in freshly laundered, fresh-smelling sheets. I took a book from the shelf, his favourite, a children’s picture book of Journey to the West. But before I could even open it, I heard the sound of vomiting. I looked back and saw that the whole bowl of porridge he had just eaten was now streaming out of his mouth and onto the sheets.
I sobbed like a defeated soldier as I cleaned up the mess. James was on yet another business trip, and I was left alone to fend for myself. Afraid my son would not be able to breathe, I sat by the bed and kept my eyes on him all night.
When dawn came, exhausted as I was, I scooped up my weak son and took him to the hospital. The paediatric specialist from Egypt examined him and said in sombre tones, “The situation is not good. He needs to stay here for observation.”
At that moment, I made a decision. I would take him back to Singapore for treatment.
It was the right decision. After we flew all that way back to Singapore, the paediatric specialist discovered in an X-ray that his nasal passages were blocked with an infection. He required immediate surgery.
Afterward, as I sat next to his bed, I saw a smile on his innocent face—the first I had seen in a very long time. I responded in kind. It seemed like ages since I had last smiled too.
The doctor warned me that, although Fung Yee was well now, the desert sand and winds did not suit someone with a respiratory condition. The doctor feared that, with a return to the desert, there was a real possibility that the condition would flare up again.
If I did not return to the desert, I knew that James would be lonely, left there to fend for himself. That sort of complete isolation was difficult to bear. On the other hand, if I went back, I would have to sacrifice my son’s health. I did not have much of a choice.
My son and I moved back from the desert to Singapore in June 1980, and stayed with my parents on Holland Road. My life entered yet another new stage.
CHAPTER 3
A Sweet Trajectory
Changing Fields
THE QUESTION I have answered most often in my life is: “Why did you leave journalism and start teaching?” Old friends often asked this question, and new acquaintances did the same. Why did I make that change? All of my old friends knew that it had long been my dream to be a reporter, so for me to let it go, I must have had a very good reason indeed.
Most of my newer acquaintances think the life of a reporter must be colourful and interesting, while that of a teacher lacks lustre. So to give up brilliance for monotony, I must naturally have had no choice.
In fact, this was the decision that caused me the biggest internal struggle of my life. But in the end, it was just not possible to have my cake and eat it too.
Not long after I returned to Singapore from Saudi Arabia, I went back to work at the news agency. Though I continued as a field reporter, the role I liked best, it did not feel the same as before. What had made everything change was that I now had a child living at home with me.
During this year-long period, James stayed on in Saudi Arabia, so I was temporarily staying at my parents’ home. While I was at work, my mother looked after my son. In the past, when Fung Yee had stayed several hundred kilometres away with my mother-inlaw, work was like a tonic to make me forget. I worked day and night, and when I was worn out from work, I went to sleep. I did not have any idle time, so I had no idle worries. Now things were different. My son was nearby, but I did not have time to spend with him. Often, by the time I got home from work, he was already asleep. The cold, clear moonlight was like a gigantic piece of glass, pressing heavily on his lean face and on my heart. I felt bound by invisible shackles, and I needed to find the key to unlock them. It was during the Mid-Autumn Festival in 1980 that I made an agonising decision.
A week before the festival, I received a call from James in Saudi Arabia, saying he had a few days to come home and spend with us. I realised that we had been apart for several months already. That phone call set off vivid fireworks in my heart.
On the morning of the festival, as I set out for work, my mother reminded me, “Make sure and come home early today. After dinner, we’ll admire the full moon together. This year’s yams are especially good, so I will steam some. The water caltrop is also plump and big, so I bought several kilos; and we have the delicious mooncakes your mother-in-law sent us…”
I answered her agreeably and was extremely happy thinking of it. Spending the Mid-Autumn Festival together was a pleasant tradition in my family. My mother always filled the table with a huge variety of special treats for the occasion, and as we admired the full moon, we also savoured our familial affection.
This day happened to be the launch of the National Court Campaign, and based on this theme, I conducted separate interviews with a hotel personnel manager and a secondary school principal. When I had finished the interviews, I rushed back to the newsroom to wrap up the day’s work, hoping to finish a little early and go home to spend the festival with my family.
Highly motivated, my pen practically flew across the page. I had always been a quick writer anyway, so in short time, I had written a two-thousand word article, read through it, made a few modifications, then read it once more and felt quite pleased with it. Sighing with relief, I looked at my watch. It was five-thirty. Everything had gone smoothly, and I felt joy welling up inside me.
I was about to hand in my manuscript when the chief editor unexpectedly said, “Mr XX just called and applied for urgent leave. You have to take over this interview tonight.”
I heard my spirit scream, and my instinct was to turn around and run, but that was not possible. I was like a heavy statue, unmoving as I heard the words from the chief editor’s mouth. “There is a multinational company celebrating the Mid-Autumn Festival at the Shangri-La Hotel. The guest of honour is DPM Rajaratnam. He will give a speech, so you need to be there early.”
He handed me the invitation. I walked back to my desk. Tears welled up in my eyes, but I suppressed them with all my might. I could not let anyone detect the turmoil in my heart at this moment. News reporters were like foot soldiers, ready to be deployed at a moment’s notice. What foot soldier ever got to choose his or her own hours? I tried to comfort myself, but I just could not help feeling wronged. I had been anticipating the Mid-Autumn Festival for so long!
That night after the interview, I walked down the moon-bathed path to my house. The silence weighed me down like a heavy burden. My family members were all asleep. There was a single person left on the balcony, together with a table full of uneaten snacks, waiting for me under the cold moonlight: the husband I had been separated from for so long, his beard grown out, and looking lonely.
I made my decision on the spot. I resigned from the paper and enrolled at the National Institute of Education, where I underwent a year of teacher training. I chose to teach because I wanted more stable hours. Also, I really liked teaching, and I have always believed that you can only do a job well if you love the work.
Sometimes I imagine myself walking beside the sea. A wave washes a bottle ashore, and I rub it a few times. A genie trapped for three hundred years inside the bottle appears and, shedding tears of gratitude, offers to grant me a wish. So what would I ask for? I think it is easily summed up in one word: happiness. Life is short, so we all have to live happily. If we want to be happy, we have to live in a way that suits our individual personalities, so that while we enjoy the work we do, we can also live out our own characteristics and colours. If I found a job that made me feel I had compromised my principles for some scanty material reward, what meaning was there in life? Or, to
look at it another way, an unhappy woman was sure to be an unhappy wife and mother.
So, full of expectation, I returned to an institute of learning at Bukit Timah, so long after leaving school, to relive the life of a student.
It was a year of “double happiness” for me. James’s project in Saudi Arabia ended, and our little family was at last reunited. We moved into the semi-detached house we had bought when we got married, and I was surrounded by all the pleasant things life had to offer.
Domestic Help
Classes started in July 1981 at the National Institute of Education. Released from the burden of work, I felt as light as a bee flitting through a flower garden. Books were like exotic, strangely scented flowers with brilliant colours, and I flew around them all day, dazzled and happy.
To me, this flower garden of education was fresh and unfamiliar, so I tried to collect the nectar of hundreds of flowers and discover the secret recipe of making honey. The most intriguing part about education was that there was not a single formula suitable for everyone. We are only able to teach according to the students’ aptitude, so using different ways to respond to different situations is a teacher’s greatest challenge.
The more I studied, the more invigorated I became. Fung Yee turned four that year. The house was big with a lot of housework to be done, my son was small, and I was a full-time student, so nearly everyone suggested I employ a foreign domestic helper, but I did not. In fact, I not only resisted quite stubbornly then, but have continued to do so ever since.
I did not want to employ a domestic helper because I valued my privacy. The thought of a stranger in my home every day made me extremely uncomfortable. There were also numerous hair-raising stories circling around. If one was unlucky, a domestic helper might put us in sticky situations, like having ants all over our body, and we would have a hard time getting rid of them. As a result, our comfortable life might be disrupted. To put it bluntly, I could not bear to put my child into the hands of someone whose background was totally foreign to me. A child was not like a thing that could be replaced or repaired if it broke. If, due to the unintentional neglect or intentional abuse of the domestic helper, my child was hurt, I would forever live in the shadows of sorrow.
After a good deal of consideration, I decided to send my son to a childcare centre. We looked at numerous options before we finally decided on a childcare centre run by the YMCA on Outram Road. It had a long history, complete facilities, and offered full day care, including meals and early childhood education. The school fees were three hundred dollars a month. Letting my son play with other children his age every day seemed like a good way to nurture a cooperative spirit in him. Most importantly, the childcare centre would look after his safety. I had no cause for worry. Every morning at seven, James would drop our son off at the childcare centre, then drop me off at NIE. In the evening after he got off work, he picked Fung Yee up and brought him home.
I was also very fortunate when it came to housework. Through a neighbour’s introduction, I found a very efficient, capable helper named Ah Choo. I gave her the keys to the house and allowed her to go in and out freely each day. She took care of our laundry and cleaned the house, coming at six or so each morning, then leaving when she had completed her work. For many years, she kept every inch of the house spotless, with everything put neatly in its place and the family’s clothing all fresh, neat and clean.
It is funny that many guests who visited me saw no trace of a domestic helper and thought I was a capable Kuan Yin with thousand arms, as though, in the midst of my numerous projects, I could still find time to do domestic chores. Everyone was dumbfounded with surprise and admiration, until I revealed that Ah Choo had done all the housework.
Thinking of this brings to mind an interesting incident. Once, much later, the Singapore Chinese-language television station was doing a segment about my creative work. My study was the location for the shoot. When the cameraman entered this place in which I spent almost seven or eight hours every day, he was shocked. After he had hesitated for a while, he finally blurted out a request: “Can you return the study to its original state? The shoot will be more realistic that way.”
I laughed. He had assumed that a writer’s study would be untidy, so the tidiness of mine had to be the result of intentional organisation. But in fact, this was the real appearance of my study.
When I stop and think about it, I realise I am an extremely diligent person, but also extremely lazy. I can work day and night to design curricula or mark papers, or forget to eat while reading all kinds of dry books, or completely losing myself in the act of writing. I can also repeat countless experiments on cooking recipes, but I’m not willing to spend a single minute ironing my clothes, much less sweeping and mopping the floors. Doing housework is just a series of repetitive robotic actions with no benefit to the development of the mind, so I do not want to waste a single precious minute doing it. Life is short. To me, an inch of time is worth a foot of gold. I will not allow myself to use it unwisely or waste it.
Ah Choo has been our helper now for more than thirty years. We count her as part of the family. Though she has had no formal education, I have found in her a large number of valuable qualities. She takes her work seriously and is happy doing it. In all the years she has worked for us, I have never had to tell her what needed to be done or how to do it. She does everything instinctively, handling the things that fall into the scope of her work efficiently and deftly. For those things that are not part of her regular work, she deals with them on her own initiative, based on her sharp observations.
One day, she told me excitedly that she had planted a mango tree in our back garden. I was extremely pleased, and told her how I had planted an ungrateful mango tree once before and taken care of it for seven years, but it did not bear a single fruit. She said unexpectedly, “I didn’t plant the mango tree so we could eat mangoes.” I looked at her quizzically, and she pointed to my study, saying, “In the daytime, the sun is very hot. Your study is like an oven. The mango tree has thick branches and leaves, so it will block the sun and give you some shade and coolness; then you don’t have to turn on the air-con every day.”
She was right. The full-grown mango tree was like a giant holding a huge umbrella outside the study, transforming the wild sunlight in the sky into green tenderness on the ground.
There was also a banana tree in the back garden. This tree flourished, bearing much fruit. When the bananas were ripe, she took a knife and cut each bunch down, then brought some to our neighbours as a gift, promoting neighbourly friendship on my behalf.
The best thing about Ah Choo was that she was a perfectionist when it came to her work. Once, she happily told me that she had bought reading glasses. Surprised, I wondered why an illiterate woman would need reading glasses. She laughed and said, “With reading glasses, I can see the wrinkles better when I iron, so all the clothes can be neatly pressed.”
Knowing how clumsy I was with a sewing needle, she took care of all the mending of the family’s garments. When anyone’s shoes were worn out, she took the initiative to take them to be repaired. Each day when she had finished all the chores, she left quietly leaving a house full of sparkle and serenity for me. Having her in our home is like having a great treasure.
The Initiator of Evil
Having experienced bitter days of separation, the convergence of our three lives now was like three rivers flowing into the ocean. Being reunited was a wonderful feeling. Now that we had settled in and our daily life had become a routine, the days were coated with honey. When the sun came up, we worked, and when it set, we rested.
Each morning, we went in three separate directions: James to work, me to school, and our son to childcare. Each evening after dinner, we would go out for a walk along the quiet path outside our residence. As we walked, we encountered many trees of which we did not know the names, and the fragrance of bright red and purple flowers filled the air. They covered the trees, and their thick sweet smell surrounded
us every time the wind stirred. We returned home each night and went to sleep, where we encountered dreams as sweet as the flowers’ fragrance.
This serene existence was abruptly interrupted by a puzzling incident. That day, James’s business associate invited us over to his house for dinner, and we brought the active Fung Yee with us. As soon as we arrived, he was like a monkey, running around wildly and disappearing without a trace. We came across several old friends and stood chatting happily with them in the garden. Before long, the buffet was served. I was about to go look for the little monkey when he reappeared from nowhere. After we had filled our plates, we looked for a place to sit, but before we had taken a few bites, the woman sitting across from us cried anxiously, “What happened to your son’s eyebrows?”
Eyebrows? I quickly looked at Fung Yee. What I saw gave me a fright. His left eyebrow was missing! How could a whole eyebrow just fly away? I stared at him in bewilderment. He raised his single eyebrow, innocently looking back at me.
“Your eyebrow…what happened?” I stammered.
“My eyebrow?” he asked nonchalantly. “Today we were playing ball and, when the ball hit me, my eyebrow fell off.”
Everyone at the table burst out laughing. He laughed heartily too, basking in his audience.
The woman spoke up again: “There are some skin diseases that make the hair fall out. If his whole eyebrow has disappeared, it’s best you take him to see a doctor.”
I mumbled in agreement, but I sensed something fishy. Nothing had been wrong with his eyebrow the day before. How could it drop off just like that?
That night when we got home, I asked him in more detail what had happened. Faltering, he confessed, “Kai Ming cut it with scissors.”