When Siew Lan came to see me the next week, she strode in with confidence. ‘I come to see I can or cannot invite you to eat pig’s legs,’ she announced. We broke into a giggle: a pair of pig’s legs had been one of the traditional rewards for a Nyonya matchmaker, and although no longer expected, the saying had been absorbed into our culture.
‘Wahh! Not so fast, my friend,’ I cautioned. ‘First, their birthdates must not clash. Then the Yap family must accept a chin-chuoh wedding Nyonya-style. So, they marry that time, your boy must come here live. Also got other important things, like wedding dowry. The boy I like, but Siew Lan, not as easy as you think-lah!’
Even as I said the words ‘wedding dowry’, images of house renovations flashed through my mind. In the end I didn’t need to worry about those for many months, because that was how long it took us to reach an agreement. Poor Siew Lan had to scuttle to and fro between our house on the Lahat Road and the Yap household in the heart of New Town while she toned down our mutual insults and sweetened our grudging compliments. In the process I was thrust into the position Mother had once been in – because the main stumbling block turned out to be the chin-chuoh wedding I insisted on. Like many Chinese men, Yap Meng Seng feared the gossip and ridicule it would provoke. ‘I cannot have my son dragged into a woman’s home like a stud pig,’ he told Siew Lan stoutly.
For her part Siew Lan did her best to keep my confidence up, assuring me things weren’t as dire as they sounded. ‘Don’t worry-lah!’ she said calmly. ‘He only scared lose face. We sure to find answer.’
There followed weeks of impasse, during which compromise appeared impossible. All was nearly lost by the time I remembered how Peng Choon had finally been persuaded of the merits of a chin-chuoh marriage. It occurred to me to tempt Yap Meng Seng with the same arguments. After relaying the story to Siew Lan, we sat hatching a plan.
At her next meeting with the Yap family patriarch, she pointed out the shrewdness of a chin-chuoh wedding for a widower like him. Surely his friends would applaud his deft delegation of cumbersome arrangements to the bride’s mother! Taking her time, Siew Lan carefully painted a full picture of what he would otherwise have to deal with: matters like decor, the bridal dress, the banquet – things usually left to women and of which he quite rightly knew little. She sensed Yap Meng Seng slowly changing his mind, and I knew that my chin-chuoh wedding would come to fruition.
We eventually agreed on a compromise not dissimilar to the one Mother had forged for me: the boy Yap Wai Man would live in our house during the first month, after which Hui Fang would move into the Yap household for the second month. Thereafter I was told my daughter would move with her husband to Taiping, the capital of Perak state, where Wai Man was to be promoted to the position of senior clerk in the bank which employed him. The thought of Hui Fang leaving town saddened me, but there was little I could do: chin-chuoh wedding or no, many Nyonya girls were already living away from home, some as far afield as Kuantan on the east coast, travelling to which required the crossing of mountains. I could hardly object to a place reachable by horse-drawn gharry, and thwarting my son-in-law’s career was out of the question.
Thus on the tenth day of the tenth moon in the year 1918, I welcomed a new son into my house, and the respected Hakka patriarch Yap Meng Seng became part of our family.
26
In the months preceding the wedding, I was beset by anxiety. My nerves were first stirred by Yong Soon Soh, the flamboyant mistress of ceremonies Siew Lan had introduced to me. She was a figure I had occasionally noticed around town but to whom I had never spoken, a statuesque woman with a waist so corpulent that her clothes always seemed about to burst. Yong Soon Soh was one of the first Nyonyas in Ipoh to parade around in that form-hugging tunic known as the kebaya, now so ubiquitous, and her kebayas were nothing short of eye-catching. With loud embroidery in precisely the wrong places – at her neckline and hem – all eyes were naturally drawn towards those folds of skin. I was no different; when we met, I could barely take my eyes off her bosom and the quivering rolls over her belly. The same garments would have been grotesque on anyone else, but on Yong Soon Soh they somehow seemed appropriate, moulding themselves on her expansive frame with panache.
She waddled into our house, hips swinging and bracelets rattling. Introducing herself as the ‘woman who had married off the Nyonya children of Ipoh’, Yong Soon Soh burst into a laugh that shook the walls of our house. Like See Nee Ee, the woman who had presided over my wedding in Penang, Yong Soon Soh was well-versed in all the rites and rituals of marriage. ‘I do this for twenty years already-loh,’ she told me, a wide smile on her round face.
Beneath her buxom exterior and sharp tongue, Yong Soon Soh had a big heart. In our first meeting she asked whether I had prepared my daughter for the night of her marriage. Coming out of the blue, the question made me freeze. I lowered my eyes.
Siew Lan put her hand on my arm. ‘You should tell the poor child what to come at least,’ she said softly.
‘But . . . ,’ I stammered, ‘time come, her . . . her husband will know how to do-lah.’
Yong Soon Soh remained silent, but when I glanced up, her eyes were lit by gentleness. ‘You want me to explain to your daughter-moh?’ she asked in a whisper. I nodded, grateful that I would have Yong Soon Soh to help me.
We moved on to other topics after that, subjects far more contentious, in which Yong Soon Soh proved as formidable as she was in everything else. She was a Nyonya of the old school and rather dogmatic, insisting on every ritual with well-rehearsed arguments for why they were needed. Our conversations became so heated that for a time I forgot she had been tasked with explaining the facts of marriage to Hui Fang. Over a discussion one day about the importance of the bride and groom kneeling before both parents, Yong Soon Soh casually mentioned that my daughter was now in possession of what she called the ‘truth’. I blushed, finally understanding why my daughter had been avoiding my gaze for days. ‘So, she know . . . everything-ah?’ I asked.
‘Of course-lah!’ the mistress of ceremonies replied emphatically without even a hint of bashfulness. ‘What the point not tell the girl everything?’
Over the next while the atmosphere in our house remained strained. My eldest daughter seemed to avoid me. I thought back to my own conversation with See Nee Ee, the mistress of ceremonies who had been instructed by Mother to share life’s secrets. I had been repulsed; the idea of Father and Mother doing that was too much. Eventually, though, I had accepted this as part of life. My eldest girl, Hui Fang, on the other hand, seemed to take polite embarrassment to new heights.
Detecting little change after a week, I decided to raise the subject. It felt easier, because Yong Soon Soh had done the hard work.
When an opportunity came, I whispered, ‘We all must, you know.’ Hui Fang nodded without looking up, her cheeks the colour of my angkoo kueh. Touching her arm, I said, ‘My girl, you have something you want to ask-ah?’
My daughter stayed quiet, neither nodding nor shaking her head, and mute too, as if her tongue had lost all powers of speech. We looked at each other in the yellow glow of the kerosene lamp. ‘Don’t forget, we are Nyonyas,’ I said encouragingly. ‘So first month you are at home. Mama stay here together with you.’
In between stormy conversations with Yong Soon Soh, I went shopping. I did more shopping than I had ever done in my life. Siew Lan was tireless in helping me navigate this complicated world, dragging me into outlets I would never have otherwise entered. Without a second’s thought we walked alongside white women into classy places with ceiling fans where even the sales assistants wore uniforms.
For once I spared no expense. I purchased fabrics and lace, the best glass beads and embroidery pieces. I chose fluffy pillows, a bolster, or Dutch wife, smooth woollen blankets, even Kashmiri rugs and pink silk for the bedspread. I bought a European four-poster bed and ordered an almerah, or capacious wardrobe, from a well-known carpenter. When this wardrobe arrived – the first piece of furniture w
e had ever ordered specially – I felt strangely proud, because its workmanship was immediately obvious. Yellowish brown in colour, the almerah was made of beautifully seasoned chengai, a tropical hardwood with fine veins. On the inside of one door hung a polished mirror which came from a distant land where the people were swarthy and happy and sang opera all day long. The wardrobe was big enough to fit Hui Fang’s trousseau, with extra space for what I estimated would be the bridegroom’s requirements.
We also bought jewellery – armloads of it. I showered my daughter in gold: bracelets, chains, pendants, and the occasional jade and diamond stone. Siew Lan told me about a country far away, a place like China, with beautiful lakes and mountains where the perfectly crafted silver watch I acquired for my son-in-law had been made.
In those days I flew around like a madwoman. I rushed from shop to shop, barely catching breath. All the while I remembered how Mother had done the same before my wedding, leaving our house every morning and returning later in the day with mysterious new items in her hands. Arguably I had even more to manage than Mother had, what with a kueh business to run and my youngest child then only seven. Yet somehow I survived those frantic weeks and months.
But they did not pass without incident. It was the renovations which ultimately caused my temper to fray. Those were the household improvements I had put off for years – the repairs and painting and upgrading I had always found excuses to delay. When Hui Fang’s wedding became imminent, I felt trapped: it was a matter of face, so I had to do something – something grand – not only because we were expecting a hundred guests to inspect the bridal chamber, but also because Yap Meng Seng’s dowry was so generous.
I decided rather unwisely to have ten years’ worth of repairs and upgrading carried out all at once. ‘You want to do so much-ah, Chye Hoon?’ Siew Lan asked when she heard my plans. ‘A lot, you know.’ But I was adamant; if we were going to have work done, then we would have it all done – and properly.
Thus we had water pipes laid and enamel basins installed in the kitchen, the bathrooms upstairs and downstairs, as well as the inner hall, where I liked to wash my hands before sitting on the barlay. For weeks there were workmen in our house – a plumber, a painter and a man doing odd jobs – who collectively knocked up dust wherever they walked even though there were only three of them. A thin film settled over our lives, tickling our nostrils and leaving grainy traces everywhere: inside each cupboard, all over our skins and in between the sheets of fresh linen I had brought back from the shops. No amount of wiping or cleaning helped. The dust jarred my nerves, putting me in a bad mood.
With the workmen in our house, wedding activities slowed. A few, such as the setting up of the bridal chamber, stopped altogether. Discussions with Yong Soon Soh also didn’t progress as expected: between her combative nature and Yap Meng Seng’s obstinacy, arrangements that should have been finalised remained in the air. As we fell behind, I felt increasingly uneasy.
When I walked into the inner hall and caught sight of half-embroidered roses and butterflies, still unfinished despite days of work, panic engulfed me. Poor Hui Fang, who happened to be nearest to me at the time, bore the brunt of my madness.
Grabbing her portable embroidery frame, I pulled it from her hands with such force that a row of pink beads rolled off. ‘You give me-lah!’ I shouted wildly. ‘No use! Slow and no use! We, no matter what we do now, still cannot finish on time! No use!’ I screamed so loudly that Ah Hong came running in to see what the matter was. It had been years since I lost my temper like that, and my daughters all cast their eyes downwards, not daring to meet my fiery gaze. Even the usually robust Hui Ying, whose cheeks were ablaze, did not utter a word. Ah Hong, in a state of shock, also said nothing, but the mute yet reproachful look she gave me made me feel instantly guilty.
Still carrying Hui Fang’s wooden frame in my hands, I strode into the kitchen, hoping its familiar aroma would calm me. But of course with the workmen there the kitchen was a mess, and the sight of it threw a veil of hopelessness over me. I genuinely feared we would never finish. Sitting down on a chair, I inadvertently used my fingers to scrape away a layer of white – paint dust, I assumed – and I could take it no longer. I burst into tears.
I sat with head buried beneath dust-soiled hands – how long for, I don’t know. I was still there when Siew Lan appeared like a miracle. My eldest son, Weng Yu, on hearing my plaintive cries had run to Siew Lan’s house. She in turn had rushed over, worried about my state of mind.
‘We cannot finish before the wedding date,’ I said in a sombre voice.
‘Of course can finish-lah!’ Siew Lan retorted. ‘Chye Hoon-ah, you cannot finish, still not so terrible! Not finish, so what? What can they do?’
I looked up glumly; the mere thought of undoing what we had already agreed gave me a headache. Besides, as this was the first wedding in our family, my pride was at stake.
For the next hour Siew Lan sat listening to the worries plaguing me. She heard about my frustrations with Yong Soon Soh and our endless discussions over ritual. ‘She waste so much time!’ I declared. She heard how the dust in the house was getting into my hair and my clothes and lately also into my dreams; I told her about the swirling grains I was seeing in the little sleep I managed each night. I lamented my twenty-hour days. We were working flat out, I said emphatically, despite the help she and the hordes of experts and workmen I had hired gave me; how could we work any harder?
Siew Lan listened. Then she made me go through the tasks every single person was responsible for, asking a hundred questions to draw out a handful of details. I had carried out this exercise time and again in my own mind, yet somehow it felt different while I was talking to my friend. What I needed to change became clear. When we finished, I wondered why I hadn’t thought of the solutions myself. Siew Lan stretched her arms out, yawning. ‘You let me with Yong Soon Soh talk,’ she said with a wink. ‘The rest you deal with. Tomorrow only-hah; now must sleep.’ I nodded gratefully.
The next day my boys were summoned into the kitchen. They learnt to pound and grind, to fan the bellows and use a wok. They learnt the techniques their sisters had already become proficient at, including how to harness the weight of their bodies over the heavy grinding stone, so that they could churn mixtures of galangal, lemongrass and dried shrimp into fine pastes. In this way their sisters were freed to dedicate themselves to needlework and whatever else I needed them for, and we began to make strides.
To my surprise Weng Yu turned out a deft hand in the kitchen. Not only that, but he seemed to enjoy cooking, even volunteering for tasks his brothers hated. Perhaps his strong affection for his sisters overcame all else. In any event he displayed a new talent – a knack for pounding mixtures of onions, chopped chillies and garlic. With eyes watering, Weng Yu would squat over the stone mortar bowl, crushing the ingredients to a pulp by bringing the pestle down repeatedly. It was a skill – yet another unlikely to further his prospects – which came naturally to my eldest son.
As she promised, Siew Lan had a quiet word with the mistress of ceremonies. At our next meeting Yong Soon Soh struck a decidedly more conciliatory tone. We soon came to agreement with the Yap family, and the ceremony itself began to take shape.
For my part I went around visiting kueh customers to tell them about my daughter’s coming wedding. I knocked on doors, chatting to the women who bought my kueh. I told them we would have to make changes and hoped their patience would not be tested. They would be in good hands; my trusted helpers Ah Hong and Li-Fei were excellent kueh makers who had worked with me since the business was established. As a bonus I said that Li-Fei would begin delivering the kueh on a bicycle so as to improve our service. It would have a loud bell, and they would recognise her by the sound of the bell and by her shouting ‘Wong family kueh’ aloud. Everyone seemed thrilled at the thought of kueh on two wheels: ‘Wah! A bicycle! What good idea!’
To my surprise sales increased even when I was no longer carrying the kueh around or swe
ating every morning over the steaming pots and flaming woks. In fact, the less I did, the healthier the sales. A few customers later told me about the subtle difference in taste when I was no longer at the helm; not better or worse, they were quick to point out, just different. I suppose that was to be expected. After all, none of my helpers had grown up with Nyonya cooking in their blood. The important thing was that I could begin to really shake my legs, and my business still made money.
27
Ten days before my daughter Hui Fang’s wedding, I went to all our friends and relatives to distribute invitations. I must have been unusually flustered. Money would have been on my mind, since a rickshaw had to be hired by the hour, and I had forty houses to visit. I exchanged the minimum of greetings on each visit before taking out the pink handkerchief from my betel box. The single betel leaf that I set down on the hallway table, tied with fine red thread, would invariably elicit squeals of delight. ‘Ahh . . . congratulations!’ A stream of questions would follow: ‘Which daughter? Who’s the groom?’ Even though I spent no more than a few minutes on chit-chat, these visits took two days in total, and I was drained by the end.
In between the house drop-offs I sat in a rickshaw worrying about the mountain of expenses I had incurred, Yap Meng Seng’s dowry notwithstanding. I thought constantly of Mother then. It had taken twenty years for me to appreciate the anxiety she had spared me before my own wedding. Mother had been so successful that I’d had little idea of the comings and goings or how stressful it would turn out to be.
With the frenzy of activity just before the wedding ceremony itself, we shut the kueh business for three days. The kitchen on Lahat Road was taken over and became a depository of smells and a domain of increasing chaos. First to arrive were Siew Lan and a group of Nyonya friends, who made the traditional varieties of achar or pickled vegetables, which they cooled before ladling into enormous jars. The next morning – the day of the wedding feast – a couple of Hainanese master cooks I hired for the occasion descended on the house. They brought three assistants and two handcarts filled with portable stoves, viscous sauces and cleavers the like of which we had never seen, which they used to decapitate the terrified hens and quacking ducks. Knowing that space would be at a premium, I had arranged for my own servants and helpers to move to Siew Lan’s house, where they could prepare kueh for Hui Fang’s nuptial feast.
The Woman Who Breathed Two Worlds Page 22