The Woman Who Breathed Two Worlds

by Siak Chin Yoke, Selina

  While the chefs were working, Yong Soon Soh appeared. Impeccably dressed, with a serene look on her face, she resembled a grand matriarch preparing her troops for a big event. She came towards me first, soothing me with her heaving presence before going round to each of my children. Once she had satisfied herself about our well-being, she led the bride-to-be upstairs by the hand, where they remained sequestered until the guests started arriving.

  It was three in the afternoon when people began to trickle in. By five thirty everyone was there, seated at tables across both inner and outer halls of our house. I remember the happiness . . . and smiling faces . . . the warmth that suffused us all. The room was cast in an amber glow – from the elegant English lamps we had rented for the evening. There was laughter and the lazy clanking of glasses. I recall plates and bowls being filled and refilled while I beamed at the compliments given to my daughter, who sat demurely sipping her abalone soup, faultlessly made up and beautifully dressed. Se-Too-Wat, sitting opposite me, enjoyed every dish with gusto despite the heat of the night, which drenched his neat shirt and black bow tie in sweat. I looked at him with fondness, this white man with the ruddy cheeks – still pink after all the years – who patiently read my sons’ report cards every term and to whom I now owed a son-in-law.

  Throughout the night I was on my feet. I went from table to table, exhorting our guests to eat. As I walked, I soaked up the air of conviviality, thick with the goodwill which settles among friends when they have agreeable food and company.

  But it was the conversation with Mr Ho-Lee and his missionary friends that sticks most in my memory. I had told Weng Yu to invite the headmaster; I said he could bring a handful of other teachers if he so wished. Mr Ho-Lee came with three others – two newly arrived missionary women, and a local boy who was also a teacher at the school. They were wildly enthusiastic about the food, especially the Englishwoman known as Miss Win-Te, with her locks of curly dark hair and eyes as grey as the Birch Bridge. When she heard that none of my girls attended school, the shock in those eyes was palpable. After a minute she regained her poise and told me – via Mr Ho-Lee, because she didn’t yet speak any local language – ‘But why not send them? Our girls’ school is not much further than the boys’ school.’ Repeatedly she and her companion encouraged me to bring the girls in, assuring me that it was never too late, that no girl was ever too old to learn. They told me about girls who had started at a much later age than my daughters who nonetheless successfully mastered reading and writing within a few years.

  By the end of the evening Miss Win-Te was begging me. As she left, she gazed directly into my eyes, and I found myself staring into pools exuding such warmth that I knew Miss Win-Te spoke from her heart. ‘You must give your daughters the best chance in life, Mrs Wong,’ she said.

  I remained silent, but I had made a quiet decision.

  There was a diffident Chinese man sitting with the group whom I recognised as the class teacher for my youngest boy, Weng Foo. I had met him at the start of the school year when I carried out my annual practice of meeting the men who taught my boys. It helped me to see their faces, to look into their eyes, so that I could judge what sort of men they were. Even if we couldn’t communicate freely, I wanted to be able to picture who it was that my sons sat in front of each day. Over the years more local boys had become teachers at the school. The young man who attended Hui Fang’s wedding was one such – a local boy made good who spoke in a soft, shy voice. His name was Lim Tsin-sang; I was to discover that he was a poor country boy from the outskirts of Kampar, where his parents survived as vegetable farmers.

  But that was to come later. When the Chinese oboe sounded at the midnight hour, Mr Ho-Lee and his group had long departed. Only close friends like Siew Lan remained, honoured guests at a ceremony I would have preferred to omit.

  My mind had been in a fog during my own hair-combing ceremony, but I remembered enough to realise that emotion would overwhelm me. I was vulnerable as soon as I heard the strains of the oboe, when, as if in a dream, Yong Soon Soh led my daughter towards the inverted rice measure, placed on a red velvet rug within a large red circle. I watched my daughter walking and in those moments saw her as the placid woman she was, in her simple white tunic, but also as she had once been – the baby with tiny fingers who had been my firstborn, the girl in braids, the demure one who never threw tantrums nor answered back; the girl whose embroidery I had snatched in my hour of despair. The memory brought a sob.

  Within minutes Hui Fang was bowing before Peng Choon’s tablet. I cried as she bent her head low in deference to her papa. My daughter, who had comforted me in front of the altar table the day I finally shed tears for my husband, had been wise beyond her years even as a child of ten. And when I thought how I had once been disappointed in her being a girl, I was racked with guilt.

  By the time Yong Soon Soh’s booming voice broke into the silence, tears were flowing freely down my cheeks. When I heard the mistress of ceremonies ask heaven to bless my daughter, I hoped I had not made a mistake with the boy or his family. I prayed that my daughter would be loved and adored, that she and her husband would prosper. I asked the gods to grant my daughter sons so that her husband would be content.

  When the music stopped playing, Yong Soon Soh led me to a chair. I was so distraught that I thought I would faint. Then I saw my daughter on the rug in front of me, kneeling, her hands folded in an attitude of worship, and the well of sadness I tried to contain erupted. Instinctively I moved towards my daughter, but Yong Soon Soh stepped in and held me back firmly while telling Hui Fang, ‘Now worship your mother, who gave birth to you.’ At those words my daughter prostrated herself before me, apparently without prompting. Hui Fang lowered her head until it touched the ground near my feet. All the while Yong Soon Soh continued invoking phrases, to which my daughter responded by bobbing her head up and down. When I was able to take no more, I went forward to raise Hui Fang to her feet.

  She faced me with such love in her eyes that I wept. I remembered the times I had attacked her with my temper, yelling for no good reason other than that she was there. Despite such petty cruelties my daughter had forgiven me. I held her tightly, refusing to let go, as if by squeezing her ever tighter in my arms I would make my past wrongs right.

  28

  The aftermath of Hui Fang’s wedding coincided happily with the end of war in Europe. Many celebrations took place in Ipoh, and the festive air provided an excuse for lavish family dinners. I took to inviting Yap Meng Seng to join us, because I knew the old man missed his son, who was living with us at the time. It was the only way I could show gratitude for his magnificent dowry.

  The patriarch’s visits were always jovial occasions, which began with a sound like the bleating of goats – three hoots from his family car, a rambling open-topped vehicle in dark green which seated four adults comfortably. It had two oval lights suspended over a long, lean bonnet and stubby tyres that could have been legs. The Yap family car reminded me of a bullfrog, but everyone else loved it. People whistled in admiration and stared whenever they saw it on the streets of Ipoh.

  His arrival was a signal for the boys to stop whatever they were doing and race to be the first to lay hands on the bullfrog. Little Weng Foo, though not the strongest, was the nimblest. At the first bleat of the horn, he would strike like lightning over the Kinta Valley. The car was unchanged from week to week – a metallic body straddled by squat tyres and the same ugly lights – yet one squeeze of the horn was enough to send Weng Foo scuttling towards the door, as if seeing the car for the first time. Meng Seng – who at the time remained Yap Tsin-sang, or Mr Yap – would appear soon after with my youngest son. They were a sight to behold: the old man with his stoop, flanked by his walking stick in one hand, and my painfully thin son holding the other.

  Meals proved a problem. While eating Nyonya fried chicken as a treat, the patriarch began to cough and splutter after just one mouthful. The chicken pieces, which were dipped in a special paste smother
ed with chillies and black pepper, made his eyes water. Sweat oozed from his temples and rivulets from both nostrils. When the old man finally found his voice, it was thin. ‘Water quickly,’ he pleaded.

  Following such an inauspicious start we decided to lessen the proportion of chillies and spices we used. That in turn was unsatisfactory to everyone else. I ended up spending hours concocting menus with a mix of dishes, some easy on the tongue, others with enough fire to satisfy the chilli lovers. Over time Meng Seng, like Peng Choon, learnt to appreciate Nyonya cuisine. Once he was converted, there was no stopping the patriarch. He acquired a particular love for the hot and sour, and so I recreated Penang specialities I had not made in years. To indulge him, I dredged up recipes from sheer memory. We would make our famous pickles and pungent dishes like stir-fried cucumber in vinegar or tamarind fish curry – food coated in sauces that made the taste buds dance. The thought crossed my mind that I was cooking for a man who was neither husband nor son, which felt strange, though I didn’t reflect long on the fact. Tongues inevitably began to wag – or so Siew Lan later told me – not only because Meng Seng spent a lot of time in our house, but also because we developed a respect for one another.

  The truth is that the old man was lonely in his retirement. He enjoyed being with my family and took a lively interest in the children, especially their education. When he spoke, he expected to be listened to. In the patriarch’s presence, Weng Yu’s sway over his siblings was broken and he became just one of the brood, to be interrogated in a way which brooked no argument. Weng Yu barbed his responses with impertinence, while the younger ones were intimidated into silence. Even Wai Man, the patriarch’s own son, said less when his father came to dinner. Only my fourth son, Weng Yoon, a boy who could talk his way up Malaya’s mountains and down all its rivers, basked in the old man’s attention. He filled the empty spaces by proudly recounting all that he had learnt in school.

  In turn Yap Meng Seng regaled us with tales of his life. He was a Hakka from Chiao-Ling County – my husband’s county – in Kwangtong Province. He hadn’t met Peng Choon, though he had heard of him. On one of his earliest visits to our house, Meng Seng told the children about the village where he had been born. He described a haven where the waters were sweet and the fruit was luscious. Hearing those words, I recalled Peng Choon’s moments of homesickness, when he too had longed for his fields at the bottom of the hills.

  ‘Meng Seng Pak,’ interjected my little prince, Weng Yu, ‘if this village is so perfect, why are you here?’ I scowled at his tone. Meng Seng himself dealt with the matter calmly. ‘Big son, I tell you it’s a wonderful place – totally unspoilt. But there were no opportunities. That’s why I left, and your father also. We missed our villages, though.’

  Ignoring Weng Yu’s darkened face, the patriarch began to talk about traditional Chinese medicine and his own mother. He told us he was ten when she had fallen victim to an illness which the village doctors, whose only instruments were what he called ‘primitive needles and herbs’, could do little about. He watched his mother slowly but surely waste away. He and I became embroiled in an argument about traditional and Western medicine. Meng Seng claimed that if his mother had had access to English doctors, she would have lived, but he offered no evidence to support this viewpoint. I pointed out that all my children had been brought into the world by a Malay bidan, that we had always been treated by Chinese doctors, and I was not about to give up a lifetime’s relationship for some quack with a piece of high-flown paper but little experience. It was a subject we were to revisit time and again; right from that first occasion we agreed to disagree.

  Another time Meng Seng told us what he had seen upon leaving his village. He became subdued, and shadows flickered across his eyes as he brought forth long-forgotten scenes. ‘The country was on its knees, half the population dazed on opium,’ he said into the still of the night. I listened intently, pricking up my ears.

  But nothing else came. On this subject, as on many others, Meng Seng proved different from my husband. For him opium was part of the Chinese landscape.

  The first time I heard him talk about his stepmother, I had to raise my eyebrows. This occurred much later, after Hui Fang had already left for Taiping with her husband, when it was just Meng Seng and I chatting alone after dinner. A well of bitterness opened up in the old man. The string of adjectives which flowed out – fierce, tough, outspoken – would have been compliments had they been used on a man, but the tone in Meng Seng’s voice left no doubt that he regarded the woman who had ruled his life as a shrew whom his father should never have married. I listened, neither agreeing nor disagreeing.

  As we continued sipping tea, Meng Seng shared an idea that had burned in his mind for forty years. He told me that his stepmother had been responsible for his father’s demise. ‘How?’ I asked, intrigued.

  ‘Well . . . ,’ the patriarch stuttered, unsure how to express himself. ‘She was much younger,’ he offered.

  ‘So?’ I couldn’t see the connection, but when I noticed the pink glow on Meng Seng’s cheeks, I guessed his intended words. ‘You mean . . . ?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes-lah,’ he replied hurriedly. I nodded in sympathy, even though I wasn’t altogether convinced. Surely his father had willingly participated in his conjugal duties.

  Over time Meng Seng and his trove of stories merged in my mind. Sitting with the patriarch sometimes overwhelmed me, because he made me realise how much I still missed my husband. I continually compared the two, asking myself whether Peng Choon would have said this or that. Invariably I ended up being grateful for the husband I’d had; few men would have handed me their income every month or given me free rein to manage our household, as he had.

  Not long after Hui Fang’s wedding, my two younger daughters and I stood under the main verandah of the Anglo-Chinese Girls’ School, where Siew Lan had told us to wait. Hui Fang, already preparing to leave our home and Ipoh, remained in our house.

  When we arrived, we found a ready crowd: women alongside girls, whom I assumed were either their daughters or their charges. The girls came in all shapes and sizes. Some were as young as seven, while others were more mature, like my own daughters, who were seventeen and fifteen. The smallest girls let out head-turning shrieks, their volume out of proportion with the tiny bodies from which they had come. The older girls were more sedate; they stood huddled in conspiracy, breaking into hysterical giggles or gesticulating in a code only they could understand. In the drift of chatter I caught snatches of conversation, which told me that the women were at varying levels of intimacy. A few were obviously close friends, while others were acquaintances who had met within the school compound.

  In those first few minutes Siew Lan was nowhere to be seen. I looked past the crowd in front of me to the track beyond, the one our rickshaws had pulled into. It was still a dirt track in those days, properly contoured and running straight for several hundred yards before forking into a loop, but a dirt track nonetheless. With the loop, rickshaws and cars could pull up in a continuous stream as they dropped girls off under the shade of the main verandah.

  The loop was a simple and ingenious device, one the boys’ school lacked. In all other respects, however, the girls’ school was inferior, looking the way the boys’ school had years before, with low brick buildings and scattered attap sheds. Doubtless, improvements were in the air; already fine lush grass had been dug up, earth uncovered and new bricks laid in the ground, but it would be a while before the girls’ school achieved the splendour of the boys’.

  Siew Lan eventually appeared on a rickshaw with Flora by her side. Until then I had only seen Flora at home, and I was amazed by the confident young lady who alighted from the rickshaw that day. If this was what school did to a girl, then I wanted it for my own daughters. Of course Flora was more than just self-assured; she was also beautiful. She had grown into a true Eurasian, with porcelain white skin and her Nyonya mother’s dark eyes and thick lips. On top of that nature had provided its own qui
rk – a set of eyelashes so thick and gloriously long that you were instantly distracted. Long eyelashes were rare in Malaya, and I stared in admiration at the curving, willowy reeds which swayed above Flora’s eyes. When Flora spoke, perfect Hokkien streamed out of her mouth – a language one did not normally associate with a person who looked the way she did. Even I had to look twice. More than once I reminded myself that this was Flora, Siew Lan’s little girl, the one I had known since she was a baby.

  Siew Lan herself appeared in a hurry that morning. She beckoned us with a beaming smile and a curt wave to indicate that we should follow her. As she forged ahead, she turned around to apologise, mumbling about having to see Flora’s teacher before lessons began. Within minutes Siew Lan had led us to Miss Win-Te’s office, where she left us with a smile. ‘I come later,’ she told me.

  I had sent word to Mr Ho-Lee via my sons that I would be bringing my second and third daughters in that morning. Miss Win-Te was expecting us. ‘Selamat pagi, Puan Wong, selamat pagi!’ she said, welcoming us with a radiant face. ‘Masok-lah!’ she added, ushering us in with a wave of the hand. I smiled. Miss Win-Te seemed genuinely pleased to see us; the light was dancing in her grey eyes, and she had also evidently picked up a smattering of Malay. Her facility impressed me, because already I had no difficulty understanding her, something which could not be said for all her compatriots.