As we entered, I noticed a diminutive Chinese woman standing quietly in a corner, her hands held expectantly together just below her stomach. Once the girls and I were seated, the woman came forward to introduce herself. Everything about her seemed taut, from the muscles on her face to the twin pigtails which fell over her shoulders, coiled into knotted plaits like rope. She grappled with her hands as she spoke, clasping and unclasping them nervously.
‘I am Liew Siow-chia,’ she announced. Her voice was thin and raspy, and I wondered whether this woman ever tried to sing. ‘I’ll be teaching your daughters,’ she continued, smiling. Surprise must have shown on my face. I was expecting a man as a teacher, not this minute woman with a scratchy throat. As if reading my mind, Liew Siow-chia told me forcefully, ‘Peng Choon Sau, you don’t need to worry. I passed Standard Four two years ago and have been teaching Primary One since. I’ve taught many girls to read and write.’
She then turned towards my daughters, asking their names and their preferred dialect. I was impressed by the teacher’s consideration and how she made no assumptions. An instant camaraderie formed between the teacher and my second daughter, Hui Ying, whose dimples were inscribed into her crimson cheeks as she flashed Liew Siow-chia her most becoming smile. Once Hui Ying got wind that she would be going to school, she had looked forward eagerly to this day and had nearly fallen out of her rickshaw earlier. As for her younger sister Hui Lin, it was difficult to gauge what she really felt. My third daughter rarely offered an opinion. Among the girls it was Hui Lin I knew least. Of her sweet nature there was little doubt; whenever we were unhappy, her turkey-like guffaw would infect the house, chiding us into cheer. But what she really thought about anything was hard to discern.
Soon after, Liew Siow-chia led my daughters to their classroom. I rose, following them out and thanking Miss Win-Te for accepting the girls. The headmistress gave a slight wave of her hand, as if to say that what she was doing was small, that the purpose of the school was exactly to teach girls like my daughters.
Hui Ying and Hui Lin were placed in a special Primary One class for older girls. When we arrived at the allotted classroom, I counted twelve others – all of whom, from the curves on their bodies and their demeanour, I judged to be in their teenage years. Two of the other girls were also Nyonya, one was Indian, and the others Chinese. I watched as the girls introduced themselves, telling the whole class their names and preferred language or dialect.
‘Good! We have two new girls today,’ Liew Siow-chia croaked, ‘so we will go over the characters of the English language.’ Turning towards Hui Ying and Hui Lin, she continued in Hakka, our home dialect: ‘There are only twenty-six characters. Each one has its own sound, and you put them together to make words.’ The teacher impressed me by repeating herself immediately in Hokkien, then in Cantonese, and also in market Malay for the benefit of the Indian girl. Not many locals could speak all three Chinese dialects, and this woman was clearly proficient in all three.
Liew Siow-chia proceeded to draw a series of straight lines on the blackboard. Her white chalk squeaked as she moved it along. ‘Ai-yy,’ she shouted out, her voice imbued with surprising authority. ‘Repeat after me. Ai-yy!’ I saw my second daughter, Hui Ying, studying the teacher’s mouth as she tried to form the required sound, but her younger sister Hui Lin remained silent, her eyes catching mine, and both cheeks red. Liew Siow-chia, turning from the blackboard, observed us before giving me a sympathetic but firm glance. It was time to go. I smiled and waved goodbye, pleasantly surprised by my first experience of the girls’ new school.
As soon as I reached home, I lit three joss-sticks with trembling hands. I had never disobeyed the gods before, and I feared facing the Goddess who had watched over my life since I was a child. For a long while I stood with eyes averted. I thought of Fatt Shi Tan, who told me not to send my girls to school, but also of Flora and what I had witnessed that morning. When I finally raised my eyes to the altar table, Kuan Yin seemed to understand. Through tendrils of misty smoke, she looked at me as if nodding. I inhaled the acrid wafts rising into the air, breathed out the words of my sutras, and felt comforted.
29
My eldest daughter, Hui Fang, did not bloom after her marriage in the way I had expected. She seemed happy enough, and there was certainly harmony between her and her husband, but they never looked at each other the way Peng Choon and I used to. I kept telling myself that every marriage was different, that not all couples would behave as we had or be as blessed in their happiness, no matter how much I desired it for my children. Perhaps the presence of so many siblings inhibited the newlyweds.
Nonetheless I kept watch like a crow, sniffing for the tiniest odour of decay. Even in those early days I sensed an implacable barrier between husband and wife. My heart sank, because if their marriage was a mistake it would be my fault. The thought that I might have condemned my daughter to a lifetime of unhappiness was too much to bear.
Shortly before she was due to move from our house into Yap Meng Seng’s, I knocked on Hui Fang’s bedroom door.
It was noon and there were just the three of us upstairs: my daughter and I and a sleek Malayan house lizard, which had clambered up one wall. It hung upside down on the ceiling, from where it stared at us through eyes too large for its head. I placed myself beside my daughter on her European four-poster bed with its pink silk spread.
‘Daughter,’ I said, looking directly at Hui Fang, ‘you and Wai Man, everything good-mah?’
Blushing, my daughter nodded. ‘Why you ask, Mama?’
‘Because . . . ah, I also not know. I . . . I just . . . want to be sure.’
The clacking of the house lizard broke the silence, reverberating like a tongue pulling against the roof of a mouth. Hui Fang said in a weak voice, ‘I no complaints so far, Mama.’
It should have been clear to me then. Four weeks into marriage with Peng Choon my reply would have been one of unbridled enthusiasm, any awkwardness due only to a desire to keep some secrets sacred. Nine years after he passed away, memories of our life together still had the power to stir me.
But I had been one of the fortunate ones. For many women marriage meant nights of violence, putting up with stinking drunken breath or turning a blind eye to infidelities – sometimes all three together – plus the burden of tugging children to boot, following one after another like rabbits. As I looked into Hui Fang’s face that sunny afternoon, I hoped that she and her husband would grow close, that a fire could be kindled between them. Already I had my doubts, but I kept those to myself. Instead I told my daughter, ‘I know you and Wai Man of course happy.’ Still smiling, I stroked Hui Fang’s smooth hair, reminding her she would always have a home with me. All she had to do was ask.
From the time Weng Yu began attending English school, he spent longer in the bathroom every morning than all his brothers combined. His habits drew comments from the servants, especially Li-Fei, the younger of our two maids, who I think secretly adored him. She described how my son would come down for breakfast in his spotless white shirts, always scrupulously tucked in, with fingernails trimmed and every strand of his hair in place. On my mornings off, even I wondered what Weng Yu could have been doing in the bathroom.
Once, when he left the door slightly ajar, I glimpsed the answer. Weng Yu didn’t notice me as he put the finishing touches on his toilette in front of our long mirror. He patted a white cream lovingly on to his head, a cream he had insisted on purchasing and for which he had saved hard-earned pocket money. I watched as my son’s deep-set eyes stared dreamily into another world.
Weng Yu’s adolescence had arrived, and it assaulted us with indelible marks.
The first signs were heavy stains on his underwear. One morning as the servants and I were in the midst of kueh preparation, I spotted the strange look Li-Fei exchanged with Siti, our Malay washerwoman. I tiptoed to the cemented courtyard beside our indoor well, where Siti crouched, scrubbing hard at a pair of male underpants. ‘Got problem-kah, Siti?’
I asked.
‘No, Puan,’ she replied. ‘But your oldest boy – he now big!’ she said, winking at me.
Thereafter Weng Yu became even more self-absorbed. He occupied so much time in the bathroom that even Hui Ying, who never said an angry word against her favourite brother, howled in complaint. She took to banging against the bathroom door, rattling the wooden boards on the floor in the process. ‘Come on, Weng Yu!’ she would yell. ‘We’re waiting for you!’ Resentment simmered among the brothers as they were forced to troop to the smaller bathroom upstairs. Fights broke out. As soon as the sound of scuffles was heard near the kitchen, I would let loose a shout that left my children in no doubt as to what would follow if they didn’t start behaving. My reprimands kept the peace for the day but did nothing to solve the ongoing problem of bathroom occupation.
When Weng Yu’s voice finally deepened, the walls of our wooden house sighed in relief. They were no longer shaken by his singing or indeed much by his presence, as Weng Yu spent more time at school, returning home only after his brothers.
Once a week he asked to go to the films – always films in English – to which he would take his sisters, and his brothers when cajoled. I wasn’t keen on the cinema, but it was hard to argue when Weng Yu pointed out how the films would help his sisters improve their new English language skills. Besides, the films did not seem to do the children any harm. Every Saturday afternoon my eldest son would appear punctually in the outer hall, clad in a pair of leather shoes, his hair meticulously creamed and smelling of scented water. At first, I asked what the films had been about, but when I heard the stories they told, I stopped. There was little to interest me in the poor thief who ended up a hero in a boxing match, or the rich woman left alone on a ship with her male servant. The children didn’t say what happened between this woman and her servant, but I could imagine.
Hui Ying once dropped me a mysterious hint. ‘There’s a girl Big Brother likes,’ she declared with a knowing look in her eye. This was on a Tuesday afternoon, when the boys stayed behind in school for sports.
‘What girl?’ I asked as my youngest daughter, Hui Lin, giggled in the background.
‘An American actress,’ Hui Ying replied.
‘Really?’
‘Yes. But, Mama, you mustn’t say I told you – Weng Yu will be very angry.’
‘This actress, she look like who?’
Hui Ying thought for a moment. ‘She’s pretty.’
‘Ai-yahh!’ I exclaimed. ‘You can say that only-ah? At least give description-lah!’ I was bursting with curiosity and taken aback at the same time. The idea of it . . . My little prince – my own flesh and blood – being interested in a white woman. This will pass, I told myself.
Nonetheless I took the trouble to learn more about the queen of film, a female phenomenon known as Bee-Bee, whom Siew Lan had also heard of. On a quick trip into town, my friend pointed her out on a poster. I had seen the picture many times before but had never realised that this apparition before me, with the petite lips, the thick eyebrows and dark curls sweeping over her head, was the one men talked about. Apparently it was her eyes – haunting, melancholic eyes that stared directly, as if she knew you – which made hearts throb all over Ipoh.
Weng Yu never mentioned Bee-Bee and I never asked, not least because I was soon preoccupied with new challenges. Ah Hong told me about a soiled patch on the barlay where the boys slept; she had noticed it when she was cleaning the house. ‘Part of growing up-lah,’ she assured me, and she would not have mentioned it had she not noticed how Weng Yu was behaving with Li-Fei.
‘Ai-yahh! You say what?’ I gasped, horrified.
‘This evening come, you watch him, Peng Choon Sau,’ Ah Hong replied calmly. ‘You watch they how with each other.’
Sure enough, when the time came I saw the surreptitious glances my son exchanged with Li-Fei. He was discreet, but he flicked his eyes down her body more than once, the way I had seen men do, face expressionless yet fully alert. From the flush on her cheeks, Li-Fei had noticed too. Recalling her words of adoration from when my son was still a boy, I felt alarm.
I left the dinner table wondering what to do. If Peng Choon were alive, I would have asked him to take Weng Yu aside for a chat man to man. But without my husband there, I kept my worries to myself, too embarrassed to discuss my son’s roving eyes with Siew Lan. Soon enough my friend started to worry. ‘You more thin. Do what?’ Siew Lan asked. I shook my head, mumbling that I was still getting used to my eldest daughter’s absence. Siew Lan conveyed her scepticism with just one look, but she kept quiet, knowing better than to put pressure on me.
It wasn’t long before my anxiety became too great and I confessed all. Siew Lan’s immediate thought was that her husband should speak to Weng Yu, but doubt must have shown on my face, because Siew Lan felt obliged to mention Yap Meng Seng too. ‘I think he is good choice,’ she said enthusiastically. I was less sure; I explained our differences on many issues. ‘Ah, those not important!’ Siew Lan exclaimed. ‘You see – you can tell him what values you want your son to learn. Think a bit-lah.’
So it was that on my next visit to the Yap household, with Siew Lan beside me, I raised the subject of Weng Yu with Meng Seng. The old man listened keenly, interrupting only to ask for clarification. His eyes were bright, as if he was pleased to step into the role of surrogate father. To stress the importance of what I wanted my son to learn, I relayed a story Peng Choon had once told me, of how his own father had taken him aside while on a walk in Chiao-Ling’s hills. High above their fields of rice, he and his father had talked about the responsibilities of manhood. Experimenting with the village girls was strictly frowned on by his father, even though that was all the boys could think about. ‘I had finished school by then, and there was nothing to do all day. I couldn’t stop looking at the girls,’ my husband confessed. He laughed, recalling his bachelor days and what he got up to with delight. But marriage had eventually crept up on him, and with it had come the grim duty from which he had felt a need to escape.
One weekend soon afterwards Meng Seng invited Weng Yu to join him on a stroll before dinner. My eldest son accepted without a second’s hesitation, flashing his dimples and even white teeth. I watched as they set off, Weng Yu striding forth proudly, his lanky frame a head taller than Meng Seng’s.
By the time they returned, my little prince’s body language had changed. Indignation was written all over his dark face and his cheeks were puffed up and flaming. The silence of old had returned; he did not say a word during the entire meal. He kept his eyes on his plate while studiously avoiding mine.
As soon as I had a chance, I quizzed Meng Seng, but the old man simply shrugged his shoulders, telling me that all would be well. For the moment, though, my son was an angry young man.
‘He angry about what?’ I asked in surprise.
‘That I tried to act like his father,’ Meng Seng replied drily. ‘He’s a good boy – just a bit unsure of himself. But then again, aren’t we all at that age?’
‘But . . . he how with you? The boy say what?’
‘He didn’t say anything. But I don’t think you’ll have trouble.’
With little else to add on the matter, we moved on to talking about other things – Meng Seng’s life and his opinions, which he always enjoyed expounding. As for Weng Yu, it took weeks before his mood softened. He went often to Siew Lan’s house in those days to speak to her, maybe even to the white devil, though she never mentioned it. In due course my son regained his voice, and what mattered to me was that the words I had wanted him to hear had been said.
30
When Meng Seng discovered that I had enrolled my daughters at the Methodist school in town, he was delighted. ‘Very good-lah!’ he said emphatically. ‘Girls should learn to read and write these days so that they can be better companions to their husbands.’
My daughters Hui Ying and Hui Lin made rapid progress. When they came home, they practised what they had learnt during the day, holdin
g up items and repeating a chorus of incomprehensible sounds. They giggled over their mistakes, and their brothers would correct the words they had mispronounced. Weng Yu was diligent in helping his sisters, unlike his brothers, who simply shouted out corrections. Weng Yu would sit with the girls and patiently show them how to twist their lips to form the right sounds. I was pleased to see both girls blooming with their newly acquired skills; it became evident even in their posture, the way they held their head and back. Hui Ying would look around excitedly whenever we went out, trying to spot words she could recognise. When we were on a stroll in Belfield Street one evening, she insisted on reading aloud the sign on every shop. ‘Look, Mama! That is the Ipoh Provision Store,’ my daughter announced, translating the words into Hakka for my benefit. They had only been in school for a few weeks at the time, and I was amazed at how much they already knew.
One afternoon Liew Siow-chia turned up at our front door. She told me that my daughters were excellent students, the best in their class, and she thought they would make even more progress if they had an extra hour of tuition once a week.
She offered to come to our house to teach them free of charge on any afternoon of our choice.
A warm, heady feeling oozed inside me as I listened to the young teacher; I was so proud of my girls. With such an offer, how could anyone refuse? That was how Liew Siow-chia came to be at our house every Friday afternoon while the boys stayed behind in school for sports practice. She would sit with my daughters at the dining table in the kitchen, repeating words and phrases. She patiently watched them write lines on sheets of paper, correcting the sounds they made and the squiggles they drew.
When they finished, Liew Siow-chia would say goodbye, before dashing off to hail one of the passing rickshaws along the Lahat Road. I sometimes asked her to stay for dinner, conscious of the kindness she was showing my daughters, but Liew Siow-chia always politely declined. One evening a young man appeared a few minutes before she had finished with the girls, a man with round horn-rimmed glasses and the same taut look as Liew Siow-chia had. He introduced himself as her brother. I didn’t pay Liew Tsin-sang much attention the first time, merely leading him to the inner hall, where I left him to wait.
The Woman Who Breathed Two Worlds Page 24