The Woman Who Breathed Two Worlds

by Siak Chin Yoke, Selina

  When I accompanied Noridah to the door, I asked whether anything had changed. The bidan pursed her lips, put both her hands in mine and whispered that the baby was still turning. She would only be able to tell later on in the week.

  As promised, Noridah came every day after that. She repeated the same procedure at each visit: a thorough examination followed by an hour’s massage. It was only after her fourth visit that the bidan took me aside. ‘The baby still not in right position . . . head and legs are a problem,’ Noridah said in a low voice. When she heard my intake of breath, the bidan touched my hand. ‘Don’t worry, Makche. Your daughter is strong. And I also will do my best to help her.’

  The bidan’s attempts at optimism did little to calm me. My daughter’s discomfort grew, but I did not know what else to do. On the sixth day Hui Ying’s pain was so intense that Noridah stayed by her side the whole day. Around five in the afternoon the contractions began, and it was clear that a long night lay ahead. Noridah would have to stay. I sent Li-Fei on her bicycle to Kampong Laxamana to fetch the bidan a change of clothing.

  The next hours proved as excruciating as Noridah had anticipated. Unable to leave my daughter, I remained beside Chin Tong and the bidan the entire time. Hui Ying’s groans became louder through the night. By five in the morning, when Chin Tong was asked to leave the room, my heart was in my mouth. Because of her heaviness, Hui Ying lay on her back, and I could see Noridah having trouble coaxing the baby out. It seemed to me that there was something in the way blocking the little one’s passage into this world. I wondered whether it would help to have my daughter standing, but the bidan shook her head, continuing instead to exert pressure on Hui Ying’s belly. When the pain became too much, Hui Ying started to scream. Her shrieks were unbearable. I had to cover my ears many times.

  Noridah used her hands to urge the baby out, all the while encouraging my daughter to push. Finally, after screams which raised the hairs on my arms, Hui Ying managed to expel the baby’s legs. At the very same moment blood began oozing out of my daughter’s wound, and my heart jerked. I put both hands over my mouth as the colour drained from Hui Ying’s face. She turned pale. Droplets of sweat were visible on her forehead. Noridah whispered words of sweetness into her ears, telling her how well she was doing and that it would soon be over. Soaking a piece of cotton wool with the herbal oil she had brought, the bidan tried to staunch Hui Ying’s bleeding.

  But the baby’s head appeared stuck, which meant a last effort would be needed. Noridah worked quietly to spur Hui Ying on. ‘Sayang,’ she said in a gentle voice, ‘one last push.’ When my daughter replied that she had no strength left, Noridah calmly dabbed her wet forehead with a cloth. ‘Your baby’s legs are out . . . just one more push . . . then you can rest.’

  With heroic force, Hui Ying pushed, at the same time letting out a scream that reverberated across the neighbourhood. It made her husband rush in, just in time to see a stream of blood gush out of his wife. I did not look at my son-in-law till minutes later, after I had taken my dead grandchild – a poor baby girl – from the bidan. Noridah meanwhile was frantically trying to soak another piece of cotton wool in herbal oil, because the swab she held in her hand was already drenched in my daughter’s blood. When I saw how quickly the blood flowed, red and thick, with no sign that anything we did had an effect, I realised we had to act quickly.

  I turned towards my son-in-law. ‘Please,’ I begged, my voice nearly breaking. ‘Please fetch a doctor.’ Chin Tong’s face was drained of colour, but he understood at once. Releasing his wife’s hand, he ran out of the room. Later Chin Tong told me he continued running all the way into Old Town, where he was able to hail one of the rickshaw pullers who had started work early. It took them half an hour to reach Dr Khong’s house and another fifteen minutes for the two to return in the doctor’s car. By then Hui Ying was barely conscious. We had used up all the cotton wool in our house and were doing our best with any piece of clean cloth we could find. I’m far from faint-hearted, but I had seen so much blood pour out of my daughter’s body that I was close to collapsing when the two men arrived. Somehow I held on, because I knew Hui Ying’s life could depend on it.

  When I looked up at Dr Khong, the horror on his face told me my daughter was in grave danger. He took out a syringe from his black bag and injected her with a clear fluid – ‘To stop the bleeding,’ he explained. Then, twiddling his moustache with his right hand, he muttered a few words to Chin Tong in English before rushing off – to where I have no idea, but my son-in-law explained that we were going to get Hui Ying to a hospital. Not long afterwards an ambulance arrived with sirens shrieking, and two men descended with a canvas bed. Hui Ying was still bleeding, though not as badly. I was beside myself by then, my throat parched and my hands trembling. The men placed my daughter inside the ambulance. Chin Tong and I were allowed to travel with her as we sped to the hospital, which was then located in Old Town, not far from our house. It could not have taken us long, yet those few minutes crouched in the ambulance are the longest in my memory.

  When we arrived, it seemed that we were expected. A white man received us, flanked by two nurses, and the trio bundled my daughter off. I followed my son-in-law blindly as he led me down long bare corridors that had a smell which made my stomach churn. We finally reached the room into which they had taken Hui Ying to see if they could repair the tear the baby had made inside her body. My son-in-law told me all this in an even voice without any hint of blame, but I paced up and down the waiting room berating myself. Why had I not listened when the portents of ill luck had lined up one by one before my very eyes? I prayed silently to Kuan Yin, hoping it would not be too late to save my daughter.

  Eventually the white man came out, his face the colour of ash. His message made the tears flow down my son-in-law’s cheeks, and I understood that my wish would not be granted. Without a word Chin Tong took my hand and pulled me into the emergency room, where we saw Hui Ying on a bed covered in white sheets. My daughter’s eyes were fluttering weakly, but from her smile I knew she had seen us. Hui Ying took her final breath as I stroked the hair on her forehead. When she was gone, I walked out into the endless corridor, not knowing where I was going.

  39

  For weeks afterwards I wandered with my soul detached from my body. A dark hollow formed inside, as if my innards had been scraped clean. I knew I could have prevented my daughter’s death; I could have acted the night I heard her screams; even further along the way, I could have fought fate. In the glaring light of hindsight my remorse was terrible.

  Overnight I aged. Before losing my daughter, a handful of grey hairs graced my head; afterwards they sprouted from hour to hour, multiplying so quickly that within weeks whole patches of white could be seen. Sitting before the mirror one morning, I was aghast. There on my head sat a white crown, its threads wiry like cotton wool, beneath which a shrivelled bag of bones protruded – the woman I had become, my skin as furrowed as baked earth.

  This pathetic sight woke me from my stupor. Shaking my coconut-white mane, I lifted its end deftly with my left hand, coiled it into a bun behind my neck and then fastened it with small black pins, as I had seen Siew Lan do several years back. I stared. The mirror, ever faithful, told me that my new bun was no less pretty than the chignon I had worn every day since the age of twelve, even though the bun wasn’t held up by five-pronged pins or garlanded with blossoms. And it had taken only five minutes. I understood then why many Nyonyas had adopted this new form and wondered at my previous obstinacy. When Siew Lan had begun wearing her hair in a simple bun, I had scoffed. ‘No work, just easy life. Everything also everyone want make easy. How can be like that?’

  The bun on my head brought with it a burning compulsion to change, perhaps to become ‘modern’, though I had little idea what this meant.

  I descended into the kitchen, where the air was thick with the sweet smell of steaming coconut milk. There I found Ah Hong busy supervising Li-Fei and the two hired hands in the making of k
ueh. All were surprised to see me, as I had barely stepped outside my bedroom in weeks. When Ah Hong complimented me on my new hairstyle, I smiled before surveying the room.

  In a far corner Li-Fei was pouring finely diced winter melon into a large wok. A mesmerising white cloud rose up, which disintegrated into puffs as it spread its wonderful fragrance of pounded chilli and dried shrimp across the room. Sprawled on the kitchen surfaces were rectangles of cut banana leaves and large pots of glutinous rice, sticky with coconut milk. These and other comforting Nyonya scents dragged me out of my malaise. In that early dawn, when I bit into winter melon, a vegetable fit for emperors, my spirit revived. Once again it was my roots which saved me.

  Days later, when the letter arrived from the Kinta Electricity Department, I surprised my children by agreeing to have electrical points fixed up in every room in the house, even the latrine. By the time our house could be lit by the quick flick of a switch, Liew Chin Tong had moved out. I had used every argument I could to persuade him to stay but without success; our house just carried too many memories. Fortunately Chin Tong visited often, knowing there would always be a place in my heart for him.

  I felt immensely sorry for my son-in-law. At Hui Ying’s funeral he had looked like an expiring animal, with eyes that stared vacantly into the world. For days he could barely get out of bed. I was too distraught to tend to him then; that task fell to my youngest daughter, Hui Lin, and the servants. They did what they could, making sure he had one square meal each day and feeding him plenty of tea.

  The jolt of seeing me in a new hairdo must have roused Chin Tong, because he began thereafter to recover noticeably. He hauled himself out of bed the next morning, shaved off the stubble on his chin and announced that he was taking a stroll in the People’s Park. When he had regained his colour, he resumed the routine he had once followed. He would wake to watch the sunrise, dash off after a breakfast of steamed dumplings, spend all day inside his airy courthouse and then return in the late afternoon, bursting with stories.

  In those weeks the hours of twilight proved our toughest challenge. We would sit comforting one another in the tranquillity of the inner hall, Chin Tong with cup of tea in hand, I with Nyonya kueh in mine. As we each tried to conjure up the magic that dusk had previously wrought, we would chatter endlessly, desperate to prevent the silences which sometimes descended. My habit of devouring the Wong family kueh started then. Until Hui Ying passed away I had kept my sweet tooth in check, preferring to sell kueh for profit; in the months afterwards I succumbed to temptation and indulged heavily. At first I ate only what could not be sold, dousing leftover apom in palm sugar sauce or gobbling up the badly cut pieces of tapioca kueh I inevitably found on various tables. But I enjoyed them so much that I took to sniffing in our kitchen like a hungry vagrant. I ate kueh for breakfast, taking just one or two, then three or four, then more. Slowly but surely I gained weight. My sarongs grew tight, and folds of skin showed beneath my bajus. Though my girth never matched that of the mistress of ceremonies, I was still unhappy with myself. By the end of the year I was thirty pounds heavier, but I found the habit of eating many kueh a day impossible to stop.

  For as long as he lived in our house, Liew Chin Tong never once missed taking an after-dinner tea with me. One balmy night – a night so hot that even the creatures outside could not settle – Chin Tong cleared his throat just after the croaking of frogs had reached us from the open land behind the Lahat Road.

  ‘Mama,’ my son-in-law said, at once looking away. ‘Weng Yu . . .’

  Nearby a mosquito hovered, oblivious to the concentric dark green coil we burnt to keep them at bay.

  ‘Yes?’ I whispered, wondering what would come next.

  ‘Weng Yu . . . ahem . . .’ Another clearing of the throat. ‘And this . . . this white woman . . . Helen . . .’

  At the sound of her name, I recalled the uncanny feelings I’d had whenever Weng Yu’s letters were read to me. ‘Tell me,’ I said, ignoring the itch on my wrist. My son-in-law sat immobile, as if considering a weighty legal judgment.

  ‘I think you must be prepared, Mama,’ he finally declared.

  Outside the frogs continued to screech; inside the air remained still except for the belches of acrid smoke released by the burning mosquito coil. The look I gave my son-in-law made his horn-rimmed glasses fall halfway down his nose, until he admitted that Weng Yu had made references to Helen in his letters. Chin Tong said it had been Hui Ying’s idea to conceal the truth, because my daughter worried that her brother’s infatuation would upset me. An angry welt rose on my right wrist. I scratched it vigorously and made a disgruntled noise in my throat, even though I knew my daughter had been right. She and my son-in-law had hoped Weng Yu’s enthusiasm for the girl would diminish with time, but that had not happened; if anything, Chin Tong feared that my son’s ardour had grown. The inevitable would soon come, and he felt it prudent to tell me. ‘You must be prepared, Mama,’ he said again.

  I went to bed crestfallen, still scratching my wrist. As soon as I awoke the next day, I stood before Kuan Yin and our ancestors. The redness on my wrist had subsided, but I had hardly slept. I placed a handful of oranges into a white porcelain bowl etched with blue butterflies and flowers. On a matching plate I lay three pieces of kueh kochee, beautifully wrapped in oiled banana leaves, and set both plate and bowl down on our faithful altar table. Then, lighting three joss-sticks as I had always done, I began to chant.

  While I mouthed the sutras, my mind wandered. I thought about the things I had seen in Ipoh during my twenty-five years in the town, how it had mushroomed from a small settlement on one side of the Kinta River to a modern town straddling both banks. There were now many more people, the horse-drawn gharries had been replaced by rickshaws and bicycles, and there were even motor cars.

  But not all the changes had been good. Our lives were now permanently invaded. Signs of the white devils were everywhere: in the clothes we wore, the language we spoke, the films we saw, the deference we showed, kowtowing without question. Some Nyonya and Baba families had even forsaken their own ancestors and gods and embraced the god of the white devils, the one they worshipped on Sundays. That was something I could never do. Change I was willing to entertain, wholesale abandonment of everything dear never. It would be like giving up Nyonya kueh, the food which had sustained my family through the years. How could I have done that? I couldn’t.

  With these thoughts swirling in my mind, I remembered the resolution I made on the day I had coiled my hair into a simple bun: to become modern. But what did that really mean?

  White streams rose from the joss-sticks in my hands. Higher in the air, where the streams broke into ringlets, I saw the handsome face of my eldest son, with his deep-set eyes and dimpled cheeks. Why had I ever allowed Weng Yu to go to England? It was beginning to seem like a big mistake.

  40

  As soon as Siew Lan returned to Ipoh from her grand European tour, she sent her servant Rokiah over with a basket of juicy mangoes and a message that she would visit as soon as she had unpacked. I was delighted to have my friend back in town, but so much had happened that I also felt a tinge of trepidation. How could I tell her everything just as she was settling in?

  True to her word, Siew Lan swept in soon after, resplendent in an eye-catching red kebaya and a beautiful brown sarong she had bought in Penang. A boisterous welcome greeted her. ‘Lan Ee!’ the two youngest boys, Weng Onn and Weng Choon, shouted. I was so overcome that I hugged my friend for many minutes and stood breathing in her scent, ignoring Rokiah and the rickshaw driver, who trailed behind with a large number of boxes. With my arms around her body, I could tell that Siew Lan had gained weight too. Her belly pushed against mine and her shoulders felt well padded. She was still beautiful, even with the extra inches and the lines on her forehead, which had spread to both eyes and cheeks. Having been away from the tropical sun, Siew Lan had grown fairer, but her skin was also less taut, as if the years had suddenly caught up with her.


  ‘This is what, my friend?’ I asked, pointing to the absurd load her servant had scattered about. There were boxes everywhere: on the table in our inner hall, on chairs and on the floor. When I stepped inside the kitchen, I found boxes there too.

  ‘Oh . . . just small things,’ Siew Lan replied with a dismissive wave of her hand. ‘Hope you all like.’

  She was about to encourage Hui Lin to tear open the ribbons on an exquisite box when my friend gave me a peculiar stare. ‘Your hair, Chye Hoon!’ she exclaimed. ‘Wahh . . . you do modern-ah?’ she asked in a teasing tone. Then, looking around, Siew Lan noticed the lights on the ceilings. ‘Wahh! Electric lights! I not here that time, so many new things!’

  As her eyes continued to scan, I could feel her question coming. Within minutes Siew Lan blurted out ‘Ai! Hui Ying-leh? She where?’ so cheerfully that it was enough to bring a lump to my throat.

  No one said a word. My gaze remained on Siew Lan, who looked carefully back at me. I saw the old sadnesses in her almond-shaped eyes as they measured my fuller hips and waist before studying my face. While waiting for me to speak, Siew Lan did not once take her eyes off me. ‘She . . . she pass away, my friend,’ I replied, my voice weak as the emotion I thought I had conquered came gushing back.

  Siew Lan’s look turned to one of mute horror. She understood at once, and a sob escaped into the air. Wailing openly, my friend rocked back and forth in grief. She stayed doubled over for many minutes, her face covered with both hands, as if she was unable to quite believe what she had heard.