She continued to visit us throughout her first two pregnancies, a phenomenon which bothered me. Not only that, she even went regularly to see her uncle who lived on Belfield Street in Old Town, not far from us. This traipsing around Ipoh with a belly hanging over the side of a rickshaw was not something I thought wise, but Mei Foong simply laughed. ‘I’m fine, Mama,’ she said in that deep voice of hers in such a way that I could feel her strength.
Towards the end of 1934 Mei Foong gave birth to a boy they named Wai Sung. Though desperate to see my latest grandchild, I worried about stepping into the hospital, fearing I would be dragged against my will into a room where some waiting doctor would stand. Only after my fourth son promised that nothing of the sort would happen did I visit. By then the baby was already two days old.
We went in three rickshaws. When we arrived, Weng Yu was standing stiffly near the window as if unsure what to do. From a distance he watched his wife cradle their son. As soon as Weng Yu saw us, though, he beamed, slipping into the role of proud father. ‘Meet my baby boy,’ he announced.
During the hour we were allowed to stay, I observed Weng Yu’s peculiar aloofness for a man whose son had just been born. When I asked what he was thinking of, my son smiled – that wonderful smile in which he showed off his perfect teeth and handsome dimples. ‘Many things to think about, Mama,’ he said. ‘Fathers have more work, you know!’
Wai Sung was a lovely pink child with a snub nose, which stood out in the room. We couldn’t understand where that nose had come from, seeing that our noses were long and thin. ‘His grandmother’s nose,’ Mei Foong informed us. He also had amazing hair, so abundant that it covered the top and sides of his head thickly in mats and even reached down below his ears, a sight that elicited exclamations throughout the room. ‘Wahh! Lot of hair! Good-lah, he’ll never be bald!’
Over time the ants swarming into our latrine grew in number. Despite my valiant attempts at hosing the floor, the creatures returned, darting about wildly and sniffing at empty space. They were perpetually in our kitchen, caught by the water basins protecting our food cupboard. Whenever the basins – in which the legs of the cupboard stood – were emptied, their waters were inky black with creatures.
Other than the ants, I did not feel so different. I breathed more heavily during walks, but then again who wouldn’t at my age? It was only when I collapsed in the People’s Park one afternoon that I felt fear. I fell suddenly, exactly as I had when I went tumbling down the stairs. One minute I was standing on two feet, the next my knees folded into themselves and my head hit the ground. When I opened my eyes, I could barely see. Everything around me had turned white, full of blurred dots. It crossed my mind that I had perhaps reached the other side. Blinking furiously, I opened and closed my eyes many times until the dots disappeared. Standing over me was a stranger, who asked if I was the Nyonya matriarch of Wong family kueh fame. In a weak voice I said yes. The woman helped me to my feet, walked me to the edge of the park and once there promptly hailed a rickshaw, which carried me all the way home to Lahat Road.
The following evening my fourth son, Weng Yoon, sank his stocky frame into the chair beside mine. It was a hot, sticky night, and the sharp hissing of cicadas floated in through the open air well. Without warning my son told me that it was time I retired.
This was not what I was expecting to hear. Weng Yoon was then extremely busy with his legal practice; it being barely a year old, he worked all hours from dawn to dusk, and when he did come home he brought work with him. After dinner, while I strolled along our street or sat sipping tea, Weng Yoon would be at the kitchen table with his bundles of papers laid out in piles or rolled into clutches, each neatly tied with a pink ribbon. The last thing he should have been doing was worrying after his old mother. I told him so, but the boy would not give in.
‘Ai-yahh! If no work, I how to spend my time, Son?’ I argued. ‘Nothing to do, how can-ah?’
‘Mama, how many women your age run three businesses?’
When I pointed out that I could hardly be said to run anything, we faced each other like warring buffalo. Weng Yoon raised one of his bushy eyebrows in a thunderous look he no doubt employed to great effect inside the courthouse where he spent his waking hours, but the boy forgot that I was his mother. I was not going to be put off by a child who had once nestled inside my belly. I reminded my son that our servants took care of the kueh business. As for moneylending, I indulged only sparingly, and the two rented shophouses didn’t even need me – it was his youngest brother, Weng Choon, who took care of rent collection once a month.
‘But there are repairs, Mama! You should be resting.’
We continued in this vein, until I promised to think about retirement. ‘This is big decision,’ I said. In the distance the cicadas screeched in sympathy.
I decided to seek the opinion of the patriarch, who himself had retired many years before. I was surprised when he told me to take Weng Yoon’s advice. ‘His heart is in the right place,’ the old man said with a faraway look in his eyes. Meng Seng’s beard was then already the white of coconut milk on its first squeeze. When talking, he liked to caress its arid strands. The more ponderous he became, the faster his fingers would work, as if each stroke gave him a new idea. He described the visit my fourth son had paid him on his return from London. Unlike Weng Yu before him, Weng Yoon had shot off to see the patriarch and almost went down on his knees. ‘I had to stop him,’ the old man said with a quaking voice.
Meng Seng subsequently gave Weng Yoon a financial guarantee so that he could start his business. I never heard the exact details, but I knew Weng Yoon could not have established his legal practice if it had not been for Meng Seng’s unflinching support. Which was enough to tell me, yet again, how much my family owed this exasperating man.
The patriarch seemed happy to while away his time, but I wondered what I would do if we didn’t make kueh and laksa. The day would surely come, but I would delay it for as long as I could.
When Mei Foong was pregnant with their second child, she came to visit us more often. Seeing how her first pregnancy had passed, I became more relaxed at the idea of an unborn grandchild being rocked on a rickshaw, though I can’t pretend I liked it. I guessed that my daughter-in-law was bored at home, as my son had hired two servants by then: the first to cook and clean; the second to look after Wai Sung, which meant that Mei Foong wasn’t much needed.
It was then that she and I started talking. Or rather, I started talking: my daughter-in-law merely listened. With each visit I poured out more and more of my heart, until the day came when I had told Mei Foong all my troubles. She knew about Helen and how hurt my son had been, also what he’d been like on his return, when he had refused to speak our dialects. Though she said nothing, Mei Foong’s eyes widened. Finally, as if she had made some sort kind of decision, she turned to touch my hand.
‘Mama, you and Weng Yu will be united someday.’ The words, when Mei Foong spoke them in that quietly stirring fashion of hers, had a palliative effect. I believed her and felt immeasurable relief.
It was Mei Foong who encouraged me to build the Green House. While describing the Wong family lands, I told her about my vision of a wooden house painted completely in lime green; also how I had resisted the move for years out of fear that Peng Choon’s spirit would never find us.
‘But it’s been twenty-five years, Mama! You have to live your life.’
‘You say these words, very correct. I also like that think.’
‘Why not build your house now on one of the plots of land?’
‘But my sons also will need the land.’
‘One of them can live with you,’ the girl answered without any hesitation.
The more I thought about Mei Foong’s idea, the more I liked it. It would be easier than buying another plot, as I had been vaguely considering. Siew Lan thought Mei Foong’s plan a good one too, though my friend, who continued to be dogged by unshakeable fatigue, was distinctly less effusive. ‘Only if you
anything also no need to do,’ she told me. ‘We now no strength already-lah, cannot here go there go, like before.’
One night after dinner, with a wink towards my daughter-in-law, I raised the subject with Weng Yu. It was another wonderful Malayan evening when the River of Heaven blinked down on us. With my fourth son, Weng Yoon, also present, I told the boys that as one of them was a civil engineer and the other a lawyer and both were British-trained, it would be best for them to divide the land their father had acquired. We would need six equal plots – one for each surviving son – each with the necessary papers, which everyone in modern Malaya demanded. I would build a house on one of the plots, I said, a brand-new wooden house painted green, as befitted a dwelling in that part of town.
My sons looked at me in astonishment. Weng Yoon immediately reminded me of my diabetes, but I parried him by pointing out that what I requested would have to be carried out in any case. ‘You scared for my health, then you do quickly-lah. I want to live in my house while I still strong.’
My fourth son breathed deeply. ‘Mama, please . . .’ When I retorted that I wished to die in my own house, not in a home rented from someone else, Weng Yoon could think of no response. I had won, but I decided there and then that building the Green House would be the last thing I would do. It seemed fitting; finally I would do something entirely for myself, with my children’s help, on the land my late husband had left us. I felt like the warrior Hang Tuah once more, wisely wielding the sword I had been given. The Green House was my dream. It would also be my legacy.
49
When I knew that my dream of a house in green would come true, an astonishing contentment settled on me, a feeling broken only by Siew Lan’s persistent complaints of fatigue.
‘I always so tired-lah,’ my friend said when I went to visit. ‘Sleep and sleep also still tired.’
‘You see doctor already-ah?’
‘Of course, Chye Hoon! I take all those herbs also, still no good. We now old already-lah. What to do?’
Though I said nothing, I was worried about my friend. Black sacs hung below her large eyes, and the folds of her kebaya gathered ever more loosely around a shadow of skin and bone. I made up my mind to speak to the patriarch when I next saw him, to ask whether he knew another doctor whom Siew Lan could consult.
The following day Weng Yu’s and Mei Foong’s second child, a baby girl called Lai Hin, entered this world. My granddaughter’s birth proved rather dramatic; indeed, if fate hadn’t intervened, her arrival could easily have been a catastrophe, for Mei Foong went into labour at her uncle’s house on Belfield Street.
When the contractions began, my daughter-in-law was unruffled, thinking they would settle and she would have time to get home and thence to hospital. But instead of there being periods of lull, the tugs grew increasingly violent. Mei Foong sensed she was dealing with a headstrong child, one in a hurry to enter the world and who would not be stopped. Within a half hour her waters had broken, and my daughter-in-law knew that her body would expel the baby before help could arrive. Her uncle, a widower, stood helplessly watching the pools of liquid inundating the floor, barely able to listen to his niece’s tormented screams. Fortunately an aunt happened to be there who had borne six children. With plenty of experience on birth matters, albeit not in the capacity of a midwife, this aunt had the presence of mind to scrub her hands and then to shout for rags and pieces of cloth, anything they could find, while she massaged Mei Foong’s belly, giving whatever relief was possible with nutmeg oil and her gentle palms.
By the time the ambulance came, my granddaughter was already out in the world.
I received the news half an hour later, just as I was preparing to leave for Siew Lan’s house. For a fleeting instant I felt torn, but then the excitement of another grandchild took over. How could it not? I told myself that I would see my friend in the afternoon, when it would be more comfortable once the sun was lower in the sky.
My granddaughter, a little girl bristling with energy and covered in thick mats of hair just like her elder brother’s, was a joy to behold. Her hair was darker than anything I’d seen on one so young – black like starless nights – and shiny too, as if it would start to glow. It was only after reaching the hospital that I heard the circumstances of her birth. Panic engulfed me. Losing my head, I screamed at Mei Foong, stunning everyone in the process, most of all her husband. I couldn’t understand why my daughter-in-law would put her baby at such risk. Perhaps because of the harrowing story of her birth I had a soft spot for Lai Hin from the outset. The impatience she displayed during her journey into this world I took as a sign that she might have inherited a little of the Wong fire.
On returning to Lahat Road from the hospital, we found a distraught Rokiah wailing in the kitchen. My heart sank when I realised that both our servants were crying too. ‘Ahh . . . ahh . . . Makche Wong . . .’ Rokiah herself seemed beyond comfort. Tugging at my arm, she gestured towards the front door. I followed meekly, numb from shock.
Rokiah was too disconsolate to speak during our rickshaw journey. My main concern was whether Siew Lan had suffered pain. On this point Rokiah shook her head but I didn’t believe her – I had to see for myself. The image of my friend sitting upright on a chair with both eyes still open was to remain with me for the rest of my life. Her body lay limp on one of the very chairs she had reminisced about – a well-polished mahogany chair Se-Too-Wat had acquired in Singapore. Her son, Don, had reached the house by then, and he helped Rokiah and I carry Siew Lan to bed, where we lay her down before gently closing her eyelids.
Knowing what would come next, Don went quietly downstairs, leaving us alone with his mother’s body. While Rokiah was in the kitchen preparing the warm water we needed, I began speaking to my friend. I whispered to Siew Lan that I couldn’t believe she had left so suddenly without any warning at all, so that I hadn’t even had time to say a proper goodbye. I told her how sorry I was that I hadn’t seen her that morning. The words choked in my throat, but no tears would come. Instead, gripped by an inexplicable urge, I released Siew Lan’s hair from its coiled bun. I stroked the long strands, first with my fingers, then with a brush I found on my friend’s dressing table. Her hair was completely white, but it still felt healthy, the strands thick and smooth; they glided like silk on my fingers.
When Rokiah returned with a basin of warm soapy water and a sponge, we undressed Siew Lan and started to wash her. We spoke to her throughout, Rokiah in Malay, me in Hokkien. We said many beautiful things, and I hoped Siew Lan could hear us. I reminded her of how we had met at the Pa Lo Old Temple those years ago by chance, two young women in need of companionship. I remembered the creases etched into her face even then, the sadness of past disappointments she carried in her eyes. I told her that I had been wrong about Se-Too-Wat – he had indeed been a good man. I knew this, I said, not only because of the way she began to glow after their marriage, but also from the kindnesses he had freely bestowed on my family. As Rokiah chose a fresh kebaya and sarong for her mistress, I prayed that Siew Lan’s and Se-Too-Wat’s souls would be reunited.
The next few days passed as if in a dream. I remember little about what went on. I just know there were people constantly coming and going – family, friends, well-wishers who had only known Siew Lan to say hello to on the street. Food and drink appeared miraculously, organised by Siew Lan’s children, Flora and Don, with help from the patriarch, who despite his own frailty retained his wits about him. My eldest son seemed much affected by Siew Lan’s passing away. Though he visited with his wife, they did not stay long. There was incessant noise throughout. Priests in yellow robes chanted all day and late into each night, accompanied now and again by the beat of an enormous gong they had carried in.
When it came time for the cremation, a long cortège filed out towards the Gopeng Road, led by a multitude of priests, who carried four gongs between them. These they beat intermittently with great vigour. There were so many mourners that traffic in New Town came to a standstil
l for hours until we had all passed through.
It was a scorching morning. I could walk no further than the few hundred yards to the corner of Hugh Low Street before exhaustion overcame me, and I climbed into the motor car my fourth son, Weng Yoon, had hired. Everyone, including those of us riding in the relative shade of the cars, was sweaty and bedraggled by the time we reached the Sam Poh Temple outside town. Yet the sight of that august structure soaring into the air lifted my weak spirits. As Weng Yu and Mei Foong held my hands, I whispered that I too wanted this to be my final place of rest. ‘Chay, Mama! Don’t say such things please,’ Weng Yu begged.
Once inside Ipoh’s limestone caves, I was revived. Cool air blew in, breath of the gods which fed the wondrous hills I had loved from the first moment. I imagined my best friend’s soul being freed from her body, rising into new worlds beyond. In this magical place of rock and ancient trees, my turn would one day come.
The day after my friend’s funeral, Flora and Don appeared on the five-foot way outside our house. Don, with his dark complexion and round, flat face, was a replica of his Malayan mother, while his sister beside him, with her rosy cheeks and brooding double-creased eyes crowned by exceptional lashes, could have passed for European. In her hand she carried a plain receptacle, the sight of which made me shiver. We three stood smiling dumbly at one another, until I finally found my voice and invited them to enter.
Flora glided in. With her head held gracefully high, she moved like a swan on water, her white dress billowing in the breeze. I marvelled at her poise in the face of such a tragic loss. Flora explained in an apologetic tone that she and Don couldn’t stay long – she had to return to her job in Kuala Lumpur. Too miserable to attempt small talk, I nodded, unable to focus on anything except the object on her lap, a plain vessel with three distinctive lines etched around its body. What Flora said I have no idea. Her voice washed over me until the moment she faltered and I caught the words ‘Mama . . . alone by herself . . .’
The Woman Who Breathed Two Worlds Page 38