I looked up to see Flora’s beautifully dark eyes misting beneath their willowy lashes.
At the sight of her tears, I berated myself once again for not having called on Siew Lan when I still had had the opportunity. If I had not procrastinated, I could have bid farewell to my friend of thirty-six years. As it was, all I had left were memories and the urn on Flora’s lap. I could barely bring myself to hold the urn. Someone else had to take it from Flora.
After Flora and Don left, I found the urn sitting forlornly on our altar table beside the jar that held my husband’s ashes. I picked the vessel up with both hands. As I ran unsteady fingers along the three lines on its body, I was shaken again by grief and regret. It was only much later, after the pins and needles had started attacking my feet, that I realised I had forgotten to thank Flora and Don for this gift of their mother’s ashes.
Siew Lan’s demise changed our lives. My little prince, it seemed, was especially affected. Within a fortnight of her funeral, Weng Yu went to pay his respects to the patriarch and even took Mei Foong along.
‘He say what-ah?’ I asked the old man.
‘Oh, it was just a social call,’ Meng Seng replied with a wave of his hand. ‘They dropped in to see how I was-lah. Very nice of them.’ Then, narrowing his eyes and stroking his moustache, he added mysteriously, ‘I think the boy has repented.’
The comment raised my interest, as Meng Seng well knew it would. ‘Why you like that talk-kah?’ I demanded. ‘My son say sorry-ah?’
The patriarch shook his head, but when he next spoke his voice conveyed a distinctive air of satisfaction. ‘I think, Chye Hoon, you can finally stop worrying about your son. The boy has seen sense . . . much more humble now, not like before.’
When my eldest son and his wife next came to dinner, I was stupefied. Not only had the boy’s swagger mellowed, but he even took care not to point his nose down on us. Remembering Meng Seng’s words, I wondered how it could be that it had taken Siew Lan’s leaving us to make my son sorry.
‘My husband was impressed by the number of people at her funeral, Mama,’ my daughter-in-law explained one afternoon.
‘What you mean?’ I asked.
Mei Foong’s response was a deep sigh. ‘You know what Weng Yu is like,’ she said softly.
I shook my head in incomprehension.
‘He has his own ideas. He sees this woman, uneducated, doesn’t work . . . and yet half of Ipoh turns up to pay their last respects. So he had to ask himself why . . . What did Siew Lan Ee have? He searched his heart.’
‘I told my husband it was time, Mama,’ Mei Foong added, her voice turning steely. ‘Time to make up with the family who has given him so much. Going to see Meng Seng Pak was my idea.’
At last I dared to hope.
In the ensuing months, when Weng Yu’s conciliatory manner persisted, I finally believed that my eldest son had come home to his roots. If he could serve as a role model for his younger siblings, I would not have lived in vain. There was still a chance that Siew Lan’s dire prediction ‘Maybe one day . . . no more Nyonya’ would not come to pass.
50
In those days I often found myself taking out Siew Lan’s favourite Pekalongan sarong, the only possession of hers I had kept. The shapes and colours of Java on the cloth – previously vivid in blacks, reds and greens – were by then barely visible, and no one else could understand what I saw beneath its faded lustre, or the volley of memories the sarong evoked. I would retrieve it from inside my almerah just so that I could hold it in my hands. I would place it on my dressing table and stroke its well-worn material, smooth from the years of washing.
On some days, feeling the cloth on my skin was not enough. Like a jilted lover I longed to hear my friend’s voice, to smell her scent on our barlay. In desperation I would pick up the pale purple sarong and place it tight against my nostrils, pathetically attempting to evoke her fragrance. It was only after my third daughter, Hui Lin, saw me sniffing at the sarong that I became self-conscious. Though she said nothing, her astonishment was obvious. I became more furtive thereafter, breathing in my best friend’s aroma only behind locked doors, where my secret would stay safe.
By the time Mei Foong came to see me, the Wong family land had already been broken up into the six parcels I had asked for. Weng Yu and his fourth brother, Weng Yoon, showed me their drawings, outlined on rolls of special paper in fine black ink, just like the plans my eldest son had once made of Ipoh town. The shape and size of each plot were visible, as were the tree-like figures denoting the small rubber estates, which made the neighbourhood so leafy. Having encouraged me towards my dream, Mei Foong took a continued interest in the Green House, and I thought she had come to discuss the next phase of work.
The servants were preparing lunch when she shuffled in, wearing a faded Chinese tunic and the type of black trousers favoured by the amahs. Mei Foong was weighed down by the third child she was then carrying, and the sight of trousers on her legs caused my tongue to desert me.
‘Comfortable-ah?’ I finally asked, not knowing what else to say. Smiling, my daughter-in-law nodded.
When a long and ponderous silence ensued, I sensed that Mei Foong had come to ask my advice. From our kitchen floated the tantalising aroma of chillies and dried shrimp frying. Though my eyes were failing, my nose and taste buds were as sharp as ever; one whiff was all it took for my mouth to water. I savoured the thought of lunch while waiting for Mei Foong to come to the point. It took ten minutes before she confessed.
‘I’m worried about Weng Yu.’
‘Why?’ I asked, nostrils dancing to the wonderful smell of sambal.
‘He’s changed in recent months.’
‘That mean what?’
‘He . . . comes home later than usual.’
I was unsure what my daughter-in-law was saying. It didn’t help that from where I sat she appeared as dim as a ghost.
‘I need your help,’ the figure whispered.
‘You want me to do what, Daughter?’
‘Talk to my husband,’ Mei Foong replied, more forcefully this time and in a tone full of expectation, as if I could perform miracles.
There was a sizzling sound . . . something being poured into a hot wok, followed at once by a smell which I recognised as petai – the crunchy, fiery Malayan bean – being cooked. Shaped like a beetle, the bean is an astonishing laxative, which provokes unique explosions all over Malaya. Petai was also my favourite dish, and its odours trailed through our house for days.
‘Maybe my son just got more work,’ I said when I had regained my concentration. Mei Foong shook her head.
When our servants banged the gong to announce lunch, Mei Foong rose, said she had to hurry home for her afternoon nap and then disappeared as quickly as she had arrived, leaving me with nothing but an enigmatic message.
‘Mama, if you can’t help him, no one else can.’
Late next morning, after counting the coins Li-Fei had brought back, I set off towards the shophouse on Hale Street that Weng Yu had refurbished. Hard as I tried, I failed to think what Mei Foong could have meant. When I climbed out of my rickshaw, I was saddled with a niggling feeling that the girl knew more than she had said.
As soon as I stepped inside Weng Yu’s office, I could tell that neither of the moving apparitions was my son. One of the hazy persons I recognised as my son’s assistant, a boy who seemed oddly nervous. He wished me good morning and then stood with his hands together, as if he didn’t know what to do. Breathing heavily, the assistant told me that Mr Wong had gone to see a client.
‘Weng Yu when come back?’
Neither the assistant nor the draughtsman seemed to know, a fact I found amazing. My son was running his business very badly. I imagined a new client walking in as I had done and wondered what his reaction would be on finding the boss away, whereabouts unknown. The client would take his project elsewhere of course. There were enough engineers in town to provide Weng Yu competition – of that I was certain. Men who cou
ld build houses and bridges just as well, even if they didn’t have British qualifications. It was inconceivable that my son could continue in this undisciplined fashion. I shuddered at what I would have to say to the wayward boy.
Meanwhile the assistant offered me Weng Yu’s chair, a high stool my son had imported from Europe. Made of unforgiving wood, it stood on three legs instead of four and was so hard on my posterior that I had to move on to a local cane chair. Not knowing where my son was or how long he would be away, I soon decided to head home.
I would normally have hailed a rickshaw there and then, but in those years I was assailed by nostalgia. Following an urge to retrace the walk I had taken with Peng Choon during our first tour of Ipoh, I strolled towards Leech Street. It was only a few minutes away on foot.
Along the next block from my son’s office, my ears caught a distinctive sound – of tiles clanging and men laughing. The shophouse looked just like ours, except that its front door was closed and the bright blue shutters of its windows flung wide open. From inside came raucous voices and the noise of mah-jong tiles crashing against one another. A sudden clattering erupted, with voices shouting in both jubilation and commiseration all at once and in Cantonese. ‘Pong! Eat!’ someone yelled. ‘Wahh! Eat like that-ah!’ a low voice cried out. ‘Ai-yahh! Such pity-lah! I why throw that tile?’
Something prompted me to knock. What it was I shall never know, except that the thought came with a lucidity which stopped my heart. I climbed the shallow steps leading from the street up on to the five-foot way. Once on the five-foot way I stood for a few minutes, staring hard at the wooden and very blue front door before banging with my clenched fist. The portly middle-aged man who opened it looked surprised to see me. ‘Wong Weng Yu here-mah?’ I asked. ‘I am his mother,’ I added in a firm voice. The man nodded curtly before turning around. ‘Weng Yu!’ he said, shouting towards the back of the shop. ‘Your mother!’
At those words play ceased. No one stirred while the man at the front door helped me over the raised ledge at the doorway entrance that kept evil spirits at bay. From afar a figure made its way towards us. Through the acrid pall of cigarette smoke it was hard to tell whether the moving man was my son, though he bore Weng Yu’s gait. I could barely breathe. Electric fans hung from the ceiling, but their blades turned lazily, hardly stirring the stale streams rising into the air.
Fear gripped me. I was reminded of the opium den into which I had once ventured with Father. I recalled the two men who had come tumbling out as they pummelled one another. Nearly thirty years had passed, but my heart still beat fast at the memory of what they had said, at the way they had cursed their mothers. The blood roared through my veins.
Amidst revulsion I was aware of a strong smell of roses, the same fragrance Mei Foong had worn early in her marriage. When my eyes adjusted to the darker interior, I realised that there were women at the mah-jong tables, holding cups and cigarettes in their hands.
Everyone was scrutinising me then, men and women alike. Those who sat close by stared openly. The others further away probably did too, but I could only sense their eyes from where I stood. For the first time I regretted the bright red baju I had put on.
When the figure walking towards us finally stopped, it turned out indeed to be my son. His face was as red as my tunic, which at least told me that Weng Yu knew shame, yet when the boy opened his mouth he shocked me.
‘What are you doing here, Mama? Who told you to come?’ he screamed, making me jump.
Though Weng Yu had always been a gentle boy, as I stood near him my heart thumped. My lips became strangely immobile. I was aware only of breathing and smoke, the perfume of roses and the smell of coffee.
Eventually the sight of my son in so incongruous a setting propelled me to speak. I gave Weng Yu a choice: either he came to our house that night, or I would come to his and we could talk in front of his wife and children. It was up to him.
By the time I finished, my throat felt parched, even though I had said just a few words. Weng Yu’s face darkened. Without answering, he began shouting once more.
‘This is no place for you! I want you to leave now, Mama!’
‘You come tonight or not?’
‘Mama, I’m thirty-five years old,’ my son said irritably. ‘Not a child any more!’
‘You tell me-lah, you come or not?’
That was when I felt Weng Yu’s hands on my right elbow, nudging me away. His elegant fingers dug into the sleeves of my baju and I looked at my son in wonder. How could someone so unathletic be so strong? I had a sensation of standing on a cliff edge and being dragged by stronger forces. A scuffle broke out between Weng Yu and the middle-aged man who had let me in. As they pushed at each other, I heard the older man telling my son to let me go.
It felt like a long way to the front door. The room stretched from the front of Hale Street to the tiny lane at the back. Nothing untoward happened. No one shoved or threatened me, but I was shaking when I left. Holding back tears, I shivered all the way home. When we reached our front door, the coins fell from my hands as I paid the rickshaw puller. I rushed to the washbasin in our inner hall, where I crouched to hurl fear out in great oozy clumps. When I looked down, I saw the remains of my breakfast.
As soon as I could, I went to Kuan Yin’s altar. My heart was filled with shame and my head with regret for the foul deeds I must have committed in a previous life. How else to explain my fate?
Then, while standing in candlelight enveloped by white wisps twirling into the air and flanked by the shadows of my ancestors and late husband, I remembered.
Shoving my joss-sticks into the dark earth of the urn, I headed straight to my bedroom and the dressing table. I opened the bottom drawer, where I kept every letter I had ever received in my life. Rifling through the sheets, I found at the very bottom the crumpled papers my late husband had sent from his deathbed, yellowed with age. I peered at their faded Chinese writing and wished for the first time that I could read. I went to ask my daughter Hui Lin for help, only to find that she had no idea what the characters meant, as she had never attended a Chinese school. Later, when the boys returned, I found to my dismay that they had largely forgotten their Chinese. It was with difficulty that they deciphered enough characters between them to convey the gist of their father’s message. As my children read out parts aloud, I could hear my dead husband speak from beyond.
‘Beware,’ he had warned. ‘They have this Chinese vice in their blood.’ I wept, never imagining that Peng Choon’s words would one day come true.
That night it rained heavily, a veritable Ipoh downpour, in which the waters gushed down in sheets. The atmosphere in our inner hall was fraught. None of my other children took Weng Yu’s gambling seriously.
‘Mama, this may just be a pastime,’ Hui Lin said while throwing a nervous laugh into the air. Weng Yoon’s thick eyebrows knitted into a frown while he reminded me that the world was changing. ‘Nothing wrong with a game of mah-jong now and then, is there?’ My son-in-law Kwee Seng wisely stayed out of the fray, mumbling that he didn’t have any experience of these things. Neither did I, but when a boy who should have been at work was found in a gambling den, I knew we had a problem. I said as much aloud.
Our conversation was broken by the sound of rain beating hard against our wooden shutters. Through the open air well, the water pouring in was caught by the drains, which carried it back into the earth.
At eight o’clock Weng Yu strode in striking a nonchalant air. He was wet but impeccably dressed, with not a single crease visible on trousers or shirt and with every hair in place. His head shone from a new cream he was using. Under the glow of the electric lights, only his inflamed cheeks and the muscles on his face, so taut that both his dimples had disappeared, revealed any anxiety. At the sight of Weng Yu, his siblings stood up and began to troop out, but I stopped them, knowing instinctively that I wanted Hui Lin and Weng Yoon with me. This infuriated my eldest son. ‘I’m head of this family, and you want to talk about
me with these two?’ he protested.
‘This is family matter,’ I said firmly. ‘Is important Hui Lin and Weng Yoon listen what we say. Here live with me, they are the oldest.’
When Weng Yu continued glaring, I thought he would get up and walk off, but just as quickly he sat down again, albeit in a huff. Keeping his eyes steadily on his knees, my son bristled like a cat.
I thought of the warrior Hang Tuah and his magical sword. Somehow I would have to find my sword tonight.
How I managed to speak, I have no idea. Nothing had prepared me; I was led only by intuition and an aching heart. I poured out my deepest feelings, reminding my son of what he knew and telling him things he didn’t. I started with how I had taken him from his hanging crib the night he couldn’t settle. I recounted the tour we had taken, he and I, around our house, until I had sat with him inside our inner hall. I described cradling him close against my breast, so close that I could feel his breath against my neck.
My son’s eyes moistened at these revelations. I told him that life after their father’s death had not been easy, and there were times when I didn’t think we would survive. Yet survive we did, thanks to my hard work and the grace of Kuan Yin and our gods.
I may have made mistakes, I said, but I hoped my children would forgive me, because I had always tried to do the best for them. When I told Weng Yu that Siew Lan had even accused me of spoiling him, he reddened. I was a mother, I said. How could I not love him and hope he would change?
Then when he had asked to study in London, everyone in our family had made sacrifices. As I said this, Weng Yu took a deep breath. We had been happy to do this, I added, because we were proud of our joint enterprise. He was our eldest boy after all, and we wanted him to be an engineer, a somebody. How thrilled we would be by his successful return. But then had come news of his escapade with a white girl, during which I lost hope of ever seeing him again. At the mention of Helen, a shadow flickered across Weng Yu’s eyes.
The Woman Who Breathed Two Worlds Page 39