Frog Under A Coconut Shell Page 23

  “Thank you,” she says, preening at the compliment. “If I may say so myself, my food is really excellent. You see, even though I haven’t published a book, I’ve got all my recipes on computer. I wrote them down as our mother recited them to me. Phine’s book is only good for England, with ingredients that she can find there. But mine is more authentic.”

  Fifteen

  “Christmas is only around the corner,” Agatha says. “Who knows whether this is Mak’s last Christmas. Why don’t you stay for a while more?”

  She is right. It would make sense. It could be the last Christmas I spend with our mother. Or it could be the last Christmas which she remembers. I call David and though he is not keen on my continued stay, he thinks it makes sense, too. I ask David to come over to Singapore, but he says that he has a lot on. He always says that. Fortunately, my elder son has worked it out with his long-term girlfriend in Singapore that she’d chip in for his flight out here after term breaks up, so that they can spend Christmas together. And as his younger brother is in Singapore, waiting to go into national service, it will mean having the two of them together for Christmas here. All in all, Agatha’s idea is a timely one. Although I shall miss David terribly, he’ll have his mother, children and grandchildren around him, so he will be well-entertained. In any case, he’s on the phone to me everyday, sometimes twice a day, for at least half an hour or a whole hour. Like our courting days.

  Christmas trees and tinsels feel strange in a hot climate. It is interesting how my perceptions have changed, because I never saw it like that when I was living in Singapore. But now that I am used to the bleak Christmases of England, and the snow-clad ones of Europe and the USA, I can’t think of the heat as Christmas-time. But Christmas is more celebrated here than anywhere I know, in the churches and in the commercial districts. You can’t escape its commercial trappings, with carols blasting from every conceivable speaker, from early November. You couldn’t go to the shops without seeing advertisements to buy this or that and smiling Santas on every window. Every break in a programme on the radio and television trys to entice you to buy something for your loved one or yourself. Hotels, particularly along Scotts Road and Orchard Road, bring in genuine, giant Christmas trees, decked with fake snow and twinkling lights to bring customers to their premises. To draw customers away from the hot humid streets into the hotels, the air-conditioning is turned to high to simulate a temperate climate. It gives people a chance to wear their jackets, waistcoats and leather boots. Patisserie chefs concoct gingerbread houses, yule logs and Christmas cakes with white icing, sprigs of holly with blood red berries. Figures of skaters skim the surface of these cakes or on ice sculptures, ladies dressed in mini Santarina outfits. All the Northern winter objects of snow, reindeer, holly, mistletoe, Christmas trees seemed displaced in equatorial Singapore, just as my mother had seemed displaced when she visited England in her flimsy sarong kebaya and open-toed sandals or Gandhi when he wore his dhoti to rainy Liverpool. Orchard Road looks more Christmassy than any place I know, with each hotel or department store competing to display the best Christmas facade and decoration. Reindeers drawing Santas on sledges are depicted in numerous designs. The whole street is festooned with coloured bulbs, both along and across the walkways, stretched from building to building. It is a hundred times more festive than the lights on Oxford Street in London. Mak has always loved a drive through Orchard Road when the Christmas lights are all up. So I decide to take her out. It requires a bit of persuading, because she complains of feeling tired, but she eventually relents. Andy and Bernadette come along for the ride, too.

  “Aiiyah, so nice!” She exclaims as we see coloured bulb nativity scenes, angels, Santas and reindeer. Lighted snowflakes drift down from the tropical sky; aerosol snow cap the tops of giant presents in colourful wrappings and bows in shop windows.

  I nudge the car slowly along the crowded street. Not that I have a choice since there are cars on the left and right of me, cars in front, and cars behind. Obviously, others have the same idea to come out to see the lights as well. On either side of the road are pedestrian malls, filled to capacity with moving bodies of people. Young people form such a huge percentage of the population that the crowd is nearly all made up of teenagers or those in their 20s and 30s, all of them so very slim, with such leggy arms and legs that you wonder how all the food centres in Singapore make money. Their bean-pole figures are beginning to give me a complex. When I am in the UK, or even in Canada and the USA, I feel quite young and fit, but here, I feel old, overweight and sometimes downright ugly. Whenever I have the opportunity to go to the shopping malls to get something, I am inevitably stopped by an anoreixic-looking young lady selling cosmetics, asking if I wanted to try their brand of whitening cream. Somehow this innuendo that I shouldn’t be so dark reminds me of my father, so it puts me in an ill-temper.

  “I’m happy with my colour,” I say crossly. “I don’t want to be white.”

  Perhaps I should have said that to my father, too. But my words don’t have the desired effect on the salesgirls, they only make them look at me with such pity in their eyes. To them, I must seem ridiculous when I have the choice of having a fair complexion but choose to be as dark as the maids trawling behind the Marms and Sirs, carrying the babies or taking care of pushchairs and parcels whilst their employers shop around the malls and eat at food courts. Not only is my complexion not in fashion for the Chinese, it tells everybody I am not in the right class. To accentuate the problem, there is no Chinese or Malay word for tanned, so everybody will say I am black. From thinking that I look all right in the West, I am suddenly made to feel out of place. Amazing how such a transformation can occur when you cross continents.

  “If one more person asks me if I want to buy a whitening cream, I’ll scream,” I complained to David.

  “Don’t you change anything. I love you just the way you are. I think you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

  I’m sure he was laying it on a bit to give me back my confidence. I guess that is what love is all about. But I was too grateful to protest. So now I look at all the youngsters and say to myself I don’t mind what they think of me. After all, ugly as I appear to be to people here, I am so lucky in love. What more could I ask?

  “Aiiyoh! So many people one, huh. Give me a headache. My head is spinning round and round,” Mak says.

  The coloured lights now dazzle and confuse her. Things outside herself and her comprehension tire her easily. I had hoped to treat her to supper somewhere, but she wants to get back. She is uncomfortable in unfamiliar surroundings. People with Alzheimer’s seek routines and familiar places. So we have to shorten the outing. She is certainly not like she used to be. At the rate of her deterioration, it is prudent to spend Christmas with Mak because I don’t know how many more Christmases she is going to see. When someone is ill, every single day is a hurdle to be gotten over.

  Mak used to love going to church for Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve, because she loved listening to the carols although she can’t sing them. But now she doesn’t feel up to going. So I go with Bernadette, Andy and my boys, although I’m not a church-goer. It is the one time in the year when people really dress up for church. Bernadette wears a red, embroidered knitted top with a matching mid-calf skirt and a pair of ankle-length leather boots. She explains that the church is air-conditioned and is cold. Andy is cute in long trousers, white shirt, bow-tie and waistcoat. The boys wear silk shirts with their fashionable trousers. I am desperately trying to find something that looks dressy without feeling warm, so I choose a lemon trouser-suit, with embroidered lapels. It’s like a fashion parade in church, with some men in jackets and some women in evening wear. It adds to the festive ambience. Compared to the poor attendance of Mass in English churches even on Christmas Eve, the church was packed, with people having to stand at the back of the pews. Unlike the high percentage of old people at Mass in England, a great number of the congregation here are young people and young families. I thought
how proud the missionaries who came here to convert our people would be to see such a turnout.

  Like Chinese New Year, Christmas in Singapore is a continuous round of eating. Bernadette has first go for Christmas lunch so that everybody can come and wish Mak a Merry Christmas. Dinner will be at Agatha’s and on subsequent evenings at Matthew’s, then Romia’s, then Jacob’s. This is not counting friends who have invited me. I help Bernadette and her maid to chop, cut, slice, pound spices, fry and cook. We arrange platters and decorations on the trestle table covered with a festive tablecloth. Bernadette sets out a buffet spread of the traditional turkey and ham, baked by Cold Storage, alongside Peranakan specialty dishes like Itek Tim, Ayam Buah Kerluak, etc. I had organised with my sisters to wear our sarong kebayas to take a photo with Mak whilst she is still standing upright and has reasonable recognition. Matthew’s wife, who is Chinese but not Peranakan, decides to wear the outfit as well, so too her daughter and Joanna. Agatha’s daughter looks stunning in her sarong kebaya and more and more like my mother in looks. Beside her slim figure and that of Matthew’s daughter, we three sisters look like overweight mothers-in-law!

  My two elder brothers have three children, and Agatha has three, Bernadette has one and Matthew has one. Jacob’s son is married with one child, whilst Romia has two married children. Altogether, my mother has 13 grandchildren, one great-grandchild, with one on the way. My elder son will be coming with his girlfriend, so there will be 26 people for lunch. And that’s only our immediate family. Except for Matthew and his family, I haven’t seen my other elder brothers and their families since my last visit. Mak sits on the settee, dressed in her best kebaya, ready to receive the guests. She had put on her favourite earrings, a five-petalled flower studded with diamond with Chinese gold surround. The pierced holes of her earlobes have extended over years of wearing heavy earrings, and now her earrings drag them downwards. Once, on festive occasions, she would insert the yellow chempaka flowers into her bun or twist the bunga melor chain around it. But now her bun is so small and pathetic that it cannot support either. The lighted Christmas tree, with all its tinsel, helps to remind her that it is Christmas Day. She loved Bing Crosby’s carols so Bernadette had bought a CD, and Bing’s I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas is now playing. Every now and again, Mak would bring her hands together to clap like a gleeful child.

  “People are coming already. People are coming already,” she says excitedly as she peers out the French windows. Soon the front doorstep is littered with footwear of all colours and sizes. Asians never wear footwear indoors.

  “Aiiyah, Ah Phine, ah,” Romia says, “How come you put on weight?”

  His wife, whose skin has never been exposed to the sun because she wears long sleeves when she goes out and carries an umbrella to shield herself from the sun, takes one look at me and says, “Eh, Phine, ah. You’re so black!”

  When Jacob turns up, he says, “Wow, you’re almost as black as me.”

  Perhaps I need the whitening cream after all. Or I need to introduce a new word to the Chinese and Malay dictionaries. Up until then, I had thought I looked rather becoming in my sarong kebaya, suddenly I am not so sure.

  My boys turn up and I give each of them a kiss, including the girlfriend. Both boys are taller than me, so I have to tip-toe to reach them. It’s a not a custom in this country, so the younger shyly offers his cheek.

  “Aiiyah, no need, lah,” says the elder.

  I pick a few of Mak’s favourite dishes from the buffet table and take it to her, still sitting on the settee. She is talking with animation to my sisters-in-law. I address her and she looks up with such sheer wonderment as if she has only eyes for me and my heart turns over. “See, it’s Ah Phine,” she announces. “She’s come from England to visit me.”

  After lunch, we stand and pose for the photographs. Mak stands in the middle, first with only her daughters, then her daughters and granddaughters. She looks small amongst us, like a tiny sparrow. Then we take a picture of her with all her children and their spouses and their children and grandchildren. My throat catches as I think that this might be the last gathering that we have would with all of us together. My mother has held the family together for such a long time, not in a matriarchal manner but by her love and her ability to cook. When she was able, she used to cook every single Sunday so that we could all come and visit her. Every single Sunday for years, she would cater to more than 10 of us for lunch. Until she could no longer cope. We see each other because of her. If she goes, what will happen to the family? I have no doubt that I will see my brothers and sisters, but perhaps not so much of their families. It’s too large to grasp, too large to try to continue holding everyone together. Bernadette says that every year, she is getting more exhausted in having to cater to them all. If the younger generation has any sense, it is them who would have to pick up the reins now, to keep the family together.

  I am pleased that I suggested that the girls should wear the kebaya because Mak is pleased. She says, “Good-good. Nice to see young people wearing sarong kebaya. It keeps tradition alive. It won’t be long before our Peranakan culture is dead.” She expresses my sentiments entirely. Pernakans are marrying non-Peranakans. Our children, because they are classed as Chinese, study Mandarin in school. They won’t speak Malay nor our patois. Many Singaporean children, particularly the Chinese-Singaporean, are not taught the old Asian customs. Like Andy, many are not taught to call the elder before eating, not taught to bend low when passing in front of an elder and many other forms of respect that we, as children, used to be taught. Though they think of themselves as Chinese, I don’t see much of any Chinese-ness in them. They look Chinese, but don’t act Chinese in that they lack Chinese graciousness and good manners. With their western clothes, mobile phones and loudness, they appear like Westerners, but without western graces. Mak would have said that they weren’t brought up properly.

  “You know,” I say to my nephews and nieces, “you are the next generation of Peranakans now. You have to practice our customs to keep our tradition alive for your children so that they can keep it alive for theirs. Otherwise, the knowledge about us Peranakans will soon die off and we will pass into history.”

  “What’s the big deal about being a Peranakan?” Romia’s elder son, Brad, says. “It’s only Chinese people dressed up as Malays, what.”

  It is hard to say goodbye to someone who is ill, you never know if you’re going to see them alive again. Death is a burglar who robs in stealth. And it has no respect for age or time. My mother is too poorly to come to the airport. For someone used to exerting herself and not the type to give in to physical exhaustion, this lethargy is so out of character. It tells me that she is truly unwell. Although Alzheimer’s is a disease of the brain, it seems to have a toll on her body in a round-about way. Her failing memory makes her unfit for the usual things that she does, so she can no longer keep as active as she used to be. Her heart condition has stabilised but it’s her overall physical health that is also deteriorating. It is getting hard to separate one from the other now, the physical and the mental are twinned in their destruction, stripping her of the power to be who she wants to be. I have to tear myself away. Life is about moving on after all. Despite my telling her that I am leaving, she seems to have no comprehension of the idea until she sees my packed cases on the marble floor.

  “Going home already?” She says as though it is the first time the subject is being broached. There is a kind of simplicity in her question, almost as if she’s existing in a void, with no past and no future to colour her perception. All you see is what you get, no memory left between the lines. Once she was an ice berg, the submerged part of her being providing stability and informing her social personality; now she is just a cork, floating on the surface of the water, bobbing up and down as the waves take her.

  I feel at a loss. I cannot mouth the words, I love you or I shall miss you. Our culture and upbringing do not encourage such a rendering. In some things we are forthright, in this we
are not. We show love by giving food, doing things, by our actions and our respect. We do not normally hug and kiss. We do not articulate our feelings. My sons still blush when I say to them in English, I love you. They are the words of lovers, not parent to grown-up child or vice versa, nor of siblings. It is our handicap. I move forward to take Mak into my arms but she keeps me at bay, deny me the solace.

  “No need,” she says. “I don’t feel well.”

  “Okay, Mak, I’m going,” I say.

  I feel inadequate, unfulfilled. When words or touch are not permitted, it puts a stopper to the transferring of emotions. There is no poetry in sorrow. Especially sorrow which is left unleashed. And so that is it. Deflated, I walk out the front door. She follows on my heels on uncertain steps. A little bit lost, a little unsure what is really happening. Bernadette’s husband picks up my cases to put them in the boot of the car. I give Dolores a quick hug, press a thank you note in an envelope with some cash into her palm. Andy tugs at my hand, reluctant to have me leave. When I was packing my cases, he said to me,

  “Aunty Phine, I will transform into your suitcase so that you will carry me to England. Then when we get there, I will transform back into me!”

  “What about school?”

  “I want to go to school in England! Study at British Aerospace!”

  And he could, too, with his brains. Bernadette goes to the passenger seat in front. I sit at the back, Andy on my lap. I close the car door, give Mak a final wave. She waves back. She looks small and frail, her attention already elsewhere. I know I have slipped into her past, our days together in the last eight weeks will soon be out of her knowing, written on a piece of paper whose glue will not stick to her mind. This certainty comes to me with a stab in my heart. In her terms, we have ceased to create memories together. I have to hold on to mine for the two of us. It is not so much for me that I want her to remember, but for herself so that she knows she is loved, that she is not neglected. My brother-in-law eases the car out of the driveway and I play a word-game with Andy so that I do not have time to listen to the tune played by my emotional heartstrings.