Frog Under A Coconut Shell Read online

  The birthday party for our uncle is a great success though he sits observing it all from his seat, still attached to his oxygen tank, clapping his hands. It is held at cousin Jennifer’s ranch-type home around her swimming pool in the Californian evening, with a cast of talented relatives who sing, dance and play the piano, trumpet and guitar. Barry plays the saxophone with verve. All of Uncle’s children and grandchildren are there, and of course his friends too. It is strange to see so many Asians in one party here that it is almost possible to forget that I am in the United States, except that the majority of guests speak in American accented English. Bernadette and I decide to wear our sarong kebayas, especially for Uncle Joe and he is indeed very pleased.

  “Like your mother,” he says.

  Because of his inability to breathe unaided, his words are sparing. So I am not sure if he means our dressing or our looks. However, his remark touches a chord in me, anything that reminds me of my mother has the capacity to move me. Although he doesn’t say much, I can gauge that his feelings for my mother are intense whenever he mentions her. His and my private exchange is not brought up again. He is frail and I do not wish to contribute to his distress although I feel a little cheated that I cannot verify the facts of my mother’s story about their exodus and their new life in Singapore. I had so looked forward to completing the family jigsaw puzzle because Uncle Joe is of sound mind and can easily set the record straight. For some unfathomable reason, he is reluctant to air the family closet. Then I thought, perhaps he doesn’t want to discuss things with me because he doesn’t know me well, or that he’s in ill health and therefore doesn’t want to recollect a painful past. But surely, he must have told his family; after all, his beginnings are their beginnings, too; surely he won’t deprive them of their roots and history. So, just before I drive Bernadette and Andy to Las Vegas for their short holiday, I take my cousin, Jennifer, his eldest daughter, aside and ask her, “Do you know if your father ever used the name ‘Kanchil’? Does your mother or any of you know about his family’s flight from Malacca?”

  “No, lah. Dad has always been very secretive. We have often puzzled over this. We know he is very fond of your mother and used to visit her. He told us that when he’s better, he wants to visit her. But he has never spoken about your father. It’s as though there was something between them that he doesn’t want to remember. We have heard from the grapevine that something did happen in Malacca that caused them to leave the town. But we don’t know what. It’s weird, but no matter how we begged him, Dad will not tell us about his life before he was 17.”

  Cousin Jennifer stresses this several times, “We don’t know anything about his life before he was 17.”

  So now I, too, will never know.

  Bernadette and Andy have only four days in Las Vegas. She calls home every day and on one of the calls, learns that Dolores has to rush back to the Philippines for a court case because her husband has threatened to wrest custody of their children from her. Agatha has to send her maid over to look after Mak. Matthew drops in at his lunch hour to make sure that our mother gets on with the maid-on-loan. I take my sister and nephew to the Hoover dam and other Vegas attractions. Andy is delighted to ride the gondola down the replica of the Grand Canal at The Venetian, one of the many themed hotels on The Strip. Then Bernadette receives a call from Romia to say that Dolores is not returning. Of course, this is a catastrophe. Bernadette works full-time and so does Agatha and all my brothers. There won’t be anyone to look after Mak.

  “Agatha says that maybe it’s time we consider putting Mother in a nursing home,” Bernadette says.

  I am silenced by the prospect. Of course I am thinking that she should be in a place that she is familiar with but then I am not the one who has to care for her, what can I say? I have to bow to Bernadette’s decision. Fortunately, in the next breath, she says, “I’d rather stay at home than put Mak in a nursing home.”

  Telephone calls bat back and forth between Bernadette and Romia. My brother has decided to start interviewing potential maids. Meanwhile, I take Bernadette and Andy to see the volcanic eruption and White Tigers at The Mirage, the battle between the French and the English at Treasure Island, the flower conservatory at Bellagio. We receive another call from Romia to say that he has found an excellent replacement, a 30-something Filipina who had trained as a nurse and has requested the maid agency to transfer from her present employer in Singapore because they are mistreating her. What a marvellous coincidence to have a trained nurse! Maria had not qualified as a nurse because she could not afford to pay the fees for the Final Examinations and came out to Singapore to work because she is paid three times more as a maid what she would be paid in the Philippines as a nurse. One Singapore dollar is equal to 24 Philippine pesos. As a qualified nurse, she would earn 2,800 pesos a month which is approximately S$115.00. As a maid, all her meals and accommodation is completely free and she takes home S$350.00 a month which is about 9,200 pesos. It sounds a lot but it is about £225 a month! (However, the maid’s employer has to pay a levy of about the same amount to the government.) The maid herself has to repay the employment agency their fee and her airfare in instalments. It seems tough.

  The fact that Maria is already working in Singapore means that she can start getting used to Mak immediately. Apparently, according to the employment agency’s contract, she would get a day off after working for three whole months. I am astonished that nobody thinks this is unacceptable, including the maid herself. When Romia asked her if she was willing to take care of an old lady suffering from Alzheimer’s and could be difficult, Maria said that she was willing. We express our gratitude to whoever has engineered her availability to us.

  The day comes when I have to take Bernadette and Andy to MacCarran Airport for their flight back to LA and then a connection to Singapore. Though I feel sad at our parting, I have to get things ready for David’s and our clients’ arrival. In one of our summer seasons on these holidays for retired people, we could eat away at least 10,000 miles, approximately the distance of Singapore from England. Every time I return to Singapore, Andy will say, “Aunty Phine, why don’t you adopt me?”

  “Why do you want me to adopt you when you have your own parents?”

  “So that I can see bears and moose. So that I can go to California, Nevada, Nova Scotia and up to Alaska and the Yukon.”

  He is very practical, my eight-year-old nephew, who will be turning nine in August. Wisely, he didn’t miss a chance to remind me about his coming birthday whilst we are in Las Vegas and persuaded me to buy him an advance birthday present, a toy of the huge American trucks which fascinates him.

  One of the problems of life on the road is that communication with family is a challenge. Although I carry a three-band mobile telephone, the areas that we go to are so remote that there are no telephone masts. The only times we can be in touch is when we are near towns, where we can get access to a landline or a public telephone. Although there are satellite telephones, the cost is too horrendous for us at the moment. Most of the time I keep in touch with my boys and Bernadette via e-mails which we get access to in public libraries and cyber cafes. But as we travel hundreds of miles away from towns with libraries and cyber cafes, we can only keep in touch occasionally. This causes me the greatest worry when David and I are on the road. I hate to find out things about our families when it is too late. Bernadette knows that she can contact our office in England if there is an emergency because David is in touch with his office manager every day. The 16-hour difference between Singapore and certain parts of Canada and the USA is another obstacle to my communication with Bernadette.

  By August, we have finished with our Las Vegas to Seattle tour and in September, we begin our Nova Scotia route. So far, of all the places I have seen, Nova Scotia is my favourite place with endless coastlines that curves and dips so that as you come around the bends, you are greeted with the fabulous sight of sea and sky and little fishing coves. Scottish culture thrives in these places, with many peo
ple still wearing kilts and playing the bagpipes. We are now 11 hours behind Singapore. My mobile doesn’t work here at all because the country is still on the analogue system. So I use the public telephone when I want to get any news. Mak seems to be almost always sleeping when I call, so I don’t get to hear her voice. Every now and then, Bernadette sends an e-mail about how troublesome Mak has been, shouting at them or throwing things around. I am always saddened when I receive such news, not willing to admit that this woman that she is talking about is actually my mother. You read books on Alzheimer’s and understand that this sort of behaviour is all part of the disease, but when it is happening to someone you love, you still find it hard to come to terms with it. You keep on hoping and praying that the doctors might be wrong and that Mak is only suffering a severe case of senile dementia. You will not accept a verdict that is similar to a life sentence. If I only knew then, that there is worse to come.

  To call Bernadette at 10AM on a Sunday, I have to stay up until 11PM of my Saturday. At Halifax, I take the opportunity to play a few hands of Blackjack at the Nova Scotia Casino, which is right on the waterfront so that I can use their telephone. David says I will find any excuse to pop into casinos. He would rather sit in the bar-lounge nursing his gin and tonic. At exactly 11PM, I get off the table and call Bernadette. I am always apprehensive when I do so because I never know what to expect. But when Bernadette takes my call without bursting into tears, I know that I can relax a little.

  “How’s Mak?” I ask.

  “Oh, it’s terrible,” she says. “Today she went to the bathroom to pass motion and didn’t know how to do it on the toilet. She squatted on the bathroom floor and did it there! Maria discovered the mess.”

  So the terrible thing has begun. As the books foretold — the awful moment when normal everyday things are outside the comprehension of the Alzheimer’s sufferer. The disease is a tragedy of monumental proportion, robs the sufferer of her dignity, reduces her to a mindless child in a wizened body. For my mother who had pride herself on cleanliness and personal hygiene, this is an even greater insult. Even when we had been so poor with no indoor bathroom and toilet, she made sure that our home was clean, our clothes washed and ironed. All her aluminium pots gleamed and shone, the aluminium that is supposed to have contributed to her disease. She washed the chamber pot with her own hands everyday until I took over the task. During the hot seasons when the water in the village well receded, she would put out pails and containers to catch any rainfall or dew so that she could continue cleaning. She used leftover water from the washing of clothes to scrub the floor, clean our char kiak or wooden clogs, and our canvas school shoes.

  “As long as you have water,” she often told me, “you are not that poor that you have to be dirty.”

  I am scourged by Bernadette’s news, my heart bleeding afresh. This woman who appeared to have lost her senses is the same woman who educated us to the proper use of precious water in Potong Pasir. When the reservoirs in the country ran to a dangerously low level and more water had to be bought from the Malay Peninsular (now West Malaysia), the village standpipe where we got our supply of drinking water would be turned off, too. And Mak would queue patiently with all the villagers for the municipal lorry to come with its load of rationed water. This is the same woman who had the fortitude to send me to school, the same woman who acted as mid-wife to many of the village births, healer to the sick. This same woman who gave away her own food to the kampong folks who were in greater need, a gentle quiet heroine who brought joy to lives which she brush-stroked with her smile and tenderness. Who is there to restore her to that former glory? Who is there to heal her now?

  Eighteen

  “I think I ought to go back to see Mak after our season is over,” I say to David. “From the sound of her deterioration, Christmas is too far away.”

  “Yes, that sounds like a good idea. I shall see if I can go across, too. But I do hate those damn flights. It’s agony for my gout.”

  Our last tour for our travel business is from Montreal to New England to see the fall colours. But we had a couple of weeks’ break before it begins. We need that time anyway to drive from Nova Scotia to Montreal. But we can squeeze in a few days of leisure. So we decide to take in a whirlwind view of Prince Edward Island, which is outside our tour route. From New Brunswick, we use the Confederation Bridge to get to Prince Edward Island. The bridge is a feat of modern engineering at 12.5 kilometres long. It spans the Northumberland Straits, which completely freezes over in winter. The island, called PEI for short, is incredibly rustic and unspoilt, with soft undulating hills very much like England, with many towns named after those in the United Kingdom. Our campground that evening is in a place called Stratford. But we have a long journey to Montreal, so we can only stay a couple of days. We zip through New Brunswick and go into Shediac, lobster capital of the world, to try some lobsters and are disappointed that they are nothing special. Then signs begin to change from English into French and that surprises me, since the majority of Canadians don’t speak French or Quebcois, the variety of French that they speak here. We go into a tourist centre to ask for a map of the area and is handed a map totally in French. The first thing I discover is the Quebecian’s arrogance.

  “Do you have the map in English?” I ask the young girl.

  “What is the point? The place names are all in French anyway.”

  Throughout my months of travelling, seeing lovely areas of wilderness and beautiful places, I never forget that without my mother, I would not be here. If I had not gone to school, I would not have gone to University and would not have worked as a marketing executive and David and I would not have met, would not have been able to communicate even if we had met. My destiny would have run on a different track. I keep casting my mind back because I still can’t get over how lucky I am that my mother forced a change in the couplings that re-directed my train. I owe her so much.

  David and I stop at a campground in Quebec City and are charmed by the old part of town which is very European in character compared to the rest of Canada, with its narrow cobbled streets and town square. David and I have a meal and a couple of games of chess. Then we stand and watch the fireeater demonstarting his skill in the square to a cheering crowd. It is 11 o’clock in the evening, which is a good time to call Singapore. I call Bernadette and she starts to cry when she hears my voice, and my heart plunges a few fathoms.

  “Mak is in hospital. She had a fall and broke her hip. I e-mailed you.”

  But of course I had not been able to get online for a few days. This is the kind of news I had feared, another setback to an already ailing body. I am so distressed, I pass the phone to David. It seems that Mak is in a very bad way. The doctors are not sure if they can do a hip-replacement because they don’t think she’ll survive the operation. Hasn’t my mother gone through enough? If I still believe in a God to rail to, I would. But I don’t, believing now that it is all karmic. But why does Mak need all these experiences? What is she supposed to be learning still? Philosophy is easier to digest in print, but when it is a part of real life, it feels like one is trying to swallow dry paper.

  “Shall I come out?” I ask Bernaedtte when I get on the phone again.

  “It’s hard to say. She’s been in there four days. And she doesn’t look good. She’s confused about where she is, so she’s screaming and shouting at the nurses. She’s on traction at the moment, in a straitjacket and strapped to the bed to stop her from moving. One of us needs to be with her 24 hours.”

  I am stabbed by her words, visions of our mother straitjacketed like an inmate in an asylum, fearful and confused, struggling with everybody who tries to help her. When I was a nurse, I worked in Woodbridge Hospital, a mental institution, located in what used to be Singapore’s countryside in Yio Chu Kang. The staff of the dental unit had to go to the hospital one day a week. I was sent out there, every Tuesday for two years, to assist the dental surgeon. The place was dismal, resembling a prison more than it did a hospit
al. I was only 17 and it was quite a traumatic experience the first time I went there: people sauntering around with that dazed look, their hospital garments looking like sack cloths. The more serious cases were in straitjackets or tied up, some locked in personal cells, their dentures taken away from them. Is my mother reduced to this? Has she crossed some invisble line between disease and sanity? What is the difference between the two when an Alzheimer’s patient starts to lose sight of her days and weeks, her own memories, and worse, the workings of her own body?

  “I’ll come out. I’ll find out if there are flights available when we get to Montreal.”

  We set off from Quebec City the next morning. Instead of the leisurely run to Montreal that we had anticipated, our drive there is a race. We take Highway 20 West, following the beautiful St Lawrence River on our right, though we have no time to stop at the shoreline towns. With our motorhome and the tow vehicle behind, our rig is nearly 60 feet long, so it must look odd to other motorists that we are zipping along like a wagon-train on fire. David and I take turns to drive so we cover the 155 miles in just under three hours, ever watchful for the blue lights of the Highway Police. The Highway Police ought to be busy because I have never witnessed such lunacy on the roads as I do here. The design of the highways and freeways exacerbate the problem, with entrances and exits at random coming onto the highway and departing sometimes on the right, sometimes on the left. The signage is typically French and are not consistent or well posted in advance, so you can be caught unawares as to where you are supposed to exit or join another freeway. Cars zip in front of us so abruptly that David is reduced to using swear words. Thank God he’s driving and not me. A 60-foot rig with two tons of metal, kitchen, bathroom and bedroom in the back, plus a car in tow, is not easy to brake when some lunatic changes lanes to come into yours without much preamble. Montreal is the most nightmarish city I have ever driven in, even worse than Bangkok or Singapore where, though chaotic, the madness is minimised by the lower speed limit.