Frog Under A Coconut Shell Read online

Her wisdom did not come from books. It was what her heart taught her. Thanks to my other sister, Agatha’s diligence and penchant for organising, there is one surviving copy of our parents’ sepiaed wedding photo, which I had copied onto photographic paper to produce another. Surely, it must have been our mother’s lips which had attracted our father, full and unmistakably sensuous, for even in her sorrow, they called to be bruised with kisses. Her hands are tucked into the folds of the billowing sleeves of her Peranakan wedding dress, a bright red outfit, whose colour is believed to ward away evil. (The white in western wedding dresses which represent purity or the virginal status of the bride is a funereal colour for the Chinese. Sikh and Indian widows wear white to indicate their colourless lives after their husbands have died.) My mother’s wedding dress really should have been exceptionally elegant and richly embroidered in gold threads, specially tailored for the occasion with an intricate head-dress. The Peranakan wedding dress was red silk shaped into a tunic with long, wide sleeves and matching silk sarong. Grandmother would have supervised its design and creation with elaborate motifs and beadwork to show off the family’s wealth. Funerals and weddings were the two times to boast and show off the family’s ability to finance such occasions, or an opportunity to show the family’s respect and concern for the deceased or the bride/groom. But since their circumstances had changed, Grandmother could not afford the luxury of showing off nor such a gracious wedding outfit. But worse still, she could not even rouse herself to show any interest about the pending marriage. My mother, already conscious that she was going to my father like a slave-girl from a poor family, bringing no dowry, was trying hard to hold her head up high. She felt that the least she could do was dress reasonably for the occasion so she searched for someone to lend her an outfit. Being in a foreign country without many friends made this a daunting task, but she was diligent, asking round and meeting new people. At last she found a bibik, a nonya woman who too had fallen into bad times herself and who was willing to let Mak borrow her wedding dress for a fee. Aunty Mary’s wedding outfit was nowhere near the value of what her parents would initially have bought her but it was not too far below it either that she would have been ashamed. In fact, it was this transaction that gave Mary the brainwave to start Mary’s Wedding Dress Rental Agency, which pulled her out of her poverty. Since my mother hired an outfit for her wedding, when my own time came, I did not have hers to wear — and so there was no continuity of custom. Besides, we had become modern, the beliefs and mores of our own culture pushed aside by other stronger influences and the western wedding dress became the fashion instead.

  My mother had a recurring nightmare. She would have nightmares anyway, waking up in a small attap hut with its leaky roof, wedged amongst other huts, instead of the huge bungalow in its own grounds by the sea. Instead of the sound of the servants’ bare feet pitter-pattering on the floor boards as they scuttled about to get the family bath-water and breakfast ready, my mother had to wake up to the sound of rats scuttling below their platform bed, cockcroaches crawling all over their counterpane. It was she who had to rise early to empty the chamber pot, draw water from the well and prepare the family breakfast. But if she had nightmares about this new existence, she did not voice them. But there was one nightmare which she could not stitch close. Snatches of memory mingled with old phantoms and invented ones. She had them as far as I could remember, waking us up in the nights with her shrieks; my father, whom we addressed as Ah Tetia, tried to rouse her, to free her from her old demons.

  “The fire, the fire,” she cried. “Somebody put the fire out, lah.”

  “There’s no fire, Dek-Dek.” My father tried to pacify her. “There is no fire.”

  Ah Tetia used the same dimunitive for my mother as my aunts did, dek being the contraction of the Malay word adek, meaning younger sister or brother.

  “Put it out. Put it out!” She flailed at flames leaping onto her sarong. Slapping them down with her bare hands then examining them as if they have been truly burned. And then the anguish.

  “Ah Tio!” She cried for her father. Seeing the flames devour him. Over and over again, she would see him burn in the fire that destroyed their lives.

  Her emotions were so strong, her spirit so linked with mine, that sometimes I shudder as if I could see him too, soaked in kerosene, the flames licking him, his arms in front of his face as though trying to shield his eyes. Was this Grandfather’s final act of power? An exertion of his will to end his erroneous ways? Had he thought that his debts would burn with him in the fire? Or perhaps he was so far gone that he didn’t care anymore, couldn’t care. What must it be like for a daughter to watch her father burn? Sometimes, her fear was so palpable that I hear the fire crackling and the ceiling of the wooden bungalow collapsing, flaming wood which clattered downward to crash onto his head, the beautiful house which he designed and built and loved becoming his funeral pyre.

  “Rubbish,” Agatha said, always forthright with her opinions. “Pure invention. Like she said she had 16 children. Some days it’s 12, some days 13. She makes it up as she goes along. Her brain has never been the same since Robert died.”

  Agatha spoke of our mother in the distant third person even in her presence because Mak’s understanding of English was limited. These days, she talks as if Mak’s ability to feel has gone the same way as her mind. She is three years younger than me, though she behaves and looks the elder sister, taller, larger; in control. She has a face treasured by the Chinese, full and white, with tattooed eyebrows, permanently seared like flat blue-black worms unchangeable even when her expressions change. A face that speaks of wealth and thereby its implication of sophistication; a face unblemished by the sun, not like mine. Agatha is an exceedingly generous person and, like Bernadette, would let me use her private club’s facilities and her car when I am visiting. I am sure she has a very kind heart. It’s just that she doesn’t modulate her tone of voice nor shift from her own view-point, which gives people the wrong impression about her. She prides herself as being a sensitive, successful business woman. Rich. Has a stable marriage and a stable family. Not like me. A failure. A broken marriage. Wounded children. Rescued only by an ang mo, a foreigner.

  “How can you know what she says is true?” She challenged.

  “How can you know it’s not?”

  Since it is difficult to separate the Singaporean inclination towards melodrama from straight facts, I cannot arrive at a true picture of Mak’s condition from Bernadette’s telling. My suspense-filled mind begins to procreate from loose words flung, building up its own scenario that has me quivering with dark anticipation. The eight-hour time difference in autumn means that when the phone rings at 7AM, I sit up in bed in extreme anxiety clutching my duvet, forcing David to go and answer the call. But it’s only his 37-year-old daughter inquiring about the sleeping arrangements for her two young sons for the coming weekend. Sadie has an infallible belief that because she is up, the rest of the world should be, too. This is not the first of her lark rise calls. She is quick to make known her needs, but has a casual disregard for anyone else’s. Especially mine. Recently, she and her husband invited David and I for dinner. Knowing that I have been a vegetarian for 15 years, she served a Pork Roast and Roast Chicken. But when it comes to her needs or her family’s, she has a blinding dedication. In the summer, I had invited my in-laws down for the weekend, the only weekend I have available from my other commitments. My stepchildren live in Buckinghamshire, so our seven-bedroom house with an outdoor swimming pool becomes their country retreat, particularly in summer. The house guests that weekend consisted of my mother-in-law and her live-in companion, who is also her sister-in-law, my two stepsons with their girlfriends and their two friends who were visiting from Holland. I allocated the best room to Sadie and her family, an ensuite room converted from Victorian servants quarters of old, a suite wallpapered with pastel magnolias and light green leaves, a colour scheme carried through into the bed clothes, two piece suite and giant Chinese vase. I mad
e up a bed for her eight-year-old on the settee in the room and dragged up garden cushions which I put on the lush pink carpet by the king-size bed, lay them over with sheets, duvet and pillow for the two-year-old. The purpose of my stepdaughter’s early morning call is to say that the previous sleeping arrangements were inadequate.

  “My sons didn’t get any sleep last time,” she whines down the telephone line. “They need proper beds.”

  Sadie obviously thinks we need this kind of wake-up call.

  Eventually, when life’s constraints permit, I decide to make a dash to Singapore to sort out the situation for myself. My elder son is at Bristol University and he would break up for Christmas. So he would have to manage with David. My younger son is about to go into National Service in Singapore, so if I see Mak, I can have him for Christmas, too. If I didn’t go out there, I’ll fly the younger one out here. David is supremely efficient in organising the ticket, he’d rather have something practical to do than to tackle the complexities of emotions. His is a life of action with little space in-between his multitude of thoughts. He has prospered by his single-mindedness and his super-human zeal and those of us who live by his sweat have to learn to accept this.

  The 12½ hour flight is interminable when you don’t know what news might await you at the other end. I have this gnawing fear that wakes me up in terror some nights, that I might be too late. Unable to keep my mind still enough to read, I watch a new version of Dr. Doolittle two times and Notting Hill thrice, thankful that Singapore Airlines provides personal video screens even in economy class. So when I see Bernadette through the glass wall at the arrival lounge in Terminal Two at Changi International, waving and smiling brightly, with her eight-year-old son Andy who is hopping up and down with energetic glee beside her, my heart slips into a more restful gear. Bernadette is the prettiest of us three sisters. Like Agatha, she belongs to the half of the family who are fair in complexion, a hereditary trait from my father’s Chinese side. She is petite and has a very generous smile and an outgoing personality. Like Agatha, she’s always properly made-up and well dressed, every strand of hair in place. Beside them, with my brown face unmade-up, I always look like a poor relation, and worse, am sometimes mistaken for their maid. It is interesting how I can be both beautiful and ugly at the same time. In the West, people admire my tanned complexion; in the East, the colour of my skin makes me out as a peasant. I remember a saying of the Dalai Lama: “Just because you are perceived in a certain way by others, it does not mean that their perception reflects your true character. What your true nature is depends entirely on what motivates you. Nobody outside can see that.”

  “How’s Mak?” I ask.

  “Okay, lah. She’s back home now. But she’s really bad-tempered these days. Complains about everything. Aiiyah! Her brain is definitely gone! Yesterday, she thought I was her cousin! Every night this week, she has insisted on paying rent for her room.”

  When our mother is talked about in this manner, I fold inwardly, as though in being referred to in such a way, she is being violated. Perhaps Bernadette talks like that to ease the unspoken sorrow and fear inside her. So I have to consciously suppress the urge to react. After all, Bernadette is a well-meaning person with no cruel intent. Throughout our journey to her house, Andy bounces on my lap and asks questions about England. He is only a week older than my step-grandchild, but is streets ahead in intelligence. He owns a deck of cards with pictures of aeroplanes and their specifications, type of engine, wing span, etc, the kind of detailed knowledge that would normally interest an older child. In great enthusiasm, he points them out to me and reads out the name of each aircraft. His reading skills surpass most children his age and his vocabulary is enormous. In between Andy’s prattle, Bernadette gave me an update on her life, her new house, her business and her staff. My ears have to readjust to Singaporean colloquialisms. Singaporeans use a huge repertoire of acronyms: ECP, EPS, COE, URA, MOE. If you’ve been out of the country for quite a while, none of these has any meaning for you. Sometimes it makes me feel like I’m foreigner in my native country.

  Returning to Singapore is also a return to heat and noise. For the monsoon season, it’s pretty humid, with temperatures that wrap around your body like the stuffings between walls in temperate climates. I can hardly breathe. My blood must have thinned considerably. Newly plucked from the quiet English countryside, the city’s white-noise assaults my senses the moment I step off the plane: people talking loudly, the constant drone of machinery, the traffic. What used to be part of the sea is now the new airport with two plush terminals, the reclamation a feat which is highly prized in the nation. Just minutes away via East Coast Parkway is the city with buildings so tall that the Malays called them sapu awan, meaning cloud sweepers. The Malay language which the Peranakans have incorporated into our own patois is very poetic and is often spoken with the hands. My English mother-in-law has remarked to me on several occasions with a slight note of disdain, “I think if we tie your hands, you won’t be able to talk!”

  The Singapore skyline is blotted by multi-storied apartment blocks, shopping centres and hotels, one of which is the Westin, one of the world’s tallest hotels. They elbow each other for space like giant headstones in a cemetery. I found that having lived in the English countryside for so long, I crave a view of open fields and blue sky. If I stay in places like Bangkok and Singapore for some time, I have to run somewhere where I can see ahead without buildings to obscure my vista. Streams of traffic are now flowing alongside Bernadette’s vehicle as they speed towards the town centre along the expressways. For a nation with discipline in almost every facet of life, there is little discipline on the expressway: slow drivers hog the outside lane and others overtake on the inside, cars zip in and out of lanes as the fancy takes the driver. Nobody likes to give way. It’s the manifestation of the Singaporean kia su (afraid to lose) mentality. It is amazing that there are not more accidents. The motorists project a frenzied sense of busy-ness. My heart quickens at this induced pace and I can feel the adrenaline pulsing through my veins. In a need to seek respite, my eyes search the rows of bright bougainvillea and ferns grown in tubs on the central dividers on the expressway and trailing down from the concrete flyovers. There are nice things about Singapore, like the considerable efforts made to beautify the concrete flyovers, unlike their ugly, drab sisters in London and New York. Yet, I am seized with a kind of panic and almost want to get back on the plane. I have not realised how much I have changed.

  Bernadette and her husband run their own computer firm, he creating software tailor-made to local and international businesses and she running teaching programmes and selling the hardware. They are obviously successful, having moved from a government subsidised HDB flat into a three-storey house which sits on prime land in an area once renowned for its sea-view, except that the sea has now moved. There is a heritage tree here which marks the boundary where the sea used to be. It’s a magnificent Banyan Tree, Sea Ficus Superba, with its wide girth and sturdy aerial prop roots. From its woody trunk, the tree spread its branches like strong parachute lines to support its canopy of broad leaves. Underneath the tree is an information board that reads, “... Here where the tree stands mark the end of East Coast Road before it turns into present Bedok Road. The sea was just opposite across East Coast Road ...” The tree now stands in a car-park which serves the Bedok Corner Food Centre.

  The local joke is that Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s Senior Minister and previous Prime Minister, is such a powerful man that he can even move the sea. Some even whisper that he has been seen standing on the seashore attempting to command the waves. Now that Goh Chok Tong has taken over as Prime Minister, Mr Lee has taken a backseat, although he still advises and casts an opinion or two. There is talk that perhaps his son Lee Hsien Loong is destined to walk in his famous father’s footsteps. Bedok and Katong still have bungalows on concrete supports where the seawater used to run underneath. These replaced the wooden huts on stilts that had been part of the fishing c
ommunity eons ago. Disowned by the sea, these houses look orphaned, white elephants in a bustling metropolis where high rise flats in condominiums with tennis and squash courts, swimming pools and huge car-parks stare down at them. Not far from Bernadette’s home is a hotel called Sea View Hotel that used to have direct frontage to the sea. Now the view is of a big supermarket and chain store, other houses and other condominiums, BMWs and Mercedezes parked in the concrete driveways. In the colonial days, it was a custom on Sundays for the white populace to have morning coffee at Sea View Hotel, served by Chinese boys dressed in starched whites. (Though they were called boys by the whites, the waiters were really middle-aged or older.) When folks in England tell me that they “love Singapore the way it was”, and the “good, old days”, I know they are talking about their poly-wrapped expatriate lives in beautiful air-conditioned houses ran by local amahs, kebuns, and amats, who looked after their children, ran the households, took care of the gardens and drove them everywhere to their rounds of tennis and afternoon teas. Very few of them have seen the type of kampong I was brought up in, let alone ventured into one. Having been raised in such extreme poverty, it is now good to return to a prosperous country where every citizen lives well and in comfort. That is the reason why people of my generation respect Lee Kuan Yew so much. It was he and his Party who moved us out of derelict housing, where there was no electricity and water into apartment blocks with amenities. So I guess a bit of city noise is a small price to pay for such luxuries.

  “Welcome to Eastwood,” Bernadette says with pride about her new home.

  The cast iron gate is opened electronically and Bernadette edges the seven series BMW slowly into the narrow driveway that flanks the neighbour’s wall on one side and a patch of lawn which they call their garden on the other. From their boxed HDB flat on the eighth floor where you can hear the neighbours’ television and quarrels or someone flushing the toilet, this is upward mobility. (Eighty percent of the population still live in HDB flats or condominium apartments.) Even though the house is one in a row of terraces, in land-starved Singapore it means they have indeed arrived. Certainly, from where we have come from, it is success with a capital “S”. The kampong or village where we grew up, shanty attap houses and outhouses are long gone now, razed to the ground by bulldozers and the village replaced by concrete blocks. To think that once I thought a flat in a concrete block was paradise! I was 25 when I left rural village life and was easily beguiled by the fact that when I turned on a tap, water ran out, that when I touched a switch, the light came on, that when I completed my ablutions and pulled a long chain, water rushed out to clear my mess. It was pure magic.