Frog Under A Coconut Shell Page 9

  My mother was wrapping nasi lemak, coconut rice into squares of banana leaves when I prompted that I wished to be born. Every morning, she grated coconuts to squeeze the milk from them which she used for boiling the rice over a clay stove. The fragrance of this was unbelievable — it would tickle the soft palate and you could not stop salivating. Even today, I can still remember this smell and sometimes wake up in the mornings in England longing for it. One of the accompaniments with nasi lemak is fried fish, so Mak fried ikan bilis or selar kuning. She was happier here than in the previous hut because she could have a hen-house and a small stretch of rich loam soil which served as garden. One of the things she always talks about at Bernadette’s beautiful house is her dream of planting herbs and vegetables, although we know she would be incapable of doing it. Then, she rejoiced in gathering warm eggs from the hen-house, fresh chillies and coriander from her garden. She made omelettes with the eggs, cracked them into bowls, thinning the mixture with water. She ground fresh chillies on her batu gilling or granite slab and fried it with tamarind juice to create a mouth-watering sambal, then arranged a portion of each neatly on the mound of cooked coconut rice. When wrapped, the nasi lemak packets were green pyramids, parts of the leaf wilted brown by the heat of the rice.

  “My nasi lemak is well-known in the kampong, one,” Mak used to say.

  Little things can help her bridge the gap of time, a word, a memory, a favourite dish. The pride swells her voice, blooms her face as she captures her youth in fleeting moments. Unless you knew her before, you would not have known how capable she had been, how the other villagers looked up to her. Today, she is the one who needs looking after, struck witless by Alzheimer’s. I am sitting with her eating nasi lemak with our fingers. These days, the rice is wrapped in oiled paper, it is possible but rare to find them wrapped in banana leaves. This is Singapore in the 1990s. Nasi lemak is manufactured in big factories and distributed around the island. It has the flavour and taste of cellophane wrapped bread. It is what people have become used to. Each packet deprived of its home-made goodness sells for $1.50 cents, sometimes more, whereas Mak used to sell hers for 3 cents. She used to make my eldest brother Jacob sell them to his schoolmates in his missionary school during recess, until the school’s principal forbade her to do so. After that, she paid one of the Malay boys in the kampong to hawk it.

  “Nasi lemak! Nasi lemak!” The child would cry at the top of his voice.

  In the mornings, he would be competing with other itinerant hawkers, some peddling their wares on bicycles or tricycles, some in baskets slung on bamboo poles across thin shoulders: curry puffs, noodles, thosai, roti prata, lontong, and a myriad of other foods which served as breakfast. Villagers were roused from their sleep by the crowing of the cocks, dogs barking, sparrows twittering and the hawkers shouting out their wares, the bicycle bell of the chye tow kway lady, the clack-clack of the noodle-man’s bamboo clackers. These were the echoes of rural life, sounds that my ears stretched to hear when my eyes opened in the mornings.

  On the morning I was born, my mother forfeited her sale of nasi lemak. She was cooking, standing and squatting by the clay stove right up to the moment I was going to emerge. I announced my intention to begin my journey from inside to outside by causing my mother severe cramps. My father was at work and the elder boys had gone to school. Four-year-old Matthew was sitting on the threshold of the door, filling and filling his bucket with sand. Mak lifted him and put him in a home-made cot, wooden slats nailed together, just a square wooden fence on the cement floor. She gave him some broken toys to play with, a dismembered train, some wooden blocks, a rattle, all discarded by the rich English families living at the top of the hill. Another cramp seized her and she had to steady herself on the bed-post. There wasn’t time to call a neighbour. She quickly spread the absorbent rice paper on the bed, heaved the heavy metal bath-pail, filling it up with warm water, got her scissors and cotton-thread ready, squares of her old sarong serving as nappies. How could I see this so clearly when I was inside her? Or was my mother’s telling so potent that the scene entered my mind and stayed imbedded as my own memory? Is this the sort of thing that constitutes false memory syndrome? But what does it matter whose words shaped the tale? Its contents remain the same. She stacked the pillows on the bed and sat herself down in the birthing position. I was coming too quickly, she was in so much pain, she couldn’t call out to Mak Ahyee next door. She would have to manage on her own. Still, she was not unaccustomed to delivering her babies by herself, she had done it so many times before, for herself and the villagers. It was simply one of those things which was a woman’s lot.

  Counting the number of children living, I was probably her fifth. But if I were to take into account the babies she told me about, I must be about her 10th or 11th. There is no way to verify this total, no way of discovering how much she erred in her summation. All I know is that my mother would not lie, had no reason to lie. If I was her 11th, then Agatha was her 12th, Bernadette her 13th and Robert her 14th. There were 22 years between my eldest brother, Jacob, and my youngest brother, Robert. Perhaps all of my brothers and sisters, dead and alive, had sapped Mak’s strength because by the time Robert was born, he had little immunity. He contracted a fever when he was a few weeks old, which damaged his brain and made him a spastic, unable to sit, unable to walk or talk. She was 43 when Robert arrived, and 67 when he left.

  “I delivered all my children myself and there was no problem. But I had a professional midwife for Robert and look what happened!” Mak would lament.

  But she had no midwife nor friend to assist her in the delivery on the day I was born. She lay on her bed as soon as her waters broke. She was sweating so much, the bed-sheet was drenched. And it was not just from the tropical heat. Her hands gripped tight the headboard of her bed and she grit her teeth. Her hips, so used to childbirth, opened easily, so I came out fast. Only once, did she cry out, for Mak Ahyee to come to her aid. But nobody heard her. For, two doors away, the drumming had begun. When the wife of the great Chinese philosopher, Chuang Tze, died, friends going to offer their condolences found Chuang Tze playing the drum. “How can you be so happy when the woman who has been your life companion has just passed away?” They asked. “Why should I grief when she is now freed of her mortal bonds?” He said softly. On that humid, equatorial day in March, just as Mr Kurumbia Vikaram was loosening himself from his mortal bonds, I was tethering myself onto mine.

  Six

  Bernadette had her son, her only child, when she was 36. Mak was exactly the same age when she had me, although I was not her first nor her last. Andy is eight, a week older than my stepdaughter Sadie’s little boy, whom I would have loved to dote on as my own grandchild. When we heard that Sadie had her baby, David and I rushed to the London hospital, proud to be first-time grandparents. Sadie was lounging in her Dawn French Fashions outfit on the hospital bed. If she smiled, she would have look really lovely, but her young face was always expressing disapproval and bitterness, making her cheeks drag down. With great joy, I scooped the newborn babe into my arms and nuzzled into him. For me, there’s something especially precious about a newborn’s tender skin and its lovely baby smell. It makes my insides melt.

  “Smile for Grandma,” I said, tickling his chin gently. “Smile for Grandma.”

  “He has two grandmothers already. He can’t have another,” Sadie snapped.

  Though I have already known her sharp tongue, I was still staggered. It was clear, that I was not kin to her, and never would be. David’s family seem to believe that he had gone out to the Far East and had been disarmed by the tropical moon, fell headlong in love with an Asian floosie 12 years younger than himself, who staked a marriage claim as soon as she learnt that he had a country mansion and a Rolls Royce. They don’t want to be reminded that I had been self-supporting, had two degrees and a successful career. I have learnt that it’s impossible to fight prejudice. Money breeds greed. I realise that part of their rancour is due to the fact that I am
a threat to their inheritance. No matter how I act, the image they have of me is already deeply ingrained in them. (I shall always be grateful that at least one member of the family turned up at Heathrow after our wedding in Singapore to welcome me with a bouquet of flowers, and that was David’s younger brother. Unfortunately, his wife doesn’t like David so we don’t see much of each other.) Of David’s three children, only the elder twin, James, allows his generous nature to overcome prejudices and so he has always been civil to me. The only thing to do is to maintain equanimity. I don’t want to prevent my husband from seeing his family, but will no longer crave for their love as I once had. So I seek familial love in my friends and keep myself emotionally distant from my stepfamily. It’s the only way to survive.

  Naming a child was so important in Chinese communities in the old days. Family before self, so surnames came before one’s own. An astrologer was usually consulted as to the most auspicious name that should accompany a mortal incarnation. Naming was similar to a fairy godmother bestowing a baby with abstract gifts of love, beauty, kindness, etc. There were meanings in names, potentials to be realised. My mother’s was Soon Neo: “New Bride”. That combination of innocence and anticipatory pleasure. A freshness of view. She lived life in accordance to her name, she approached everything with new zeal, innocent of duplicity. She found ways to spur herself forward even when the landscape of her days was bleak. It’s a wisdom that I extract to plump up my own life.

  These days, it’s fashionable to give a child a western name, only the traditionalists plod on with the old custom, reluctant to lose their culture to the West. So when Andy was born, Bernadette gave him a Christian name. The name he was given must have been popular, because right across the world, without one or the other knowing, Sadie gave her baby the same name. However, except for the two boys sharing the same birth year and name, they are as different as coffee and butter. Sadie’s little boy has curly golden hair and looks like one of cupid’s angels, his blue eyes benign, whilst Bernadette’s boy has the devil in him, coppertone in complexion like me, rather than like his mum who is fair-skinned. The Asian Andy has eyes like black marbles which speak volumes and gleams whenever he is up to something. He is so quick-witted and bright that I shake my head in amazement. At eight, he reads English and Mandarin books more suitable for someone at least three years older than himself. He is very small like his dad and is a natural on the computer, getting into the Internet and sending e-mails like a pro, working easily on Windows 98 when I am still struggling with Windows 95! The previous year, at a special concert staged by his kindergarten to welcome the local minister, he was appointed master of ceremonies, where he presented the whole programme. His parents caught it on video for me. He spoke into the microphone as though he was born to it! He definitely has Bernadette’s way with people and her bubbling personality. He is an all-round livewire, asking endless questions all the time so that one can get exhausted just listening to him. But he is truly lovable.

  Because Bernadette works full-time and I am there in the house on holiday, Andy and I get to do a lot together that I had missed out on with my own sons when they were his age. I take him to the playground, take him to the pictures, buy him ice creams. Since Bernadette can’t swim and isn’t an outdoor or sporty person, Andy and I go swimming a lot and it is an activity he identifies with me. He even comes in to my bed so that I can read him his bedtime stories. Sometimes he pretends that I am his mother, putting his little arms around me and calling me mummy. I know that he’s not replacing Bernadette and never will, but I believe that he does it because he’s an old soul who understands my suffering and is calling me mummy because I had missed out, thus giving me a unique gift. He is truly special. But he can be bothersome when I am trying to keep Mak company because he keeps on interrupting. Talking to Mak and Andy at the same time, I bat between our Peranakan Creole and English.

  Mak and I are sitting on the settee facing the French windows. I am sweltering in the humidity, sweat gathering under my armpits and my back because Mak cannot tolerate the cool air-conditioning which hurts her legs. Her knees are now disjointed, swollen out of proportion, her hips bony and out of kilter. The large living room which is an atrium that goes right up to the ceiling normally circulates with air but today it feels as though its walls are stuffed with heavy blankets. Once again, Mak is telling me how she came to buy this house. Even her voice is getting frail. Andy places his Thomas The Tank Engine colouring book on the marble floor and is pressing his crayons hard into the white spaces. He soon tires of this and brings out a writing pad.

  “Aunty Phine, I’m going to write stories like you. Can you spell for me?”

  “Okay.”

  “How do you spell, ‘creature’?”

  I spell it for him. He writes down the sentence, “The aeroplane is a creature.” I raise my brow thinking that he has misused the word.

  “How do you spell, ‘transforms’?”

  I am amazed that a child his age even knows the word. I spell it for him. His face is a picture of concentration, eyebrows knitting. He looks up and asks me to spell another word, then he painstakingly writes it down. I am full of admiration for his perseverance and more, for his imagination. Gradually, the story builds up. He tells the story of an aeroplane who is a flesh and blood creature who had to transform its body into metal to protect itself. What a gem! A budding science fiction writer.

  Bernadette has always been a career lady so before she had Dolores working for her, it was Mak who got up in the night to bottle-feed him, sat with him through a fever, toilet-trained him, watched his first few stumbling steps, played with him when he got bored. She was the typical old-fashioned grandmother: sweet, gentle and loving. Her personal goals were twinned with the family’s, not separate. Her life was an offering to us. All my brothers’ and sisters’ children were nurtured and brought up by her; Andy was the last because when her memory started to fail, Dolores was brought in from the Philippines.

  “Aiiyah! She keeps on giving me food, lah!” Andy complained when Mak tried to give him his dinner again for the fourth time. That was when Bernadette noticed that things were not right with our mother. Now Mak looks quizzically at Andy, who keeps on leaping up onto my lap every now and again to hug my neck and kiss me or to ask me to spell something. This is a child she had watered and pruned, yet the memory of him has somehow slipped away from her mind. She turns to me and say, “He has a delightful nature this boy, always smiling. But what’s he doing here, huh? Who does he belong to?”

  When I was eight, I could not even read, let alone write. I remember seeing a green Milo tin and thinking, “Those squiggles mean something.” But why didn’t I know what they meant? I was distraught that there existed a world beyond my comprehension. I felt stupid. When your father batters you with the idea that school is not meant for you, the idea digs into the tissues of your mind. You begin to believe that ignorance is bliss. But my mother, despite not having been educated herself, went beyond the reaches of her mind and saw education’s potential for me. So despite earning my father’s wrath and mockery, she continued to try to get me into school. Although I was a Catholic and named to honour St Joseph, I was somehow refused entry into the convent. The nun tried to explain it to Mak in English, except that Mak could not understand a single word. If she had to be converted to another religion to get me into school, she probably would have done so. Ah Tetia had no part in the endeavour to get me into school because he objected to schooling for me. “Education is bad for women,” he often said. “Poisons their minds. Makes them less meek.” Both my husbands could well agree to that. In my down days, I am sorry that I am not meek and mild. How peaceful and uneventful my life would have been if I could simply acquiesce and accept whatever I am told, instead of forming my own opinions and fighting oppression.

  “If she is schooling, she need not be answerable to any man, what,” my mother said in a voice I didn’t usually hear. But I never forget her words. I try to live my life never b
eing beholden to a man. And that causes problems. A man has an innate tendency to control women, whether it is through his opinions, money or power. He can’t help himself. Just as a woman can’t help herself and feels she has to apologise for her needs.

  I used to think that it was her boldness which made my father let Mak have her own way occasionally. Only in later years did I know the truth. When I got married, she told me about it. She called it, “pillow talk”. “Learn to hold your tongue till right moment,” she advised. “Whisper quiet-quiet into his ear in softness after love-making. You will more get what you cannot at other times.” Unfortunately, I have no such patience, shooting from the hip whenever I want to say something. Instead of rewards, it often earns me abuse. I should really try to learn. But I don’t have either my mother’s grace or patience.

  My mother was very eye-catching when she was young. She was tall and slim-hipped even after having so many children. Her face was exquisitely shaped, her features so fine. When she married, she combed her coal-black hair into a single bun instead of the two coils on the side of her head, which were more appropriate for the young maiden. Her hair when loosened would reach her waist and I used to love standing behind her back and running the comb through it. When newly washed and dried, her hair would squeak. To maintain its gloss, she would smother her hair in freshly squeezed coconut cream and then wrapped it with a warm towel. Before I suffered from malnutrition and anemia, she used to do the same with my hair and, for a while, my hair too was as rich as hers had been. I imagine that she would have looked lovely with her dark hair spread out against white pillows, her arms and legs nut-brown and slender, capturing my father’s desire. I have seen men look at the way she walked in her sarong kebaya, the way their eyes followed her hips swaying to an inner rhythm. What was lovely was that she was totally unconscious of her beauty and therefore she was at ease with her body, unlike women who behave in a stiff and arrogant manner because they think they are beautiful.