The Catherine Lim Collection (12 page)

“How marvellous, how simply marvellous,”
breathed Angela, already seeing it in the master bedroom in her house. It would
have pride of place in the new house. She thought of suitable silken drapes for
this magnificent bed. “And to think,” she said, “it could have rotted away,
have become a heap of dust!”

Old Mother had handed over her jewellery in
the old blue cloth bag for safe-keeping. Angela had bought a pretty lacquer box
from S K Han’s to replace the ugly old blue cloth bag. In the privacy of her
room she emptied the contents of the cloth bag on to her bed, wanting to see if
the foolish old one had lost any of her jewellery besides the gold chain.

It gave her a deep sense of satisfaction to
identify many pieces of jewellery as gifts from her and Boon over the years.
The diamond ear-studs, a gold ring with an oval piece of jade, a gold bracelet
with a row of six round pieces of jade, a gold bar. The worth of these items
must have tripled, quadrupled. She saw the gold ring given by Wee Tiong and Gek
Choo; she studied it closely, convinced it was not gold. There was a long thin
gold chain, which she could not remember having previously seen. She had never
seen Old Mother wear it. Then she recollected: it had belonged to her late
father-in-law; the old man had worn it right to the moment of his death.

There were four small metal cylinders, like
the one that the idiot wore round his neck, containing the charm bought for
$200 from the swindling temple priests. Why were there so many charms among the
jewellery? Or perhaps each contained a small piece of jewellery? Angela took
one up, pulled it apart easily. Something fell out, a rolled-up piece of yellow
paper with Chinese words on it. There was something inside the little roll of
paper; Angela unrolled it carefully, afraid to tear the frail paper. A small
withered coil, as of dried skin or flesh fell out, tied round in the middle by
a piece of red string.

Angela stared, not knowing what it was;
moments later, she walked rapidly to the bathroom to retch for she felt quite
ill.

The umbilical cord – now she remembered.
Boon had once told her that his mother kept the umbilical cords of all her
children, as was the custom among superstitious Chinese, as a symbol of the
bond between parent and child.

So the four little metal cylinders carried
within them the umbilical cords of the four sons. Angela wondered with a tremor
of terror, whose umbilical cord she had inadvertently unrolled, and which was
now lying on her bed?

She pulled out a piece of tissue paper from
the box of Kleenex in the bathroom, strode with grim determination to the bed,
threw it on the dried, shrivelled little coil of flesh, hastily picked it up
and put it back with the roll of yellow paper into the cylinder. She would
never touch these things again. She would return them to the old one, and keep
the jewellery in the lacquer box for her in a safe place. And she would never
tell Mark. It would be unfair to add to the burden that the boy already carried,
of the dreadful irrationalities and weirdnesses of his forbears.

Angela went to the bathroom a second time,
to wash her hands and rinse her mouth. There was a horrible taste in it.

The
inevitable first visit of courtesy
by the two brothers-in-law
and their wives was made shortly after the old one had settled in. Angela,
dreading the prospect of two separate visits, two separate lunches, two
afternoons of tedium, had manipulated for the two sons and their wives to come
on the same day. “Like this,” she explained to Mee Kin, “there will be less
strain on Mooi Lan. The poor girl is already quite terrified of the prospect of
having to attend to the difficult old one in addition to her other work. She
hasn’t said anything but I must try to get another servant. That miserable
Aminah has gone on maternity leave again, and I’ve got someone to take her
place for the time being. Mooi Lan has to keep an eye on this one all the time;
one morning she caught her taking home some eggs and tinned stuff in a paper
bag! Poor Mooi Lan, she’s cook, housekeeper, watchdog, all rolled into one.”

The girl had helped Angela get ready Old
Mother’s room. It was the guest-room handsomely done up (“But you mark my
words,” Angela said sadly to Mee Kin, “she is going to turn it into a pig-sty
soon, what with her mania for collecting old paper bags and biscuit tins and
bottles. You mark my words.”) with a colour television set as the old one
sometimes liked to watch the Cantonese serials.

“I really don’t know what will happen when
SBC dubs all dialect serials in Mandarin,” said Angela to her visitors, as she
took them to see Old Mother’s room, to point out the new colour television set,
neatly atop a lace-covered table, a comfortable distance from the bed, covered
by a crisp blue and green bedspread. “I suppose she won’t want to watch TV any
more then, and then this set will be redundant.”

Wee Tiong and Gek Choo looked better; much
of the strain of the earlier weeks had left their faces. The baby boy was
better and was being cared for by the elderly Kim Lan Soh. Chwee Hwa was big
enough for play school now and no longer needed her. Angela had heard rumours
from Ah Kum Soh that Gek Choo’s mother had consulted a temple medium about
their sickly son, and the medium had said that the boy’s destiny and his
grandmother’s did not match. They had to be kept apart.

So this was why the old one was quickly
evicted, thought Angela, her earlier revulsion of her brother-in-law and his
wife returning. All this anxiety about the old woman falling down and twisting
her ankle and needing a place to rest was pure bullshit. They got her quickly
enough when they needed her to take care of the child; they got rid of her as
quickly when they found she was of no use! Those vipers. How can they treat a
poor old woman in this way?

There was something else that rankled. Ah
Kum Soh had told her that Wee Tiong and Gek Choo had hinted, had actually
stated, that Angela had manipulated to get the old one to stay with her because
she could then lay hands on the heap of antiques in the old one’s house,
antiques worth thousands of dollars. This could not be allowed to pass. “Ah Tiong,
Gek Choo, come and look at the antique bed I rescued from the old dark room in
the wooden house, remember?” she said brightly, leading them upstairs to the
master bedroom where the bed, fully restored, with maroon bed curtains, stood
in all its splendour. “I had it assessed. It is said to be worth about $4,000.
I thought it only proper to pay Old Mother the amount, minus the cost of the
restoration. The money has been banked in for her, I thought it only proper.”
She went on to say that the other things were quite useless, except for a few
altar cups and jars. Mee Kin’s servant girl had kindly cleaned the furniture
and things, as well as the old dark room. It was very clean now, properly
fumigated and the things were neatly stacked in a corner. Wee Tiong and Gek
Choo, if they were interested, could have them; they had only to tell Ah Kum
Soh who was managing the house now.

Gek Choo said, “No, thank you. We have
hardly enough room in our flat as it is,” and the subject of the so-called
treasure trove in Old Mother’s house was never referred to again.

Gloria admired the bed, feeling the richness
of the silken maroon bed curtains, but recoiled at the four serpents’ heads on
the bed-posts.

Angela led them to see the altar for the old
man; it was in a neat little corner at the back, hidden from sight by a pretty
Chinese screen of four folding panels. Mooi Lan wiped off the joss-stick ash
from the altar table every day and removed withered petals that had fallen off
the flower jars. Old Mother tended to be careless sometimes. The oranges on the
plates would be soft and rotting before she realised it, the little cups of tea
stale and murky.

Gloria looked away from the framed
photograph of the old man. She was sure to have another frightful dream of him;
he persisted in coming out of photographs, out of graves and coffins to pursue
her. She was never without her rosary at night, each rosary bead filled with
the holy water of Lourdes, kept under her pillow or tightly gripped in her
hand.

It was the presence of the holy water-filled
beads that had dispelled those frightful dreams and allowed her, instead, to
see herself with her sisters, amidst laughing summer roses and fruit, in
faraway happier lands.

Gloria looked much better, and Angela
commended her on her improved looks. She had brought more snapshots to show,
and this time Michelle and Gek Choo’s four little girls monopolised them,
passing them on to one another and chattering happily. Michelle spoke proudly
of the Australian holiday she had taken with her parents and brothers. She said
she too had picked apples from apple trees and ridden on a pony. The eldest of
the four girls ran to her father and said petulantly, “Pa, why don’t you take
us to Australia too? The only place we’ve been so far is Johore Bahru!”

Wee Tiong laughed a short sharp laugh and
said, “We can’t afford anything so expensive! You’re not as rich as your
cousins, you know!”

“Poor girls,” Angela said to Mee Kin later.
“The furthest they have been to is Johore Bahru.” Old Mother had looked a little
despondent at first, and Angela had confided to the visitors that somehow she
had come to hear about Ah Siong and the Australian divorcee. But Angela and
Boon had assured her that there was no Australian woman, and so she was not to
worry at all. They were right on a technicality of course: The woman had left
and Ah Siong was now alone, but deeply immersed in some religious pursuits, in
a sect known as Brotherhood in Christ or something like that.

They had not told the old one of the latest
development; let her be spared the pain of the truth of this wayward son, the
son on whom she pinned all her hopes.

There was animated chatter about the wastrel
son, out of the hearing of Old Mother. In this, there was a semblance of
camaraderie among them, and several times Wee Tiong and Gek Choo nodded in
agreement as Angela spoke spiritedly against the youngest brother-in-law who
had, to date, spent at least $100,000 in Australia without having anything to
show for it.

The subject was changed when Boon returned.
He apologised for being unable to join them for lunch, as he had to rush off to
attend a Rotary lunch meeting. He was not in the best of spirits. Angela tried
to distract attention from him for Boon was not one to hide his feelings and
just now his moroseness had a dampening effect on conversation and caused
everyone to stop talking and sit by in uneasy silence. Angela knew the cause;
Minister had seemed to be less pleased with her husband of late, and had shown
it in a variety of ways. The proposal for membership in Parliament seemed too
long in coming, and might not come at all for Minister was now known to be
looking around elsewhere. It was most distressing. Poor Boon, troubles did not
come singly for him. The Restaurant Horiatis of which he had a share was not
doing well; there were plans to close it down. Those stupid Indonesian
businessmen. Boon should never have trusted them in the first place, thought
Angela. A distraction presented itself – not exactly what Angela would have
wished for, but at least it had the effect of turning attention away from
her morose husband who sat chain-smoking and looking absently into space. There
was a clamour at the door, and Ah Kum Soh walked in, followed by her idiot son
who went up to Old Mother, making a lot of noise and then looked round for
Michael. The boy came bounding down the stairs and the idiot one gurgled with
delight. Old Mother smiled too, and began bustling round in the kitchen to
provide lunch for the new visitors, as they had not yet eaten.

“Mooi Lan, get the food on the table. Don’t
let Old Mother do it, she’ll only mess things up, and then you’ll have more
cleaning up to do in the end,” Angela whispered with urgency. She herself went
into the kitchen to help Mooi Lan. She hoped the wretched day would soon be
over.

“Mooi Lan! Wait! That’s beef, it’s for the
children’s dinner tonight,” cried Angela, surprised at the girl’s
absentminded-ness. Mooi Lan had gone upstairs with a cup of hot coffee for
Boon, had then come down and bungled things.

“My God, not the beef,” cried Angela with
some irritation, “Have you forgotten, Mooi Lan, that dreadful fuss, just two
days after she came here to stay? I don’t want anything of that sort to happen
again.”

It was an unfortunate incident. They were
all having dinner together and there was a plate of fried beef and vegetables,
Mark’s favourite. Old Mother had realised that it was beef only when the tips
of her chopsticks picked up a piece. She dropped the piece of beef in a hurry,
dropped the chopsticks too for they were now contaminated and picking up her
bowl of rice, went into the kitchen in a fit of pique where she sat by herself
at a small table, finishing the rest of her food with a new pair of chopsticks.
From that day she kept her utensils and chopsticks separately in a corner of
her cupboard, bringing them out only at meal-times.

“Would you believe such eccentricity, such
unreasonableness?” she had asked Mee Kin, but at the time, she calmly told her
family to go on eating and to finish the meal. She then made arrangements for
the family to eat together only on non-beef days; on steak days, the children
had dinner early or ate in a separate part of the house.