The Catherine Lim Collection (16 page)

Angela went to see the man, and was
impressed by the professional, precise way in which he went about his work.
(“My mother-in-law’s temple mediums go into trances and foist all sorts of
weird charms on you. This man is totally different. You don’t get any uneasy
feelings about him. His methods are almost scientific.”) The geomancer
suggested some minor structural changes to the restaurant. One pillar had to
go; a part of the doorway had to be re-aligned. “I’ll see about the changes,
dear; don’t you worry,” she told her husband.

Angela was
called home
from work by an urgent call from Mooi Lan.
“Please come home; it’s urgent,” said the girl tearfully and hung up.

“It must be the old one,” said Angela to her
colleagues, as she hurried off.

I hope it’s not Michael,
she thought, her heart beating fast. Has the idiot one broken into
the house and done something to the boy? Oh God, what thorns in my side. They
give nothing but trouble.

At home she found Mooi Lan sitting in the
kitchen weeping and Old Mother standing near her, shouting at her.

“Oh no, for God’s sake,” cried Angela,
stopping her ears against the obscene words thrown by the old woman at the
crying girl.

When she saw Angela, she immediately
launched into a tirade against Mooi Lan. But she was incoherent. She went on
and on in an unconnected way, calling Mooi Lan a poisonous snake, a
disrespectful and immoral woman; her accusations were laced with references to
the grocer’s assistant who came in with the weekly deliveries, to the next-door
neighbours, to Boon. “What on earth – ” exclaimed Angela, irritated by the old
woman’s shrill and agitated babblings which no amount of questioning could
shape into sense and coherence. She gave up in the end.

She smelt a pungent smell, and saw an
earthen pot on the cooker, with the horrible herbal medicine overflowing, as
usual, down its sides and on to the cooker. She saw a plate of something that
had been flung to the floor and broken into many pieces; she stooped down,
lifted one of the pieces and saw cooked beef underneath.
Oh no, her nonsense
all over again,
thought Angela in vexed distress. And she dares scold the
poor girl and hurl obscenities at her!

She went to Mooi Lan’s room. The girl was
there, her eyes red with crying. She had changed into one of her good dresses
for going out, and was putting her things into a large suitcase.

“Mooi Lan, what are you doing?” Angela asked
anxiously. “I’m going home to Johore Bahru,” said the girl with some petulance,
her lips quivering. “This is your home, Mooi Lan,” said Angela placatingly and
she made the girl sit down and tell her what had happened.

Old Mother, as Angela had suspected, had
started brewing her medicine again and forgotten about it. She lost her temper
when Mooi Lan reminded her of it, accusing the girl of continuous harassment.
In her anger, she flung the plate of beef on to the floor; Mooi Lan had just
finished frying the beef and put it on a plate on the table, but Old Mother had
insisted that the oil from the sizzling beef had gone into her medicine and
contaminated it.

“What was she saying about the grocer’s
assistant, the neighbours and Doctor? What was she talking about?” inquired
Angela. Mooi Lan began to weep noisily.

“She saw me talking to the grocer’s man,”
explained Mooi Lan. “He said something, and I laughed, and then she came out
and scolded me and said that I was behaving improperly.”

“What about Doctor?” asked Angela, frowning.

“I served Doctor his lunch; Doctor asked me
for more chillies or something like that, I’ve forgotten, and she called me
aside, after lunch, and told me it wasn’t proper for me to speak to Doctor or
be around when he was eating.”

“But that’s absurd!” exclaimed Angela
angrily. “You’ve been doing that for years! Why has she suddenly become so
irritating?”

“I’m leaving,” said the girl, now dry-eyed.
She zipped up the suitcase.

“Wait,” said Angela with mounting panic, for
she trusted this girl. Mooi Lan was also the only one who could handle Michael,
keep away the idiot one. “Wait, Mooi Lan. Please don’t act in a hurry. You know
that I like you very much. You’ve’ been with us for more than four years now,
and are like one of us. Doctor and I like you very much, and the children adore
their
chae-chae
.”

There was a softening; the girl began to
weep again. She was obviously torn.

“Mooi Lan, listen,” said Angela, going
closer to the girl and holding her arm. “The new house will be ready soon. It
will have a separate wing for the old one as I’ve told you. You will then no
longer have to tolerate her. I shall be getting a servant just to take care of
her. She will be quite separate from the rest of us. Are you prepared to put up
with all this for a few more months for our sakes?” The girl looked down.
Angela helped her to unpack.

She was extremely annoyed with her
mother-in-law, and her annoyance mounted to anger when the old one came to her
and once again began abusing Mooi Lan.

“Beware, beware of the snake!” cried the old
one maliciously. Angela quivered with indignation but she managed to say, with
great restraint, “Mooi Lan has been with us for four years and has given
excellent service. If you don’t like her, I shall tell her to keep out of your
way. In this way, you needn’t be bothered by her at all. You are already old,
Mother,” she added, “and should not be troubled by the young. If they do wrong,
it’s their own undoing; the old should not be bothered.”

Go and play mahjong, go out shopping, go
travelling like Mee Kin’s mother, go anywhere but for God’s sake don’t make
yourself a nuisance at home.
Angela shrieked
silently.

“The lunacy of old age,” she confided to
Dorothy who had rung up that evening to congratulate her about Mark. Angela was
in no mood to speak of Mark. “She gives endless trouble. She’s become quite
paranoid, thinking everyone’s out to criticise her. Michael is the only one
she’s able to get along with – she finds fault with everyone, even my little
Michelle!”

It was impossible to send her back to the
old house, to live with Ah Kum Soh and the idiot foster-son, Angela explained
when Dorothy made the suggestion. Old Mother’s health was not too good; her
ankle had not healed completely and her eyes were beginning to give her
trouble. She could fall dead in that wretched wooden house and nobody would
know, with the irresponsible Ah Kum Soh always away at mahjong and the idiot
one more a burden than a help. Her health had been good until she was sent to
stay with Wee Tiong and Gek Choo. The one month in that cramped flat, taking
care of the sick baby, had taken an unfair toll on the old one’s health and
spirits. Now it looked as if her mind was getting unhinged, for she had begun
to have this persecution complex.

Dorothy asked when Wee Siong was returning
from Australia; she knew about the favourite youngest son.

“Oh, don’t talk to me about that
brother-in-law,” cried Angela. “Did I tell you that he’s in some strange
Christian sect now – he and the Australian divorcee separated sometime back –
and goes around preaching? Recently he sent to every one of us some religious
pamphlets. Full of fiery messages of salvation and that kind of thing. The old
one had better give up all hope of him; he’s going to prove her biggest
disappointment.”

“An old folks’ home?” Dorothy tentatively
suggested, then promptly dismissed the suggestion, the old folks’ homes in
Singapore being well known for their squalor.

“Oh, no, not an old folks’ home,” exclaimed
Angela, not thinking of the squalor but of the embarrassment it would create.
Boon had been more cheerful of late; the hope of being called by Minister to
stand in the coming elections for a seat vacated by a Member of Parliament, was
being revived by certain signals being sent out by Minister, known for
frequently changing his mind about people and situations. The astrologer’s
predictions might prove correct after all.

“So far, so good,” said Angela to Mee Kin
who telephoned to ask how things were going, having learnt of Angela’s
problems.

“Mooi Lan is going about her work as usual,
though she’s not her usual happy lively self. The old one remains sullen and
keeps to her room all the time. As long as she doesn’t provoke a quarrel, she’s
tolerable.”

But the next day Angela rang to report
distressing developments.

“Mooi Lan’s gone back home to Johore Bahru,”
cried Angela, vexed beyond words. “She must have been so upset that she left
without even phoning me. I came back to find her gone. Do you know, I simply
refused to listen to the old one who, as usual, was incoherent in her abusive
accusations of the poor girl. What can I do? It’s difficult to get another girl
like Mooi Lan. I dread the thought of a new servant!”

The next-door neighbour told her that there
had been a quarrel. The idiot one was there too. There was a great deal of
shouting, and Mooi Lan finally ran out of the house, crying, with only a few
things thrown into a paper bag. Later Ah Kum Soh came to take the idiot one
back. “Oh, I can’t bear this! They are such thorns in my side!” cried Angela
with vehemence. “It’s not fair that I should be the only one carrying this
dreadful burden. That Wee Tiong and his wife have cleverly extricated
themselves from the situation; that useless Wee Nam and his wife can always
plead financial and all sorts of problems to escape any share of the
responsibility; that fanatic in Australia is too busy with his religion and
preaching to be bothered. Why is it that poor Boon and I and the children have
to bear all the pain?”

She drove all the way to Johore Bahru to
Mooi Lan’s house, a humble thatched house in the heart of a coconut plantation.
Angela reached the place, hot and panting. Mooi Lan’s mother, a thin
nervous-looking woman, was with the girl. Her younger sisters crowded round,
looking in awe at Angela whose presence in that small thatched house with its
floor of broken cement drew a few curious neighbours to hang around and watch.

Mooi Lan refused to return. She said, with a
sob, that she could not take it any more from Old Mother. She had tried to
prevent the idiot one from going into Michael’s room, and Old Mother had struck
her across the face for being disrespectful. No, she would not return.

Angela persuaded, then finally gave up. Mooi
Lan followed her to the door, in uneasy apology.

Maybe there’s hope still,
thought Angela. I’ll wait a while, then try again. She had got used
to Mooi Lan; she couldn’t do without her. The girl was discreet about the
family secrets; a new servant might trumpet things around, and that would be
intolerable.

Angela went a second time, three days later,
with Boon. She told Boon to help her in persuading the girl to return. Mooi Lan
flushed a deep crimson. She fidgeted, and looked about to cry again.

“Come back, Mooi Lan,” said Boon. “The
children need you. We need you.”

She returned with them.

“
You have come again,”
said Old Mother. “You look thinner. Don’t you have enough to eat?”
The old man stood still and said nothing.

“I prepared such a lot of food for you, yet
you are so thin,” remarked Old Mother, referring to the recent Feast of the
Ghosts during which she had offered a whole suckling pig, steamed chicken, a
huge slab of roasted pork and heaps of pink buns.

“I know why you have come,” said Old Mother.
“You have come because you see me being badly treated by the younger
generation. You yourself did not treat me very well when you were alive, but at
least now you care, and can feel sorry for me.”

The ghost began to heave and sigh in
distress.

“I know, I know,” said Old Mother bitterly.
“He says he’s coming back, but he never comes back. He does not think of his
old mother any more. His letters get fewer. He has forgotten his promise to his
mother. He has a foreign woman; of what use is a foreign daughter-in-law? She
will not
put up an altar for me when I die.”

The ghost began to talk; he talked in a soft
rasp, difficult to hear. Old Mother strained her ears with impatience. “Do not
worry. Ah Siong will come back. He has given up the foreign woman. You will not
have a foreign daughter-in-law. Ah Siong will come back and take care of you.”

“You said that the last time,” said Old
Mother, reproach in her voice. “You told me that the last time, but he never
came back. He will come back only when my body is already in the coffin,” she
ended bitterly.

“You will have to endure many more
hardships,” said the old man, and he looked pityingly at her.

“Hardships! Hardships! Haven’t I endured
enough?” said Old Mother peevishly. “I’m 71 years old, with a head of grey
hairs. Am I to suffer more hardships at the hands of the young?”

“You will have more sufferings,” repeated
the old man. “Enough!” cried Old Mother angrily. “Is it not in your power to
help me, to protect me from the snakes around? You are quite useless, as you
were in life. Be gone!” She shouted imperiously, and the ghost left.