The Catherine Lim Collection (17 page)

“Mummy, Grandma is talking to Grandpa’s
photo again,” said Michelle. “I couldn’t understand what she said, but she
sounded very angry, and then she cried.”

“Never mind about Grandma, darling,” said
Angela. “She’s old and unwell and does funny little things.”

Mark stayed in school every day as long as
he could. He did his work in the school library. “I dread to go home,” said the
boy when his mother asked him. “I dread to go home because I see Grandmother
always talking to Grandfather’s photo. It’s morbid. She talks in her sleep. I
can hear from my room.” There were other things that vexed the boy, but he was
reluctant to mention them to his mother: Michael’s tantrums, his mother losing
her cool, her complaints to his father, the tensions that any visit of the
idiot uncle was sure to generate.

Angela knew. She agonised inwardly. “Oh, I’m
so sorry, Mark. But what can I do? I’m surrounded by all these troublesome
people, so what can I do?”

Mark moved to the spare bedroom, to put more
distance between himself and his grandmother, for she was beginning to walk as
well as talk in her sleep. She moved around in her room in the middle of the
night, like a restless, trapped animal.

“Grandma, look,” said Michael, going up to
her and showing her a tooth which he had just pulled out. Then he opened his
mouth, to reveal the cavity where the tooth had been, clean, unbloodied.

“I pulled it out myself,” he added proudly.

“Come,” said Old Mother, taking him back to
his room. When they were there, she made him stand straight, with his feet
placed very straight together. She bent down, pushed them together to make sure
they were in a perfectly straight position.

“Now throw your tooth under the bed,” she
said, which Michael did immediately.

“There!” said Old Mother. “Now the new tooth
will grow straight and even with the others; you will have nice, straight
teeth.”

“Grandma, why do you talk to Grandpa’s
photo?” asked Michael.

“Your grandfather comes to talk to me,” said
Old Mother. “He knows I’m very sad and he comes to see me, but he is not of
very much help.”

“What does he say?” asked Michael.

“He doesn’t talk very much,” said Old
Mother. “I wonder whether you still remember him, Michael? He never talked much
when he was alive. Such people are called
‘those-who-have-gold-in-their-mouths’. They are afraid that if they open their
mouths to talk, the gold falls out, and others come to pick it up.”

“Remember you once told me a story about a
man who picked up a lot of gold from a well?”

“Did I? I’ve forgotten. I’m getting very
old. Look at all my white hairs.”

“Would you like to hear a story about a king
who touched things and made them turn to gold?”

“All right, Michael. Tell me your story.”
The boy sat beside his grandmother and told not one but several stories, his
face animated.

“I shall tell Uncle Bock these stories when
he comes.”

“You’re a good boy, Michael. Come, I’ll take
you to Grandfather and you repeat the words after me.”

Old Mother took Michael to the altar. She
stood behind the boy, both arms encircling him and both hands holding his up,
pressed together in a gesture of supplication before the old man’s framed photo
above the altar.

“Grandfather, make me grow tall and strong.
Make me a good boy. Make me do well in my studies.”

The boy repeated every word, slowly,
reverentially.

When Angela came downstairs, she stared at
the sight of the old one moving Michael’s clasped hands up and down, up and
down, before the photo. There was a big joss-stick in an urn on the altar.

Angela wanted to scream.

“From now
onwards,
when I hear the telephone ring for me, I’m
going to tremble,” said Angela. “Really tremble in anticipation of further
agony.”

The first had been the call from the
distressed Mooi Lan. Happily the girl had now gone back to the old routine,
losing none of her efficiency, thank goodness. She was quieter, less her old
self. But she retained her sensitivity to the varying moods and needs of the
various members in the family – which maid-servant could be counted on to do
that? There would have been trouble if she had not adeptly intervened in the
case of Mark and the packet of joss-sticks. For some totally inexplicable
reason, the old one, who was beginning to wander aimlessly around in the house,
had left a packet of the joss-sticks on a table in Mark’s room. Mooi Lan’s
sharp eyes had detected the offensive object and she had quickly run in,
removed it and returned it to the old one’s room before the boy returned from
school. And there was the occasion when Boon returned home, somewhat wan and
dispirited; Angela was away for a mahjong session at Dorothy’s, and Mooi Lan
prepared a cup of hot Bovril for him unasked. She later told Angela that she
was nervous about asking him what he needed but had hit upon the right thing
with the Bovril for he drank it – drank all of it and asked for another cup.
Poor Boon, thought Angela with a slight twinge of guilt, but thank goodness I
have Mooi Lan.

And now, when she had barely recovered from
the distressful events of the past month, when she had steeled herself
sufficiently to keep down her exasperation at the sight of the old one still
endlessly brewing the nasty stuff in the kitchen, still working on the futile
patchwork blankets, the trouble had started again, once more the brutal assault
on her nerves.

“Angie,” said Mee Kin on the phone. “Come
over to my house. Right now.”

“What on earth’s the matter?”

‘It’s your mother-in-law.’

“I should have known. What’s she done now?”

“It’s best you come over right now.”

Mee Kin was at the driveway to intercept
Angela’s entry into the house, to caution and warn. The old one had been
wandering in Orchard Road; she had apparently taken a bus, wanting to go somewhere,
then got down in bewilderment at Orchard Road. It was most fortunate that Mee
Kin had seen her from across the road – a car had narrowly missed her, and
someone had screamed and pulled her out of the way. Mee Kin had dashed across
and guided her to a coffee house for a cup of hot coffee, but she was weeping
so loudly that Mee Kin had to take her out again. She managed to get a cab; the
old one did not want to return to Angela’s house, she kept muttering about a
snake being there, and she wanted to return to the old house to be with Ah Kum
Soh and the idiot foster-son. Mee Kin thought it best to take her back to her
own place and then let Angela know.

Angela felt the angry tears pricking her
eyes. The poison had spread: it could no longer be contained in the home. It
had broken through and spread abroad. How would Boon feel? How would Mark feel?

“We saw your grandmother wandering about
Orchard Road, like a destitute. She was weeping and wiping her nose on her
sleeve. She was almost knocked down by a car.”

Fortunately, it had been Mee Kin. Mee Kin
could be trusted to be discreet. But Mee Kin was likely to tell Dorothy,
Dorothy was likely to spread it a little further. Oh, the shame, the shame of
it all. “You’d better go about things calmly,” warned Mee Kin. “She keeps
muttering to herself, and any scolding is sure to upset her.”

“I’m past scolding anyone,” said Angela
wearily. “And I’ve no intention of upsetting her. She’s upset me enough. She
can’t go back to that wretched house in her state of health and mind. And I
hear that the irresponsible Ah Kum Soh has turned the place into a gambling den
– one of these days I shall have to do something drastic. Oh God, why does she
continue to be such a thorn in my side?”

Angela asked Mee Kin not to tell anyone. She,
on her part, would tell no one, not even Boon. She would drive the old one
back, placate her yet further, continue to endure. What else was there to do?

“I wish the house were ready,” she said.
“These stupid contractors delay and delay. I had to goad them on with the work.
And I made them rip off one whole section of the patio and re-do it. I tell
you, even when you have the money to build a house, you suffer endless
heartaches. The separate wing is coming up nicely. I had a look at it
yesterday. Quite separate. Oh, Mee Kin, how sick I am of everything. Why can’t
she be like your mother?”

Mee Kin’s mother happened to be there; when
Angela walked into the house, she saw the nice, affable old lady talking in
soothing tones to the old one. Old Mother sat in a chair sullenly, eyes
red-rimmed, the seams in her old face much sorrow-deepened.

The picture of true pathos, thought Angela
bitterly. Portrait of old white-haired woman ill-treated by children and
grandchildren.

The extent of derangement was greater than
Angela suspected. Mee Kin accompanied them home; she sat at the back, trying to
console Old Mother in her ineffectual dialect, while the old one began a stream
of incoherent abuse. “A snake is hatched. It will bite and then I shall say,
‘serves you right’. I warned you and you never listened to me. I know you won’t
do it, it will still be your improper coffin that I shall lie in. He came again
and for the fourth time he said, ‘Don’t let them put you in that kind of
coffin, as they did to me.’ They will dash my ancestral altar to the ground –
who knows if they will put one up for me at all? An old useless woman. The
foreign hairy one. What does she know? She has bewitched Ah Siong and he’s now
a foreigner, like her. He was ill, he nearly died and I brought him back to
life, saved him from the pond devils that were threatening to drown him. And he
writes and says he’s marrying the foreign hairy one.”

The tirade was in itself frightening; it
became macabre when it was mixed with laughter – genuine, cackling laughter of
deepest amusement. “I made him the walking tin-cans, and he was satisfied at
last! Poor boy! Everybody was walking along on tin-cans – Plock! Plock! Plock!
– and laughing and he came crying to me and said, “Ma! Ma! I want to have the
tin-cans, too!” Well, there weren’t any – I actually bought two tins of
condensed milk – I put the milk into a jar and then forgot about it! Forgot
about it, imagine, such an expensive thing. The old devil, if he knew, would
have scolded me for extravagance, but the stuff had turned mouldy and I could
save the bottom part. But the boy had the tins. I got a long stout string and
tied the tins together, and then he began to walk about – Plock! Plock! Plock!
– he was so happy – ” Old Mother chuckled to herself.

Angela said, under her breath, “Do you think
she needs to be committed? She’s raving mad,” and Mee Kin answered, also under
the breath, “You must let Boon know, Angie. It’s serious. You can’t let her go
on like this.” They reached home. Mooi Lan kept out of the way.

Angela did not tell Boon; he was scheduled
to go on a trip that was likely to improve his chances of being selected.
Minister himself had been hinting of it.

“I think she was just being difficult and
perverse,” Angela told Mee Kin a few days later. “She appears all right now,
although she still hurls sarcastic remarks at Mooi Lan, but the girl’s learnt
to take everything in her stride now, and to ignore her, for my sake. She was
perfectly normal when Wee Tiong and Gek Choo called. I was extremely annoyed with
them as I’d told you. Ten thousand dollars. They had the audacity to say I made
$10,000 out of that wretched antique bed. I snubbed them right and left after
that. Then they called. They ate humble pie and they called. And I’ll tell you
why.”

The baby boy was ailing. A temple medium
consulted by Gek Choo’s mother had said that the baby must be given away in
adoption – in name only if necessary – to a person who was blessed with
prosperity and who was bom in the year of the Dragon.

“I suppose their search was fruitless and
they had to come to me,” cried Angela, made doubly triumphant by the
capitulation of the enemy and the attestation to her prosperity. “I’m not one
to take revenge. I agreed immediately. So now I’m Godmother or foster-mother or
whatnot to the boy.” She had undergone the simple ceremony of having her wrist
tied to the baby’s by a piece of red string blessed by a temple priest. It was
highly amusing, but it seemed the baby improved immediately. The unusual twist
of events had stemmed Chinaman’s rancour somewhat. “But a leopard can’t change
his spots. He still twists his neck about in that horrid way and I can sense
the sarcasm in his tone. But as I’ve told you, I feel for the baby boy. After
all, he’s my nephew – sort of.”

Old Mother slipped an ang-pow into the
baby’s vest, and the ceremony was over.

It wasn’t the Season of Ghosts yet, but she
took it in her head to prepare a feast for the old man’s ghost. A huge amount
of roasted pork and steamed chicken and pink buns were put on the altar. Angela
fretted about what to do with such a large amount of food that the children
would not touch, that Mooi Lan would not eat a morsel of because, though she
still cleaned the altar and swept Old Mother’s room, she dissociated herself
from everything else belonging to the old one. The pink buns went to Aminah who
gratefully took them home to her children in a paper bag; the meats went to
Muniandy’s wife who had again appeared at the door with the baby on her hip and
the pot-bellied, scabby boy at her side.