The Catherine Lim Collection (22 page)

Michael clapped a hand to his mouth. He was
wont to do that whenever he was very excited and happy; he was very happy now.
Old Mother said, “Let me tell you a story. Who wants to listen to a story?”

“Me! Me!” cried Michael, and the idiot
echoed, “Me! Me!” The old ones had come out of the shadows and gathered in the
little pool of light in the centre of which stood Old Mother.

“Listen, can you hear a bird outside? It’s
saying Tee-tee, tah-loh? Tee-tee, tah-loh? I’ll tell you a story about this
bird.” Nobody heard the bird, but they listened, entranced. “There was a very
wicked woman who had two sons. One was her real son, and the other her
step-son. She loved her real son and ill-treated the step-son, giving him half
a bowl of rice at the most everyday and making him wear clothes that were so
patched. The original cloth was no longer to be seen. Now you would expect the
natural son to follow his mother’s footsteps and ill-treat the step-son. But
this boy had a very good heart. He loved and pitied his step-brother, who was
younger by a few years, and sometimes, unseen by the mother, slipped him a
handful of boiled rice or cabbage. The wicked woman was intent on getting rid
of her step-son. She hit upon an evil plan. She called the two boys together
and said, ‘I’m going to give each of you a handful of maize seeds. You must
plant the seeds in the ground and make them grow. The one whose seeds do not
grow will have no food to eat for ten days.’

So this wicked woman gave her natural son
good healthy maize seeds and her step-son maize seeds that she had secretly
boiled so that they would never grow. So the natural son’s maize seeds sprouted
into healthy plants, the step-son’s seeds withered and died in the ground.

‘Aha! No food for you for 10 days!’ said the
evil woman, and the boy, saddened by the failure of his maize seeds to sprout,
and thus pining away in sadness and hunger, soon died. The evil woman secretly
buried him in a dark forest and returned to tell her own son that the boy had
wandered off and died somewhere, it was no use looking for him.

‘Tee-tee, where is my tee-tee?’ asked the
boy in great sadness, which made his mother very angry.

‘I want to die too, and become a bird and
look for my tee-tee,’ said the boy. ‘Don’t be a fool!’ said the mother. But it
was too late. The boy suddenly died and was transformed into a bird.

To this day, it goes in search of the
brother, crying out in its agony, Tee-tee, tah-loh? Tee-tee, tah-loh?”

“I think I can hear the bird, Grandma,” said
Michael. “I heard it once before, when I was alone in the house one morning.”
No birds flew near the dark House of Death in crowded Sago Lane, but the boy
had an active imagination. He heard birds in his sleep and sometimes strange
creatures from the deeps, that made him moan and move from side to side. The
idiot, in an outburst of pure joy, hoisted the boy on to his shoulders and
carried him round the room. The boy laughed with delight and clung tight,
afraid of falling.

The old woman with the bare scalp said, “Oh,
do be careful, the boy may fall,” but the idiot continued to prance round with
Michael on his shoulders, gurgling, his head moving from side to side.

“A man loved his wife so much that he always
listened to her and ill-treated his mother,” said Old Mother. “He forgot how
his mother had borne him in pain, suckled him, brought him up in hardship and
sorrow. Now, the wicked young woman showed no respect for her old
mother-in-law; not once did she take her a basin of water to wash her face in
the mornings, not once did she offer a cup of tea. A daughter-in-law dutifully
empties the mother-in-law’s chamber pot every morning, but this daughter-in-law
was so wicked, she made her mother-in-law empty her chamber pot. The mother-in-law
was very old and could hardly walk but every morning she had to empty the
daughter-in-law’s chamber pot. The ‘old devil’, the ‘old-she-devil’, she
muttered all day. ‘Die, old-she-devil die, for I want to be rid of you.’

Then one day she instigated her husband to
get rid of the old one. She said, ‘Put her on your back and take her to the
dark forest and leave her there to be eaten by the wild animals. But tell her
you are taking her to see a puppet show. She loves puppet shows, and can be
easily fooled.’ Now the young man was so much under the influence of his wife
that he immediately complied with her order. He said to his old mother, ‘Come,
mother, I’m going to carry you on my back and take you to see a puppet show.
Today, they are performing the story of the Heavenly Emperor with the silver
and gold chariot and the Monkey-God! Come, mother, come,’ and squatted down so
that she could climb on to his back. She laughed in her happiness, she was
eager to see the puppets with their colourful faces and clothes. She laughed
with glee. So he carried her through the dark forest, but the Lightning God who
releases bolt upon bolt of lightning upon the heads of the unfilial, saw him
and killed him in his anger. ‘You have committed the greatest of sins,’ cried
this God and the man was struck dead.

‘But that was not punishment enough. The God
breathed upon the man and he came back to life, all horribly charred by the
lightning bolts. He groaned in pain and groaned still louder when a huge snake,
with very sharp fangs, unwound itself from a nearby tree at the bidding of the
God, slid towards him and sank its teeth into his heart. His body was now all
bloated with the poison. So the man died, a double death; he was struck by the
Lightning God and he was bitten by a snake.’

“But, Grandma, the old mother-in-law was
eaten up by wild beasts,” said Michael, his mind clear despite the fever. “You
told me the last time that she was eaten up by wild beasts in the dark forest.”

“No. He was struck dead by lightning and was
bitten by a snake and it served him right,” muttered Old Mother bitterly. “It
served him right because he listened to his wife when he should have listened
to his mother.”

“Ah Siew Chae, my dear sister,” said Old
Mother, turning to the old woman in the patched black blouse and cupping both
hands in hers. The old woman chuckled and nodded. “We were happy together for a
long time. You were never a servant, for I loved you as a sister. You had no
sons but daughters and you were sad. You were jealous and even said, ‘One night
I will go to your house, straight to the cradle where your baby son is, and I
will steal him away, and put my baby daughter in his place!’ But, what’s the
use of sons now, Ah Siew Chae!” Old Mother began to weep. The old woman who had
been chuckling all along now frowned in dismay; her mouth collapsed round her
toothless gums in an expression of pure sympathy as she tried to stem the flow
of Old Mother’s tears.

“Do you have a coffin?” asked Old Mother
anxiously, drying her tears. “A proper coffin, when you die? I don’t have such
a coffin, but I’ll make them. Give me one!” Her voice rose in desperate
self-promise.

The idiot one had led Michael to an old man
in a corner, lying on some newspapers, smoking an opium pipe. He was oblivious
of their presence, never once did he look at them. A woman, bent almost double,
came up to Michael to ask for money. Michael looked quizzically at her, not
understanding what she wanted.

The pandemonium was brief, but it would be
recollected, years later, in its every painful detail. An old man moaned, an
old woman screeched when the party burst in upon them – Angela hysterical and
shouting, “There they are! There they are!” Boon going straight to Michael who
clung to the idiot, refusing to let go, Old Mother weeping, “Let me stay. Let
me die here. Let me die with Ah Kheem Chae.” Some boxes were toppled in a minor
scuffle between Wee Nam and the idiot. A moan arose from the old ones who had
shrunk back into darkest shadows.

Angela managed to grab Michael crying all the
time, “Oh my darling, my darling, Mummy was so worried for you,” as she
scrambled down the hateful steps in this hateful house of decay and death, to
the light outside where the white Mercedes gleamed in the bright afternoon sun,
waiting.

“Oh my poor darling – what have they done to
you – ”

She felt his forehead, his neck. “Oh, my
God, the fever – ” she sobbed.

The boy struggled for a while, then subsided
in her arms, making little piteous noises, crying for his grandmother and Uncle
Bock. She saw with horror his lips, bluish, his face, drained. “Take us back
first,” she instructed the chauffeur. “Straight to Dr Wong’s clinic. Never mind
the others. They will find their way back,” as the commotion in the Death House
continued.

Who would believe it, she thought, the angry
tears pricking her eyes. How can they do this to my son? and she held the boy,
and in her heart the anguish returned, of a son born different, born to thwart
and pain his parents.

It was remarkable, in view of previous
events, that the old one’s mind could be so lucid – at least during some of the
visits paid her in the hospital. She had been taken home almost raving mad –
she had kept crying to be with Ah Kheem Chae and Ah Siew Chae – and then had
collapsed. They had rushed her to Saint Luke’s, and now she was in the first
class ward of Singapore’s first rate private hospital, actually able to sit up
in bed and receive visitors. The rantings had subsided. During those periods
when her mind did not wander, it was astonishingly clear, and she asked for
this and that, in clear control of death arrangements, for she was now fully
convinced that death was impending.

“Do not talk like this, Mother,” said
Angela. “You will recover, and you will return home to us.”

“Home!” the old one echoed, in derision. “I
have no home.” She gave precise instructions – the inevitable proper coffin,
burial next to her husband, an ancestral altar for the honour of her memory.
She went through each request carefully, eliciting a promise for its compliance.

Reassured, she sank back on her pillow,
exhausted, a frail spent old woman.

The doctors recommended complete rest, but
she wanted to see all her family. They came in a continuous stream, and she
spoke to each, sadly, earnestly.

All the grandchildren came, except Michael
who was ill at home. Angela promised that as soon as he recovered, she would
take him to see his grandmother.

Mark came, subdued, uneasy. His grandmother
remarked on how tall he had grown. She seemed to have been aware of his recent
success in the examinations, for she referred to this and exhorted him to work
harder and be a pride to his parents. Mark murmured something, turned to look
another way and the meeting was over. His grandmother had stretched out a
feeble hand to touch his; he had flinched, but not perceptibly.

Michelle was afraid to look at her
grandmother on the sick bed; she had heard that her grandmother had gone mad
and was afraid the old one would leap out of bed and do something terrible. She
clung to Angela, but allowed herself to be led up and touch her grandmother’s
hands.

Wee Tiong and Gek Choo visited almost every
day, and sometimes with all their five children. The four little girls stood in
a cluster together, awe-stricken, not daring to talk to the grandmother about whom
they had heard such awesome tales. Their mother made them call their
grandmother, loudly and clearly; one by one in order of age, they did so,
obediently, reverently.

Old Mother smiled feebly to see the
grandson, now almost recovered fully from his operations and growing bonnier by
the day.

“Grow tall and good, obey your parents;
study hard,” she admonished all the grandchildren. She said she wished she had
an ang-pow for each of them, but the adults said solicitously, “Oh, please,
don’t worry about such things now. We want you to rest well, to get well.”

“When is Michael coming?” inquired Old
Mother, but Angela said that the boy was still ill and Dr Wong would not allow
him to leave his bed.

“When is Ah Bock coming?” she asked, and
Angela had no choice but to fetch the idiot one whom she had been hoping to
keep away as long as possible, so that there would be as little disturbance as
possible in the hospital room.

Ah Bock came. He ambled into the room,
looking around inquisitively and gurgling. When he saw Old Mother, his face
suddenly took on an expression of puzzlement, then alarm, as finally it dawned
on him that she was very ill and would not be with him much longer.

He went to her bed and wept noisily. Old
Mother held his hand and looked sadly at him. She signalled to Angela to go to
her; Angela had to put her ear close to her lips, for now her voice was getting
faint.

“My jewels, whatever money I have,” rasped
Old Mother, “let Ah Bock have them if none of you has any objection.” Angela
nodded. “This jade bangle,” she said, feebly lifting the wrist where the band
of jade glistened, exquisite in its translucent greenness, “it’s for Michael.
Tell him it’s almost totally green now.” She smiled faintly. Angela nodded.

Old Mother slipped into a long sleep and
woke up to talk, as in conversation with an unseen visitor.

“You have come,” she said with a faint
smile. “You have come for the last time. But all is well now, so you don’t have
to worry about me any more.”

Her eyes opened a little wider, and she
said, a little testily, “Don’t you ever benefit from all that food I’ve been
giving you? You are as thin as ever! Indeed, you look thinner with each visit.”