Miss Seetoh in the World (52 page)

The only thing that seemed to calm and
comfort Por Por in the home was the sight of the small porcelain dragon
ornament, probably from some temple or shrine, that must have been in her
possession for more than half a century. Maria had put it in a cloth-lined box
which the old woman carried everywhere with her in the home, afraid to let it
out of her sight. The ornament had had the opposite effect on Anna Seetoh who
was convinced it was a Satanic object and had recoiled in horror from it. She
wanted it thrown out of the house. Surely there was no greater generational
estrangement than theirs: an old woman, still clinging to the traditional
beliefs of her childhood, and her daughter, secure in the Christian religion of
her conversion, convinced that ties of blood mattered much less than ties of
faith. Maria Seetoh had taken her grandmother’s side in a noisy quarrel over
the dragon ornament, and had insisted that it not only remain in the house but
have a place of honour in Por Por’s room, as the old one wanted.

It was Anna Seetoh’s belief, never openly
uttered, that the evil object had been partly responsible for her son-in-law’s
death, since its presence had invalidated the prayers of the church group that
had come to pray for him. It was the cause of persistent estrangement, for Anna
made it clear that as long as Por Por revered the object (in a dream she had
seen the dragon, covered with pitch black scales, crawling out of a swamp) she
could never pay her a visit in the home, much as filial duty dictated.

‘What when Por Por dies?’ Maria had asked
angrily. ‘Will you even come for the funeral?’ It would be a funeral with the
Taoist rites that Por Por would have wanted.

Anna Seetoh had replied sadly, ‘I will pray
for her,’ adding, ‘as I am praying for you, Maria,’ for she believed that even
non-believers would be eventually saved by the persevering prayers of their
loved ones, through God’s merciful establishment of a place called Limbo, a
kind of holding station for the unbaptised or those who had renounced their
baptism, whose fates had yet to be decided.

Rosiah had brought gifts for Por Por – her
favourite coconut pudding, a bead bracelet and a new cotton blouse. The old
woman stared uncomprehendingly at her and her own grand-daughter, and let the
gifts drop from her hands on to her lap, then to the floor. In the brief time
that she had been at the home, her mental condition had deteriorated
alarmingly, as if she had lost all will to live. The large staring eyes carried
a reproach: you have abandoned me. Maria sat numbly beside her throughout the
visit, her heart too heavy for words, while Rosiah chatted brightly and at one
stage, took out a comb, to comb Por Por’s long, untidy strands into a neat bun
at the back of her head.

If at Yen Ping’s wake she had reflected on
the tragedy of a young life cut short, here in the Sunshine Home she saw the
dereliction of old lives waiting for death that was too long in coming. A very
old woman, probably in her nineties and sitting in a wheelchair, looked around
with the terrified look of a small child lost in a crowd. Another, equally old,
sat in a large chair, carrying in her arms a life-size plastic doll dressed in
a pink dress and rocking it to sleep; the doll must have been given to soothe
the pain of the revived memory of a dead infant so very long ago. A nurse in
blue was attending to a woman in a wheelchair specially constructed to
accommodate her massive obesity which oozed out at the sides, like some giant,
boneless monster from the depths of the ocean floor. There was a woman who
looked too young to be in a home, being in her sixties at the most, dressed in
a floral print blouse and black pants. She could be taken for a visitor except
that she was being attended by one, a young woman, probably her daughter, who
had brought her a box of biscuits and a plastic bag of grapes, and was speaking
to her in the cajoling tones one used for a recalcitrant child. Was the woman
suffering from early dementia, like Por Por had, years earlier, and had the
daughter put her in a home for the same reason – it was no longer possible to
cope even with a loved one?

The term invariably appeared in obituary and
memorial notices, whether the deceased one was loved or not, whether indeed, he
or she, in the last stages of disease or dementia, had become so unmanageable
as to become unloveable.

A faint smell of dried urine and disinfectant
filled the air, despite the presence of pots of green plants to sweeten the
decrepitude of old age. Somewhere from one of the nearby rooms a thin wail
followed by incoherent mumbling, like someone having a bad dream in the midst
of day, floated out to add to the desolation. Maria and Rosiah sat two hours
with Por Por who ended up petulantly stamping on their gifts and making shrill
noises of protest. Rosiah would not be coming again, and Maria sighed at the
thought of the next week’s visit.

It was money that filled her mind again,
although this time, the thoughts took a different colouring: even if Por Por
were in the Silver Valley Home well-known for its beautiful surroundings and
up-to-date medical facilities, she would still be staring at her with those
eyes of deep despair. A loved one beyond loving and being loved. But no, Por
Por had earned her love which would always rise above the petty disappointments
and distress of each visit.

Maria would always be grateful for the last
conscious act of a hopelessly demented woman. It was as if Por Por, aware of
her approaching end, managed to wrest one moment of lucidity from the rapidly
descending darkness and asked for her. She had actually mentioned her
granddaughter’s name. Maria would keep in fond memory the small details of the
message that the home superintendent told her; the old woman, to make sure that
they would send for the right person, had indicated Maria’s ponytail by tugging
at the bun at the back of her head, and her pretty face by circular hand
motions around her own face, followed by a perky thumbs up.

Maria had visited only the day before and
noticed there was no change of mood or condition in her grandmother. But the
next morning, to her surprise, the home superintendent called and said the old
woman wanted to see her, and could she come quickly. Por Por had refused to get
up from bed and seemed very agitated. Maria arrived in time to say goodbye. She
was at her grandmother’s side, holding her hand, whispering into her ears,
until she heard a tiny gasp and saw that her Por Por was gone. The only memento
she wanted of her grandmother was the dragon ornament, still in its cloth-lined
box, but for years, just looking at it brought tears. It was part of her
closure that she had put in the box a note from Rosiah that she had received
two weeks after Por Por’s death.

Rosiah had got someone to write it in
English for her: ‘I am very sad for death of Por Por. She is good kind person. She
bite and scold only because old and sick. I pray Allah Por Por now well and
happy.’

Brother Philip’s letter fom Ireland was half
solicitous and half reproachful. How was she? Why had she not replied to his
cards? Why had she not told him about the deaths of Mark and Yen Ping, of her
grandmother? Of the principal? Why had she not told him she had resigned from
St Peter’s? How was she coping, etc., etc. The letter bristled with a hundred
question marks of caring; Maria could imagine the creases of anxiety on
Brother’s calm forehead as he wrote. There was no direct mention of Dr Phang;
instead, a skein of veiled hints, some rather clumsy, indicated how curious he
was to know about that part of her private life.

Distance had, at the beginning, sharpened
need; then as the months went by, had actually blunted it, so that she no
longer felt the urge to write that long anguished letter in which she would
pour out her heart and soul to him. The urge to pick up the phone and put in a
long distance call to Ireland had long subsided. If her heart had been broken
at his departure, the tumultous events that followed had simply shaken it back
into full operation to continue to bear yet more of life’s disappointments. To
Maria Seetoh, they seemed to be saying, borrowing the words of Brother Philip:
get out of your skin! You are in the real world, and there’s no escaping from
it. They also said, Maria Seetoh, your story’s not over; it’s still unfolding.

So she wrote only a brief, quick reply to
all the anxious notes. ‘My dear Brother Phil,’ it said, ‘At this stage, I can
only give you a factual account of each of the events you referred to, and a
factual account is the least useful thing at the moment. In any case, I am just
too tired to do it. I don’t care for the facts any more, only the meaning, and
if you were here with me, my ever dear, kind, wise Brother Phil, you would help
me extract a little of that. In any case, my story’s still unfolding, and I’m
not sure what’s going to happen in the future. I can only write these dark,
dreary, depressed little notes to you, which you’re better off without. Love,
Maria.’

It was the second phone call from Yen Ling,
more than three months after her sister’s tragic death. ‘We found the silver
locket you told us about,’ she said excitedly. ‘It was stuck in a hole in a
drain, and we could get it out only by knocking off some of the cement.It was
all dirty and rusty.’

She went on to say that the locket,
containing the pledge of love, would be used in the coming marriage ceremony
which of course Maria, the favourite teacher, must attend.

The ceremony was conducted, as the wake had
been, in the same ground level area of the housing estate, but needing only a
small part of the space, as only a few people would be present. There was a
monk from a nearby temple in attendance, dressed in a long brown robe, wearing
a long strand of brown beads round his neck, chanting prayers to unite the
deceased couple in a marriage that had been denied them on earth. They were
just two large paper effigies, crude cut-outs only, both wearing red paper
mandarin robes with the frog buttons drawn in. They were placed side by side on
a table covered with a richly embroidered red tablecloth that must have been
borrowed for the occasion. No likeness was necessary, only distinct marks of
their respective genders, so that one could tell which one was groom, and which
bride. Thus Mark’s effigy had short hair and wore a skull-cap, and Yen Ping’s
had long pigtails and circular red dots on her cheeks. Both had the large
staring eyes of dolls, with unnaturally long lashes. Maria looked to see where
Yen Ping’s silver locket with the pledge of love was placed, and noticed that
it lay in a little space where the effigy hands overlapped.

The monk chanted prayers to unite them in
marriage for all eternity. He swung a censer of fragrant incense ash over the
bridal couple, before placing them in a miniature funeral pyre and setting them
on fire, imploring them to be on their own now and not to be bothered by the living
anymore, a gentle, indirect way of saying: Please don’t return to earth
anymore. For the living too needed their peace to go on making their living in
a hard world. Yen Ping’s parents had already resumed working at their drinks
stall in the market, their attention now concentrated on their other children.

There was the story, reported years ago in
the Chinese newspapers, of a young couple similarly frustrated by parental
objection to their relationship, who decided to end it all one dark night,
inside a locked car, setting themselves on fire. By the time they were
discovered, their bodies were just a charred heap. Their respective parents
decided to put aside their hostility in order to meet and conduct a ghost
marriage for their children, who had appeared to them in their dreams,
expressing such a wish. The effigy wedding was not the end of the matter, for
about a year after the event, the girl’s parents found an abandoned baby at
their doorstep who they instantly concluded was a ghost child despite its human
appearance. They took it in as a much loved grandchild. For a while the papers
were full of the rumours that the baby indeed was a ghost child, for it had no
shadow and could give winning lottery numbers.

Yen Ping’s mother had no need for any such
dramatic, elaborate aftermath of dealings with the other world, even if it
brought gain, being too down-to-earth and needing only the necessary closure
provided by the wedding ceremony to pick life up again and earn money for her
remaining children’s education. As soon as the effigies were reduced to a
little heap of ashes, she invited the wedding guests comprising only Maria and
two relatives to partake of the wedding feast set out on a small table,
comprising some pink buns, biscuits, candied peanuts, pomelo and packet drinks.
Then she bade them goodbye, thanking them warmly for their attendance.

For Maria she had the kindest words, saying
again and again, ‘My Yen Ping was always talking about you.’ As soon as she had
given the monk a donation for his temple and cleared the place of every vestige
of the ceremony, she assumed a look that said, ‘It’s all over. I have done my
duty to my daughter.’

The good woman would now devote herself to
caring for her husband who had never recovered from the pain of his daughter’s
death, and to her business of selling soft drinks at the market, which had
suffered a considerable loss of takings since the tragedy.

Up till the end, Maria was still hoping that
of the several letters that the police had returned to the dead girl’s family,
one would be for her. But Yen Ling who would have been put in charge of such
matters never mentioned such a letter. Her last words to Maria were the same as
her mother’s, ‘Thank you very much for being such a kind teacher to Yen Ping.’
Maria never heard from her again.