The Catherine Lim Collection (13 page)

“If she were like Mee Kin’s mother,” said
Angela wearily, “I wouldn’t have to resort to such ridiculous arrangements.
Imagine my poor children not being able to eat beef in their own house!”

“Grandma, why don’t you eat beef?” the
innocent Michelle had asked one evening, going to her grandmother who was
sitting by herself in the room.

“I’ll tell you a story,” said Old Mother,
and she smiled when she saw Michael sit down on the floor beside his sister, at
her feet.

“A very, very long time ago, a man died, and
his soul went up to the Almighty God in Heaven. Now he would have to be reborn
and come back to live on earth, and the Almighty God was not sure whether to
send him back to earth as a human being, an animal or an insect.

‘I know, I’ll send you back to earth as a
cow,’ said the Almighty. At this, the man began to weep and protest loudly.

‘Not as a cow,’ he wept. ‘A cow’s life is
the most miserable. It works all day in the fields, ploughing, drawing up
water. It is not given any rest, andwhen it can no longer work, its master
takes it to the slaughter house and with a long knife, cuts off his head, so
that its flesh can be eaten!’

The man wept for a long time, but the
Almighty said, ‘No, no, that is a very unfair thing to say. Man is not so
ungrateful a creature. He will never work an animal, then kill it for its
flesh.’ The man was finally convinced by the Almighty. So he was reborn and
came back to earth as a cow. The poor cow, from the moment it was capable of
work, was made to work from morning till night. But it bore all its sufferings
patiently, thinking to itself, ‘Never mind, when I can no longer work, I shall die
peacefully as the Almighty has promised.’ But one day, when the cow was no
longer capable of work in the fields, its master brought it to the slaughter
house. The animal wept, big tears rolled down from its eyes, but the master had
no pity. As the big knife descended on its neck, it let off a piteous howl, a
howl of pain so powerful it pierced the sky and reached the ears of the
Almighty. The Almighty covered up his ears to stop the painful cry, and then in
a loud angry voice he said, ‘I did not know man could be such an ungrateful
creature! From this very day I forbid all my followers to touch the flesh of a
cow!’”

Michael and Michelle listened entranced.
Mark, to whom Michelle later told the story, said it differed significantly
from the legend of the cow that he had read in his book of Chinese legends.
They were beautiful legends, beautifully illustrated. Angela had read all of
them and enjoyed them. Why, Angela wondered with some sadness, had beautiful
legends like the legend of the cow translated into clumsy, unreasonable
superstitions that made life more difficult for others?

“You look
carefully,”
said Old Mother. “You look carefully at the
moon and you will see a woman. She’s the lady of the moon. She washes her hair
in the water of a stream, then dries it, and sticks a jade comb in it. A comb
of real jade – not like mine, which has only a small pinhead of jade.” And she
good-humouredly removed the jade pin from the knot of hair at the back of her
head to show the children.

Michelle giggled, clapped her hands to her
mouth, looked to her mother and giggled again. Then she listened intently to
her grandmother. She liked listening to stories. Every day in school, she asked
her teachers for stories.

“The lady of the moon combs her hair and
sings. She is tired of her jade comb. She wants another one – a gold one. And
she invites the man on the other side of the moon to come. If he wants to marry
her, he must bring a gold comb. That will make her very happy.”

“Are there really people on the moon?” asked
Michelle.

“The lady of the moon – last time you told
us she tried to cross a river on her small feet and she drowned,” said Michael,
and the clarity in his voice and the sweetness of his face brought a catch to
Angela’s throat as she sat, watching the children listening to their
grandmother while Mooi Lan cleared the dinner things in the kitchen. He never speaks
to me with that clarity and sweetness, she thought sadly. My poor Michael. How
can I get him to be like the other two?

“The moon’s an uninhabited planet. It’s
waterless. The conditions there are not fit for human habitation. Nobody can
live there,” said Mark with eldest-brother hauteur. He hated to see his younger
brother and sister listen to nonsense and superstition. Once he wrote a
composition on ‘Superstitions’ which won him first prize in an inter-school
essay-writing competition. In it, he wrote:

My grandmother believes that an eclipse of the
moon is caused by a dragon trying to swallow the moon! She beats two tin cans
together, very loudly, to scare the dragon away and so save the moon. When
there is a flash of lightning in the sky, my grandmother makes quick motions
with her lips, pressing them together, with funny ‘pup-pup-pup’ sounds. In this
way, she is swallowing the power of the lightning which will make her stronger
and more virtuous! My grandmother says that to dream of human excreta is a sign
of coming luck.

Michelle, who read all her brother’s
compositions so that she could talk to her friends about them, had asked what
human excreta was, and had then asked, “Why didn’t you write just ‘shit’, Mark?
It’s easier,” but her brother had merely said, “Don’t be crude” and taken back
the composition book from her.

Mark had won first prize.

“The lady of the moon drowned because with
her very small feet, she couldn’t cross the bridge over the river,” said Old
Mother. “But the man on the other side of the moon sent a big band of silk –
with many colours, silver, pink, purple. The lady clung to the silk and was
saved.”

“How can she cling to the silk if she’s
drowned?” asked Michelle.

“She came to life, when she saw the band of
silk,” said Michael. ‘The man on the other side of the moon gave her not one
gold comb, but two – the second one was actually silver, washed him gold like
Grandma’s belt. It looks like gold, but actually it’s only silver, washed in
gold.”

Old Mother laughed. She touched Michael on
the cheek and laughed again. She laughed so rarely it came almost as a shock to
Angela, listening, watching, but, thought Angela, better to have her talking
nonsense and laughing than moping and complaining to the gossipy neighbours.

Dear God, if only Michael would talk to me
like that, she thought sadly.

“There was an old man. He lived in a temple
on the top of a mountain – ” said Old Mother.

“Another story – good,” said Michelle,
hugging her knees.

“An old man with skin like yellow paper and
teeth yellower than mine,” and Old Mother showed her teeth, brown stumps where
they were not gold. Michael laughed and said, “Aiya, Grandma. You are funny!”
The hours went by, but Old Mother, as if to make up for her long days of sullen
silence, went on and on in garrulous good humour. The clatter in the kitchen
ceased. Mooi Lan came out, neat in spite of the cleaning up, and brought Angela
her cup of coffee.

Angela whispered, “In one of her rare good
moods. Storytelling. Watch,” and Mooi Lan bent over and whispered back, “She
was like this yesterday evening, too – when you were out for your mahjong game.
Doctor, like you, was amused. He said to me, ‘Have the children done their
homework? Are they going to listen to stories all night?’ But he was rather
pleased, like you. Such a relief from the usual complaints and curses!”

The two women smiled, conspiratorially.

“This woman – she was very devoted to her
mother-in-law.”

Another story. The children were rapt or
rather, Michael and Michelle were rapt, Michelle still giggling. Mark had
abruptly left. He thought he knew what the story was going to be about. If it
was the stupid one about the stupid lady who gave suck to her old mother-in-law
out of a sense of filial piety, he would scream – he hated that one – it filled
him with intense loathing because of what they had told him when he was only a
small boy, but which he had never forgotten. His mother had later told him that
what he heard wasn’t true, but it remained with him, the hateful story, and any
reminder of the incident – he didn’t care whether it was true or made up –
filled him with shame and anger. If his friends in school heard about it, he
would die of shame.

“This woman – she had true filial piety,”
said Old Mother, and while the two children listened, rapt, Angela stiffened,
anticipating the veiled insults. The old one was always hurling insults at her,
but these were always veiled, oblique. She was not a child, she could feel the
barbs instantly.

“This woman – she said to the mosquitoes,
come and bite me, all of you. Bite me till my body is bumpy all over. But do
not bite my old mother-in-law. So the mosquitoes had their fill of her and left
the mother-in-law alone. And in the cold winter season, when the mattress was
as ice to the body, she lay on it for hours, taking the cold into her own body
and letting out the warmth, so that her old mother-in-law could sleep on a warm
bed.

And then there came famine and starvation.
People were eating the roots and bark of trees. This woman had no food, but
there was a little milk in her, and so she lifted her blouse and invited her
old mother-in-law to come and suck at her breast, to take nourishment from
whatever was left in her body – ”

Mark, sitting not too far away, though
apparently absorbed in the Book of Scientific Knowledge, made sounds of intense
irritation.

His mother went up to him and bent over him,
protectively. “Never mind, darling,” she said. “She’s old. She’s old and
superstitious and talks nonsense. She also wants to imply that I’m not a good
daughter-in-law. Never mind that stupid story. What Kheem Chae told you wasn’t
true. It wasn’t you she tried to feed that night. It was one of the other
grandchildren – ”

“DON’T TALK TO ME ABOUT IT!” The tears had
sprung to the boy’s eyes. He had once, on a visit to Haw Par Villa, seen the
whole pantheon of gods, goddesses and mythological figures. Everything had
filled him with delight and fascination – the gods in heaven, the demons in
hell – until the obscene figurines of the young lady lifting her blouse to
suckle her white-haired mother-in-law crouching at her feet – the boy had
turned away, embarrassed, confused, and then the hateful story that she had
tried to feed him that night when he was crying for his mother and she didn’t
know how to stop him crying had blended with the obscene image and caused
intense shame. He saw the withered breast, himself pulling at it – and he threw
up. It was no use now telling him it was another baby, not him. Mark ran out of
the room.

Michael leaned against his grandmother’s
knee and gurgled. “Look at my bangle,” said Old Mother, and the two children
came closer to study the band of solid jade round her left wrist.

“You see the bright green of this bangle,
except for the few pale specks here and there?”

“Yes, I see,” said Michael.

“Well, when I first bought the bangle 20
years ago, it was all pale, not bright green,” said Old Mother. “Then as I wore
it, it became greener and greener. The green spread. That means luck. That
means the goodness is coming out of my body, through the pores of my hand, and
making the bangle green, bright green. I’m going to be lucky! I’m going to buy
a lottery ticket tomorrow, and win the first prize!”

Michael gazed at her rapt. “And what will
you do with your money?”

“I shall give half to your uncle Siong in
Australia (Old Mother said ‘Ow-say-lyah’). Then I shall use some to send Ah
Bock to China. They tell me there’s a clever surgeon there who can cut open his
head and remove the water there. It’s the water in his head that makes him like
this. Otherwise he’s all right.”

“I don’t like Uncle Bock, Grandma. He
frightens me,” said Michelle petulantly. “When he talks, saliva falls out, and
he makes loud, frightening noises. And Daddy says his disease is congenital.
That means he was born an idiot.”

“Can the surgeon take the water out of his
head?” asked Michael. “Can I go with him to China, Grandma? I can take care of
him. He doesn’t frighten me. Michelle is silly, to be so easily frightened.”

“And with some of the money, I shall buy a coffin
for Kheem Chae,” said Old Mother. “She lost all her money. Now she has no money
to buy a proper coffin – the real type of coffin, not the useless kind. It
costs a lot of money.”

“But Kheem Chae isn’t dead yet,” said
Michelle. “Anyway, where is she, Grandma?”

Old Mother’s eyes filled with tears. “In the
old death-house,” she said. “In the old death-house where death is too long in
coming. I shall be going there, too. It’s not too far away. Two buses from
here. I know how to get there.”

“Oh, Grandma, don’t die!” There was panic in
the boy’s voice as he jumped up and clasped his grandmother’s knee.

“Yes, I will die, and there’ll be nobody to
care, nobody to burn joss-sticks and paper for me,” said Old Mother, suddenly
overcome by self-pity.

Enough was enough.

“Time for bed, children,” said Angela with
severe restraint. “Michael, have you done your homework? There’s a spelling
test tomorrow, isn’t there?” But the boy had withdrawn, again, into his secret
world of private agonies and confusions.