The Catherine Lim Collection (48 page)

She heard him moving about, then saw his
shadow from under her locked door.

“Little Daughter, I’ve brought you a
present, would you like to have a look at it?”

Never receive gifts from strangers, both
Mother and Older Sister had warned. Never receive gifts from fathers.

The shadow lingered, then moved away. She
lay still on her bed, worrying about her uncompleted Family Joy Project
scattered on the floor. The metal gate clanged. Mother was home! Pei Yin got up
quickly to rescue her project. Outside her door stood a box of magic colouring
pens – and there were 36 of them. Pei Yin gasped. She had never seen such a
magnificent array of colours. Reject the gift. Never receive a gift from the
enemy. Pei Yin stepped over the box and let it lie there. The next morning,
when she woke up and opened the door to have a look, it was gone.

Mrs Tan allowed extra time for the
completion of the project. The silver trophy stood in a glass case on the wall
in the school assembly area and inspired last-minute feverish activity. The
generous classmate who had lent the box of magic pens was generous no longer in
the new momentum of rivalry. Pei Yin fretted over her inability to put the
finishing touches to the last few pages; she pleaded and the classmate who had
stolen a peep at Pei Yin’s work and then recoiled in horror at the meagreness
of her own, snatched up the precious box of pens, removed herself to another
corner of the classroom and tried frantically to make up for lost time.

I must win the trophy, thought Pei Yin,
looking around for a similar box to borrow. Mrs Tan, at the door, called to
her. She turned round and went pale with fear, for the father was standing
there too, a crumpled shirt over his singlet and not even properly buttoned,
and an old pair of khaki trousers over his pyjama trousers. In his hands he
held, shyly, the box of 36 magic pens.

“Say thank you to your father, Pei Yin,”
said Mrs Tan sharply. “He’s come all the way to bring you these lovely pens for
your project. Where are your manners?” She felt sorry for the man, shy, poor,
uneducated.

Pei Yin said
‘Thank you’ tremblingly and received the gift. She would no
t tell Older Sister about this. Mrs Tan later said, as she observed
her using the pens to complete the project, “I’m rather surprised and
disappointed in you, Pei Yin. I thought you knew better than to treat your
father in that way. He must have spent a lot of money on those pens. And then
to take the trouble to come all the way.” The man would have come by bus or
bicycle; such as he could not afford a car, such as he spoke no English, had
bad teeth and deferred to daughters who were ashamed of him.

And then Mrs Tan had an idea. Its relevance,
indeed necessity, for any meaning at all for the programme that she had
initiated in the school in her capacity as Counsellor, was so obvious she was
ashamed it had never occurred to her before. She announced to the girls that
she would give them one more day for the submission of their various projects
for the Family Joy Competition; they cheered.

“There’s something else I want you to do,”
she said, and the cheers subsided into attentiveness. “I want you, in the true
spirit of this competition, to dedicate your project to your daddy.” No cheers,
but some faces lit up with daughterly affection, and continued to be attentive
for more instructions.

“I want you,” said Mrs Tan in the confident
glow of a job about to be very well done, “to take your book home to your daddy
this evening, tell him what it is about and say you have done it for him. As
proof that you have actually done what I told you, because some of you are naughty
girls who don’t follow all instructions,” here the girls giggled, rather liking
that description of themselves, “you are required to get your daddy’s signature
on the last page of your book, and also whatever he may wish to write. It does
not matter if it is not in the English language,” she added.

Someone asked, “Can I ask my mummy to sign
too?” and Mrs Tan said, “Yes, if you like. But it’s Daddy’s signature that I
want. And I want all of you to tell one another in class what your daddy said
and did. We’ll have a nice sharing session.”

Pei Yin hung around nervously and anxiously,
waiting for her mother to leave for work; Older Sister had left much earlier.

“Aren’t you going to school?” said her
mother. A classmate was coming, she said, to meet her in a short while and they
would go to school together; she needed help to carry some things borrowed from
Teacher for her project. Her mother took much longer to finish her coffee; Pei
Yin fidgeted, ready in her school uniform, her school bag bulging with things,
her Family Joy book in a separate large paper bag.

Alone in the flat with the father at last,
her heart thumping so wildly she thought she was going to fall down and be very
sick, she took the book out of the paper bag and slowly walked to the father’s
room, stopping by the door. He was in bed, reading a Chinese newspaper, and at
the sight of her, he sat up and pulled off his glasses.

The spasm of surprise over, he said, “Eh,
Little Daughter? You want something?” Biting the ends of his spectacles, he studied
her with the rare pleasure of an unobstructed view: no hunched shoulders, no
turning away. She continued standing at the door, wanting to speak to him, not
finding speech. A situation of unspeakable promise, he realised, had presented
itself to him, and for a moment he was struck dumb by the sheer wonder of it
all. But he soon scrambled out of bed, knocking down spectacles and newspaper
and went to her at the door.

“Little Pei Pei, you want something. What
can your father do for you?”

She pushed towards him the book, beautifully
bound and redolent of roses and hearts, and asked for his signature.

“Ah, you want me to sign this beautiful
book?” he said, and the book took on the fresh aspect of an accomplice.

“Come, come, put it on the table here and
I’ll find a pen,” and he led her into the room. “Where’s my pen? Where are my
glasses? I must put on my glasses so that I can write my name properly in my
daughter’s beautiful book!”

It will all be over and done with soon,
thought Pei Yin with desperation. The harder part was to come. It was a
necessary condition for the competition, Teacher said, and they were to talk
about it during the sharing session in class.

Pei Yin with new resolution moved up to the
father and put her arms around him. “A kiss too,” said Teacher. That would make
Daddy so proud and happy.

“Ah!” he said, dizzy with the wondrousness
of the turn of events, and determined no wondrousness should distract flesh
from its long-awaited purpose.

He said, hoarse with urgency, “I’ll sign
afterwards,” and lifted her to bring to his bed.

***

“Pei Yin, whatever’s the matter with you?”
cried the startled Mrs Tan for there stood before her a ghost, wild-eyed and
white, the blood drained completely from her face, her mouth opening and
closing in little animal noises. “Pei Yin, what’s the matter? Are you ill? Is
it the project – ” And it was precisely at this moment that the girl realised
she had forgotten to bring the book; her precious book was at that moment lying
on the father’s bed.

“My project,” she gasped and began to look
around wildly.

“My project, I forgot to bring it!” She
began to scream hysterically, from a further onslaught of that darkness that
had enveloped her as she stumbled out of the room, running blindly into a wall
before she found the open door, and again as she rushed into the bathroom and
struggled through the raw pitilessness of sweat and blood and slime. Choking,
she had tried to spit out the poison, but the scorpion had bitten too deep for
that.

She threw herself upon the floor, crying
dismally, and Mrs Tan caught hold of her and with the help of another teacher,
carried her to the school lounge where they put her in a large comfortable
chair and tried to soothe her. She continued crying, in great sobs that wracked
her little body, while Mrs Tan held her, stroked her hair and patted her gently
till the sobbing subsided.

“Don’t worry about the project,” she said
soothingly, “You can bring it tomorrow, I don’t mind at all. Don’t worry,” and
wondered about the larger agonies, beyond any school project, that this poor,
sensitive, overwrought child was privately suffering. She was convinced they
had to do with the father, and she wondered, for the hundredth time, about an
education system that distanced articulate English-educated daughters from
their fumbling illiterate fathers. If guilt was part of this strange child’s
hysteria, it was no bad thing.

“I have to get my book, or it will be
ruined! Please let me go home to get my book!”

The child was becoming hysterical again, and
had to be soothed afresh. Somebody brought a hot drink. Mrs Tan, putting her
arms tenderly round the poor girl, drew her attention to the clouds that could
be seen through the window, amassing with dark power. “See how dark the sky is.
See those black clouds. It’s going to rain. So you can’t go home, or you will
get wet and catch cold. It doesn’t matter if you can’t hand up theproject
today. It doesn’t matter at all. It will make no difference to the competition
whatsoever, see? I know how hard you’ve worked at it. Now take this drink and
you’ll feel much better.”

The rain came down in torrents. Pei Yin
watched it with dull, resigned eyes, and Mrs Tan went on talking to her in a
soothing voice.

“Try to get some sleep, dear,” she said.
“Everything will be alright, so you mustn’t worry. Okay, Pei Yin?” The rain
continued to fall in thick ruthless sheets. Mrs Tan, leaving Pei Yin’s side for
the first time that strange afternoon in answer to a call, stared in amazement
at the visitor standing at the entrance of the school office in a puddle of
rain water. He had apparently come in the rain in a hurry, for he had on only a
singlet and pyjama trousers, now totally wet and clinging to his undernourished
legs. To Mrs Tan’s first astonished question about how he had got there in the
rain, he shyly pointed to an old bicycle leaning against a dripping tree near
the school gate, and to the second question about why he was there, he pulled
out of a paper bag the book, but no longer recognisable, for the rainwater had
scrambled all the colours into a streaky, brownish mess. A sodden page fell out
and the father, laughing nervously, bent to pick up the Holy Family and put it
back into the book.

“My daughter forgot to take this to school,
so I’ve brought it,” he said simply, and then was gone back into the rain.

Mrs Tan stood for a while, holding the soggy
mess, and her eyes filled with tears as she watched the father, a tiny figure
now, pedal away in the rain.

“Pei Yin,” she said as she returned to where
the girl was sitting quietly in the chair, “I’ve got such good news for you.”
The girl, suddenly noticing the book, frowned, started up, rushed forward to
grab it and gazing upon the desolate remains, sat upon the floor once more and
sobbed in the infinitude of woman’s sorrow.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” said Mrs Tan, awed
by the power of what she had just witnessed. She picked up the girl and held
her close. “We’ll not worry about the competition any more, shall we? Anyway,
it isn’t that important, is it? We’ll just forget about it.” The good news was
not just for the girl alone; it was for all daughters and fathers, and she, in
the work to which she had committed herself, would be its humble bearer.

Let me tell you the story of nanna, the great
goddess of the ancient Sumerians. So beloved was she because of her power and
wisdom that every year, her High Priestesses received, in her name, streams of
devoted men bringing gifts of wheat and fruit, fish and animals, to lay at the
goddess’ feet. Every year too, there was the Ritual of the Sacred Mating, that
is, a High Priestess put to the test young men aspiring to be appointed the
year’s Shepherd or Damuzi, True Consort of nanna. And this was how the ritual
went: her body, freshly bathed and perfumed and wrapped with her breechcloth
and robes, her eyes glowing with kohl, the High Priestess invited the aspirant
to prove himself on her bed, to test his fitness as the sacred consort. He,
trembling with anxiety, would he led by her to the bed, and she would remind
him, even as they were about to climb on to the silken pillows, that even
though his gifts of fruit and honey, herbs and plants, flesh and fowl were the
best of all, and even though his youthful beauty was unparalleled, he had still
not passed the ultimate test:

Only when he has shown his love

When he has pleasured my loins

And I his, on my bed,

Will I show him kindness

And appoint him Damuzi

The Chosen of Inanna’s Lap.

(From The Woman’s Book Of Superlatives)

“
Good
morning, Mr Ong.
There’s something I would like to talk to you about, if
I may. It’s very important.”

“Sure, Mrs Lee. Do sit down.”

“Mr Ong, I hope you don’t mind, but I’m
going to be extremely frank.”