The Catherine Lim Collection (49 page)

“No, I don’t mind at all. Please go on.”

“I’ve been thinking about the matter for a
long while, Mr Ong, and in fact have been quite unhappy about it, wondering
what I should do. I thought it best to discuss it with you, rather than with my
husband.”

“You’ve made me very curious, Mrs Lee. Just
what is this matter that’s making you so unhappy? And so very nervous. Your
hands are trembling. Can I get you a hot drink or something?”

“Oh, no, thank you, Mr Ong, that’s very kind
of you. You see, Mr Ong, you see, I ... I ... ”

“Yes, Mrs Lee? Don’t be afraid. Do tell me
what’s troubling you.”

“Mr Ong, I’ve been working for you now for
six months, and I want to say what a very good and generous boss you’ve been –
”

“Surely that’s not what’s troubling you, Mrs
Lee? Do get to the point. We haven’t got all morning, you know. There’s the
Meyer letter we must do this morning.”

“Yes, of course, Mr Ong. Oh Mr Ong, please
forgive me if I sound too ... too unreasonable but I wish you’d stop touching
me ... you know ... touching me ... ”

“Oh!”

“Mr Ong, I don’t mean to sound rude or
accusing, but I get very uncomfortable when you touch me on the ... on the
behind and ... and ... in front – ”

“I’m sorry, Mrs Lee. I had no idea I was
making you so unhappy. I offer no excuses for my behaviour. I assure you it
will not happen again. Will that be alright?”

“Yes, Mr Ong. Thank you so much for your
understanding.”

“Mrs Lee, I can’t tell you how truly sorry I
am. I deserve all the contempt you can show me, and it will serve me right if
you now speak your mind and tell me to my face what you have been suffering all
these months because of me.”

“Oh, Mr Ong, it will do me good to tell
everything, since it has been a wretched secret burdening me. I had nobody to
tell it to, knowing nobody would believe me.”

“But I do believe you, Mrs Lee, and I
believe you must have suffered intensely. So now tell me. There is no greater
punishment for a sinful man like me than to have his sins flung in his face.”

“Last month, Mr Ong, you called me into your
office to handle a fax from Germany. While I was sitting at your table, you
suddenly got up, came up to me and sat on the edge of the table, facing me,
your fly unzipped. I did not know where to look, and kept my eyes down, but I
knew you were looking at me all the time, enjoying my discomfiture.”

“I’m really sorry. Mrs Lee. I’m indeed most
ashamed – ”

“On another occasion, Mr Ong, I was standing
beside you with some letters when you suddenly remarked on the pearl necklace I
was wearing, got up and pretended to examine it, all the time letting your hand
slip lower down my blouse. Fortunately, someone knocked on the door then.”

“Mrs Lee, I’m thoroughly ashamed – ”

“Then just last week, Mr Ong, you called me
into the office and told me you had something interesting to show me and you
pulled out of your drawer a magazine opened to show a most disgusting picture
of a copulating couple. You asked me, did you not, whether my husband and I had
ever tried that position – ”

“Mrs Lee, I beg you to stop. I’m most
ashamed. I can hardly believe I subjected you to all these indignities – ”

“Mr Ong, the very next day after that
disgusting picture, you again called me into your office. You were not at your
table and as I was looking around, wondering where you were, you called again
and this time I saw that you were in the toilet and you said, in a voice that
will haunt my worst nightmares, ‘Come here, there’s something I would like to
show you! Quick, it’s waiting for you!’”

“Mrs Lee, please forgive me. I’m ready to do
anything by way of reparation. Please forgive me.”

“Promise me you will never ever do any of
those things again, or tell dirty jokes or touch any part of me.”

“I promise.”

“Promise me you will never do that to any
other woman.”

“I promise.”

“That is all I ask of you, Mr Ong. Thank
you.”

Helen Lee’s fantasies, as she sat half
dozing in the bus on the way to work, never shaped around roses and moonlit
tenderness, only around a man’s understanding of a woman’s pain and a sincere
promise to stop causing the pain.

Today, she was going to try to make her
fantasies come true.

She knocked on the boss’s door, her heart
pounding wildly.

“Ah, Helen! Here you are! You are a little
late, but never mind. Come in, come in.”

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

The tone during the rehearsals was firm; now
her voice went all unsteady and her hands began to feel cold. But the opening
words had come off right, thank goodness. He looked up and grinned.

“Sure, Helen. Do sit down.”

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

He continued grinning at her.

“Hey, this is a new you. I’ve never heard
you speak like this before. But of course I don’t mind. In fact, I rather like
you in this new mood. Shoot!”

“I’ve been thinking about the matter for a
long while, Mr Ong, and in fact have been quite unhappy about it, wondering
what I should do. I thought it best to discuss it with you, rather than with my
husband.”

“Ah, so I take precedence over your husband?
That sounds very promising, Helen!” And he gave her a wink.

“Mr Ong, I want to talk about – I would like
– ”

“What would you like? Goodness, Helen, your
hands are trembling! You must be very cold. Come, let me rub them. I’m very
good at rubbing.”

“Oh, no! No thank you, Mr Ong. Mr Ong, I ...
I hope you will understand ... I’ve been here six months and I enjoy working
for you very much – ”

“Well, my dear, I’m glad to hear that! So
you enjoy working for me? Well, I enjoy working with you too, dear, and perhaps
one of these days, it will not be just with you, but on you and in you, I hope.
What do you say to that? I love the versatility of the English preposition
‘in’, don’t you? Have you heard the joke about the couple in their cabin on a
ship bound for India – ”

“Mr Ong, please forgive me if I sound too
... too unreasonable, but I wish you would stop touching me ... you know ...
touching me – ”

“Ha! Ha! Ha! So that was it. Ha! Ha! Ha! How
funny you are. But of course it’s unreasonable of you, Helen, to ask me to stop
touching you. Very unreasonable indeed. A beautiful woman like you simply cries
out to be touched. Look at yourself. Do you look at yourself in the mirror
every morning, Helen? And I don’t mean with all those clothes on. I suggest you
do. Only women with gorgeous bodies like yours have a right to. Excellent way
of building self-esteem. But tell me, my dear, when did I last touch you?
Where? How? Show me, my dear.”

“Mr Ong, you mustn’t make fun of me. I’m
very serious. I’m very unhappy.”

“Tch, tch, tch! I don’t want you to be
unhappy. You know that’s the last thing I want for my efficient, hardworking,
totally loyal little secretary. But my dear, you still have not given proof for
your accusation. You accused me of touching you. When was that? What did I do?”

“Mr Ong, I was wearing a pearl necklace and
you touched it and admired it, but you were only interested in ... in ... ”

“In what, my dear? Tell me.”

“In touching my breasts, Mr Ong!”

“Ah, how strange the word sounds coming from
you. But I like it. You know Helen, I’ve never heard you say ‘breasts’ or
‘thighs’ or ‘penis’ or ‘screw’. It’s okay to say them, you know. This is the
age of emancipation for women. You say and do exactly what you like. So I
touched your breasts, Helen. How did I do it? Like this?”

“Please, Mr Ong. Don’t do this to me. This
is no time for joking or playing. I’m very unhappy.”

“But surely it does no harm to admire a
woman’s lovely breasts? And you have the loveliest breasts I’ve ever seen,
Helen. Nicer than my wife’s. I tell her to use those bras that improve the
shape and thrust. What size – ”

“Oh, please stop, Mr Ong. I’m only a simple
secretary and I have to work hard to support my child who is in hospital and my
husband who is at present unemployed – ”

“But happily employed in other ways, my
dear. How I envy him! While I go home quite tired out and unable to perform my
husbandly duties as well as I would like to, he is all fresh and ready for you.
How many times – ”

“Oh, please stop, Mr Ong!”

“Look at this picture, my dear. Isn’t it
wonderful that they can do it in this position? I couldn’t if I tried. Maybe I
should try – ”

“Stop, Mr Ong, please stop!”

He was once more sitting in front of her,
his fly unzipped. She ran out, sobbing.

At her desk, she quickly dabbed powder around
her eyes, applied fresh lipstick and prepared for the day’s work. Appealing to
a man’s compassion for a woman did not work. Indeed a supplicant woman raises a
man’s blood so that he wants to hit harder, rape more. She would have to think
of some other way out of the bitterness. Tomorrow would bring its fresh store
of bitterness, and the day after tomorrow yet a greater, but she would have to
endure. The sobbing could not be in the open, only in the Women’s Room.
Meanwhile, she would write to ‘Agony Aunt Aggie’ of The Evening Star. She would
end her letter with, ‘Please advise me, but please don’t advise me to give up
my job, because my husband who is at present unemployed gets violent every time
we have money problems and also because I have a three-year-old son who was
born with a defective heart and who will need a very expensive operation.’

“Helen, would you please come in for a
minute? And bring the Meyer file.”

“Yes, Mr Ong.”

Woman, know that if you are a subject race
socially, you move in the ancient literatures with the nobility and dignity of
godlike spirits.

Know that your womanhood has been held as
sacred among the Athapascans and the Anatolians, among the Chinese and the
Chibcha, among the Irish and Iroquois, among the Japanese and the Jicarilla,
among the Egyptians and the Eskimos, among the Mashona and the Mexicans, among
the Semites and the Scandinavians, among the Zulu and the Zuni. Woman, know
this: that you hold up half the sky.

(From The Woman’s Book Of Superlatives)

Bina, her baby sister on her hip, was
nevertheless able to manage the 20 skips, and so claim the prize which was the
skipping rope itself, a length of hemp rescued from the garbage bin outside old
Abu’s shop. Her two friends, Fatimah and Zakira who had been turning the rope
and counting in perfect unison, “One, two, three, four – ”, graciously handed
over the prize which Bina expertly coiled and prepared to take home, to save
against any future need. Meanwhile, she Jet her baby sister play with it,
setting the baby on the hard earth of the playground, under a tree, where it
sat contentedly chewing one end of the rope.

“I could do 30 skips if I wanted to,” she
said with happy confidence, adjusting her blouse which was held together in
front by a row of safety pins, as well as the skirt which was too long and
rimmed by dirt where it touched the ground.

“Is it true that you are going to be married
soon?” “Will your husband take you away, like Khalida’s?” The two
interrogators, with solemn faces, faced Bina solicitously, touched by a sense
of her tragedy and their own impending loss. For who could be a more wonderful
playmate than Bina who skipped better than anyone, told stories and was ready
to share her possessions? Once Bina saw a rupee at the bottom of a dried up well,
in a clump of grass. She slid down, agile as a monkey, picked up the coin and
clambered up, announcing the treasure and sharing it. Another day, she found a
pencil, almost new, in old Abu’s garbage bin. Old Abu provided good things in
his overflowing bins and good stuff for gossip in his odd ways: it was rumoured
in the village that he went to a beautiful woman in the darkness of night and
then discovered the next morning that she was a leper. The frantic preventive
treatment by the village doctor had cost him hundreds of rupees.

“You are going to be married. Your mother
told our mother.” They dealt out, sadly, the confirmation of her fate.

“I need not be married if I don’t want to!”
cried Bina with a defiant toss of her head. The sheer impossibility of this
claim left her two friends speechless, and they gaped at her. Their turn would
come too, they knew, if the Arab men asked for them and offered their parents
good bride money. Khalidah fetched $1,000, and Fauziah before her, only $800,
because she was darker. The men, they were told, liked their brides
fair-complexioned.

“Keep away from the sun,” admonished a
hopeful mother and, to reinforce Nature’s largesse, applied fine white powder
liberally on the face of her 12-year-old, preparatory to the line-up of
daughters for
the inspection. In Bina’s case, Nature’s munificence to her parents had thrown
up a startlingly fair child amidst a brood of dusky daughters; she had,
moreover, a face like a doll’s, hair like heavy jet curtains, and breasts which
though as yet no more than buds under her thin cotton blouse, had the promise
of full-blown fruit within the year. Her price would definitely be more than
$1,000 dollars, maybe $1,500, maybe even $2,000 – who knows? Her father’s hopes
settled on this precious daughter. Soon the Arab men would be coming; his hopes
soared.