Miss Seetoh in the World (46 page)

She did not even want to read the daily
papers because occasionally there was something about him, usually about his
work in the Ministry and the conferences abroad. But about three months later,
as she was watching TV and listening to the news presenter, she learnt that he
had been sent to Germany on a posting as Singapore’s ambassador.

When she was a little girl of about seven, a
neighbour’s child one day came over to play with her, attracted by her several
dolls, boxes of beads and a plastic tea-set. Later that afternoon, she went to
her mother crying, ‘My Snow-White’s gone! Mee Mee’s stolen it!’ The neighbour’s
child must have hidden the doll under her dress and gone home with it.

Anna Seetoh was at that time in the fervid
stage of preparing for her conversion to Christianity, when its doctrines and
tenets had never been more appealing, ready to flush out every vestige of the
old religion and sweep her into a new bright world of hope, purpose and
meaning.

‘What?’ she said to the crying child
standing before her holding a large basket containing three dolls and a space
where the fourth should be.

Maria again howled, ‘Mee Mee’s stolen my
Snow-White!’

Anna Seetoh said, ‘We’re going to Mee Mee’s
house right now.’ To the child’s puzzlement, she said, pointing to the
remaining three dolls in the basket, ‘Pick one. We’re bringing her along.’

Maria chose her favourite, a cloth doll
called Sayang, with a large head and black wool for hair; in the privacy of her
little secret space under a table or behind a door, she would often whisper to
Sayang her dreams of becoming rich and happy one day, with a room of her own.

‘Alright,’ said Anna Seetoh, as she and
Maria stood before Mee Mee’s mother who was wondering about her daughter’s
frantic efforts to hide behind her back. With the formality of tone required in
a religious ritual, Anna Seetoh commanded her daughter, ‘Now give that doll to
Mee Mee.’ Maria stared at her mother. Then all was pandemonium as the full
injustice of the command sank in: she had not only lost Snow-White but was
about to lose her favourite Sayang to the thieving Mee Mee.

She screamed and made a rush at the
frightened girl still hiding behind her mother, shouting, ‘Give her back! Give
my Snow-White back!’ Anna Seetoh managed to pull the beloved Sayang out of her
arms and hand it to the thief who was too frightened to take it and continued
clinging to her mother who could only say, ‘What – what –’ in great
bewilderment. In the end, looking both confused and worried, she held the cloth
doll in a limp hand and watched Anna Seetoh stride out of the house dragging
the crying Maria with her. Out on the road, her mother said soothingly, ‘One
day Jesus will reward you. He sees everything.’

It would be years later that she understood
the reason for her mother’s strange behaviour that day. Anna Seetoh had taken
to heart the biblical message of unlimited magnanimity that God enjoined on all
the faithful: you give your neighbour not only your spare cloak but the very
one off your back. For a while after her conversion, she gave the message
literal application – giving a neighbour two bowls of rice flour when she had
come to borrow only one, giving a beggar standing outside the church a dollar
and then turning back to drop another into his begging bowl.

The breath-taking scope of the charity of
the new religion was new for Anna Seetoh; its call for patience and endurance
in suffering was not, being simply an extension of the traditional stoicism
that she had inherited from an elderly relative who used to talk to her very
seriously, even as a child.

‘I never learnt anything from your mad Por
Por; it was God’s mercy that I had your Second Grand-aunt to teach me to be a
good person.’

The aunt had instilled in her habits of
quiet endurance under the greatest privations, because, she explained, it was a
woman’s lot in life. Women were born to endure. ‘But Sky God hears and sees
everything,’ she would say, pointing a serene finger to the sky. Sky God’s
handmaiden, Kuan Yin, the Goddess of Mercy, would never ignore women’s cries.

When Anna Seetoh converted to Christianity,
it was a simple switch of alliance from the merciful goddess to the gentle
Virgin Mary.

Maria had often marvelled at her mother’s
strength in coping with the many adversities in her life’s journey, and
concluded that but for her religious faith, she would have been utterly crushed
half way through that dolorous vale of tears called other names by her
ancestors. But the relentlessness of her god in testing her was not done yet,
even in her ageing years. In obedience to his wish, she was making preparations
for a new life that would surely call for greater sacrifices; she said she was
going to live with Heng and his family in Malaysia and take care of them. They
would be in a small town with a church called, very significantly for Anna
Seetoh, the Church of the Mother of Mercy. For she had had a dream in which the
Holy Virgin had appeared to her and assured that all would be well; Heng would
be converted, become a good Catholic, live a good life, and by his example lead
his wife to the church too. In the dream she saw the little autistic grandson
cured and kneeling, bright-faced, at the altar with all of them and even
receiving Holy Communion.

‘Then my life’s work will be done,’ said
Anna Seetoh with tears in her eyes, ‘and I will die in peace.’

If she had failed in bringing her daughter
back to the church while alive, she would succeed in her new role as heavenly
intercessor. In her saddest thoughts about her impossible daughter, she had
clung to the brightest hopes. Por Por, being too old and beyond anyone’s
capacity to change, was beyond the pale of her help.

There was something that happened years ago
which had made her give up hope of converting her mother. It was a small enough
incident: Por Por refusing to throw away a small, chipped porcelain dragon that
Anna Seetoh’s prayer group had identified as a Satanic object, emanating evil
that was spreading in the house. When Maria came to Por Por’s defence and
actually took over the ornament for safekeeping for her, the two were
permanently ranged with the arch-enemy himself beyond the power of earthly
help. There was enough filial piety in Anna Seetoh to pray for at least a
peaceful death for her mother: who knew what miracle the Merciful Mother of God
might work even at the deathbed of an old difficult woman past all hope?

Anna Seetoh said, ‘Maria, there’s something
I’ve got to ask of you,’ and she knew it had to do with the hard realities of
financial contingencies, which even her mother, lost in heavenly schemes, would
be forced to face at some time.

Apparently, it was a request that Heng had
coached her to present very carefully, argument by reasonable argument: since
she would no longer be living with her, Anna explained slowly, Maria would be
saving on both the cost of maintenance as well as the monthly allowance. Would
she then be so kind as to disburse a sum, a once-and-for-all payment, to enable
her mother to begin her new life in Malaysia?

The wily deviousness of her brother once
again stung her into a sharp reply, ‘Of course you will continue to have your
allowance, Mother, as long as I have a job. How can you think otherwise?’ She
added reproachfully, ‘And of course I’ll give you whatever you need for your
new life in Malaysia.’ In her mind, she was working out some quick sums: would
she have enough in her bank account to sign a cheque for exactly the amount she
had paid out to her brother for his half of the flat? In her mind, she was
already making the washing-hands gesture of final severance; any remnant of
unease still attached to the inheritance would be cleared away, like a piece of
dirt, a stain.

Anna Seetoh said, ‘I’ll have to get some new
furniture, a new fridge, as the old one’s broken down, everything’s just so
pitiful there – ’ Maria thought, ‘There goes my dream’, and the little
apartment she had dreamt of, a pretty studio apartment that she had seen
advertised in the papers where she would live all by herself, rapidly retreated
into the distance and vanished. She wished she had more money. It could buy
dreams and vanquish nightmares, including the most horrible ones created by
one’s own family. Money, even if the filthiest of lucre, could help save family
relationships.

It could also save friendships or destroy
them. Winnie had told her, with much agitation, that Meeta’s very expensive
wedding present of the sapphire earrings had been more poison than gift. She
had sent it through the maid who arrived, looking very embarrassed, at the
hotel where she and Wilbur were temporarily staying before leaving for
Washington.

Philomena had said very briefly, ‘Ma’am said
to give you this,’ then left abruptly. There had been no card carrying the
felicitations demanded by the occasion.

‘I was going to return the gift,’ Winnie had
confided angrily in Maria, ‘but Wilbur said, ‘Never mind, honey, don’t upset
yourself. Just take the gift and forget all about it.’ Wilbur’s so right. You
know what? I’m going to sell it and give the proceeds to charity!’ The
twenty-year-old friendship had come to an end.

Maria thought with some envy that Winnie was
the only one carried along on life’s friendly, placid stream, while all around,
everyone was tossed about in the dark churning currents of disappointment,
disillusionment, fear, anger, greed, lust, jealousy, hate – herself, her
mother, Heng’s wife, Meeta, Maggie, Yen Ping and Mark. Also poor V.K. Pandy,
now freed by death, but not Mrs Pandy who was said to be in India, still
struggling with her cancer. And the great TPK’s wife who was lingering on in
her illness, beyond the power of even the most advanced medical skills. All,
all in this tumultous vale of tears, humanity’s unavoidable passage in its long
journey.

There was another, of course, besides happy,
smiling Winnie, being borne along serenely on untroubled waters. Until she
subdued the turbulence of feelings inside, she could not even bear to mention
his name, although she thought of him often, wondering how he was faring in his
ambassador’s post in Germany. There had been a dream, a very brief one, in
which he was speaking at some glittering diplomatic function, with Olivia
sitting beside him. At one point he looked up from his speech and saw her as
she stood observing him from behind some tall plants. He waved cheerfully to
her, until rebuked by Olivia who turned to her and said angrily, ‘Leave my
Benjy alone!’

She practised what she had preached to
indolent, careless students: don’t just make a resolution to work harder, write
it down, paste it on the mirror and stare at it every day. Her resolution
stared back at her every morning before she left for school: no looking back,
only looking forward. She would pull herself out of the quagmire, sluice
herself clean with pure water and start working towards a new life.

‘Hey, God,’ she said, glad that her old
irreverence was coming back, a promising sign of the restoration of spirits,
‘are you still there? You take care of Mother and Heng first, and then, if
there’s anything left of your largesse you can throw it at me!’

Her mother’s all-out storming of heaven
through a series of novenas in church, during which she was half the time on
her knees, could only be matched by Meeta’s massive plan to go on a pilgrimage
to India to personally meet with the holy god-man Sai Baba and return with his
blessing. The plan had nothing to do with winning back Byron who she realised
was just a useless bum not worth having, but everything to do with regaining
her precious health and peace of mind. She would make a request for something
rarely conferred, that is, a personal meeting with His Holiness. But even if
that request was not granted, she would return to Singapore a happy woman, for
the saint was known to see into the hearts of grieving women and relieve them
of their torments.

‘Oh Meeta,’ Maria said, grasping her hands
for the sight of the defeated-looking woman who had lost much weight, pained
her. ‘I hope everything works for you, and you’ll be happy.’

It consoled Meeta somewhat to have company
in suffering. ‘Just forget him, Maria. He’s a cad, like the rest. I can see
you’re taking it all badly, despite your brave attempts.’

She invited Maria to join her on her
pilgrimage to India. Maria said, ‘I wish I had your faith, Meeta. Or my
mother’s. That might make things less complicated for me.’ Too much cerebra,
too little viscera, he had said jokingly to her, tweaking her nose in the
endearing way she would always remember. Neither had worked for her, either on
its own or in combination. You think too much, he had said. You should feel
more. She thought, Maybe I think too much and feel too much. That was why her
tunnel had become twisted, darker and more difficult to negotiate, with the
light at the end always eluding her.

‘I am making a visit to the principal,’ said
Brother Philip. ‘Would you like to come along? I think he’s not averse to
visitors now, and might welcome our presence.’ Almost a year after his
departure in disgrace from St Peter’s Secondary school, his teachers and
students were still referring to him as ‘the principal’, as if in subconscious
rejection of the new head. Even at that stage, nobody knew the exact nature of
his offence and his fall from grace; the story was still of the improper
awarding of the building contract to his brother-in-law. It was a reflection of
the general goodwill towards him that nobody cared to find out the truth but
stuck to the belief that he had been manipulated by an unscrupulous relative,
and had not profited by a cent in the whole sordid affair.