Miss Seetoh in the World (53 page)

Out in the bright sunshine, standing by the
roadside to hail a taxi, she said to herself, ‘Oh no, am I never to be free
from her?’

For the driver of the red Volvo that had
screeched to a halt in front of her was none other than Maggie, as if she had
lain in wait all through the ghost wedding, watching somewhere from her parked
car.

She was smiling and said brightly, ‘Hi, Miss
Seetoh, get in. I’ll give you a lift to wherever you want to go!’ Beside her
was a young, very pretty-looking girl who was also smiling amiably.

Maria’s immediate impulse was to say,
‘Thanks, Maggie, but it’s okay. I can get a taxi easily.’ Clearly it was part
of Maggie’s plan, whatever it was, whether then taking shape or already fully
formed in the girl’s permanently active, scheming mind, to get Miss Seetoh into
her car for the useful duration of at least half an hour to put the plan into
operation.

‘Miss Seetoh, get in, quick! There’s a car
behind honking. Okay, you impatient idiot!’ She turned around to make a rude
sign, ordered her young passenger to open the back door, and in a second,
Maria, as if against her will, was swept into the back seat. ‘Miss Seetoh, this
is Angel, my little sister. You recognise or not?’ said Maggie laughing
shrilly. ‘She grow into big girl now. Very pretty, but very naughty girl.
Angel, say good afternoon to Miss Seetoh!’

The alarm bells in her head never rang more
insistently. The red Volvo reeking of the smell of new leather, probably a gift
from one of the hard-drinking companions in the bars and lounges, possibly the
man with dark glasses she had seen waiting for Maggie at Yen Ping’s wake, the
whiff of the bars and lounges clinging to Maggie’s extravagant hairdo, clothes,
perfume, high heels, make-up, nail varnish and multitude of jangling jewellery,
the new sly smile of the young Angel signifying an innocence already lost or
about to be lost in the older sister’s plans for her – oh no, the world of
Maggie spelt danger of the worst kind that should never be allowed to even remotely
touch hers.

Maggie said, as she drove along and Maria
tried to work out the motive for the new mood of expansive affability, ‘Angel
and I going to the Hotel Premier for high tea. Their high tea really high
class, I tell you! Come and join us, Miss Seetoh.’

Maria declined firmly. ‘No, I hope you don’t
mind, Maggie, but I really have to be home now.’

The girl now turned on her a look of deep
distress, apparently part of an ongoing scheme of enticement, ‘Miss Seetoh,
something very important. About my sister Angel, I need your advice. You are
only one I trust for advice, Miss Seetoh. I really trust you, Miss Seetoh.’
Maggie could use that word to serve any mood or purpose. There was no relenting
in Maria.

‘Maggie, I’ve already told you. Our days as
teacher and student are over. Too much has happened. It’s best that we don’t
see each other again.’

Maggie’s eyes suddenly filled with tears.
They were not the tears of defiance and anger that Maria had seen that awful
day when she rushed out of the creative writing class, but the artful tears of
manipulation, causing the alarm bells to ring shrilly. The girl turned to say
something to Angel who responded sharply. They were speaking in a dialect that
was totally unintelligible to Maria except in the strident tones of accusation,
for Maria was convinced Maggie was blaming her sister for what was happening.
Soon the sisters were shouting at each other, and Angel started crying.

‘For goodness’ sake, stop all that,’ said
Maria severely. ‘What on earth’s going on?’

‘We both in trouble, Miss Seetoh,’ said
Maggie blowing her nose on a piece of tissue paper, ‘and only you can advise
us. Please, Miss Seetoh, don’t say no.’

Over high tea at the Hotel Premier, Maria
thought, as she listened to the indefatigable Maggie, now all dry-eyed and
cheerful, I must never let down my guard with this girl. It turned out that the
big problem Maggie had intimated was none at all; it had to do with Angel who
was not paying enough attention to her studies, and too much to her boyfriend,
someone called Eddie who worked as a deejay.

Maggie who had settled on certain awkward
euphemisms (where on earth had she got them, Maria wondered) to describe her
work – ‘I am in the social entertainment enhancement industry, Miss Seetoh,’ ‘I
provide professional services to select clientele of certain social standing,
Miss Seetoh’ – said disdainfully, ‘A deejay! I said to Angel, ‘Why you so
stupid? What future you got with deejay? Your sister work hard for you to go to
university and you want to go with deejay’?’

Maria now understood what the noisy quarrel
in the car had been about, for Angel screamed back, ‘You leave me alone! You
don’t boss me around. I can go with whoever I like!’

Maggie ignored her, as if she were a
recalcitrant child, turned to Maria and said with a very serious face, ‘Miss
Seetoh, I know you already leave St Peter’s. Now no job, no income. How about
you give private tuition to Angel, prepare her for the English language G.C.E.
O Level paper? I can pay you well, Miss Seetoh, because you excellent teacher.
Also, Miss Seetoh, I can find you other students, go to your place for private
tuition. You can make lots of money, more than teacher’s salary. You know or
not, the old Chinese language teacher at St Peter’s, Mr Kam, he left and give
private tuition, bought big apartment.’

Everything came out in one rushed,
breathless effort of persuasion that was too urgent to be interrupted. Maria,
now clear about the purpose of Maggie’s ambush of her as she was waiting for
her taxi, said firmly, ‘Right now, Maggie, I have no thought about giving
private tuition. I can only think about writing a book, which I’ve always
wanted to do.’

The first statement was a lie, the second
the perfect truth: she would have no choice but to work as a private tutor to
support her passion of writing which might remain just that – a passion only,
with no financial reward.

Her new life was shaping more clearly by the
day. With Por Por’s death, she could sit down and work out the practicalities
that had to be in place before the dream could be invited in. It would be
divested of its centerpiece, that lovely little studio apartment that grew
lovelier with its unattainability, but it could still be the happy, peaceful
world she had long yearned to be in. If it was to maintain its peace, Maggie
and anyone connected with her had better not be part of it.

Maggie pushed a little further,
commandeering her entire panoply of persuasive skills, including melodrama and
clowning. She said, tugging a lock of Angel’s hair and making the younger girl
scream in protest, ‘Miss Seetoh, you know how much I love my little sister,
will do anything for her. You know or not, I open bank account for her, to save
money for her university education. Because she is very bright girl, with
brains and can go to university, not like her stupid sister Maggie!’

Angel made a face and began eating a large
plate of ice cream. She said sullenly, ‘Always checking on me. Always calling
to see whether I am doing my homework.’

In Maria’s ever active imagination suddenly
flashed the most bizarre picture of Maggie in the black sexy lingerie she had
once seen her in a dream, wearing for a triumphant Bernard no longer burdened
with cancer; the man in the picture was not her husband but the man with the
dark glasses in the car, and Maggie was saying to him, right in the throes of
lust, ‘Please excuse me, something very urgent, can’t wait,’ before jumping out
of bed and going into another room to make a call to her sister, ‘Angel, good,
so you at home. Are you doing your homework? When I come home, show me.’

Then she saw Maggie, now divested of the
lingerie, climbing back into bed. Maria had to suppress a smile for the
situation had lost its lightness, and Maggie was looking at her with the old
hardness and resentment. The girl opened her gleaming leather handbag to take
out a name-card to give her.

‘Here’s my phone number, Miss Seetoh. If
change mind, want to coach Angel, just call me. I can pay you double the normal
tuition fees, no problem.’ She placed a hand on the table where Maria could see
a sparkling diamond on her middle finger that she was sure had not been there
before. A thought occurred to her and froze her: could it be the lost Tiffany
ring that was not lost after all? Maggie was a liar, cheat, braggart and thief,
all rolled into one. She had not seen the ring long enough to be able to
identify it; in any case, she did not care, and as she rose to leave, insisting
she would take a taxi back, she never disliked her former student more.

Neither Maggie nor Angel would be allowed
anywhere near her new world. She would remember to change her phone number so that
she would not be bothered by Maggie’s calls again.

The visit from Father Rozario was
uncomfortable; she was sure it had to do with her mother and she was right.
‘Your mother asks you to forgive her,’ said the good priest, and before Maria
could ask an astonished ‘Why?’ he said, ‘For not attending your grandmother’s
funeral.’

There was the dilatory explanation expected
of her mother, which the good priest, on her behalf, must have memorised word
by word, about needing to act in accordance with one’s conscience; Anna
Seetoh’s conscience had told her it would be wrong to take part in a Taoist
ceremony.

‘Is it wrong, Father?’ asked Maria, and
Father Rozario replied, ‘I suppose in the end it depends on your conscience.’

In her new life with Heng, Anna was in the
midst of a novena of prayers to bring about the conversion of his wife, one
more feather in her cap of evangelical zeal, and she did not want to spoil it
by attending a pagan ceremony. She wanted priestly support of her stand, and
Father Rozario had readily, good-naturedly obliged. ‘Pagan?’ Maria remonstrated.
‘Do you call Por Por ‘pagan’?’ Father patiently explained that Anna Seetoh had
used the word in the purely technical sense of a non-Christian, with no
derogatory meaning intended.

‘Father, my Por Por was a good, kind person.
Do you think she is in heaven now?’ Maria’s willful streak, already manifested
in childhood when she had asked impossible questions of the kindly Sister St
Aidan (‘Sister, how come if the Garden of Eden was in a dry desert area it had
an apple tree?’), was asserting itself now, not to discomfit the priest whom
she actually liked for his generosity to all his parishioners, but to hear what
God’s representatives in a multi-ethnic, mutli-religious society, had learnt to
say in response to tricky questions.

Father Rozario said, ‘God is our merciful
father. He will never condemn a good person.’

He winced slightly when Maria, her
willfulness not at an end, asked, ‘Can animals go to heaven, Father?’

‘I could look it up in the Bible for you if
you like,’ he said desultorily, and it was then that she administered a stern
rebuke to herself: ‘Maria, for goodness’ sake, stop harassing the poor priest!’

He stayed for coffee and cookies, prudently
sticking to innocuous topics of a non-religious nature, such as the weather and
the declining health of poor Mrs TPK whom many parishioners were praying for.
Then he rose to take his leave, never mentioning once that in the list of
people to be prayed for by the church prayer group, it was not Mrs TPK but
Maria Seetoh, widow of the good, pious Bernard Tan, who headed the list.

Shortly after, Anna Seetoh paid a visit to
her daughter. ‘If it makes you happy,’ she said, ‘I will visit Por Por’s niche
in the columbarium with you, and say my own prayers for her.’

Maria said, ‘Mother, let’s sit down. There’s
something we have to talk about seriously, if we don’t want to end up not
talking to each other at all.’ It was the simplest of modus vivendis: agree to
disagree on the matter of beliefs and thereafter steer absolutely clear of any
topic that might break the agreement. ‘For one thing, Mother,’ said Maria, ‘I
don’t want you to threaten me with hellfire. For another, I don’t want you,
every time you say something to me, to add, ‘Praise the Lord’, or ‘God’s will
be done’, or ‘Blessed Mother Mary knows.’

For Maria, the invocations had reached a
point of irritation equal to the infliction of tinnitus; each time her mother
shared a piece of information, good or bad, made a complaint, issued a warning,
paid a compliment, the sheer certainty that the invocations would follow in a
precise second, made in exactly the same tone of voice, with exactly the same
pious uplift of eyes, would drive her crazy.

 ‘Alright, Mother? And a third thing. No
reference to what Heng is saying and doing now that he’s a devout Christian. I
don’t want to hear a word more. Alright?’

‘Alright,’ said Anna Seetoh curtly. ‘You do
all the talking. I’ll listen.’

‘No, Mother, that’s not the point,’ said the
strong-willed daughter. ‘You can do as much talking as you like, minus those
three irritations. Now, to be fair, I want you tell me what you want me to
avoid saying or doing, so as not to irritate you.’

Anna Seetoh said stiffly, ‘Nothing. You can
do and say anything you like. You are the smart one. I’ll just keep quiet and
listen.’

It turned out that Anna had something to
talk about after all. Maria had noted on previous occasions her mention of a
certain Joseph Boey, the sacristan of her church, whom she described as an
extremely kind and helpful man. He had gone out of his way several times to
make her and Heng feel comfortable in their early attendance at the church
services. When his name came up for mention a few more times, Maria decided to
do a little investigation of her own. Over her mother’s favourite minced pork
noodles in her favourite restaurant, she pounced on the name as soon as it came
up again, watching eagle-eyed for tell-tale signs. Anna Seetoh’s mood was a big
improvement over the sullen guardedness of the first few days, which made it
easier for her to say with teasing gusto, ‘Aha, Mother! Who is this Joseph
Boey? Don’t tell me you’ve found your heartthrob?’