Had a sombre read in Suchen Christine Lim's collection of 14 short stories titled, 'The Man Who Wore His Wife's Sarong' (2017). However, all these stories are all about the Chinese families in Malaya pre and post 1965, and some dated back to the Japanese occupation. It also included stories of inter-racial marriages, a domestic helper's experience and folly, and drugs and the death penalty. It's as the title indicated, 'Stories of the Unsung, Unsaid and Uncelebrated in Singapore'.
I enjoyed the abrupt endings of each story because the author left it to the reader to decide how it would end or how the story turned out. There're many themes touched in this book, most of all familial obligations and social norms, and adherence to what is 'normal'. Life was hard back then, and family was everything, including minor wives, concubines and mistresses, half-siblings and such.
Cross-dressing, LGBTQ characters are fleshed out. They led a life of secrecy and pain because they knew that 'normal' society wouldn't accept them, and maybe not even their family members. But the point is not in the LGBTQ characters or their feelings — it's in their stories, which are as painful and normal as any heterosexual person's lived-through experiences.
Rose was somehow looked down upon, raped by said priest and was left 'cursed' child, leading a life as a cabaret performer, and later on, a mama-san running a private brothel. The other, Cha-li became the adopted daughter and took over the priest's role as the Taoist deity of the Monkey God. Cha-li never knew what Rose went through or what her adoptive father did to the latter.
Decades of separation closed by a terse reunion between Rose and Cha-li. Cha-li was overcome by guilt, and also love. She still loved Rose. But could Rose overcome her bitterness to accept it? It ended on a big question mark of whether the childhood friends and lovers made their peace with each other.
She couldn't face Rose. She wanted to shut her eyes, shut out the noonday glare, but she forced herself to keep them open, fixed on the green lawn outside sizzling in the midday heat. 'I... I can get a flat big enough for the three ... three of us ... er ... you and him ...' Her voice trailed off.
The eponymously titled short story in this book was pretty cool. It meanders, but it got to the point. Molly, the narrator's Uncle Kim Hock is the man who wore his wife Gek Sim's sarong. There were the mysterious consecutive deaths of Kim Hock's mother followed by his wife in a matter of two days. The daughter-in-law was apparently bullied by the tyrannical Nyonya mother-in-law, and after being all meek and obedient initially, morphed into a hard woman who stood up to bullying. Molly was only a six-year-old child back then and didn't know if her deceased Aunt Gek Sim was indeed a witch who had incurred gambling debts and kept a toyol in the house. So Uncle Kim Hock loved pink and cross-dressed. The mother had an issue with it.
And if you think about it, Uncle Kim Hock loved his wife and she him. Not in the way the world expected. Not in the way Uncle Kim Hock's mother and sisters had expected. But it was love nevertheless. The love that accepted him for who he was. I can't claim to know him well. I can't claim to know his wife. She was the dreaded landlady in my childhood, the witch. But she was the mother of Tommy and Johnny, and the grandma of their four children. Witch or no witch, she must have taught them something about love. They didn't judge their father, why should we?
The last story of the book is titled 'The Lies That Build A Marriage', which was earlier published in 2007 and placed into its own short story collection. That was some painful family history. As I read through, these stories and family secrets could have belonged to any of us, to our grandparents. If they didn't say a word about anything, they have taken all their secrets with them to the grave.
One more story that I didn't mind is 'The Cleaner's Son'. In a nutshell, old woman Ah Gek has had a hard life, and also worked as a cleaner before she got fired. She borrowed money from the local loansharks, but couldn't return it and the interest compounded. Said son in this title is John, who is gay and HIV-positive and absolutely depressed after the death of his partner. His three sisters lead their own difficult lives too, not seemingly able to escape the poverty that enveloped them since childhood.
Ah Gek also needed money to pay for her son's HIV drugs. She agreed to run an errand for the loansharks in Johor Bahru. She didn't know that she was a drug mule (at least from how the author presented it), and got caught and was given the death penalty. She was placed on the death row for 10 years. Ironically, in Changi Prison, Ah Gek didn't have to worry about loansharks or not having a bed or food and shelter. This is one of those cases of tragedy and poverty, and genuine ignorance about drugs and scams. And this is when I wonder what people think marriage and having children is about. It's like, you labor your whole life, and what for? Is it worth it?
She saw herself shrinking smaller and smaller until small as a bug she'd scuttled away from the Virgin Mother. She had failed as a wife and mother. Fought her husband. Fought her children. Fought them throughout their childhood to adulthood. Yet not one of them would bend to her will. Not even Kow Kia. She'd loved him the most. Did he live with a Malay man? She was blind when she should be mute like the Holy Mother. Maybe that's what children want from their mother. An inscrutable maternal silence.
No comments:
Post a Comment