Moth Stories, page 23
You’ll be 33 soon. You have never had a boyfriend. You work long hours and only go for holidays with your group of single-women friends, those girls from university and Joan from the office who are all in your position. You took a cruise from which you came home tired and out-of-sorts. And now this young man comes twice. He may not be handsome or lively but did you not say he’s a doctor? Besides, what else are you looking for?
“Yes, mother,” said Li Hwa dully. “He’s nice.”
* * *
The first two dates did not leave much of an impression on Li Hwa. The first was to Jack’s Place for steak where he ordered wine, which had made her feel flattered. He had asked her about herself, her sisters, and told her about his own family.
By the second (to a movie and beef noodles afterward), she knew about the clinic he hoped to start one day. The stamp collection he kept. His outings with his parents to Giant for super-saver Chinese New Year promotions. He told her what he had planned for the next date, in blithe assumption of it. She did her honourable best to quell the return of the same feelings of their first meeting, when she had thought him presumptuous and crass.
At the end of a day, getting ready for bed, she thought of his pale round face, its indeterminate features, the remnants of acne, the buck-teeth, the effete stoop of round shoulders that presaged the middle-aged hunch to come, his darting, restless eyes that had made her think him a broker or salesman of some sort. Not guileless, as his three-year search for his second-hand Mitsubishi proved, as his daily consultation of the real estate prices bore out, as his talks of wise share investments presaged. Not a shirker, as the dutiful care of his parents showed.
Would she have been disappointed had he never called again? Had she said, Oh I am going through a busy patch, in response to his suggestion of a third date? She could not say.
It still irritated her the way he had, of looking at her with a slight upturn of his chin, as though sizing her up, a quirk she could do nothing about, nor about those eyes that darted everywhere as though he were afraid of missing a chance, nor even about the ridiculous habit of sententious declarations: the early bird gets the worm. He who hesitates is lost.
He clearly lived his life by axioms. Sometimes she wanted to say, You sound like an advertisement on the back of a bus.
Now, a few more months down the road, six—or was it eight?—dates later, and in the wake of her mother’s remark, Li Hwa knew herself in a better position to gain a fresh perspective on those first impressions.
If his conversation was hardly scintillating, there was no disputing the soundness of his philosophy; as for that annoyingly air of always sizing up people, deals, even the bill for a meal, well, that could hardly be called a character defect.
Here was someone who would always pay his taxes on time. If he had children he would never shirk his responsibilities. If he had a sick parent he would do his best. The clinic would come if he had to eat and live thriftily for however long it might take. She had seen the way he had manfully drunk the wine he had ordered but clearly did not much like.
There was nothing of the fluttering stomach she had felt when she had chatted with Boon Aik.
But there was a river, and this river was life. It had its ebb and flow, its inexorable currents, it was compelled by a higher force.
And it was in full spate, never more so than now, that Li Eng had produced her brood and Li Qin was expecting her second. Ah Ee, their children would call, childish respect as yet untainted by adult irony. The latter was already seeping into the too-bluff greetings of their relatives at Chinese New Year. And Li Hwa, looking into the mirror at the end of a long day, knew that every road had its eventual fork. She searched the pale narrow face. There were already beginnings of shadows beneath her eyes. Her slightly protruding lower lip might have suggested a pout had she been prettier—the pout that fleshy, flirty Mavis had had, one hand on Boon Aik’s arm.
Her one asset was the gangly basketball player’s figure that had made her tower over the boys in her class and now made high-heels with Chee impossible. But she knew that this leanness was nothing against the curves and powers of seduction of women as Mavis. What was the secret that she did not possess, possessed in abundance by women like those?
But then, did it matter? You weighed your chances and played the odds.
She looked back levelly at her reflection.
He’s nice, ah, girl?
Yes, mother. He’s nice.
* * *
The question came six months later, with that jokey, slightly challenging lift of his chin, the now-familiar cockiness: So? Want to get a HDB? By then he was almost a member of their household: a place was always laid for him at weekends. He taped TV serials for her mother, ran grocery errands with her, and was always at hand for that cough, ache, dyspepsia attack.
Life truly was a river. You could choose to jump in, or she could stay forever on its banks, forever an observer.
It seemed the most logical thing, to say, offhandedly of course, Sure. Why not.
And then, when he said, The flat should be in a good area. Near a hub. MRT station, Li Hwa was able to congratulate herself with genuine conviction.
Thank goodness she was not one of those women who use their sex and looks as bait.
* * *
It was a quiet ceremony at the Registrar’s, followed by a five table dinner at the Imperial Peony. There was a slight tug-of-war about how many tables his side would give hers, but it was only half-hearted as both sides knew that it was merely making official what was the natural order of things.
The best and most pleasant surprise, by the time the last of their furniture was perfectly positioned in their two bedroom flat on the outskirts of the Hougang housing estate, was how well they understood each other. It was like a reunion of kindred spirits from lifetimes before. When he said, Do your math, about discounts, tax rebates, savings, and the bottom line, she knew exactly what he meant. She was in completed agreement with his axioms: Plan Ahead, Keep an eye out, Cover your bases, Value for Money. She for her part could read that infinitesimal lift of his brow, that slightest widening of his eyes, and the repressed smile that signified the pleasure that his pride would not allow him to express. She knew she need never have to explain driving an extra half hour to a certain neighbourhood whose local supermarket had advertised offers that week on Milo and toilet paper, or if she became impatient with him when he forgot to take with him one of the coupons she faithfully cut out and stuck onto the chalkboard in the kitchen. It was all part and parcel with competitive petrol prices and bargain-sniffing and win-win investments. She would always know precisely where she stood with him, as she knew that their fortnightly Sunday morning communions would always be the punctuation marks of any month, needing none of the superfluities of whispered tenderness or the jargon of bad movies.
This marriage of minds was never more obvious than after the boys came.
V
Somewhere between the stages of nappies and semi-solid food, the goal had formulated itself. It would of course have to be the Li Bai Primary School. Li Bai’s alumnae counted the children of ministers and captains of industry. It was one of an elite number of schools dedicated and funded toward the pursuit of bilingualism in English and Mandarin, its avowed goal the parsing out of an elite by an educational sieve.
The fulfillment of this objective, neither Peng Guan nor Li Hwa being alumnus, required residence within the statutory distance (distance category) or the tenuous hope that an offer by Li Hwa of volunteer work would be accepted. So highly in demand was the school that places in all categories were always over-subscribed. Li Hwa submitted her name for its Helping Hands Reading Club when Chong was almost a year old. It was tenuous, but, as Chee said, Hey, every bit helps.
The corollary of this of course was that the language aspect could not be ignored. Seven-year-olds started at Li Bai able to write Mandarin compositions bristling with proverbs and idioms, equipped thereby for the national winnowing at age ten. How else would you separate the chaff from the grain?—the gifted, the not-gifted-but-smart-enough, the unremarkable “others”, and the vocationally-destined, for those euphemistically termed “neighbourhood schools”, on whose horizons hovered those grey forms, liminal yet menacing, of technical institutions. Their very possibility made Li Hwa blench.
Chee’s nephews and nieces, besides Beng and Tock, were headed that way. Wing, Teng, Chui: Wing’s parents had failed to see it was a zero sum game; Teng and Chui’s had tried, but they could only go so far, their children were hardly academic in inclination.
Li Hwa and Chee cherished fond and secret hopes. There was of course always the possibility that one’s child was gifted in which case the obstacles presented by proficiency at Mandarin could be easily ignored. The system in certain instances was receptive, understanding, even helpful to a surprising degree.
But they also prided themselves on their realism. There was no telling how it would all go. Chong was already three. It was time to spring off with mandarin, with cunning games with measuring jugs and brightly-coloured liquids, that would lead to mathematics, with play-sessions with the rhymes and sing-song that would lead to speech and elocution, with just about anything that could make a difference. So that even if not gifted, there would still be a place in the rung below. Business Class if not First. As the sorry examples of Peng Guan’s nephews Beng and Tock and the others had shown, children, left to their childhood, only fell into fecklessness and dreaming and complacency and irresponsibility, a ripe compost for the work of statistics.
To this end therefore Chong, by kindergarten, had a full day: the Montessori Children’s House (8am–11am); and the Precious Jade Kindergarten (11:30am–1:30pm), where classes were conducted in Mandarin and children were made to stand in a corner for lapses into English. After lunch—a haphazard affair of warmed-up Kentucky chicken or last night’s rice and leftovers—they would be dropped off at Romper Room (groundwork for the ultimate destination of competitive sport, if a place in a good secondary school and Junior College was to be assured of in the future), or Hsiao Dou Dou, (Mandarin song and dance, arts and crafts). A brief nap would follow and then it was off to the YMCA for swimming lessons.
Li Hwa sometimes felt stupefied from the driving and logistical arrangements their routine, necessitated by her wish as well, to work part-time. (Mondays and Thursdays, her mother; Tuesdays and Wednesdays Chee’s oldest spinster sister; Fridays, his mother; all trips early mornings, lunchtime and after work, hers). The combined efforts of maid, mother, and grandparents on shifts reached its point of maximum efficiency and broke down one day when Li Hwa, her mother and Chee’s sister all converged on the Precious Jade one afternoon owing to a miscommunication.
So when Chee said, Maybe better stop work, he spoke the thoughts in her mind. Taxis were expensive. And of course there was the maternal influence and all it stood for.
Times like these Li Hwa felt a gust of affection for her husband.
By this time their HDB resale purchase in the Dou Miao estate, within a five-minute walk of Li Bai, came through, entitling the older boy to priority for Primary 1. A frisson of bitterness trembled through Li Hwa that this had not come through earlier. It would have saved her at least a year of its Helping Hands and Reading Clubs, whose bright noisiness and perpetual childish incidents filled her with feelings far so from maternal as to be almost menacing. Fortunately such cost was forgotten by the time Chong and Chuan were settled into routine.
The boys were at school in the mornings; the afternoons were divided into two, the time-table pasted up on the bench desk Li Hwa installed in the living room (she had read somewhere that children fall into order easily when order is made a part of their daily life). The first part of the afternoon was spent on multiplication, division, reading and spelling (Mandarin and English), Mandarin compositions, and Mandarin exercises. Li Hwa, between her sons, accomplished this armed with a booklets of stickers, which, accumulated over time, could be exchanged for toys, sweets, comic books (bonus stickers for good Mandarin composition grades). The later part was spent ferrying them about their various activities (You must be all-rounder was the Li Bai credo).
There was the Warrior Wasps Chinese Enrichment Centre at Woodlands; the Einstein Mathematics Laboratory at Pasir Panjang; the Oxford Creative Writing, Elocution and Drama Centre in the heart of Serangoon Gardens. Then, as it is axiomatic that all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, to these were added Jumping Gym and Junior Judo. For, besides the benefit of exercise, school athletes were given bonus points for entry qualification to junior colleges.
On the five nights that Peng Guan held late-night clinics, dinner was on a come-and-get-it basis. The dishes would be laid under a fly-cover in the kitchen, cooked earlier by the maid (Jamilah was their fourth): vegetables in viscous pools of gravy, chicken in ambiguous pieces huddled amongst indeterminate pieces of potato, coldly gleaming. The boys were allowed cartoons or computer games a half-hour before dinner and a half-hour afterward. The rest of the night would be left for finishing up their schoolwork. Lights-out time was non-negotiable.
Weekends allowed a respite but imposed their own tyranny. They were the days in which all the other co-curricular pursuits were crowded. The programme had been modified. Jumping Gym was relinquished when neither boys showed the aptitude required for serious competition. Swimming had replaced Junior Judo, and was a source of anxiety. The boys constantly failed selection. Li Hwa had on occasion had words with the coach, and the outcome was always the same, the timed entries by each swimmer’s name unarguable. Such events always made for an unhappy ride home as Li Hwa gave her sons pep talks for poor showing. For their progress Chee relied on her reports. For he too was busy at the clinic or at computer showrooms. Li Hwa did not begrudge him this. It gave her a break: one less presence to summon up attention for.
The streaming exams at Primary 4 were a blow to both of them. The first time around when Chong had failed had been bad enough. Now the younger one.
So far from being found not to be gifted (Was it ratios? What sort of diagrams? You don’t remember? What sort of answer is that?), Mrs. Phua the vice-principal had confirmed: no, assuredly, she did not think they would cope with Chinese as a first language. And certainly no Gifted Category Re-Test.
Li Hwa sat on a bench in the school canteen. She felt giddy, as though she had not eaten. Sitting there before the permed primness of Mrs. Phua, Li Hwa had felt like a dispossessed villager appealing against a terrible dictator. Of course, Mrs. Phua’s decision could be overruled, if Li Hwa exercised her parental prerogative. Business Class if not First.
But Mrs. Phua’s words hung in the air, reverberant and dire. Of course you can appeal but I should tell you that generally such children seldom do well.
Dinner that night felt like a meal at a wake. Li Hwa and Chee had both anticipated this day, results day, with hopes that they had not dared to speak of. But Chee had known from the first, when there had been no call, no text from Li Hwa. After an almost wordless dinner, with the boys sullenly silent between them, Chee retired to the solace of his cyber flights—those websites with the names of second liner universities, the second-hand market cars, computer equipment, properties. Li Hwa could only sit in the darkness of her room listening to a silence loud with clarity.
* * *
How does one tell one’s child: now you are back amongst the faceless digits, your elimination commenced when you thought life was just fun and games. Now you will have to work just like dogs to stay in the pack.
The boys realised they had failed not merely in exams but in something bigger. It was everywhere at school, emanating from those classes with names like Justice, Democracy, Equality, containing the elect few in teacher-pupil ratios that made the rest look like herds in pens. Beyond their reaches, in that common corral of the masses, the Others like themselves, bright but not bright enough, average but just about.
For Li Hwa, it was all the more painful, awaiting the children in the pick-up bay, the chatter of the mothers like unwelcome crows. Ah yes, Mei Chen is in the gifted programme. Your Benjamin? What about Sharon’s boy? No luck. But I hear Sharon is appealing. Soh Hoon’s? Better not ask. I heard it’s not even… Li Hwa saw the trail stretched behind those words, landmarked by the effort of the years: Oxford, Einstein’s, Warrior Wasps, Hsiao Dou Dou, Blessed Jade, Montessori, a limitless trail from those earliest beginnings to the present, littered with the debris of their striving: the tyranny of exams, the dogma of the disciplines, forgotten theorems of simple algebra, the unnumbered hours of Mandarin composition and memorisation. All now the mute and forlorn evidence of hopes for futures blighted by the age of 10, condemned by the age of 12. Li Hwa sat in the car, driven there by the tide she had no longer strength to struggle against. There was only one way out.
She went home and locked herself in the bedroom. She could not recall when she would pour her heart out so unreservedly.
And then, drying her eyes, a surprising strength surged from her deepest self. There was always a Plan B in any situation.
When the news came that her appeal was allowed, she felt like a parched traveller stumbling on an oasis. If Chuan were not to be numbered amongst the gifted, he could at lease take his place amongst the next best. Business Class if not First. All a matter of resource allocation and making sure you’re at the receiving end, said Chee, beaming at the news.
The news restored some measure of domestic tranquility. Li Hwa, hobbled emotionally by these events, found her sons surprisingly obedient to her listless instructions. The boys, with the beginning of fuzz on their upper lips and voices becoming uncertain, were themselves growing aware: through his self-absorption, Chuan was able to see that he had only compounded the heavy blow inflicted by his older brother’s earlier failure. Chong, aware that he was responsible for half of the heavy emotional blow his parents now staggered under, became more biddable and obedient. Not long after this, Li Hwa discovered she was pregnant for the third time.
