Singapore, Singapore
‘And that’s why you and your son will never get along.’
‘I said, I am done with this argument, ’ Mother said.
‘You only like to finish when I am starting, is it?’
But Mother grabbed her precious little nephew Ang’s hand and shut the door before Mother could hear any more of her sister Nadia’s thoughts. The bells and chimes from the inside clanked and clinked and whistled, and as she closed the gate to the door Nadia’s shouting on the other side continued to resound. Mother had no time for it. It was nearing six-thirty in the morning, and Ang’s reporting time would start an hour from now. They walked towards the lift, but just as they were passing the stairwell, Nadia, who had gotten over the shock of the door being slammed on her, opened the door and shouted for them to stop. Mother did not want another argument to start, and definitely not in such a closed space, so she turned and started descending the stairs, much to the complaints of little Ang.
‘Auntie… Hey, Auntie… Ah cold.’
Ang normally liked to put on an affected British accent, the sort they were most likely teaching him at the international school, but at such an early hour the click-clack sound of his Singlish accent was all that came out.
‘Nonsense,’ Mother said. It may have been early in the morning, but the weather in Singapore was so humid that even at such an hour no chill was out. ‘You get cold because you don’t know how to run. You have to heat up your body like this.’
Mother increased her speed so that they were nearly jumping down the stairs. Normally around this time the corridors of these HDB buildings were empty, and so the unintended noise of Mother and Ang’s footsteps would have gone unheard. However, at that very moment, there was a group of Tamils outside of the second-floor lobby. They looked to be around Mother’s age, the men wearing vetti, the women wearing sari, all of them stopping mid-chat to stare at Mother and her nephew. Mother assumed they were not used to seeing people rushing down the stairs at this hour, and so she smiled politely at them.
The woman, whose hair was woven with flowers, pointed at Ang. ‘Ma’am, those are underpants your son is wearing.’
Mother chuckled, as she thought the woman was simply making a fashion comment. Then she stopped in her tracks and looked down at the polka-dotted boxers her nephew was sporting. Yes, in her bid to escape Nadia she had forgotten that Ang liked to put on his uniform in parts, and he often wore his school shirt for fun with no trousers or shorts attached.
By then, Nadia had caught up to them. The primly vixen that she was—being a only little under the age of fifty and yet still getting away with tucking that much of herself into a dress so short—she was wearing her usual garish amount of make-up on her face. Mother felt it was because she wanted to hide the origins of her looks – Nadia’s father, who had been their mother’s second husband, had been an Arab-British-Malay Eurasian. Unlike Mother, who had such an obviously Chinese face that tourists from the mainland kept asking her things in Mandarin that she didn’t understand, Nadia had inherited enough width to her eyes and enough length to her nose to pass for anything in the Southeast Asian region, which often resulted in unwanted questions. When she powdered her face that white it was impossible to tell where she came from. It made Nadia look unimpeachably modern – a product of her father and his set of cultures, values, and traditions. It also got rid of the roundness that Nadia had inherited from their mother.
Despite how different Mother and her sister superficially were, most could somehow tell that they were siblings. Even this group of random neighbours were inching themselves away, as if they knew these two had it out for each other.
‘You forget this?’ Nadia declared loudly to her sister, unfurling a pair of pants for everyone to see. Then she looked away and noticed that she had an audience of six other people. The bullish look in her eyes became that of a meek dove. ‘Happy Pongal,’ she said to her neighbours.
‘This is not Pongal!’ said that same beflowered auntie. ‘This is my daughter’s wedding! Now, can you put some trousers on your boy?’
Mother took this moment to interrupt, ‘Don’t you know what time it is?’
It was getting close to six forty-five, which meant that Ang was going to be late for school.
‘The time? You’re thinking of the time? Is that why you marched Ang out of the house in his sleeping trunks?’
Mother groaned so loudly it could have been mistaken for a growl. ‘We’re going to be late for school! We don’t have time to argue.’
The woman who was wearing the most makeup out of the Tamils started shouting, ‘We are on our way to the temple! Can you both stop making a scene and let us go?’
In moments like these, Mother and her sister were good at forgetting whatever was causing consternation between them. They both took turns apologising to the woman and asked her questions about her special day, before realising that they were wasting more time yet. They marched back together to the third floor and worked on Ang’s wardrobe together. Nadia helped him put on his pants and tie. Mother brushed his hair so that all of the messy strands were curled back. The boy was so ready he jumped with his arms out in front of the mirror and made a victorious pose.
It was now seven.
Nadia said, ‘Let me drop you off.’
Ultimately, she would have to if they were going to get to school on time. To get from the south side of Novena to the other side of Queenstown would take around an hour on the MRT, whereas a drive, assuming that they would beat the morning traffic, would take about fifteen minutes. The problem was that Nadia’s work was at HSBC in Claymore, which was in between the two neighbourhoods. Thinking about that, Mother put Ang’s backpack on and asked, ‘But won’t you be late?’
Nadia shouted so loudly that the pink she had plastered all over her brown cheeks was cracking. ‘I’m late already! The manager of the bank is going to kill me!’
‘Okay, okay, let’s go!’ Mother said. They took the lift down and made their way to Nadia’s car. Her red Mazda had a mild layer of dust on the windshield because she was normally driven to work by her husband, Victor, in his car. In fact, Victor had been in the house earlier when Nadia and Mother first started arguing. Mother wondered when it was that he had lost his patience and chosen to leave without telling them.
The three got into the car. Nadia turned on the obnoxious K-pop that Ang liked to listen to, then went back to the argument they had been having before Mother ran off:
‘So, as I was saying, you have to be careful around your son.’
‘Aiyah, not this again.’
‘I’m saying it to be respectful.’
‘Oppan Gangnam Style!’ Ang shouted. The song playing was not actually that one, but it was the only K-pop song Ang knew the lyrics to, and he was doing the horse-riding dance in the back seat despite his moves not fitting the sultry beats coming from the speakers.
Nadia stopped whatever she had been talking about to say, ‘Ang, keep quiet.’
This interjection did little to calm Ang down, and Mother said over the noise, ‘You always like to take his side. You did this ten years ago. On and on, you said this, you said that. Well, he is coming home now.’ Mother groaned again. ‘You are the first person I told. And now you are behaving like this.’
‘Relax, lah!’
It was hard to tell whether Nadia was exclaiming towards Mother or towards the traffic. They were now on the other side of one of the largest shopping centres in Singapore, and at this point there was a bottleneck, resulting in all of the cars piling up from the left and the right and even from the opposite direction. Mother, who often took the MRT and wasn’t familiar with the traffic aboveground, asked, ‘Why got so many cars?’
‘Everybody has somewhere to go at seven o’clock,’ Nadia explained. Mother saw the sweat on Nadia’s wrists.
‘Worrying too much won’t get you on time,’ Mother said, and, in a bid to calm her sister down, she was going to say more, but Ang interrupted by shouting, ‘Ehhhhh, sexy lady!’ This time, it was Mother’s turn to say, ‘Ang, be quiet!’
All the while, Nadia shook her head like it was the most annoying thing. ‘You try getting to a bank late. They don’t take it easy on me.’
Her legs were jittering, to the point that Mother was starting to see the ends of Nadia’s stockings at her thighs. Mother retorted, ‘Pull down your dress.’
Nadia spat back, ‘I’m not your son. You don’t tell me how to dress.’
And wasn’t that always the case? Mother thought about how it was when the two of them were growing up. They had been born at different times and never once inhabited the same household. Mother had grown up in the northern part of the island with her parents, near the causeway to Johor, whereas by the time she and Father had gotten married and moved themselves towards the city centre her father had passed on, and her mother had remarried and moved the family over to Rochor. Mother knew little about Nadia’s father. The first time she really got to know Nadia was when she and Father were coming home to announce their marriage. It was an odd time to have a sister who was young enough to be your child, and to have to relate to her. Over time, Nadia matured and become more like a sibling, but Mother always saw her as a little girl. And sometimes Nadia leaned into the role as sister more than Mother would have liked, such as when she had to butt in with an unwarranted opinion. She was doing it once more.
‘So, when your son comes back home,’ Nadia had to reiterate, ‘I implore you—no, I beg you—don’t bring it up anymore. It’s his personal business, and that’s it.’
‘You’re the one who likes to bring it up and be a kaypoh,’ Mother scoffed. ‘This is the sixth time you have said this in three days!’
‘Then you know…’ Nadia said.
But Mother did not. She didn’t understand why her sister had to repeat this over and over again in the first place. The constant mentioning of it was causing the heat that Mother had grown used to arriving uninvited to again spring up in her chest.
‘Don’t say it again,’ Mother said as she reached over to open the air-conditioning vents a bit more.
'Say what?’ Nadia asked, but before Mother could preempt, the traffic came to a light point. It was here that Nadia crossed into a side street, taking advantage of the shortness of the alley to make her way to the other side of the commercial buildings and high-rises. Something of catching that turn filled her with energy, and just as the song changed tune, Nadia said, ‘You mean, I shouldn’t say that your son is gay?’
She had to use that ugly word over and over again. Mother wished little Ang didn’t have to hear it. Mother didn’t want the idea of what that word represented to get into his permeable young head. It was a word the little children probably used among themselves all of the time. It was a lifestyle that was getting fashionable, even in state-controlled Singapore. Though never in the limelight, never in the media, and never in the public eye.
Mother couldn’t respond at first because she was taken aback to having to hear it again.
Yet Nadia was continuing. ‘Well, what do you want me to say? Is there anything I have said that I haven’t said before?’
‘Don’t say anymore, cukup,’ Mother said, and she turned up the volume so that whatever K-Pop song was playing would blare even louder.
Nadia carried on, ‘All I am saying is he will come home. For the first few days, he will be tired – so let him rest. After that, he will want to go on about his business. He will want to date, he will want to meet people like him. And that is when I say, let him! This is his home, too, so you have to make him feel comfortable.’
Ang was interrupting again. They were getting close to school, so he was changing his accent to fit the way the boys and girls there had to speak. ‘Auntie, can you please turn that down?’
Mother realised she had been playing with the dial and had forgotten to stop turning it up. She turned it down to an agreeable volume, then told Nadia, ‘You are saying it’s his personal life, but you keep talking on and on about it.’ Mother took a breath to calm herself. She hadn’t been there when Father and Son had spoken on the phone, but based on the way the conversation had gone she could have only imagined how desperate Son must be. ‘He spent all of his savings just trying to survive. He’s lost the rights to his visa. We’re going to have to pay for his fourteen days of quarantine. And then we’re going to have to help him find a job. It won’t be easy on him, but it won’t be easy on us. You remember that, please…’
They zipped on the roads for some time, neither sister knowing what to say to the other. The primary school was a set of towers on its own, with red-tiled roofs of colonial British style. As they pulled up along the road, Ang saw a group of his friends alighting from the bus, and so he opened the car door himself and hopped out. Mother was not sure whether she should drop him off right at the gates as she normally did. It was not necessary now given that he was with his friends, and he was often embarrassed if she came up and introduced herself to them. Mother and Nadia gaped at him until he made his way safely through the gates.
‘Should I drop you off at the MRT?’ Nadia asked.
‘But you are late already!’ Mother exclaimed.
‘My manager is going to chop off my head anyway. I might as well drive you there.’
Mother smiled at the image, but artificially so. Nadia reciprocated with her own version of that smile which she often used at work – it was just as formal, but it involved baring a lot more teeth, which kept her appearance as kind and friendly, yet presentable.
On the drive, Nadia turned the radio off and said, ‘I’m your sister, you know, I’m just looking out for you.’
‘I know.’
‘Do you?’
The sun was making its way towards a dominant position in the sky, the cool breeze of the pre-light hours had relented to a sweltering warmth. All around them were the tembusus and the mahoganies. Nadia dropped Mother off at the corner of the street close to the MRT. Mother said her goodbyes, but she never responded to the question hanging in the air. She was finding her mind cramped, crowded, and overcooked with thought.