The Thorn of Lion City: A Memoir. Lucy Lum

The boys liked playing in the bathroom, splashing each other and wetting the wall and floor. Miew-kin and I took care to keep away in case we were blamed for the wasted water. Our bathroom had a squat toilet at the far side and measured about seven by ten feet. In one corner, beneath the cold-water tap, an oval stoneware tub held more than a hundred gallons of water. Popo thought we would save money if the tap was left to drip continuously, day and night, so the water meter would run very slowly, if at all. Every day we each had a bath using an aluminium bowl to scoop the water and, by morning, the tub would be filled to the brim again.

      One day some decorators were in the bathroom, repainting the walls and ceilings white and touching up the black skirting. In the evening, when they left, they reminded Dai-chay to keep an eye on the wet paint. Dai-chay yelled a warning to us: ‘Listen, all of you, the paint in the bathroom is still wet. You can use only the toilet. No one can bathe until tomorrow. Is that clear?’

      Only my sisters and I responded, and I wondered what my brothers were up to. I found them sitting on the bathroom floor. Beng was trying to remove paint from his feet with a towel and I saw that the walls were smudged and streaked with black. ‘Beng, you’re in trouble now. Popo will surely punish you,’ I cried, imagining her striking him with her cane for the first time. But he put down the towel and then, springing to his feet, he pushed me against the smudged wall. I lost my balance, turned to brace myself against the wall and, pressing my hands on the slippery wet paint, slid to the floor. Before I could get up, he shouted, ‘Popo, come quickly! I saw her, Popo, she did it.’

      My grandmother and my mother came running. I tried to tell them what had happened but they wouldn’t listen to me. Popo flew into a rage and my mother held my hair in a tight grip to stop me running to the garden. Together they dragged me into the dining room and pushed me down by the teak table. My arms were pulled round one of the legs and my wrists were tied. Holding my left hand, Popo wove a chopstick between my fingers, then did the same with the right. She put my hands together and tied the chopsticks tightly at both ends, squeezing them against my finger joints. The loose ends of the string were tied round my wrists so that any movement would increase the pressure of the chopsticks against my fingers. There was no escape. The thin rattan cane, looped at one end for a handle, slashed down on to my back, delivering the first sting. ‘Did you do it?’ Popo screamed after each lash. ‘Did you? Did you?’ The more I cried out my innocence, the harder she beat me. As I struggled, the chopsticks tightened on my fingers and the string bit into my skin. Blood streamed from the cuts in my wrists.

      Mother, believing that my brother would never lie, snatched the cane from Popo and rained blows all over me. ‘Where did you learn to be so stubborn, Miew-yong? Is it from your father? Is it?’ she asked, again and again. I tried to hold out against the pain, and take my mind to the places I enjoyed visiting in secret after I had delivered Popo’s chap-ji-kee lottery stakes. I shut my eyes and pictured the giant trees in the botanical gardens with their huge exposed roots and imagined myself sitting on the low-hanging branch gazing at the water-lilies in the still pond beneath. After a while, Mother and Popo got tired of beating me and sat down to smoke cigarettes. They called the muichai to bring them tea. I thought they had given up, until Popo said I was to have nothing to eat or drink until I had admitted my guilt. I was left kneeling on the floor, tied to the table, while my family had dinner. Only Miew-kin felt sorry for me, but her fear of Mother was greater so she stayed silent. My father had not returned from his office and I suspected he had heard of my plight and stayed away. I knew he loved me, but he never had the courage to stand up to Mother and Popo.

      After dinner, my mother and Popo returned their attention to me. I knelt on the floor resting against the table leg with my eyes tightly closed. Popo lit a grass wick, the same type she used for the oil lamp on the altar, and each time I protested my innocence she pressed it, lighted, to my lips to teach me not to lie. When tears ran down my cheeks, she doused the wick on my eyelids, to stop me crying. My lips and the skin round my eyes were soon swollen and blistered. ‘If you want the punishment to stop, admit your fault and stop crying,’ she shouted. In the end I gave in and said what she wanted me to say.

      I did not cry again and I would not cry for many years. That night, I sleepwalked for the first time. I climbed on to a chair, unbolted the kitchen door, opened it and walked through our garden towards the Muslim cemetery, past the beautiful mauve bougainvillea, the orange bird-of-paradise and the huge cactus, which loomed dark against the night sky. Popo saw me go and watched me as I walked but she didn’t wake me because she believed that the soul wandered during sleepwalking: should the sleepwalker be awakened, the wan pak might not return to the body and the sleepwalker would fall into a deeper sleep from which they would never return.

      Many times, after that first night, my soul would wander while my bare feet took my body outside into the night and back again through the kitchen door, which I always bolted firmly behind me.

       Nine

      When a new black Wolseley arrived outside our house in January 1941 we were all excited. My grandmother and my mother had raised the money for the car by buying tontine shares, a method of investing that was popular with housewives. Few people had bank accounts and they had paid for the car in cash. That afternoon, when Popo went to the temple, she made Father drive her there in the car so that the people at the entrance would see her arrive in style. She boasted to her friends that she had paid for the car, and added that she had a clever way with money.