A Yellow House Read online

  ‘But PoPo,’ I said, realising I was skating on thin ice, ‘You did not live in the kampong, did you? You lived in the Blue House?’

  PoPo’s stories had started to become jumbled those last months. Her speech had changed too, more and more colloquial Malay and Singlish slipped into her sentences, and other words that sounded Chinese but were not the Mandarin I learned at school.

  ‘Of course, I’m not kuku, I know where I lived. But the kampong is ulu, the best for playing wild. At home, I had to do chores. You know, we had two amahs, a cook. The amahs can do chore lah, but no, my mother made me too. Not spoilt like you, always need to focus on school work.’ PoPo paused and sniffed. ‘I sneaked to the kampong at the end of the road. My mother did not like me to go there, we were not kampong.’

  ‘What did they play there, PoPo?’

  ‘Last time in the kampong, life was free. No amah to check on you. The kids had no shoes, but the boys played football. My brothers always play football. The kampong boys were happy when my brothers came. They had a real leather ball.’

  Football. The condo boys still played it now, and at school too.

  ‘And they played chaptek. And goli. I liked goli too.’

  ‘What are those?’

  ‘Goli, are – what do you call in English? Marbles. Little glass balls.’

  Marbles I knew, I had a jar full in my bedroom. But apart from arranging them in pretty patterns, I wasn’t sure what to do with them.

  ‘Sure, marbles, I have those. But what’s chapter?

  ‘Chaptek,’ PoPo said. ‘Well, chaptek, you know. It’s this thing with feathers and you need to kick it, keep it in the air, lor. Like a football. The kampong boys made from old tyres and chicken feathers. My oldest brother was neighbourhood champion. He had one bought in the store, but the kampong boys made better so he’d trade for goli marbles. Marbles they could not make.’

  ‘Did you play, PoPo?’

  ‘How can? It is for boys, is it? Like kite wars.’

  ‘Kite wars?’

  PoPo told me how in the windy season her brothers and friends all flew kites, and the kampong skies filled with colour. Kiting was not a friendly game. The boys would stick glue to the kite string and add ground glass, so the string got sharp as a knife. They would fly their kites, high, steering to cut through the string of others so that the loser’s kite blew away in the wind.

  ‘My girlfriends and I, we would watch and chase runaway kites,’ PoPo said, her eyes hovering around the room. ‘The one who caught it could keep it. Sometimes they would fly for miles, and we’d follow the sungei, river, until it got stuck in a bush or tree. My mother would scold me if I came back dirty. Girls like me were supposed to stay clean. So we had other games.’

  ‘What else did girls play, then?’

  PoPo contemplated her answer. ‘Hopscotch. You must know hopscotch.’

  I did. But you needed friends to play it.

  ‘And masak masak. Play cook. We pick grass, leaves, colourful seeds, and pretend campfire from sticks. We use empty tins as pots, and boil soups, stews.’

  Childish. I did that when I was, like, five.

  ‘You know,’ PoPo sat up straight. ‘You know what your mother loved? Zeropoint!’

  I had never heard of it. I waited, knowing PoPo would explain if I said nothing.

  ‘You don’t know zeropoint, or yay yay? What do you girls play these days? You just want this make-up, computer games, stick glitter on fancy paper lah, but no-one plays good game with yay yay.’

  ‘But what is it?’ I asked.

  PoPo spread out her arms wide. ‘You need a lot of rubber bands to make a rope. These ropes, they are very good. You can use them for skipping too.’

  ‘I have a skipping rope, PoPo.’

  ‘No, no good,’ she shook her head. ‘No good. For zeropoint it needs to be elastic. We need to make the rope first.’

  PoPo got up and started rummaging in kitchen drawers. ‘I can’t find anything here. Where are rubber bands?’

  I had an idea. ‘We can use my rainbow loom.’

  Rainbow loom had been a craze the previous year, and Jenny and I had spent many a rainy afternoon using it to make bracelets from rubber bands. When we’d made more than we could have worn in a hundred years we created figures, dolls and animals, all from those colourful bands.

  I ran to my room and brought out the loom and stash of rubber bands. PoPo eyed them suspiciously.

  ‘Why so small lah, too long time to make the rope? My fingers don’t fit.’

  But PoPo’s fingers were slender, and after some fiddling she strung the loom bands together with surprising speed. I used the plastic loom and we competed to see who was fastest. She was.

  Whilst I concentrated on my fingers on the loom, PoPo spoke more about kampong games. When she broke off, I told her how you could make everything you wanted from loom bands. I showed her the little figures I’d made, which she looked at as if she’d never seen them before. PoPo abandoned her rope to inspect the lizard that had been my favourite creation. She said nothing, didn’t even compliment me for finishing the complex design.

  Instead, she said, ‘You know, I used to collect chichak eggs. I bred them in an empty matchbox so I had baby chichaks. My brothers said I had to catch flies to feed them, but I did not know how, so I would let them go, find new eggs, and start again.’

  She cradled the lizard in her hands and picked up a snake.

  ‘My brothers kept a zoo in little boxes. Grasshoppers, and spiders that they trained to fight. At the kampong, they held fights; pretend cock fights with grasshoppers and spiders. I could not watch. Many of their insects lost legs.

  ‘But once, they had this beetle. It was the most beautiful thing you ever saw. Bright green and shiny, like a jewel. Gold sparks shone on its shield.’

  PoPo eyes sparked too when she looked at the rubber lizard in her hand.

  ‘I wanted one of those, to keep in my own box and look at every day. A beetle like that was a treasure, hard to find. My brother bound a string to one of the beetle’s back legs. The beetle would fly and he would let it go, and then, when it reached the length of the string, bang, stop. My brother would take it for a fly, like walking a dog.’

  ‘Wasn’t that cruel?’ I asked.

  ‘Of course. People were cruel to animals then. People were cruel to people. In the war…’

  PoPo stopped.

  ‘What, in the war?’

  ‘Never mind lah. You know, one day, I cut the string. The beetle flew off, like a runaway kite, happy as a bird, a length of string still stuck to its leg. My brothers were, oh so mad. They broke my favourite doll in revenge.’

  PoPo sighed. ‘I have not seen a beetle like that since I can’t remember when. That day, maybe.’

  She looked at me wistfully. ‘Can we make one?’

  ‘What, a beetle? From rainbow loom?’ I said.

  ‘Maybe. But how to do it?’

  I took out the iPad and we googled instruction videos. We could not find any for jewel green beetles, but there was one for a ladybird.

  ‘If we do this one in green, with some of the glow in the dark yellow for the spots, it will be bright like that,’ I said.

  PoPo nodded, excited like a little girl. I was happy to show her that I had good things to play too, that I could match her kampong games with my loom.

  We set the bands on the loom as in the video and PoPo looked on, following every movement of my hands. It took a long time, and PoPo sat with glistering eyes while I worked, commenting on my moves, trying to make out that she was the one in charge; but this was my time. When it was done, PoPo brought out a matchbox, threw all the matches in the bin, and put the beetle inside. ‘I’m keeping it,’ she had said.

  Then she put the matchbox in her pocket, and transformed back from little girl to old lady in an instant. She picked up more laundry to fold.

  ‘But PoPo,’ I said. ‘What about the zeropoint?’

  ‘Ah, yes, can. The yay yay.�
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  PoPo put down the bed sheet, picked up the rope we made, my loom-made one tied to her handmade version, making one long, colourful string. She looked at it thoughtfully, and her enthusiasm faded.

  ‘We don’t have enough people,’ PoPo said. ‘You need three: two hold up the rope, first low, then higher. And then the third one has to jump over. There are seven levels. You can’t touch the rope, not at all for the first levels, not with your hands with the higher ones.’

  You jump over? How? Why? I wanted to ask more, but PoPo had taken the matchbox from her pocket and was staring at the beetle again. We’d spent all that time making a rope for a game we couldn’t play.

  Can you miss a country that you’ve never been to, one that no longer exists even though you’re living in it right now? As I lay in bed nursing my painful eyes, I imagined that beetle whizzing around, tethered and frustrated. I wished I could have seen the real thing. We only had mosquitoes and ants. And cockroaches, of course. Would people love cockroaches too, if they were green and shiny, like a jewel? I slipped into dreams where I was the beetle, my swing like its string, going up and down, back and forth, until PoPo cut the rope with her glass-tailed kite and released me high into the sky.

  The next day, I rummaged in my cupboard and found it all, all but the beetle: the loom I had abandoned when the craze ended, the bracelets, the lizard, and even, to my shock, the rope PoPo and I had made. Even without the beetle I remembered the excitement in her eyes that day, as well as my disappointment when we never played the games she’d described.

  I ran out to Aunty M and asked her if she knew zeropoint.

  ‘Zeropoint? What is that?’

  I explained it was a game and showed her the rubber band rope.

  Aunty M exclaimed, ‘Lompat Tali! Yes, we played that in our village.’

  She knew exactly how to play, just by a different name, and that afternoon we took the rope to the playground. We took turns in playing, two of the aunties holding the rope, higher each level, me and the others jumping over it on the padded surface of the playground. Most of the aunties were better at giggling than jumping, and Mary Grace sat on the ground rubbing her sore knee, unable to stop laughing long enough to get up.

  Nobody managed the highest levels. Afterwards we played with the little ones, the rope at ankle height. When they kept falling they got up and tried again and again.

  PoPo’s magic, her stories and ways of reviving the old times had worked to bring people together, even after her death. Perhaps I should give Mama a zeropoint rope to use at work? Mama would come home happy, just like the aunties had that day. I giggled as I imagined going one step further: what if we gave one to all the mean employers in Singapore and let them play with their helpers?

  But then I thought about school, and how I would never, ever dare bring a yay yay there to make friends. I could hear the jokes already.

  The thought weighed me down, and I didn’t even ask Aunty M what her daughters played in Indonesia, whether they played zeropoint, or if they had a rainbow loom – or any toys for that matter. If I’d had their address, I could have sent Nurul my old loom and the spare elastic bands. But I didn’t ask.

  19

  I was helping Aunty M to do the dishes. My mother had decided I risked becoming a spoilt expat brat, so forced me to do chores like setting the table and making my own bed. I hoped she’d get over it soon. I was a Singaporean, not an expat.

  Aunty M had been quiet all evening – but then Mama was home, and she was usually quiet around Mama. She had this multiple personality thing: she was one person with Chloe, all coo-ing and sweet, and another with me, friendly but strict. She was chatty and gossipy with the other aunties, and subdued around Mama. With Dad she was neutral. And when we had visitors, she just blended into the background as if she wasn’t even there.

  At dinner she’d said less than she normally did, not even when spoken to. Now, when it was just the two of us, she said nothing at all. She’d been on the phone just before dinner, and I was curious if something was up.

  I broke the uneasy silence. ‘Are you ok?’

  ‘Of course I am. Why wouldn’t I be?’

  I carried on drying the plates whilst working up the courage to ask about the telephone call.

  ‘Who was on the phone? I mean, earlier?’

  Aunty M started. After another pause she cleared her throat. ‘It was my daughter.’

  After the zeropoint afternoon I had banished Nurul and Adi from my mind. Aunty M was mine now, and thoughts of those distant kids upset me more than I cared to admit.

  ‘Oh. Nurul. Is she ok?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Ok.’

  Aunty M scrubbed a large pot fiercely. ‘Actually, I don’t know. We only spoke a few seconds. She did not say much.’

  That must have run in the family.

  ‘Then she hung up on me. Again.’

  ‘Why would she do that? Isn’t she happy to hear from you?’

  I always chatted forever when Dad called from one of his business trips, until he’d say he was busy and had to go. We exchanged more words on the phone than in real life.

  ‘No. She is angry with me.’

  We finished the dishes in silence. But when I was done and about to leave, Aunty M turned to me. ‘You know how you are mad at Mama sometimes? When she is busy with work? Or comes home late? That’s why Nurul is angry with me. I have been away since she was four.’

  She left the room, a broom in her hand.

  The horror slowly sunk in. Now, at last, I saw the real Merpati. I couldn’t believe she’d had me fooled all that time. She was as bad as Mama. Putting the money first. A mother for everyone but her own children. It was good I hadn’t asked her what games Nurul and Adi played in Indonesia – she wouldn’t have known. The fact that Nurul had more reason to be mad at her than I had only made me more angry. I hated Nurul, but I decided to

  hate Aunty M more.

  One Thursday evening not long after that, I could sense Aunty M was nervous. We were at dinner – she often ate with us now, even when Dad was home. When she found a gap in the conversation, she drew herself up straight. ‘Ma’am?’ she asked.

  Mama looked up from her plate.

  ‘Ma’am, sir, can I ask a favour.’

  Mama shrugged in Dad’s direction. ‘Sure. What’s on your mind?’

  ‘My cousin, she lives in Singapore too. Next weekend, her employer is away. She is afraid to be alone in the house, it’s big house. She asked if I can stay with her Saturday night. After work is finished, of course, so no trouble to you.’

  Dad halted his fork in mid-air. ‘Sure, why not.’

  Mama cut in, ‘Well, because these people may not like that? What about the employer?’

  Aunty M said, ‘Her employer said it was ok, they don’t mind. They said you can call them to check, if you like.’

  Dad looked at Mama. ‘That’s fine then. Honey, can you call these people?’

  Mama nodded absentmindedly. ‘Sure.’

  I had learned a lot from Aunty M’s helpdesk stories. I said, ‘Actually, I don’t think that’s allowed.’

  ‘What do you mean, not allowed? By whom?’ Dad asked.

  I felt my anger at Aunty M bubbling up in my throat. I said, ‘By the government.’

  Dad looked surprised. ‘What do you mean?’

  I was on a roll now. ‘MOM says she has to stay with us. It’s one of their regulations.’

  Dad looked at me strangely. ‘Where did you get that from?’

  ‘School,’ I mumbled, avoiding Aunty M’s gaze. ‘We did this project on laws, and erm, foreign workers and such.’

  I briefly caught Aunty M’s shocked look, and hesitated. ‘It is, like, a very unfair rule.’ I looked at my plate. ‘But the rule is there.’

  Dad looked thoughtful. ‘It could be true. I saw something like that in the online course for new employers I had to do.’

  I glanced up from my plate to see Aunty M staring at hers. My anger
mingled with shame and I pursed my lips tightly together. Shut up, Maya. But the cat was out of the bag now.

  Dad pulled out his phone. ‘Would it be on the MOM website?’ He fiddled with the phone for a while. ‘Aha. Here we go. A domestic worker needs to reside in the house of the employer. Clear enough. It should be fine for her to stay with her cousin.’

  ‘No, wait, what do you mean?’ Mama looked confused. ‘That means she can’t, can she? She has to be here.’

  Dad looked at Mama and gave a small shake of his head, as if afraid to do so openly. Aunty M continued to look at her plate. After a pause, Dad said, ‘No. I reside here, but I can still go on holiday. That doesn’t mean I don’t reside here. If you reside somewhere, it just means you have to be there most of the time. Check a dictionary.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s what MOM means,’ Mama said. ‘I’m sure it’s not that simple.’

  I wanted to say something too, but then Dad got angry and I was glad I’d kept quiet. ‘If you know for sure, why did you ask me?’

  ‘I didn’t,’ Mama retorted. She turned to Aunty M, who had been staring at her plate without eating ever since she asked the question. ‘I need to think about it. I’ll let you know.’

  After dinner, Mama’s phone rang. When she came back to the living room where we were watching TV she said, ‘Cynthia says I’m crazy if I allow that. She says Merpati might as well be staying with her boyfriend. They could give us a fake number, just another friend who says what we need to hear.’

  Dad paused the film we’d been watching and looked at Mama. ‘It doesn’t seem like Aunty M to do that. Don’t you trust her?’

  Mama sighed. ‘I think I do. I mean, she’s married and all.’

  ‘Actually, no,’ I said. ‘She’s divorced, remember.’

  Mama looked at me suspiciously. ‘Maya, I think this is an adult conversation you’d better stay out of.’

  It had slipped out before I realised what I was saying. Now I was really angry – at myself, Aunty M, and Mama too. I was young yes, but, I knew much more about this than she did. I was close to blurting it all out, everything I’d learned about all the aunty issues. I wanted to march out to my room indignantly, but my curiosity won out.