Miss Seetoh in the World by Catherine Lim Read Free Book Online Page A

oppressions of her marriage would be added
the supreme one of financial dependence, translated into the daily humiliation
of stretching out her hand for money to go shopping for groceries, to pay the
maid, to buy things for her mother and Por Por, to go for the occasional lunch
with her friends.
    Without a word, she rushed to the bathroom,
locked the door, stood in front of the mirror, stared at the pale, stricken
face staring back, and then fell into uncontrollable sobbing. It was a kind of
wrenching, wracking misery that she had never experienced before. She was aware
of her husband pacing the floor outside the locked door, of his saying, ‘Come
out, there’s no need for all that.’ Apparently shocked at her reaction, he
never raised the subject again. That night, he made a few attempts to caress
her body which was resolutely turned away from him. She longed to go to the
spare bedroom, but that further act of defiance would create its own storm of
discord which she simply would not have the energy to handle. She had done it
once, not daring to lock the door; he had appeared in the middle of the night,
a dark austere figure in the doorway, and she had got up and returned silently
to their bedroom. In a comfortable, well-appointed apartment that he had
specifically taken out a huge loan to buy for her after marriage, the old
yearning was still there: if only I had a bed of my own, a room of my own, a
house of my own.
    She remembered a scene in a movie in which a
weary wife, asked what she liked best about her husband, had replied promptly,
‘His absence.’
    The witticism had at the time amused her
greatly, and was readily shared with girlfriends. Later, in the quiet of her
reflections, she saw the serious side of the ontological absurdity as it
applied to her own situation: her husband’s absence from home for a weekend, on
a trip with his boss for a conference in Jakarta, was a reality all its own,
claiming its own existence and presence. In her imagination, the welcome
absence became a solid gift, a magnificent ang pow of unending cash, enclosed
in the brightest of red gift paper, that she could spend as she liked.
    On the happiest spending spree in her life,
she returned to the long girlhood walks in the Botanic Gardens, which he never
allowed her to visit unless in his company, read for long hours curled up on
the large king-size bed now all her own, and, best of all, made an appointment
with the reluctant publisher to try to make him change his mind. She made the
phone call for the appointment from Emily’s house, just in case the maid or her
mother let slip the information in her husband’s hearing, and there was the
whole tedious explanation to go through afterwards. The rare joy of the weekend
only emphasised the oppression of the days ahead. I’m not sure I can continue
living like this, she thought miserably. The Catholic woman, enjoined to live
with her husband till death did them part, could be condemned to a death-like
existence till the end of her days.
    As a child she had hated the temple visits
that Por Por had forced upon her, and the endless visits with her mother during
the Chinese New Year season to the homes of relatives she had never seen
before, stiff in a ridiculous dress of lace and ruffles that her mother had
made on an old sewing machine, with large pockets to receive the New Year ang
pows which she promptly handed to her mother as soon as they got home, before
Heng, even then already on the look-out for gain, could lay his hands on them.
In a fit of bad temper, she would, halfway down the road, abruptly remove her
hand from Por Por’s or drag her feet along the ground as she walked beside her
mother. Sometimes she sat down resolutely on the ground and refused to get up.
Her mother would jab her forehead with a forefinger screaming, ‘Why are you
like that? Do you want to end up like Por Por?’
    Por Por who was born and brought up in China
was the black sheep who was now paying, with her