Yeo Wei Wei
Issue 1: RISE, July 2023
Auntie Bebe bathed the old-fashioned way using a bucket and ladle. There was a modern shower in her bathroom but she never used it. Before her husband passed away, he offered many times to have the shower removed, but each time Auntie Bebe retorted: ‘What about the taps? Are you getting rid of those too? And what will we do for water after that? Collect well water from public taps, is it?’ The last time she fetched water from public taps was forty years ago. After Cursed Thing made its presence known to them, they moved house. When that didn’t have the desired outcome, they moved again. They moved three more times after the second home but each time, Cursed Thing moved with them. After Auntie Bebe’s husband died from a sudden heart attack, for a period of time the taps behaved like ordinary faucets and Auntie Bebe could wash herself in peace in the bathroom. Then one day, Auntie Bebe woke up from her nap to the all-too familiar sound of gushing water coming from the kitchen. Whilst she was trying to silence Cursed Thing at the kitchen sink, the bathroom taps turned themselves on. She couldn’t be in two places at once, of course, and so in very little time her home was flooded. She could see her reflection in the water.
A lull followed that day. But Auntie Bebe knew Cursed Thing’s tricks by now. So today when watery jets flew into her face in the bathroom, she wasn’t surprised. She had been scooping tepid water with the bath ladle over her naked self, wishing that her bathroom wasn’t this small and poky, when the shower hose grew taut and erect like a snake rising to attack. Many more bullets followed after the first shot, leaving Auntie Bebe spluttering and rubbing at her eyes. The ladle fell onto the floor as she tried to dodge the pelting at her body. Grabbing the ladle, Auntie Bebe brandished it like a cudgel at her invisible assailant.
‘够了!够了! Enough! Enough!’ she shrieked.
Cursed Thing made no reply.
Auntie Bebe threw the ladle at the showerhead. It clattered onto the floor. How could something so small make such a loud sound? The walls of her bathroom were uncomfortably close to her. She couldn’t stretch her arms out fully on either side. That was what it would have been like – she couldn’t stop the flow of her thoughts now. The watery grave of drowned girl infants crammed inside water jars back in her village – a sight she could never unsee although she was an old woman now, as far away as she could be from that fate. She inhaled deeply. She was here in Singapore, saved, spared. Familiar smells surrounded her – the sweet, floral scent of her soap, the damp fug of this tiny space – but nothing gave her comfort.
••
Auntie Bebe had sailed to Singapore from China when the war ended. She had expected Big Sis to be at the quay when she arrived, but no, only her aunt was there and she wasted no time in revealing to Auntie Bebe what she had not been able to bring herself to write in her letters to Auntie Bebe’s father who was still in China. Big Sis had not been seen since she was taken away by Japanese soldiers. Auntie Bebe refused to believe her. She went out every day to search for Big Sis, showing an old photograph to everyone she met, asking if they had seen the girl in the picture. To persuade her to stop, her aunt repeated the story about the night their street had been raided by armed Japanese soldiers. Big Sis was dragged away into the night and not seen again since then.
One evening, as was her custom, when Auntie Bebe got home at dusk after another day of futile searching, she carried a bucket of well water to the bathroom at the back of the shophouse where she stayed with her aunt in a rented room. She sat on a low stool to wash herself with that precious water. Ladling it over her head, she was enjoying that sweet relief on her clammy, grimy skin when she noticed bubbles coming up to the surface in the bucket as if someone was breathing underwater. She sprang to her feet, knocking the stool over and backed away from the bucket until she was pressed up against the exit. Staring from a safe enough distance, she observed bubbles rippling into first a circle and then an oval shape. Curiosity overcame caution and she inched forwards, peering into the bucket.
There was a girl inside the water. The apparition wrinkled as if fingers were clawing at the water surface. It was Big Sis, wearing the same clothes in the photograph Auntie Bebe had been bringing around with her! There were cuts on her face, where she had been scratched; her hair was dishevelled and the buttons of her blouse were missing. Instead of eyes, the face had two small mirrors and Auntie Bebe glimpsed herself in them.
The next morning, she couldn’t get out of bed. Whether she opened or closed her eyes, the horrible vision in that bucket of water hovered over her. She flung a blanket over her head but it was no use. When her fever finally subsided after three days, she put Big Sis’s photograph away and never spoke about searching for her again.
••
‘Auntie, this is your room. Well, it’s Hugo’s room, but you can put your things in that cupboard and oh, before I forget, here’s the air-con remote. If there’s anything else you need, feel free to let us know,’ the baby’s father, Mr Lim, said pleasantly as he handed the remote to Auntie Bebe and went back to the master bedroom where his wife was nursing Hugo, their newborn son. Hugo, like other babies she had cared for before him, was a small defenceless creature who needed her to feed him and keep him clean. These would have been the responsibilities of his parents if they hadn’t hired her. Over the years, Auntie Bebe detected a change in the fathers. When she first started working as a confinement nanny some twenty years ago, there was very little interaction between her and the men. If her month-long presence in their homes was acknowledged, this was usually in the form of perfunctory nods and grunts. But these days, the husbands got involved from the start. When she had come to their home for the interview three months ago, she had met not only Mrs Lim with her beautiful big belly, but also Mr Lim. The couple had sat on the sofa across from her, asking the sorts of questions that only first-time parents with western ideas could come up with.
Mr Lim had placed a palm on his wife’s bump and stroked it as if Auntie Bebe wasn’t there. She had looked away each time he did this.
‘Is there anything we should get ready for you? We want you to feel at home,’ Mrs Lim had said.
Auntie Bebe had enquired then about the attached bathroom for her bedroom. During her initial phone conversation with Mrs Lim prior to this in person interview, she had already stated that an attached bathroom was a non negotiable condition for her acceptance of the position. Mrs Lim reassured her that the baby’s room was en-suite and they moved on to discuss the other details of Auntie Bebe’s month-long stay. Just before she left that day, Auntie Bebe couldn’t stop herself from blurting out: ‘It’s a boy, you know.’ She could tell from the shape of Mrs Lim’s bump. A boy! She was so happy for them.
‘Oh,’ Mrs Lim said with a wan smile. ‘Boy or girl, we just want the baby to be healthy.’
Auntie Bebe nodded. They had said earlier on that they’d asked their doctor not to reveal the sex of their baby. How odd but also how wonderful that the younger generation had such liberating ideas, she thought. Gone were the days when parents’ happiness rested on one thing, that the infant was a boy. When she was little, a male infant missing a foot was better than a girl baby with no defects. That era was long gone, not just here but in the big cities in China too, Auntie Bebe supposed, suppressing her childhood memory of abandoned female newborns squashed like pickles into a waist-high water jar in her village.
Auntie Bebe’s prediction was accurate. Three days ago an elated Mr Lim rang her from the hospital and here she was, in baby Hugo’s room. She had to see the bathroom, this was always the first thing she did when she was alone in a new client’s home. The bathroom was larger than her bedroom at home. It had a rainfall shower head over the bath tub, a separate shower cubicle, a toilet bowl, a bidet, and a washstand. She turned on the tap at the basin and waited for it to fill. The sound of the water made her pulse quicken, but she made herself count to a hundred and finally, when the basin was half full, she looked down and waited. Nothing happened. When she was satisfied, she splashed her face, patted it dry with her handkerchief and prepared herself for the start of her job.
An infant’s mewling next door brought a smile to her face. Auntie Bebe tucked the handkerchief into her sleeve, it was her must-have for dabbing at baby’s sweat or food stains and the countless other messes baby was bound to make. Her smile widened. But when she straightened herself and saw her reflection with its expression of maternal tenderness, she put the smile away and said out loud: ‘He is not mine and I will never be a mother.’ This, like her request for an attached bathroom, was a precautionary salvo. A newborn’s life was at stake, she must not take any chances.
In her thirties, after her second miscarriage, she and her husband had gone to see Old Cat, the famous tang ki at the Goddess of Mercy Temple. The medium was an auntie with short tight curls which clung to her head like a helmet. Her real name was Mdm Tan Lay Kuan but everyone called her Old Cat. As she listened to their woes, Old Cat’s face remained impassive. During the ritual, her mouth formed unusual shapes like putty until it settled into a pout and quivered like a child’s lips on the verge of crying. A small girl’s shrill voice flew out of Old Cat’s mouth like fizzy soda. It was nothing like Old Cat’s raspy two-packs a-day voice. Old Cat slumped onto the floor at the end of the spirit’s incomprehensible tirade. The tea cups used for offerings at the altar were swept by an invisible force onto the floor. Old Cat walked around them like a detective at a crime scene. After one minute, she beckoned Auntie Bebe and her husband to go close to the broken ceramic pieces and tell her what they saw.
‘Is that . . .?’ Auntie Bebe’s husband stopped.
The shape the broken pieces made on the floor was a Chinese character. 安, meaning peace.
‘Peace is a woman whose head is a roof. Poor thing, cursed thing,’ Old Cat said.
‘Cursed Thing,’ Auntie Bebe said. ‘What happened to your Big Sis during the war was unforgiveable and her spirit continues to suffer. The men who hurt her have died, but she can’t have peace yet. Is your fridge Japanese? Is your TV a Sony? Throw them all away!’
‘Our car is a Toyota,’ Auntie Bebe’s husband whispered.
‘Sell it and buy a Kia!’ Old Cat hissed. ‘Never eat tempura or sushi again!’
‘Asahi is brewed in Vietnam, does that make it alright?’ Auntie Bebe’s husband asked.
‘Tiger. Chang. Carlsberg. Anything but Asahi!’
Auntie Bebe and her husband followed Old Cat’s advice. A few months after their temple visit, Auntie Bebe got pregnant. After their fourth and last miscarriage, like their fourth and last house move, they gave up. Age demolished what little remained of Auntie Bebe’s dream of motherhood. Her bleed stopped completely when she was fifty-five. Not long after that, her husband died.
••
Auntie Bebe secured her jobs through word of mouth. Most years, she took on no more than six postings and her earnings allowed her to treat herself to Korean barbeque, bibimbap and pastries from Paris Baguette (also Korean, she checked). Her most lucrative years were during the Year of the Dragon. She’d been through three cycles by now and each time, she was deluged by job offers, the dragon being the most auspicious creature in the Chinese horoscope. That she was good at her job wasn’t something she gave too much thought to. She had a reputation among the first-time mothers and their friends for being exceptionally calm and patient with difficult babies. Mr and Mrs Lim were certainly relieved that Auntie Bebe was with them whenever Hugo clenched his tiny claw-like hands into impotent fists and bawled inconsolably. Like most inexperienced mothers, Mrs Lim often looked like she was ready to join Hugo in his fits. Auntie Bebe found it strange that anyone should expect a baby not to cry. They had been ejected from the sanctuary of the womb into this harsh life. Of course they should cry.
Her clients would never know that Auntie Bebe owed her unflappable, detached demeanour to her fear of something far more calamitous than an inconsolable bawling baby. But this time at the Lims, something had changed in her. Perhaps it was old age. Perhaps it was the irresistible cuteness of Hugo, abundantly blessed by the genes of his good- looking parents. Whatever it was, Auntie Bebe grew more attached to Hugo with each passing day, despite reminding herself that she had to keep her maternal emotions in check if she didn’t want to provoke Cursed Thing.
One day during her third week with the Lims, Hugo was alone in his cot in his room and Auntie Bebe was in the kitchen warming up soup for Mrs Lim. She looked over disapprovingly at Mrs Lim who was playing with her phone at the kitchen table. If Hugo was hers, she would never let him out of her sight, not even for one minute. When Auntie Bebe realised the line she had crossed, she immediately babbled out loud: ‘He isn’t mine! I’m not his mother! Not mine, not mine!’
‘Huh?’ Mrs Lim said absently, eyes still on the screen of her phone.
‘Not mine, not mine! His mother is that one, over there, over there!’
‘Auntie Bebe, can you speak softer? Hugo is sleeping.’
The baby’s cries rose in the air.
‘See? He’s crying. Oh God, I’m so tired of drinking this stuff,’ Mrs Lim said to Auntie Bebe as the latter put a bowl of soup down before her. ‘And he’s crying again.’
‘Drink. Soup good for you.’
‘I don’t know what’s wrong with that child!’ Mrs Lim pulled at her hair. ‘Why can’t he nap like a normal baby? He’s had his feed and his nappy was changed not that long ago. I think he hates me. That’s why he tortures me with this endless crying. Make him stop, make him stop!’ Mrs Lim started tearing.
From her many years of experience with first-time mothers, Auntie Bebe understood what was required of her at such times – she was to provide the affirmation and encouragement the mothers craved to receive from an auntie. Some of the mothers’ mothers were close in age to Auntie Bebe, so Auntie Bebe could picture these women as her daughters. But when they broke down in front of her, there wasn’t any need for her to suppress her maternal feelings because she felt nothing for them. They didn’t know how lucky they were.
‘My sister says I have post-natal depression,’ Mrs Lim said, pulling several sheets of tissue from a nearby box and burying her face in them.
Auntie Bebe didn’t have any views on these sorts of ideas which seemed to be western in origin and not quite comprehensible. What could be better than giving birth to a baby boy? Hugo had four limbs, two eyes, two ears, a mouth, a nose, and a nicely-formed male member which would bring forth more Lims in the future. What reason was there for his mother to be weepy? But showing sympathy was one of the easiest aspects of her job and not revealing how she truly felt about anything came naturally to her. ‘You stay here and drink your soup. I go take care of baby,’ she said in her most soothing manner.
Mrs Lim blew her nose and looked up. ‘So glad you’re here, Auntie.’
••
Seeing Hugo was like seeing a friend since Auntie Bebe spent most days alone with him as the Lims carried on with their busy lives. She spoke to him the way she always spoke to the babies she cared for whenever they were alone. ‘Your daddy has gone out to work and make money and your mummy doesn’t know how lucky she is,’ Auntie Bebe told Hugo as she leaned over his cot to pick him up. The Lims were most enthusiastic around Hugo whenever they had their phone cameras aimed at him or when one of them was in the frame with him. Auntie Bebe didn’t understand the need for two cameras but this was the way the young did things these days. She noticed that both Mr and Mrs Lim went everywhere with their phones, even the toilet. ‘One day you will have a phone too and you will be taking many photos of your handsome face,’ she said to the caterwauling baby. She said this even though she could see objectively that his features were distorted by his tantrum. Auntie Bebe cooed: ‘You are small baby but your temper and your voice, aiyoh, so-o-o big! You made your mummy cry,’ she said as she hugged him to her bosom. ‘Silly mummy.’
She felt the warmth of his head, that wonderful weight of it resting against her chest. She touched his downy fuzz with the tip of her nose. On an impulse, she pulled up her blouse, slid the strap of her bra off one shoulder and guided his little face with a steady palm towards her breast.
She had to stifle the urge to squeal when she felt his lips hoovering the skin of her areola, searching hungrily. Then it happened – he clamped his sweet bud-like lips onto her nipple – and Auntie Bebe yelped as much from pain as delight. The baby’s curiosity tickled her. She could see the questions in his eyes: Where was the food? Why wasn’t anything entering his mouth?
‘Peace, peace,’ she murmured. Gazing down at his insistent mouth, her lips began to mirror its suckling movements. This was how her mouth had moved when she hid inside the pond behind her family home in China on the day the matchmaker came for her. Submerged and partially hidden by the weeds underwater, this movement of her lips helped her to stay calm somehow. She blew bubbles intermittently to breathe, but her father, the matchmaker and all the others who were searching for her hurried past the pond, casting flurries of shadows on the surface. Later on, the matchmaker would leave Auntie Bebe’s family home with Big Sis rather than Auntie Bebe. She would chaperone Big Sis first to Amoy and then to Singapore on a ship where a family waited for their child bride – servant and future wife to their five-year-old son.
‘I didn’t know they would make Big Sis take my place,’ Auntie Bebe
whispered to the baby. ‘I was scared, I didn’t want to be sent away from my family.’
The baby leaned back from her and unleashed even louder cries than the ones before. Auntie Bebe squashed her breast into his face to make him take her nipple, but this time he writhed and even kicked his small useless limbs at her.
His crying grew fiercer by the second. It was like the taps in her home, starting softly at first before they became uncontrollable.
‘Enough! Enough!’ Auntie Bebe muttered at first before she too, like the taps and the baby, lost control.
Loud water sounds emanated from the bathroom. Mrs Lim’s voice came from the opposite direction, through the locked entrance to the baby room: ‘What’s happening? Is Hugo alright? Auntie, what are you doing to my baby? Open the door!’
Auntie Bebe shook the baby to make him stop. The water and the baby were combining forces. She was in their tempest, but she would keep herself safe, just as she had done so inside the pond of her childhood home all those years ago.
When firemen charged into the room, she surrendered the baby to Mrs Lim without any struggle. She would have sat down on the floor despite the water if the men hadn’t caught hold of her. Mrs Lim shouted at her, even as she guided the baby’s face towards her enormous, waiting breast. Auntie Bebe watched as the men talked, Mrs Lim scolded, the baby drank. She wished they would follow the example of the baby and be quiet. There was silence at faucets of the bath, the basin, the toilet flush, the bidet, the shower. But Cursed Thing wasn’t appeased, and so even though Auntie Bebe was silent, she told the rising waters that only she could hear: ‘Enough! Enough!’
Yeo Wei Wei’s fiction and translations have appeared in anthologies and journals, including the Best New Singaporean Short Stories anthology, Brooklyn Rail, Mascara Literary Review, and QLRS. She is the author of These Foolish Things & other stories (2015). Diasporic and Clan, two volumes featuring her translations, transcreations and adaptations of Soon Ailing’s short stories, were published in Singapore, UK and US in 2023.