The funeral was a quiet affair; a congregation of slippers and shoes gathered at the door, the female relatives wearing headscarves taken out of mothball-minty cupboards only for special occasions like deaths, and the male relatives at the corridors, leaning over the ledge to smoke. Strangely, as Maimon was crying, she never once thought of her husband. The only thing that was inside her head was the rain. Why did it come at the same time her husband was dying? And why did it take her away from his side? She should have been there during his last moments, to hold his hand and tell him to think of God, to finish up his sentences for him. She wanted him to know that she would pray for him every day. The rain had been spiteful. It crowded at the windows and pulled the house into darkness. The moment Maimon knew her husband was gone was when she switched on the fluorescent light and his eyes failed to wince. That sight was something she would carry with her for the rest of her life.* * *Abu Bakar had married a girl he had met working at a department store when he was 18. During the wedding they had seven costume changes. There was one where she was dressed in a kimono and one where Abu Bakar was done up like an Arab sheik. They also received a blue swan made up entirely of one dollar notes. What he remembered most about their wedding dais was the pink satin, because he didn’t like pink, but the girl’s mother had insisted on the colour. Two years later they were divorced.
After that Abu Bakar held odd jobs: working for a while at the end of a car wash, polishing windscreens and later as a mechanic in an auto repair shop. He would return home every day with grease under his fingernails. Five years later his mother decided that it was time for him to find another wife. Through a cousin, she managed to find someone who was two years older than Abu Bakar. The girl was then working as a stacker at the supermarket near her home. Her name was Maimon.
This much was what Abu Bakar told his new wife, and this much was what she lived with for 44 years of marriage.* * *One week after the funeral, Jamilah went down to visit her mother. She had moved out of the flat in Choa Chu Kang when she managed to get married at 26, to Azhar. Azhar was a man five years older than Jamilah who worked at the post office. Azhar was an orphan. His parents had passed away three years ago, within a day of each other. On some Singapore Post Family Days he would ask Jamilah’s parents to join them. He was childless and having his in-laws with him on Family Day made up the numbers. After moving out, Jamilah visited her parents about twice a month. Part of it was because she was busy as a leading member of her Community Centre’s aerobics group. She was responsible for holding activities like jogging on Fridays and for bigger events like getting people down for the Great Singapore Workout at the Padang, where even the Prime Minister was involved. Part of it was also because when daughters visit their mothers they usually bring their children along.
“Assalaamualaikum,”˚ Jamilah greeted at the door. It was Maimon who answered her and opened the door. Jamilah reflected on how from now on, it would always be Maimon opening the door.
“I’ve just finished praying,” Maimon told her. At this point Jamilah would usually ask if her father was sleeping, and her mother would grumble how the only thing the old man did was sleep. But now there was only silence.
“I bought these,” Jamilah said. “When I came out of the MRT,˚ I smelt them. Quite expensive, ten dollars one kilo. Better be good.” Jamilah handed a bag of chestnuts over to Maimon. Then she went to seat herself at the dining table, beside the vase of plastic flowers she had bought from Geylang for her mother.
“You’ve been cleaning, it seems,” said Jamilah.
“I have many things to give away,” Maimon replied.
“How about the tickets?” Jamilah was referring to the two tickets for the Haj˚ which had been reserved for her parents. They were supposed to have gone in two months’ time.
“The agency managed to get people who wanted those tickets. Nowadays it seems a lot of people want to go for the Haj.”
“At least the tickets aren’t wasted.”
“Do you know, I learnt during my Haj course that if you die while performing the pilgrimage you go straight to heaven?”
“I know.”
“But what to do? It’s God’s will.”
“All in God’s hands,” said Jamilah. Then she continued, “God loves Ayah˚ more than we love him.”
Jamilah had heard that phrase from someone, and she thought that it was an appropriate time to use it. Maimon flinched a little because somehow she heard the statement as: we never loved him enough. After touching a petal on one of the plastic flowers, a violet one, Jamilah spoke again.
“Mak,˚ do you remember Makcik˚ Som?”
Who could forget, thought Maimon. That was her husband’s first wife.
“Why?”
“She sends her regards.”
“You met her?”
“Yesterday at the market at Hougang.”
“What did she say?”
“She said she heard about the death and she just wants to send her regards.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s all.”
Suddenly, Jamilah remembered that it
