At this time of the year in China, there is a huge exodus of people travelling back to the countryside, to be with their families to celebrate the onset of spring, which is generally taken as the beginning of the Lunar New Year, which will fall on 19 February 2015 on the Gregorian calendar. Goldie knew she had to get out of China before the mad rush began, when roads are jammed, trains and flights over-booked. Her company is satisfied with the results of her work there and has given her an extra bonus. If she had the courage, this would be the right time to tell her parents that she is going to quit her accountancy job to become a professional diver. She might even go so far as to tell her parents that she wants to change her name by deed poll. She will take on her great-grandmother’s name, Kim Guek. Her hair is long now, glossy in its blackness, making her face seem daintier, her features sharper. At her homecoming, she surprises her family with her spruced-up appearance, no more spiky hair, no more heavy metal studs or chain belt. Even Emily has to concede that she looks much more feminine. Anthony smiles indulgently.
“Wah! Dajie,” both Andie and Winona marvelled, “you look so different!”
On the evening of the reunion dinner, Goldie amazes her family by wearing her tailored sarong kebaya, her transformation complete.
“Where did you get that?” Emily asks. “I have to say it does suit you.”
Emily must be mellowing. It’s the first time that she has ever complimented Goldie.
“Oh. Before I left for China, grandma took me to a tailor in Katong.”
“She’s not a bad grandmother. Or mother-in-law. Come to think of it. Pity about her loss of memory.”
“Mum!” Goldie says with amazement. “Are you all right? You seem different.”
“Mum had a cancer scare when you were away,” Winona whispered. “Doctor found a lump in her breast and did a biopsy. Dad said not to worry you about it until we know the results. It turned out to be a benign growth. But since then, mum has been acting really weird.”
“You look lovely,” Anthony says to Goldie when he comes into the room. “It’s quite astonishing. You look so like my grandmother did when she was young.”
“I’m thinking of changing my name to hers,” Goldie whispers to him. “Don’t you think Kim Guek reflects our Asian culture more than Goldie?”
“What? Your mother will have a fit! She hasn’t changed that much you know!”
“I’ll take my chances,” Goldie says in a voice which has acquired a quiet confidence. “It’s time for me to make my own decisions and to live my own life.”
Anthony raises his eyebrows, but not with disapproval.
“I like your guts,” he says.
Anthony is preparing to go to the nursing home for his mother, so that she could share reunion dinner with them, a meal held on the eve of the Lunar New Year to bring members of the family together. Anthony is unsure if his mother is still capable of understanding the significance of the day, but he can’t leave her in the nursing home on the special annual family get-together. She can be lucid one moment and totally with the fairies the next. Dr Kwa has suggested that the periods of lucidity will decrease as the disease advances. Alzheimer’s is in many ways a long funeral where the patient is alive physically but lives in the ashes of the past, sometimes dead to normal day-to-day happenings.
The Indonesian maid has spent the day before and today preparing a sumptuous meal. Having faced the prospect of cancer had made Emily re-evaluate her life and toned down her opinions. She had gone to the extra trouble of buying some food her mother-in-law would consider appropriate for a Peranakan reunion dinner: a good helping of itek tim, ayam buah keluak, and chap chye, from a Peranakan restaurant. She knows that the food in the nursing home is not of the standard of her mother-in-law’s cooking and wants her to have the best before she loses the capacity to appreciate such special foods. There’s a great deal in the media these days about heritage and the Peranakan culture, so Emily decides that it would be good for her children to know their Peranakan tradition. It is their heirloom after all. Having stood on the brink of possible demise, a sense of identity, culture and heritage has suddenly become significant to her. Emily had also bought the yu sheng from her country club, a raw fish salad that members of the family will toss together in the traditional manner, accompanied by gleeful shouts for luck and prosperity, before the dinner commences.
“Mum, you know all this yu sheng lark is not an authentic Chinese tradition?” Andie, the student-lawyer says. “I googled it. It was actually started in the 60s by some restaurant guy who wanted to sell off his raw fish. And he even created the poem that is supposed to tell you which ingredient to put in first for luck. Since Chinese people are so into feng shui and good fortune, the practice caught on quickly. The restaurant guy was happy, people are happy. Anyway, it’s a good community thing.”
“What nonsense you people find on the Internet,” Emily says with a huff. “You think that everything you google is the truth! Especially you, training to be a lawyer! You should be more circumspect with your opinions!”
As Anthony is guiding his mother onto the sofa in their apartment, Goldie is shocked to see how much her grandmother has shrunk. She seems a ghost of the woman she had left behind.
“Hello, grandma,” Goldie says gently. “I’m home.”
Pansy looks up and she sees a young woman in an elegant turquoise sarong kebaya, her long hair draping her shoulders softly. Turquoise. The bright colour flashes in her inner eye. She has seen it before. There is something about the young lady’s face which reminds her of someone. Her brain
