Now That It's Over by O Thiam Chin

Author:O Thiam Chin
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789814757294
Publisher: Epigram Books
Published: 2016-09-21T16:00:00+00:00

Lying on the mat in the darkened hut, I can’t sleep, my eyes glued to the ceiling. Light from the table lamp throws long shaky shadows across the floor of the hut. The lonesome moth that has flown in remains stock-still on the wall near the stove, the pattern on its wings like the unblinking eyes of a nocturnal beast. Toads drone mechanically, along with the insistent chirping of the cicadas. Darkness lurks like a predator outside the hut.

The old woman sits on a wooden stool at the threshold of the hut, fanning herself with a straw fan, looking out into the courtyard, into the dark forest. From where I’m lying, looking at her arched back, she seems vulnerable. Under her breath, she mutters something rhythmic to herself, perhaps a song. The sound comes to me, in a mellifluous cadence, and I strain to catch the notes. In my mind, I play out memories of my dead grandmother, my head on her lap on warm, lazy afternoons, her hand patting me gently on my back, coaxing me to sleep. She would always sing to me in Hokkien, always a song about a lonely, tragic woman pining for her faraway lover, and waiting for him to come back to her. I would tried my best to decipher the lyrics with my limited knowledge of the dialect, waiting for the song to end before asking my grandmother about the things I did not understand. Why couldn’t the woman in the song go and find her lover? How could she not have eaten for so many days, wasn’t she hungry at all? Why did she drink the poisonous potion? My grandmother would answer some of my questions, and then tell me to hush and close my eyes. I would try to think of the ways I could save the woman from her misery.

Now, with the night sounds pressing in on us, I wonder about the old woman’s life in the middle of this deep forest, high up in the hills, surviving all on her own. How can she live the way she does, with nothing except for the barest of necessities? Yet, she can, and she has, for god knows how long. Does she have a family, or someone who’s aware of her existence? Over the past few days, I have seen no other person in the vicinity. For all I know, she might have lived this way for a very long time, without the need for anyone, or anything else.

And in imagining her life, I recall my grandmother’s, who lived alone for twenty-two years after my grandfather passed away. While she had taken care of my brothers and me on days that my mother was at work, she was often alone, occupied with her own life. She did not trouble my mother, her second daughter, with anything, even on occasions when she was sick; one time she even admitted herself into the hospital after she had a bad fall, and did not inform my mother until the day she was checking out.

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