The Catherine Lim Collection Read Online Free

slobbered and made a fool
of himself, therefore, he felt less shame, and he was ashamed of his brother
Michael who laughed with this uncle and of his sister Michelle who thought the
uncle terribly funny.
    “Mark darling, never mind,” said Angela,
pained for her son, her greatest pride. “Don’t call him ‘The Idiot’ any more,
at least not in Daddy’s or Grandma’s hearing. Okay, sweetheart?”
     
    Years ago, the family had lived in a small
village in Changi. Old Mother grew vegetables in a small plot of land near
their wooden house, to sell in the nearby market. She was stout and strong
then, and could draw bucket after large bucket of water from the well. A large
muddy pond sometimes provided the water for the growing vegetables.
    “Come and look at something. I want you to
come and look at something nice,” Wee Tiong said, his small sly eyes smiling,
and the idiot one – he must have been eight- or nine-years-old at the time –
readily followed, his large head lolling on his rounded shoulders. He gurgled
happily.
    “Come along, I’ve something very nice to
show you,” said Wee Tiong, his small body taut with intensity of purpose. “Come
along, something nice. Something really nice.”
    Once before lured, by a slice of bread with
sugar, to an anthill full of big red vicious ants, the idiot nevertheless
followed eagerly, gurgling.
    Wee Tiong led him to the muddy pond, ringed
with tall tangled weeds, slippery at the edges.
    They stood near the edge.
    “Something nice, see? Can you see? Look
closer. Bend. That’s right. Bend over. More, more. See, something nice. Can you
see it? There, there!”
    The large lolling head propelled the body
forward; the idiot one fell in with a splash. He was in the mud at the edge;
the mud rose to his knees and he began to contort his features, slowly, in a
piteous cry.
    “Want to get out,” he said, and began to
struggle.
    Wee Tiong had expected, not mere mud that
only dirtied the legs, but deep, swirling muddy water that would have sucked in
the idiot one, lolling head and all, in an instant.
    As the idiot one struggled to get out, he
sank deeper into the mud.
    “Want to get out!” he wailed, and then the
mud was at his waist.
    A feeling of panic seized Wee Tiong: he
turned and ran, pale and gasping, homewards.
    The mud had reached the idiot one’s
shoulders before Ah Kum Soh’s husband who happened to hear the cries, ran and
pulled him out.
    The years had thrown a haze upon the
incident.
    “A devil pushed the poor idiot one into the
pond. We had to make offerings of food and flowers at the site and burn some
joss sticks to appease the pond devil.”
    “His real father saved him, his real father.
He should have gone back to stay with his real parents. It showed the curse had
lifted.”
    “We were standing at the edge of the pond
when Ah Bock saw a fish, tried to catch it and fell in. I yelled for help.
Luckily, Uncle was nearby and pulled him out.”
    If he had died that day, it might have been
more merciful. Look at him now – a 30-year-old man-child that’s a burden to an
old woman. This was not said, only thought, and in this Angela and Gek Choo
were one. Both felt sorry for their old mother-in-law. Oh, the burden of it
all.
    Michael trembled with agitation. He held
Uncle Bock’s hand. The message was in the big timid eyes: I love you. I’m glad
you didn’t drown in that mud, and I hate that pond and the pond devil.
    But the idiot one was not capable of
understanding thoughts. He only understood touch, and when Michael held his
hand, he gurgled with glee and began chattering excitedly.
     
    “It is far better,” said Mark at a school
debate at which his mother was present, “far, far better for a child, if the
doctors know that he is going to be sadly deformed, to be aborted than for him
to grow up and be a burden to his family and society.”
    The debate had been televised; Angela had
shown the videotape of it at least a dozen times to her