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Old grandmother lay on her bed, stiffening a little, her small bright eyes fixed suspiciously on the door when she thought she heard footsteps outside, but falling back in relief when she remembered that the whole family had gone out for the afternoon, and there would be nobody to disturb her.

Disturb her! “They seemed bent on just that,” thought old grandmother bitterly. Why must that daughter-in-law of hers be plaguing the life out of her, wanting to get rid of the things in her room—her table, her cupboard, her bed!

“My very altar—she would fling my ancestral tablets out of the window if she could,” thought old grandmother angrily.

And the bitterness gave way to an overwhelming sadness so that old grandmother moaned and rocked from side to side in abject misery. From her teenage days, she had had the habit of speaking aloud her sorrows even when the sobs made speech incoherent. She did so now, recollecting the griefs of her life, first in choking agony, and gradually, as the sobs subsided, in a kind of mournful sing-song.

“I am only a poor old widow. My sons and daughters do not care for me. They argue with one another about whose turn it is to take me in. They think I cannot understand the foreign language they speak, but I know all that they are saying.

“They do not want me because I am old and sick and cannot take care of their children anymore. They have forgotten that I am their mother. They even want to take my things away from me and throw them away.

“Have I no right to keep the things that were given to me by my mother? What is so wrong with this cupboard that it must be thrown away? What is so wrong with this bed that I have slept in for 60 years now? My bed—she hates it and wants to destroy it. I cannot bear it, I shall die.” And old grandmother’s head dropped on one side, as she continued to moan to herself.

“Bugs. Filth, that’s why,” said Karen to her husband, trying to keep down her temper by clenching her hands, so that her beautifully varnished nails dug into the flesh of her palm.

“Do you know, Sai Khong,” she called him Sai Khong whenever she was angry, otherwise it was darling or sweetheart. “Do you know that her bed is so infested with bugs that the creatures have actually invaded the children’s room?

I found four in Carol’s mattress this morning, and two in Ricky’s.”

“Couldn’t you get Ah Moi to clean out her room?” asked her husband wearily.

The newspaper lay limply on his lap. He hated such scenes. Mentally he was back on the golf course, joking with his club buddies.

“Clean out her room?” shrieked Karen, no longer able to control herself. “Do you know, Sai Khong, the last time I got Ah Moi to do that, she chased the poor girl out? That was exactly two months ago. Now the place is a pigsty. And our children’s room is becoming infested.

Soon the whole house will be. I’m going to move the children to the pearl pink room, right at the end of the house.

Even in her muses, Karen could experience feelings of gratification as she spoke of the pearl pink room. This, together with the “dove grey room” and the “powder blue room” had borne testimony to her impeccable sense of colour, ever since they moved into the semi-detached house.

The thought of having to give one of the four rooms of this new, lovely house to a stupid, sickly, stubborn old woman of 70 who kept all sorts of filth in it, was a most vexing one, and Karen bit her lips in mortification.

“Couldn’t you persuade her,” she said sharply to her husband, “to give up all those monstrous pieces of furniture that are at least 100 years old, that collect dust and bugs, for some decent, easily managed pieces?

I am personally prepared to do up her room—put in a decent bed with a comfortable mattress, instead of that hideous four-poster with its carvings and that filthy mat and the rusty tin she uses as a pillow. One of these days, she’ll be infected by disease. We’ve got to do something, and all for her own good.” Karen warmed to the theme, glad to show her husband that it was really concern for his aged mother that she was making so much noise about the old, rickety, bug-infested bed.

To her friends at the office Karen could be freer in the expression of her feelings.

“I’m absolutely in despair,” she would say. “That mother-in-law is a thorn in my side. You know, she insists on keeping those old-fashioned things that are such an eyesore.

That bed! Goodness, it takes up half this room—it’s the ugliest thing I have ever seen, all weird carvings and full of bugs and vermin! I call it The Monster.”

Thereafter, Karen’s friends always greeted her with, “And how’s The Monster?” Encouraged by their murmurs of sympathy she would go on: “Sometimes I wish Sai Khong and I had never bought the semi-detached. It was not so bad when we were staying in the flat; I couldn’t care less what she did there, as the place didn’t belong to us.

But now, what’s the use of a new house, in such a prestigious housing estate, when a part of it is like a Chinatown slum? One day, she came out of her room—one of the very rare occasions—and she carried such a smell of decay and death that I had Ah Moi disinfect the whole house afterwards.”

The sympathetic murmurs grew, and one of the colleagues who happened to be a fellow-sufferer, broke in with a tirade against mothers-in-law, and Karen sighed: “Well, what’s to be done. We’ve got to put up with their nonsense. Not to mention the continual irritation at having one’s name distorted to ‘Kay-Lan’ and hearing one’s children called ‘Kay-La’ and ‘Lee-Kee’.”

They all laughed, they liked Karen’s sense of humour. In a confidential tone she added: “You know what I’d like to do with that room when it is available? Make it a study and music room for the children.

I’ll have wall-to-wall carpeting, and have Carol and Ricky do their studying there. Carol’s piano will be there too. It’s so important to have one’s children properly educated these days. There’s so much competition in society today….”

Old grandmother lay very still.

“I’m going to die,” she thought. “I’ve never felt this way before. I think I shall die very soon.”

She slipped into an uneasy sleep, and thought she saw herself, many years ago, a young woman of 24, frightened by the noise and the smells on board ship, feeling very sad and wondering how soon she would be in that new country that she was going to, to join a
husband who had left her to seek his fortune only a few weeks after their marriage.

Then it was no longer the young woman she saw, but a series of scenes which pressed upon her consciousness and caused her to murmur aloud, remembering everything in detail—the birth of her first son, after the humiliation of three daughters, the number of sons that followed, as if the curse had been lifted, her husband’s pleasure, and how he came one evening from his shop to where she lay, breastfeeding her son, and big with another, and gave her a gold chain, to show his pleasure.

“And all these things, on this bed that I’m lying on now, and will die on, in a very short while,” murmured old grandmother contentedly.

But she had a dream in which she saw Karen coming in with an axe and chopping the bed into pieces. The dream was so vivid that she started crying: “Don’t do that!”

She opened her eyes then, and saw her son and Karen standing over her, and another man whom she had never seen before. They were talking in low whispers. They were talking in their foreign language as usual thinking she could not understand, but she could always get at the essential meaning.

“What do you suggest, doctor?” asked Sai Khong.

“I think it’s best to remove her to hospital,” said the doctor. Old grandmother understood the meaning of that word. She tried to say, “No, let me die here. Let me die on this bed,” but of course nobody could hear her.

“I think it’s a very good idea, darling,” said Karen.

“The doctor knows best.”

Old grandmother wanted to shout at her: “You’re going to get rid of me at last! You’re going to throw out my things, my treasured bed!”

“Throw out the bed?” Karen’s colleague remonstrated, and she clutched Karen’s arm and said excitedly: “Dear, do you want to know something? That Monster, as you call it, is worth a little fortune!

A friend of mine just met a businessman who is anxious to collect these old beds, do them up, and sell them as antiques to tourists. Those American and European tourists love these old carved things, and will open their fat wallets for them!”

Later that evening Karen asked her husband: “Darling, is everything okay? Is mother comfortable? Which doctors are in charge or her?”

He assured her that everything had been done to make the old lady’s last days comfortable. “I have got Dr. Sinha to take care of her, he is the best doctor in Singapore,” he said.

They sat quietly together, promising to take turns in visiting her everyday, now that her end was near.

“We’ll bring the children along, she may want to see them,” said Karen.

She was going to add, in as casual a tone as she could: “By the way, darling, that old bed in her room—someone tells me that I may be able to get a good price for it. A collector’s item, sort of,” but she decided that that could come later.