The Milkman And The Leper

Granny always had advice for Aoife that she should just follow even though she wasn't old enough to understand why because she would thank Granny later for it. That's what Granny said when she wearied of Aoife's regaling her with her string of but-whys.

So when Granny told Aoife, "Don't keep going over to that Twinkie's house to play so much", and she asked why not, she wasn't surprised when she was told the same thing.

"Alamak budak, just do as you're told can or not? You know Twinkie's mother is always going out at night so it's not good for you to take up her time in the day," said Granny, in a way that said she just didn't like the idea and would later only explain why and in Malay to her Mummy so that Aoife wouldn't understand a word. Even though Aoife did understand because she would ask Mummy to translate everything afterwards.

"Okay, may I ask Twinkie to come over here and play with me?"
"Other people's children, I don't want to take care of. Already I have you."
"But I don't mind."
"I mind. You think your Mama got so much energy to take care of you two? Anyway everyday you see her in school, why not enough? Why must play here play there? Play at school sudah!"
"Can I at least talk to her on the phone?"
"Can. You pay."

Personally, Aoife thought Granny was just being unreasonable. She was the same way with the Indian milk seller who came by daily to drop off the two bottles. She never spoke to him in the same way she spoke to the Chinese woman next door. To Mrs Heng, Granny always chatted about the price of eggs and how big Mrs Heng children were getting. But Twinkie only ever got one-word answers, and so did the milkman. Then, as soon as he dropped off the milk, she would pick the bottles up with a dishcloth.

"You don't know what he touched before touching the milk!" she would snap everytime Aoife asked why she needed to do that but not with the other bottles in the kitchen, like the soy sauce one.

Granny was the same way with the old man who slept on the newspapers he collected at the void deck of her and Grandpa's flat. If Aoife waved back to him and smiled, she would instantly grab her by the hand and circle around him as if he had some contagious disease. "You don't be too friendly to him, Aoife, just do as you're told and don't talk to him."

Aoife sensed Mummy didn't agree with Granny about how she felt about Twinkie, the goats' milk man and the newspaper collector.

"Mama came from a very rich family when she was young, and they lost everything in the war. They had to sell all their jewellery just to get meat to eat," she told Aoife.
"Why couldn't they just eat vegetables and keep the gold instead?"
"That's because Peranakans must have meat all the time. The meal isn't complete without meat. Meat was more important, so they pawned everything to get money for meat."

In fact, Granny's family had lost its entire family fortune during the Japanese occupation of Singapore in World War II, along with Granny's bride price, which was supposed to get her wedded to a rich landowner's son. The marriage fell through when the patriarch discovered that Granny's family was broke. So Granny married someone who truly loved her, which was during that time unheard of, except that Granny had no choice but to marry someone for love.

Granny had been devastated.

Grandpa had loved her ever since, and believed they could be happy on his clerk's salary of $12 a week to be shared among six children and a wife. For the most part they were, said Mummy, who remembers she and her two brothers and three sisters had to keep wearing the same shoes even though they were torn, sew their own clothes and dance to records at home because going out would be too expensive.

But whenever Granny got depressed about her life, and fretted about not having money, and felt she had not married as well as some of her siblings, she would tell the story of "my cousin Ah Eng".

Aoife knew the name by now. Granny's cousin Ah Eng had been raped by Granny's uncle. Ah Eng's mother and father found out, and to cover up the incestuous scandal married her off to the first person who proposed, a leper who manned a pig farm in Sembawang, who as it turned out, was "not so bad" for Ah Eng, as Granny would say, with a snort.

"She has four children now, all grown up. Not bad, lah, for a leper," she would end the story, usually at about the same time she finished her cigarette, and stubbed it out meaningfully.
"Mama, what's a leper?"
"A leper is someone whose body is rotting, everything is falling off, it's very contagious their disease. You touch them, you also can get it, can kena leprosy. Then they lose their toes, their legs, their hands. That's why they must live very far from the rest of us! Cannot touch them!"
"Does the milkman have leprosy?"
"I don't know! You don't know! That's why I have to pick up the bottles with a cloth, bodoh! You just listen to me, next time when you're older, you'll understand why!"
"Twinkie doesn't have leprosy, can she come over and play?"
"Aoife, you want me to put chilli on your mouth? I told you already."
"Okay, sorry."

Funny, she thought, Mama never said she couldn't play with Ping even though she knew her parents were also always away. But, as getting in too much trouble was both a painful and miserable affair, she decided not to ask any more questions for one day.