He didn’t know how he had made it through that initial period following his wife’s passing. Incapacitated by grief, he had lain in bed, unable to sleep or eat. Remorse coursed through his veins. If only he had accompanied her that morning, he might have been able to push her out of harm’s way. If only she hadn’t spoken to their daughter the day before, she might not have decided to go to the market. If only, if only, if only. The possibilities of what could have been paralysed him.
He barely registered Hui Shan’s visits, ignored her pleas for him to get out of bed. He couldn’t bear to look her in the eye. Their daughter, who had her mother’s eyes. Their daughter, for whom her mother had lost her life. Only occasionally, when he had no choice but to respond to his body’s needs, would he climb out of bed. He would then collapse into his rattan chair, the matching one next to his, forlorn. He would stare at the Styrofoam boxes of food Hui Shan had brought him, thinking about the dishes his wife had planned to cook on the day of her untimely departure, dishes he could never taste again. With a palm on her chair, he, riddled with bitterness, would weep and weep.
He might still have carried on that way, had it not been for his wife, who entered his dreams one evening. When he roused, it was early morning. Outside, the sky was beginning to fill with light. For the first time in weeks, he took a shower and changed into a fresh set of clothes. He sat next to his wife’s rattan chair and dipped butter crackers into hot coffee, feeling the thin biscuit soften and nearly disintegrate before placing it in his mouth. By the time he put both mugs away—his empty and hers still full—he felt rejuvenated in a way he hadn’t felt in a long while.
The first thing he noticed upon unlocking the gate was the two neat rows of terracotta pots to the right of the doorway. The plants that his wife had so dearly tended were now shrivelled up, the soil painfully parched. The sight of it induced a pang in his chest. He pulled on his slippers, oblivious to the dust under his cracked soles, and began his pilgrimage. He walked, following the same route he used to take with his wife, impervious to the dense clouds gathering in the distance. The journey took an exceptionally long time, for after weeks of lying in bed, his legs were no longer accustomed to the exertion.
When he finally reached the heart of the forest, rain began to pour from the skies. The droplets of water rolling down his face reminded him of that showery morning with his wife. Like before, he closed his eyes. Under the canopy of rain clouds, he felt his wife’s presence and her voice resounding in his head: How nice it’ d be if we had a garden of our own.
By the time the rain abated, he had made up his mind. That afternoon, he built a makeshift shelter. He knelt under it, his knees cushioned by mud, and listened to the pitter-patter of raindrops above and around him. The soothing sounds of the forest seeped into his pores, a salve for his sorrow. This time, he kept his eyes open, envisioning in its full glory the garden he would create in her honour. *
Hui Shan stood on the rungs of the ladder, staring at her mother’s portrait next to the marbled urn. It was her mother’s first death anniversary. There was so much she wanted to tell her, so much that had happened since her passing. But she was acutely aware of her father and her husband and her son, all waiting behind, below her. Hui Shan put her palms together and squeezed her eyes shut, trusting her mother would know everything. Gently, she placed a small cluster of periwinkle hydrangeas next to the portrait. They were her mother’s favourite.
Outside in the main hall of the columbarium, Hui Shan planted three joss sticks in the incense burner. Then she began laying out the food she had brought with her. The table soon filled with the dishes her mother used to love: fried bee hoon, spicy ladies’ fingers, slices of guava with sour plum sugar. She uncapped a thermos flask and poured out a cup of pale blue tea.
“Ma,” she said softly, “please enjoy your meal.”
Hui Shan took a step back and waited. It was only then when she realised what was missing. In her haste to get everything and everyone ready earlier that morning, she had forgotten to prepare a wedge of lemon for the tea. The squeeze of citrus that was so essential to her mother’s enjoyment of butterfly pea flower tea. A knot of self-reproach tightened in her stomach, but before she could dwell on it, she felt a heavy hand on her shoulder.
It was Kenneth’s. Hui Shan turned to see her father sulking at one side, her son’s face foreshadowing a meltdown. The latter, she could understand. But her father’s disinclination to visit her mother’s resting place baffled her. She gritted her teeth, then checked the time. Her mother had had barely five minutes to eat. Hui Shan’s face darkened, but almost immediately, she recomposed herself and began packing up the containers of food. She would use the wooden moon-shaped blocks next time, she told herself.
“Let’s go,” Hui Shan said, straining to keep her tone level. As they made their way down to the car park, she glanced back—bags in one hand and her nine-month-old’s fist in the other—wishing to steal one more look at the person who loved her most.
Hui Shan’s father had known nothing about gardening when he first started. But driven by his mission, he went to the library and spent hours poring over photographs in books and watching videos the librarian helped him to find on the internet. With his savings, he bought seeds, fertiliser and equipment. He poured himself fully into the endeavour. It filled his hours. It gave him purpose. Before long, he found himself relishing the tactile warmth of earth between his fingers, the perspiration that would be purged from his pores, the tender ache in his limbs at the end of the day.
That the garden was now flourishing eight years on did not stem from luck. Not everything he had planted germinated at the start. But over time, he learnt from trial and error and hard, honest labour. Eventually, with every bud that emerged, every flower that blossomed, every fruit that ripened, he basked in the memory of his late wife. As he strove to build her the garden of her dreams, he felt he could—at long last—grant her this one simple wish.
Glancing at her watch, Hui Shan frowned. It was twenty past one. She had called her father last evening to remind him that she would pick him up at one in the afternoon for her son’s eighth birthday party, but her father was nowhere to be found. Her phone rang again.
“On the way back?” Kenneth asked without a greeting.
“Pa’s still not home,” she said, not bothering to conceal her exasperation.
“What?” he said, his voice gruff. “Already so late, he should know better than to go jalan jalan now. You better come back lah, the guests are arriving soon.”
Hui Shan hung up. A mixture of worry and irritation flooded her lungs, making it hard to breathe. She didn’t know if she ought to be concerned about her father’s absence. That she couldn’t reach him wasn’t out of the norm. In the past eight years, he had grown impossibly distant. If Hui Shan had hoped that having a grandson might persuade her father to act otherwise, she couldn’t have been more wrong. The frequency of their meetings was reflected in the way her son greeted his grandfather whenever they met—not with effusive enthusiasm, but with the tentative politeness the child reserved for acquaintances. But surely, a grandson’s eighth birthday would have meant something to him?
As Hui Shan headed down to the void deck, she wondered what it was that her father was occupied with. How was he spending all those hours that stretched before him, alone and without a companion by his side? She couldn’t understand the persistence with which he pushed her away, considering he had no one else in his life—or did he?
Much as Hui Shan tried to sweep away the doubt that had crept up on her, her mind couldn’t stop returning to it. Not as she took a taxi home, not as she smiled through her son’s birthday celebrations, not as she opened her eyes early the next morning feeling as though she hadn’t slept at all.
At least she didn’t need to go into the office on Sunday, she told herself. She turned towards Kenneth. Saliva was dribbling down his chin, forming a dark patch on the freshly-laundered pillowcase. As he let out a snore, she quietly got dressed, went to check on their son, left him a note and then exited the apartment.
At a quarter past seven, Hui Shan arrived at the foot of her father’s apartment block, relieved to see a rectangle of light from his living room window. Instead of making her way up to the eleventh storey, she waited at the void deck of the opposite block, where she had a clear view of the lift lobby.
Ten minutes later, Hui Shan didn’t know whether to rejoice or despair when she saw her father stepping out of the lift. His gait was unusually sprightly, and he was cradling a red plastic bag in his arms as if it contained bird’s nest of the highest quality. Just as she was wondering who it was for, her father glanced in her direction. He was crossing the road, fast approaching the block where she was hiding. She hastily stepped behind a pillar and held her breath, hoping he hadn’t spotted her.
He hadn’t. When her head emerged from behind the pillar, Hui Shan saw that her father had already gone ahead, making his way towards the main road. For the next forty-five minutes, she followed furtively behind him. But her father appeared so wrapped up in his gaiety that he probably wouldn’t have noticed even if she were walking directly behind him. Her sense of foreboding grew as they entered a secluded forest, wild with vegetation. Hui Shan contemplated turning back. Perhaps she ought to leave whatever it was her father wanted to withhold from her a secret. She feared what she might witness, what she might do in a fit of fury on her mother’s behalf.
Still, she trudged on.
What lay at the end of the trail took Hui Shan by surprise: a profusion of plants, vegetables and fruit trees, in an area the size of her parents’ three-bedroom flat. Her eyes scanned the greenery, which was peppered with the red of chilli padi, the yellow of papaya. As her gaze fell over the splendid blue of a butterfly pea flower, Hui Shan thought about the two neat rows of terracotta pots her mother used to keep by her doorstep, each one containing her favourite plants—the same plants that now luxuriated in the expanse of soil before her.
A breath of wind blew past, carrying a bouquet of botanical scents to Hui Shan’s nose. Her father’s thin grey singlet flapped in the breeze. She was standing mere metres away from him, but he still hadn’t noticed her. He, in his hole-ridden singlet, was plucking random plants from the ground. Confounded, she remained rooted to the spot, watching from the periphery as her white-haired father went on weeding.
It was only after Hui Shan’s father turned towards the sudden weight on his shoulder that he realised Hui Shan was there. It was a cool morning, but her face was red and her features were twisted in an expression he couldn’t read. Irritation swelled in his chest. He still had his singlet on, but he suddenly felt exposed, the intimacy of the Eden he shared with his wife now compromised.
“Pa?” Hui Shan cried out. “Are you listening? What are you doing here?”
He tightened his grip on the cluster of stray plants he had uprooted, impervious to their sharp edges cutting into his palm. The audacity she had to question his behaviour, when he had yet to demand an explanation from her. What was she doing here? How dare she follow him and sneak up on him like that?
“How did you even end up in this place? Do you know how dangerous it is for you to be all alone out here? Pa, you’re not young any more.”
He refused to meet her eyes. The annoyance in his chest spread to his cheeks, seething into anger. What did she know?
“I don’t know why you’re doing this,” Hui Shan went “But whatever it is, you shouldn’t come here any more, you understand?”
He flung the weeds to the ground and let explode a fury that had been coiled up for eight years. So violent was his outburst that, after she had fled, he fell to his knees and remained there, shaking involuntarily as soil turned into mud.
Later that evening, when Hui Shan told Kenneth a sanitised version of her discovery after tucking their son in bed, he appeared more shocked than she had been, though for different reasons.
“That’s illegal!” Kenneth exclaimed. “It’s government-owned land, you know. If your dad wants to garden, he can go apply for those community garden allotment plots. If everyone is like him, suka suka go and claim land for themselves, can you imagine what will happen?”
“I’m more worried about his safety,” she said after a pause. “He’s already so old. If he gets hurt or lost in such an ulu place, how can he get help?”
“Do you know the exact location?”
She sent him the coordinates she had marked out on Google Maps. “I told him not to go there again, but you know how stubborn he is. I really don’t know what to do about him.”
