“You hired a private investigator to check up on this girl?”
“Of course I did. We know nothing about this girl, and everyone is already talking about her and Nicky—”
Philip looked down at his fishing pole, which was beginning to vibrate a hair. He knew where this conversation was leading, and he wanted no part in it. “I’m afraid I can’t talk right now, darling, I’m in the middle of something urgent.”
“Stop it, lah! This is urgent! The report is even worse than my worst nightmare! Your stupid cousin Cassandra got it wrong — it turns out the girl is not one of the Chus from that Taipei Plastics family!”
“I always tell you not to believe a word out of Cassandra’s mouth. But what difference does it make?”
“What difference? This girl is being deceitful—she is pretending to be a Chu.”
“Well, if her last name happens to be Chu, how can you accuse her of pretending to be a Chu?” Philip said with a chuckle.
“Aiyah — don’t contradict me! I’ll tell you how she’s being deceitful. At first, the private investigator told me she was ABC, but then after more digging he found out that she’s not even truly American-born Chinese. She was born in Mainland China and went to America when she was six months old.”
“So?”
“Did you hear me? Mainland China!”
Philip was baffled. “Doesn’t everybody’s family ultimately originate from Mainland China? Where would you rather her be from? Iceland?”
“Don’t be funny with me! Her family comes from some ulu ulu[29] village in China that nobody has ever heard of. The investigator thinks that they were most likely working class. In other words, they are PEASANTS!”
“I think if you go back far enough, darling, all our families were peasants. And don’t you know that in ancient China, the peasant class was actually revered? They were the backbone of the economy, and—”
“Stop talking nonsense, lah! You haven’t heard the worst yet — this girl came to America as a baby with her mother. But where’s the father? There’s no record of the father, so they must have divorced. Can you believe it? Alamak, a child from some divorced no-name ulu family! I’m going to tiao lau!”[30]
“What’s wrong with that? There are plenty of people these days who come from broken homes and go on to have happy marriages. Just look at the divorce rate here in Australia.” Philip was trying to reason with his wife.
Eleanor sighed deeply. “These Aussies are all descended from criminals, what do you expect?”
“This is why you’re so popular down here, darling,” Philip joked.
“You are not seeing the big picture. This girl is obviously a cunning, deceitful GOLD DIGGER! You know as well as I do that your son can never marry someone like that. Can you imagine how your family is going to react when he brings this gold digger home?”
“Actually, I couldn’t care less what they think.”
“But don’t you see how this will affect Nicky? And of course your mother is going to blame me for this, lah. I always get blamed for everything. Alamak, surely you know how this will end.”
Philip sighed deeply. This was the reason he spent as much time as he possibly could away from Singapore.
“I’ve already asked Lorena Lim to use all her Beijing contacts to investigate the girl’s family in China. We need to know everything. I don’t want to leave a single stone unturned. We need to be prepared for every possibility,” Eleanor said.
“Don’t you think you’re going a bit overboard?”
“Absolutely not! We must put a stop to all this nonsense before it goes any further. Do you want to know what Daisy Foo thinks?”
“Not really.”
“Daisy thinks that Nicky is going to propose to the girl while they’re in Singapore!”
“If he hasn’t already,” Philip teased.
“Alamak! Do you know something I don’t? Has Nicky told you—”
“No, no, no, don’t panic. Darling, you are letting your silly girlfriends work you up for nothing. You just need to trust our son’s good judgment. I’m sure this girl is going to turn out just fine.” The fish was really tugging at the line now. Maybe it was a barramundi. He could ask his chef to grill it for lunch. Philip just wanted to get off the phone.
That Thursday, at Carol Tai’s Bible study, Eleanor decided that it was time to call in her ground troops. As the ladies sat around enjoying homemade bobo chacha and helping Carol organize her collection of Tahitian black pearls by color grade, Eleanor began her lament as she savored her chilled coconut-and-sago pudding.
“Nicky doesn’t realize what a terrible thing he is doing to us. Now he tells me he’s not even going to stay at our new flat when he arrives. He’s going to stay at Kingsford Hotel with that girl! As if he needs to hide her from us! Alamak, how is this going to look?” Eleanor sighed dramatically.
“So disgraceful! Sharing a hotel room when they aren’t even married! You know, some people might think they eloped and are coming here for their honeymoon!” Nadine Shaw chimed in, though secretly the thought of any potential scandal that might bring those high-and-mighty Youngs down a peg filled her with glee. She continued to fan Eleanor’s flames, not that they needed any further stoking. “How dare this girl think she can just waltz right into Singapore on Nicky’s arm and attend the social event of the year without your approval? She obviously has no clue how things work here.”
“Aiyah, children these days don’t know how to behave,” Daisy Foo said quietly, shaking her head. “My sons are just the same. You’re lucky that Nicky even told you he was bringing someone home. I would never be able to expect that from my boys. I have to find out in the newspapers what they’re doing! What to do, lah? This is what happens when you educate your children overseas. They become too Westernized and aksi borak[31] when they return. Can you imagine — my daughter-in-law Danielle forces me to make an appointment two weeks in advance just to see my grandchildren! She thinks that because she graduated from Amherst she knows better than me how to raise my own grandchildren!”
“Better than you? Everyone knows these ABCs are descended from all the peasants that were too stupid to survive in China!” Nadine cackled.
“Hey, Nadine, don’t underestimate them. These ABC girls can be tzeen lee hai,”[32] Lorena Lim warned. “Now that America is broke, all these ABCs want to come to Asia and sink their claws into our men. They are even worse that the Taiwanese tornadoes because they are Westernized, sophisticated, and worst of all, college educated. Do you remember Mrs. Hsu Tsen Ta’s son? That Ivy League-degreed ex-wife of his purposely introduced him to the girl who would become his mistress, and then used that silly excuse to get a huge divorce settlement. The Hsus had to sell so many properties just to pay her off. So sayang!”[33]
“My Danielle was so kwai kwai[34] at first, so dutiful and modest,” Daisy recalled. “Hiyah — the minute that thirty-carat diamond was on her finger, she transformed into the bloody Queen of Sheba! Nowadays she wears nothing but Prada, Prada, Prada, and have you seen how she makes my son waste money by hiring that whole security team to escort her everywhere she goes, as if she is some big shot? Who wants to kidnap her? My son and my grandchildren are the ones who should have the bodyguards, not this girl with the flat nose! Suey doh say!”[35]
31
A Malay slang term that means “to act like a show-off or know-it-all” (basically, a pompous ass).