Mrs Chan

I have lived long enough to see my children grow up into fine adults who in turn had lovely children of their own. I have lived long enough to see my husband and children pass away, and long enough to see my grandchildren lead lives demanding enough to forget me. I am not bitter, but the mechanics, science, and emotions of time, have changed. Time passed me effortlessly until the deaths of my darlings, and now, it is up to me to journey the passage of time, which now passes at a pace which is almost arduous.

Like most elderly people, I get up early and I sleep early, or when I get tired, whichever comes first. It doesn’t take much to get me tired. A trip to the market in the late morning is enough to help me sleep through the night, my weathered body travailing to patch up leaks. A lot of tea is involved throughout my days. When I wake up, I set the kettle on the stove, and in two minutes and sixteen seconds the whistle would be set off. With this water, I make a cup of chamomile tea which I have with my breakfast. In between breakfast and lunch, I make another cup of tea using the same chamomile tea bag. World war doesn’t seem so long ago when I do things like this. With lunch I have another cup of tea, and during tea time, I have what else but tea. After dinner I have a cup of tea too. One extra ordinary day while settling into my sofa by the window after dinner for one, I noticed Ben and Justine Tan moving in across the street. They did not have a whole lot of belongings that they were moving in, it was just one truck load of the necessities, a laundry machine, a dryer, a dining table, four chairs, a old brown sofa, a television set, a stereo set and other personal effects in various brown boxes.
I hesitate to refer to them as the Tan family because in the traditional sense of the word ‘family’, little boys and girls with toys and pacifiers are required to be present. The Tan family was just Ben, and his wife, Justine.

I watched as Ben carried the boxes up the staircase into the fourth floor apartment together with the movers. He probably could have sat back and let the movers do the job but he didn’t. When Ben came down to retrieve the second cardboard box he tripped over a curb and hit his head on a chair that was waiting to be carried upstairs. I watched Justine cradle Bens head in her slender arms and drizzle gentle kisses on the bump. They were laughing about it, and soon enough the movers came down and took a minute off to laugh too. I haven’t stopped watching the Tans since then.

The very next day I set out at 10:30am to buy two onions, a loaf of bread, and a stick of butter. When you are as old as I am, you can’t buy groceries all at one go, that just gets too heavy. The last time I bought an entire watermelon was on 21st October 1998. An old lady like me does not eat much anyway so that is not really a problem.
As I walk home I run into Ben and Justine whom I welcome to the neighborhood. We shake hands and part. From then on, whenever I see them on the streets they wave.

Two years have passed since I first saw Ben and Justine Tan. This is what I talk about when I talk about Ben and Justine Tan.
As much as I can tell, Ben and Justine are self-employed. When they weren’t holding each other, Ben would read or write and Justine would stand loyally by her easel, but I could never tell what she was painting. The back of the easel faced my window.
For young people they cooked surprisingly a lot, though they rarely spent more than half an hour cooking. When I bump into Ben at the grocers he is often buying fresh salmon. He explains to me how it makes the easiest and most delicious dish, fresh salmon on a bed of white rice with a dip of soy sauce and wasabi.
Every few months Ben and Justine would pack their bags and leave town for two weeks or more. This would leave me feeling empty for I had nothing happy to watch while I sipped my tea. Awhile after they moved in I stopped watching the TV altogether!
A year after they moved in, there was a third member of their household, and when they travelled after that, it became my responsibility to take care of the ignorant cat, named Am. Am was named after the earlier half of the day on the 12 hour clock.

There was one thing I never quite fully understood. Whenever the weather was cool and refreshing, they would throw the windows wide and smoke would billow out. Whenever I look out of the window and think to myself how glorious the weather is, chances are their windows would be open too, smoke and music with hands on each others hips dancing out of the window.
Ben and Justine usually danced and laughed a lot after this, and once I even saw them making love surrounded by pens, paint, palettes, and paper. I thought of the last time I had made love to my husband more than fifteen years ago. I thought of the chronicles of love making my husband and I authored and there were too many chapters to fit into a book of thoughts.
There was teenage sex, married sex, angry sex, special occasion sex, sex that I used to steer his mind towards something I wanted, sex in the morning sun initiated by whoever woke up earlier, sex in the moonlight right before sleeping, sex at hours even cats don’t have sex at, sex when I felt there were no better days ahead, sex when he felt there were no better days ahead, sex when we traveled, sex in the country side, sex in the city, public transportation sex, sex in the bathrooms of pubs during nights out with other friends, after exercise sex, sex when there were visitors at our place, there were too many times we had sex to think of all at once.

One thing remained constant throughout all the sex we had, and it was probably the most important thing. What was constant was each other.

I felt embarrassed when I saw what they were doing so I started sewing. An hour and a half later I went back to the sofa and looked out of the window. They were still going at it. It must have been Justine’s birthday or something!


The days rolled on by and I knew my body couldn’t keep up with the demands of living. One mighty fine day an hour after a light drizzle in the 2pm sun, as Ben and Justine threw open their windows for more smoke and music to exit, I hobbled to my walking stick and made my way towards their place. I just had to know one last thing and I could go perfectly happy.
The four flights of stairs were imposing but I thought nothing of it. Using the handle of my walking stick I rapped the door five times crisp. It took them awhile to come to the door. It was Ben who cracked the door open.

‘Mrs Chan! What brings you here? We weren’t expecting you. Would you like some tea? Gee you do look a little pale, please come in’
I might have been dying but my manners were still alive. I thanked him for his kind offer, and explained how I was just wondering why the windows always broke open and why smoke and music poured out whenever the weather was beautiful. The house smelt of smoke but I was just glad Ben and Justine invited me in, and I felt awful that I was about to do what I had to do, what I couldn’t help but doing.

Justine and Ben stood huddled in the kitchen whispering to one another as they fixed the tea, turning around occasionally to throw a smile at me. Am the ignorant cat lay its chubby face on my lap and went promptly to sleep.
Ben and Justine sat down around the small coffee table, poured me a cup of tea and awkwardly explained what the whole deal with the smoke, weather, and music was. I sipped the tea out of the chipped tea cup before carefully placing it back on the table, smiled at them, and closed my eyes, passing away peacefully on their sofa before i could remove my spectacles.