Object Permanence 1: Nappy Pail
a fictional nonfiction series & FED exclusive
Welcome to the Object Permanence Series
With all FED invitations, I offer the opportunity to do something new, to experiment and play, and to create something mutually nourishing by expanding the universe for oneself and others from an established professional base. So, when I called Preeta in France to talk about the potential landscape, she said, after a rambling bit of conversation, embarked upon at the end of a long day for me and just before dinner for her, “Hmm…I have old photos and an idea! Let me think.” Et voila! The Object Permanence series was born. You have before you the first installment, and I can’t wait to see where Preeta takes us.
Big love, Ashley
Series Note from the Author
In this series, I hope to give free rein to several of my longstanding obsessions: the relationship between physical objects and memory; ageing1 and the way it strengthens some memories and weakens others; oral history; literary ventriloquism. These short first-person monologues should be read as the memoirs of half-imagined characters. They are real in the sense of being drawn from and heavily inspired by the generation of pre-WWII-born, pre-independence Malaysians to which my own parents belong. But the narratives themselves are imagined oral histories, born of an imagination fuelled by lifelong research with this generation, going back to a time before I thought of it as research. Why, you might ask, am I choosing to speak in their voices rather than faithfully transcribing those voices to relay them unaltered? Mainly because this technique allows for the kind of distillation-condensation that renders these characters more truly – and I might argue more faithfully – than a factual transcription of their own words. —Preeta Samarasan, 10 March 2024
Madam S. Rajambal, 86, homemaker2, Butterworth
The nappy pail was on the list of things to buy. Tommy Tippee brand, later on there were other matching items: a soapdish, a fine-bristled hairbrush, a baby toothbrush that jingled. Can’t remember a damn thing these days but Tommy Tippee, that trips off the tongue so easily like as if it was just yesterday I walked into a shop and asked for it.
In my time when you were expecting you had to go and get a book from the library or any good bookshop and copy out the list. Or sometimes the women’s magazines would tell you what-what you needed. Of course the lists were all made for England so we just ignored the jackets and woolly hats and whatnot. But the rest we copied out dutifully into exercise books, including the recommended brands. So many muslin nappies, so many pairs rubber pants, nappy bucket, nappy cream, talcum powder, safety pins, cotton singlets, gripe water, lanolin (“for sore breasts”, it said, I remember because where else would I ever have seen or heard the word spelt out so boldly like that? I read it over and over again in one kind of delicious shock), carry cot, hundred and one items there were, even if we didn’t have to get the crib bedding and all that because our babies slept with us. After drawing up the list you had to make one grand expedition to purchase all the items. We went to Penang to that big shop that were stockists for all the British brands, I’ve forgotten the name of the shop but it was HARRINGTON’S nappies I bought, that I can tell you, a hefty chunk of his paycheque that month. That time Pamper’s all don’t have. Even washing machine don’t have. You looked at the piles of muslin nappies with dread unless you were the type to let the washerwoman handle your baby’s nappies. I was not that type. Baby’s things nobody must touch except me.
Month by month I would add a few items to the layette. Mittens, socks, a cardigan for chilly mornings, those days we still had chilly mornings you see, not like now. Tiny booties decorated with satin ribbons, those were a gift from one of the other teachers at his school. A crocheted blanket from another teacher. Some cotton tunics handsmocked by my auntie, oh, I was so thrilled with them even though I hated my auntie to tell you the truth but that’s a different story. No we didn’t know boy or girl but that didn’t matter, those days you could put smocking on any baby. And no big hoo-ha about blue or pink, nobody knew what was coming out so all the things were white or cream or yellow.
Can you believe how long I hung on to that nappy pail? Must have been taken thirteen-fourteen years after I bought it, this photo, and don’t think I got rid of the pail after this last baby, oh no, I kept it, plenty of things you can use a covered pail for isn’t it? Shifted from house to house with it too, in the photo it’s our own house at last, first time we owned the roof and the walls, the floors and the cabinets. Talking of the floors, that kitchen floor wasn’t properly level. You wouldn’t notice just standing there but when you tried to wash it the water would pool in one place. People said the developer started with the opposite row and got more slipshod by the time he got to our row. Maybe ran out of the top-quality materials too. Not the same materials in fashion nowadays though. Terrazzo for the floors, formica for the countertops. Both rows had the same but people said the other side was better. Funny how after all these years I see the colours in this photo. You see black and white, I see green, cream, light blue. In the shadowy corner was the drain, but I told you about that floor isn’t it, I had to use the lidi broom to push the water into the drain from the place where the floor made a shallow basin. The things I had the energy for those days, I tell you. Squatting in the outer kitchen washing five people’s clothes by hand, a whole set of pails I had and I’d soak each person’s clothes separately. Cooking three proper meals a day. Ironing the school uniforms and the work shirts. Scrubbing the two bathrooms daily, and this nonsense with the lidi broom, you had to do it at least once a day especially if you had been frying anything. I was never one to leave things messy but the way I had to bend to use that lidi broom properly, there were times I used to think, If I drop dead right now what a relief that will be.
Leave the lidi broom aside, I wanted to tell you about the frog. It must have come out of the drain, it was just sitting there one morning, I got the fright of my life. Nobody else at home. Just me and the frog looking at each other. I thought, Let me run and get a neighbour. But then I thought, What happens if it moves when I turn my back and we can’t find it after that? I’ll be living in terror, dead or alive it’ll still be right here in this house. Somehow I managed to back away without turning around. Stepped out of the kitchen and closed the kitchen door but the back door was still open. I thought, if I don’t see it when I come back with the neighbour I won’t know whether it went out through the back door or hid away somewhere. Better close the back door. So I went out through the front door and walked round to the back door, and would you believe it when I peeped in as I closed the door, that bloody frog was perched on the countertop next to the sink? My sister had told me about frogs in the estates that could jump all the way up to the ceiling but I always thought, Estate different, town different. Well there you go. Town frog sitting cool as a cucumber on the countertop. Well! I said to myself. At least I know it’ll be trapped in the kitchen until I get back.
Ran in my sarong to the back neighbour’s house. You won’t believe this but we used to call him Froggie on account of his bulging eyes. Ran to ask Froggie to rescue me from the froggie.
Now this Froggie had a son who was a bit slow. What was actually the matter with him nobody knew but he never went to school and often we used to see him simply loitering on the grass verge or shaking legs on the culvert. He was there on the grass verge that day and when he saw me coming he ran inside to get his father. He was still a small boy then, later he on he became a big strong fler, taller than his father, even used to beat up the poor man but no need to talk about all that now. What I mean to say is, Froggie’s wife had passed away and he was managing alone with this boy who was what they call a bit slow, not a vegetable, he could walk and talk, but all the same you see, even Chinese people can have hard lives sometimes, not everything is happy-happy jolly-jolly for them just because they are Chinese.
When his father came to help me he also came running behind. Funny way of running he had, his whole body would move from side to side, I can still see it vividly. My children used to imitate him sometimes, poor fler. He followed us right into the kitchen and when his father found the frog in the sink he also started hopping up and down and clapping his hands to his mouth. Froggie tried to catch the frog in one hand like how wild men catch fish but Froggie was no wild man. The thing kept slipping out of his fist and then with one big jump it plopped onto the floor next to the nappy pail. It was the boy who grabbed the nappy pail and put it upside down over the frog just like that like as though he had planned it all long. You see? Slow also, he could think better than we two big buffaloes. Or maybe he didn’t think at all, maybe that was his strength, you see, just do, no need to think. It was difficult to know anything about him because you couldn’t ask. Lucky the pail was empty though. Just imagine if it had had soiled nappies inside. Of course after the boy put it over the frog we still had to find a way to turn it over with the frog inside and cover it up quickly. Somehow we managed it. Froggie took the pail outside and released the frog into the monsoon drain and brought the pail back in.
The reason I wanted to tell you about the frog was this: I used that pail only the night I almost bled to death. When I was on the brink of death I didn’t think if I drop dead right now what a relief that would be. Oh no, at first I was much too frightened for that kind of showing off to myself and then I was much too weak to think at all. I was pregnant, you see, and the pail filled and filled with blood until I thought it would overflow. Inside it, at the bottom of all the blood, a frog that had plopped out of me. He went to get a lady neighbour who came running back to the house with him and next thing I knew I was in hospital and now here I am today, still not dead yet but getting there. And all of this coming back to me through the nappy pail in the photo: the list the shopping trip the aunt the floor the lidi broom the frog the Froggie the blood the lump of flesh that never grew into a baby. I wasn’t sad for it, I was sad for me. If you’d asked me the story without the photo I would have told you the whole thing of course but it would have been different. I would have described the feelings from a great distance like as though they were somebody else’s feelings I had once read about. The minute you put that nappy pail in front of me they were my feelings again. Green and cream and light blue in that kitchen, it’s hot but I’m cold, I’m sitting on the pail, the enamel is chipped by now and rough against my skin, the tiles are oily under my feet because I haven’t lidi-broomed the floor in weeks, there’s a smell of blood and clothes that have gone sour from soaking too long, there’s a shaking fright and a deep blind sadness.
What are we keeping this rotten old pail for, they would say every time we had to shift again, and I would say Keep it, keep it, a covered pail will always come in handy.
Just look at me! Other people means they’ll talk about the baby, not the pail. But the baby, well, you take one look at her and you know everything there is to know about her at that moment in time. Healthy normal baby, not slow, thank god, after you count the fingers and toes the day they are born you have to turn your watchful eyes to all the rest of it: when they sit up, when they roll over, when they stand and talk and walk, will it be soon is it already too late are they are all right are they properly equipped to cope with this world – But she was all right. Nothing to worry about, and once you stop worrying, one fat little loose-nappied (I always believed you had to let the air in to prevent rashes) all-right baby becomes very much like another. Oh she was mine and I loved her, but it’s the pail that holds all the stories. They say you come into this earth with nothing and you can’t take anything with you when you go. Be that as it may, all these small-small things, you leave your mark on them and they leave their mark on you. Imagine if they just passed through your life, the things of your childhood, the things of your youth, your new-bride things, your motherhood things. Imagine if you never saw them again, imagine you had no pictures and nobody else who remembered the same things. Wouldn’t it be like you never existed?
FED’s goal is to publish each creator’s most authentic piece according to their chosen standard(s). Because standards are systems, created and inflected by historical and contemporary forces that are, or were, not designed to give everyone a voice nor be equitable and empowering, FED does not edit spelling, nor other bits, to one standard. Instead, we honor variation and diversity as we edit to respect the standard each creator and FED contributor chooses to use for their piece. Thus, you will find variations from piece to piece across the site with, for example, the spelling of ageing/aging. —FED editor
I wanted to put ‘housewife’. It seems this is not the correct word anymore. Homemaker, they said. Or you can put pensioner. But I’m not a pensioner, I said. I don’t get a pension of my own. And housewives don’t retire. It’s the opposite for us. Our men retire and sit at home and make more work for us. Homemaker! Cheh wah. Now I am thinking, was I making something, with the lidi broom and the meat cleaver and the grinding stone? All this time I thought I was just sitting in the house being a wife. —Madame Rajambal
To learn more about Preeta and FED’s entire Spring 2024 all-star line-up of musicians, artists, writers, growers, gleaners, cooks, and craftspeople headed your way this season, check out Special Guests.
Be sure to cruise on over to Recipes & Free Advice for Madame Rajambal’s Garlic Chicken recipe. It drops Thursday, 28 March 2024.
And, oh, lovely Vegans & Vegetarians, please do not despair. We will soon have something you needn’t modify to enjoy—stay tuned, for example, for Sahana Murthy’s upcoming Ayurvedic treats from Rasayana Mysore Kitchen. In the meanwhile, Madame Rajambal’s creation seems perfect for modifying with seitan, tofu, or tempeh if chicken’s not your thing. Yum!
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