Cheryl Tan: Sarong Party Girls

“Yes, yes—but there’s something we need to talk about…” I started to explain. “This is serious. Listen—I think we need a plan.”

Fann and Imo looked worried. I cannot blame them lah. We whole life never talk about serious things at all. Yes, when Fann’s dad died and Imo—aiyoh, Imo—when all that drama happened after junior college with her father and his second family, then, yes, we were serious. So they must have thought something really bad happened.

“Eh, you OK or not?” Fann said.

“OK, OK… but listen, I’ve been thinking, we don’t have much time. Look at us three—this is a happening Thursday night and the best plans we have are going out with each other. No husband, no two-carat diamond ring, not even a boyfriend. What kind of cock life is this? If we want to marry ang moh guys, we cannot go to SPG bars and just anyhow shoot arrow. No wonder we haven’t win yet. We must have a method!”

Imo looked skeptical. “If we just go to Chaplin’s or Hard Rock, meet people, dance dance dance, sing sing, hiau hiau a bit,” she said, “aren’t we just doing it because it’s fun?” Fann shrugged and nodded.

“Fun—your head lah!” I said. “Like that maybe for one night or a few nights, of course it will work. But if we want to get married, then we must be more strategy! So, listen—I came up with this idea. Got four parts.”

Imo leaned forward—I could tell she was a little curious. Of all of us, she’s the one who’s most focused on getting married. Her father—aiyoh, my god.

When we were in secondary school, we didn’t see Imo’s dad much. Uncle was always traveling for work—each week he would disappear for a few nights, often over the weekend. So every time we were at her house, it was mostly just us hanging out with Auntie. Auntie never seemed to mind though—whenever Uncle came back from his travels, he always brought something nice. Sometimes got duty-free perfume lah; other times if he disappeared for longer trips, he would actually come back with a Prada handbag, that kind of thing. But of course Imo always liked it best when he showed up with those big Toblerones—so big that each piece alone was the size of a McDonald’s hamburger! The few times we met him, he seemed nice, not anything special—people’s father is just people’s father after all. Unless you bump into them in a club or something—my god, later on, after our school years, that actually happened with some of our friends’ dads—you don’t really think about them that much.

And Uncle was so boring we definitely didn’t think about him at all. He was like my dad lah. Or Fann’s dad, who we didn’t really care about until he suddenly had a heart attack. But then right after we graduated from JC, like just the day after our final exam and we hadn’t even had time to go chionging to celebrate and all, Uncle and Auntie sat Imo down after dinner and said, “We have something to tell you.”

Imo said everything happened very quickly—once Uncle started talking, everything also just anyhow come out. Apparently, his job was actually not a traveling type of job. He works in a local insurance office! First, he said, Imogen, you know your Mummy and I love you very much, right? Everything you want, we also give you. (When Imo first heard this, at first she thought he was dying—at that time Fann’s dad had recently passed away, so we were all quite scared, wondering which Uncle is the next to go.) So Imo just nodded and kept quiet—when she told us about it, she said she was almost crying.

But then Uncle said, “Now that you’re old enough, almost a woman already, your mummy and I thought you should know something: You have two brothers.”

At first, Imo was quite confused. She didn’t know what he meant. “But how could my mum have two other kids that I don’t know about? Cannot be! She had me when she was so young and then I don’t remember her being pregnant anymore. Where got two sons?” She was still thinking hard about all this when Uncle continued talking.

“I have another family,” he said.

Imo looked across the dinner table at her mum, who was looking a bit blank-faced, except that her eyes were staring down. She said Auntie was blinking and looking hard at her fingers, which were pulling apart at one corner of the carefully ironed white tablecloth that she spent four months last year crocheting. This was the tablecloth that Auntie cared about so much that she even bought a special clear plastic cover for it for Chinese New Year so when people brought curry or whatever over, her tablecloth will still be Number One OK. So Imo knew that if her mum was actually cho cho-ing with this tablecloth—then, confirm: this conversation is really serious.

Uncle continued: “When I met your mum, I already had one son. And then just around the time you were born, I had my second son. They look a bit like you actually…”

Imo is usually quite toot lah. So at this point, when she told all of us about it, we thought the situation was pretty clear. But Imo was actually still confused! So she asked her dad, “But… you had your mistress before mum?” She still wasn’t getting anything or understanding what was going on. When she told me, Sher and Fann all this—my god—we all just wanted to reach over and slap her one time. Where got people so stupid?

That was when Uncle looked a little bit embarrassed. And she said her mum by this time couldn’t even look up from the tablecloth.

“Imo, I care about your mum very much. And I care about you very much. The two sons I have are with my wife. They live here—in… well, a town center quite far from here so you were definitely never in the same schools of course. But now that you are all grown up, have wings, can fly already, we wanted you to know you have brothers out there. Just keep that in mind whenever you meet new people. You just… aiyah, you just never know. And we were thinking now that you are getting older, going out and dating dating all, sekali something weird happens. Better be safe. So we might as well sit you down and tell you everything—just in case. So, um, if you ever have any news about new guys you are meeting, might be getting serious with, you just be sure to keep us informed ah? OK, come, come, let’s eat some oranges.”

And then after that Imo’s mum just got up, peeled two oranges for them, went to her room and turned on the TV to watch her Cantonese serial and they didn’t talk about it anymore.

Walao eh! Crazy lah!

When Imo told us, at first we weren’t quite sure what to say or think. We all hugged her of course. And then we just looked at each other. Finally, Sher smiled, reached over to squeeze Imo’s hand and said: “Eh, Imo—you are lucky you’re a sarong party girl. Like that, you confirm won’t end up snogging your brother by mistake. Even if your dad’s wife is white, her sons will only be half ang moh. As if you’ll even think of going home with a loser like that!” Even Imo had to laugh over that one. Sher always knew just the right thing to say.

So ever since then, Imo has been quite determined: Get an ang moh husband or bust, man!

“Come, set. Tell us your strategy,” Imo said. The guniang had even closed her mirror and put it away, so now I really knew she was listening.

“OK, number one,” I said. “Looks. Obviously we are quite chio, otherwise how come we have so many ang moh guys always chasing us? But girls, think about it. If you look carefully, the types of Singaporean girls that ang moh guys like to pok and the types that they end up marrying is quite different! So we must make ourselves look like those girls they want to marry.”

“But who?” Imo asked, already looking a bit lost.

Aiyoh, I tell you. I tried very hard not to roll my eyes though. Instead, I pulled out some of the pictures I looked up on my phone that morning. Best one: Maggie Cheung. “This one ah,” I said, “very power. Marry the best type of guy—European! French some more; sexy sexy one. Rich also.” Imo and Fann were nodding.