Status Symbol

Ah Kheem looked fondly at the trophy. Placed in the cabinet’s top shelf it had been accorded status above amongst all the other trophies. She herself had tended to its constant polishing so it never failed to shine. The cabinet’s prominence, place conspicuously in the hall’s wall, was marked by guests of her son, who never failed to note and make exclamations like, “Oh, James how brilliant, fancy us not knowing you won that competition.” Or it was that other competition which was ever so prestigious and they would pour over each trophy, noting each gleam from the carefully polished surfaces. And James would blush contritely and remark in an offhand manner that it was nothing.

But Ah Kheem knew that to her son, the trophies were not just nothing, they were a status symbol. Each and everyone one of the numerous trophies represented a milestone from his climb from their abstract poverty to success. And it was at this point that Ah Kheem would proudly note that it was through her efforts, that her son could have gone to the top schools and later into a well known western university.

Back then, Ah Kheem took four jobs at once, waking up well before the rooster even deigned to crow. She washed clothes, cleaned dishes, cooked for the wealthier families and picked up rubble from the construction sites. It was backbreaking work, but Ah Kheem never once complained, she was content to see her son bring home trophy after golden trophy. Even overseas, he would write home often telling her about each and every competition, clinching the top spot every time.

She would have oft said, “Boy, your Pa would have been proud.” And James would nod in obeisance, the figure of his long dead father already blurred in the vestiges of his memory. And Ah Kheem would place the trophy in front of the picture of her husband and light a joss stick and happily relate to that being in another plane, the recent exploits of their fabulously gifted child.

When James came back from university at once clinching the top position nationwide and acing his studies, he triumphantly clutched that golden symbol of his success in his hand and met his mother at the airport accompanied by his fair-skinned friends. Ah Kheem, with rheumy eyes and runny nose, overcame with emotion had rushed forward to embrace her son and fawn over his trophy. While James’ ang moh acquaintances had watched at his side at this woman who wearing tattered clothes and badly worn slippers clutch at that role model all the while gibbering hurriedly in dialect. Many stared in astonishment, some sniggered unobtrusively.

James had blushed furiously and pulled his mother off him in embarrassment and quickly took a taxi back to their run down flat, his mother for once not nagging at him at the extravagance of a taxi, so overcome with happiness that she held the trophy tightly in her hand and thought of her James. He was all grown up now, from that little boy that used to frolic in the kampung with the other children and beg her persistently for money to buy sweetmeats and she would always drop a coin or two into his grubby hands for she could not resist her little child, her world.

And James Tay Kiat Wah had been headhunted by the most prestigious and famous of companies each eager to get hold of this prodigy. He had in turned become fabulously rich in a matter of years able to afford the purchase of a house and the hiring of a servant, so that his mother could live comfortably, he had told her. Ah Kheem’s eyes had watered at her son’s thoughtfulness and show of filial piety. Her only task would be to polish carefully that exquisite trophy, and remember with sweet nostalgia how hard she had worked and how successful her James was now.

James had married the daughter of his boss, and they lived in utmost luxury, sparing no expense for the comforts of life, for it was always the classiest in Italian sofas and the most celebrated of clubs that they went for. And they enjoyed the high-life, with glittering diamonds and flashy cars. Unremorsefully abusing their credit cards. James never failed to give his mother a handsome monthly allowance, even though all her needs were taken care of, and to buy back gifts of bird’s nest and abalone and other beneficial and expensive supplements for her elderly health. And for a while, all was paradise for Ah Kheem.

And her utopia was shattered one day, when she walked past the door of James and Mabel’s room and heard them conversing in low tones. Mabel was commenting rather cruelly in that carefully cultured voice of hers that the old one was cramping their style and they would be better off with her in an old folks home. And she had shuddered dramatically with eyes widening in horror and little hands with daintily painted crimson nails held up in abstract terror as she described her posh friends’ reaction to that pottering old lady with those work-roughed, withered hands and loud uncouth voice speaking in dialect and oh, the shame, the shame.

James had protested albeit weakly, with the same guilt that drove him to purchase health supplements and allowances for his benefactors. Assuredly it had not lasted, James could never have denied his Mabel anything for long.

And so Ah Kheem had retreated quietly to her bedroom and there she wept silently while lighting a joss stick to her late husband and poured out her grievances for she knew that they would do away for her. In time, James would gradually forget her, she would be just another old lady, left in an old folks home, victim of the heartlessness of the younger generation. But the picture stared balefully out at her, and no amount of incense would make them heed her plaintive pleas.

The next morning, James approached his mother under the watchful eye of Mabel and suggested in an offhand and amiable fashion tacitly if Ma would like to go to this well known facility which they would be able to better take care of her aging and rapidly degenerating health and rheumatism stricken bones. Ah Kheem her eyes set with hard resolution had kept silent for she knew the heart of her son had been turned away from her.

She had withdrawn to her room and took out a bag with her belongings in it. And as her last act before she left, she reached out towards the top of the cabinet where that trophy sat contentedly, in it crystal majesty, with intricate craftsmanship, and bore those gilded words of honour. And although it was heavy, in her age-worn hands it felt strangely empty and in front of the shocked faces of James and Mabel, she had flung it vehemently on to the ground, her love for her child, shattered into a thousand pieces, irrevocable.