Vegetarian

Ah Hui prides herself on keeping up with the times. It is because of keeping up with the times that she is able to research the most effective ways of inducing anaphylaxis from the comfort of her own bedroom. Wikipedia confirms that this allergic reaction can be triggered by many foods, including wheat, seafood, milk, and most importantly, peanuts.

Something else the Internet confirms is that anaphylaxis caused by peanut allergies typically happens instantaneously, causing death within minutes if left untreated. This is why, after weeks of discussion, she and Cecilia decided that peanuts would be the best way to do it. Things you see in movies like guns and sleeping pills are not easily procured in a place like Singapore, not least by elderly women.

Ah Hui loves the Internet. It reminds her of the ocean, deep and bewildering, when her father would take her out on his boat as a little girl. Most days the catch was predictable—usually tilapia, maybe cod or grouper if they were lucky—but sometimes they would find gasping strange creatures that had no name, greenish black or purple, with odd, bright eyes, which they would untangle and throw back into the sea as quickly as they could, because to do otherwise would be bad luck. She struggles to imagine what life must be like for her grandchildren, growing up in a brightly lit world without limits, where nothing remains unanswered and no one believes in luck anymore.

The bedroom that Ah Hui sits in is small and square. It contains nothing more than she needs—futon, wardrobe, sink, a single rusty window. And her computer, bought years ago by her children as a birthday gift. The children have long given up trying to change her lifestyle. They do not understand the appeal of simplicity; they think wealth is meant for spending, that money and time are the only limits. She once thought the same way. A long time ago Ah Hui had been a glutton, like children in her hungry generation, but today she lives on a strict diet of boiled eggs, steamed carrots, congee, and the occasional hawker dish. It was only after she turned vegetarian that giving up one or two types of food a year seemed to come naturally. Each little relinquishment felt like a victory in an otherwise infinite world. The children did not understand and thought she was starving herself. It did not stop them from leaving.

Ah Hui is convinced that the different types of people in the universe can be counted on one hand. There are three who represent the entire world: Her second younger brother Ah Yau, a fastidious man who stopped talking to a relative for life because of a missed handshake at a wedding; her cousin Swee Hong, who had abnormally large hands for a woman and asked too many questions; and her childhood next-door-neighbour Boon Kiat, whose malnourishment never stopped him from quarreling with the big boys.

When Ah Hui met her husband, she saw from his habit of opening doors with his feet to avoid dirtying his hands that he was an Ah Yau. And within the first few years of her children being born she could tell that her younger son with his unblinking, greedy eyes was a Swee Hong, while the older daughter would grow up fighting, a Boon Kiat.

It was only on the day she found Cecilia sitting cross-legged on the sidewalk that she remembered Sun Bee. Cecilia was the first Sun Bee she had met in a long time.

Sun Bee was Ah Hui’s widowed aunt who had no children of her own. She passed her days in Ah Hui’s overcrowded childhood home making barley water that no one wanted to drink. She was very young; her husband had died in a car accident six months after their wedding. Sun Bee always carried with her a tiny bottle of drugstore perfume, which she would carefully squirt herself with when she thought no one was looking. The other aunts talked about her vanity in hushed tones behind her back. Ah Hui is ashamed to...