Lunchtime.
The chicken rice seller is drinking ice-cold beer outside his chicken rice stall. Business is good, and the chicken rice seller knows it. He wears an apron around his waist and grimy rubber boots on his feet. He is relaxed, red-cheeked. He leans back in his chair, positions both hands behind his head. He stares at the long queue and studies the hungry faces and sips his beer. If mood strikes, the chicken rice seller greets customers he recognises. Exchange pleasantries.
Talk about the weather.
Meanwhile, the chicken rice seller’s wife moves about the stall with quick hands and quick feet. She takes customer orders (averaging two at a time), remembers them, then, proceeds to scoop the rice, chop the chicken, drizzle the sauce, throw in the sliced cucumbers, ladle the soup, collect the money, return the change, utter the thank-yous.
After the lunchtime crowd has dispersed, the chicken rice seller gets on his feet and returns inside his stall. One regular customer of the chicken rice stall wonders why he calls the chicken rice seller the chicken rice seller and the chicken rice seller’s wife the chicken rice seller’s wife. The customer has never seen the chicken rice seller take orders, scoop rice, chop chicken, drizzle sauce, throw in cucumbers, ladle soup, collect money, return change, and utter thank-yous.
Within months, the chicken rice seller’s skin turns yellow. There’s no beer on the table. The chicken rice seller no longer smiles, no longer speaks. He sits by the table, disoriented, as if the stall doesn’t exist in his life at all. He looks just like any other patron at the coffee shop, except that his skin is yellow, unlike theirs. Meanwhile, the chicken rice seller’s wife continues to sell chicken rice; each plate and each packet go to the chicken rice seller’s medical bills. To a new customer who has never visited this chicken rice stall, the chicken rice seller’s wife is the chicken rice seller, and the chicken rice seller is simply a man who looks sickly. They might identify him as The Sick Man, and might if they knew the chicken rice seller was married to The Sick Man, call her The Sick Man’s wife.
The Sick Man becomes The Dead Man.
Gathered are kinsfolk, friends, and a handful of long-time customers. Most of them will avoid the chicken rice stall for some time. Perhaps they sense an ‘aura of death’ surrounding the stall, the chicken rice, impossible to disregard, and feel if they consume the food, they will also ingest this aura. Others begin to talk about The Dead Man’s chicken rice recipe: they wonder if it has been handed over to the chicken rice seller’s wife. They wonder if the nasi lemak seller has written down his secret recipe for his wife, just in case, for he is eighty now, and one never knows when one’s time is up.
Is that The Dead Man’s wife over there? a child asks, her face lighting up. The child’s father sticks out his finger. The correct term to use is The Widow, which means, he explains to the girl in a slow, drawn-out manner, a woman who has lost her spouse by death. The girl nods and runs along and shares with her new friends the new word. But no one actually refers to the widow as The Widow. It is, in fact, only a temporary name, useful only at funerals, and during the subsequent period of mourning. After which, not many will refer to her as The Widow, and she shall be addressed by her real name—The Widow looks up; her smiling face is tense and tremulous.
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Marcus Ong Kah Ho is a writer and teacher. His fiction has appeared in Guesthouse, WeAreAWebsite, and the anthology Momaya Press Annual Review. His latest novel was longlisted in the Epigram Books Fiction Prize 2018 for unpublished manuscripts. He lives in Singapore. Twitter @marcusongkh