diary

The Old Cabinet

Many years ago, we had an old cabinet. It stood quietly in the shared bedroom (Dad and myself – we shared the bedroom); its legs rested on the ugly green floor tiles and its back almost leaning against the dirty cream-white walls. It was a sturdy old cabinet, about five feet in height, of a light viridian brown colour, and coated with a thin layer of wood varnish. It had one large shelf on top and two smaller shelves below. The shelves had sliding glass panes. Beside the two smaller shelves, there were three drawers, one with a lock and the other two without.

One day, while cleaning the shelf, Mum removed a glass pane from the top shelf in an effort to wipe it. As Mum was wiping the glass pane, a lizard suddenly appeared from beneath the cabinet, and, momentarily startled by the lizard, she loosened her hands for a second, and the glass pane fell and broke into pieces. After the careless incident, Dad removed the other glass pane from the top shelf. The cabinet looked somewhat awkward or incomplete since then.

In those days, Dad used to have a lot of things on top of the cabinet. There were friends’ name cards (but he never contacted most of these friends, neither did they contact him), medicine bottles, court letters (Dad was an illegal hawker), and Dad’s favourite picture of Brother when Brother was a year old. The picture was framed in a yellow plastic frame. When Brother left home a few years back, Dad was so upset he smashed the picture with a hammer and threw it away.

Dad also occupied the large shelf with other things. He collected crystals, scissors, nail clippers, knives (yes, knives), old photographs (most of these were black and white) and other curios, such as wooden carpenter pencils, Taoist and Buddhist talismans, and fishing lines (Dad was probably a good fisher when he was young). However, when the cabinet was still around, I never understood that objects have their stories and past to tell.

The cabinet also contained some of Brother’s belongings; these were left behind after he had left home. There was a chocolate box containing his old bus passes, a few fake Harley Davidson handkerchiefs, and stickers of ninjas and skulls. An old postcard from Bendemeer Secondary School dated back to 1993 read: your child has not been in school for seven days. Those were days of family violence, and the cabinet contained these memories. Every time I picked up the postcard, Dad’s beatings and Brother’s yelling replayed in my mind like a flashback movie, although I was the only one who could hear the voices in the quiet room.

The locked drawer belonged to Mum. It contained needles and rolls of thread of different thickness and colours. Mum used to have sharp eyes and soft fingers. She was once a beautiful and lively lady, then a dutiful and conforming wife, but now what is left of her is a jaded and forlorn ageing woman resigned to her fate. She also kept a few very old song books in there. In very recent years, she still sang some of these songs to my niece, who was with us for a while, but had left for China a year ago.

The other two drawers belonged to me. The act of opening and closing the drawers drew me into a world of memories and untold stories contained in various memorabilia. These stories and memories changed as I added new things or removed old ones. I used to keep stamps and old chewing gum wrappers and conceal love letters. New Year cards came and went with each New Year; cards and letters came and went as friends did the same. I kept cassette tapes and lyrics of heartfelt love songs. All these things are gone now.

It was exactly two years ago, when we decided to sell the house. ‘Come, help me chop the cabinet into smaller pieces,’ Mum said. I used screwdrivers to pry the pieces of wood apart and hammered them loose. Then, I emptied the drawers of their contents and removed them, after which I carried the wooden planks and drawers downstairs to discard them. All that remained of the cabinet was its bottom half; a hollow wooden box with four legs, like an empty shell. It was quite heavy, and because it was a rather bulky piece of furniture, Mum and I had to carry it to the bin compound. I imagined it being shoved into the incinerator -- a large angry fire engulfing it as thick black billowing smoke continued to rise, the fire consuming the cabinet with all its memories and family histories, reducing them to ashes that flew about in the dry wind, and finally to nothing.

(805 words)

posted by sin @ 8:01 PM