So. It’s a new
lunar year and it’s the turn of the horses out there to be prancing about, smug
that 2014 is all about them. That is, unless they’re on their third or fourth
cycle, in which case, chances are, they won’t be happy campers this year.
That’s the thing about the Chinese
zodiac – they’re dead giveaways. If you’re trying to hide the truth about your
age, and you’re an amateur liar, it’s the first thing that will give you away.
Tell someone truthfully you were
born in the year of the horse, during
a year of the horse, and people with just a basic grasp of the 12 times table
will be able to immediately work out how old you are.
Tell someone you were born in the
year of the rabbit during a year of the horse, though, and no one bothers to do
the maths, and you’re safe. It’s too complicated trying to work out the
sequence. Unless the person you’re talking to is a real busybody (say, your
boyfriend’s mother) and squirrels away that little nugget of information for
when they’re out of your sight and they whip out their smartphone.
The people in my mother’s generation
were masters at the game. Once they got past the age of 24, they began lying
about their age.
To this day, no one, not even my
father, knows exactly how old Mother is.
“How could you not know?” my sister
once said crossly to Father. “You’re married
to her!”
“It’s not like I haven’t asked,”
Father bleated. He’d always been a little afraid of Michelle. “All the women in
her family lie about their age. Especially her mother.”
“How do you know Por-Por is lying?”
I asked. I must have been six or seven at the time, and I couldn’t wait to get
to ten.
“She says she’s sixty-five but once
I heard her telling your sam-gu-ma that, growing up, her favourite movie star
was Lillian Gish which would make her at least fifteen years older!”
Michelle’s eyes narrowed. “This is
just so weird.”
Of course, the year she turned 25,
Michelle had a minor nervous breakdown. “My God,” she told me. “Do you know
what this means? In five years time, I’m going to be thirty! Oh, that is so
not happening!”
Which is why for the next five
years, if anyone asked, she said was 25. And when, after a while, that was no
longer plausible, she moved cities and made new friends and told them she was
26.
“You know that you’ve just turned
into our mother, right?” I told her.
“This is the one time I don’t care,”
she replied primly. “I so totally get it now.”
I remembered all this a few days ago
when Sharyn came over for lunch.
“Wah, I got itchy feet today,” she
said the minute she’d unloaded her bags of takeaway boxes from our favourite chai-beng stall down the road. “My mudder say is a sign I want to gallop
away.”
“She makes you sound like a horse,
Sharyn,” Saffy said as she opened the white Styrofoam boxes.
“Yah, lah! I’m a horse, what. This
is my year, you know.”
It was as if someone had sealed off
all the noise in the room. Saffy froze. Amanda stopped rummaging through the
pink plastic bags and looked up. My eyeballs swiveled from one person to the
next. The sound of three minds doing rapid mental arithmetic was deafening.
Finally, Saffy spoke up. “Are you
telling me…”
Amanda coughed.
“Are you telling us that you’re…you’re forty-eight?”
Sharyn flapped her hands at Saffy.
“Choi! Where got? I’m only thirty-six,
ok? Wah, so suay, accuse people of
being so old!”
Later, after Sharyn had left, it was
all the girls could talk about.
“Is it possible?” Saffy asked. “I mean, I guess it’s possible. Her eldest son is
15, so she would have been…uhm…21 at the time. As opposed to…uhm…33, which
isn’t old, but it seems so unlikely.”
Of course, Amanda was having none of it. “I’m not
saying she’s not 36, but she sure
doesn’t look it!”
“But she doesn’t look 48 either,” Saffy pointed
out.
And then a thought that had been trying to attract
both their attentions for some time now, finally managed to push through,
because both girls suddenly stopped and stared at each other.
“My God,” Saffy breathed.
“She’s not
a horse?” Amanda whispered.
I was confused. “What? What just happened?”
“Will you keep up? She’s lying about being a horse!”
Saffy said, her bosom inflating.
I was still confused. “What? Who’s lying? Sharyn?”
“That is so
sneaky!” Amanda said, her voice deep with admiration.
“Wait…what?”
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