“I want to go visit my son”

Having to work at the shop for almost a year, I’ve notice there is this petite lady aged about eighty that comes every Wednesday for about three months. “Boy, same thing hor.” Yup, I know what she means. Twenty dollars big, and twenty dollars small for all the three days. What puzzles me is that, this lady doesn’t seem to be working and yet she can spend money on these games like everyone else. Devotedly. One hundred and twenty dollars per week means four hundred and eighty dollars per month. Of course I’m no one to start question her capability to spend, but I’m just puzzled that’s all. Is she a millionaire? Does she have a lot of money in her CPF account?

Today is a cloudy Wednesday where it may rain anytime. However it never stops the old lady from visiting our shop. Having to see that no one is queuing behind her, I’ve decided to brave myself to ask her the “million dollar” question.

“Aunty, wah every time you buy so much for every week. Not siong meh?”

“Not too bad lah. My son sends me money every month. He works hard overseas you know.”

“Oh, then you should have save the money up.”

“No lah. I want to strike more money so that I can fly over to visit my son.”

The moment she ended her words, another middle-aged woman steps into the shop, pulls the old lady out of the shop. I can still hear them talking though. “Ma, can you stop buying all these with the money that Ah Soon sends to you? You need to take care of yourself you know?”

Then the middle-aged woman comes back into the shop, leaving her mum, I presume, outside. I swear that none of us made her tear, and she started to tell a story to us.

Never did the old lady know that, in actual fact, her son was killed in a car accident a year ago while traveling overseas to work. The middle-aged woman, who is the daughter-in-law, was requested by her husband to give a certain amount of money to his mother for her daily expenses and yet to hide the fact that he is already dead. We cannot do anything but to keep the secret as well, as the woman begs.

The poor petite lady will never know the truth.