Another Fair Maid

 

The two women roughly the same age, height, colouration. Moderately plump, pear-shaped both. The unusual in-step walk was what drew attention. 

This was a definite, striking lock-step, almost military in precision, despite the fact the woman on the outside was swivelled around half-facing the other. It was a kind of unity of being that marked out the pair in the midst of numerous others passing along the concourse. 

The similarity in size and feature came as the secondary observation. And only after that, lagging behind the other impressions, the notes of racial difference.

In fact the woman on the inside might have been four or five years older, perhaps early thirties. So much else was in accord that this distinction too took some time to register. 

The younger had a slightly darker skin tone, freckles, something of the Pacific in her aspect. Both were dressed in cheap, non-descript, washed-out clothes of the same unflattering dun colour. Shorts, printed tees and thongs. That was an added part of the unity; even the colours the same, as if they shared clothes indiscriminately.

The elder carried the strapped baby of two or three months high on her chest, facing. In order to engage the baby and have it in focus, the woman needed to retract her head. With head pulled back a little like a rooster, arching her spine, on she marched in-step with her companion. The baby sat comfortably, wisps of dark hair and eyes that blinked only a little, tiny and soundless.

A late afternoon constitutional underneath the HDB block. Dinner would follow upstairs. The lifts were in the central hub where most of the shops were clustered. Like at the base of any other HDB, food stalls stood ready as an option. On North Bridge here the cluster was somewhat unusual for all the stationery and printing shops. Across the road there was more than one Art supply outlet. Old grannies often sat along the ledges looking out onto the traffic on North Bridge Road. Incongruously, Raffles Hotel sat directly opposite, its presence inconsequential for this other side of the street. Often it was a surprise to be reminded of the incongruity.

The pair of women walked slowly, yet there was a rapidity in their motion at the same time. This impression came from the younger, darker, freckled woman, who walked half side-on, holding a fan in her hand which she directed at the baby. 

The girl was right-handed. From such close range shoulder-to-shoulder, she could not have fanned the child with her left even if she was able. Swivelling half-round, she battered with the fan from the right in rapid strokes. Keeping step, perhaps swinging her legs in a wider arc, she kept up with the fanning. 

Such energy in her action. An odd look of earnestness she gave the baby, who sat on contentedly, clearly in perfect comfort. 

There had been a couple of downpours through the afternoon, one just five minutes earlier. The heat and steaminess had quickly descended again. But this was almost November now; the oppressive sting of mid-year was long gone. 

The younger, darker, freckled woman beat a rapid time at this baby of such a charmed life, channeling at the child carefully. The most doting aunt could not have fulfilled the role as well.

Even the lower middle-class in Singapore, even renters in the HDB blocks, could afford cheap Filipina, Indonesian and Myanmar maids. For as little as three hundred and fifty Singaporean dollars a month a young mother could have such a girl living in the spare room, minding the baby, washing, cooking, cleaning, fetching the groceries. 

Many of the maids were the care-givers for the elderly, whose children prefer to undertake employment. Many have left their own children with their mothers and husbands back home and don't see them for two, three or more years. It was only in recent years that a mandated free day a month, and then weekly, was given these young women. In earlier years more than one had been encountered who had not had a free day in two or three years of employment. Cases of beatings are not uncommon. Trouble with the Sir usually takes the other, predictable form. Surveillance cameras regularly capture maids slapping their elderly charges because there had been trouble over medication and the like—the newspapers providing coverage. A dozen or more maids have fallen from the high towers to their deaths.

       Two hundred thousand maids in the country, in a native population the size of Melbourne.