Heart

Yati couldn't drag herself away last night. She said as much. I don't want to go home. Or back she may have said. Back was to a bedroom she shared with three young boys under seven out in Kranji near Woodlands and the Causeway, at the far end of Singapore. 

Two years Yati had been in that household working as a live-in maid. After a break back home in Java, three hours out of Jogjakarta, Yati has recently returned for another two year contract. A very difficult, demanding job of course, for which Yati received SG$500 per month.

When Yati left to go back home her employers held back two months pay on some pretext to ensure Yati returned. Neighbours and other allies gave this explanation on the matter. Ma'am’s own sister, who had taken more than a little shine to Yati, offered the same. Ma'am’s sister has advanced stage breast cancer which has become untreatable. When Yati left to return to Java short of funds the sister leant her money. 

Out at Kranji they all like and respect Yati. Still, in the last week or two there had been something amiss. The adults in the house, Sir and Ma’am, had shown blank, unsmiling faces. In that situation the maid invariably assumed it was something she had done. 

Yati put up with the state of affairs a week or more, following the lead of the pair and responding in kind. OK. Yati said nothing. A few days ago it seemed after a week or more of the same, the weather turned of itself. The smiles re-appeared, the warmth and the little jokes and pleasantries. Just when Yati was on the point of saying to them, I see you are unhappy with me. You won't tell me why. I will return home. I want to go back. 

Had they said, We are unhappy with this or that you did wrong, Yati could have accepted it better. But nothing. Brooding. Somehow it lifted just when she was going to say. 

Ma'am works in the city; Sir at home in his room, on the computer it must be. Yati does not know details. Four weeks passed like four days back in June in the kampung. Yati's boy will be four in December, grown in the two years his mother had been away. Some maids are given yearly returns to their families by their employer. Yati does not have this luck. 

Before Singapore Yati had two years in Brunei. Here second time round she might do only the first year of the contract. Two years already seems impossible. 

Other maids have vastly better conditions and circumstances, Yati knows. Some worse. You would think she would at least explore the possibilities of another position, give it a try. One reason Yati returned was the boys, hard as it was looking after them. The attachment had developed. A very difficult job, but even so, heart was involved now. 

         — You know? Yati asked, pleading for her heart, pointing at her chest and looking away. 

The middle boy is her favourite, just nine months older than her own. Her heart called her back to the same position at Kranji. Of course there are little prospects back in the kampung, beautiful as it is there. Many foreigners come to visit the region and Yati’s kampung in particular. How though to make a living and raise a child there, as a single mother especially? 

Lawyers for the divorce have sucked money. Yati has returned to the house of her mother and father. A younger sister has just given birth to her first child. Luckily Yati was present for the event. Every two or three days Yati calls home to talk to her son, her parents, her sister and brothers. The phone is a major expense for all the maids in Singapore, for all foreign workers everywhere. Recently bathing the children Yati dropped her phone in the water. Luckily the sister dying of breast cancer sold Yati her old phone cheaply.

In December the family would likely go up to Kajang in Malaysia again. In Kajang they have a favourite hotel where they spend a week at the end of every year. Kajang is an hour out of KL. Yati went once to see the Petronas towers. Another time she and the boys went with the parents to a favourite restaurant up in the city. 

For Hari Raya Yati had donned the kerudong and the full body cover. In the photographs she looked unrecognisable. Yati enjoys dressing-up and jewellery. A pink skirt with black polka dots hasn’t made a re-appearance after some remarks were passed on it. 

The kerudong—or tudong in Bahassa Indonesian—is a serious undertaking for Yati. Some girls wear the scarf with a casual attitude. Without the inner truth the kerudong is a travesty, Yati says. 

Yati is wary of boy-friends. Once an Indonesian boy-friend had sworn to her he was unmarried. A true Muslim should not have sex outside of marriage, that was another thing. 

Her heart called Yati back to Kranji, where she sleeps in the top bunk above the youngest boy. Last year she had the boy in another bed with her, the only way he would settle. In the last year of her previous stint at Kranji Yati had voiced her own opinion when the possibility of a fourth child had been raised. How could they possibly manage with another? The maid did not hold back. 

         Understanding the pull of the heart was likely too much for an outsider to comprehend, Yati knew. Harder still for a male. You don't know, Yati said. 

         There are lots of love hearts in Singapore, far more than in Australia. Asia generally had more hearts than Australia, than Western countries generally, you would guess. Hearts are thought sloppy in Australia. They wouldn't sell anything like they do here. In turbo-capitalist Singapore they had lots, and not just on the ubiquitous tee promoting their patriotism. In Australia it was usually the flag or some other signifier attesting to the allegiance; not the heart. Tees, key-rings, napkins, curtains—big apple hearts are everywhere in SG. In Indonesia there might not be so many even with the much larger population.