The Feeling I Get
by Marcus Ong
How I wish I can describe to you the feeling I get when I see a middle-aged woman, in musty office clothing, pudgy, battling hair lost, wrinkles on her face, high-heeled, green bulgy veins showing behind her knees, coming out from the supermarket, two hands gripping plastic bags containing potato chips and instant cup noodles, walking home, a three-bedroom HDB flat, head down, eyes fixed on the ground, crossing the road at a green light, going into an elevator, coming out of the elevator, walking down an empty but brightly lit corridor, fumbling for her keys in her handbag, smiling at a neighbour coming in her direction from the elevator, opening the front gate, entering the flat, greeted by her young children, putting down the plastic bags on the draining board in the kitchen but forgetting to store them in the cabinets, staring at the clock on the wall, thinking about her husband still at work, talking to her children, asking them if they had done their homework, if their grandma had given them dinner, having yet showered, on a Monday, ten in the night, eight more hours to go before she wakes up in the morning to prepare breakfast for her children, to shower, to brush her teeth, to take her vitamins, get ready, to get to work, taking the train at the station outside the supermarket, and stand in the train on her high heels for 40 minutes, getting to the office building by walking through an underground passageway, finding her desk on the 32nd floor, leaving her desk only for short periods of time, until she leaves, coming back by train again, passing the supermarket again without entering, queuing at the ATM, withdrawing cash and checking her account balance, staring at the screen at her modest savings, a result of her having a job, returning home, eating the potato chips she bought the day before while watching Western dramas on Netflix on her laptop, switching to a comedy halfway because she feels like laughing, that is of course after the laundry and ironing is done and the children are put to bed, finishing the comedy until it is her bedtime, hoping to fall asleep as soon as possible, feeling thirsty because the chips were too salty, waking up in the middle of the night to drink a cup of water, asking herself how long it has been since she took a shit before going back to bed, waking in the morning, washing her hair because she forgot the night before, finding thick coils of hair clogging the drain, sighing, not sure what she should to do about this as she sits on the toilet bowl trying to shit, reminding herself to eat more greens when she gets the chance, picking her clothes from the cupboard, trying out new combinations, matching colours, so it doesn’t appear to colleagues that she has nothing to wear, seeing her husband still asleep, kissing him on the cheek before she leaves the house, repeating all these actions with slight variations, like grandma falling on her bum in the bathroom and having to send her to A&E in the middle of the night, like visiting her children’s primary school for Meet-the-Parents session, but all these not are enough to change anything…
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Marcus Ong Kah Ho is a full-time writer based in Singapore. His fiction has been published by Momaya Press in their Annual Review 2016. This story is his first publication in Singapore.
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