The Aunty Whose Story Stopped at the Sugar

The coffee shop on Simei Street 4 I go to on weekday mornings has six marble tables, four ceiling fans, and an aunty at the corner who always orders teh halia with less sugar and always begins a story she never finishes. I know this because I have sat three tables away from her for eighteen months and I have heard the opening of the same anecdote about her daughter at least nine times. The daughter works in healthcare. The daughter bought a flat. The daughter came home last weekend with a boyfriend the aunty does not entirely approve of. Each time the story reaches the boyfriend, something interrupts it.

Today the interruption was the sugar. The uncle behind the counter called out that the teh halia was ready and the aunty reached for the cup and forgot, mid-sentence, what she was about to say about the boyfriend’s haircut. She stirred the tea. She looked at the surface as though the rest of the story might be reflected there. It was not. She drank. She turned to her friend and said, anyway, never mind, and the friend nodded in the way of someone who has heard the anyway never mind before and knows it means the telling is over for this morning.

I had my own cup of teh halia, slightly too sweet because I always forget to say less sugar until it is too late. The ceiling fans turned. The television above the counter showed a cooking programme with the volume off. A delivery rider came in for kopi-o and left. The coffee shop was in the part of the morning between the breakfast rush and the lunch prep, when the uncle wipes the counter in a different direction and the room sounds like it has more space than it actually has.

Half a story is still a story. It just ends where nobody planned for it to end.

I tried once to imagine how the anecdote would finish. The boyfriend’s haircut is not interesting enough to sustain a full narrative, which makes the interruption more puzzling. Perhaps the aunty reaches the part she is not supposed to tell — something about money, or illness, or a disagreement that is private — and the sugar is a convenient place to stop. Perhaps she simply forgets, the way people forget the last item on a list when someone asks them a question. Perhaps the story was never meant to have an ending and the aunty knows this better than I do.

At 9.28am the aunty paid and stood. She said see you tomorrow to her friend. She walked out into Simei Street 4 where the sun was already hot on the pavement and the story about her daughter went with her, still unfinished, still carrying whatever the boyfriend’s haircut was supposed to mean. I finished my tea and folded the newspaper along its original creases because the uncle appreciates that, and I walked to the MRT with the taste of ginger and the sense that I had witnessed something complete even though it was not.

Why do I write about this. Because the unfinished anecdote is the part nobody records and nobody remembers by evening, and yet it is the part that tells you what kind of morning you are having — whether you arrived early enough to catch the opening or late enough to catch only the anyway never mind. I caught the anyway never mind today. That is enough.