Before International Women’s Day

We celebrate International Women’s Day today.

A day to honour the way women should be honoured.

A woman’s truth remains, waiting for the right post.

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The night before International Women’s Day settled on Caleb Lim’s study, an evening for perfunctory posture. Posturing was in the wealthy Asian businessman’s DNA; years of company events and dinners and ingrained positioning. In the manner of a suave, well-heeled corporate figure, he typed a carefully worded tribute for his company’s Facebook page. A polished act of respect for the women his organisation couldn’t do without. A message his followers expected, and would admire. Of little consequence. The ceremonial gratitude was necessary. He swept his dismissiveness aside and arranged his goodness in cautiously worded sentences. 

He was about to click on the ‘post’ button when the phone on his rosewood table buzzed.  

A voice he couldn’t mistake. 

His daughter’s.

Disbelief turned to shock. Then hope arrived before reason. 

His daughter couldn’t be speaking to him. 

She had long since been cremated. After a long bout of depression. 

But, the heated words. His insistence that she should know her place as a  daughter. Her rudeness. Her utter defiance. 

Out of line. As a woman. 

But the dead had his number. How, he had no way to know.

That voice – it was Jane’s. But what should have sounded comforting was instead wary.

Too wary.

‘Dad, I’m sorry to bother you…”

The apology always came before anything she ever said to him, especially if it mattered.

That came because isolation taught her displeasing him mattered. 

The haunting, soft caution. The almost ghostly tiptoe around his anger with her mere presence.

“I’m so sorry, dad, for calling at the wrong time…” 

Jane’s voice was not comforting, but had the soft ring of deference. Every sentence bent, low.

A woman’s bow. Too low.

She spoke as though that taking up his space was her failure. 

And he heard it in her manners. His damage. 

The receiver hung limp in his hand. She WAS dead. Too much so to be speaking to him. 

And yet the voice echoed over the line. The girlish, subservient voice. 

The voice he had nurtured. 

No, her call didn’t shake his being. 

Her voice did. The soft ring of her woman’s voice. 

His Facebook tribute to women smiled on his monitor. A false smile. 

The public praise he knew too well how to execute.

His words for his wife, then his daughter, were never seasoned with care or kindness, but with sarcasm.

Dismissiveness. 

Contempt. 

The nearest women to him had been deprived of the shelter they deserved. Of honour, in their home. 

His message lit up the monitor without a truthful source.

He sat, his head in his hands. No words of reconciliation would ever reach Jane; he was remorseful.

Too late. 

Grief and change couldn’t walk the same aisle. 

The truth had arrived long after the sand in his hourglass had finished dripping. 

The dead were beyond repair. The living –

Waiting to be fixed.

Addressed. 

He clicked on the button. 

To delete. 

His Facebook timeline refreshed. 

A photo of him and Jane, her bright smile giving the monitor the light it needed. 

He had sent the right post. 

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