“A little bit naughty I’m known to be, make sure you don’t take your eyes off me!”
Blue-and-white striped boxers, felt peach skin, round eyes and explosive hair, his lips pinched together in a cheeky grin. He was cute from the get-go, but bringing Tumbles home hadn’t been a priority in my mind.
She was sitting hunched on a low stool, a trolley bag by her side, along a stretch of one of Singapore’s busiest streets. Her modest wares – packets of tissue, instant noodles, biscuits, shirts and other bits and bobs – were laid out before her on red canvas. “If the police come, I have to pack up and move away quickly, or I’ll get into trouble,” she says in Mandarin, her words running a little together.
I take in the gnarled, twisted fingers, the liver-spotted skin, the eyes slightly clouded by cataracts. How fast can she really go to escape the police? “How long have you been selling things like this?”
“I don’t remember any more.”
“Didn’t you try to get a vendor’s license?”
She waves a wrinkly hand in the air. “You have to pay so much for a piece of paper! And the price goes up, up, up. Now it’s practically $1000. It’s more than I can earn in a month, how can I pay?”
“What happens if you get caught?”
“Sometimes if I pack up fast enough they can’t do anything. If I get caught I’ll get fined, or if you can’t pay the fine you’ll have to go to jail until someone bails you out. The fine’s maybe about $500, $600? It gets more and more if you’re a repeat offender.”
It’s unclear if she’s ever been to jail, but she claims that she once received three summons slips in a day, when a particularly strict police officer had come by.
“What should I do? Housing rental is going up. Vendor’s licenses are going up; they even want to measure the size of your stall. Sometimes I can make enough, sometimes not. That’s how it is. That’s just how it is nowadays.”
I study the sad-looking goods on her mats, wishing I could help her somehow. My eyes fall on the little row of three Beanie Kids; mischievous-looking bean-bag toys, each dressed in different boxers. In the middle is Tumbles, his pink puffed cheeks offset by his over-sized pants.
I pay for him and move aside for browsing passers-by. We chat for a little while longer, but her soft voice keeps getting drowned out by the evening traffic mostly made up of shiny new cars, BMWs and Porsches among them. Finally, she sighs and nudges me.
“I’m fed up of talking. These things just make me angry. And you shouldn’t stand here. If the police come maybe they’ll give you summons slips too.”
