Mother’s Curse and the HDB Stairwell

Male Modern Social Mobility Overbearing Mother Curse Breaking Cynical Author: Marcus Goh

Summary

AI · 2026.08.01.08:30

A conscript’s silence breaks when his mother’s ghost haunts their HDB stairwell — not to warn, but to demand he climb to the top floor and burn her wedding photo before dawn, or their block will vanish like the kampong it replaced.

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1962. The HDB block on Upper Serangoon Road

still smells of damp cement and kerosene. Tan

Jie Ming, 18, returns from NS training with a

blistered heel and a letter stamped “Pending

Registration.” His mother, Lim Siew Keng, has

not spoken to him since he refused to sit for

the scholarship exam. She only moves now in the

stairwell — barefoot, in her sari, whispering to

the walls where the British once nailed

propaganda posters. No one else sees her. The

neighbours say the block was built on a Malay

burial ground. But Jie Ming knows: she’s not

haunting the concrete. She’s haunting the

promise she buried under his name.

The curse isn’t magic. It’s colonial arithmetic.

Every HDB flat built after 1958 must be

registered under one name — the mother’s, if the

father died in the Occupation. If the son

doesn’t take over before 21, the flat reverts to

the state. Siew Keng’s husband vanished in 1945.

She signed the papers with her thumbprint. She

never told him. Now, the Housing Board’s notice

hangs taped to the lift door: “Final

Verification — Failure to Transfer Will Result

in Vacancy.” The world changed when the British

left and the state took ownership. Homes became

paper contracts. Bloodlines became liabilities.

He finds her photo in the kitchen cabinet — her

and his father, smiling beside a bicycle, the

frame stamped “Straits Settlements.” She never

let him touch it. He burns it on the

seventhfloor landing, using his NS lighter. The

flames catch the lace trim first. The smoke

rises in the shape of a joss stick. Below, the

neighbours start shouting. The block trembles —

not from wind, but from the weight of a thousand

unregistered names. The lift doors open. Empty.

The stairwell lights flicker. The notice on the

lift door vanishes.

At dawn, the Housing Board officer arrives. He

checks the register. “Tan Jie Ming,” he says.

“Flat 412. Registered. Approved.” He leaves

without asking why the photo is ash. Jie Ming

walks past the same stairwell. His mother is

gone. The smell of kerosene lingers. He doesn’t

cry. He knows: the state didn’t take her. She

took herself — to keep him in the system. The

curse was never supernatural. It was the only

way a widow could make her son count. The block

stands. He passes his NS medical. He will never

apply for scholarship. He signs up for the army.

The world still moves on paper. But now, he

knows how to burn it.