Singapore had always been known for its no nonsense approach to social ills, so it wasn't a surprise when the government announced the institution of "morality schools" to stem the tide of unwed motherhood. The management of the schools was handed over to a former minister of education, P.T. Wang, who had established his reputation during a teacher's strike years earlier when he fired all the protesting teachers and even had a few paddled for insubordination. And so the morality schools were opened and quickly populated by young women from all over Singapore and Malaysia who had gotten into "trouble" at the hands of oversexed employers or lying boyfriends. Mostly the girls were from the lower class whose families were unable to bear the shame or the social stigma of unwed pregnancy. So they arrived in buses from the surrounding cities and villages; some waddling from their belly loads and others barely showing, with the idea that they would be reindoctrinated in virtue and shown the error of their ways while preparing for the birth of their bastards.
Mr. Wang was always there to greet each new busload. He would stand on the porch of the school with his hands held behind his back eyeing the woman with a searing expression. On this day he saw two who were laughing, and he quickly laid down the law.
"Anybody I see smiling or joking will tote water buckets for a week!" he snapped.
The young women quickly became serious and lined up in their bare feet and loose house dresses for review. Mr. Wang moved to a place in front of them and walked down the line, stopping only when he had reached a tall, pretty, Malay girl whose huge belly projected out like a shelf. She directed her eyes at him briefly and then directed them back to the ground. He stood there and stared at her. Was she the one he had seen smiling? He moved away then.
"My name is Mr. Wang!" he started, "I will be managing your experience here. What I require is absolute commitment! There will be no foolishness, no playing around!"
He stopped to look at a slightly built Chinese girl who appeared to be overtaken by shame from the redness of her face.
"I'm sure you all have your stories, your reasons, your excuses for being here! But I don't want to hear them! You've made your choices and now you have to suffer the consequences! All actions have consequences! That is what you are here to learn! In the coming months, you all will give birth and when you feel that pain you will understand that this is no joke! Playtime is over!"
After several more minutes of this diatribe, the women were dismissed and led to their barracks. They were shown in by a stout, uniformed woman who carried a riding crop in her hand. They soon found out what it was used for when two of the girls got into an argument over a bunk bed. Their bickering was quickly turned to silence when the crop was laid across one of their backsides. It rang out loudly and the girl who was hit collapsed to the floor in pain.
"Big girls on the bottom beds, smaller girls on the top!" the guard admonished.
The tall, pretty, Malay girl and the petite Chinese took a bunk together, while a Filipino girl took the lower bunk next to them. The three began to talk as soon as the guard left.
"Did you see that!" the pretty Malay girl said to the Filipina, "She hit her with that leather thing hard!"
"They use that on horses, so I guess they're going to use it to train us." The Filipina replied sarcastically.
"I'm not a horse! Nor am I a naughty child!" the Chinese girl complained indignantly.
"Hi, I'm Teresa!" the long-haired Filipina initiated.
"I'm Joan." The Chinese one replied.
"I'm Sri." The Malay girl followed.
"How far are you?" Joan asked Teresa as she gazed over at her basketball-sized belly.
"Thirty weeks." she replied with a sardonic smirk.
"How about you?" Teresa inquired of Joan whose bump was barely visible.
"Eighteen."
"And you?" Teresa asked Sri.
"Thirty-six." The large-eyed beauty replied with a dismayed sigh.
"Was he a European?" Teresa pressed as to the identity of the father.
Sri's face angled down in demur discomfort at this question. She merely shook her head in response.
"A lot of the girls who worked for those Europeans ended up pregnant in the Philippines!" Teresa informed them.
"How did you get put here if you're Filipino?" Joan asked her.
"I became a citizen of Singapore when I married this guy a few years ago. It was just a fake marriage so I could stay here." She explained.
"Is he the...?" Joan started.
"No! He's not the father!" Teresa corrected with exasperation, "I got raped by some bastard one night. He put something in my drink. I just remember waking up the next day alone in a hotel with his semen leaking out of me."
Joan put her hand over her mouth in shock.
"Oh my god!" Sri exclaimed, "That's terrible!"
"It's terrible for all of us!" Teresa assured them, "What happened with you, Joan?"
The young Chinese woman's face went red with this question.
"He was my English teacher." She admitted with downcast eyes.
"A foreigner?" Teresa weighed in.
"No, a Singaporean man... Chinese like me." Joan managed to confess.
"Another opportunistic bastard!" Teresa proclaimed.
"No, he was nice." Joan quickly corrected, "He lost his job when they found out."
"Well, he should have been punished. He broke the trust." Sri chimed in.
Joan angled her head to one side as her gaze became distant.
"He broke many things." she said wistfully.
Teresa looked over at Sri. Did Joan actually believe she was in love with this guy?
"We are the only ones being punished here! And for the crimes of men!" Teresa righteously asserted.
"Shhh!" Sri warned as she looked around the barracks.
"Don't worry, these other girls no doubt have similar stories!" Teresa went on, "They have been victimized by everyone they trusted: Authority figures, family members, even perfect strangers!"
"My father condemned me as a slut." Joan added then, her expression still distant.
"We have all been condemned! All the shame has been thrown on us! They brought us here to hide us away! They don't want to see us because that's just a reminder of how immoral their men are!"
"Shhhh! Not so loud!" Sri warned her again.
"Is it not true?! What about you? How did this happen to you?" Teresa pressed Sri.
"It just happened because people are weak and not following God!" She replied.