Busted!

Enida had a motorcycle. She usually picked me up on her way to uni and dropped me off on the way home. In return we shared the gasoline cost.

One day we decided to check out a poster store after class. Enida got confused by my instructions and took a wrong turn. A traffic policeman on a motorbike was waiting for us around the bend. We were stopped. This kind of policemen usually expected money from people who got caught. I was not familiar with the procedure and I didn’t have much money with me anyway so I just stayed quiet. Enida didn’t offer him any money either. We were asked to follow him to a police station nearby.
Enida sulked throughout the ordeal. She didn’t argue with the policeman but she refused to surrender her driver’s license. She didn’t answer any of the policeman’s questions. She just clamped her mouth tightly together with an expression that said ‘I’m not talking to a scum like you!’ and ‘I’m going to tell my dad, you Bully!’ After almost an hour, the policeman gave up. He let us go with a warning.

The Reward

I was an average student throughout school, but at university I suddenly get a lot of As and Bs. I actually hated economics and I couldn’t put two and two together without a calculator. But since we were allowed to use calculator, I did just fine.

There were some hot shots in my batch at uni. You could tell who were hot shots by the way they strutted around campus. They usually had rich or influential dad, or both. I instinctively disliked these kids. I was naturally jealous because they had money and and were popular. I didn’t and I wasn’t. One of these kids was Rina. Her father was a successful businessman in Palembang. Rina asked me to help her with one of the subjects. I didn’t particularly like her, but she was nice to me so I helped her with some tutoring sessions. She treated me to a movie as payment.

When the result came out, Rina got a B. Not bad. As for me, I made a small but fatal mistake in the exam. I got a D and had to repeat the subject.

the village

When I was a teenager, Mom took me to a small village where she grew up. It was a tiny village in the middle of nowhere in Sumatra. After a long, tiring trip we arrived. We stayed in a quaint house on stilts, by a small river. I don't remember much of the trip. Just that people recognized me immediately as Mom's daughter. I must have looked just like her. I had the best fried chicken ever in that village. Things were going great until morning came. We took a shower in an outdoor bathroom. There was no roof, so everybody donned a sarong when bathing. If that was bad, the toilet was worse. It was at the back of house, at the end of a wooden plank, over the river. The toilet itself was a small cubicle about one meter in diameter, roofless, like the shower. If a person squated over the hole on the floor, he or she could still enjoy the surrounding view because the cubicle was only one meter tall. But the worst part was that there was a similar facility right across the river. You could practically chat with your neighbour while unloading. I took one look at the toilet, and abandoned all idea of trying it out. It was a torture but I managed to wait until we arrived at another relative's house in a small town half a day away. This relative's toilet is not much more than a hole on the floor, but at least it had proper walls and a roof.

Loo Incident

When my sister started dating, she sometimes took me along as a chaperone. One evening a prospective boyfriend took us to a restaurant. We ate in the outdoor area. Afterwards I needed to go to the loo. It was a bit far from where we ate, which was good, considering what happened next. I had a bit of a problem with the toilet door. I tugged and tugged at the door but it wouldn’t budge. I tugged hard and the whole door came off with a crash. Nobody else was in the toilet area at that time so nobody saw what happened. I went out, my brain still trying to digest I had just yanked a door off its hinges. There was a light switch right outside the toilet and I automatically pressed it, as I usually did at home. The toilet light went out, so did some lights for the eating area nearby. Gasp! I quickly pressed the switch again and walked calmly towards our table as if nothing had happened.

Bibi Rani

After the neighbour boy left, my mother found another washer lady. She was a cheerful Indian lady. Bibi Rani was very dark, very round and very nice. She helped my mother to lift father when he was completely paralyzed. When my father was beginning to recover, she became a physiotherapist and helped him walked up and down the house. Bibi Rani liked to chew betel leaves and tobacco. She carried around a tin can to spit into. She let me try some betel leaves with a little lime. I can’t remember the taste but it was not unpleasant. Bibi Rani has a sister-in-law called Bibi Anggema. She also chewed betel leaves and tobacco and I think she was addicted to lotto. The ladies spent long afternoons discussing what numbers would turn up next. They analyzed their dreams or their relative’s dreams or anybody's dreams and then tried to interpret the dreams into numbers. It was an elaborate and complicated process. Every once in a blue moon they won a bit of money and they would brag about it to us.

Lotto Addicts

After failing to turn the neighbour boy into a proper laundry man, my mother found a real washer lady. Bibi Rani was cheerful Indian lady. Very dark and round all over. She helped my mother to lift father when he was completely paralyzed. When my father was beginning to recover, she became a physiotherapist and helped him walked up and down the house. Bibi Rani liked to chew betel leaves and tobacco. She carried around a tin can to spit into. She let me try some betel leaves with a little lime. I can’t remember the taste but it was not unpleasant. Bibi Rani has a sister-in-law called Bibi Anggema. She also chewed betel leaves and tobacco and I think she was addicted to lotto. They spent long afternoons discussing what numbers would turn up next. They analyzed their dreams or their children’s dreams and then tried to interpret the dreams into numbers. In fact, they interpreted anything that they saw or experienced into numbers. It was an elaborate and complicated process. Every once in a blue moon they won a bit of money would brag about it. Then they would immediately restart the painstaking process of number-hunting.

Neighbours 3

My mom did not give up. She went on another crusade. She persuaded the lady next door to allow her younger boy, who was about eleven, to stay with us. She persuaded another lady who lived a bit further away to allow her son, who was around nine to come too. The boys were happy at first. My mom taught they should be taught religion, so he made them pray five times a day. (They were not even Moslem!) As I said, my mother did not have any training in social work. After a couple of days, the boys started to get bored with home life and the routines, especially the younger boy. His name was Phai. Phai is small for his age. Not much bigger than my four-year-old niece. One day, they were playing together when my mom started to get suspicious. Phai was rubbing himself a lot and acting funny, and was trying to take my niece to a quiet corner. Mom approached and told Phai to stand up straight and sure enough, the little guy had an erection. She sent both boys home. I’ve just learned about child abuse and I realized now that Phai could have been a victim of child abuse. Things had been shown to him or even done to him that was not appropriate. Poor kid.

Neighbours 2

We had some very interesting neighbours. Our next door neighbours were ladies of dubious reputation. They had several children, whom they beat up regularly. From our house we could hear the children crying, screaming, pleading as they were chased around the house with a cane, or whatever were used. My mother, who did not have a rosy childhood herself tried to do what she could. She had no training in social work or psychology, so her efforts were unplanned and sporadic, with some interesting results. First of all, she tried to save the eldest neighbour boy. He was a cross-dresser and had worked in a massage parlour. My mom tried to keep him away from prostitution by hiring him to wash our laundry. I think he hated the job, because he never smiled when he did the washing. He swore a lot. In the end, my mom fired him because clothes started to go missing and one time he was caught with clothes hidden under his shirt.

Neighbours 1

My salad days was not all bad. I made some good friends. My sister had a school friend who lived near us, in a small street called the Snail Alley. The friend’s mother was a hairdresser, so I often come and visit to get my hair cut. I called her Aunty. The friend also had a little brother about my age. His name is San. Sometimes our two families went on picnics together. I remember fun trips to the zoo, the beach and the mountains. Aunty sometimes took us to see Mandarin movies. The cinema was not very far so we usually just walk there and back. San and I often played together. San and I got along pretty well, considering that we were both in our early teens. Sometimes I visited San, and sometimes he visited me. One day he came while I was in my room. I had almost finished getting dressed, but not quite yet. He walked in, I screamed, he ran home. He didn’t show up again until we were both in high school.

Super Dentist

I was teased a lot about my looks and had grown very anxious whenever I left the house. I stopped looking at people’s faces. I looked down on the asphalt, up at trees, sky, cloud, sideways to the houses, things in the shops, rooftops, cars, feet, grass, fallen leaves. At one point my brain began to persuade me to believe that I was inside a bubble, like a glass shell, and nobody could hurt me while I was in there. Crazy? Sure. But that was just my self-defense mechanism going over-creative.
We went to another orthodontist, yet again. This one was a university professor. She was rough, and nasty. She always gossiped with the assistant while treating my teeth. When I asked for a discount she verbally abused me for several minutes (Trust me, you can say a hell of a lot of things in 5 minutes). It was very effective. I never dared to ask for a discount from her ever again.

The professor yanked out three mammoth teeth and installed braces that caused me headaches and a million blisters. For the first time in my life I was able to close my mouth properly. I began to look more or less normal. I was sixteen.

The Sewing Machine

I saw a small, battery-operated sewing machine at Hoya. It was pink and it could really sew. I looked at it and drooled. I was twelve or thirteen and I liked to make clothes for my doll. I asked my mom questions about it. She said it was too expensive for a toy and I could hurt myself with the needle. She told me a story of grandma, who had a needle of a sewing machine jammed into her forefinger. It must be very difficult for parents to say no to their children. I know this because my mother never forgot that sewing machine. One day she bought me a miniature sewing machine. It was not pink, but it was tiny and it could really sew. I was thirty when she bought it for me. ((((((:

Dentists

By fourteen I was not cute at all. Very tall, very thin, very bucked teeth. I could only guess that my parents knew I was teased at school. I never told them and they never said anything. My mom took me to one dentist after another. The first one treated me for about a year with no apparent result. After an incident with the water-jet teeth cleaner, I got fed up and so I refused to go there anymore. The second dentist laughed nervously and said to my face that I was unfixable. OK, so he was young and inexperienced. The third one was in the city’s foremost university. He took x-ray photos of my face and the doctor said the way to fix me was by cutting my face open and shaving off some of the upper front jaw. So my mother said that we would think about it and we went home feeling horrible.

Sundays

On Sundays, when my father was well enough, we usually called two rickshaws and me, my sister, and mom and dad would go to an old restaurant in the city. It was called Tip Top. My favorite was the delicious chicken steak followed by ice-cream for dessert. After dinner we walked down the street and we usually stopped by at the small bookseller’s stall. It wasn’t even a shop, but it had what we wanted. Reader’s Digest for my father, and Famous Five for me and my sister. Sometimes we went to Hoya, the biggest toy and stationary store in town. The toys were too expensive to buy so we only bought a fancy pencil or two at a time.

The Missing Ruler

I think the richer and more influential the parents, the meaner and more screwed up the kids . I'm being prejudiced, I know. These were the kids who came to school with dopey eyes and slurred speech , studied together at a friend’s house and watched porn movies, and collected money to buy Final School Exams. They were the ones who treated me like dirt. One day, a rich bratette (female brat) saw my ruler. It was purple, with a picture of a cartoon sumo player on it. She fancied it so she asked me to give it to her. She was never very nice to me so why should I give her anything? Anyway, she was rich. Surely she could buy a hundred rulers if she wanted to. I said no. A few days later my ruler disappeared. I searched high and low at home but I couldn’t find it. A couple of months later I saw it on rich bratette’s desk. She wasn’t there, so I took it back. She didn’t say anything after that so I assumed that it really was my old purple ruler. Brattt!!!

Junior High

After finishing primary school, I moved to a new school. Another snobby Catholic school. My schoolmates were savages. Some teachers were not much better. Unlike my friends in the old school, my new classmates have rich, influential parents. I could get in there because my school reports were good. We got a discount for the enrollment fee because my mom showed a letter from the neighborhood secretary, stating that my father was ill and we were poor. Just like the movie Mean Girls, there were groups at school and kids of the same kinds ganged together. There were cool chicks, rich brats, sport stars, brainy bunch, math whiz, some drug users, and one or two borderline delinquents. I belonged with class rejects. Weird kids who did not fit into any categories. We did not hang out in the cafeteria during breaks. We just stood under the acacia tree and chatted with other rejects. Sometimes we mucked around by tangling acacia fruits in each other’s hair.

End of Cute

Judging from old photos of myself, I was a beautiful baby. Then grew into a cute, chubby toddler. Things started to go wrong when my tiny, tiny milk teeth were replaced by menhir-sized teeth. The new teeth pushed forward and very soon I began to look like Bugs Bunny. I couldn’t close my mouth properly. Four front teeth stuck out permanently. People started to stare at me in a funny way. Sometimes they giggled as I passed by. Other times they made comments and laughed at my expense. A boy at school called my coconut-shaver. It hurt me sometimes but most of the time I didn’t care. Most of my school friends treated me like a normal kid, so I felt ok.

The Last Breath

Father never ever raised his voice at me when he was well, but near the end he scolded me very harshly for forgetting to cook rice. He boomed through the stroke and minus his dentures, "WAH CHINDH F PUHSON AH YE!!!" <“What kind of person are you?!!”> At that time it hurt me deeply, but now I realize that he wasn’t himself anymore. He might not even understood what happened around him. Parts of him were already taken away forever by the stroke. A few weeks before he died he did not recognize any of us. He looked close to eighty. Sunken eyes, shrivelled to the bone. He was only 60 when he died.

Three Strokes

My father tried several business enterprises in JB but none worked out. I guess the pressure was too much for him. He started to become ill. We went home before the money totally ran out and bought a house in a lousy area. It was what we could afford then. Not long after we went back to Medan, my father had his first stroke. Then he got well and was able to work again. Then he had his second stroke. He got better but had to stay home most of the time. The third stroke left him completely paralyzed. He could hardly speak and what he said sometimes did not make sense sometimes. He got thinner and thinner.

Exodus

I only know vaguely why we moved to Malaysia. My father had a freight forwarding business. I overheard the grown ups talking about my father helping a close family friend to ship some valuables abroad. In the eyes of the law this is called smuggling. One of my father’s employees held a grudge on him and took revenge by dobbing him to a newspaper. I remember my family sitting around in the living room and looking at the newspaper article. They were worried that the police would come and arrest my father. He was Chinese, and at that time in Medan, a Chinese in jail could soon be a dead Chinese. My parents quickly sold everything they could sell and took us all to Malaysia.

Miss Miranda

It’s a good thing that we did not stay in Melody Gardens for a long time. We found our own home. It was a big old house. My father said that it was haunted. One time he heard people talking while he was in the shower, but no one was around. Instead of running scared, my father scolded those bodyless voices. That must have given them quite a shock. My mother also had a bad experience. A huge centipede, as big as a pen, crawled up the bed, and onto her legs. Again my father came to the rescue. I myself thoroughly enjoyed my time there. I didn’t go to school because of some document problems, so I stayed at home most of the time. My brothers were sent home to finish high school. Only my sister went to school in JB. My parents solved the problem of my education by sending me to an Indian lady next door. I called her Miss Miranda. She had two sons, but I never saw her husband. She usually opened her window in the morning and hollered my name. I would come and she would teach me some English words and some math. Miss Miranda probably gave me my first English lessons. Most of the time I think I just chatted with her.

Malaysia

I was about eight when the whole family moved to Johor Bahru, Malaysia. We only stayed there for about half a year, but we went though some awesome experiences there. When we first got there, we stayed at a relatives house in Melody Gardens. It was a lovely neighborhood. There was a young woman living next door. She was a pretty Malaysian girl. Sometimes she invited me to come and play at her home. She had a doll-collection that she made by herself, so of course I said yes. One time I came with my fifteen year old brother. The young woman was very pleased about that. She gave me a little doll and allowed me to play with her other dolls. Meanwhile she took my brother to her room. I thought she and my brother were playing older kids’ game, and I was left out as usual. I didn’t mind because I was happy playing with the dolls. Only now do I realize that she was much older than my brother and was probably giving him some ‘lessons’. My brother might not mind it, but the rotten bitch had corrupted him.

Keeping Mum

So there I was, 12 years old, and already responsible for the death of a loved one. I imagined Mak Ucu trying desperately to call out to me and instead of coming to her rescue I went to sleep. My family would see me as a murderer if they found out and I would rot forever and after in hell.
It took me years to gain enough courage to tell my mom. She told me it wasn’t my fault, and there was no way I could have known. The heavy burden was lifted off my shoulders.

A Nightmare

We moved away from the old neighborhood and then to Malaysia and then back again. When we had settled down in our new home, my parents invited Mak Ucu to live with us. I was very happy about that. She had grown older over the years. Her hair had gone very thin and she had lost some front teeth. She had never been very fit, and now she panted and wheezed just from walking from the bedroom to the living room. Mak Ucu sometimes had nightmares and she would moan in her sleep. I was used to hearing her moans because she slept next to my bedroom. One night her moans were slightly louder than usual. I was in my warm, comfortable bed as I tried to figure out whether it was her usual nightmare or something more serious. I decided if the moans continued a bit longer I would wake my parents up. Then it stopped. So I went to sleep. The next morning we woke up to my sister’s voice. She was crying and calling out, “Mak Ucu! Mak Ucu!” She was in Mak Ucu’s bedroom and was desperately trying to wake her up. Mak Ucu had passed away that night.

The Hair Extension

One day while I was looking at the trinkets in Mak Ucu’s room, I saw her ‘cemara’. Cemara is kind of wig and is an old version of hair extension. It is usually made of real hair and is used to help make hair chignons. I was fascinated by the cemara. I touched it and tried to look at my self in the mirror with it on my head. Suddenly a small gecko jumped out of the cemara. It was as frightened as I was. In fact it was so frightened it detached its tail, which horrifed me even more. I threw the hair down and must have screamed my head off. Mak Ucu rushed in to see what happened. She was able to calm me down but I never touched the cemara again. And I was always wary of geckos after that.

The Revolution

Mak Ucu had some royal blood in her. She told me that during the revolution in the 60’s, relatives and descendants of the sultan had a terrible time. Some were persecuted, some were killed. Their belongings taken away from them. She said she saw some relatives murdered when they tried to run away from the city. Luckily she survived. I never asked her what she did when she was younger, but I know that she got a small pension-money from the government and that helped her through old age.

Royal Bait

I loved exploring Mak Ucu’s house. It was a typical old Malay house. The front part was build on pillars, so we had to climb a few steps to enter the living room from the outside and there was a staircase leading down to the bathroom, dining area and kitchen. The house was partially made of wood and every time we moved the floor creaked in protest. Mak Ucu’s bedroom was wonderful. It was white-washed and there was a cartoon picture of a jamu-seller which I really liked. Mak Ucu always had some interesting stuff on her desk for me to look at. If I asked about them sometimes she would tell me stories about the time when she was young. Some of them was horrific, but as a child I was simply fascinated. She told me of an old sultan who liked to go fishing. In my head I saw royalties surrounded by guards. The royalties would have servants to hold big umbrellas over their heads and cool them with gigantic fans. Mak Ucu said that on a bad day, when no fish took the bait, the sultan would command some poor servant to jump into the river and have a soldier spear the doomed servant as a bait or as a sacrifice.

Mak Ucu

Our old home in Medan was located in a small neighborhood within the city. There weren’t many cars going through the neighborhood, so I was allowed to roam free as long as I asked for permission first. My favorite place to go was Mak Ucu’s house. She was a relative of my adoptive grandmother. Since my real grandmother lived far, far away in the outback of Sumatra and the others had passed on, I saw Mak Ucu as my own grandma. Mak Ucu came straight out of a history book. She wore long kebayas and sarongs and tied her hair in a bun. She spoke in Malayu accent. I loved her. She did not seem to mind a little girl coming to her house almost daily and probably asked her all kinds of stupid questions. She was a great naptime story-teller. She introduced me to Si Kancil dan Buaya, Si Kancil Lepas dari Bahaya, and Batu Belah. I never got tired of her stories and I asked her to repeat them over and over again. She probably started my love for books, because I started asking for story books before I could read. I looked at the pictures and pretended I could read, and made up my own stories.

First Grade Fight

I did not have many friends in my snobby Catholic school. But I was seated with a very nice boy. His name was Ronny. We got along very well. Some friends got jealous and started teasing us, saying that he’s my boyfriend. I guess bitches come in all ages, even in first grade. I got angry and started quarrelling with those mean girls. At some points we started throwing stationery missiles towards each other. When I got home, I cried and told my mother that some girls were giving me a hard time at school. She said I should be strong and she told me to punch them in the face if necessary. I did not think that it was a very good idea and I could not imagine hitting anybody in the face. Over the years I found out that my mother used to be a member of a bicycle girl-gang and they carried bike-chains just in case anybody tried to get fresh with them. Thus I understood why she gave me such a funny advice.

17th August Fiasco

I hated my first grade in St. Joseph. I felt lonely most of the time and I hated the new teacher. She was a local nun and she was not very patient. One day we were rehearsing a game for the Independence Day Celebration. We first graders lined up with lighted candle in our little hands. I was worried about the melted candle touching my finger. I guess I was not listening very carefully to the teacher's instructions.She gave us a signal and we raced to the finish line. My candle blew out before I reached the line so I turned back to the start line. The teacher was cross about that. She angrily told me to go straight to the finish line. My five-year-old self felt stupid and didn't understand why I was scolded. I thought to myself, I did not like this game. So I did not tell my parents that we were supposed to come the next day. Come Monday I got scolded again for not turning up.

Kindy

One day I misbehaved in class. I talked too much. Sister Nathalie did not say anything. She simply walked towards the table which I shared with some other kids, grabbed the back of my chair, and pulled the chair briskly away from the desk, and looked at me sternly. That was enough for me. I shut up immediately.

This was a sharp contrast from what a classmate got another day. The good Sister practically slapped her around and out of the class. The poor girl was Indian. I reckon she was too dazed to even cry. I can't help but think that maybe Sister Nathalie was a bit racist.

Kindergarten

I was still sitting on the train and I tried to remember as far back as possible. There wasn't much left of my childhood, but I'll try.

The Teachers

I remembered my first days of Kindy. The building was enormous to my four-year-old eyes. My father took me to school. He carried me in his arms and the teacher joked with us, saying that I was too big now to be carried. The teacher's name was Sister Nathalie. I think she's Dutch. She was already middle aged at that time. She wore a nun's white dress and head cover, a cross, and steel-rimmed eye glasses. She always smelled of lemon. I loved her smell. For many years after that I searched for soaps, colognes and perfumes which smell like her. There was a younger, prettier teacher who helped her. She had short hair and was always nicely dressed in bright colours.

Superman Returns

I was on the train, on my way back home to Croydon. I had just seen Superman Returns. My thoughts were straying as usual and it went way back to when I saw the first Superman. I couldn't believe that it was so long ago. I was around 8 and my family was temporarily living in Johor Bahru. The movie must have made quite a big impression on me because I could still remember little bits and pieces. I remembered the big plaza where I saw the movie, but only on the outside. I remembered waiting in a car, a partially cloudy day, lots of people, a connecting bridge between two buildings, and a fly-over.
Then I remembered going to see Indian movies with our house-helper lady, and probably some other neighour ladies. Some scenes were permanently engraved in my head. A young girl swirling round and round while singing, an elephant wrongly punished - chained and beaten. I still felt sorry for that elephant. I have many stories from my slightly twisted childhood and here are some of them.