Frog Under A Coconut Shell Page 14

  “You do what?” She said.

  My mother hardly ever raised her voice. But that day, she did. She looked at my blue record book and on the page of lines which she could not read, she saw a word written in red. Scarlet letters, condemning me. I knew I could be scalped or feathered-and-tarred for this sin. Or both.

  “What does that say?”

  I could hardly bring myself to say it, “‘Failed.’”

  “After all that I’m doing to send you to school, you’ve failed! I give you chance to be somebody and you failed! I got to suffer your father so that you can go to school and this is how you repay me.”

  Her words and her broken voice lacerated me. Still, she took the dreaded rotan, the length of cane which was hooked over a protruding nail on the wooden wall. The rod was the penalty for childish misdemeanours. My mother would not tolerate laziness and bad manners. If we were rude to our parents or answered back or repeated a word that other village children had said, which was not supposed to be repeated, she had one sure way of making us remember. She would take out her mortar-and-pestle and pound the searing hot chilli padi, the hottest of all chillies. Then she would hold us tight and force the hot chilli paste into our mouths. And our mouths would burn for hours! Even though I realised that I deserved it, it was the one thing I didn’t like about my mother. She could be really cruel until we learnt our lesson. For other childish pranks or not doing our chores properly, we got the cane. That day, when I took her my school report, she caught hold of my arm and whacked me hard on my bare legs.

  “But I tried my best!” I yelled in defence.

  “Best? No good best if you fail! If you want something so bad-bad, you got to dream it, sleep it, live with it. Let it be part of you, not outside you.”

  I didn’t understand what she meant. All I wanted at that moment was to escape her beating. She whacked again, this time harder, as if her disappointment in me had transferred itself to the cane. With my wrist imprisoned tightly in her one hand, I danced a jig around her trying to avoid the cane, eventually letting out a howl. Then with a cry, she threw down the rotan and sat huddled on the floor, burying her face in her hands. At first, I was relieved to be spared further affliction and sat down to nurse the striped weals of red coming up on my legs. It was some while before I noticed that Mak’s shoulders were heaving. Then I realised that she was sobbing and it made my heart sick because it was I who caused her to grieve.

  “Mak, I’ll do better next year. I promise.”

  Promising was one thing, but trying to keep the promise was another. There was too much going against me; my classmates didn’t like me, neither did Miss Tang. I didn’t look Chinese. I was dumb. There was no one at home or in the village to practise the language with. Mandarin was still the language of the educated. There weren’t many in our sector of the kampong. There was an all-Chinese school further in the village but the kids there didn’t mix with us kids in the Malay part of the kampong. So I failed in my promise and didn’t do well in Chinese, although I was okay in English and the other subjects. I loved English, loved the sound of its vowels, the precision of its tenses, sing, sang, sung; take, took, taken. It was wonderful and made a lot of sense to add an “s” to make a plural instead of our language, which repeats the word to make it a plural. I could say, book, books, not buku to become buku-buku. In Malay, we also repeat our words for emphasis or to make a gerund and it fascinated me that you didn’t have to do that in English, you’d say walk-ing instead of walk-walk, play-ing, instead of play-play. What a thrilling adventure learning English was. But to Jacob’s frustration, I also failed mathematics. So he gave up on me and I was flung out of his tuition class. Fear is a great block to learning, I think. I feared Jacob, my Maths teacher, Miss Gupta and Miss Tang. And worse, because we couldn’t afford new text books, I was using text books that belonged to Jacob. The books were 13 years out of date. I could hardly ever follow the lessons in class because the pagination and content were different from the current text. Also, it seemed ridiculous to me to be learning about pounds, shillings and pence when I didn’t know what they looked like. It was inevitable that my inability to add and subtract earned me a red mark on my report book until I took my Senior Cambridge examinations when I was 16. Today, I joke that I can only count up to 21, the total in the game of Blackjack.

  Thank goodness, I was more capable in English and the other subjects which pulled my grades up. I came in 16 in a class of 32. My mother didn’t seem as upset when I failed in Maths. The following year, I failed Chinese every single term. It just seemed that I just had no aptitude for that written language. Now, it was not only the Chinese teacher who despaired of me, but my mother and Miss D’Souza. Eventually, I was sent to see her. She looked enormous behind that desk of hers in the principal’s office. It was an ordeal even to walk pass her office, let alone be in it. I felt small in the chair opposite her. I was praying that she was not going to say that my school days were ended. But her tone was exceedingly kind.

  “Do you know how much hope your mother places on you?”

  “Yes, Miss D’Souza.”

  “She is a fine woman, your mother. With a very sharp mind. If she lived in a different era, she would be a great success, I tell you. She wants the best for you, you know that, don’t you.”

  “I know that, Miss D’Souza.”

  “Does anyone speak Mandarin at home?”

  “No, Miss D’’Souza.”

  “Your mother spoke Malay fluently. Are you the same?”

  “Yes, Miss D’Souza.”

  “Then I can’t see why you need to go on taking Chinese, even if you are classed as one. I’ll speak to ‘Che Siti. It will be the first time she has a non-Malay in her class. But I’m sure you’ll get on very well. I don’t know why I didn’t think about it before.”

  “Oh, thank you Miss D’Souza, thank you so much.”

  If only there was a similar solution for Maths. The Malay taught in school is the Romanised script and not Jawi. So it was a case of learning to put familiar words together with the English alphabet. ‘Che Siti was a lovely lady, who moved so fluidly in her baju kurong. When Miss D’Souza took me to see her, she welcomed me with her soft voice and her smiling eyes. I felt so at home in her class. It was helped by my classmates who treated me like one of them and we chatted in the same language from the first day. When I joined their class, I was way behind because although I was in Primary Three, I had not learnt Malay formally. ‘Che Siti took extra time over me and my new friends were very helpful with my homework. Except for a difference in religion, I felt very much as if I was one of them. Until today, I identify myself more with the Malays than I do the Chinese, who always seem quick to criticise my dark skin and love to hear of mishaps. ‘Che Siti would be proud to know that I read Malay linguistics and literature up to my third year at University. In her sweet and gentle way, she gave me a love for the language and encouraged me by giving me a part in the year-end school play, which was performed entirely in Malay. At the end of the concert was a prize presentation and I was totally surprised when I was awarded a prize for coming third in Malay. It was a small Malay-English dictionary but to me, it was as if I had won a million dollars. I ran all the way home so that I could show it to Mak.

  Nine

  There is so little now that my mother is capable of doing that it is easy to imagine that she has always been this way. Like when you look at very old people and somehow find it difficult to imagine them as young and sprightly with powerful brains who have raised a family or commanded a business enterprise or was a well-respected professional. It’s as though someone with a weak body, wrinkled skin, an ambling gait and a forgetful mind could not have owned another kind of body, mind or life. But if you look closely into those opaque fish-like eyes long enough, you may see the life that was once there, that the same wrinkled face once had a strong jaw-line, taut skin, those same eyes had once sparkled like precious gems, filled with love, wit and mischief.

  As my mother�
��s once were. Besides her figure, her eyes were once her best asset, though you wouldn’t know it now. Due to our mixed heritage, her eyes were large yet with a hint of an Oriental tilt. Except for a slight spreading of her hips, she has remained slim unlike both her elder sisters, who developed bodies that showed neglect and indulgence. Soon Hua, Great Aunt who had dreamt of marrying her millionaire husband but forced to marry a chicken rice seller, turned out well because the man doted on her. She discovered what it meant to be an old man’s darling. Her husband had been a widower and was nearly 20 years older than she was. He bought her a two-storey brick house in Alexander Estate. Soon Chew had a love-marriage after her first husband died, which was unusual for her generation. She had no parents to stop her from doing what she liked, no brothers to run her life. Her Indian husband was a garbage collector and was assigned living quarters in a bricked-terrace house. Soon Mei, Fourth Aunt, married and died in a few short years and her husband took the two children away and never kept in touch. Ah Tetia wasn’t particularly fond of my two aunts and he never visited them, but on the few occasions when Mak took my sisters and I to visit my aunts, I thought they were very rich because of the brick houses that they lived in, compared to our kampong hut.

  I used to believe that anyone who lived in a brick house had to be rich. Long before my mother had the courage to defy her husband and take us to visit her sisters, I was given an opportunity to see the inside of a brick house. Elizabeth was my first friend in school. Unlike the others who ridiculed me because I looked Malay and spoke Malay but was a Straits Chinese, Elizabeth accepted me as I was. She was seven, a little more than a year younger than I was when we met. She was a grand looking girl and when she made me her friend, others took me into their circle, too. Elizabeth knew that I lived in the shanty village down the road from her. And I think she felt sorry for me.

  “I was named after the Queen of England, you know or not?”

  “Is the Queen of England as beautiful as you?” I asked in all innocence and that must have endeared me towards Elizabeth. At eight and a half, I wasn’t flattering because I didn’t know how. To me, the girl from the kampong, she was like a queen. Her pierced ears were graced with 24-carat gold studs and on her wrist was a bracelet with small gold hearts. Her uniform was the right colour, was always properly pressed, her canvas shoes were bought from a department store in town and well blanco-ed. Her hands were unbelievably soft and creamy. She wasn’t very tall but she was petite; such grace and poise in her mannerisms and walk. I quickly learnt that the rich had a certain confidence when they speak or do something because they expected to be listened to, and all my other schoolmates seemed to bow to Elizabeth. As I was in the morning school session and my brother Romia in the afternoon, he would cycle me to school on the bar of his push-bike but I had to walk the couple of miles home. So it was with envy that I watched the chauffeur taking Elizabeth to school in an expensive motorcar every morning. There were many bicycles, trishaws and bullock-carts in the village, but if a motorcar should drive down our rutted road, it was still an occasion for all the children and even some adults to come out to look. Motorcars were definitely for the rich. Elizabeth had everything. But she had such a sweet nature and was exceedingly kind to me so I could not really be jealous. When I learnt that she was a ballerina, I was really impressed. Piano-learning and ballet dancing were only for those who did not have to spend every available cent on food and clothing.

  “You want to come to my house for lunch or not? Maybe on Saturday when there’s no school,” she said.

  It was like being invited to the istana (palace). I was very excited. My best friend in the kampong was Parvathi and I told her about it. Paravthi was an Indian girl three years older than I was. Her family was so poor that she was sent out to work at the paper factory when she turned 12 a year ago. The paper factory manufactured stationery and envelopes and all the envelopes were folded manually so they employed youngsters like Parvathi as cheap labour. Besides the paper factory, our kampong also boasted a rattan factory, huge piles of long rattan outside waiting to be shaved and cleaned and sent to other factories to be formed into furniture and baskets. Parvathi had no hope of an education and when I started school, I became her teacher, teaching her the English alphabet. When I told her that my classmate, Elizabeth, had lessons in ballet and piano, she said, “Wahhh! Her family chap wang (print money) or wat-huh?”

  I told Mak about the invitation and she was so pleased for me. Perhaps she was remembering her life of plenty when everyone took pains with their clothes and appearances when they visited each other. She set about preparing me for the visit. As my hair had gone back to being straight, she released her Tontin money for my permanent wave. She believed that curly hair was more sophisticated than straight hair though she never indulged in it herself. Tontin was like a kind of fund where each person participating puts a certain sum into the fund and could take out the whole group sum in an emergency. Against my protests, she marched me to the village hairdresser and subjected me to an ordeal of hot wire rods that stuck out like Medusa’s head of snakes. The old-fashioned perming rods made my head, face and neck look like a boiled crab. When the rods were released, my artificial curls sprang out like I had had a fright. Worse still, the hairdresser back-combed and hair-sprayed them. In those days, hair spray was not as fine as what we have today and it made my hair look lacquered! I came out of the salon with this huge crown of stiff curls.

  “Don’t disgrace me,” Mak said. “You must be well-mannered and behave properly. You better go in your best clothes.”

  I thought, oh no, she’s going to put me in that Chinese New Year dress again. After all, it was my best and only really smart dress. The one with the awful can-can which I hated! And I bet she would make me wear those horrible, black, plastic shoes which squashed my toes. But I guess Mak was right. It certainly wouldn’t do to appear at Elizabeth’s posh house in just my homemade knickers or my well-washed A-line dress. I guess a bit of discomfort would be worth it for the pleasure of the visit. I was excited but nervous, too. I hadn’t been in a brick house before. I told Mak how Elizabeth was so rich she could take ballet lessons and also play the piano. These activities were so beyond our circumstances that the thought of someone able to do them was such worthy news.

  “I used to play the piano,” she said in a soft voice.

  Perhaps my mother had wanted to talk about her piano-playing days, and share them with me. But I didn’t give her the opportunity to open her heart because I was too engrossed about my visit to my friend’s palatial house. A child is a child because she can’t see beyond her own wants. How easy it is to miss emotional opportunities! Through simple non-attention. Our minds can be engaged elsewhere when our mouths are opening in conversation. Does it mean that there are two of us? Why is it that the significance of my mother’s words made no impact on me then and yet can cross time barriers to touch me today? How is it that what she told me flew past my attention then and yet today, I can recall what she said? Or am I imagining it? She had told me that she was tutored to play the piano, like her two elder sisters. Their family piano sat in the living room, which opened out to a verandah which looked out to the sea. I can see her as she must have looked, young and slender, sitting with her back straight on the piano stool, her dark head tilted forward, her beautiful eyes looking downward. Like the ripples of waves outside, her supple fingers made the piano keys ripple in delightful tunes. What pleasure it must have been for her and for those who had the good fortune to hear her play. She would be so absorbed she wouldn’t feel the sea breeze gently playing with her hair. Why hadn’t I thought of buying her a piano when I could afford it? When her fingers had not yet been arched by arthritis? Especially when the musical notes were still in her voice and in her head? What good is money if it’s not to feed the desires of one’s loved ones?

  How I regret it now. The music she loved is no longer hers to capture. Occasionally, I hear her humming in her room as she combs her scanty hair.
I had bought her a tape deck but she finds it difficult to operate a mechanical thing that holds no meaning for her. So she holds the tunes in her head and she tries to sound them with her voice, but the voice that ensues from her old throat is worn and cracked. I remember all this now, yet on that day when I had told her of Elizabeth’s invitation, all I could think of was my excursion to my friend’s beautiful house in Sennet Estate. I didn’t think of my mother and how she had longed to tell me about her piano playing days.

  Elizabeth’s family lived in a terraced house. Today, I would probably look at it with different eyes, but back then, with my experience of life in a kampong, being a frog in the coconut shell of my existence, I thought they lived in Millionaires’ Row. I hadn’t been in a brick house before. I felt small in front of the huge front door, which looked like an entrance to a palace or something. I stood there feeling nervous, dressed in my best, the Chinese New Year dress with the can-can underneath which I had worn on my school-hunting day. And of course those toe-pinching shoes. My mother had baked a small cake for me to bring because she said it was not polite to visit someone’s home empty-handed. She had spent half the morning baking the cake over her clay stove. She put the cake in a small wicker basket and it was difficult trying to hold the basket, keep my skirt with the can-can underneath down and maintain balance on Romia’s bicycle.

  “Have fun,” he said, when he dropped me off. “I’ll be back at three.”