Frog Under A Coconut Shell Read online

  “Pity we don’t have picture of Grandfather, lah. We ran away from Malacca with bundle of clothes, some jewellery that Grandmother had saved and our money belts. Grandfather usually has nice, smiling face. So handsome. But when angry, like someone else take over. On that night, I saw very angry-look, lah, but never again. So sad, because, after-after at end, I only remember face with broken look, like face is mirror, smashed by hurt. Very sorrowful his eyes when he lost everything.”

  I was only a child when my mother divulged her sorrow. I was insensitive.

  “What happened after that?” I asked.

  I pictured a slim young girl, black hair loose, dropping her sarong then stepping gingerly into the water and turning into a mermaid. It was where she was most comfortable. On land, her legs often gave way under her. Weak knees, she said. Mak’s voice always seemed like an arrangement of beautiful musical notes. That day when she described the house and the life she led, the music snagged as it missed a few beats. But being a self-centred child, I slid over her emotion, only interested in finding out the consequence of her act.

  Even before I could understand it, I felt that there was something special about my mother — she wasn’t like the other women in the village, she carried herself differently, spoke in a quietly refined voice, her movements too graceful for her to have been brought up in a village such as ours. And yet, she was never haughty, never behaved to others as if she was from a different class, she took to the low life in the same way she did the high, always with dignity and a gentle smile on her face. Being so young, I didn’t pay much notice to the way her voice tripped as she told me of her father’s last days. Only when I was grown up and had time to reflect did the telling come back to me with the knowing of an adult mind, only then could I have guessed at her anguish. By then it was too late to ask her, she could no longer sort out the facts. How many occasions in our lives do we say, “If only ...”? But we can’t drag those times back from the past, so we ought to let them stay there, instead of trying to feed on them, fill ourselves with regret.

  “What did you do?” I tried to find out again as I ignored her soft sigh.

  “What to do? I quick-quick swim towards stairs, lah. But I can hear Grandfather’s footsteps on floor boards, first like he is walking-meditating, then like water-buffalo chasing him. Maybe he heard splashes I made, lah. I try to be quiet but more worse sound I make because heart toom-toom like drum. Okay, I think. If I become like duck, looking for fish, I can put head underwater and come up near stairs. Only need to reach out and grab sarong. But you guess it right? Grandfather already there, his foot was on it, tapping-tapping, like saying, oh, so daring that girl! She’s going to taste my hand tonight! Aiiyah! I knew I was in big trouble. Oh, his face! Like monsoon-clouds over sun. One hand on hip, eyes looking to garden, he handed me my sarong. Then he turned to walk away. No word he said. But I know I must follow. He went to his sitting room, take rotan off hook on wall. What to do? I know I do big wrong. So I bite my tongue when he caned me. No good let everybody, especially servants know, what.”

  We have a tendency to see old people as if they have always been old, as though they did not possess a youth before they aged. It is hard to scrape off wrinkles from one’s parent’s face to visualise them as a child or teenager with taut unblemished skin. And it’s harder still to think that your parent who was a flag of authority and discipline could have dared to be defiant and was punished for childish misdemeanours. You would not dream that your parent could have been like you at your age.

  Grandmother told my mother something which she in turn repeated to me, “Must know how to cook or run household, huh, if not, cannot handle your servants, you know.” When Mak told me that, I thought, what chance had I of ever having servants? We were so far removed from that kind of world that she was just mouthing empty dreams. But my mother never stopped dreaming. She carried them in her thoughts and in her being. That was why she fought my father for the education of my siblings and particularly for me so that we could make her dreams a reality, return her to a world she knew. As I was the eldest female who lived, I was her hope and dreams, so she passed her baton for me to finish her race. But now, she doesn’t know how far we’ve come — cannot know.

  In the one sepiaed photo I have seen of Grandmother, she wore the long version of the sarong kebaya — the kebaya panjang. The kebaya panjang was favoured by the older women as the material for the kebaya top was either made from pure cotton or raw silk and not the see-through voile worn by younger women. Because of its length that swept well below the knees, it was more flattering to the broader hips and wider waists of older women. The top was held together by a twenty-four carat gold kerosang set, which comprised of three separate brooches, the first one called the ibu kerosang, the mother kerosang distinguished from the other two by a more elaborate and sometimes flamboyant design, often studded with diamonds. Younger women tended to use the kerosang rantay, where a gold chain linked the three brooches which in this instance would match each other identically.

  Grandmother had an elaborate gold pin in her bun. The red kerchief which she used to dab the sireh juice from her lips was slung over one shoulder. I can see her wagging her finger at my aunts to tell them it was for their good that they learnt to cook. Soon Mei was still at an age where she was playing masak-masak, a pretend game of cooking and keeping house. Soon Hua and Soon Chew were not convinced that they themselves had to do housework in order to give instructions. They maintained that servants were paid to work, so why should they have to learn anything except how to enjoy life and make their husbands happy? Grandmother had shaken her head indulgently, confident in the knowledge that they will always have servants. Except, of course, her confidence turned out to be misjudged. When the tragedy occurred, she simply slapped her forehead repeatedly like someone crazed, lamenting, “Mati, lah! Mati, lah!/Die, lah! Die, lah!”

  Of the four daughters, only the third youngest took Grandmother’s advice and learnt to cook. It was my mother, Soon Neo. Perhaps she liked pleasing Grandmother. Or perhaps, she had a foresight about what the future held for her. Or perhaps it was just in her nature not to be idle and she was really hungry to acquire skills. She was 12 when she invaded the kitchen, following around Grandmother’s heels. Grandmother was the typical matriarch in control of her household, giving orders, waving her red kerchief about to indicate something, direction or haste. In the kitchen, Che Asmah, a Malay Muslim lady from the nearby kampong with 12 children and a fisherman husband came in to help Grandmother prepare and serve meals. Because of the necessity of earning something to feed her children especially in the monsoon season which affected fishing adversely, Che Asmah waived aside her religious mandate about handling pork. Soon Neo learnt from Che Asmah the correct way to slice an onion for a soup or sambal. Ingredients in Peranakan cooking were used in precise ways, an onion sliced lengthwise was not suitable for a dish which required it to be cut across. Even though she was small like a mousedeer, Soon Neo managed to turn the batu gilling deftly, so that the granite rolling pin ground the spices nicely against the granite slab. There was an art to the task, tilting the pin to crush the chillies, onions or whole spices before rolling them into smooth paste. When in full rhythm, the body sang with the movement and was a delight to watch. To make smaller amounts of chilli and onion paste, she made use of the batu lesong or granite mortar and pestle set instead of the batu gilling. Even before I was nine, she tutored to me to these tasks so that preparing spices properly for cooking became ingrained in me. It took me years to wean myself from these labouring devices to make use of modern blenders and choppers because I, like my mother, believed that the intrinsic taste of a dish was in its manual preparation and technique. My mother never cut corners and there was a kind of religiosity in which she engaged with whatever she was doing so that an everyday chore would become a fulfilling creative process. She taught me what she learnt from Grandmother and Che Asmah, showing me how to arrange the food so that their colour and the
ir tastes did not clash and what to serve on different plates and dishes.

  As far as she was concerned, it was a sacrilege to serve food in the wrong receptacle, in a dish instead of a bowl or plate or whatever the occasion demanded or to use the wrong utensil.

  “It’s finer things that matters, you know,” Mak often said to me. “Money alone doesn’t buy refinement.”

  From the other amahs, dressed in white samfoo tops and black trousers, she learnt how a household was run. From Grandmother, she learnt her manners and customs, how not to walk tall past an adult, that one had to bend at the knees in a show of humility; one must not sweep the floor in front of guests nor on the first day of the New Year. One has to address an elder and invite her or him to eat before one could begin a meal. Many a times, Grandmother would find Soon Neo in the kitchen, forelock damp and curling onto her forehead, frying, stirring and tasting, scaling the fish, cutting, chopping. She didn’t mind any work, even drawing water from the well, scrubbing the clothes on the wooden washboard. But she minded having to slaughter the chickens and having to wring their necks. She particularly hated to seeing them writhing on the sandy ground, heads lolling, their wings still fluttering. As if it was a legacy she had handed me, I too hated the sight of the slaughtered chickens writhing on the ground or running around in a frenzy until they realised that they were supposed to be dead. The vision bothered me so much that I eventually gave up eating chicken or anything that had legs to run around with. Has this something to do with my mother or was this my own uninfluenced choice? Sometimes, I wonder where the Me who is my mother’s daughter ends and the Me who is entirely myself begins.

  “Try, try,” Grandmother said to Grandfather with pride, waving her hand expansively at the array of food, the gold bangles on her arm jangling, “Ah Neo cooked today, what.”

  Tasting the food, Grandfather said, “She’ll make some man a good wife.”

  “Not enough salt, lah,” Soon Hua made a face.

  “Too much chilli,” said Soon Chew.

  “It’s very nice, Third Sister,” Kanchil and Soon Mei said.

  In a family of females, Kanchil was the only boy, the last child becoming heir apparent. When he was born, he had gangly arms and legs, very much like the Malayan mousedeer and so was nicknamed after it, Kanchil. My mother always referred to her brother as Kanchil so that I don’t even know his given name. There was five years between Soon Neo and Kanchil. They started the best of friends, then she mothered him for a while until he flew the coop when he was 17. Soon Neo liked to challenge herself each day, making her hand fly with the tatting shuttle as she made the lace, edgings for handkerchieves. For less fine lace as in tablecloths and runners, backs of chairs, doilies and bedspreads, she crocheted them, her hand a blur as her fingers moved with lightning speed. Her smooth brow crinkled when she sewed the colourful manek-manek onto the piece of hessian fabric, shaping flowers, birds and animals with the glass beads. These pieces of artistry were then made into the front of Peranakan slippers. She beaded purses and handbags, sewed beads and sequins onto clothing. These were some of the things a young woman had to make for her trousseau in preparation for her wedding. Like a magician, Soon Neo could bloom a floral bouquet from crepe paper, cat-gut and silk. She passed all of these skills from her fingers to mine. Once she did her embroideries out of sheer pleasure but later, when I was a child, she did them out of necessity — to earn money to buy the school uniforms, clothes for the New Year, the occasional treat. Her earlier life was like the bright sight of the moon, her later life was its dark side.

  Grandmother loved to teach my mother because Soon Neo was ever so keen. She warned her, “Remember, huh. Never look directly at man, always lower your eyes. Speak sweetly, like bird singing, not cocks fighting. Only express opinions which he expresses. Always be clean and smell beautiful so that when he wants you, your body is desirable. Feel with your fingers. You eat with them and you love with them. Fingers on a man’s body, fingers across the strings of a viola, violin or piano. It’s same art. Making joyous music. Pleasing, entertaining. So that your man never errs.”

  Always be clean and smell beautiful so that when he wants you, your body is desirable. Feel with your fingers. You eat with them and you make love with them. My mother echoes her mother before her, a lesson passed from mouth to mouth. But I have no daughters to pass it to. So I wait for a granddaughter to hand my legacy. By then, the sentiment would probably age into an heirloom, something to treasure because it’s associated with the past but has no relevance today. Only express opinions which he expresses. How simple and straight-forward it was in my grandmother’s and mother’s time, their roles so clearly defined. I should have been satisfied as they had been, learnt to be pliable, moulded myself into the opinions of my first husband, swallowed the stones of my words. Then I wouldn’t risk being burned in hell for what I had done. But I have only myself to blame. My father was probably right, “Education ruins a woman,” he had said.

  Two

  In her halcyon youth, Soon Neo had expected to marry into a fine Peranakan family, a man clothed in rich silks, used to being waited on. Her elder sister, Soon Hua was already contracted to marry the son of a wealthy merchant who lived in a mansion in the Portuguese sector of town. As nothing had been written down and nobody talked about it, I reckon that all these took place around 1931, when Soon Neo had just turned 16 — just before the disaster. No one had an inkling of what was to happen, of course. Grandfather went about his business and then he came home; sometimes early, sometimes late, predictable in his unpredictability. As in the old days, his outside world did not collide with the one of family — until that fateful day. Grandmother was totally unprepared and because of that, turned inward, unwilling and unable to wrestle with the demons. Her pain and Grandfather’s pain were possessed instead by their third youngest daughter, my mother. If you had seen my mother’s eyes when she was younger, you would have known how beautiful and clear they were, huge and dark classically shaped with a slight tilt at the corners. For an illiterate person, her eyes expressed profound intelligence and a penchant for gaiety. But if you looked closer, you would have seen a lurking shade of her parents’ pain and the misfortune that had befallen her family. A pain that her brother, Kanchil, tried to write out of his history, one which the sisters never discussed.

  For years, I did not understand why Mak was not smiling in her sepia-coloured wedding picture. Instead, her dainty face wears a wounded look, her eyes bewildered. But now, I realise that she must have still been suffering the aftermath of shock. She was only 17 but already carrying the burden of adulthood, unceremoniously heaped onto her young shoulders. She had been destined for an arranged marriage anyway, so the fact that love did not enter into the equation was not unexpected. She was just grateful that in the situation she found herself in, my father was simply suitable. It must have been an added bonus that he was handsome, had an athletic body. She was better off than most: some of her friends were forced into marriage with hare-lipped men or hunchbacks or men who were old enough to be their fathers. It was not uncommon in those days for a widower to seek a young bride to help look after the children his late wife had left behind. My best childhood friend, Parvathi, nearly suffered this fate but she took drastic steps to avert it. Therefore, Soon Neo, like many young girls of her time saw marriage as a necessary social contract — it was what they were bred for. Generally, they would not see their husbands until the wedding day. If they were lucky, they were allowed to put their eyes to the peep-hole on the upper floor of their Peranakan townhouse where their fathers usually interviewed the potential groom.

  “Aiiyah! So ugly!” The girls might exclaim softly behind their kerchieves. Or they might say, “Aiiyah! So fat one, lah.” Or, “He looks as if he smells!” But whatever their comments, they still had to marry the man of their father’s choice. It was a measure of their breeding. My own father had always threatened to arrange a marriage for me. Had he been alive, he would have no gumption to choo
se a husband for me. Perhaps things would have turned out better then.

  Although my mother escaped an arranged marriage, her marriage to my father was not totally without its constraints. She had little choice and was only too glad that someone wanted to marry and house her. Despite her fall from the grand heights of luxury to a meagre existence, Soon Neo had the capacity to live her new life with dignity and she had a delightful way of seeing jewels amongst the dirt.

  “Believe in goodness,” she often told me. “Don’t focus on bad things, one. What you focus on become more strong-strong.”