Frog Under A Coconut Shell Read online

  “Why don’t you come round for dinner before Christmas?” Agatha says. “I’ll go to the market myself to search for nangka to make the lemak.”

  Agatha knows this is one of my favourite foods, impossible to reproduce in England because the nangka fruit is not readily available in either the local supermarkets or the Asian ones in London. Besides, the dish makes use of the fruit when still young and tender and is really only good with freshly squeezed coconut milk. I am touched that my sister is going to such great trouble for me. It’s our mother’s specialty and, fortunately, Agatha had learnt how to cook it from my mother before Mak’s mind had let loose the recipe. In some ways, our mother’s incapacity has triggered off some good. Bernadette used not to have to cook because Mak was always there to do it for her. When she tried to cook rice, she always put in the wrong measure of water and it became moey. When she made chunky potato soup with pork pieces, she put in such a ladleful of sugar that it became syrup water! But she learnt very quickly and is now quite good and able to teach her maid. Grandmother was right after all. Many years ago she had told my mother and my aunts, “Must know how to cook or run household, huh, if not, cannot handle your servants, you know.”

  If Bernadette had not learnt how to cook from my mother, she would not know how to teach Dolores to cook the food she liked. And it is the same with Agatha, who is now an excellent cook, with the same high standard of cooking skill as our mother, so I look forward to the dinner.

  “Aunty Phine, how come you still know Singapore roads?” Andy asks.

  Bernadette’s husband is busy so I drive her and Andy to Agatha’s home. My youngest sister will only drive when absolutely necessary. I feel sad that Mak is unable to join us. She used to love getting out of the house and seeing places but now she doesn’t enjoy it anymore because she gets car-sick and places are no longer familiar. Lights and noise confuse her. Dolores stays behind to look after her. Agatha’s place is in Changi, only fifteen minutes away from Bernadette’s. Where they live is the vestigial remains of Singapore’s countryside, a few Acacia and plane trees providing testament. Unlike housing estates where HDB apartment blocks dominate the skyline, this particular area is prime land, not far from the coast, graced with stylishly designed private apartment blocks, condominiums with swimming pools and sports complexes, and grand terraced houses. We pass Tanah Merah, the name borrowed by Noel Barber for his eponymous novel. I have fond memories of this place because when I was a teenager, there used to be government-run bungalows by the sea which we could rent. My group of friends and I had wonderful weekends there. But it’s all so different now. Agatha’s house is larger than Bernadette’s, is semi-detached and therefore much more exclusive, with a back and front garden and an outside drive for guests’ parking. Bernadette’s place overlooks other houses; Agatha’s is across the road from Changi Prison.

  It is difficult not to notice Agatha’s and her husband’s wealth. A Mercedes and BMW sit in the driveway, Italian sculptures in the living room, Van Gogh’s print of The Sunflowers on the wall. The room is so large that there are two matching suites of settees and armchairs standing on the gleaming marble floor. A flight of stairs lead up to two more storeys with all rooms being ensuite. Another flight of stairs descend into the dining room with its own patio and waterfall, kitchen and maid’s room. We are emotional miles from Potong Pasir. Mak has often likened this place to an istana, a palace. Once I had thought that my friend Elizabeth’s house was a palace, but compared to Agatha’s, Elizabeth’s was a hovel. Our success is Mak’s success because without her, we would not have grown up in the right soil and would not have flourished, would not have become the upright trees that we are. So I am glad at Agatha’s success, glad that she had the wealth to return our mother to a grandeur she once knew. I remembered my own promise to my mother on the day she found me a place in school.

  “You know, Mak, I will study very hard and when I finish school, I will earn a lot of money and I shall take you to Malacca to see the place where you used to live and anywhere you want to go.”

  After I left my first husband, I took Mak to Japan, Korea, Hongkong and Taiwan. We also went to Indonesia and, of course, Malacca. Second Aunt was still alive then, and I took her along, too. Grand Aunt had already died. My mother still had all her wits about her then, but we never found the site of the bungalow which Grandfather had built. Perhaps Mak and Second Aunt never really did want to find it, to rake up painful memories. We went up and down the coast but everything was so different and they could not identify the place where their home had been. So, we had a lovely holiday instead, visiting all the markets and shops, buying her the voile material that she loved for her kebayas, the gula melaka for making her desserts.

  “We must live for tomorrow, not be sad-sad for the past,” she said on the way back.

  And Mak’s tomorrow is in her granddaughter, Agatha’s beautiful elder daughter, who looks so like Mak in her younger days that it is uncanny. You can put her face next to Mak’s on her wedding day and you wouldn’t be able to separate the two. Joanna, at 20, is tall, slender and dark-skinned, her face the same shape as Mak’s when her jaw line had been taut, her skin firm. She even walks with the same grace, the same fluidity of movement. And best of all, she has my mother’s nature, gentle and caring. To see her is to wish I had a daughter. To see her is to see my mother young again. Recently, someone saw her on the street on Orchard Road and approached her to take part in a television commercial, which she did. Through her, my mother has become immortal. Joanna and her younger sister, Gloria, greet us with smiles as we come in. Gloria is naturally fair-complexioned like her mother, but is tanned from her running as a school athelete. She has also brains besides speed and is one of Singapore’s top scholars. Perhaps it is she who has inherited my mother’s healing skills because Gloria intends to be a doctor. If only her grandmother could understand, she would be proud. Andy dashes upstairs to play with Agatha’s youngest who is also a boy and close to Andy’s age. Agatha is dressed in a lemon-yellow suit trimmed with black, with diamond studs on her earlobes and an enormous diamond choker round her throat. Like Bernadette, her complexion is creamy-white, the kind favoured by traditional Chinese.

  “Do you like my Escada outfit?”

  “When you get fed up of it, you can give it to me,” Bernadette says, although she’s much smaller.

  The television is on and is telecasting CNN News, perhaps for the benefit of their guest from Texas, who is my brother-in-law’s business associate. My brother-in-law runs a successful soft-furnishings business. We are introduced to Don, who is in an open-necked shirt, the colourful and patterned kind that some Americans think is compulsory casual wear. His belly stretches the shirt and the buttons look as if they are about to pop. He is in keeping with the present environment, with a gold necklace looping down onto his hairy chest, gold bracelets on his wrists. Despite the cool air-conditioning, Don has a ruddy face and is sweating profusely, his brow and the hair on his chest glistening.

  “This is my sister from England.”

  “What part of England are you from?” Don asks with a predictable drawl, but not waiting for an answer. “I’ve been to London. Have you been to London? How do you put up with all that damn traffic? They should take down those decrepit old buildings and widen the roads.”

  The evening is going to be hard work, my cheeks are already straining from the practised smile. I’d rather be discussing books with Gloria but like Joanna, both are dutiful and have gone ahead to help the maid set the table for dinner. I let the man’s chatter float pass me. Bernadette is better at talking to him, her face animated. It gives me the chance to drift into the background. I pick up one of Agatha’s old albums to browse through. She is extremely organised and all the photos have dates assigned to them and even the occasions on which they were taken. I am pleased to see pictures of our village, precious since the village is no longer around; and more precious still are photos of me as a youngster. Photos are testimony to one’s
life and I have lost mine in my acrimonious divorce. When I left home, my ex-husband had burnt all my albums, those that held my image, from birth to adulthood, perhaps in an effort to erase me from his life. When the decree nisi came through, he sent me my part of the photograph which had contained an image of our family in happier times. He had scissored himself and our children away from the photo and sent me the remainder twisted round his wedding ring. The act was so much in his character.

  In Agatha’s well-organised album, there’s a black-and-white picture of Matthew standing with us three sisters taken in all our Chinese New Year finery. We are wearing identical dresses that Mak sewed with can-can underneath. Imagine the stiff and scratchy can-cans in the tropical heat! Especially when it was probably the cheap variety. Bernadette, at six or seven, is cute with her dimpled smile and has always remained the prettiest, Agatha is willowy and elegant. Regrettably, I look like a stuffed dumpling with a weird hairdo. Mak had taken us to the hairdresser in a bid to make us more modern. It had been a painful exercise, my hair wound tight round metal curlers with wires protruding from them which made my head look like an electrical Medusa. I felt as though I was being fried. Both Agatha and Bernadette had pliable hair so their curls came out soft and gentle, sweetly framing their faces. But mine, released from the rods sprung, out in a fright like a shocked porcupine. The tops of our heads showed our staircase of heights, Matthew being the tallest, followed by myself, although Agatha soon overtook me in subsequent years. We are posing by the banana tree, its broad leaves acting as backdrop. When the photo was developed, one of the old village ladies had pointed to my picture and made a prediction.

  “This one has legs that will carry her far. She is born to travel and will move away from this country.”

  Strange how I did not remember that until recently. There I was in the wilderness of Alaska and I suddenly remembered the old lady’s prediction. David and I had started a travel company taking retired British people on holiday in motorhomes to North America and we began with a journey to the Gold Rush region of Alaska and the Yukon. We were comtemplating the beautiful Emerald Lake with its waters glittering in the sun like the jewel it was named after. Apparently, the deposits of marl, a type of shell at the bottom of the lake, is the reason for its glorious colours. David had a bakery business when we got married. When I was involved in it, his family was afraid that I might inherit it. So we gave it to his children and started our own business so that we could start afresh, with no shadows from his past marriage. I wasn’t prepared to work for him as an employee, so we went into it as partners. As he has the business brain which I am entirely without, he runs the business and handles all the finances, whilst I handle the marketing and wrote all the brochure and sales literature. It was the kind of partnership my mother would have been proud of, if she had understood it. It was the kind of opportunity she bought me with her hard work and sacrifices. That day when we were sitting by the lake, outside our 40-foot motorhome, having a cup of coffee, David waxed lyrical about the beauty of the region. Emerald Lake is halfway between Whitehorse, Yukon and Skagway, Alaska. And I suddenly remembered the nenek’s prediction from all those years ago.

  “Do you know,” I said to David, “once when we were still living in Kampong Potong Pasir, an old lady predicted that I, of all my brothers and sisters, would travel far. How would she have known that?”

  It is funny about memories. A memory isn’t recovered in a complete package from the past — it is excerpts spotlighted by the mind. Certain incidents and situations beome highlighted and they become triggers for us to explore the entire picture. Memory is about remembering, but is it usually about what we think we remember? This particular photo, for instance, pulls me back to our kampong, to a specific memory of my sisters and I playing marbles. I can see clearly the spot where we stood in the photo, in front of the banana trees, in our sandy yard. This was where we played our games: hantam bola, teng-teng, also called balloon or hopscotch, keledek and chaptey. Keledek was actually tapioca and it had given its name to the game because the stones used were normally flat like slices of tapioca that were dipped in batter and deep-fried. Two opposing lines about 10 feet apart were drawn in the sand and the idea was to get your stone as close to one of the lines as possible. The winner was the one whose stone was the nearest. The loser had to piggyback the winner back-and-forth the two lines, according to the number of times that had been negotiated. I used to be welcomed in this game but then when I got fat and heavy after the ministrations of the WHO medical team, I became unpopular. I was only asked when the kids were short of players. And when I won, everyone groaned. Chaptey was okay because it was an individual competing with another to flex the sole of their foot to kick the chaptey, made with a circle of rubber pieces for its base and three or four feathers stuck to it. Generally the same badminton court which was used for film screening was also where my brothers would play sepak raga with his friends, a game I have never been allowed to join in. The raga was a rattan ball and it was similar to volley ball, played over a net but using the foot.

  But there were some games which we had to play to make money. Even before I was 12, I had to find sources for extra money, to buy exercise books for school or the occasional treat. Mak and Ah Cob were already working so hard for the money to keep me in school, it wouldn’t have been fair to ask them for more. Now that I could read and write, I decided to write very short stories to sell to the other village children. (In retrospect, it was odd that I chose to write my first books in English rather than Malay.) I could draw reasonably well, so I combined the two skills and made a 10-page comic book complete with story and illustration and sold it for five cents a piece.

  Matthew, four years older than myself, has always been my favourite brother. He is small in stature and has a very gentle personality, just like my mother. He and I would buy boxes of sweets or crackers, split them up to sell them individually at a lesser price than the shops, so that the village children would buy from us. We organised a Sports Day, with several events and collected a small fee for entry. Part of the collection was used for prizes for the top three winners and we’d keep the rest. Our other source of income was from colorful, glass marbles. We would find out the number of marbles the village shop was selling for 10 cents and we’d sell ours for the same price with an extra five. The village kids couldn’t resist the bargain and they seemed unaware that the marbles were theirs to begin with anyway. We won them first and then sold the marbles back to them. One of the variations of playing with marbles was an arrow drawn in the sand in the compound and the marbles were be lined along the stem of the arrow. Three or four feet away would be a stay line, from which the last person could toss his marble. The person furthest away would toss the first marble. The aim was to shift a marble from the arrow and what was beyond the marble which was dislodged from the line became yours to keep. As Bernadette was the littlest, I always put her on the stay line; Agatha got to go somewhere in the middle and I would attempt to get a place far beyond all the other village children so that I got first whack at sweeping up the marbles. It was hard to make Agatha understand why this strategy of placing us in intervals to the village children was vital to our winning the most marbles.

  “How come you always get to go first?” Agatha used to complain.

  But she has no cause to complain now, she has it all, success with a capital “S”. She is a high-powered executive in an international firm commanding a five-figure salary, has a long-term successful marriage and three beautiful children. She travels to exotic places, has a lovely home in Singapore, kept in splendid condition by a full-time maid, and has apartments in Kuala Lumpur and the Gold Coast in Australia. And she is a wonderful cook, as good as Mak had been. In the middle of the rosewood dining table is a line of hot-plates on which there is a row of dishes with a variety of mouth-watering dishes, from stewed pork to beef rendang, spicy chicken, sambal, mackeral, soya sauce tofu, long beans and many others. Of course, there is also the promised
dish: nangka lemak. Agatha must have slaved in the kitchen all day, the selection of Peranakan dishes is widespread. Our mother has taught us the importance of cutting and slicing a vegetable or meat in just the right way to suit the recipe and every single dish of Agatha’s is perfectly cooked and presented. She could open a restaurant and it would have a roaring trade. We all tuck in.

  “This is absolutely delicious,” I say, meaning every word.

  “I love Chinese food,” says Don, and I cringe.

  I get a bit cross when Westerners can’t differentiate Chinese food from Southeast Asian food, when Singaporean/Malaysian food use spices and ingredients not found in the usual Chinese food. I can understand when people don’t know that Peranakan cuisine is unique, and is the haut cuisine of Asian food, but I am irritated by this generalisation. People in the West think that all Chinese are the same. I often asked people if all Caucasians speak the same language and eat the same food. I am sure that the Italians would not like to be put in the same category as the Germans, nor the French, the English. Yet they are all Europeans. So why should all Chinese be the same? But Agatha does not seem to mind.