The Woman Who Breathed Two Worlds Read online

  ‘Who tell you to laugh? Next time you no hit your brother.’ With that, Mother disappeared, leaving Chong Jin and me with a sick feeling in our stomachs.

  When Father returned, Mother shepherded him into their bedroom. The agitated rise and fall of her voice could be felt on the outside verandah, where Chong Jin and I huddled, not daring to speak. Father came looking for us, his face like a thunderous monsoon cloud. He called my brother inside. While I remained on the verandah, I heard the swishing of air and Chong Jin’s screams. With a pounding heart I stood beneath the shade of Mother’s mango trees, awaiting my turn.

  It never came. I was spared because I was a girl and I had not stolen. My brother, on the other hand, ended up with a bottom streaked red where the skin was bruised, and palms flushed from the ruler Father had also used.

  Chong Jin sobbed through the meal. ‘You all, stealing not just naughty . . . stealing is bad. Father always cane,’ Mother announced. Though her eyes were full of sorrow, she gave Chong Jin extra fish. Father ate in silence. Elder Sister and I kept our heads down.

  That sombre dinner marked the first time the cane had been used in our house and the only time I was not in trouble. In fact, I overheard Mother telling Father, ‘Pity Chye Hoon ours a girl – maybe she will be good in business.’ It was a remark Mother would remember years later.

  In those days Songkhla was a sleepy village where everyone knew everyone else. In my mind, much about Songkhla is shrouded in a film of light golden dust, yellowed like an old photograph. I have forgotten many things, but I remember the stars dotting the night sky like ants and the stories Mother told us each afternoon.

  Mother spoke of wondrous things. In her world suns travelled on golden carriages, causing the earth to burn, and men turned into tigers. She had said this to stop us from wandering into the jungle near our house. ‘You three, jungle very dangerous, got wild animals. Don’t run here there by yourselves-ah!’

  One day I asked Mother where we came from. She, Father and everyone in their families – had we all been born in Songkhla? Sitting as still as a lake on a calm night, Mother began to tell us about our ancestors. We heard that Father’s great-grandfather many times over had been a trader from Amoy in southern China. He arrived a long time ago in a boat with a huge eye painted on its prow. ‘Like wooden junks that we sometimes see off the coast,’ Mother said with a faraway look, which told me she was picturing the scene in her mind.

  I had seen how rough the South China Sea could become, had smelt the salt in its air and the fish from its depths. I marvelled at the courage of Father’s ancestor. He had set sail with the monsoon winds, staying only a few months; when the winds changed, he had boarded his boat and returned to China. He continued this for several seasons, sailing to and fro. After a while he settled in Siam. There were others like him, Chinese men who chose new lives. They married local women and became Siamese.

  The first time Mother told our ancestral story, she paused when I was least expecting it.

  ‘Our ancestors,’ Mother whispered, ‘were different.’

  I waited, watching for any change of expression in Mother’s eyes. Mother had eyes I wanted for myself: brown and clear with dark seeds in the middle. The seeds in her eyes sparkled when she was animated. Mother’s upper eyelids had deep-set creases, considered attractive in our part of the world – unlike my poor Chinese eyes. Mother winked at me, and her tone led me to expect treasure.

  ‘They married Siamese Malay women and became Babas and Nyonyas,’ Mother said, almost to herself.

  ‘What mean that?’ I asked.

  Mother answered that she was a Nyonya and that I too would grow up to be one. She said I would dress in Malay clothes but worship Chinese gods, wear my hair in a chignon and become known for spicy cooking. She told me Father was a Baba, equally at home in Mandarin-collared jackets or with sarongs around his waist, comfortable speaking many languages – Hokkien, Malay and Siamese – and, with the arrival of the white devils, even English.

  I clung to Mother’s every word. Her story gave a name to what was already familiar to me – Nyonya – and for my Father, Baba. By then I was accustomed to the languages in our house, each with its own set of sounds and intonations: to Hokkien, spoken often and always loudly by people who opened their mouths wide, as if the words had to be spat out; Malay, soft and even in its tone; and Siamese, with its nasal high-pitched torrent of words. I was used to seeing Mother go about her routine. She pounded chillies for aromatic dishes during the day and did needlework in the evening, stringing colourful beads by the light of the kerosene lamp. These activities, part of being a Nyonya, seemed as natural as the monsoon rains.

  Unlike Mother, Father said little. He preferred singing to talking. When Father opened and closed his mouth, out would float a rich voice that lulled you into calmness. Even more amazing was his Adam’s apple, a prominent sac which wobbled like the red bags below our rooster’s throat. Once, while Father was going through his repertoire of Chinese and Siamese tunes, I reached out to feel his Adam’s apple. Father merely smiled. He let my fingers touch the hard knob before putting me down so that he could continue with his song.

  Though Father had eyes like mine – almond-shaped Chinese eyes with no double creases over the eyelids – I thought him handsome. Father’s hair was the black of coals and his skin smooth, unlike that of other men, whose faces resembled Songkhla’s streets – full of unfilled holes. Father’s teeth, white and even, had no gaps between them. He was taller too and better dressed, his Mandarin jackets and tunics made by Songkhla’s tailor.

  Father was the village teacher. We lived near the schoolhouse in a wooden building with the thatched attap roof so prevalent in those days. Every morning Father would leave our house while the air outside was cool, and he would return in the afternoon when the sun was already high in the sky. After lunch he would sit at the dining table with stacks of books, two bottles of ink and a set of quill pens, and begin scrawling on his papers.

  ‘Teach me write, teach me write!’ I pleaded as I climbed on to a chair to watch Father work.

  From their bedroom, Mother’s stern voice would reach my ears. ‘Come here. No disturb Father.’ To keep us amused, Mother began her stories. But she always fell asleep. I would sneak back to Father then, to be indulged in ways Mother would never have dreamt of. Father was content to let me watch him dip his quill pen into ink; I would sit riveted by the grand strokes over sheets of paper.

  I begged Father to teach me to write, but no matter what I did he refused. ‘Writing is not for girls,’ he would say in his deep voice. When I picked up a quill and tried to copy what he did, Father’s jaw tensed. His Adam’s apple stopped moving, a sure sign of displeasure.

  The more Father refused to teach me to write, the more determined I was to learn. Somehow I preferred to start by writing rather than reading. I had no quill pen or ink, but I had sticks and sand. In between climbing trees and chasing live creatures, I would pretend to write in the sand. In order to write properly, I had to see from close up what Father’s fingers were doing. I decided to climb on to the table.

  Father’s hands ceased their rhythmic movement. ‘You should not be on the table, Chye Hoon,’ he said. Nothing happened, though, that first time, or the second or even the third. Soon Father was happy to let me perch near his right hand, from where I stared in awe at his squiggles. The next day I would reproduce the same squiggles in the sand, without any idea what they meant.

  One day Father wrote complicated characters I had never seen before. I waited until he had left the table to find a book before putting my head so close to his sheet of paper that my breath brushed every curve. Too soon I heard Father’s footsteps, and I scrambled into my original position. On stretching a leg out, I promptly overturned Father’s inkpot.

  ‘Chye Hoon!’ he bellowed. Father never raised his voice; when he did, we knew we were in trouble.

  Mother came rushing in, eyes still powdered with sleep. ‘Is your fault!’ Mother sai
d accusingly. ‘You let her sit there.’ Father clamped his jaw without saying anything, but the look he gave me was full of disappointment. When I felt Father’s anguish, I was sorry for the trouble I had caused. I still wanted to write but thereafter could only watch from afar. I would look longingly at Father’s lone figure, with only an ugly black stain on the dining table for company.

  At the time there were changes taking place in the world beyond which even we children were aware of. We’d had a handful of visitors in Songkhla who looked as white as the ghosts that were said to roam our jungles. My friends had gone up to pinch their skins to see whether they were real, before laughing and running away.

  From village chatter I knew that the white visitors were not well regarded. This singling out of a group in Songkhla was unusual, because our village was a melting pot into which all could be thrown. Anyone was welcome, provided the person respected local customs. Everyone married everyone else, and no one paid attention to race or religion.

  It was different with this new breed of foreigners. They did not settle among us. When they first appeared, they were a curiosity. By the time I came along, their aloof presence was already resented. Never outwardly, of course, though it wasn’t hard to peel away the veneer of politeness. They were casually referred to as ‘white devils’ in Chinese, occasionally as ‘red-haired devils’, and in Malay more politely as ‘white people’, but always in such a way as to imply undesirability.

  As time went by, hushed conversations took place between the adults. Sometimes I caught snatches about happenings in the other Malay states south of us, where the white devils had arrived years previously. I once overheard Father say that there were many more of them now, and they had even started to rule in some areas. It was then that he began his English lessons. Father bought books with mysterious writing, a script very different to the signs around us. On his one rest day he would go to a friend’s house for English lessons. When he returned in the afternoon, Father would sit in his bamboo chair on the verandah.

  The verandah was his refuge. Like the rest of our house, it was raised above the ground on solid wooden poles and remained cool through the day. Father often sang in his chair, but after the arrival of the white devils he became preoccupied. He would sit like Lord Buddha, absorbed within his own thoughts.

  One day we were visited by a man who dressed like Father. He wore a Chinese jacket and skirt but spoke in a strange accent and didn’t understand Siamese. Mother told me to call the man Cousin-Uncle Lim. She said he was a distant cousin of Father’s and that he came from a place called Penang. He must have been a very distant relative, because I could not tell how he was related to us. When Cousin-Uncle Lim was there, Father and Mother spent a long time talking to him.

  After he left, my parents spoke in whispers. I tried to eavesdrop from behind the kitchen wall, but they kept their voices low, and I could not hear much. Change was in the air – I could smell it.

  I grew nervous. I woke up talking in my sleep. Then one morning before daybreak I went walking around our house. Mother followed me; she said my eyes were closed, but I navigated without bumping into furniture. My sleepwalking set off warning bells for Mother.

  That night she and Father gathered us children together and informed us matter-of-factly that we would soon be leaving Songkhla. With his Adam’s apple bobbing, Father told us there would be a better future for us in Penang, where Cousin-Uncle Lim lived. Father explained where Penang was – ‘Far south of here. It’s controlled by the British.’

  ‘Oh, white devils?’ I asked, adopting the same sneer I had observed among the adults.

  Father smiled, showing off his even teeth. ‘You mustn’t call them that, Chye Hoon,’ he said.

  I couldn’t see why. After all, he and Mother had always used the term in the past, but there was a change in Father’s tone that night, a deference that had not been there before. He talked enthusiastically about the ‘British’ and the development they had brought. ‘They are opening tin mines and rubber plantations. There are new schools and hospitals and plenty of jobs for men like me who speak English.’

  I looked at Elder Sister and Chong Jin. Like me, they sat dazed. I thought about never again seeing the field where we played each day and began to sob. ‘Chye Hoon, don’t cry,’ Father said, his rich voice enveloping me in its cloak of safety. ‘This is for your own good. We are moving to Penang for you, children.’

  But when Father stopped speaking, I remembered my friends and my butterflies. ‘I no want to go!’ I wailed, until Elder Sister and Chong Jin also cried.

  It was Mother who put us out of our misery. ‘Ai-yahh! You three, stop it! You ride elephant.’

  ‘Elephant?’ I asked, tears instantly drying, taken over by rising excitement. Elephants walked our village streets, but seeing how they trampled on everything in their path, we kept out of their way. Now we were told we would soon be riding our own elephants. Mother encouraged this new-found fervour; she didn’t want us dwelling on what we would leave behind. She kept saying we were off to a distant land to seek our fortune, just like our ancestors had done.

  Just before we left Songkhla, a water buffalo fight took place. It divided our neighbours. Such fights were big events; in the weeks preceding, villagers would speculate about what would happen once the bulls were released inside the makeshift pen that was the fighting ring.

  The buffalo owners, two of Songkhla’s wealthiest farmers, shrewdly called the impending fight ‘the battle of our lifetime’. Each bull was said to be a ferocious fighter, inclined to charge at the slightest opportunity. For weeks beforehand, while rice was being harvested from the paddy fields, the villagers spoke of little else. Father grumbled that the discussions seemed more heated than usual, and some men lost their heads. Our closest neighbour across the field, an easy-going man who loved to whistle, bet several months’ wages on one of the bulls. He was a hired hand in Songkhla’s general store, but he dreamt of being rich. In the fevered atmosphere he was sure he would win.

  On the afternoon of the big day, when the fishermen had long been home, the whole village gathered in anticipation. It being my first water buffalo fight, I was eager for a good place at the enclosure. Mother, unfortunately, never liked getting anywhere early. ‘Waste of time!’ she would exclaim. ‘Just longer to wait!’ By the time we arrived, the ring was already crowded. We fought our way through, my younger brother Chong Jin on Father’s shoulders, Elder Sister and I holding tightly on to Mother’s hands. We found our neighbours in a far corner, leaning against the wooden fence and talking loudly. He – the man from the general store – was red-faced, as if he had been drinking, while his wife, pregnant again, was slumped, so that the fence posts bent under her weight. Their children stood further along, where the barrier remained sturdy. As soon as Mother released my hand, I ran to join them, latching on to the first of the three rungs for a better view.

  I could hardly believe that the creatures tied up inside the ring were the fighters everyone had talked so much about. I saw two black beasts with little funnels dangling down, like the one my brother Chong Jin had. The bulls stood placidly inside the pen. Though huge, neither looked fierce; each twitched its ears and blinked gentle brown eyes, first at me, then at each other, in a friendly sign of greeting.

  When the bulls were finally untied and let loose, neither knew what to do. Even shouts of ‘Rao, rao!’ couldn’t arouse them. They stood staring dumbly into the air and at the people shouting. One of the beasts started to sniff the other’s rear end but quickly backed away. When it dug its right hind hoof into the earth, I noticed how dirty its hooves were from digging all day in mud and earth.

  The bulls could not be encouraged to approach one another. When they eventually did, it was not to fight but to smell the ground beneath a tree. By then the crowd had grown impatient. Their screams were loud; even Father, normally a serene man, joined in, his deep bass voice echoing across the enclosure.

  Without warning, one buffalo took its fell
ow buffalo by surprise. The attacking buffalo locked its black horns with the other’s and tried to lift the gentler bull off its feet, driving everyone wild.

  Next minute the bull which had been attacked raised its head, took one look at its opponent and decided to come straight towards me, staring with terror in its eyes. I screamed, jumping off my place on the fence. It turned out I need not have worried, because the running buffalo veered in another direction. The two ran around the ring until they found a hole through which they were able to squeeze. The bulls were chased in every direction by villagers carrying coir ropes, led by a tall paddy farmer with burnished skin who was the fastest runner in Songkhla.

  Our neighbour was not among them. With his head buried in both hands, the man from the general store sat crumpled on the grass. In between terrifying silences he emitted growls and inhuman cries, like the noises we heard from the jungle – the sound of a hundred elephants dying, according to Mother. I stared at our neighbour, fearing the worst. But when Mother went to put her arms around his wife, the man lifted a hand, and I saw that he would live. He was only crying, the first grown man I had seen with tears on his cheeks. His children – my friends – looked away.

  When we reached home, the air was brittle. The knob on Father’s throat tensed as he declared, ‘It’s best to work instead of gambling and dreaming of easy money.’

  Mother nodded. ‘Yes, Husband, I know . . .’ But when she saw that Father was unmoved, Mother’s glare turned icy. Her thin lips tightened, curving decidedly downwards. I held my breath. ‘Have heart, Husband,’ Mother finally erupted. ‘They have children!’ In the distance cicadas screeched.

  That night Mother and Father had their biggest argument ever. The floorboards of our wooden house shook under the weight of their words, and Elder Sister and I had to draw blankets over our heads. It was morning before calm returned. When our neighbour’s wife next came to our house, Mother handed her some rice and a portion of the chicken curry Kapitan she had made, rich with chillies and coconut. Mother had won; we shared what we could with our neighbours, but it wasn’t much, and my friends grew skinnier. Sometimes their stomachs rumbled when we played. It was the first time I had known anyone hungry.