From: Rosa - 2
Date: 7/3/00
Time: 8:31:01 PM
Of course it was not only on family
occasions, such as birthdays, that the families of the two sons (Phooi Kee and
Baan Chai to our grandparents) used to gather. In fact there was a time when we
all lived together, all three generations - Grandfather and Grandmother, our
parents and us the kids who by then had numbered at least ten.
It was in Kampong Pandan, a modest
two-bedroom semidetached house, a 'government quarters'. It was in the name of
Dai-Kau-Fu, who worked at the Treasury and was allocated the house. As he and
his family were living in a matriarchical arrangement in the house of his mother
(our Popo) with his unmarried sisters, he very kindly let his sister (Mother)
have the use of his house. Father, who had only joined the government service
after some years with Shell, was still on the waiting list for government
quarters. Paul Suk's family had moved in with us when he took time off from
employment to do his honours degree in Geography at the University of Malaya in
Singapore. As our grandparents had always lived with one son or the other, the
house in Kampong Pandan saw 'samm sai toong tong'. There was a time too when
Koko (Auntie Theresa) lived with us but by the time Paul Suk's family moved in
she had got married, thankfully releasing one space in that bulging house.
Father and Mother and the current baby
occupied the dining room downstairs which had been turned into a bedroom; Sei
Yee and her growing brood had one of the bedrooms upstairs; we shared the other
bedroom with Ah Koong and Ah Mah. Ah Mah's was a double bed with the old iron
bedstead, complete with a mosquito net hitched up by iron hooks during the day.
Ah Koong's single iron bed was against the other wall. On the wooden floor in
between, little bodies lay stretched side by side in sleep every night, on
mattresses and under bedclothes which were rolled up every morning. The two
servants (one for each family) slept on folding canvas beds in the living
room.The two bedrooms were connected by a balcony in front and the landing of
the stairs on the other side and this allowed us to run round in circles from
one room to the other and round again, in some wild, whooping cowboy-and-Indian
chase or walk at a sedate, solemn pace in make-believe processions of the Holy
Communion or a funeral. Grandfather had paid for a railing to be put up on the
balcony for the safety of his grandchildren. This he proudly showed to visitors
as he did the extension that he had got built at the back for use as a dining
room and an outside kitchen.
I am not sure how long we lived thus among
our dearest and nearest. Long enough to see some additions to test the seemingly
expandible capacity of the house, some additions more welcome than others by
chauvinistic Hakka-loh Ah Koong. The unintentionally wicked joke we played on
him at the birth of Meimei #7 Genling sticks in my mind. Not knowing how really
badly he wanted more grandsons and the significance of it, we shouted to him as
he walked home from the bus-stop the evening that Meimei #7 was born, 'Ah Koong,
Mamma has a little boy, we have a didi!'. Hurried steps, a wide smile on his
face, quickly turned to a silent sulleness that even we children could sense.
Mother said that for days he walked past the cradle of poor Meimei #7 without so
much as a glance at her. Needless to say he was not at all interested in giving
her a name. As we had the unbidden good sense not to play the same trick on him
the next year when Meimei #8 Martha was born, I have no recollection of his
further disappointment so soon after. Papa was literate in Chinese and together
with Mamma, the headmistress of a Chinese school (albeit her father's charity
school) before she was married, they chose beautiful Chinese names for their two
youngest. And, turning out as she has done, Meimei #7 has certainly not suffered
from the chauvinistic snub from her grandfather on the first day of her life.
Sei Yee had at least one child (if not two) during this period. The birth of
Didi #5 Matthias must have renewed grumpy old Ah Koong's faith in the heavens of
the feudal gods and when Didi #6 Tony arrived, he must have been pleased as
pleased. I do love these two didis but I must confess that I have no
recollection at all of their births or the happiness thereof. My feministically
loyal instinct must have been quietly at work to blot out, injured by the
jaundiced attitude to my little sisters, by blood and in sexual politics.
What I have very clear recollections of are
the two seemingly always pregnant women in the house. They always seemed to be
carrying bulges on them. The picture of Mother prostrate and retching with a
spittoon always within reach remains an abiding picture. There were always
babies about. The antics of Didi#3 Justin who always clung to Mother, who would
stand on the mat near the lavatory crying out and snivelling for her. For such a
large household with so many children it did not appear too disruptively noisy.
But when it got a bit too much I used to take refuge under a bed and lose myself
in the world of Enid Blyton or even the stodgy 'Pilgrim's Progress' and other
authors. An unexpected reward for tackling 'Pilgrim Progress' at what was
considered an early age was the gift of a watch from kindly Dai-Kau-Fu who, on
one of his visits, was much impressed.
Against the background picture of women heavy
with child, babies, Ah Koong and Ah Mah with their friends visiting for mahjong,
Papa who seemed an occasional figure as he was only at home after work or when
he had returned from his volunteer work at church, some scenes, played many
times, stand out.
Ah Mah, neat in her black satin/silk trousers
and striped cotton blouse, silver hair combed behind her ears. In the big
pockets of her blouse she always carried a little comb in its handmade cotton
sheath. On a day when she had washed her hair and scrubbed the comb clean,
leaving it out to dry, she would invariably say, ' I am now all clean and ready,
if Jesus asks for me I am ready to go'. Invariably, on cue, we the oldest four
(Dai-Ga-Chey, me, Meimei #3 and Meimei #4) would burst into tears and pitifully
cry, 'Ah Mah, please don't die!'. 'Silly children, of course I won't die, I live
for the day when all of you are working and give me money to mai-yeh-sik', and
stretching out her hand for the tin of delicacies that was always by her bed,
'Have some of these, all of you'.
Deep and long frightening groans of Ah Mah
trying to catch her breath when she had a severe attack of asthma. Ah Koong, all
agitated, pacing up and down waiting for the doctor's arrival, going over to the
hunched lump that was Ah Mah, her blouse drenched in sweat, and thumping her
back to bring her some relief. The adults all awake and Papa nervous that the
doctor still had not come and that that would send Ah Koong into a fit of
unreasonable temper. We the children caught the tension but most of all the
frightening groans that seemed to shake the house told us that beloved Ah mah
was going to die at any moment. A pause in the groaning was a relief from the
death-spelling sound but did it mean that Ah Mah was already dying? The groans
returned soon enough. We scuttled up from the bedclothes on the floor, led by
Dai-Ga-Jie. She shook awake the older among the little ones who were still
asleep. We hurried into Sei Yee's room where the altar was, Agnes lit the
candles and commanded us all to kneel. We burst into fervent 'Hail Mary, full of
grace .... please, please, please don't let Ah Mah die...' Stirrings of the
doctor's arrival, serious adult consultation from the next room, and soon after
the doctor's departure a safe, soothing silence was heard throughout the house.
The injection had worked, Ah Mah was not going to die. We got off our knees and
trooped back to sleep as there was school tomorrow.
Ah Mah, a loving, lovable, central figure of
our growing years loved us much, gave us much to worry about (but not her
quarrels with Ah Koong as we were always the indirect benficiaries of their
disputes - stories for another time), taught as much through her stories and her
conversations with our mothers, and from whom we have inherited a wicked sense
of humour, a discerning and huge love of food, an abiding sense of family and
the values of being Chinese.
Memories crowd in on those crowded years. The
close living of the two families ended when Paul Suk finished his studies and
got a posting as headmaster to a school in Kuala Kubu Bharu. Father was
allocated his own goverment house, a little larger, still in Kampong Pandan. Ah
Koong and Ah Mah resumed living alternately with the sons (the reason for moving
to one sometimes, but not always, was they were displeased, for whatever
reason/non-reason, with the other!). We still saw a lot of one another,
especially when Paul Suk was later posted to Kuala Lumpur and lived not too far
away in Lower Ampang. And then there were also family gatherings at our mothers'
family on occasions such as the birthday of our joint Popo.
Crowded years they indeed were. Some modern
social worker may regard our living arrangement as physically unhealthy and
potentially unhealthy in other ways too. There were the occasional adult
misunderstandings, I do not deny, but they do happen anywhere and our lives were
not fraught with them.The modern youngster, used to her/his own
taken-as-required space may find our living appallingly cramping. Cramping it
certainly must have been (although, except for crawling under the bed to read, I
have not found it unbearably so) but it by no means cramped our style. We grew
individually and we grew up with some wonderful collective memories which must
have helped to cement us as a family now. Yet, now with all my acquired taste
for individual needs and all the thinking on crowding I have absorbed, I do
wonder, should I be asked now if I would want such a childhood, what my answer
would be. I think I know - it seems daunting but it is not necessarily unhealthy
or impossible or undesirable.