Childhood in Kanowit

Heaven is above. Heaven must be up in the sky, my eight year old mind surmised. It was evening, the skies were just beginning to get dark. Ma and the others walked, paying little attention to me as I scanned the skies. That big cloud with the shape of a large man has to be God the Father, the other one looked like Jesus and there, the form that looks like a little bird is God the Holy Spirit.  Sometimes I believe heaven is where it is all blue behind the clouds.

Another evening, we went to the Church to practice some new hymns. I walked back, the tune playing in my mind, “firmly I believed and truly, God is three and God is one….” I thought that one of the most beautiful hymns I learned; the tune was so moving.

At home I started my own little religious practice. I collected old holy pictures and went behind the rooms of our shop house. I pilfered a match box from the kitchen and burned the holy pictures. I collected the ashes in a can. I did that several times. It is a marvel I did not burn the shophouse down and entire row with it.  I hid the tin in a corner. In my mind if Chinese mediums could burn paper written with words and fed those to their clients to cure ills, I could do the same with holy pictures. They should have the same power.

When I was smaller, Ma allowed me to leave the Church and played with the other boys outside the Church. The Church was one of the oldest in Sarawak and built by the Mill Hill fathers. These were missionary priest from Europe. The Church stood, old and majestic with two spires.  Outside were a few gentle slopes. We often climbed up the slopes and ran down full speed. One Sunday, we managed to find some cardboard and sitting on them, slided down the hill slopes.

One Sunday, there was a stir with the boys. Someone dropped ten cents at the Church collection and it fell through the cracks of the wooden floor. The boys gathered, each trying to pluck up enough courage to crawl under the Church building and retrieved the ten cents. None dared to do it till one young lad did it. He came out showing off the ten cents. Ten cents could buy four nice sweets those days. It could even buy ten of the kind which is hard and plain.

The day came when Ma decided I was old enough to understand the Mass. After that I had to stay inside. Ma had a book with pictures of the Mass and described what was happening. I knew only at a time when the altar boy started ringing the bell, I had to keep my head down and not looked up because that was the moment when Jesus would be there. I often wondered what would happen if I lift my head up and look. Would I see Jesus? I never dared attempt it and never put the theory to test.

Those were some of my earliest memories.

When I was around eleven, life became very serious for me.  At year end I will be sitting for Primary Six examinations.  A lot rested on that. If I passed the examinations, I could move onto public schools. If I failed, I would have to go to private schools. Most parents could not afford that. Failing that test often meant the end of any education. That to me was a fate I could not endure. If there was anything I was prejudiced against, even at that early age, it was being uneducated. Even if my parents were able to afford it, those schools were called rubbish by most. I would feel embarrass having to go to such a school.

I made a pact with God, help me pass my Common Entrance examinations, and I promise when I grow up, I will become a nun. Every night, as I recited that night, I produced a look of torture on my face, so that looking down from heaven, God could see how much it meant to me. It became a bit of a burden because every night I had to produce one which outdo the one of the night before.

My mother and siblings were not privy to my inner anxiety. I kept it to myself and told no one, not even my sister Teresa who was a year older and closest to me. Ma and Lily often teased me, “When Ah Gert finished school, there will not be jobs available for her. She would have to marry Michael.”

Michael was a new addition to our class. His father was a police man. He was Iban with big huge eyes, altogether quite good looking but at that age who wants to get married? However, I was worried about jobs not being available till I made that pact with God and then I became insulated. No amount of teasings could get to me. God will help me pass my examinations. And I would not need a job, I will become a nun.

…

I am going to try another version….

God is in heaven, Ma said.

Where is Heaven? Above the skies.

Would that cloud be God the Father?

It has to be, big and bulky.

Where would Jesus be then?

That other cloud, longer and thinner.

And the Holy Spirit?

Ah, that one, small with irregular shape.

The saints, and angels, they are all up there.

Ahead of me, Ma and my siblings walked.

Paying scan attention to the mental game.

Their little sister was playing.

Around us dusk was falling.

With it, the villagers are coming out.

Men sat on curbs talking,

Women stood around chatting.

And children ran around playing.

Above us, swallows dived in and out.

Of their nests building on ceiling of shops.

Never destroy their nests, shopkeepers said.

They bring good luck.

And so they let them live.

Building their nests thick on their ceiling.

We lived very close to the priests and nuns, Kanowit being a small village also. Brought up the nuns, my mother looked up to them also. There was Fr. Bruggeman who would come to visit my parents. He was Dutch, tall and fairly big. He loved to frighten us making barking noises. The moment we heard him coming, we ran to hide.

We were not as afraid of Fr. Mieng who excelled in making bird’s mouth. He was Scottish, with crinkling eyes and ready smiles on his face. My brother, Philip, decided he was going to become Fr. Mieng when he grew up. That was how we found him, nice and pleasant compared to the loud voice barking Fr. Bruggeman.

Later there was a Fr. John who taught us a song, Bong didi aye di boon didi aye di booom. It is actually called, Land of the Silver Birch. Fr. John was young and handsome. We liked him very much.

The sisters were different. They lived in a building situated on top of a hill. A few yards away was their clinic where they saw to the sick. Any case more serious, they sent the patient by speedboat to the hospital in Sibu. Hence every time we got sick, my mother would taught us how to tell the sisters our symptons in English. Teresa and I would memorize the words walking to the clinic and then like little parrots, intoned what we were taught. The sisters were often very amused as they listened to us.

It was little wonder most of us think about becoming a priest or nun on growing up.

Apart from this influence, they were others. Kanowit, the village I lived in had a good number of Hokkien living there. These practiced ancestors’ worship. For us, it was worshipping the spirits and we knew that was bad.

My sister, Ah Sa and I sat on the fallen tree trunk, looking across the river. I loved looking across the river. I know what was across the river. Our older sister, Lily, brought Sa and I there one evening. It was to receive her prize for getting first position in class.

I could not wait to get into the long boat, powered by an outboard engine. It was that, a long rowing boat. It took some use getting into it without falling but for me that was the most exciting part. There were school buildings, big one floor buildings and more buildings where the boarders lived. We knew even as small as that, eight and nine what boarders were about and what day scholar was about though they were just names for me. Boarders mean they lived at the school. Dayscholar means they lived in their own homes and take the boat every day to go to school.

I remember mostly the big hall, cramped with heads of students. And the school principal of medium height, with slightly bald head, fat in the middle and always wearing knee length shorts. In my mind, he looked a little like humpty dumpty. He delivered a speech then went “Hip hip…..” And the entire hall roared, “Hurrah.” He did it three times. And then came the prize giving. Not only Lily but my other brothers received their prize also. They all attained first or second position. I was very disappointed to find they were all dictionaries. Something to eat, now that would be a lot better. But that was one night and one time only I visited the school.

Looking across, I could see the buildings and tiny figures of students getting into the boat or out of the board. To me, it was a magical world. When I am big, I will go to the school also, I thought to myself often. I will pack my lunch like my older sisters and daily wait for the motor launch to carry me over. “If you have to do it everyday, it would not be fun,” wise Ah Sa warned me. I did not believe her. The school across the river, how much, how badly I wanted to be a student there.

“Ma has gone out,” Philip informed Sa and I. The three of us stood looking at the dark room, which was a storage room where Pa put goods he was selling. Pa was sales personnel of the Borneo company.

“Don’t do it,” Sa told us, “we might get caught.” But Philip and I had made up our minds. Ma had just left and in that dark room were the black fruits. She hid them in the room and used a padlock to lock the door. What she did not realize was the fact we always knew where the key was. And the fruits were so good, called karang chee.

There were two types, the small ones which were not very expensive. Cracked open the thin black skin of the oval shape fruit and inside was a seed with powdery flesh. These were often sour and not sweet but the ones Ma hid in that room, they were so good. They were the bigger variety and expensive. Crack the brittle thin black skin and inside is the fruit but instead of powdery this one is wet and sweet.  Within the wet flesh is a big seed which meant we got to enjoy a thin layer of meat only.

“Please don’t do it,” Sa begged. “we will get caught. I know we were get caught.” But there was no talking to Philip and I; the fruits were too tempting.

“Ah Gert, here is the key, you take care of the key and watch the door in case Ma comes back. Ah Sa and I will go inside,” Philip instructed.

They went inside and I heard Ma’s footsteps, she came back earlier than we had expected. I panicked and did not know what to do. I decided to cover the crime and put the lock back, effectively locking Ah Sa and Philip inside. Needless to say, we were caught red handed.

Ma took out her rattan cane. One by one, we had to hold our hands and get our strokes. There were a few only and did not hurt all that much. It did not bother me too much but Sa was very sad about it. “I told you two not to do it, and you want to do it. The first time I join you two in such things and we got caught,” she said sadly.

Food, food, how much that occupied our minds and quests.

……

Food, food, to what extend would I not go for food.  When food is not easily, readily handed to us, nature became a good hunting ground for food. It was what happened with us. Kanowit those days was very green. Behind the shops were green grass and trees and shrubs. All over the village, grass and wild plants grew readily.  Easily available was a kind of crawling creeping vine, these grew on the ground; its leaves had hairs on them. What we coveted were the fruit. It looked like a green flower with hairy outside, inside were moist seeds looking like little black eyes covered with moist clear fluid. The fluid with seeds were very sweet and a pleasure to eat. Today I would put it on the list of exotic wild fruits for sampling. The other variety we hunted for looked like a little lantern. Inside the lantern was a little round fruit with tiny seeds inside, that too was edible and grew wild along the grounds but did not taste as good as the former.

Around the corner from the hospital ran by Mill Hill Nuns was a mangos teen tree.  It was Clare, a girl around my age who brought Sa and I to the tree. We looked at the fruit with longing. Inside the round dark purple fruit were soft white sections which tasted so good but there was a price to eating it. “People say, if we eat that fruit, we cannot eat sweets for twenty hours or we will die.”

The tree was on an incline, along the riverbank, growing a few feet from where we were standing on the road. It would be a bit tricky getting to them but that would not have deter us, we would have found means to get at the fruit.  Instead, we stood mulling the consequences of eating the fruit, there were hardly anything without sugar. Take cookies for instance, the filings were made of sugar. None of us wanted to sacrifice anything sweet that might come our way that day, nor did we want to put the theory to the test. What if we die. We walked regretfully away.

We did not go hungry, we did not see ourselves as being poor either but fairly well to do. They were a lot poorer than us. For one thing, we had food to eat and did not go hungry and Pa was a big man in town. He was unusually tall for a Chinese at five feet ten. He was not fat and not thin giving him a large build which added to his looks of importance. He was sales personnel of the Borneo Company.

Clare soon showed us another means of getting food, getting food even when we had no money to pay for it. Old man Yu tek Pek had a cart selling sweets and goodies. He lived alone, story had it he came alone to Sarawak from China and had wife and children in China. He worked hard and sent money he earned back to China to support his family. Unlike some men in similar position, he did not marry another woman in Kanowit, he lived alone, a slight man looking seventy with graying hair and slightly bald head.

Clare bid her time; she waited until he was not looking and in one fast move plucked something from the stall. He never saw her. I tried it and the angry man chased me down the street, and took what I stole from him.

Another time, Clare came to visit our house.  The three of us, Sa, Clare and I soon ventured into the streets to play when Clare demonstrated again her skill taking things from Yu Tek peck without paying for it. By this time, Yu Tek Pek had advanced to renting half a shop. In the afternoon, he sat on his stool, minding his store. He often fell asleep on his chair, nodding his head. The half shop was to the side facing a side road.

Clare motioned us to wait with her at the side of his shop. She slowly peered at Yu Tek Pek. The moment he started nodding his head, she ran inside, grabbed something, anything and ran back to us, giggling. She did it not once only but several times. Sa and I watched her, too nervous to attempt it ourselves and marveled at her guts and adeptness. We were very grateful when Clare shared the spoils with us.

One day a chance came for me to treat myself to something I had been longing for. We lived in two rooms above a shop. Downstairs was butcher Lau and his family. Most shop apartments had one staircase only. Ours was unique because an English family lived there once. They needed privacy. Instead of using the only and only staircase which led into the middle of the shop downstairs, they had an extra one constructed at the back of the shop. This way they were able to go in and out without disrupting anyone. Their need for privacy worked to our advantage.  Most members of my family used that side staircase, avoiding the main one. I often play at that main staircase. It was wide and dark. One day I was playing there when I noticed a flat metal box. I opened it; it was full of coins, twenty cents and ten cents coins.

Quietly, I took out 30 cents. I had been eyeing green apples at a shop, dying to eat one without the means to get one. Now I had the means to. The coins were heaven sent  or heaven cents. I quickly went and bought an apple. I usually shared everything with Sa, but in thiscase, I knew I could not share it with her. It was the only thing that diminished my pleasure as I hid at the dark staircase and slowly enjoyed the apple. Daily, I took 30 cents and went for my apple. Some afternoons, the butcher would be taking a nap on a little bed feet away from the box, snoring loudly. I have no idea how I had the courage to move quietly down and stole thirty cents all the time watching him warily. If he woke up and caught me stealing his money, there was no accounting what he would do. He was a tyrant and a bully whom everyone in the village feared. The villagers claimed my parents had to be saints to put up with him.

One night it was late; we were already in bed. Our apartment had two main rooms only. My parents slept in the front room with my younger brothers and sisters, Teresa and I slept with my older siblings in the other room. By day the second room served as living room. At night, we pulled mats out and turned it into a bedroom. Sa and I were sleeping when loud commotion woke us up.  We opened our eyes to see a man standing in front of us brandishing a cleaver which he used to cut pigs up to sell at the market. We knew what that cleaver was capable of doing. It could cut through any bone.

He was shouting, gesturing angrily. My parents stood to one side, trying to pacify him. Apparently, my eldest brother came back late, nine at night was too late for him and he objected to it. My parents apologized. My mother finally talked him into going back downstairs.

“I was so very afraid,” Teresa confided. “I thought he was going to kill us. I pretended to be sound asleep but my eye lids would not stop moving.”

He often caned his sons, and their cries of pain would reach us living upstairs. At such times. Teresa trembled with fear, afraid he would storm upstairs and cane her in turn. He usually made the culprit stand in front of him an as he scolded, then hit the cane at their legs making them cry and dance with pain.

All good things came to an end. One day, I crept down the dark main staircase and the can of coins was no longer there. I felt a sense of regret though relieved also. I could not resist taking coins from the box when it was there. At the same time, it was very nerve racking. Imagine taking coins from the box with the tyrant snoring feet away from me. With the coins removed, so also was the source of my temptation to steal.

Later I wondered if the shopkeeper selling me the apples wondered where I got the money from. Few children in the village have money to spend, much less have the money to buy imported fruits like apples.  Like the time a shopkeeper Ching Poh got suspicious. “You better mind that daughter of yours”, he warned my mother, “recently, that daughter of yours has a lot of money to spend. You know, the one always hanging around the shops.” Sa was a year older and we were always seen together except for those times I played around the shops, at which time she stayed at home. Sa was also the good one. Butcher Law’s second wife would tell my mother, “Your Ah Sa is so good. Whenever she walked passed our dining table, she never looked at us,” implying that I did and was not as good.

My mother confronted me with my sudden wealth. I went into a tale about how Ah Chew, my friend next door had a long bed in the family room. Under the mat, Ah Chew and I collected a lot of coins. Needless to say, my mother did not believe the tale.

Had my mother been more observant, she would have noticed that her collection of 50 cents coin were slowly dwindling. Ma always kept the drawers locked. Somehow I knew where she hid the keys. As with coins from the tin, I started taking a coin at a time. Years later my mother was still lamenting about one of her children stealing most of her fifty cents coin collection. It was not until I was an adult I admitted to the theft.

Another mystery puzzled her also, slow dwindling of her hidden bars of chocolate. That brand of chocolate was a new product. The difference between those bars and others were the illipinuts used. The bars were thin and rectangular, with animals on the paper wrapper. What was remarkable about the chocolate was the taste of illipinuts. It did give the chocolate a certain flavor. Illipinuts could be found floating down the river. My brothers, Francis and Peter would encounter those swimming in the river and picked them up. They could sell them for money. The fun thing about those illipinuts is, they had what looked like wings attached. Threw one into the air and it would spin gracefully down. It looked like a spinning top with the seed attached to the wings.

I knew where my mother hid them, behind a stack of clothes. When nobody was around, I stealthily reached behind that pile of clothes and treated myself to them one at a time.

In later years I would steal to buy books but that is another part of the story. Grown up and adult, I regretted stealing from my mother. It was hard enough for her raising thirteen children on my father’s later salesman’s salary without me stealing money from her when things were so hard every dollar counted.

More than ten years later, when I became a nun at a contemplative order, these sins of stealing were the hardest for me to confess. A lot older now, I could look back on it as an innocent child’s attempts to get hold of food she so craved to eat and forgive myself more readily.

Not that stealing as a sin did not occur to me. Ma told us if we steal and someone hit at our left side with palm blessed at Mass on Palm Sunday, the devil who was tempting us to steal would cry out with pain. Left side because the devil is at our left side while our guardian angels occupy the right.  I tried it a couple of times, pretend to steal then hit at my left hand side with the palm. It did not work. After a few attempts, I decided I would be afraid hearing devils crying out in pain and did not try it again.

Kanowit    –  Fears and Phobias

“Ah Gert, wake up, wake up,” the voice of my sister, Teresa or Ah Sa as we called her penetrated my dreams. “There is a millipede in the room,” she told me, urgency in her voice.

My eldest brother had occupied this room, which was one of the two my parents partitioned into two rooms. One became store room and this became bedroom for my eldest brother, William. He left home for further studies and Teresa and I took over the room.

“Where is it?” I asked Teresa, mind groggy with sleep.

Teresa pointed it out to me. I took a piece of newspaper, picked it up, screwed it into a ball, opened the side door and threw it out.

“Did you kill it?” Sa asked.

“No, I rolled it in the newspaper and threw it far away.” I told Sa, my one thought being getting back to sleep.

“Oh no, you did not kill it,” Sa wailed in dismay, “I told you to kill it. Why did you not kill it?” she railed.

“It is alright. I threw it far away” I reassured her, intent only on going back to sleep.

But Teresa would not let me. “It will come back. I just know it will come back.”  Her fears finally got to me, I found myself more awake and waited with her. And it came back.

With a sort of strange morbid fascination, we watched the millipede slowly crawling through the opening under the door. “It is back, it is back,” Teresa wailed, “I told you it will. I just knew it will. Now kill it, this time please really kill it or it will come back again.” This time I really did kill it.

I always believed that night caused my phobia of millipede, especially when it happened in the dead of night when everything is so much more terrifying and the millipede as though knowing what it was doing headed back into the room.

If any species is alien from outer space, it would be the millipede with its hard shiny surface for body, and the multiple legs.

While nothing much bothered me, a lot of things could cause Sa great fear. We were walking along the road one day when I passed a remark about the big swaying behind of a young woman walking in front, “Oh no, why did you say that? I am sure she heard you, Now I will feel uncomfortable living in the village, for fear of bumping into her.”

“I don’t think she did,” I said to make her feel better but Sa was sure she heard me.

Talking about fears, I often wonder why children sometimes keep things to themselves, telling no one about it. The shop next door belonged to Ah Chew’s family.  Because we had the additional staircase hence cement landing for the staircase, it was possible for me to look directly into their kitchen and living room upstairs. I stood there often, watching the activities going on in the kitchen from daily cooking to festivals when they sometimes cooked a dog over open fire. They would clean the dog and put the entire dog on a stake, cooking the dog that way. They were Hakkas and did eat pork, not us, Foochows.

I often look at their living room upstairs also. Two young boys, I guess to be Ah Chew’s cousins lived there together with an old man, The old man saw me often looking curiously into their room trying to see what was inside the room. He appeared amused at my curiosity and often smiled in greeting.

One day, he was gone for a while and then came back. I looked at him curiously. Instead of smiling, he raised one arm and shook it angrily at me, letting out a stream of angry words which I did not understand. Terror gripped at my heart. I had never seen him angry. Apparently he had suffered a stroke which left him paralyzed on one side. My curious eyes became prying ones for him and he objected to it. I took care not to look across again. That feeling of terror remained with me for a long time.

….

It was dark. Ma entrusted a package to Sa and I and told us to drop it into the river and do not let anyone see us.  It was the way she said it, the urgency with which she drove home to us not to let anyone see us.

I walked with Sa down to the river, terror still gripping at my heart, like hard fingers squeezing it dry.  I do not know how Sa felt that night, for me it was sheer terror. For years I was not able to take shower at night. I still prefer not to take shower at night. And waters at night still terrify me. Something about the dark and water glittering in the moonlight. I often wonder if the above incident did not play a part in such phobias.

Kanowit – The village

My parents came from Sibu. My mother was not happy married into a family with a father-in-law who resented her and was very mean to her. He had arranged a good marriage match for my father with a woman who would bring acres of rubber plantation into marriage with her.  My father disliked the woman and refused to marry her. He heard about convent girls being given in marriage and went there to look for a wife and married my mother. My mother was a penniless orphan brought up by the nuns, a fact which led his father to look down on my mother and resented the match.

My father asked my mother to be patient and wait till the second world war is over and then he will bring his wife out of his father’s house.  For a son to consider doing that during those days was quite remarkable especially a filial son like my father. My father was also not a man of great courage but strong feelings. His love for his young bride was such, he did what he promised. The war over, he found work as a teacher in Kanowit and my parents moved to Kanowit.

….

Kanowit. Kanowit was a jungle village situated by the Rejang river.  It was situated where two rivers meet, RejanRejang river with river Julau branching from it. To my child’s mind, it was three rivers, there was the river flowing from Sibu, another river flowing to Kapit and a third flowing to Julau.  This meant standing at the little window at the back of our shop apartment, one could see a huge expanse of water.

There were no connecting roads during those days. Our main means of transportation was the river. There were the sampans or long boats Ibans rowed to come to town. The ones more well off would have an outboard motor attached.  Long boas are like canoes and long. Then there is the old Chinese motor launches for carrying goods or transporting passenges. These boats were slow with slow putting engine. It took 4 hours going from Kanowit to Sibu. The big day was when newer bigger more powerful boats were built going a little faster from Sibu to Kapit than the slow putt putt- ing boat.

One could say Kanowit lay nestled at the heart of the jungle, for at every and any angle one saw trees and more trees and greens. Grass, scrubs, bushes grew everywhere. It was nature’s  paradise  though we did not view it that way. Instead the jungle were often terrifying for us. We walked as far as the hospital run by the nuns  and no further. Further in, it was thick jungle and scary for us as also the hill where the water board was situated though at the time it looked more like a tall mountain than hill to us.

My mother loved to bring us there for evening walks. We would climb the stairs going up to the top of the tall hill and walked down on the other side which was a dirt road. We never braved the hill alone, orang utangs lived in the jungle so we were told though none of us had ever seen them nor any of the villagers.

The village had two rows of shops  with one main street. We went everywhere on foot or bicycles There was one motorcycle and it belonged to the reporter, a man who looked the role with slightly balding head and wearing a beard. There were no cars. The one time we heard there was a car in the village, we ran to look at it only to find it stuck in mud. The car disappeared soon after and we did not see it again.

Yet we did not lack entertainment.  Often, after dinner, my mother and sister Lily would take us for a walk. We either walked along the river side where the Malay Kampongs were. A good walk and we reached the padang or football field.  We went there a few times to watch the games. It was like a picnic. We brought mats and sarongs and laying them on the ground, we sat watching the games.

Further in were quarters for government workers and the Malay Kampong. We walked pass a pond with water lilies which was situated behind the post office. We love watching the water lilies. For a truth there is no flowers more beautiful than those pink water lilies floating in water.

Most nights my mother would take a walk pass the priest house and stop to pay a visit to the cook for the priest. I did not like those visits. The cook, an elderly woman had a daughter called Magdalene.  She was a teacher though fortunately she was never my teacher. She was known to be fierce, and had a reputation of being almost sadistic.  Every time we stopped by, she would ask my mother, “Is she still sucking her thumb?  My mother would answer in the affirmative and Magdalene would go, “Shame on you, so big and still sucking your thumb,”

I sucked my left thumb as far back as I could remember. I sucked it so much, the skin broke, making it most painful. Yet that did not stop me sucking on my thumb. Not only did I suck my thumb, I needed a nice soft material to rub against my lips while sucking my thumb, the smooth cloth added to the taste.That area was mission land, the school was situated there as well as Church, the hospital ran by the nuns and their convent situated on a little hill.

My mother boasted we had the oldest church in the country. It was old, a two sphere… building. The wood not painted made it look as old as its age. It had survived gunfire during second world war which meant whenever it rain, the congregation had to open their umbrellas and attended Mass, holding umbrellas above their heads.

Often also, after dinner, my mother and sisters would go out into the streets to play. Often, it appeared the entire village had come out to enjoy the cool evening. Men sat and chat, women stood in groups and chat and we children played games,with swallows diving in and out of their nests. They are said to bring good luck hence shopkeepers allowed them to build their nests on the ceiling of their shop outside along the five foot way.

I often played tag with Sa and got very good at it. I ran till I was out of breath then I stall, moving this way and that so Sa could not touch me and took off running again.

When we were able to recruit village kids, we played Ah Seng. Ah Seng wais a most fun game. We needed at least four. Six and more was more fun. We divided into two groups and drew parallel lines on the ground. One group would position themselves on each line, making sure no one pass through. The trick was to pass the guard without being touched till the players moved down all two to four guarding lines.

Once touch, the group lost and the other took over and the group who lost had to stand guard. That game can be very exciting, fun leaving us often tired but wonderfully worked up.

During the day, we often went to the playground for the swings.  We were not alone in our pastime. Often we arrived to find grass on the seats. “”Yessh, “ we would go and bending down plucked a handful of thick grass to clean the seat. It was some mean spirited village children spitting globes on saliva on the seat, covering it with grass so that unsuspecting children would sit on it.

That play ground was our favorite.

Apart from the playing ground, we had one cinema also.

While Chinese inhabit the town area of Kanowit, Ibans lived in long houses surrounding Kanowit. They came to town, rowing their boats or those with means, with outboard motor. I was playing in the street one day when a cry went out. “Headhunters, headhunters….” I ran home.

From our front window, we could see people running for shelter, shopkeepers hurriedly closing their doors, they did not care who were inside taking refuge from the headhunters. Across the street from us, I recognized the son of a friend of my family. His home was too far away, he took refuge in one of the shops.

After a while, men gathered carrying all kinds of rough tools, mostly of them brandishing metal pipes. They waited and we waited and slowly the fear died down. It was a false alarm.

Iban warriors do come to town, they wear a loin cloth and cut their head coconut style with a tale. Imagine half the husk of coconut cut straight across and placed on a head, that is coconut style. Around their waist, they tied a parang, a long sharp sword, their bodies covered with tattoos. Those parangs can cut off heads.

Though we did not get such alarm again, the fear of headhunters were always there. One of their customs is tattooing marks on the hand or fingers of men for every head taken. The more heads, the braver and more sought after the man would be. Needless to say, Chinese did feel very vulnerable. And sometimes maybe with reason to.

Most of them come daily to sell jungle produce and buy what they need from Chinese shopkeepers. The Chinese shopkeepers loved them, they buy things cheaply from them and sell them things at inflated prices. In later years, the government would step in to protect them by mandating price stickers.

This was not lost on them. Some of them told my mother, “You Chinese, you like what we bring you but you do not like us.”

Prejudice did run high amongst us Chinese even when we claimed not to be prejudiced. “Oh those lak kiang, (native Ibans) they live hand to mouth…”  As children, we held some generalized notions about them also…

Cousins.

Ah Tui and Ah Mui were visiting us from Sibu. Ah Tui was daughter of my second Aunt while Ah Mui daughter of my second Uncle, both Aunt and Uncle were step-siblings of my father.

“Do not expect anything from your relatives,” we learned from a very young age. “We are all alone and the one thing we can be proud of, we are all educated.” Lily, my second sister drummed that into us often. From Ma’s tales, she was right.

They were very poor once and did not have enough to eat because my grandfather pocketed my father’s teaching salary. He did allow them to tap one sheet of rubber per day for survival. They were so poor, my eldest brother, a three year would open the rice bin to check and made sure there were rice for the family. Whenever the growing family needed help, they had themselves only.

Hence we grew up, a little nucleus, mistrustful of relatives and friends, hanging onto the fact, we were all bright students except for me. Alas, I was the first to disappoint.

Primary One was not bad, there was Sister John who taught us how to sing. A mean Lucy Tiong who caned us for every little infraction. One afternoon, I arrived late, still munching on the five cents packet of nuts I bought. Sister Joan noticed it but let it go.

She taught us how to count, using rambutans. I counted mine, and was in a quandary, what was I to do, I have one extra. Eat it, my mind counseled. I did that. Sister Joan came round, counted my rambutans and one was missing. She was perplexed and asked me what happened to the rambutan. I kept my face innocently stupidly bland. She let it go. She must have thought there was no talking to this dumb kid and let it go.

I was a bully too. I was placed next to a girl called Margaret. I resented her. Lily told me her mother stole my name and use it with her. After all, how could Ah Kiet comes from Margaret while At Gert is taken from Gertrude. She stole my name hence she was my enemy. I would not let her put her bag in her own drawer. Her sister was the sadistic Miss Tiong yet that did not stop me. I simply would not let her use her own drawer. I could never understand how I had the guts.

Clare was the class’ queen. All the students minded her, after all, her mother was a teacher at school. In my mind, my father was bigger. Every body knew him, he was a sales representative of Borneo Company. Since my father was bigger than her mother, why should I kow tow to her? I did not. As a result, I spent many break time alone. When Clare decided no one should talk to me, no one dared to. It happened quite frequently.

She demanded they paid her homage by giving her money. I had a precious five cents for lunch break and refused to give up mine which further incurred her displeasure.

And then it was end of the year, my report book showed a child not scoring first and second position but thirteen. “This child is no scholar,” my mother sighed and so the first of my childhood nicknames surfaced. Crackpot, that was the sisters’ favorite term for anyone who was foolish. Rubbish bin was another except it was the bin used for leftover over, never washed it could get very stinky, and foolish.

I was not as haughty the second year. The following year at school, at one recess time, I sat next to the most stupid girl in class. “You and I, we are alike,” I told her, “You are stupid and I am stupid. You have a scar above your lips, I have a little one also.” Actually, that was all the similarities. I tried to be friends with her but was not able to keep it up. She did not want to talk, I decided she was really stupid and boring and left her alone.

That did set a pattern for the rest of my school years. I avoided the rich and clever girls and made friends with the poor and downtrodden. With them, I felt comfortable and at home.

I often tried to look back to my childhood and try to figure out why I get the impression I was always alone. I could not be, I was playful and talkative.

My companions before I turned twelve were boys, Ah Ling and Ah Hung. They were sons of butcher Lau. We enjoyed playing at the green field at the end of the main street. One day, the boys were up to something. They wanted to prove a theory. Ah Ling came with a piece of newspaper, and we helped him plucked enough grass and fill the newspaper up. “Who has a coin?” Ah Ling asked. None of us have one. Even if we had one, we were not about to surrender it because according to Ah Ling, grass ate coins. Every time he dropped coins in the grass, he could not find it. We dismantled the project and went home.

On Saturdays we hounded the doorkeeper of the cinema. “Let us in when the movie start,” we begged him. He agreed one day but alas there were not enough people and the movie never started.

And then my young cousin came to live with us for a year. He was son of a half sister of my mother. His parents were well to do shopkeepers which meant he had money. His bicycle arrived first. My mother took advantage of it immediately. It was so hard teaching us how to ride bicycle on an adult bicycle and that was all we had. In the evening, we would go to the school’s playground and learned how to ride it there.

Heading home, it was my task to wheel the little bicycle home. One day, I decided it was foolish pushing it home. I got on the bicycle and rode right into the middle of several men, who were seated outside. “Oi oi, Ah mui yang, little sister, where are you going?” They laughed and steadied the bicycle. I walked it home.

When he arrived, he was instantly our hero, he had money to spend. Ah Ling, and Ah Hung wasted no time hanging round him, I joined them. We went from shop to shop looking at things, encouraging him to buy this and that. And that spelled the end of my fun times with the boys.

That evening my mother pulled me aside, “Ah Pa said you are ten years old, you are too old to play with boys. He does not want you to play with them any more.”

I turned to Ah Chew next door but it was never as much fun as playing with the boys even when I came home with bad language. “What did you just say?” my mother asked me one day when I let out the expletive.

I had said, tu lang. Tu lang for me meant I was angry. I felt very tu lang. Tu lang, that person annoyed me no end. My mother told me the term implied private area of a girl and it is a sin. I was old enough to commit sin. I had just committed a sin.

That fear was enough to make me not touch my private area. If calling it by name is a sin, what more touching it? Whenever I bath, I let the water did its work. That worked until I had menstrual period. One day my private area itched so horribly, I felt like dying. I knew how to cure itch, tiger balm. I smeared tiger balm on that tender area and literally rolled on the floor as the tiger balm burn that area. I looked and saw what looked like pus flowing out. That was it, I decided if such a bad thing could happen not washing it, it could not be a sin touching it.

Getting back to my cousins. One day they invited me to join them into climbing the mountain. Both cousins were giggling. I was happy they invited me and went along with them. Halfway up the stairs, they ran ahead and disappeared from sight. I hurried up to the top of the mountain, and could not find them. I was alone at the mountain top. Terrified, I ran home. My cousins had already reached the house, and laughed when they saw me. I did not find it as funny.

They tricked me, they were not friends. That evening, I stole their purse. “Ah Gert, come out,” Sa begged. “Ma knows you took their purse, she will cane you.” I hid under the tall four poster bed and stubbornly refused to come out. No amount of persuasion from Teresa could sway me. I was not afraid and stay put.

My mother pulled me out and did cane me. That was the last time I ever did anything with those cousins again, nor did they visit us again. Those were cousins from my father’s side of the family. As Lily said, they might had money, they had little education, we were above them educationwise even if not financially.

My grandfather invested in sawmills, making my uncles and Aunties very well off. Since my father took his young bride and left his father’s house. He was dis inherited.