About A Girl: School Times.

So I began school, in this little institution called Katolik ( means "Catholic", pronounce it like you're Portuguese*), perched atop a little hill. It's the equivalent of primary school which apparently had standards and was pretty strict. I recall telling a small lie when the teacher asked if I had done my assignment early in my first year...

Teacher (in Bahasa Indonesia): Have you completed your colouring?

Me (gallivanting about): Yees

And at that moment my seatmate - a plump, brown-haired Chinese girl - piped, "Miss!"

And took up my book and walked, at what I now recall to be the gait and speed of a fat penguin in a hurry, with my colouring book in its scandalous page in various degrees of uncolour on full triumphant display, up to the teacher. I felt the spark of indignance - ah, my first taste of bitchery. But nothing could have prepared me for the shock of what came next.

The teacher took my book, raised it even higher and asked, who else has done this? Several other children raised their hands, not knowing to be guilty about half-completed work.

The teacher then called them up to the front, made us stand in a row. Then she asked us - me, since I was the first to get called to it -

"Why did you tell me you'd completed your work when you did not?"

I couldn't answer. I felt my face sting: shame. I still remember her: short-haired, almost militant, white long-sleeved blouse, brown skirt that covered up to her knees. I could still smell her perfume, that thick, dense scent of some kind of flower. Her lips when in their natural position were not the smiling sort, but when she began mock and invite the rest of the class to laugh at me, she became so ugly that for a long time I remembered her as this.

"Look at them, ew! They're liars! Ohh, liars!" I remember her saying, her finger accusing. Much too clearly.

I wished she would stop, and I broke into tears, wailing through tears and fear and shame, wordless for there was nothing I could say. I couldn't even say "No, no" because I did lie. Some cried, some remained unfazed, not understanding what happened. I must have looked a sight, for I was the only one in seeming terrorising shame and embarrassment. How do you deny when you've already been caught? For what, too?


...but it worked, for since then I seemed to have lost the ability to lie. Coincidentally, it was also that day that I learnt lying is really, really, really bad.

Harsh, true. Harsh, but effective. The world is like that, and I got a taste of it, that day.



School time was also the time that I recall having been to my paternal cousins' - my first cousins. I must have visited them way earlier than that, but current memory can't seem to place the visits chronologically, so they shall remain tagged with school time. Thus: my first cousins.

They lived at the head of Tambak, while I lived in.. well, just Tambak. It must have been right in the center of that stretch. My two uncles lived just across the road from each other; the younger sold petroleum to families (fuel for their stoves) and the older, a convenience store. The two uncles are my father's younger brothers, my father's the fourth boy, and the uncle with the convenience store was the fifth, and the uncle who made a living through fuel was the youngest.

My youngest uncle had always been an earthy, practical man, and was always busy. He worked hard to make sure my aunt-in-law and children had plenty to eat. My fifth uncle - he was a character, but I liked him: he was a chain-smoker perpetually wearing singlets, with coarse hairs sticking out of his nose. It was audible when he breathed, he also had a bit of a combover. I thought that was a little similar to my own father in that aspect: my father too had hair sticking out of his nose, and my father too was bald. My father smoked pipes though, and drank beer.

Each uncle had four children: fifth uncle had four girls, who I thought were really cool. My youngest uncle had three boys and a girl: they were more - "docile", for lack of a better word - by my standards, which was great as well since I made no real distinction between the two. We used to do lots of things together: caught mosquito larvae together, played catching together, played with toys and played pretend.


---

...something I remember, before school ever begun, was meeting this man called "Papa". I think I was one, or two. I could walk, and - despite what people say about children not being able to recall things before two years old, I distinctly remember setting eyes on this man who walked through the rectangular-shaped light that was the door.

He was tall to my shortness then. I saw his shoes first, his jeans, then the silhouette that was him. I was a bit fearful of a stranger so tall, but I ran toward him for my mother pointed at him and smilingly said, "Do you know who that is? That's your Papa!"

He swung me up and carried me to what felt like the skies. I heard his voice and laughter for the first time, and knew the sensation of giddy excitement.

He'd brought boxes and boxes of Van Houten chocolates for me, and spoilt me with it. He even taught me how to say "chocolate" but all I could say was "colate!" Of course, I got a fever due to too much chocolate, much to my mother's distress. But my father, he tickled me no end. He played with me, made me laugh.

Until what felt like two days later (my mum would later tell me that it's actually four days), at dinner time. He sat with his back to the bedroom facing my mother at the dining table (our dining table was an almost-knee high squarish table, to eat we sit on the floor). The table was ready and my father had just started dinner, my mother didn't seem to have touched her food - I saw my father and toddled toward him, when he raised his fist and slammed it WHAM on the table, almost upsetting his beer.

My mother jumped, I was startled, and began to cry.

"Don't scare the child," she said, and quickly came to comfort me, usher me back to the bedroom.

I stayed in the room, but heard my father's voice through the thin, thin walls that separated the bedroom and the living area on that floor. Plates of food were swept off the table, utensils were strewn and glasses were broken.

I did not hear my mother say anything.**

---


...I was told by my father that these cousins are closer and dearer to us than anyone else I know. "They are family," he said.

And so I loved them, like I loved my maternal side of the family.

During this first year - other than getting bright pink bubble gum in my hair and having to cut it off myself so a tuft of hair stuck from the top of my bob cut - another eventful thing that happened was that I got lice. It made me itch (I think), and my fabulous father, being the problem-solving young captain he was, tied a diaper cloth around my neck, lined the floor with sheets of white paper after placing a fan before me. He told me to close my eyes and try not to breathe, then proceeded to ssssspray Baygon into my kiddy hair. I thought it was hilarious, my mother couldn't be more upset. My father, he was having a whale of a time with the Anti-Louse Operation. The knocked-out lice dropped onto the paper and I was curious, to see those little specks of something drop audibly, like sand.

However, the eggs were glued firmly to my hairshafts, and there were too many to count. Thus my parents resorted to Plan B: Chinese Medicine. It involved some kind of pungent nut that's ground into powder, and have the powder, without water, rinsed through my hair. It would kill all bugs and neutralise all eggs... but truly, I don't recall what it was that they did to me that took care of the little critters. I think that was my brain trying to shield me from a traumatic experience.

So I completed my first year at Katolik, and was dreading to start a second year (I couldn't quite understand the language despite being in contact with it every day for some reason. Other kids were lapping it up) when my mother announced to me that I'm going to Singapore for my education.

Singapore! It was where the television shows were made! Every family had a satellite on the island where I lived, to receive the free channels SBC (Singapore Broadcasting Corporation) aired; I was very familiar with the stories back then. And so I went to Singapore, a little sorry that I had left my cousins and uncles and aunts-in-law behind.



That's when I first met my Fourth Aunt. She was beautiful! She wore lipstick, had short, coiffed hair and she smiled the prettiest of smiles at me. I was a little bedazzled then. I also didn't quite know what to make of the single-floored, high ceilinged and chandeliered place that's carpeted and marbled. The help they had were female, and looked soft while the help we had in Indonesia were male and... they hauled things.

I was immediately fascinated with my cousin, Chin Chun. He looked cute, wore colours that I was unused to seeing on a shirt and laughed a lot. He ran and jumped a lot too, mostly from sofa to sofa, and to slam against a grandfather clock in the living room. The clock would chime and jingle each time its internal mechanics got jangled - and it would get jangled about half a dozen times each day by that rascal as I would later observe - but at that time I wondered who this other shortie was.

I stayed there for what felt like a long while, knowing air-conditioning for the first time, kiddy bedroom antics, the bidet, nutella on bread, french toast, Mandarin, and this man whom my aunt cautioned me to "not tell whose child I was". This man was - is - my uncle. Husband to my beautiful aunt, the wealthiest man in the family.

And this was when it all began...


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*I don't know how the Portuguese pronounced Catholic neither.

*Later that evening, my mother told me when I was much older, that my father, in his continued rage, picked up a sleeping me and almost rammed me against the window grille. The only thing I recalled after some effort when she recounted the incident was the fear I felt when I was in his arms then. And the sight of her picking up the pieces after he wrecked dinner and stormed out. She was physically unhurt.