Afterwards, Father asked to see me alone. Remembering how the cane had been used on Chong Jin, I stood expecting the worst. Father was quiet for many moments.
‘Chye Hoon,’ he said when he finally spoke in his sing-song voice, ‘why so stubborn?’ His eyes looked kind, but underneath I saw a steely edge.
‘I want to go to school, Father.’
‘Chye Hoon, you’re a girl.’ He said this as if it needed no elaboration.
‘But Chong Jin go to school. I older than he.’
‘Chong Jin is a boy.’
‘Why so different, Father? Girls why also cannot go to school?’
‘Chye Hoon, in a few years you will have to get married. No man will want you unless you know how to cook and sew.’
‘I no want to marry.’
A guttural laugh escaped from within Father’s throat. His Adam’s apple vibrated wildly. ‘Don’t be silly. All girls must marry. How will you look after yourself? Now, do as you’re told, and for heaven’s sake don’t bite your mother again.’
I walked to my room, forced to stare defeat in the face. I hated being a girl. I hated life within the towering walls of our house: a prison of endless chores and chattering. Most of all I hated our steamy kitchen.
At that moment I hated Chong Jin too. Tears clouded my eyes. I stood quivering at the thought of him at school, because I knew I was as smart as he was. When Father was teaching Chong Jin the abacus, I had joined them at the table, and Father had playfully shown me how to move the beads up and down along the wooden rods. Chong Jin needed several attempts, but I understood how to count after only one lesson, to Father’s astonishment.
That night I cried myself to sleep. In my dreams I became as powerful as the warrior Hang Tuah. I turned into a boy with a magic sword who roamed the earth, slaying dragons and anything in my path. I vowed I would not lose another battle. I continued to dream the same dream long after accepting the fate destiny had bestowed on me.
One soggy monsoon afternoon when the rains beat down on Ah Kwee Street, I discovered yet another strand to our roots. Mother told us her own grandmother had been a Menangkabau from western Sumatra. I asked where that was, and Mother, with one finger pointing at the window, replied dreamily, ‘Indonesia. Very far from here.’
Mother said Menangkabau women were warriors, as good at fighting as men. She might even have used the word ‘fierce’, but I think I heard that subsequently – as a description of me. When Mother told me about our Menangkabau bloodline, I was too young to understand what inheritance meant. Eventually I learnt that the Menangkabaus passed land and property from one generation to the next via their womenfolk – a very sensible principle, I thought.
A dispute arose between Mother’s people and the prince of a neighbouring province. To settle the argument, both sides agreed to a water buffalo fight. The prince sent a large, aggressive water buffalo, while Mother’s people shrewdly chose a baby water buffalo, but one whose horns had been sharpened over many days. For twenty-four hours before the fight, the baby buffalo was starved. As soon as it was released into the fighting ring, the baby buffalo ran towards the large buffalo. In the process of trying to suckle, it spiked the large buffalo to death. Thereafter, Mother’s ancestors were known as ‘the people of the victorious bull’, or Menangkabau in Malay.
Mother had told this famous legend to illustrate the patient cunning of her ancestors, but it disturbed me. Recalling the fight in Songkhla and the terror in the losing buffalo’s eyes, I felt sorry for the horrible death of the large Menangkabau bull. ‘Ai-yahh!’ Mother said. ‘Don’t cry-lah. Long time ago that happen.’
To distract me, she said her grandmother’s family had intended to go to Phuket but had set sail in the wrong month and been blown by the wind towards Songkhla, where they ended up living.
‘You mean . . . you in Songkhla accident only, Mother?’ I asked. Imagine being blown by monsoon winds to the wrong place. How could anyone have made such a mistake?
But Mother remained composed. ‘Yes,’ she replied, her eyes on the rain, which had turned into a fine drizzle. Mother’s lack of concern could mean one of two things: either she had accepted the fate decreed by higher powers, or the entire story had been made up to stop my crying. I never found out which it was.
My best friend during those years was a girl named Hooi Peng. Her mother, also a Nyonya, befriended Mother soon after we arrived in Penang. Hooi Peng’s family lived on a street about ten minutes’ walk away, and our mothers visited each other at least once a week.
Before Penang, I had assumed all Nyonyas and Babas were the same; meeting Hooi Peng taught me otherwise. She spoke mainly Hokkien, while we spoke more Siamese and Malay. She ate with her hands like we did, but several of our dishes surprised her, as did our penchant for drowning vegetable salads in lime juice.
When I met her, Hooi Peng was a slip of a girl, so tiny and frail she seemed at risk of disappearing. Her hair, like the rest of her, was thin and fine – long black strands that behaved themselves, unlike mine, which refused to lie flat when combed. Hooi Peng’s eyes were just that bit too far apart and, combined with a flat nose, gave her an impish look, as if she were always up to mischief.
Once we were older, Hooi Peng and I trained together in Nyonya cooking traditions. We spent years in the same kitchen and, like many before us, did not stop to wonder how things came to be the way they were. Our days were long: there was much chopping and pounding, scraping and grinding. We learnt how to slice vegetables so thinly they looked as if they had been shredded, to dry spices in the sun, to extract flavours and colours from a bewildering variety of leaves and flowers. There was the sword-like pandanus leaf we tied into knots for perfuming pots of rice. There was also the butterfly pea flower, whose petals were pounded, mixed with water and strained for their blue dye. We even used the heart of the banana tree blossom, boiling it until tender for our salads.
Our work was physically demanding: we had to mince and pulverise and blend, all by hand. I found grinding the most difficult. Though we were taught to position ourselves over the large slab so that we used the weight of our bodies and the strength of our shoulders, crushing rice or green peas was still hard work. I tried shortcuts, until it became clear that sloth made a difference to the taste of what I cooked. Mother could tell at once which of her instructions had not been followed. In shame I stopped cheating.
Over time Hooi Peng and I stamped our personalities on our cooking styles. My laksas and sambals tended to be fiery, bursting into flavour on the first mouthful, while hers were understated, requiring patience for their brilliance to show.
It was in our speciality of kueh that I really came into my own as a Nyonya cook. Everyone told me how wonderful my kueh were – ‘The best we’ve ever had.’ My nine-layered kueh, from which the individual pink and white slices could be separately peeled, became legendary throughout Penang. Nothing made me happier than making kueh. Fortunately we had many varieties, and Hooi Peng and I could make two types every day without boring anyone.
Kueh is Malay for ‘cakes’, but Nyonya cakes are different from Western cakes, Chinese cakes or any other type. Our cakes assault the senses with their colours and their textures. We use no wheat flour, only rice or tapioca or green pea flour, and no milk other than the milk of the coconut, which we squeeze by hand from the flesh of grated fruit. Not all our kueh are sweet; there are savoury radish and taro cakes, and even spicy rolls of glutinous rice. Most kueh are eaten cold, but some, like our yam cakes, are best warm. The result, after centuries of trial and error, is a riot of blues, greens and reds that stop people in their tracks, and contrasts which delight the tongue.
Hooi Peng and I were already proficient cooks when I made a chance remark to her. ‘We so lucky,’ I said. ‘We cook Chinese style, Malay style. We make pork dishes, spicy dishes. We use wok to fry, hands to eat. We are really champor-champor, a mixture of things. I very much like.’
My friend stopped what she was doing. After a minute she
murmured, ‘Yes.’ Then Hooi Peng asked, ‘You think you more Malay or more Chinese-ah?’
‘I am both,’ I replied uncertainly. ‘How can more one than the other?’
Hooi Peng had started to fill out her clothes by then. Her face had grown more angular, altering that look of childish mischief I had become so familiar with. When pensive, Hooi Peng could appear deadly serious, as she did that moment. She confessed to feeling more Chinese than Malay, musing that perhaps it was because she spoke only Hokkien at home. ‘We worship Chinese gods,’ she persisted. ‘So we more Chinese, isn’t it?’
I cast my mind back to my Menangkabau great-grandmother, who had been a Moslem before marrying my great-grandfather. She had converted to Taoism upon her marriage. Had worshipping a new god made her less Menangkabau and more Chinese? I didn’t think so.
‘A god is a god,’ I said. ‘You worship which one, also no difference. Just fate our great-grandmothers took their husbands’ religion. So we now with Chinese gods pray-lah. But we also follow Malay customs. I think to which god I pray also makes no difference.’
Still, I was troubled by Hooi Peng’s question. Everyone talked about what Nyonyas did, not who we were. We were recognised by our clothes, our cooking and our tableware. But what did these outward signs really say about our heritage?
Our family stories told us that our community had grown at the crossroads between cultures. I thought back to my great-grandfather many times over, the one who set sail from Amoy, to the Malay woman he had married, and their children and their children’s children. Our ancestors had mixed up their customs and traditions, borrowing from each as they melded them together. After hundreds of years we were no longer either Malay or Chinese – we couldn’t be. My roots could not be split.
On a cool Malayan night I began to shape an answer to the question I had once asked Mother: ‘Nyonya, what does it mean?’ A Nyonya, I told myself, is a woman who breathes two worlds – not just one or the other, not more one than the other, but both equally. My two worlds were alive: Chinese and Malay rolled into one, blended by the centuries that had passed.
4
As soon as we were old enough, we girls were taken on trips to the market by our mothers. We would leave when the skies were barely light and arrive home before the heat of day became overpowering.
Chowrasta Market was a rough-and-ready place then: hygiene was unheard of and the odours intense, but it was colourful – anything went. I took immediately to its lively and bustling atmosphere. I liked the noise, the yelling and the stallholders – men and women – who competed for our attention with live animals.
Before long I developed a reputation in the market for a fearsome temper, which then spread through the island. This began one especially torrid morning.
We left early as usual. I was already a young lady then, a smaller replica of Mother, with a basket in one hand and a long-sleeved tunic – the baju panjang – flowing down to my calves. I wore a sarong around my waist and clogs on my feet. We always put on our clogs for Chowrasta Market, because of the fish. The fish, after being brought in from the sea, would be placed on thick slabs of ice; when the ice melted, pools of water formed on the cement floor, which mixed with discarded scales and blood to make walking hazardous. I would never have dreamt of putting my beautiful beaded shoes on that dreaded floor.
We would go to the dry section first, to look at the vegetables and fruit; only after that would we visit the fishmongers and meat sellers. Vegetables freshly transported from farms in the hinterland were set out on low wooden planks on the floor. I selected brinjals that day, two fat marrows and a large bagful of my favourite vegetable, petai – the stinking bean. In the fruit section I looked at bananas in different shades and sizes, some long and green, others small and yellow, yet others with light red skin – the favourites of our gods and goddesses.
When I first accompanied Mother to the market, I shuffled from stall to stall, struggling in my sarong and baju panjang. The sarong and calf-length tunic were a trial until I found ways to fasten both loosely, the former through clever folding, the latter by using brooches in just the right places. Such ruses are important if a girl is to walk with any degree of comfort.
As a market novice I spent time observing the interactions that took place. I learnt to watch the vegetable sellers carefully in case they exchanged the tomatoes you had chosen with others less succulent. I realised that negotiating with the fishmongers paid off, because they could lop a tenth off their prices with ease, and that you were wise to be wary of the pork sellers, keening your eyes while their snake-like fingers slid counterweights up and down along their incomprehensible Chinese scales.
Soon I was able to argue with the stallholders over their prices. When it became clear I was good at bargaining, I began to make the purchases for anyone who came with us to the market. Most often that happened to be Hooi Peng and her mother, who would select what they wanted, after which I would speak on their behalf. It was an activity I enjoyed, this exchange of friendly banter with the vendors where each party understood the give and take.
Some stallholders appreciated the nature of these interactions better than others. Ah Ying, the chicken seller, was one. A dark-skinned woman with a red scarf on her head, Ah Ying was someone I liked doing business with, even though the smell in her corner was particularly pungent. There, live chickens pecked noisily at the sides of their cages. The less fortunate lay in groups on the floor, their feet bound together by string. There would invariably be loose feathers around Ah Ying’s stall, some drifting in the air as they floated towards the floor.
‘Ai-yahh, how come so expensive-ah?’ I exclaimed at Ah Ying, until this became our ritual. She would respond by grabbing the poor bird in question, lifting it to show me its glories and pointing out how well it had been fed and how beautifully smooth its flesh was. ‘Yes-lah, exactly what we need,’ I would say. ‘But, Ah Ying, we are good customers. One cent less, can-ah?’ Ah Ying would consider it before either acquiescing or offering another price. ‘Kamsia, kamsia.’ Ah Ying always concluded by thanking us in Hokkien. Through the years I felt she acted fairly, giving us a lower price whenever she could.
Other stallholders were not quite so amenable, but we were forced to give them our custom all the same. When you visit a market regularly, the best source of any item becomes part of the information you store in your head. We knew, for example, that Ah Lin sold the sweetest chikus in the market. I bought these sapodilla fruits from her even though she was a grumpy old devil who never once smiled at me.
The vendors, while not exactly friends, became fixtures in our lives. So much so that when a stallholder went missing – from illness, for example – we would notice. Each corner of the market became associated in our minds with a particular person, a set of sights and smells and voices we grew to expect, the absence of which altered our shopping experience.
It must be said that I never found my footing with the pork sellers. They were men with shifty looks and a deliberately slow manner, as if they heard you but what you said was too silly to deserve a reply. They drew out their answers in long-winded sentences that tested my patience.
On that morning we went to a vendor who was new to the market. He had recently taken over a stall from which we had bought pork for years. The newcomer, a rotund man with a shiny pate and a tree trunk of a waist, looked like the slabs on display at his counter: smooth white skin glistening with grease, the odd strand of hair here and there.
We were looking for our usual pork belly that morning. When the new seller placed the piece of meat I had chosen on the metallic plate of his scale, he slid the counterweight along his calibrated wooden rod. His hands were faster than his predecessor’s, faster in fact than anyone else’s I had ever seen. But before he removed the meat, my eye told me the weight wasn’t in its usual position.
‘You no count wrong-ah?’ I asked the large man. ‘Maybe better to weigh again.’
Unperturbed, the man put the piece of pork o
n his chopping board and prepared it for dicing.
‘Ten years already I sell pork,’ he said gruffly. ‘I know how to count.’
‘Uncle, I know you know how to count,’ I responded. ‘But easy to count wrong.’
He ignored me, continuing to chop, his back a silent wall. When he started to wrap the chunks of pork belly in brown paper, I asked to see them.
With his back still facing me, he mumbled to himself, thinking he was out of earshot.
But I heard his every word. Heat rushed up to my face; my nostrils began to choke, and my eyes watered.
Impotence made me pick up the only weapon I had at hand: my clogs. I removed the left clog. Standing on my right foot, hand clasping the stall counter for balance, I hurled the free clog as I had once thrown a joss-stick – straight towards the back of the fat man’s head. ‘How dare you disrespect my mother! How dare you, you dying person’s head!’ I screamed at the top of my lungs.
It happened in a split second. The shocked pork seller turned around and my clog hit him high up against his right temple, where the baldness of his skull looked especially inviting. There was a loud clunking noise, which stopped all trade in Chowrasta Market. The man clutched his temple. He carried a bruise for weeks afterwards, so I was told. It took minutes before the other vendors turned back to their customers.
When the neighbouring pork seller returned my clog, I walked away, shivering but quietly satisfied. Mother hurried us off as quickly as possible. She didn’t say anything while we walked, as if deep in thought. Her silence disturbed me; I had a fear, an inkling of what was on her mind.
Later that evening she and Father took me aside. My siblings were sent to their rooms and the three of us were alone. Mother clasped her hands nervously as she sat in a chair, her lips pursed into a downward curve. Father paced up and down before clearing his throat. Uncharacteristically it was he who began the conversation.
The Woman Who Breathed Two Worlds Page 4