My heart leapt the first time Ah Boey handed me back the brown pouch I had given him. It was nothing more than a small bag of coarse cotton, yet I held it close against my breast as if cradling a child and carried the pouch gingerly into my bedroom to study its contents. When Father offered to help, I refused, knowing instinctively that I would need to go through this ritual myself. As soon as I was installed inside my bedroom, I poured the coins eagerly on to the teak dressing table that had been among Mother’s many gifts when I married Peng Choon. It was the same table on to which my dead husband had, not many months previously, poured out the last payments from his clients and our property deeds. The table, golden yellow when new, had once been a prized possession, but with its colour darkening over the years, I was no longer so cautious with it. I allowed the first coins we earned from kueh to tumble roughly on to its exposed surface. I felt like a child again. The coins made loud clanging noises that sounded like music to my ears; a few rolled about and dropped over the edge of the table on to the wooden floorboards below.
In the moments which followed I was thankful for having run the household Peng Choon and I had shared. It meant I was familiar with money. I knew how to handle it and had little trouble counting how much we had made.
I separated the coins, as Peng Choon had taught me, first the light bronze coins, then the heavier silver ones. In those days all our coins were round and came in varying sizes. The larger and heavier they were, the higher their value, and silver coins were worth more than the bronze ones. Naturally I cared most about the silver circles; they glinted in the morning light, those piles of five-, ten-, twenty-, even fifty-cent coins, which brought me such a thrill.
Once I had arranged the coins carefully into piles, I began counting each pile. I grabbed hold of the tiny five-cent coins first and counted aloud: five, ten, fifteen cents and so on . . . slowly, laboriously. Keeping the numbers in my head was a challenge; I had always examined Peng Choon’s earnings in his presence, and he was a man who could hold ten numbers in his head all at once and still retrieve each and every number at will. When I finished with the silver coins, I started on the bronzes: the quarter-cent, half-cent and one-cent piles. And then I repeated the whole exercise a second time to be sure I hadn’t made a mistake. If the numbers did not match, I would do the whole count again. Sometimes I was forced into a third count before I was satisfied. There were days when counting what we made took a whole hour.
On that first morning counting was easy. In fact, everything seemed straightforward and exciting, if somewhat unreal. We made eight dollars in total, a sum which delighted me. Unable to believe how much we had sold in a single morning, I sat in my room for a long time, caressing the pieces of silver until my hands smelt of dirty metal. I ran my fingers along their patterned rims. I turned the coins round and felt the raised head carved on their backs, the head of a white man with a crown on his head and a beard on his face. This, Peng Choon had once told me, was the king of the white devils.
Staring at that strange head, I felt a surge of hope. A long-forgotten dream came floating back in which a warrior stood with a magical sword in his hand, its blade curved for deadly thrust. At last I had found my sword. It lay in Mother’s gift – the culture that had given me a way to survive. I vowed to guard Mother’s legacy with every breath I took and with my soul.
In the following months our cakes continued to be popular. Ah Boey returned at the end of each morning, his load lighter, with only the odd cake left inside his carriers. I altered the menu daily so that the coolie was constantly supplied with fresh varieties of kueh, a device I hoped would prevent our customers from becoming bored.
Then a decline crept in. It happened so slowly that for a time I didn’t notice anything amiss. The number of coins Ah Boey handed me dwindled, but I put this down to the vagaries of business. When sales fell, I took less pleasure in money counting; what had once filled me with nervous energy turned into a chore I put off till the evenings, after we had finished dinner. Inevitably the day came when almost no kueh had been sold, and Ah Boey returned with his carriers still full.
Something inside me crumbled then. I had a sense that all was not what it seemed, a hunch I could not possibly have explained to anyone else. I wanted someone to follow Ah Boey on his rounds. Knowing that the person could not be me, I turned to Siew Lan for help, and she suggested her junior servant.
Thus it was that Rokiah, a Malay woman who had worked in Siew Lan’s household for many years, was let loose to track Ah Boey as he left our house one morning. Pretending to be a washerwoman, she tailed him for a week. She told us that he went first to Leech Street, where she saw him entering a shop she thought was an opium den, carrying his pole and baskets inside. He remained there for hours, forcing her to loiter in the market and at different eating stalls until he staggered out with a hazy look on his face.
At the end of each morning, when I questioned Ah Boey he looked at me shiftily. The downward, guilty cast of those slanted eyes was unmistakable, and though I gave the wretched man every opportunity to confess, he never did.
After a week Father and I walked to Leech Street. It was a wide street with sturdy double-storey shophouses lining both sides, each fronted by a common corridor, the ubiquitous five-foot way, running along the entire line of shops. Being at the heart of the Chinese quarter, Leech Street and its five-foot ways bustled at all hours of the day or night, and it was no different that morning. The usual assortment of characters crowded our way: women in Chinese tunics and trousers returning from the market with woven baskets filled to the brim; men in Mandarin-collared jackets rushing by; and hawkers, so many hawkers everywhere, squatting on the five-foot way or on the sides of the street itself. Customers squatted alongside, their faces stuck behind ceramic bowls. The wonderful aroma of freshly cooked food filled the air, smells my sharp nose told me came from Chinese delicacies: dumplings being steamed and rice flour cakes roasted, tau foo being deep-fried and eggs prepared the double-beaten way. It was noisy too. Apart from the hawkers yelling to the world what they sold, loud conversation drifted out from the coffee shops, spiced by the odd raucous shout.
It didn’t take long to spot Rokiah, because not many Malays ventured into town, and few were ever seen on Leech Street. Rokiah, with the beautiful double-creased eyes of her ancestors and lashes that flicked naturally upwards, waved to us from across the street as she pointed towards the shop Ah Boey had entered. I thanked Rokiah, telling her she was at liberty to return home.
As Father and I approached the door of the shop to which she had pointed, the clanking of mah-jong tiles could be heard. The sounds came from a shop nearby, one which had its doors and windows thrown wide open despite being a gambling parlour. Before long choice words spoken in the Hakka dialect reached our ears. ‘Ayy! Fuck your mother’s stinking cunt!’ I felt the heat rise in my cheeks. Two men stumbled out, pushing and shoving one another, leaving behind the din of tables crashing and cups being broken. The terrifying clatter shook me, as did the sight of coolies in tattered rags pummelling each other with their fists. My heart beat faster, even though the brawl had nothing to do with us. The men were soon separated and led away, and normal brisk activity resumed in that corner of Leech Street.
With my heart still pounding, I walked into Ah Boey’s opium den with Father. As soon as we entered, I began to understand the attraction of the drug. There was a cloying odour in the room, sweet and sickly. When it invaded my body, my head felt faint. In such a cloud I could see why people imagined their troubles disappearing.
When I asked for Ah Boey, we were told there was no such person there. It was only when I raised my voice that the man relented, agreeing finally to show us into a room, where Ah Boey lay in a stupor. The rooms weren’t dark and dingy as I had supposed but bright and remarkably inviting. I hauled Ah Boey up by both shoulders and shook him.
‘This is how you repay me-ah? Hah?’ I shouted. ‘So this is why no one buys our kueh!’
The miserable
coolie woke up in an instant, as if he had risen from a bad dream.
‘Pe-ng Choon Sau, Pe-ng Choon Sau,’ he spluttered.
Though Father didn’t say anything, it was reassuring to have him there. He looked like an ancient sage, an impression accentuated by the dignified silence that accompanied his slight stoop and completely white head. No one would dare lift a finger so long as his figure, which still towered over most men’s, stood beside me. Not that I felt afraid; when it came to defending my children, the flame in me rose up, unabated.
‘You no need to come back, you lousy person’s head!’ I told Ah Boey in no uncertain terms. ‘You owe me money, but I know that you one cent not even got. Today your wage also I no give. You die even better-lah.’
With that I lifted the pole Ah Boey had cast to one side. Father and I strode out with our baskets of kueh, leaving astonished whispers behind.
18
Shortly after I fired Ah Boey, Siew Lan and her family travelled to Singapore for a short visit.
‘Ai-yahh! Sorry about what happened-lah,’ she told me with sympathy in her sad brown eyes. ‘You sure to find someone else.’
But I had decided that no one else would sell my kueh: I would do the work myself. A sharp shrill noise escaped from Siew Lan’s mouth, a sound in between a horrified whisper and a gasp. ‘You no need to do that!’
‘I know,’ I replied. ‘But more easy. If not, must find someone, pay him, then still worry he do what.’
Siew Lan thought me mad, as did Mother. Women worked then as servants and as dulang washers, standing in cold riverbeds to sift for tin, but few walked around town bearing bamboo poles on their shoulders; that was only to become commonplace later. None of this deterred me, and the look on my face must have warned my friend.
Siew Lan’s attention then turned elsewhere – because I’d had another idea. As soon as she mentioned her family’s planned trip to Singapore, I recalled the dresses and trinkets the white devil had bought her during his trips away, in the days before their marriage. Many of his trinkets had looked cheap, but the dresses he brought were outstanding. They were made of beautiful material in vivid colours – reds, blues and browns – and their motifs of animals and flowers were intricately embroidered. The name Singapore was linked in my mind with lovely dresses.
While looking at one of Siew Lan’s dresses, I thought it a pity that the cloth from which it was made could not be found in Ipoh, because if it could there were surely women like me who would rush out to buy it.
And with Siew Lan headed to Singapore in a motor car, I knew what I had to do. ‘I need a favour,’ I said.
‘What?’ she asked quizzically.
I explained about her dresses and how I thought there would be willing buyers if the materials from which they were made were available. ‘If you see cloth you like, something you want to use to make your own clothes, buy it. You buy first, later I sell. We share the profits.’
Siew Lan looked at me in astonishment. ‘Chye Hoon,’ she laughed, ‘you always full of surprises! How you know you can sell them here?’
I didn’t know, I replied. But hadn’t other women complimented her on her dresses? After talking it through, my idea no longer sounded silly to my friend. ‘I get six rolls this time,’ she said. ‘My husband sure to go to Singapore again. If we sell, he can get more.’ I must have looked sceptical, because Siew Lan immediately asked, ‘What’s the matter? He choose the materials first, no-ah?’ Yes, I told her, but he wouldn’t know how to bargain. I wouldn’t make money if we paid their prices. The words ‘white devil’ had nearly slipped out of my mouth, and she had known it too. We both laughed.
‘Ai-yahh! Don’t worry-lah. I train him. I tell him what highest price he can pay.’
By the time I asked Siew Lan to purchase fabric for dressmaking, our circumstances were desperate. With our takings from kueh reduced, we were forced to live off income from the shophouses Peng Choon had acquired at the last minute; this in turn proved insufficient for the number of mouths I had to feed. Having little choice, I’d had to tap extensively into the savings Peng Choon had left me and had run it down to our last fifty dollars. Mother and Father contributed what they could, but I was filled with dread. That was why the idea of selling rolls of cloth came to me. Even if successful, the profit would have fed my family for no more than a week, but given where we were I had to try everything.
On the morning when I first set off with a bamboo pole across my shoulders, Mother stood on the five-foot way in front of our house. She watched me with red eyes. Though I did not turn around, I could feel her gaze against my back, willing me forward.
During the first hour the carrying was easy. When I left, there was already enough light to see the roads, but the day was still cool. The baskets of kueh were also surprisingly light. I barely felt them as I ambled along, shouting, ‘Nyonya kueh! Nyonya kueh!’
Siew Lan and I had chosen my route carefully. We decided that I would first traverse the whole of the Lahat Road, making my presence felt among the residents in the large houses, with their monumental gardens, before heading into town. I walked a few paces, yelling loudly that Nyonya kueh were available for sale, and then waited to give customers time to come outside. The good townspeople were just waking when I started out. There were signs of life inside the houses – of lamps being lit and lights coming on in those which had been electrified. The hum of servants chattering and babies screaming surrounded me. When they heard my shouts, the women poked their heads out of the windows to look at me curiously. Some recognised me as the woman recently widowed on the Lahat Road, while many were faces I did not know. Among the women who came out that morning, there were a few who bought kueh purely out of pity. I didn’t care. I needed them to buy my kueh, and if sympathy helped me sell a few, so be it. Besides, I was convinced they would like the Wong family kueh once they had tasted them.
That turned out to be the case. One of my most loyal customers over the years was Hong Seng Soh, a Nyonya woman who lived in one of thirteen houses along a stretch of Lahat Road known simply as Thirteenth Street. She came out that morning to tell me how sorry she was; although we did not know each other, she had heard about my husband and wanted to buy kueh from me. There were other women like her, so that by the time I wound my way up Belfield Street, my baskets were considerably lighter.
But I had not bargained on the strength of the Malayan sun, how it comes out blazing once it breaks through the clouds. Its rays penetrated the hat I wore, a conical hat with a wide brim just like the one I had laughed at when we first arrived in Penang. Underneath the hat I wore a white cloth to protect my face, but the heat pierced through the cloth and into my skull, which quickly became hot. That was when I began to feel the load on my shoulders. Even though I had sold many kueh, my bones grew weary.
At the top of the town I forced myself to cross the Birch Bridge, determined to walk until I had sold everything in the baskets. I ventured into Kampong Jawa, where I succeeded in persuading the ladies to purchase the last of the pulut tai-tai. By conversing for just a few minutes, I learnt which kueh they liked. Despite my physical discomfort it occurred to me that the various communities in town had different tastes and would have their own favourites from amongst our kueh.
Over the next months I discovered the tastes of the families in each neighbourhood. I tailored my routes according to which kueh I was carrying. If we had rempah udang or ondeh-ondeh, I made sure to include the Malay kampongs along the way. When we made savoury yam cakes or angkoo, I would cover the Chinese quarters. I tried everything I could to empty my baskets, but there were days when, despite walking until my legs could carry me no further, I still took kueh home. Those were the toughest times. I would cry silently, with head burning, blisters swelling and my spirit broken.
Through sheer necessity I persisted. Within six months my back became accustomed to carrying the load, and our kueh found a loyal following. The following year I received our first large order from one of the towkay
s when he gave a banquet in the compound of his mansion. That was in 1912, which coincided with another tin boom. The boom came at a fortuitous time for us: demand for catering soared and requests poured in for kueh and special Nyonya dishes at festivities. We created a different menu for each customer and were able to command prices which gratified me. I had to hire extra help to cope with that first banquet, because we would never have delivered our kueh and Siamese laksa otherwise.
Looking back now, I find it hard to remember how tough the early days were. When I muse that I could even have started a second business importing fine cloths for dressmaking, I forget the hand-to-mouth existence we led then. It’s true that I sold all six rolls of cloth Siew Lan brought over from Singapore on that first occasion. My success surprised even my friend; knowing our struggles, she refused to keep her share of the profit. Thereafter, whenever her husband went to Singapore he was instructed to purchase a few rolls of cloth for me. I must say the white devil had a good eye for patterns, though his bargaining power could have been improved. Had I continued pursuing that as a business line, we might well have made it work. Who knows? We might even have become wealthy. But I did whatever was thrown our way just to survive and had no time to think about another business.
We could not have lived through that terrible period if my daughters Hui Fang and Hui Ying had not always been in our kitchen, bleary-eyed but willing. For this they paid a price: my eldest, Hui Fang, never went to school, and my second daughter, Hui Ying, didn’t learn to read until she was older.
Within months of my husband passing away, Hui Fang asked me why people had to die. Looking into my daughter’s demure eyes, I took her hands in mine. ‘Daughter, we all die at some point. But we return too. We come back as what, depends what we do now in this life. That’s why must be good.’ Hui Fang remained silent but continued looking wistfully at me, as if unsure what my answer said about us or her papa.
The Woman Who Breathed Two Worlds Page 16