Once We Were There

by Bernice Chauly

We named her Strelitzia Alba, the Latin name for the white bird of paradise. Alba meant dawn, as she was born at 6.59am on the 25th of September, after 15 hours of labour. Papa had managed to find the seeds of this rare species from a heliconia grower, and planted a row of strelitzia right beside my tree in his garden, burying the placenta in the dark soil as he did.

  Mercifully, I had not torn, thanks to Lisa, who asked me to push only when the contractions came. Within 24 hours I was discharged with Alba—as we decided to call her—and an entourage that included Omar’s parents and their female relatives, thousands of ringgit worth of flowers, greeting cards and my small overnight bag. I could walk.

  In the bathroom for my first pee after the birth, I winced in pain as the urine coursed over my battered and stretched vagina. My belly flopped like a fleshy balloon. My breasts were swollen and sore and my face was still flushed from the exertion of pushing. But I felt drugged from happiness. Sheer elation. Giving birth was a thrill, and I was a mother. I felt high. I looked at my daughter, bundled up like a slug in her tiny car seat, and felt such a surge of love that I knew I would kill to protect her. Draw blood, slice off a man’s face or arm, if I had to. I finally understood what motherhood could do to a woman.

  My milk came in three days later and she drank like a fiend, constantly hungry. I slept in spurts, had frantic dreams, then woke to feed her again. Omar stayed home for two weeks until we had a consistent schedule. He bathed and changed her, sang to her and carried her in and out of rooms. I saw how he loved her, this creature that resembled him more than she did me. They had the same eyes, dark brown hair. She was of my blood and his but she was more of his. Her cries were soothed by his lullabies, nursery rhymes, and her eyes blinked in emerald countenance. Omar was in love with his beautiful Alba.

  How exquisite she was. Her tiny mouth which opened and closed when she yawned, her little fingers with white half moon nails, her arms which flailed in the air, the scent of her cheeks and neck, of milk from my bosom and the creaminess of the bath bubbles, the soft folds of flesh on her thighs, the thick tufts of hair on her head, the soft fontanel, beneath that, her brain, the soft pulse of her heart when I lay my ears next to her. How exquisite she was.

  Months passed and she grew beautifully. I got into a rhythm for bath-time, feeding, playtime, nap, feeding, nap, walk, bath, bed. She learnt to turn, squirm and cry to get her way. Papa, too, was besotted with her. Evening walks with Alba up and down the roads from his house. How she laughed and smiled to the neighbours. Her hair bouncing in the wind, her chubby thighs so warm and smooth.

  My father was alive again, he sat in the garden, reading to her, pointing at pages in books, he carried her when she fretted, sang to her. Omar and Papa, completely consumed by this child.

  But I was exhausted from lack of sleep and the constant breastfeeding. She refused formula and I was reduced to feeling like an animal bred for its milk. On some nights, I slept with her in the guest room, napping in between. She would wake up and drink from me noisily, clutching at my breast with her little hands, sometimes biting my nipple with her gums, waking me up. At dawn she would try to sit up, chattering in her own language while I stared at the languid swish of the curtains until my eyes closed and Omar came to take her downstairs. I would sleep again, then stumble downstairs to see them both, locked in a circle that sometimes made me feel like an outsider.

  How she laughed when she saw her father, how he kissed her toes and watched her squirm in glee, how his face lit up when she curled her hands around his face. How she sat obediently nodding her head when he showed her how to stack wooden blocks, how she screamed kah kah kah when he tickled her tummy, how she shrieked with joy when he picked her up and threw her into the air. How alike they were: Like father, like daughter. Was I ever like my father?

  She would cry when he had to go to work, she would wail and stretch her hands, refusing to let him go. How he would stand there talking to her saying that he would be back to play with her at the end of the day. How he would kiss her, untangle her arms and legs around him, hand her to me and then reach to kiss me quickly before gazing lovingly at her.

  Did he still love me? Or did he love her more?

  I was tired and still fat; I had not lost the extra weight. I avoided mirrors and tight-fitting clothes. I wore loose, flowing shirts and skirts, sometimes contemplating my pregnancy clothes. Every day was a fat day and there was never enough time. The glow I had from the pregnancy had long abandoned me. My hair was listless and dry; my face dull, pimply. I had no desire to put on make-up, a dress, heels, make myself look good for him. Sex was infrequent.

  But one night, during a storm, he came to me. Alba was asleep, snuggled under her favourite blanket and her Winnie the Pooh pillow. He kissed me on the neck and led me to our bedroom, and then he took off my pyjama shorts and T-shirt, lifting it over my ripe, milk-laden breasts. Kissing and sucking my nipples gently, then forcefully. I threw my head back and let him take me. I had missed him and I showed him how much. In the height of the storm, the curtains lashing against the open window, he pounded into me again and again. My hands grasped the window railings and I was reminded again that he loved me, I love you, I love you—our passionate cries drowned in the spattering rain.

  Moments like that didn’t come very often. I was still adamant about not wanting a maid, so I cooked, cleaned, fed, nursed and tried to run the household as best I could. Omar and Fairman were getting larger contracts and their office of five staff had to double. He never told me much about the work they did, just that it involved the construction of expressways in and around the Klang Valley. He seemed happier, finally working with people in his area of expertise. Fairman took on the legal aspects of their contracts and Omar designed the structural aspects of the work, often coming home with rolls of blueprints. TMF Sdn Bhd was working out and the partnership flourished.

  On some days, I struggled. I often wondered about the work and life I once had. The tear gas, the writing, the brittle anger we all shared: I missed it. Motherhood had robbed me of a life that I could never have again. My options were forever limited. There were times when I looked in the mirror and I did not like what I saw. My body had changed, my face weary and lined, my eyes sometimes sad. I did not know why. I was a wife and mother, and I was in a good place. I felt grateful, but there were times when I felt that cold, familiar emptiness. The world was a far more dangerous place. A child had transformed my existence, and I was afraid. Fear had crept in like an unwanted ghost, haunting the shell of tired existence, taunting me.

  I loved Alba with such ferocity, I sometimes kissed her until her eyes puckered with pain. She ruled us with her smiles, her chatter, her endless sing-song gibberish, and her wonder at everything. Teaching her words, feelings, colours, animals, it was all a joy. What a joy she is. Such joy. But she got bored quickly, had a tempestuous scream, and when she did not get what she wanted, she was like a fury, a creature with eyes that spat fire. Perhaps I was afraid of who she would become, that her strength would outstrip mine. I feared that she was draining the life out of me, that I would become insignificant. That she would be all that Omar wanted and needed.

  I was racked with confusion. Sleep deprivation was becoming a form of torture; I craved sleep more than anything else. A good night’s sleep seemed so impossible. Surely not all mothers suffered this?

  One night, I dreamt of a pontianak, the vampiric ghost of a woman who had died in childbirth. Malaysians have a profound belief in the spirit world and in the spaces that inhabit the visible and invisible worlds. There are many names for many kinds of ghosts but the pontianak was the most feared of all. I had never seen one, but I sometimes felt the presence of entities in my father’s house. Gasing Hill was rumoured to harbour ghosts, and some nights, I would feel a presence in the hallway between my room and my parents’ room, as if I was being watched.

  Omar was away on a business trip, his first to Sudan, and I was alone with Alba in the apartment. She had been testy from teething
pains and I had soothed her sore gums with ointment until she stopped crying. I fell into a troubled sleep.

  She came to my door, this long-haired creature with blood-red eyes. There she was, a figure in white, floating above the ground, face contorted with evil. I heard a screech, and then a gust of wind as she tried to come in through the front door. I slammed the door on her arm as her fingers reached for me, greying with mottled flesh and talons, I pressed against it with all my might, but the door burst open again and again. She wanted my child, and I fought this creature like a wild thing, clawing at her with my arms and legs. I could see into her eyes, the blackness of her soul, and the whisper of a profound sadness. Then I sat bolt upright in bed, choking with terror. Alba was in her cot, fast asleep, but the window, which I had closed and locked, was wide open.

  Ceylon Hill was the last green haven in the centre of Kuala Lumpur, dotted with a cluster of graceful colonial-style apartments. Their curved balconies of cantilevered concrete hung over thick, lush jungles, with verdant wild banana plants and local foxes or musang. These were enviable spaces. Inside, large, airy sitting rooms with clear glass window panes beckoned in cool evening breezes, delightful on cloyingly hot days. On the top of the hill, a water tower overlooked a handful of cream-coloured bungalows built in the 50s, still lived in by some of KL’s oldest families. The apartments below, in contrast, had become popular with burgeoning artists and musicians who had begun populating them, finding the cheap rent affordable in the final vestiges of colonial glory.

  On weekends, there were parties with live music, performance poetry, cheap wine and marijuana. There was talk of reform, angry, wild, avant garde gestures. Fiery speeches from activists, musicians, filmmakers. There was hunger that had to be fed, a need for expression, a need for dissent. A movement had sprung up in the arts community. Their logo—a black question mark against a yellow background with the slogan, Artis Pro Activ—APA. Apa—What? What was going on? A question for those in power. A question that demanded answers.

  Across the road, the KL Tower glimmered at night, music thumping from its base, where wild raves fed music and Ecstasy to techno-addled youth. There was always a time to party.

  In the four years since Reformasi, KL had thrived. There were more expats than ever, many who had come for the drugs, stayed for the girls. DJs fell in love with locals and procreated, and so the culture of mixed bloods carried on.

  Down the road from Ceylon Hill, a row of refurbished shop houses had become the centre of KL’s nightlife. Bangsar was old news. There were tapas bars, Irish pubs, German gastro-bars and one gay bar. Frangipani, the white colonial bungalow which had been transformed into a French-fusion restaurant with an upstairs members-only club, continued its Friday gay nights despite numerous raids, and hundreds came out to “cuci mata” or feast their eyes on young, nubile boys. Women and men packed the floors, champagne and cocktails shimmied off bar tops, mixologists twirled bottles with ease. There was chatter, kissing, extravagance. The women were beautiful, the men even more so.

  There was always talk of money. KL was becoming more cosmopolitan. Foreign investment was higher than it had been and the KL skyline was proof. New buildings competed for thinner and leaner shards of sky. Investor confidence was strong, despite the shocking announcement from Mahathir that he was going to resign.

  On 25 January 2002, as if straight out of a Malay daytime soap opera, he had stood in front of thousands at his party’s general assembly—the United Malays National Organisation, or UMNO—and said with tearful hubris, “It’s time for me to go, yes, it’s time for me to go.”

  “No, no, you can’t!” shrieked the Minister of Trade and Industry, her red tudung falling over her face. More ministers rushed to the stage, unabashed in their grief. Mahathir was bathed in uncommon hugs. Their beloved leader, their visionary, the authoritarian tyrant who had fashioned a mandate for Malaysia was finally going to leave after 22 years in power as Prime Minister.

  Thousands celebrated. In bars, in restaurants, in mamak stalls, in homes and in the privacy of bedrooms, ordinary Malaysians thanked their gods for the unthinkable. Some were saddened, most were stunned. A Malaysia without Mahathir. It was unimaginable, it was uncertain. It was utter folly.

  Anwar was still in jail, inching through his sentence. His back had deteriorated; his spine would suffer lifelong consequences from having to sleep on concrete. The world condemned the Malaysian government for its draconian actions. Mahathir retaliated by blaming George Soros and the Western media for twisting truths.

  “You are jealous of our success, our fundamentals are strong,” he infamously retorted.

  Yet, KL continued to thrive, the city was alive with intangible possibility. It was this that armed Marina that night when she stepped into Frangipani, her hand on a man who had booked her for the night. She was no longer the same person who had left the same club in a Black Maria a year ago. No longer a streetwalker, but now a high-class escort, she lived in a different world. When she walked up the stairs into the doorway, the crowd of boys and men parted to let her through, and the music and the flaming lights swept her away.

  Omar was working late the day it happened. He had just returned from Sudan and he was jetlagged and tired, but there were documents, plans that needed to be finalised. The television was on in his office and the news came on. A teary Mahathir came on the screen and said that he was going to resign as Chairperson of the Barisan National, the ruling coalition that had governed the country since Independence, and as Prime Minister of Malaysia. It was also the final day of the UMNO General Assembly and traffic would be bad near the Putra World Trade Centre, so he decided to finish the paperwork and head home after 8pm.

  As if on cue, his handphone rang.

  “You see the news? Bloody hell!” Fairman was shouting into his ear.

  “Yeah. This is absolutely insane,” Omar said and paused. “Are we going to be all right?”

  They were about to sign million-dollar contracts and Mahathir leaving could pose problems. It could cause jitters with their foreign partners, and as a Bumiputera company, they had the ease of contracts, not just because they were Malay, but because both their fathers had made sure that their sons got a fair share of the spoils.

  “I’ll get those contracts signed as soon as possible.”

  “Yes please, or we’re fucked.”

  Fairman hung up and Omar stared at his reflection on the glass that divided him and the KL sky. His tie had come loose, his hair ruffled and disarrayed, his eyes riveted to the Petronas Twin Towers in the distance. It was inconceivable. The man who had created the Malaysian Reformasi was retreating, the man who had brought Anwar to his knees would no longer be the most powerful man in Malaysia. The man who had given certain meaning to his life was bowing out, to be immortalised in the pages of history.

  Omar opened the top right drawer on his desk, pulled out the bottle and the crystal snifter beside it, unscrewed it, poured out the amber liquid, and lifted the hand-cut glass to his lips.

  He suddenly remembered the scent of tear gas, the volleying screams of people pounded by water cannons, Del with her wild eyes and snarling mouth screaming, “Mahathir Undur! Reformasi!” It was over, but instead of feeling any measure of joy or relief, he felt nothing.

  As the whisky swirled around his tongue and slid its fiery tail down his throat, he picked up the picture frame. Del cradling Alba, taken moments after her birth.

  It was all for them now. Everything that had meaning was contained within the four corners of that gilded frame. He finished the whisky and thought of cradling Alba in his arms. All he wanted was her.

  I knew he was at the door. A struggling Alba squirmed her way out of my arms into Omar’s.

  I got her, he said. I got her.

  Her cries stopped almost immediately upon seeing her father. I was on the verge of collapse.

  Oh god. I whispered as I stumbled to the couch and fell onto the pillows. So tired, so tired, I murmured, my voice trembling, thr
eatening tears. Alba started crying again, her high-pitched screams slightly muted and hoarse from the hours of being unsettled the night before. She was teething and had been impossible to put down. I had tried everything humanly possible to soothe her. My head felt leaden on the pillow. I could not move, my calves ached from pacing up and down and my arms felt like I’d been carrying weights non-stop for 12 hours. Omar started talking and singing to her, she settled for a while until a shrill wail escaped her.

  Maybe she has colic? Omar suggested softly, leaning into my ear.

  I don’t know, I don’t know, I whispered back.

  Maybe a bath will help. Omar said, while swooping her down towards me. Alba gurgled and smiled, her chubby arms trying to grab me. It was so typical of him. All he wanted to do was play with Alba when he came home. And all I wanted to do was curl up into a ball and sleep for days.

  Say mama, mama.

  Go away, I need to sleep, I said.

  She is four months old today, darling, Omar whispered

  So she is. I tried to sit up but immediately felt dizzy. Sorry, it’s been hellish.

  Omar sat down next to me, Alba snuggled contently in his arms, sucking on her fingers. I leaned my head on his shoulder and kissed his cheek gently. Look at us, our little family. And one very tired mummy.

  We love you, tired mummy. Omar leaned to kiss me. Alba struggled in his arms, her legs kicking in the air. She was unhappy again. He stood up.

  Right, bath time it is.

  Let me nap, please, just for half an hour. I stretched my arms over my head, let out a big yawn, put my leg over a cushion and fell into a deep sleep.

  When I woke up, Omar was in front of his computer on the dining table. He looked showered and refreshed.

  Hey there, gorgeous, how you feeling? he asked. Want something to eat?

  Where’s Alba? I stifled a new yawn.

  In bed, listening to the heartbeat music and she’s happy. Omar gestured to the baby monitor on the table. We both heard her gurgling to the sounds that were coming out of a CD player we’d installed close to her cot. It was an ambient track that combined a human heartbeat—which supposedly helped babies sleep—whale song and guitar.