'Trees'

Strange, I thought, how the course of a life is shaped. Having my second helping of macaroni soup, listening to two story tellers, I found out how my mother ended up working where she is now for more than the entire duration of my existence.

She was originally working for a Christian Malay, who had the name of the first human from the Bible. He was an Anglican pastor who scolded her harshly one Christmas eve because she could only go to work late in the evening. My grandfather had passed away days earlier and it was the last day of the rituals. She personally went to their residence to offer this explanation being the person that she is, accompanied by her younger brother, my well-educated uncle who was already working in Kuala Lumpur by that time. Acting as a translator was the pastor's wife, a Chinese lady who was originally from Hong Kong. The pastor sounded angrier and angrier with each translated message, spewing alien words like a rebuking prophet to my mother. My uncle, not being able to stomach it anymore, perhaps with the realization of what was being said, burst into the house looking for my mother's room and when he had located it, packed everything that she had, got out and told him that she wasn't going to be working for them anymore. It had been less than a week for her there.

"Dramatic," I replied, smiling with a little disbelief as I turned to face aunty.

"I was going to have a fourteen year old girl work for me, but found out very early that she was a good-for-nothing! She was sent to one of my friends to help out, but when my friend got home, the young maid was singing away from a book that she was holding while being in bed! She was fired on the spot."

"You can't expect a girl that young to work as a maid," said my mother.

"How old were you then?"

"25."

It was later that aunty heard news that my mother needed work, through a grapevine consisting of friends and maids. She was hired and aunty's daughter took to her immediately, giving her the grand tour of the house when the pastor's wife arrived with one of her sons by taxi at their home. She had wanted to convince my mother to return to them. It was her second day at work.

"I had actually called and talked to her before all that. Asked her if your mother was still under their employment and if they had wanted to have her back. She had answered no to both questions."

"That woman was possessed. She'd wake me up at three in the morning and ask me to find a taxi for her because she had wanted to run away from home."

"She wasn't that well mentally."

"She was possessed, I tell you."

"Back to where she was trying to get you back," I said.

"There I was, with her kid tugging on my left hand and aunty's daughter at my right. I didn't know what to do actually. Their two sons were always crying their eyes out and there was one time when their parents just left them with me when they drove to Singapore!"

"These people didn't know what they had, in your mother."

"Aunty's daughter was quite serious with keeping me, saying no to them the whole time. And even when I had told them that I had wanted to stay here, she kept visiting my family's house with the child that was crying the most. My mother, your grandmother, kept saying each time after their visit, 'Such a pitiful family.' It was a really crazy time for me. It didn't help that at the time there was an Orang Minyak running loose in the kampung, molesting and raping girls."