They were on a deserted stretch of Klebang before the sandy rutted path on the left that led to Grandaunty’s house and the shallow sloping beach facing the Malacca Straits. Wood-planked shacks roofed with rusty galvanized iron alternated with common lots on which grew a wild profusion of morning glory, lallang, mimosa and pandan bushes. A few coconut and areca palms leaned in jumbled lines away from the hot tarmac. The sky was a blinding blue, barren of clouds, and arching in a vast depth of heat under which the dripping trishaw man mumbled and cursed. The bicycle lurched forward and the attached carriage, on which Mei Sim crouched as if to make herself lighter, moved forward jerkily with it.
“Aiyah! Sini boleh,” her mother said sharply, and almost at the same moment the man’s legs stopped and dangled over the wheels. She pushed Mei Sim off the sticky plastic seat and stepped down carefully so as not to disarrange the elaborately folded pleats of her skirt.
The man took a ragged face towel from his pocket and mopped his face. Mrs Cheung clicked the metal snap of her black handbag, zipped open an inner compartment, extracted a beaded purse from it, unbuttoned a flap and counted some coins which she clinked impatiently in one hand, waiting for him to take the change. She poured the different coins onto his calloused palm, then walked up the path without a word. Mei Sim stood for a moment watching him count the coins and, at her mother’s annoyed call, ran up the narrow lane just wide enough for a car to go through.
Waddling ahead of her, her mother was singing out, “Tua Ee, Tua Ee.” A wooden fence, newly whitewashed, separated Grandaunty’s house from the lane which suddenly petered out into a littered common compound shared with some Malay houses on low stilts. Beneath the houses and through the spaces between the concrete blocks on which the wood stilts were anchored, Mei Sim could see the grey coarse sand grading to a chalky white for yards ahead, clumped by tough beach grass and outlined at stages by the dark, uneven markings of tidal remains, broken driftwood, crab shells, splinters of glass, red-rust cans and black hair of seaweed.
Grandaunty came out through the gap in the fence in a flurry of kebaya lace. Her gleaming hair was coiffed in a twist, and a long gold pin sat on top of her head, like a nail on the fearsome pontianak, Mei Sim thought.
“What’s this?” she said in fluent Malay. “Why are you here so early without informing me? You must stay for lunch. I have already told that prostitute daughter of mine to boil the rice, so we have to cook another pot.”
Grandaunty had four sons, of whom she loved only the youngest, and a daughter whom she treated as a bought slave. She was not a woman for young girls and gave Mei Sim no attention, but she tolerated Jeng Cheung as the niece whose successful marriage to a rich towkay’s son she had arranged ten years before.
Mei Sim’s mother visited her at least once a week with gifts of fruits, pulut and ang pows, and consulted her on every matter in the Cheung family’s life. At six, Mei Sim was allowed to listen to all their discussions; she was, after all, too young to understand.
It was in this way she learned what men liked their women to do in bed, how babies were made and how awful giving birth was. She knew the fluctuations in the price of gold and what herbs to boil and drink to protect oneself from colds, rheumatism, heatiness, smallpox, diarrhoea or female exhaustion.
It was in the this way she found out that women were different from men who were bodoh and had to be trained to be what women wanted them to be. If women were carts, men were like kerbau hitched to them.
This morning she settled on the kitchen bench behind the cane chairs on which her mother and grandaunt were sitting close to each other sharing the sirih box between them, chatting and scolding in Malay and snatches of English, and she listened and listened without saying a word to remind them of her presence.
“. . . and Bee Lian saw Hin at the cloth shop . . . she told me he’s been going there every afternoon when he’s supposed to be at the bank . . . that slut is probably taking all his money, but I haven’t said a word to him, I thought maybe you can help me. What should I say to him, oh, that swine, useless good-for-nothing, I scratch his eyes out. Better still if I take a knife and cut her heart. These men always walking with legs apart, what does he want from me? Three children not enough, but she is a bitch—black as a Tamil and hairy all over. I keep myself clean and sweet-smelling, a wife he can be proud of. So itchified, never enough, always wanting more, more. That’s why now he won’t give me more money, say business bad. Ha, bad! We know what’s bad. I’ll get some poison and put it in her food, and all my friends talking behind my back. She’s making a fool of me, but what can I do? I tell them better than a second wife, not even a mistress, just loose woman smelling like a bitch any man can take, so why not my Peng Ho.”
It was Father Mother was complaining about! Mei Sim rubbed her ears to clear them of wax, but quick tears had risen and clogged her nostrils, so her ears were filled with a thick sorrow. She knew all about second wives. Hadn’t Second Uncle left his family to live in Ipoh because their Cantonese servant had bewitched him, and now he had three boys by her and second Aunty was always coming to their house to borrow money and to beg for the clothes they’d outgrown for her own children? And little Gek Yeo’s mother had gone mad because her father had taken another wife, and she was now in Tanjong Rambutan where, Mother said, she screamed and tore off her clothes and had no hair left. Poor Gek Yeo had to go to her grandmother’s house and her grandmother refused to let her see her father.
Mei Sim wiped her nose on her gathered puff sleeve. Grandaunty had risen from her chair and was shaking the folds of her thickly flowered sarong. Her Malay speech was loud and decisive. “All this scolding will do you no good. Men are all alike, itchy and hot. You cannot stop him by showing a dirty face or talking bad all the time. You will drive him away. The only thing that women have is their cunning. You must think hard. What do you want, a faithful man or a man who will support you and your children? Why should you care if he plays with this or that woman? Better for you, he won’t ask so much from you in bed. No, you must be as sweet to him as when you were first courting. Talk to him sweet-sweet every time he comes home late. This will make him feel guilty and he will be nicer to you. Make him open the purse-strings. Tell him you need money for prayers at Hoon Temple to bring luck to his business. He will appreciate you for your efforts. Some men have to be bullied like your uncle, but . . .”
She stopped to take a breath, and Siew Eng, her skinny dark daughter, crept up beside and whispered, “Na’ makan, ’mak?”
“Sundal!” Grandaunty shouted and slapped her sharply on her thin bare arm. “Who asked you to startle me? You know how bad my heart is. You want me to die?”
Siew Eng hung her head. Her samfoo was faded and worn at the trouser bottoms, and the thin cotton print didn’t hide her strange absence of breasts. She was already sixteen, had never been sent to school but had worked at home washing, cleaning and cooking since she was seven. All her strength seemed to have gone into her work, because her body itself was emaciated, her smile frail, and her face peaked and shrivelled like a ciku picked before its season and incapable of ripening, drying up to a small brown hardness.
Mei Sim had never heard her cousin laugh, had never seen her eat at the table. She served the food, cleaned the kitchen and ate standing up by the wood stove when everyone had finished.
Mother said Siew Eng was cursed. The fortune teller had told Grandaunty after her birth that the girl would eat her blood, so she wouldn’t nurse or hold the baby, had sent her to a foster mother, and had taken her back at seven to send her off to the kitchen where she slept on a camp bed. Mei Sim was glad she wasn’t cursed. Her father loved her best, and Mother bought her the prettiest dresses and even let her use her lipstick.
“Now your uncle . . .” Grandaunty stopped and her face reddened. “What are you waiting for, you stupid girl? Go serve the rice. We are coming to the table right away. Make sure there are no flies on the food.”
Her daughter’s scrawny chest