‘No. I won’t. I promise,’ I say and I mean it.
So, that is me, Jack, and that is my story so far.
I am on my way now, I really am.
4
Tess’s Story
Hello everyone. My name is Tessinda Alya Avery and I am ten years old. People normally call me Tess or Tessy, but my daddy calls me many different names. These include: penguin, pixie, bebek (which means duck in Indonesian language), tesscot, tinkle, tixy, trouble, tussy, tusscy and Tesco’s. My daddy never calls me by my real name unless he is angry with me, and that is not often. My daddy loves me very much.
Anyway, I want to tell you the story of my life until now and so here goes. I will write down everything that I can remember about all the things that have happened in the ten and a half years that I have been alive and I hope you won’t get too bored reading my tale. After I have done that, I will tell you more about my life now, and then I will tell you what I hope will happen in my life when I am older and grown-up even.
I was born in a place called Sidoarjo in the country of Indonesia in November 1997, and although I don’t remember being born, of course, I stayed in hospital for just a few days before my mummy and daddy took me home with them. I was born in the middle of the night, and my mummy had to have a special operation to cut me out of her tummy because I was too big to come out the normal way. This operation hurt my mummy for a long time afterwards and she couldn’t walk properly for many weeks afterwards. I know this is true because my mummy has told me many times.
Usually she tells me this story whenever she thinks I am being naughty.
I am a girl from two countries because my parents come from two different countries. My mummy is from here, Indonesia, and her name is Yossy, and my daddy is from England, and his name is Neil. They tell me I am lucky to have two different countries and I think they are right, but sometimes it feels a bit strange, too. I am the only kid in my class at school who has two countries and I am the only kid who looks like I do but I am not the only kid in my class who can speak two languages, though.
When I was very little, my mummy and daddy and me lived in a house near the hospital I was born in. I don’t really remember that much about there, but I do remember some things. I have lots of photographs from that time because my parents liked to take pictures of me when I was small, and they are all in albums now. My mummy and daddy used to tell me lots of stories about that time, and also before then when they first met and got married, but they don’t do that anymore. I think that is a pity because I used to like listening to their stories.
If I look at the pictures now I can sometimes just about remember things, or at least I think I remember them. It could be that I don’t really remember them and my mind is confusing me, or I am just remembering the things my mummy and daddy told me about the events in the pictures.
I think I remember my first birthday party, though. I know I have many pictures of that day and I know I was wearing a white fairy princess dress. My house was very busy with lots of people coming to visit and play with me. My house was sort of a school as well as it had a classroom built into the garage and my mummy (and my daddy sometimes) used to give English lessons in there. On the day of my birthday, we had my party in there and we had a clown come and do some tricks, and then we ate some cake, and then everyone gave me lots of presents. This is my first real memory, I think. I remember we had lots to eat and my daddy was not happy about the food for some reason. I’m not sure why. My daddy often is not happy about food here in Indonesia and he often says that people ask for too much and then don’t eat it all. Maybe that’s what Daddy was unhappy about on that day. Who knows?
When I was very little, we moved house. We didn’t move very far away, just around the corner, and I still went back to see my old house all the time. This is because all of my old house became the school for my mummy and daddy and not just the garage. They had lots of students wanting to join the school and so finally they turned all the rooms in the house into classrooms and we had to find somewhere else to live.
My mummy usually was the teacher in the school at that time while my daddy got in his car and went to Surabaya every day. Surabaya is the name of the big city near where we lived in Sidoarjo. Now, my daddy was also a teacher but he didn’t teach kids much then. He told me he taught grown-ups in their offices and also big girls in an academy. At that time I was a bit confused about why grown-ups or big girls would want to study English, but Daddy explained that sometimes people didn’t get the chance to study much when they were little like me and so when they got bigger they would study again. I guess it kind of made sense, but I didn’t really think about it that much for very long,
