Anyway, he taught like shit. There’s no other way to describe it. He would scribble things on the board, ask us to do some sums, and then he’d write down the answer. If we got the answer, good, give ourselves ticks. He enjoyed saying, “You want to give yourself star also can, can even draw the sun and moon, up to you.” As if it was the funniest thing in the whole world. If we didn’t get it right, then we’re supposed to read the chapter again. He always kept on telling us, “Maths is about formulas, if you understand the formula you can do any sums.” But he never taught us any formulas. He taught us shit. It was during his lessons that I perfected my sketches on coconut trees. I realised one day during his lesson that a coconut tree looked better with coconuts on it. I wondered how come a simple fact like that could have escaped me. So I drew them in.
Anyway, there was this one day when my father saw my report card. My father is the type who doesn’t talk much. He was away most of the time, as a cook in an ocean liner. But there was this day when he got hold of my report card, which my mother had already signed. He called me from my room, where I was playing Championship Manager, this soccer computer game.
“Hafiz, what’s all this?”
I kept quiet, but in my mind I was thinking of Cantona on my computer.
“Hafiz, all red! You don’t like studying is it? We send you to school for what? Buy you uniform, pay school fees, for what? What do you do in school?”
“Study.”
“Then how come I get this? Shima, you saw your son’s report book?”
“Yah, I sign already,” my mother replied.
“You know he fail everything except Malay and English?”
“What to do,” was my mother’s reply. “The boy is like that.”
“Hafiz, you got no shame ah? This is your second time taking your exams you know!” Then my father switched over to scolding me in English. He did this usually when he thought he didn’t sound important enough. My guess is that it’s because his supervisor scolds him in English, and he treats scoldings like those with absolute seriousness. “Wake up your idea, man, Hafiz! Wake up your funny idea!”
My mother, as usual, had to butt in. “It’s not that I don’t tell him to study. I tell him every day. I tell him until my mouth is dry, but he never listens.”
“Shima, this is very bad,” my father continued. “As parents we can’t just let this go on. Hafiz, I’m getting you a tuition teacher. Expensive never mind. As long as you catch up with your work. You bring me the newspaper. We find something for you.”
And that was how Chris arrived at our door one day, 10 minutes late, a law student from the university. A tuition agency had sent him. He had to knock for about three minutes before my mother finally opened the door. She had been peeping out from the window louvers and it didn’t occur to her that he was a tutor because for one thing, he looked rather young, and for another, he was dressed in a polo T-shirt and jeans. I supposed my mother was expecting someone with a briefcase and tie. When he saw my mother, Chris went “Hello Auntie.” My mother, who doesn’t speak much English, simply nodded at him and asked “Tuition ah?”
When she unlocked the gate to let Chris in, my mother was still smiling, and it was an embarrassed smile. It was as if mother was apologising for not being able to speak English, or for the house being messy, or for the fact that she didn’t have anything to offer him to eat except for what was under the dish cover in the kitchen. Some fried eggs and rice and a bottle of soy sauce.* * *When Chris came into my room, the first thing he noticed was of course, the cartons of Wrigley’s chewing gum stacked in one corner. Green peppermint, white spearmint, yellow fruitflavoured ones.
“Wah, so much ah?”
I was clearing my table to make room for the two of us. I put aside the Teen magazines, a soccer jersey and some pirated computer games I had bought from Funan Centre.
“Yah, my father go overseas a lot. So can get cheap. So what can I call you ah, sir?”
“No no, don’t call me sir. You can call me Chris.”
“Okay, Chris. Is the chair okay for you? Or you want my chair, because this one got wheels. Office chair.”
“No, this will do.”
“That one is the dinner table chair.”
“It’s okay. So, do you have your ten-year-series˚ with you?”
“Oh, that one I left at school. But next time I bring. Promise, promise.”
“Okay, where can we start?”
Suddenly we heard a beeping sound and Chris fumbled in his pocket for his pager. I managed to take a look at his face and thought he was quite handsome. He was the sort who had made a point to shave each day. When he looked up, he brushed his hair back, and then he clapped his hands together, as if he were the speaker at the beginning of a seminar.
“Can I use your phone?” he asked.
“Wait ah,” I said, “I check if my mother is using.”
Sure enough when I went out of the room, my mother was curled on the sofa giggling into the telephone. My mother already has two sons, but whenever she used the telephone she acted like a girl. She would bring her legs up to rest on the sofa and she would
