In general, it was the boys who enjoyed the robust mud-sliding game, especially since the girls were not keen on being splattered with mud. But I was a tomboy and wanted to join the boys, as they seemed to have a lot more fun. I felt that there were too many limitations for girls. At 15, I had become a gawky, awkward teenager, having lost all my baby fat, my hair shorn short. My chest was so flat, the boys and girls in the village called it an airport, so level that it was suitable for a runway! As I said, kampong children were very inventive. My eyesight was poor due to growing up reading by candlelight, so I had to wear cheap spectacles that were thick and chunky. As I grew in height, I also withdrew into my shell, losing my self-confidence, except when I was in the village. My father, whom we addressed as Ah Tetia, had scolded me many times for being dark, ugly and useless, a waste of rice. He kept comparing me to my cousin Mary who was the same age as me but as white as Hazeline Snow, a popular face cream. I wondered if my father understood the impact of his words. I wasn’t great academically though I was good in English, but I was fairly good at sports. I loved writing compositions, became a runner in school and played netball and badminton. As the latter activities were done outdoors, I got darker still, earning Ah Tetia’s wrath more than ever. I wasn’t ever going to please him, so I went ahead to play with the village kids and joined their boyish games.
“Aiyyoh, Ah Phine uh,” the boys lamented in Malay, our village lingua franca. “You’re a girl! How can you play lah!”
“Beri dia main. Let her join in,” Pak Osman, once our village elder, now leading a less active life, said. “Things are changing in the world. Girls can do what they were not allowed to do before…”
“Baik Datok, okay Grandfather,” the children conceded.
As always, my feet were bare. Very few village children wore shoes. One, because we loved the freedom of not wearing shoes. Two, because many of us could not afford to buy them. But this lack of restriction on growing feet meant that our feet were healthy and expanded naturally. This was another of my father’s grouses.
“You have such ugly feet! Too big! Too big!” he moaned, as if I had some kind of disfigurement. “Men like women with dainty feet. Who would want to marry you huh?”
If he could, he’d probably bind my feet as they did in ancient China! As far as he was concerned, I was a lost case. Besides being big, my feet were made worse by the fact that they were like a chimpanzee’s. My toes had good grip! I could hold a pencil with them, and climb trees with agility. My toes could cling to tree branches and trunks. I moved about like a monkey, plucking cherries and rambutans and even some coconuts. Alas, climbing trees was not an attribute for a good marriage! How my father despaired!
Still, I had to find things about myself to like.
I knew I could excel at the mud-sliding game. I was wearing the home-made cotton dress and petticoat that my mother, whom we addressed as Mak, had sewn on her Singer sewing machine. I wasn’t permitted to wear shorts or trousers, as my father claimed they drew attention to the pubic area.
“Tak seronoh sekali!” he would say. “No finesse!”
I took position at the patch of wet mud, with rivulets of water streaming down it. When one of the boys, Gurudev Singh, shouted Ready, Steady, Go! in English, a phrase which non-English speakers had adopted, though pronounced colloquially, I launched forward down the slippery trail in my bare feet, my arms held aloft at shoulder level to balance myself. I was zipping along very well, alternating between using the flats of my feet and their instep. But the thought came into my head that I was doing very well. The thought distracted me and my feet turned incorrectly and I whooshed too fast and flew into the air, skirt and petticoat blown out like a parachute, spectacles flung asunder, till my face kissed the wet ground.
The boys laughed, slapping their thighs. I had to pick myself and my soiled glasses up, face and body totally smeared with mud, feeling rather bruised, not just my body but my ego as well. I cleaned my spectacles with the hem of my dress and was mortified with shame. I wasn’t as good in sports as I had believed, and was glad when attention shifted from me to Zul as he took his turn. I hoped the boys had not seen my home-sewn cotton knickers! I swore to myself that one day I would earn enough to buy myself a pair of knickers from Metro, a department store in High Street where ordinary locals went, unlike Robinsons at Raffles Place, which was frequented by rich locals, the British and foreigners.
“Aku menang! Aku menang! I win! I win!” Zul yelled with pride.
Zul was a charming Malay boy and was my best friend Fatima’s youngest brother who had recently turned 12, the
