The Moving Malabar

by Angie Pay Jie Hui

 

The family car hasn’t always been a staple in the family. My father had bought it only when I was in primary school, for ease of business relations. He had a poultry supply business with a partner and needed to meet clients from time to time. They did imports and sales; he would work regular hours, and come home everyday to dinner my mother would have prepared.

I do not remember much of my mother from my childhood. It was not because she was absent; rather, her presence was so much of a constant it faded into the background. I learnt to expect she would be there when I wake up and when I go to sleep, and every single minute in between. My mother was a housewife. She cleaned, cooked, fed and educated the household whenever necessary.

For the longest time, her daily routine did not vary. Twice weekly she visits the supermarket across the street; when I started kindergarten, she occasionally cycled to the wet market a few bus stops away. She would tell me of the friends she had kopi with while waiting for me to end class. When the bicycle broke, so did that routine. She rarely ventured out after that.

I was a boisterous child, and often begged her to let me run at the playground. She rarely refused. On retrospect, perhaps it was the only time she felt she could be reassured to leave the house.

The playground was a castle of metal poles and red plastic walls. There was a rope bridge linking two sections together, and I would run shrieking across. The blue rubber flooring mesmerized me. A huge angsana tree stood to the side, providing shade. My mother was a gentle but quiet woman. She would sit at the bench and wait for me to be done. Occasionally, I hid behind the pillars and peeked at her. Almost always, she would be lost in thought, staring at the tree.

One year, my father decided to bring us in the car to the Christmas light up at Orchard Road. It was an impromptu decision; we were supposed to go back home after school, but my father changed his mind instead.

“We have time.” He said.

It was the one and only time we went to see the decorations as a family. The lights were only half up, but there were crowds already in the area. Cars were packed in all around us, there was a lot of honking, and we could not move.

“It was not the best day to be here.” My father said.

“We have time.” My mother said.

My father insisted we were stuck on the same stretch of road for an hour. I do not remember it; for a 6 year-old, time did not matter when the world is new to you. After I memorized the color of lights hanging off the tree branches and the number of Santas on the lampposts, I looked to the streets, where the world stood for me to watch.

There was a young couple who walked past our car. I watched them because their uniforms were the same colors as mine. The girl whispered something to the guy, he replied her, and they both started laughing. He pulled her closer to him. The world was lost to them.

The lights were fascinating, but when recounting the trip, my father would always mention how bad the traffic was. Perhaps we really were stuck in that jam for a really long time.

—

There was a shift in the family dynamics after I entered secondary school. My father fell out with his partner over the poultry supply business, and decided instead to start his own chicken farm at a plot of land along the outskirts of Lim Chu Kang. He would rear chickens from chicks, and sell them to buyers. It was not possible to manage the business alone, so he requested my mother to help him on the farm.

My mother was not against the idea. Her family used to own a floral business, and she spent most of her growing years out in the fields tending to the plants. Before she married my father, she was on a farm her entire life too.

She called me over one day, when she was tending to her Malabar chestnut. The Malabar was a fairly interesting plant; in Asian cultures, it was supposed to bring good fortune, although I’m not sure if my mother believed that. Our plant was medium-sized, one she had gotten at the local night market a few days after I started secondary one. It stood about a metre tall in a brown clay pot. The top half of the plant consisted of thin, green stalks that branched out into broad leaves that were glossy and a fairly dark green.

The most interesting part of the plant, however, was its trunk. The trunk was braided, a combination of five or so small strands covered in light brown bark, each twined together to form the sturdy base. Towards the top, before it split into the greener stems, a slight bit of discoloration had turned the bark moss green and a lighter, muddy brown.

She had a pair of small scissors with her, and was looking through the leaves carefully.

“Doesn’t it look nice?” She said happily.

“The trunks are interesting,” I said. “They are like my hair.”

She put the scissors down gently, and turned to me.

“I might not be home much anymore.”

“It’s okay.” I said.

“Your father will have to work longer hours.”

“That’s alright.”

“You will have to do some things on your own.”

I nodded. She looked at me, smiled, and returned to the plant.

I prepared myself mentally after the conversation, ready for whatever lay ahead. As the weeks passed, however, it never felt like anything much had changed. We still woke up and had breakfast prepared for us every morning. She still braided my hair before they drove me to school. The only difference was that I had to wash my own shoes and socks during the weekends, and lay them out in the sun to dry. Occasionally, she would call and ask me to mop the floor.

“You are very lucky to have her as your mother.” My father said one morning, on our way to school. It was just the two of us in the car that day. He had decided to let my mother sleep in a little longer, and do a second trip back home to fetch her for work.

“I guess.” I said.

He turned his face away, clicked his tongue, and said no further.

My 15 year-old self thought I understood what he was saying. Compared to some of the classmates in school, I was lucky: my family was complete, and both my parents cared and provided for me.

My father never brought up the topic again.

My parents spent long hours at the farm, building their whole business up from scratch. During weekends, they would leave the house before the sun was out, and only returned past 10 o’clock at night. Weekdays were a little less hectic – and since my parents were working together, it was a common arrangement for them to pick me up from school. I was studying a few neighbourhoods over from where we lived, and lessons and drama practice usually ended in the evenings. I’ve always felt they viewed the car rides as a form of bonding time; perhaps they felt guilty leaving me to manage on my own as they both worked.

It was on one of these trips home that I heard my mother giggle. They had picked me up after practice, and we were met with another jam on the expressway again, our car moving slowly with everybody else.

She had spoken aloud to me. I was looking out the car at another motorcyclist near-by, and did not register her words. “What?”

“Are your library books due yet?” My mother said. “You had two of them on the floor.”

“Next week, I think.” I had completely forgotten about them. Strangely enough, the excitement of reading new books tended to dissipate rather quickly once I’ve borrowed them home.

The car was crawling; we would move a couple metres, and then stop; and then a couple metres again, and then stop. Something up ahead in one of the lanes was probably stuck.

“There seems to be an accident.” My father said. He peered past the car in front.

“It doesn’t look too good.” My mother said.

My father turned the radio down. Mother turned to him.

“Liyun came by yesterday after you left for your jog.”

“Ah? How is she?”

“She dropped off some foodstuff I asked her to buy. I didn’t have time.”

“That’s good.”

The car rolled forward a few metres again. Up ahead, I could see the flashing lights of an ambulance. Craning my neck, I tried to get a better view. The cars in front were blocking my way.

“She said our Malabar was growing very well.”

“Did she?”

“She took a picture for Samuel. She said he was studying botany.”

“Is he in Singapore?”

“You know how children like to run. He’s in America.”

My father nodded. “That is quite a distance.”

“She wasn’t worried about him. She was more worried about her plants that he brought with him.”

The car slowed as we passed the accident site. An ambulance’s lights were flashing; a Honda Civic sat stationary, its bonnet crushed. The paramedics were talking to a man sitting by the side of the road. There was no blood. Our car inched its way around the dividers the traffic police had set up, then everyone started speeding up again.

“We might be able to visit him.”

“Who?”

“Samuel.”

“Perhaps. Maybe after the business is stable.”

“We’ve only gone on a plane once,” My mother said. “Do you remember?”

My father glanced up and looked at me in the rearview mirror. “Here she goes once more,” he said. “About that only and only time we got out of the country.” He was smiling slightly.

“Ha.” I said.

“It was so long ago. Mae wasn’t even born yet.”

There was a bird soaring in the sky; it was too far away to see what exactly it was. I traced its path on the glass window of the car. Mother was looking up at the sky too. Perhaps she was looking at the same thing.

“I like planes.” She said. She turned back in her seat.

“Planes, or plants?” My father said. He glanced at her.

My mother let out a small, high-pitched giggle. If one had been distracted and staring at a motorcycle out the window like I previously was, one would have missed it. As it was, my attention was all but focused inside the car, and I heard the clear and distinct ‘hee-hee’ that ran out loose from between her lips. It was as childishly girly as a young teenager’s.

I wasn’t sure what she found funny about my father’s reply. Was it a private joke? Was it their private joke? I looked back out the window.

That night, they went home and shifted the Malabar outdoor, so it could get more sunlight and better space to grow. My mother got a red piece of ribbon, and tied it to one of the leaves.

—

University was when I spent the least time at home. Classes, assignment deadlines and theatre practice usually meant late nights in school instead, or sometimes even staying over and going for class straight the next morning. My parents’ business had grown, and they started spending long hours at work even on weekdays. We hardly saw each other much. On the rare occasion I was home, they were usually already asleep.

One night, my mother had a nightmare. It was slightly past 2am and I had just returned from school, having a late dinner in the living room. All of a sudden, I heard a noise growing from their bedroom. It was low and guttural – a sound wrenched deep from within her consciousness and forced out to the world in a single weak, helpless cry. Heart beating, I leapt from my seat to their bedroom, bursting through the door just in time to see her, mouth open and thrashing, before my father shook her awake.

Eyes wide, she stared at us, and then slumped back on her pillows. I could barely make out her face in the dark.

“It’s just a nightmare,” My father said.

A few days later, we were out in the car again, before the sun was up. I had asked my parents to send me to school, rather than sit through the two hours it takes to get there by public transport. It meant we had to wind through most of the farms in the Lim Chu Kang area to stop at my father’s place and drop him off first, but I was agreeable to it. The countryside was nice, and I could rest in the privacy of the car instead of sharing a cabin with 50 other strangers.

That morning, I was squashed in the back seat with the Malabar plant. My parents had decided to bring it to the farm; the nosy auntie next door had kept fiddling with the leaves, making them drop at an alarming rate. The Malabar would achieve greater peace in the open country, my mother had decided. They hauled it to the car and pushed it in the backseat.

“Your uncle brought along another bonsai last week.” My mother said. We were stopped at the traffic lights, about to go on the expressway.

“Did he?” I said.

“He spends most of his weekends with us at the farm now. You’ll see his plants later. He has over eighty of them at our entrance.”

My uncle was a man almost in his 60s, complete with scruffy beard and prominent beer belly. He was my mother’s brother, and a typical Asian father. His hands had only known hard manual labour their entire life.

“Your aunt is at the convenience store a lot. There’s nothing much for him to do, except pick her up after her shift.” My mother said.

“I see.” I said.

We stopped at a traffic light again. There is some silence.

“We met Jason at the kopitiam yesterday.” She paused. “He said he might be moving to Johor to work.”

“Has he told uncle?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” my mother said. “Do you think Hup gets lonely? Maybe that’s why he comes to visit so often.”

My father gave a non-committal grunt.

“Jamie is studying in America. Their entire family has drifted.” My mother said.

“He was too strict on them last time.” My father said.

The other traffic light turned orange; a green arrow started flashing for the other lane. My mother turned to face me.

“Will you stay in Singapore next time?”

“I’m not sure.”

She looked at me for a moment, then turned back to the front. “Working here might not be bad.”

“We’ll see. Theatre is a very small industry though.”

“Where else can you go?”

I kept silent. For a moment, I wasn’t sure if she was asking me, or talking to herself.

She was quiet staring out the window, and then – “We might be able to visit you. We could take a plane.”

“Mm.” I said.

The lights turned green, and we fell into silence. My father turned on the radio as we moved. It crackled a little before the signal was caught, and music started playing softly through the speakers. The drone of the car engines and consistent scratch of tires on tarmac was lulling.

I was dozing in the backseat when my mother spoke again.

“Mae,” She said.

I opened my eyes. We were in the outskirts of the Lim Chu Kang farming area. Agricultural and ornamental plants farmhouses stretch out from around us, mostly single-level establishments of rusty tin walls sprawled across a few acres. A few farmers were out, working. Green chain-link fence lined the perimeters of the farms; the rest of the land was trees and grass.

Here, you could almost see to the horizon. The sun had rose slightly, turning the sky faintly pink and purple. My father put the windows down, and the morning came rushing in, stinging our faces with cold wind and rippling through our hair.

“The Mempet trees are blooming.” My mother pointed out.

They were. I hadn’t noticed the pink flowers.

“We used to have these back in the kampung. I wonder what Hup would do if he saw them?”

Trees were lined up at intervals along the road, but only a handful of them were covered in the distinctive pink blooms. Contrasted against the faintly purple hues of the sky, it was a pretty sight. I glanced down at the road. Fallen petals littered the road we were on, creating a sparse but distinct pink carpet.

I wasn’t paying attention, but my father must have said something in reply to mother’s question, for the next thing I know, my mother was suddenly howling with laughter in her seat. Her entire body was shaking; legs drawn up, she clutched at her stomach. Her laughter was almost silent, a soft “ah-ha-ha-ha”, with the “a” cut off prematurely each time, as though the end of the syllable was a secret she kept to herself.

I had not seen my mother laugh like that before.

She gasped, barely drawing any air in, before the “ah-ha-ha-ha” laughter consumed her again. She choked out a few words but they were lost in the wheezing.

My father started chortling with her. From the back seat I could not see their faces, so I stared at the back of their headrests. We sped down the tarmac, dawn filtering through the leaves of the trees lining the road. It felt like their laughter echoed for miles out across the farmland.

Who would take care of the Malabar if they were gone?

The question suddenly occurred to me, popping in my head like a seedpod dispersing seeds over the ground. For a moment, I was afraid.

The car made a turn, and continued down a road similar to the other three we just passed. My mother was still wheezing. My father was still chuckling. I looked out the window, and pushed the thought aside.