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mugen_edamameHere's two weeks worth of angsting and dreaming of the ocean. May you hear Van Da Via Ondo in you dreams!
***
We just got off the plane, now in warm and sunny Malaysia, and already Wolfram is rushing towards the nearest toilet.
Unsurprisingly, Wolfram chose to keep his deluded sense of masculinity and force down four meals of fish and assorted seafood. And since the boy gets motion sickness from riding a bicycle, holding it in during the little fun we had with turbulence before landing was a heroic feat.
Marque is laughing, I’m laughing. Wolfram is a well of fun.
The signs are in multiple languages, the voices over the speakers speak in different tongues, and the ceiling is ridiculously pretty. Wooden slats with dotted lights; if the sky was more earthen in nature, this is what it would look like.
“Mum, cousin Wolf’s taking a long time. I’ll go check on him”
Bless Marque and his obsession with health; he’ll be a wonderful doctor if he wants to.
Like a much more attractive, darker, sweeter House.
Because without a doubt, every mother thinks her child is the single most awesome person alive.
It’s a bit of a juggling act when the mother has more than one child, but I should imagine the intense feelings of fondness multiply with each birth.
Or it could be hormones. My unreliable memory has struck again.
Tap tap tap.
I’m a compulsive foot-tapper. Numerous teachers have scolded me or knocked my knees with a ruler; did not and does not stop me.
Where are they? The baggage carousel with our luggage has already started spinning, and I think I can see Wolfram’s frilly pink one.
Heh.
Celi must have planned this somehow. When Wolf started to pack, not a single suitcase was untorn but for those of his mother’s. I suspect Conrad hid the decent ones; after our Kodak moment I think it’s safe to assume he’s flamingly in love with his brother.
Wouldn’t surprise me if Mona Lisa has a pink-lolita fetish that he smilingly pushes onto his pretty little brother.
So off we left, me and Marque with our worn-but-working bags, Wolfram red in the face slinging a large pink carryall with Hello Kitty prints.
The only surprising factor in Wolfram’s quiet coercion is the realisation that Cecilie is a fan of the mouthless cat.
She always struck me as more of a Barbie girl.
Where are they?
Tap tap tap.
Yes, I’ve had enough of this.
Where’re my dark glasses? And that warm vest?
And the omniweather I’m-such-a-tourist hat.
I look silly, dressed for winter in the tropics, but I look a lot like a boy now.
I consistently thank the genes my parents gifted me when situations like these arise. And they arise quite often, since it’s usually just me and Marque.
I’m a woman that looks like a very pretty boy.
Very pretty boy, but from class photos to social networking sites, a pot-shot at my gender swings more to girly-boy than elegant mother.
Sadly, my short stature aids the picture of young boy more than regal woman.
But at least taking a cab in a foreign country isn’t quite so daunting.
Like that one time in Latin America, when I had gone out to look for dinner, and Marque was safely holed up in the hotel room with all the
available deadbolts bolted.
A glorious little restaurant sold salsa and spiced beef and flatbread half the city away, and though the walk there was glorious, it was getting dark when I was ready to go back.
I hailed a cab, and a beefy, moustachioed cabbie with a feral grin stopped for me.
I’m usually careful to get the ones that look like they’d get blown away by a sneeze, but it was so late, and I was getting paranoid for Marque. Luckily I was dressed in my thick jacket and old khaki pants. At best I looked asexual, at worst I looked like a dishevelled nerdy student.
He spoke something about bringing me around to see his home, it was lovely out there in the countryside, and I spent ten minutes berating myself for choosing the one cab whose driver had to be into shota-con.
So I played the part of bloody annoying tourist who believes that language wasn’t a barrier if I screamed loud enough. I coughed, cleared my throat, sneezed, guffawed at nothing, and made every noise imaginable that was the anti-thesis of the little blond boy in that comic about high school for the rich and famous.
I repeated the name of the hotel maybe twenty times, sounding condescending every time. I also neglected to mention that I understood Spanish, so him muttering “bastard better not start singing” had me belting out Michael Jackson’s greatest hits.
I gather he had fallen out of love with me by then.
I got to the hotel soon enough, tossed him some cash and haggled in broken Spanish, pretended I was annoyed by the one dollar tip he had pocketed, and damn well ran to find Marque.
So looking like a boy, even a pretty one, has its perks.
Cautiously, I walked to the men’s room, steeling myself in preparation of the horror that is, urinals. Those weren’t pretty in any country.
It’s empty, but for Wolfram looking a little green at the sink. One stall is occupied, but my nephew was too busy taking in deep breaths to have noticed my presence.
I took this as an opportunity to solve a question that has left me wondering for a decent while.
Gruff, think gruff, think male.
Just out of the line of mirrors, hat tipped downwards to cover most of my face, I ground out.
“Hey, pretty boy, what’re you doing here all by yourself? Want to come with me and have some fun?”
That was a tacky pick-up line, and I’m ashamed that I actually managed to speak such hopelessly corny words, but Wolf’s apparently too distracted to pay attention to anything other than my nauseatingly perverted voice.
“For fuck’s sake, I’m in this fucking country for under a day, and you’ve got to be fucking kidding me if you think I’m going to accept a come fucking on from a fucking man again”
How many bad words did my pretty little nephew fit in that?
Well, at least I’ve confirmed that girls aren’t the only ones who make a fool of themselves for him.
I can hear a voice sniggering. Since Marque is the only person that can ever discern that it’s me even at my most dashing, I can guess who’s in the stall.
“Language, Wolf. You nearly swore the paint of the walls. Marque! Are you all right?”
It never ceases to be funny, the way horror slowly blooms on Wolfram’s face.
“I’m okay mum! It’s just that seeing cousin Wolf hurling…”
He didn’t have to finish the sentence. I get sympathetic retching too.
“Hurry Marque, I’ll get you the alka to take!”
A hum of agreement from the other side of the door, and I’m dragging my nephew out.
I ignore the looks I get; given the family resemblance it probably looks like I’m bodily hauling my brother from the toilet, but that’s hardly enough to stop me from being me.
Unresisting, my nephew gets dragged to the water fountain someone had thoughtfully designed opposite the entrance to the washroom.
I point at it imperiously.
“Gargle. Spit”
He does so.
“Drink”
He does that too, and the more he rehydrates, the less he looks like he’s about to keel over and die.
I’m busy smirking to myself when I feel a little hand grip my shirt.
Marque, the poor emphatic dear, is sweating and shaking lightly.
I wipe the bangs off his forehead and he gets a little kiss.
There’s an empty plastic cup in my bag, and poor, not-as-important-as-my¬-son Wolf gets shoved out of the way.
I dissolve the tablet in the water I poured into the cup from the fountain, swirl it around judiciously, and pass it to Marque.
“Drink half, the other half is for the wimp you call cousin, Marque”
He’s already sipping away. The hand that isn’t ruffling his hair pats Wolfram’s back as he bends to continue drinking.
The cup is emptied very fast, and they both look better for it.
“All right, my little men, let’s get our bags and set off on our incredible and astonishing adventure!”
All I get in return for my cheeriness are weird looks from the other people in the airport, and non-committal grunts from the boys.
As Anissina would frustratedly say it,
Men.
oOoOo
The bags were collected without much of a fuss, since our previous preoccupation with the toilets earlier means that most people had already retrieved their stuff and left. The lack of a crowd suited us just fine, and Marque was still being unusually clingy.
Since hitting age 7, Marque has restricted public displays of affection. I’m not allowed to randomly kiss, hug or pinch him, and we don’t get to hold hands ever. Even though I must have told him a million times that when he’s older his skin won’t be as ridiculously soft and by then I wouldn’t want to touch his hand, and he’d regret not letting me when he was younger, the boy remains firm in his beliefs.
So for him to still be clutching my shirt means he’s not feeling very well. I guess it’s probably due to a potent combination of airline food, hours in a cramped space, new weather, jet lag and exhaustion.
Sounds a lot scarier when it’s listed like that… I hope Amalina is here. I think all three of us really need to rest as soon as we can.
Especially Wolf. I think this is the furthest he’s ever been from home, and I know from pain of experience that the first time is always the
hardest.
“Look out for a tall, pretty lady with black hair and dark eyes. Wears glasses, hair tied up in a ponytail, and probably has a sign with the words “Msrs. Rufus, Marque and Wolfram”, because that’s the kind of humour your new aunt Amali has”
“Aunt Ru, won’t your friend, whom you’ve not met for longer than I’ve been alive, mind sharing her home with you guys and me?”
“Ah, an attempt at sarcasm and subtlety! How badly you failed, then, Wolf. To answer your question, she doesn’t mind. She’s not married, and her house is more than big enough for us to stay at. And besides, we’ll be seeing the country. We’ll only be staying with Amali while we’re in the capital. I want to go visit the islands and do a lot of snorkelling, so you’ll be spending more time attempting to avoid getting sunburnt than nervously twitching at Amalina’s dinner table, Wolf”
It isn’t odd that Amalina isn’t married; I’m not, and I happen to be hopelessly in love with me.
But religion being the way it is, it’s highly unadvisable for her to have children out of wedlock.
Downright dangerous, really, if one considers the extent to which prejudices can reach.
Which is a pity, because she’s always been such a sweetheart, and would make any child happy to have her.
Pity.
I got Marque, and he outweighs heartbreak. Which means, the pain was worth it.
What kind of suffering is it, to know that you aren’t even allowed to chance heartbreak for something sweet?
Gives me a headache. Ethical and theological views aside; adults should be trusted to behave like adults.
At least, the nice ones should.
“Mum, that lady over there is giving you the lovey-hearts look”
The look I taught my son to recognise and move away from with considerable swiftness.
Wolfram pulls Marque to stand slightly behind him, so that my boy’s between us two adults. Apparently, Aurel had similar ideas concerning lovey-hearts look.
Wolf then read my mind.
“Father called it the I’m-thinking-sexy-thoughts-of-you look, and told me to glare at the people who give me that look, after the sixth flasher targeted me when I was 7.”
A flash of a stunning smile from Wolfram, and wild waving from the side attracts my attention.
“It’s the crazy woman, mum!”
Hush, darling. We’ll be staying with crazy woman for a while.
“Amalina!”
oOoOo
Amalina drives a tiny toy of a car, the boot so bizarrely undersized that half our bags are wedged in the backseat between Marque and Wolf. It’s unbelievably hot; all of us have taken off our jackets, though Amali says the weather is being quite temperate.
We had hugged each other enthusiastically in the airport, chattering and laughing, while the two boys made awkward conversation with each other. Amali said that we’d looked like a reuniting couple in a Hindustani movie, then nearly fainted when I told her I don’t really know what a Hindustani movie would have in common with our reunion.
I’ve been made to swear two hours for a chick-fest involving some man by the name of “Sharoo Kan”.
Or something. Her English is a lot more accented than I remembered, which would make sense since she’s been living here from when school ended.
Also, the ends of her sentences are sometimes randomly punctuated with “la”s or “ma”s. Her sentences sound like a melody.
Ever-observant Marque had timidly mentioned that this speech pattern was absent in the Indonesians we had met on another of our trips. As I expected, my friend had taken an instant liking to my son, and had smilingly told him that “adding a “–lah” to the end of sentence doesn’t mean anything, it’s just there to complete the sentence. It shows emotion too, Marque, if said correctly. Hopefully you’ll stay long enough to be able to tell when we mean what”
Marque is already charmed by the sheer variety of the country.
Wolfram, the socially inept, has taken to smiling weakly at Amalina, and is now sitting quietly in the back, head almost between his knees as he takes deep breaths to stop from vomiting. Like all other things about Bielefelds, when we get something, we really get it.
Aurel was hospitalised for 3 weeks when he was a teen, after a simple case of the flu managed to mutate into a weird, resistant strain of the disease. He was quarantined for two weeks before they let us visit him. And Wolfram gets carsick with the intensity of that I would have thought was only possible through intensive training and a pure personification of will. On bad days, even motion-sickness medication prescribed by the finest physicians, courtesy of Celi, only meant he could sound a warning before he retched.
“Umm… Ru, is the blond Wolf okay?”
Three cheers for the multi-tasking women. Amalina had managed to glance at Wolfram in her rear-view mirror as she used it to check the distance between cars to cut ahead of the slow van in front of us.
The sudden jolt of speed drove Wolfram deeper between his knees, and I’m a little worried.
“He’ll be fine, but he’s got food-poisoning and he’s carsick. Is it very far to get to your house?”
Now it’s a look at her watch simultaneously as she steps on the accelerator.
“Usually it’s a long-ish trip, but…”
“Don’t worry Wolfrahm! We’ll be there in half an hour!”
Now it’s a slight turn to the back to shout as she flicks her indicator lights to enter the fast lane.
We drive on in relative peace now.
“How come everything is so… flat?”
I’m accustomed to airports smack bang in the city, or at least close enough that you could see office buildings and people. What surrounded the airport we arrived in was barren and red, no hills to break the horizon, nor green to soften the sight.
Not a very pleasant thing to see, for the first sight of a country.
Amali shrugs, and the car moves a little bit faster.
“It’s out of the way for everyone. The old airport was in a much nicer place, but it’s tiny, so it’s not used much. If it was up to me, I wouldn't have the port welcoming foreigners in a place so character-less”
Small talk about big talk. That issue was probably political when it was brought up, but now it’s soft drivel to utter as I try not to fall asleep.
I really haven’t seen her in a while; now would be the best time to catch up.
She didn't know I had a child until all of a few days ago, and both boys at the back sound like they’re dozing.
It’s warm, the heat is a damper, and we’re exhausted. Sadly, that’s not a good enough an excuse to fall asleep the first hour of meeting our landlady.
She turns to look at me, then looks ahead again. Amalina is so dreadfully pretty; skin a light brown, colouring so dark and mysterious. I really do wonder why she never got married. She must have enough admirers.
“You can take a nap, Rufus. I’ll call you all when we’re almost there”
The niceness factor can’t be forgotten either.
I lean back against the seat, trying to get comfortable. Not much of a napper, I wake up feeling twice the idiot I was before going to sleep.
But the tiredness is making me incoherent, even my thoughtless thoughts have become too tangential.
“Terima kasih”
Accept my affection and thanks.
oOoOo
“…fus”
Ngh.
“..ufus!”
A minute. I’ll be up in a minute.
Breathing is hard, suddenly.
And what the hell is on my nose?
“Gah!”
Amalina is grinning at me, leaning across the driver’s seat to pinch my nose. The boys were standing behind her holding our bags, looking
nervous.
Too groggy to think.
“Ghhh”
She looks at my son. My sun smiles.
“Mum does not like waking up, aunt Amalina”
“She was hard to wake when she fell asleep in Home Ec too. Nice to know you didn’t change, Rufus”
Body check.
Legs, arms, nose, neck, eyelashes.
All functioning.
On three, dear body of mine.
One, two…
I ooze out of the passenger-side door, unsteadily straightening after being curved in the small confines of the car.
Amali’s eyes dance prettily with laughter, but I’m still cotton-headed.
“Let’s go in, we can go eat out later. There’ s a very nice mamak shop only a few minutes away.”
Mak mak?
“What’s a mother mother shop?”
Oh good, it’s not me being delirious, Marque got that as well.
I shine a beam at him. How smart and heroic of my little boy!
Amalina laughs out loud now, Wolf looks dazed.
“Mamak, not mak-mak! It’s local Indian food that’s very cheap and very nice. Open till the late hours, for football fans to meet and watch matches, so you guys can go rest first”
Wolf, I should be looking out for him now.
“Amali, do you have an English-Malay dictionary you could lend us? I’m afraid Wolf and Marque might get a bit lost, otherwise”
Aww, Wolf sends me his best I’m-so-thankful-but-I-think-I’m-too-awesome-to-admit-it smile. He does look like a little boy lost, clutching his Hello Kitty, other hand clamped on Marque’s shoulder.
My little world-traveller looks a lot more at ease.
I wonder; maybe dragging Wolfram to experience new and interesting things this suddenly wasn’t such a bright idea.
Amali sends me an understanding look, then indulges in a look of longing for my nephew.
Funny. It’s not really struck me that Wolfram is.
A Man.
With a capital M, a valid I.D, and an adult-ish build.
He’s the pudgy little baby that could scream a house down, and he’s the blond angel who had once thoughtlessly deprived the world of a lovely sight of Wolf in a cat’s costume, complete with whiskers, by opting for a full-body Darth Vader costume on Halloween.
Not a gorgeous young man who looks accustomed to being drooled over.
And I didn’t know people my age could still drool over anybody.
Though, the way my nephew looks, maybe it’s understandable.
How should I feel? Amalina wouldn’t do anything, but making sheep’s eyes at my Wolf…
Marque, that brilliant little creature, manages a distraction.
His stomach rumbles, and he blushes.
That’s right, they both lost their breakfast and lunch at the washroom earlier; what with boys growing as boys insist they must, they must be starving.
Amalina looks away from Wolfram, looks at me, and smiles a little apologetically.
Just a little apologetically.
Nothing for it but to return her smile. I’ll wonder about it later. Wolfram’s old enough to be intelligent, and it’s not my little sweetheart that’s making a grown woman relive fantasies with him in place of Brad Pitt.
She heads to unlock the door, and I get a quick glance around. It’s a bit of suburbia, and her home is a sweet little bungalow, a really pretty yard with small flowering shrubs.
Wolf sidles to my left, Marque attached to my right.
“Aunt Ru…”
He’s still a boy. No man would have the guts to look so vulnerable.
“Don’t worry, she’s much too much of a lady to do anything that would make you uncomfortable. Thank you for worrying about her and my feelings, Wolf”
He blushes just a little, nods, and walks quietly through the door. He’s not clutching his mother’s bag like it was the only thing keeping him afloat any more, at least.
It must be difficult, to be such a considerate heart breaker. The curse of the stunning.
Marque will have his time too; not purely from a mother’s point of view, he will grow up to be a truly gorgeous boy. I just hope he doesn’t get into as much trouble as Wolf did.
No 6 flashers for my boy.
oOoOo
I get the spare bedroom, and in an effort to prevent Wolfram from being homesick on day one, Marque is rooming with him. Both boys are busy flipping through the channels, a little disheartened that there were so few series even on this country’s version of satellite TV.
I’m helping Amalina cook a lunch so late it does not deserve the title “lunch”; the mamak treat is for tonight.
The house is small but pleasant, spacious for a woman living alone. We had a grand tour, but aside from the blanching of the boys’ faces at having to share a single bathroom, there wasn’t much of much.
The little garden at the back was pretty amazing though. There’s lemongrass, screw pine leaves, little lime plants, the most startling purple chillies, and a small unhealthy-looking trees that she swore bore fruits that were red and hairy.
Not exactly the characteristic one looks for in a fruit that’s to be eaten, but if it’s sweet I’ll definitely give it a try.
“You didn’t tell me you were married”
I’m careful not to flinch or cover my face with shame; my hand is holding a blade and I’m industriously chopping garlic. I’d rather not blind myself, really.
“Sorry, Amali.”
She waves her hand dismissively, though the kitchen knife she’s holding would put many katanas to shame.
“So, who’s the lucky man ah?”
Sod it. Should I tell her my sad little life’s story? Aside from Anissina, no one knows exactly how I got Marque.
Aurel knew, knew while I was pregnant, but he had to go and die before my son could meet the most wonderful uncle in the world.
But Amali reminds me a bit of mum. There’s something really safe about people like them, a security that makes it same all right to admit to being dumb, daft and dead-in-the-head.
Wish mum and dad hadn’t gone, either. I can’t imagine I’d ever be too old for my parents, even if I lived this I was a thousand and they to one thousand and thirty five.
“Would you like me any less if it turns out I’m a horrible, selfish person?”
Again, the worrying wave of the knife.
“You’re being too self-deprecating again lah, you serial meek woman. Unless you’ve completely changed, ok, in the time since we were really close friends, I can tell you that you probably were being a crazy martyr again”
A bizarre, beautiful turn of sweet English laced with her mother tongue.
Makes me wax lyrical, how utterly charming her personality could be.
Always was.
Amalina was the mother hen of our little brood, way back when. She was even-tempered, and refused to be drawn into arguments.
Whereas I would either be so scathingly rude that the flesh was torn from the bones of my offender, or Aurel would have a “My spidey-senses are tingling!” moment and mysteriously appear to beat the stuffing out of whoever was bullying me.
Amalina however dealt with annoying people with steely, firm politeness.
Boys used to call her stupid names because her gorgeous skin was so much more tanned than most of ours.
She would just smile and completely ignore them.
Like they were old relatives who had made senile comments about the weather and the pet dog that’d died before the Second World War.
And if boys chose to pick on one of her friends, then so help them God.
I was in the middle quite a few times, being as disproportionately aggressive as I was.
“Excuse me,” she’d said politely, tapping the shoulder of the Leader, whose name is not worthy of my memory.
“Excuse me, but what are you doing?”
The boy had crowed and preened about how he was putting in my place after I slammed my book onto his hand.
“Oh. Why did Rufus do that?”
Ru-fuck, and yes, the mind of little cruel boys are amazing things, had tried to stop his Holiness from taking her book.
Amalina had pushed through to stand in front of me, and was still wearing the dazed smile of the polite and inquisitive.
“Why were you taking her book without her permission?”
Because he hadn’t finished his homework, the bastard.
Her smile had turned grim, and even I was a little scared.
“That doesn’t sound like a nice thing to do, bullying a girl. I don’t think the teacher would be happy to hear that, you stealing Rufus’ book because you were too lazy to do the work yourself.”
He ran off after that; our maths’ teacher was a formidable man who was tough on slackers. He also was dad’s drinking buddy the first Thursday of every month, and my father had suggested that he keep an eye out for me at school.
Amali was matured even then, and I guess telling her small bits and pieces wouldn’t hurt.
I can excuse myself a little sigh. For a story that’s eight years old, it never stops stinging.
Stupid stinging stops my boy from having a normal life.
Oh God, may Amali have something terrifyingly helpful to say. I’m in desperate need of an emotional revolution.
“Never married, my Amali. Was hopelessly in love, did things I didn’t ever really think I would do, and he left, because I loved him blindly but he loved someone else blindly. I told him to go, even though I was pregnant with Marque. It still hurts to think about, and I haven’t stayed home longer than 3 weeks since, because I can’t”
“La, that’s so horrible!”
She looks torn between her natural reserve and hugging me. Amali, while loving, was born with the natural contact-aversion of many Asians. Hugging made her uncomfortable.
So I smile.
“It’s worst for my son. He gets the best education available online, and he’s so smart it’s never trouble for him to understand anything, and he loves travelling and meeting different people, and reads obsessively, and is soft and sweet and patient!’
“Ah, Rufus, that’s bad is it?”
Knives have been set down. We are wise women, after all.
“He doesn’t deserve to be forced to cater to my fancies, doesn’t deserve to not have a permanent home, doesn’t deserve to constantly be uprooted!”
“Shuu, Ru, the children”
Pragmatic, pragmatic.
“I can’t stop myself, and he worries too much about me to stop me!”
“Ru, you have enough money for all this?”
I’m stupid and childish and mulish and petulant and dumb.
Luckily I’m not utterly useless.
“Wolf’s oldest brother is chairman of the Bank of Voltaire, he looks after my stock options and savings. Plus, you might not have known, Amali, but Anissina’s publishing house was mine. I sold it to her, but have stakes in it. Anissina’s self-written series are popular with the world in general, so yes, I’ll always have enough money to support this addiction”
I try for a lopsided grin, and can’t help but wonder if it’s just a little sad.
“Which doesn’t help Marque’s case at all, of course”
“Kesiannya…”
Funny, how we always slip into our most basic of abilities, when we feel something so strongly. Nervous tics from when we were young, our first language.
Amalina had just used one of my favourite words in the entire Malay vocabulary, one that she had often used back when we were school children, even though she had been so careful to erase anything about her accent that could be used as cannon fodder.
It means I feel sorry for you, but it’s not meant to be pitying. It’s almost symbolic of how much pain the person who says it feels for the person that’s suffering.
Almost, I feel bad for you, I feel horrible for you.
My mum had been very fond of the word, after that.
“Feel worse for Marque, Amali. I’ve been a horrible mother, am being a horrible, self-centred, selfish woman.”
“Hei, if you aren’t starving the boy, if he’s not eating anti-depression pills, and if neither of you are angry at each other about anything, then you aren’t being a horrible mother”
She measures a tiny length between her thumb and pointer finger.
“Maybe a leetle bit silly, but remember what you said?”
What I said when?
“To quote, Ru. When I fall, I will fall hard. And probably never get up.”
She smiles, and goes back to chopping chillies.
“It’s your adorable quirk, that hurts you a lot. But if my friend Ru wasn’t so overwhelmingly overwhelming, you wouldn’t be much of friend Ru”
That was… pacifying. Even if not the awakening I hoped it was.
Though if Marque isn’t unhappy…
“You’re like the sister I never had, you know”
“To help with the family you’d lost. I’m not so nice, Rufus. Just you that inspires me to be this way”
Ack, being all sad and weak and wishy-washy gets annoying after a while. Sometimes I think I should at least have punched the consciousness out of him after he said he was in love with someone else, rather than just be sweet and meek and say “goodbye”
Maybe that’s exactly what I should do. For all I know a little bit of physical violence is all that stands between me and complete emancipation.
I’ll find out where he’s staying, demand my right to get all this old, dusty stuff of my chest, and punch him silly.
Anissina’s told me to do it a thousand times, but Amalina’s completely unrelated talk appears to be the straw that broke the camel’s back. Anything is worth a try at this point, and if it means I can stay with the people I love after this, without feeling an itching in my feet to get away…
I’m going to hit him so hard he will faint.
“You give the most useful talks, Amali”
Wait, that might be a little confusing since she doesn’t know my brilliant conclusion.
“Wha-“
“Aunt Ru?”
Wolf the pretty sticks his head in the kitchen, looking at us questioningly before his eyes dart to the steaming curry on the stove.
“What’s wrong, Wolf?”
He has the decency to blush, and I can just hear Amalina’s soul going “awwww!”
“We were wondering when we could eat, aunt Ru, aunt Amalina”
Well, the brown curry looked like brown curry from the moment it was put on the stove, so I really would have no idea when it would be done. It’s still brown, but since it’s starting to choke the kitchen with its sharp, herby smell, I’m guessing the curry is well on its way to completion.
“I’ll go get the rice done, Rufus, just stir the curry”
Amalina sauntered off to the dining room, doing interesting local things I couldn’t see.
“Oi! Can you eat with your hands?”
Wolfram, unflappable though he claims to be, was startled quite violently by the sudden shout. I guess she just didn’t believe in coming closer to talk.
I’m more than willing to let go of my usual behaviour to suit local tastes, however. Plus Marque and I scream at each other instead of getting closer and speaking softly whenever we stay in a large apartment of a proper house; it seems a perfectly decent way to communicate.
And anything that could scare my etiquette-is-the-be-all-and-end-all nephew, who’s way too stiff for someone so young, is truly a wonderful thing.
“No idea, Amalina! Haven’t done that in years!”
Wolfram’s shaking his head in disappointment at the barbarism of us adults.
“How about you, Marque?”
Since she isn’t shouting, I think I can safely assume that Marque’s padded through in his socks to see what the commotion was about.
Ah, socks.
Wolfram had nearly dislocated his jaw when he was informed by a smirking Amalina that no shoes were allowed in her house; feet and socks only, preferential treatment being given to the barefoot people.
“But my shoes are clean!”
“People sit on the floor, roll around on the floor, and occasionally sleep on the floor. Your shoes aren’t that clean, Wolfrahm”
She says his name with a large, grand-sounding “raHm”, which makes it echo even when she says it softly. It’s amazing and adorable.
Not quite so adorable is how Wolfram seems unaware that removing your shoes is customary in most Asian homes; since the Indians and Chinese make up a third of the world’s population, the glaring lack of knowledge is slightly worrying as an indicator of his care for the rest of the world.
But ask him to prove why a triangle is a triangle, and you’d get pushed aside in his manic, overjoyed search for a calculator.
Ah, family!
Amalina comes back into the kitchen, hand guiding Marque’s shoulder as her eyes glitter like the excited girls in Shoujo comics.
I see Marque is doing his sleepy-angel thing, and I concede my understanding. It really is hard to resist the urge to pinch him silly when he’s like this, stifling yawns and rubbing his pretty little eyes, and I’m his mother.
Some things you just can’t get immunised against.
You can’t even build up a tolerance, which is a sad state for a mum.
“None of you guys can eat with your hands, so what do you want to do? We can have a learning session now, or I can get you forks and spoons”
Like a menacing teacher, she waggles her finger at us.
“But make sure you know that in this country, few things make you seem more like foreigners than not eating with your hands”
Never has “not eating with your hands,” sounded more positively diabolical. It deserved a musical accompaniment, it did.
“Really? I would have thought her being a blonde, me being green-eyed, and him generally looking too cute for this world would give it away”
Wolfram was deadpanning, a humour style that I never would have imagined he was capable of, as it required a total absence of emotion in the face of the sheer funniness of what was being said.
Since I tend to get teary-eyed when I have to throw away empty tissue boxes with pretty designs, I imagined that managing a straight face was a desperate, blind wish.
Good on you, Wolf, for showing there is hope for us Bielefelds!
“I didn’t think me staring at everyone like an idiot when they speak mah-lay helped, either”
Amalin actually laughs, and I stopped having my panic-attack. While true, it’s never a good idea for a child, and Wolfram will go grey with him still being a child in my eyes, to be sarcastic to an adult.
Especially here, since from what I’ve read, respect for your elders is highly rated, and is one of the more important values encouraged.
And I think I should warn Wolf to care for his mouth a little more; just because my friend didn’t get offended doesn’t mean absolutely no one ever will.
God, I’m such a responsible adult!
“We excuse that, actually. Especially in the city, we’re used to seeing ridiculously fair faces, and some of those fair faces speak Malay as well as local children-“
“Why only as well as children?”
Curious Marque. He deserves his own T.V show for being so cute.
Amalina is having slight bursts of laughter again, and pats his head for the question. Wolfram is leaning nonchalantly against the refrigerator, but his ears perking up at similar curiosity would have been hard to miss.
“Well, if I spoke with your mother the way I speak to my sister, she probably could only understand a quarter of the stuff I say. There’re different dialects, different slangs, different languages, and sheer speed when we talk. Foreigners without local parents, or who didn’t grow up here, wouldn’t have a grasp of the little differences between taught Malay and used Malay”
She points to herself, obviously enjoying how unwavering our attention is.
“Like me, I’m from Penang, a state up north. Drag a true-blue city kid there, and he would have trouble understanding, even if it’s all variations of Malay. Same goes for me, if you left me in Kelantan or most of Borneo”
“How on earth does a company work, if half the time no one knows what the others are talking about?”
Probably could have phrased it better, but I really am wondering. Little variations are of course normal everywhere, but not to the point where you get incomprehension from state to state.
“Well… There’s the bone-basics, the stuff we learned as children, that’s usually the same. And there’s English, and there’s only so much we could do to twist English”
She rubs her chin thoughtfully.
“Not that we don’t try, of course”
She claps her hands, like an imperious nanny would to a bunch of silly children, and I’m snapped out of my amazement-induced semi-trance.
“Nothing for you all to worry about, I’m here. Now let’s eat!”
By her tone, it’s obvious that she’s taking charge.
So dutifully, we each pick up a plate from the kitchen, and walk to the dining area, sitting at the table. Both boys flank my side, and I roll my eyes just a little at how silly we looked, occupying half the table and leaving the other half barren.
We stare at our plates, then stare at each other, and I hope quite hard that Amalina would be patient in the face of our cluelessness.
She came in moments later, holding a giant, silver pan, and a bowl of the steaming curry.
The pan, or “talam” as she said it was called, was set in the middle, and the curry was placed on it. She went back to get the rest of the cooked stuff, and I hear Marque’s stomach growl again. Curry, fish in this instance, smells wonderful.
A few more plates of fresh vegetables, some spicy paste and fried salted fish were put on the talam, and she walks to the opposite side, hands on her hips.
“Children, don't you think you’ll need rice to eat this with?”
We nodded mutely, and she gave us the look.
She grabs Wolf’s plate, and for a minute I thought he was going to tug it back. Territorial, is our Wolfram.
She demonstrates the complicated mechanics of walking to the rice cooker, opening the lid, and scooping out some fresh rice from within. She gave the plate back to Wolfram, who now looks perplexed as to how his plate, which had been in pristine condition, now had foreign substances, in the truest sense of the word, on it.
I laugh a little at how silly I was being, and stood up to repeat the method hesitatingly, scooping out some rice for me, then repeating for Marque’s plate.
I brought back both my son’s and my plate to where we sat. Amalina nodded like a pleased schoolmarm, and I wonder why exactly I’ve been doing so many school-related analogies.
Yet I’ve missed the most glaringly obvious one.
Like a bunch of confused school kids, we sat there in transfixed silence as she plated rice for herself, and sat down opposite us.
“Are there any prayers you guys would like to say?”
Umm… No.
Head, shake, please.
Shake shake.
“Well,”
She cups her hands, mutters something, and says amen before covering her face with her hands.
I’ve seen this at the eateries in Indonesia; it is kind of like saying thank you to God. The cupped hands are supposed to catch His blessings, and the put-to-face thing probably sings somewhere along those lines.
“Let’s eat!”
Right, let her lead the way for me, then I’ll lead the way for Marque, and he’ll lead the way for Wolfram.
Poor Wolf, he’s at the bottom of the chain right now. Wonder what’s going through his pretty little mind.
I bet if Wolf did have a theatre of the mind, it’d be pretty and bright and full of flowers. Like watching a movie in a garden.
Because Wolfram is garden kind of boy.
It didn’t require much effort to take spoonfuls of the curry and drown my rice in it, and at Amalina’s insistence I hazarded the crispy little fish bits, as well as a bit of the raw vegetables and the spicy paste thing.
It was a simple fare, really.
She demonstrated the fluid movements, catching the food with the tips of her fingers, using the thumb to move the rice and curry smoothly into her mouth. We stared at her in abject wonder, and what a strange sight we must have made.
The coordination of the hand was an exercise in willpower and dexterity.
Both of which Marque has, as he goes at eating with great and happy gusto. He’s always preferred the exotic tastes of Eastern cuisine than the meat-and-gravy stuff he’s more likely to get at western countries.
Amalina positively cooing over his every minor achievement didn't really help Wolfram’s and my self-esteem.
Wolf has dexterity, but was reluctant to dirty his girly fingers. Unlike the Fish Incident, he was willing to concede defeat to the challenge if it meant he was allowed to wrap his fingers around good ol’ fork and spoon.
I had the will to learn how to do this, but have the dexterity and the hand-eye coordination of an irate starfish attempting to make a poodle out of a balloon. The rice fell through the gaps in my fingers, several mouthfuls ended with me pressing the rice into my mouth with the palm of my hand.
Amalina’s movements were graceful and delicate, and I know she was laughing at me. Had I been anyone but me, I’d have laughed too.
Wolfram, after getting a no-nonsense glare from Amalina after asking for his beloved cutlery, went at it delicately, taking tiny bits of rice pinched between his fingers and nibbling at them when his hand reached mouth-level.
Wolf and me looked insane, and even Marque managed to tear himself away from his meal to laugh at us.
The food was delicious, the curry mild but leaving a strong after-taste somewhere in the nasal region. The little fish things were as crunchy as terrifyingly crunchy things, and the saltiness was wonderful.
Unhealthy though it is, I love salt, with the passion of a cult revering their leader.
The paste was not quite so pleasant, something distinctly fishy about it.
I asked, and apparently there’s dried shrimp in there somewhere.
Eew.
Same goes for the fresh herbs, which tasted like medicine, and therefore were not fun at all.
Marque helped himself to a second plate as I was still palm-feeding myself on the first.
Sadly, the meal ended with Wolfram being more adept at eating with his hands than I was with mine.
Halfway through the meal his eyes went hard, and from Aurel’s normal behaviour, I took it that Wolfram had made a Decision.
Granted, the decision was to embrace eating with his hands, but the way he went about getting the eating part down right means I will allow Decision to be spelled with a capital D.
“Thank you for the meal!”
We chorused just a little, all three of us, because the food really was lovely, for all of my silliness. Amalina nodded her acceptance, and was obviously well pleased that a bunch of overly white people had thoroughly enjoyed her local food.
She signalled for us to follow her, as she picked up her plate and walked back to the kitchen.
“Where’s the dishwasher?”
Good, Wolfram did know that at the very least one should always load one’s own dishes into the washer.
Bad, that Wolfram’s didn’t know that having a dishwasher here was considered luxurious and a waste of perfectly good electricity.
“Wolfrahm, no one uses dishwashers here. Just wash your hands and leave the plates in the sink, I’ll wash it with the tap later”
He blushes at his ignorance, but it’s a good sign that he knows when he’s being ignorant.
“We should wash our own plat-“
Amalina waved him quite.
“You guys are my guests, don’t worry about the chores. Just go rest for now, you’ve all had a long day”
We trudge to our separate bedrooms, Marque the only one chipper among us, the trip accompanied by the soft tones of Amalina singing to herself as she washed away all of our grime.
I meant plates. Plates.
God, I’m tired. I haven’t had to think that hard about how to eat since I was introduced to the steak knife and nearly skewered my own arm.
Scratch that. The steak knife was easier to handle than my own hand.
Why, hand, has thou betrayest me so?
The bed is a little harder than I like, but thanks the heavens, for it has a bolster pillow.
She told me what it was called, and I’ve forgotten.
I know what it means, I remember what it means.
Pillow to hug, pillow to embrace.
A pillow to sleep with.
See you on the other side.
oOoOo
I wake up and there’s a little warm body next to me.
Which, under normal circumstances, is wonderful.
These are not normal circumstances.
It’s ridiculously hot, and my clothes are sticky and I’m lethargic. Additional warmth is slowly driving me out of my mind.
So I shall be forced to poke Marque hard, enough for him to grunt and shift off of being draped over my side.
Ha, we were sharing the same bolster pillow.
He’s welcome to it himself, now.
Let’s go see what Amalina is up to. The sun’s down, it’s late evening, maybe dusk.
I’ll get used to telling time by the sun soon. It’s one of those random abilities people seem to have.
Anissina can scare men silly with just a look.
Amalina can use politeness like a lance.
I can tell time by the sun.
I fear I’ve been short-changed. Oh well. Having an excellent, accurate biological clock must have some uses. I will be very happy the day I find out what they are.
Legs swing off the bed, and I land on something squishy.
I scream, and I screamed louder when the squishy thing screamed back.
“Aargh!”
“What the hell Aunt Ru!”
“Don't what the hell Aunt Ru me! What the hell are you doing there!”
It was a question, but the exclamation mark edged out the question. Coherency is needed for a question; shock is enough of a requirement for a scared exclamation.
He gets up grumpily, lifting his pillow and clamping it under his arm.
“Marque left me alone in the room. I didn’t know where he went, and since I’m supposed to look after him, I decided to just rest here when I found out that he’d sneaked into bed with you”
Read: I was freaked out having to stay in a strange room in a strange place by myself, and I didn’t want to be alone. Marque left, so I followed. I’m so ecstatic to be together again aunt Ru!
Granted that last line was probably just me, but-
What the hell is that thumping sound?
Amalina appears at the door to the room, holding a baseball bat and looking absolutely menacing. She was an excellent athlete at school, and had an affinity for any sport that involved her swinging around clubs or sticks.
She was the bane of her opponents on the lacrosse field.
And the hockey field.
And on the one occasion when her brother had fallen ill and couldn’t play in a big tournament, the cricket field.
If she swung that bat, someone would die.
Probably the suspected attacker, but I didn’t want to say Wolfram brained.
“Calm down Amali! Just my silly little nephew surprising me, is all. Sorry I screamed so loud”
I really am. How embarrassing it is, for a grown woman to scream like a little girly.
Marque sleeps through the commotion. That’s my kid, right enough.
“You guys ah, you’ve been here only a few hours and already it’s so noisy!”
She eyed Wolfram’s tousled hair and the thin bed sheet I guess he’d used to sleep on. We certainly didn’t need a blanket in this weather.
“Told you the floors were clean enough to sleep on, Wolfrahm!”
oOoOo
the spacings are funny, because double-spacing dies between my word file and LJ. Plenty more where this silly fluffiness came from, please at least prod me to make me finish. I'm daringly behind, right now u_u
***
We just got off the plane, now in warm and sunny Malaysia, and already Wolfram is rushing towards the nearest toilet.
Unsurprisingly, Wolfram chose to keep his deluded sense of masculinity and force down four meals of fish and assorted seafood. And since the boy gets motion sickness from riding a bicycle, holding it in during the little fun we had with turbulence before landing was a heroic feat.
Marque is laughing, I’m laughing. Wolfram is a well of fun.
The signs are in multiple languages, the voices over the speakers speak in different tongues, and the ceiling is ridiculously pretty. Wooden slats with dotted lights; if the sky was more earthen in nature, this is what it would look like.
“Mum, cousin Wolf’s taking a long time. I’ll go check on him”
Bless Marque and his obsession with health; he’ll be a wonderful doctor if he wants to.
Like a much more attractive, darker, sweeter House.
Because without a doubt, every mother thinks her child is the single most awesome person alive.
It’s a bit of a juggling act when the mother has more than one child, but I should imagine the intense feelings of fondness multiply with each birth.
Or it could be hormones. My unreliable memory has struck again.
Tap tap tap.
I’m a compulsive foot-tapper. Numerous teachers have scolded me or knocked my knees with a ruler; did not and does not stop me.
Where are they? The baggage carousel with our luggage has already started spinning, and I think I can see Wolfram’s frilly pink one.
Heh.
Celi must have planned this somehow. When Wolf started to pack, not a single suitcase was untorn but for those of his mother’s. I suspect Conrad hid the decent ones; after our Kodak moment I think it’s safe to assume he’s flamingly in love with his brother.
Wouldn’t surprise me if Mona Lisa has a pink-lolita fetish that he smilingly pushes onto his pretty little brother.
So off we left, me and Marque with our worn-but-working bags, Wolfram red in the face slinging a large pink carryall with Hello Kitty prints.
The only surprising factor in Wolfram’s quiet coercion is the realisation that Cecilie is a fan of the mouthless cat.
She always struck me as more of a Barbie girl.
Where are they?
Tap tap tap.
Yes, I’ve had enough of this.
Where’re my dark glasses? And that warm vest?
And the omniweather I’m-such-a-tourist hat.
I look silly, dressed for winter in the tropics, but I look a lot like a boy now.
I consistently thank the genes my parents gifted me when situations like these arise. And they arise quite often, since it’s usually just me and Marque.
I’m a woman that looks like a very pretty boy.
Very pretty boy, but from class photos to social networking sites, a pot-shot at my gender swings more to girly-boy than elegant mother.
Sadly, my short stature aids the picture of young boy more than regal woman.
But at least taking a cab in a foreign country isn’t quite so daunting.
Like that one time in Latin America, when I had gone out to look for dinner, and Marque was safely holed up in the hotel room with all the
available deadbolts bolted.
A glorious little restaurant sold salsa and spiced beef and flatbread half the city away, and though the walk there was glorious, it was getting dark when I was ready to go back.
I hailed a cab, and a beefy, moustachioed cabbie with a feral grin stopped for me.
I’m usually careful to get the ones that look like they’d get blown away by a sneeze, but it was so late, and I was getting paranoid for Marque. Luckily I was dressed in my thick jacket and old khaki pants. At best I looked asexual, at worst I looked like a dishevelled nerdy student.
He spoke something about bringing me around to see his home, it was lovely out there in the countryside, and I spent ten minutes berating myself for choosing the one cab whose driver had to be into shota-con.
So I played the part of bloody annoying tourist who believes that language wasn’t a barrier if I screamed loud enough. I coughed, cleared my throat, sneezed, guffawed at nothing, and made every noise imaginable that was the anti-thesis of the little blond boy in that comic about high school for the rich and famous.
I repeated the name of the hotel maybe twenty times, sounding condescending every time. I also neglected to mention that I understood Spanish, so him muttering “bastard better not start singing” had me belting out Michael Jackson’s greatest hits.
I gather he had fallen out of love with me by then.
I got to the hotel soon enough, tossed him some cash and haggled in broken Spanish, pretended I was annoyed by the one dollar tip he had pocketed, and damn well ran to find Marque.
So looking like a boy, even a pretty one, has its perks.
Cautiously, I walked to the men’s room, steeling myself in preparation of the horror that is, urinals. Those weren’t pretty in any country.
It’s empty, but for Wolfram looking a little green at the sink. One stall is occupied, but my nephew was too busy taking in deep breaths to have noticed my presence.
I took this as an opportunity to solve a question that has left me wondering for a decent while.
Gruff, think gruff, think male.
Just out of the line of mirrors, hat tipped downwards to cover most of my face, I ground out.
“Hey, pretty boy, what’re you doing here all by yourself? Want to come with me and have some fun?”
That was a tacky pick-up line, and I’m ashamed that I actually managed to speak such hopelessly corny words, but Wolf’s apparently too distracted to pay attention to anything other than my nauseatingly perverted voice.
“For fuck’s sake, I’m in this fucking country for under a day, and you’ve got to be fucking kidding me if you think I’m going to accept a come fucking on from a fucking man again”
How many bad words did my pretty little nephew fit in that?
Well, at least I’ve confirmed that girls aren’t the only ones who make a fool of themselves for him.
I can hear a voice sniggering. Since Marque is the only person that can ever discern that it’s me even at my most dashing, I can guess who’s in the stall.
“Language, Wolf. You nearly swore the paint of the walls. Marque! Are you all right?”
It never ceases to be funny, the way horror slowly blooms on Wolfram’s face.
“I’m okay mum! It’s just that seeing cousin Wolf hurling…”
He didn’t have to finish the sentence. I get sympathetic retching too.
“Hurry Marque, I’ll get you the alka to take!”
A hum of agreement from the other side of the door, and I’m dragging my nephew out.
I ignore the looks I get; given the family resemblance it probably looks like I’m bodily hauling my brother from the toilet, but that’s hardly enough to stop me from being me.
Unresisting, my nephew gets dragged to the water fountain someone had thoughtfully designed opposite the entrance to the washroom.
I point at it imperiously.
“Gargle. Spit”
He does so.
“Drink”
He does that too, and the more he rehydrates, the less he looks like he’s about to keel over and die.
I’m busy smirking to myself when I feel a little hand grip my shirt.
Marque, the poor emphatic dear, is sweating and shaking lightly.
I wipe the bangs off his forehead and he gets a little kiss.
There’s an empty plastic cup in my bag, and poor, not-as-important-as-my¬-son Wolf gets shoved out of the way.
I dissolve the tablet in the water I poured into the cup from the fountain, swirl it around judiciously, and pass it to Marque.
“Drink half, the other half is for the wimp you call cousin, Marque”
He’s already sipping away. The hand that isn’t ruffling his hair pats Wolfram’s back as he bends to continue drinking.
The cup is emptied very fast, and they both look better for it.
“All right, my little men, let’s get our bags and set off on our incredible and astonishing adventure!”
All I get in return for my cheeriness are weird looks from the other people in the airport, and non-committal grunts from the boys.
As Anissina would frustratedly say it,
Men.
oOoOo
The bags were collected without much of a fuss, since our previous preoccupation with the toilets earlier means that most people had already retrieved their stuff and left. The lack of a crowd suited us just fine, and Marque was still being unusually clingy.
Since hitting age 7, Marque has restricted public displays of affection. I’m not allowed to randomly kiss, hug or pinch him, and we don’t get to hold hands ever. Even though I must have told him a million times that when he’s older his skin won’t be as ridiculously soft and by then I wouldn’t want to touch his hand, and he’d regret not letting me when he was younger, the boy remains firm in his beliefs.
So for him to still be clutching my shirt means he’s not feeling very well. I guess it’s probably due to a potent combination of airline food, hours in a cramped space, new weather, jet lag and exhaustion.
Sounds a lot scarier when it’s listed like that… I hope Amalina is here. I think all three of us really need to rest as soon as we can.
Especially Wolf. I think this is the furthest he’s ever been from home, and I know from pain of experience that the first time is always the
hardest.
“Look out for a tall, pretty lady with black hair and dark eyes. Wears glasses, hair tied up in a ponytail, and probably has a sign with the words “Msrs. Rufus, Marque and Wolfram”, because that’s the kind of humour your new aunt Amali has”
“Aunt Ru, won’t your friend, whom you’ve not met for longer than I’ve been alive, mind sharing her home with you guys and me?”
“Ah, an attempt at sarcasm and subtlety! How badly you failed, then, Wolf. To answer your question, she doesn’t mind. She’s not married, and her house is more than big enough for us to stay at. And besides, we’ll be seeing the country. We’ll only be staying with Amali while we’re in the capital. I want to go visit the islands and do a lot of snorkelling, so you’ll be spending more time attempting to avoid getting sunburnt than nervously twitching at Amalina’s dinner table, Wolf”
It isn’t odd that Amalina isn’t married; I’m not, and I happen to be hopelessly in love with me.
But religion being the way it is, it’s highly unadvisable for her to have children out of wedlock.
Downright dangerous, really, if one considers the extent to which prejudices can reach.
Which is a pity, because she’s always been such a sweetheart, and would make any child happy to have her.
Pity.
I got Marque, and he outweighs heartbreak. Which means, the pain was worth it.
What kind of suffering is it, to know that you aren’t even allowed to chance heartbreak for something sweet?
Gives me a headache. Ethical and theological views aside; adults should be trusted to behave like adults.
At least, the nice ones should.
“Mum, that lady over there is giving you the lovey-hearts look”
The look I taught my son to recognise and move away from with considerable swiftness.
Wolfram pulls Marque to stand slightly behind him, so that my boy’s between us two adults. Apparently, Aurel had similar ideas concerning lovey-hearts look.
Wolf then read my mind.
“Father called it the I’m-thinking-sexy-thoughts-of-you look, and told me to glare at the people who give me that look, after the sixth flasher targeted me when I was 7.”
A flash of a stunning smile from Wolfram, and wild waving from the side attracts my attention.
“It’s the crazy woman, mum!”
Hush, darling. We’ll be staying with crazy woman for a while.
“Amalina!”
oOoOo
Amalina drives a tiny toy of a car, the boot so bizarrely undersized that half our bags are wedged in the backseat between Marque and Wolf. It’s unbelievably hot; all of us have taken off our jackets, though Amali says the weather is being quite temperate.
We had hugged each other enthusiastically in the airport, chattering and laughing, while the two boys made awkward conversation with each other. Amali said that we’d looked like a reuniting couple in a Hindustani movie, then nearly fainted when I told her I don’t really know what a Hindustani movie would have in common with our reunion.
I’ve been made to swear two hours for a chick-fest involving some man by the name of “Sharoo Kan”.
Or something. Her English is a lot more accented than I remembered, which would make sense since she’s been living here from when school ended.
Also, the ends of her sentences are sometimes randomly punctuated with “la”s or “ma”s. Her sentences sound like a melody.
Ever-observant Marque had timidly mentioned that this speech pattern was absent in the Indonesians we had met on another of our trips. As I expected, my friend had taken an instant liking to my son, and had smilingly told him that “adding a “–lah” to the end of sentence doesn’t mean anything, it’s just there to complete the sentence. It shows emotion too, Marque, if said correctly. Hopefully you’ll stay long enough to be able to tell when we mean what”
Marque is already charmed by the sheer variety of the country.
Wolfram, the socially inept, has taken to smiling weakly at Amalina, and is now sitting quietly in the back, head almost between his knees as he takes deep breaths to stop from vomiting. Like all other things about Bielefelds, when we get something, we really get it.
Aurel was hospitalised for 3 weeks when he was a teen, after a simple case of the flu managed to mutate into a weird, resistant strain of the disease. He was quarantined for two weeks before they let us visit him. And Wolfram gets carsick with the intensity of that I would have thought was only possible through intensive training and a pure personification of will. On bad days, even motion-sickness medication prescribed by the finest physicians, courtesy of Celi, only meant he could sound a warning before he retched.
“Umm… Ru, is the blond Wolf okay?”
Three cheers for the multi-tasking women. Amalina had managed to glance at Wolfram in her rear-view mirror as she used it to check the distance between cars to cut ahead of the slow van in front of us.
The sudden jolt of speed drove Wolfram deeper between his knees, and I’m a little worried.
“He’ll be fine, but he’s got food-poisoning and he’s carsick. Is it very far to get to your house?”
Now it’s a look at her watch simultaneously as she steps on the accelerator.
“Usually it’s a long-ish trip, but…”
“Don’t worry Wolfrahm! We’ll be there in half an hour!”
Now it’s a slight turn to the back to shout as she flicks her indicator lights to enter the fast lane.
We drive on in relative peace now.
“How come everything is so… flat?”
I’m accustomed to airports smack bang in the city, or at least close enough that you could see office buildings and people. What surrounded the airport we arrived in was barren and red, no hills to break the horizon, nor green to soften the sight.
Not a very pleasant thing to see, for the first sight of a country.
Amali shrugs, and the car moves a little bit faster.
“It’s out of the way for everyone. The old airport was in a much nicer place, but it’s tiny, so it’s not used much. If it was up to me, I wouldn't have the port welcoming foreigners in a place so character-less”
Small talk about big talk. That issue was probably political when it was brought up, but now it’s soft drivel to utter as I try not to fall asleep.
I really haven’t seen her in a while; now would be the best time to catch up.
She didn't know I had a child until all of a few days ago, and both boys at the back sound like they’re dozing.
It’s warm, the heat is a damper, and we’re exhausted. Sadly, that’s not a good enough an excuse to fall asleep the first hour of meeting our landlady.
She turns to look at me, then looks ahead again. Amalina is so dreadfully pretty; skin a light brown, colouring so dark and mysterious. I really do wonder why she never got married. She must have enough admirers.
“You can take a nap, Rufus. I’ll call you all when we’re almost there”
The niceness factor can’t be forgotten either.
I lean back against the seat, trying to get comfortable. Not much of a napper, I wake up feeling twice the idiot I was before going to sleep.
But the tiredness is making me incoherent, even my thoughtless thoughts have become too tangential.
“Terima kasih”
Accept my affection and thanks.
oOoOo
“…fus”
Ngh.
“..ufus!”
A minute. I’ll be up in a minute.
Breathing is hard, suddenly.
And what the hell is on my nose?
“Gah!”
Amalina is grinning at me, leaning across the driver’s seat to pinch my nose. The boys were standing behind her holding our bags, looking
nervous.
Too groggy to think.
“Ghhh”
She looks at my son. My sun smiles.
“Mum does not like waking up, aunt Amalina”
“She was hard to wake when she fell asleep in Home Ec too. Nice to know you didn’t change, Rufus”
Body check.
Legs, arms, nose, neck, eyelashes.
All functioning.
On three, dear body of mine.
One, two…
I ooze out of the passenger-side door, unsteadily straightening after being curved in the small confines of the car.
Amali’s eyes dance prettily with laughter, but I’m still cotton-headed.
“Let’s go in, we can go eat out later. There’ s a very nice mamak shop only a few minutes away.”
Mak mak?
“What’s a mother mother shop?”
Oh good, it’s not me being delirious, Marque got that as well.
I shine a beam at him. How smart and heroic of my little boy!
Amalina laughs out loud now, Wolf looks dazed.
“Mamak, not mak-mak! It’s local Indian food that’s very cheap and very nice. Open till the late hours, for football fans to meet and watch matches, so you guys can go rest first”
Wolf, I should be looking out for him now.
“Amali, do you have an English-Malay dictionary you could lend us? I’m afraid Wolf and Marque might get a bit lost, otherwise”
Aww, Wolf sends me his best I’m-so-thankful-but-I-think-I’m-too-awesome-to-admit-it smile. He does look like a little boy lost, clutching his Hello Kitty, other hand clamped on Marque’s shoulder.
My little world-traveller looks a lot more at ease.
I wonder; maybe dragging Wolfram to experience new and interesting things this suddenly wasn’t such a bright idea.
Amali sends me an understanding look, then indulges in a look of longing for my nephew.
Funny. It’s not really struck me that Wolfram is.
A Man.
With a capital M, a valid I.D, and an adult-ish build.
He’s the pudgy little baby that could scream a house down, and he’s the blond angel who had once thoughtlessly deprived the world of a lovely sight of Wolf in a cat’s costume, complete with whiskers, by opting for a full-body Darth Vader costume on Halloween.
Not a gorgeous young man who looks accustomed to being drooled over.
And I didn’t know people my age could still drool over anybody.
Though, the way my nephew looks, maybe it’s understandable.
How should I feel? Amalina wouldn’t do anything, but making sheep’s eyes at my Wolf…
Marque, that brilliant little creature, manages a distraction.
His stomach rumbles, and he blushes.
That’s right, they both lost their breakfast and lunch at the washroom earlier; what with boys growing as boys insist they must, they must be starving.
Amalina looks away from Wolfram, looks at me, and smiles a little apologetically.
Just a little apologetically.
Nothing for it but to return her smile. I’ll wonder about it later. Wolfram’s old enough to be intelligent, and it’s not my little sweetheart that’s making a grown woman relive fantasies with him in place of Brad Pitt.
She heads to unlock the door, and I get a quick glance around. It’s a bit of suburbia, and her home is a sweet little bungalow, a really pretty yard with small flowering shrubs.
Wolf sidles to my left, Marque attached to my right.
“Aunt Ru…”
He’s still a boy. No man would have the guts to look so vulnerable.
“Don’t worry, she’s much too much of a lady to do anything that would make you uncomfortable. Thank you for worrying about her and my feelings, Wolf”
He blushes just a little, nods, and walks quietly through the door. He’s not clutching his mother’s bag like it was the only thing keeping him afloat any more, at least.
It must be difficult, to be such a considerate heart breaker. The curse of the stunning.
Marque will have his time too; not purely from a mother’s point of view, he will grow up to be a truly gorgeous boy. I just hope he doesn’t get into as much trouble as Wolf did.
No 6 flashers for my boy.
oOoOo
I get the spare bedroom, and in an effort to prevent Wolfram from being homesick on day one, Marque is rooming with him. Both boys are busy flipping through the channels, a little disheartened that there were so few series even on this country’s version of satellite TV.
I’m helping Amalina cook a lunch so late it does not deserve the title “lunch”; the mamak treat is for tonight.
The house is small but pleasant, spacious for a woman living alone. We had a grand tour, but aside from the blanching of the boys’ faces at having to share a single bathroom, there wasn’t much of much.
The little garden at the back was pretty amazing though. There’s lemongrass, screw pine leaves, little lime plants, the most startling purple chillies, and a small unhealthy-looking trees that she swore bore fruits that were red and hairy.
Not exactly the characteristic one looks for in a fruit that’s to be eaten, but if it’s sweet I’ll definitely give it a try.
“You didn’t tell me you were married”
I’m careful not to flinch or cover my face with shame; my hand is holding a blade and I’m industriously chopping garlic. I’d rather not blind myself, really.
“Sorry, Amali.”
She waves her hand dismissively, though the kitchen knife she’s holding would put many katanas to shame.
“So, who’s the lucky man ah?”
Sod it. Should I tell her my sad little life’s story? Aside from Anissina, no one knows exactly how I got Marque.
Aurel knew, knew while I was pregnant, but he had to go and die before my son could meet the most wonderful uncle in the world.
But Amali reminds me a bit of mum. There’s something really safe about people like them, a security that makes it same all right to admit to being dumb, daft and dead-in-the-head.
Wish mum and dad hadn’t gone, either. I can’t imagine I’d ever be too old for my parents, even if I lived this I was a thousand and they to one thousand and thirty five.
“Would you like me any less if it turns out I’m a horrible, selfish person?”
Again, the worrying wave of the knife.
“You’re being too self-deprecating again lah, you serial meek woman. Unless you’ve completely changed, ok, in the time since we were really close friends, I can tell you that you probably were being a crazy martyr again”
A bizarre, beautiful turn of sweet English laced with her mother tongue.
Makes me wax lyrical, how utterly charming her personality could be.
Always was.
Amalina was the mother hen of our little brood, way back when. She was even-tempered, and refused to be drawn into arguments.
Whereas I would either be so scathingly rude that the flesh was torn from the bones of my offender, or Aurel would have a “My spidey-senses are tingling!” moment and mysteriously appear to beat the stuffing out of whoever was bullying me.
Amalina however dealt with annoying people with steely, firm politeness.
Boys used to call her stupid names because her gorgeous skin was so much more tanned than most of ours.
She would just smile and completely ignore them.
Like they were old relatives who had made senile comments about the weather and the pet dog that’d died before the Second World War.
And if boys chose to pick on one of her friends, then so help them God.
I was in the middle quite a few times, being as disproportionately aggressive as I was.
“Excuse me,” she’d said politely, tapping the shoulder of the Leader, whose name is not worthy of my memory.
“Excuse me, but what are you doing?”
The boy had crowed and preened about how he was putting in my place after I slammed my book onto his hand.
“Oh. Why did Rufus do that?”
Ru-fuck, and yes, the mind of little cruel boys are amazing things, had tried to stop his Holiness from taking her book.
Amalina had pushed through to stand in front of me, and was still wearing the dazed smile of the polite and inquisitive.
“Why were you taking her book without her permission?”
Because he hadn’t finished his homework, the bastard.
Her smile had turned grim, and even I was a little scared.
“That doesn’t sound like a nice thing to do, bullying a girl. I don’t think the teacher would be happy to hear that, you stealing Rufus’ book because you were too lazy to do the work yourself.”
He ran off after that; our maths’ teacher was a formidable man who was tough on slackers. He also was dad’s drinking buddy the first Thursday of every month, and my father had suggested that he keep an eye out for me at school.
Amali was matured even then, and I guess telling her small bits and pieces wouldn’t hurt.
I can excuse myself a little sigh. For a story that’s eight years old, it never stops stinging.
Stupid stinging stops my boy from having a normal life.
Oh God, may Amali have something terrifyingly helpful to say. I’m in desperate need of an emotional revolution.
“Never married, my Amali. Was hopelessly in love, did things I didn’t ever really think I would do, and he left, because I loved him blindly but he loved someone else blindly. I told him to go, even though I was pregnant with Marque. It still hurts to think about, and I haven’t stayed home longer than 3 weeks since, because I can’t”
“La, that’s so horrible!”
She looks torn between her natural reserve and hugging me. Amali, while loving, was born with the natural contact-aversion of many Asians. Hugging made her uncomfortable.
So I smile.
“It’s worst for my son. He gets the best education available online, and he’s so smart it’s never trouble for him to understand anything, and he loves travelling and meeting different people, and reads obsessively, and is soft and sweet and patient!’
“Ah, Rufus, that’s bad is it?”
Knives have been set down. We are wise women, after all.
“He doesn’t deserve to be forced to cater to my fancies, doesn’t deserve to not have a permanent home, doesn’t deserve to constantly be uprooted!”
“Shuu, Ru, the children”
Pragmatic, pragmatic.
“I can’t stop myself, and he worries too much about me to stop me!”
“Ru, you have enough money for all this?”
I’m stupid and childish and mulish and petulant and dumb.
Luckily I’m not utterly useless.
“Wolf’s oldest brother is chairman of the Bank of Voltaire, he looks after my stock options and savings. Plus, you might not have known, Amali, but Anissina’s publishing house was mine. I sold it to her, but have stakes in it. Anissina’s self-written series are popular with the world in general, so yes, I’ll always have enough money to support this addiction”
I try for a lopsided grin, and can’t help but wonder if it’s just a little sad.
“Which doesn’t help Marque’s case at all, of course”
“Kesiannya…”
Funny, how we always slip into our most basic of abilities, when we feel something so strongly. Nervous tics from when we were young, our first language.
Amalina had just used one of my favourite words in the entire Malay vocabulary, one that she had often used back when we were school children, even though she had been so careful to erase anything about her accent that could be used as cannon fodder.
It means I feel sorry for you, but it’s not meant to be pitying. It’s almost symbolic of how much pain the person who says it feels for the person that’s suffering.
Almost, I feel bad for you, I feel horrible for you.
My mum had been very fond of the word, after that.
“Feel worse for Marque, Amali. I’ve been a horrible mother, am being a horrible, self-centred, selfish woman.”
“Hei, if you aren’t starving the boy, if he’s not eating anti-depression pills, and if neither of you are angry at each other about anything, then you aren’t being a horrible mother”
She measures a tiny length between her thumb and pointer finger.
“Maybe a leetle bit silly, but remember what you said?”
What I said when?
“To quote, Ru. When I fall, I will fall hard. And probably never get up.”
She smiles, and goes back to chopping chillies.
“It’s your adorable quirk, that hurts you a lot. But if my friend Ru wasn’t so overwhelmingly overwhelming, you wouldn’t be much of friend Ru”
That was… pacifying. Even if not the awakening I hoped it was.
Though if Marque isn’t unhappy…
“You’re like the sister I never had, you know”
“To help with the family you’d lost. I’m not so nice, Rufus. Just you that inspires me to be this way”
Ack, being all sad and weak and wishy-washy gets annoying after a while. Sometimes I think I should at least have punched the consciousness out of him after he said he was in love with someone else, rather than just be sweet and meek and say “goodbye”
Maybe that’s exactly what I should do. For all I know a little bit of physical violence is all that stands between me and complete emancipation.
I’ll find out where he’s staying, demand my right to get all this old, dusty stuff of my chest, and punch him silly.
Anissina’s told me to do it a thousand times, but Amalina’s completely unrelated talk appears to be the straw that broke the camel’s back. Anything is worth a try at this point, and if it means I can stay with the people I love after this, without feeling an itching in my feet to get away…
I’m going to hit him so hard he will faint.
“You give the most useful talks, Amali”
Wait, that might be a little confusing since she doesn’t know my brilliant conclusion.
“Wha-“
“Aunt Ru?”
Wolf the pretty sticks his head in the kitchen, looking at us questioningly before his eyes dart to the steaming curry on the stove.
“What’s wrong, Wolf?”
He has the decency to blush, and I can just hear Amalina’s soul going “awwww!”
“We were wondering when we could eat, aunt Ru, aunt Amalina”
Well, the brown curry looked like brown curry from the moment it was put on the stove, so I really would have no idea when it would be done. It’s still brown, but since it’s starting to choke the kitchen with its sharp, herby smell, I’m guessing the curry is well on its way to completion.
“I’ll go get the rice done, Rufus, just stir the curry”
Amalina sauntered off to the dining room, doing interesting local things I couldn’t see.
“Oi! Can you eat with your hands?”
Wolfram, unflappable though he claims to be, was startled quite violently by the sudden shout. I guess she just didn’t believe in coming closer to talk.
I’m more than willing to let go of my usual behaviour to suit local tastes, however. Plus Marque and I scream at each other instead of getting closer and speaking softly whenever we stay in a large apartment of a proper house; it seems a perfectly decent way to communicate.
And anything that could scare my etiquette-is-the-be-all-and-end-all nephew, who’s way too stiff for someone so young, is truly a wonderful thing.
“No idea, Amalina! Haven’t done that in years!”
Wolfram’s shaking his head in disappointment at the barbarism of us adults.
“How about you, Marque?”
Since she isn’t shouting, I think I can safely assume that Marque’s padded through in his socks to see what the commotion was about.
Ah, socks.
Wolfram had nearly dislocated his jaw when he was informed by a smirking Amalina that no shoes were allowed in her house; feet and socks only, preferential treatment being given to the barefoot people.
“But my shoes are clean!”
“People sit on the floor, roll around on the floor, and occasionally sleep on the floor. Your shoes aren’t that clean, Wolfrahm”
She says his name with a large, grand-sounding “raHm”, which makes it echo even when she says it softly. It’s amazing and adorable.
Not quite so adorable is how Wolfram seems unaware that removing your shoes is customary in most Asian homes; since the Indians and Chinese make up a third of the world’s population, the glaring lack of knowledge is slightly worrying as an indicator of his care for the rest of the world.
But ask him to prove why a triangle is a triangle, and you’d get pushed aside in his manic, overjoyed search for a calculator.
Ah, family!
Amalina comes back into the kitchen, hand guiding Marque’s shoulder as her eyes glitter like the excited girls in Shoujo comics.
I see Marque is doing his sleepy-angel thing, and I concede my understanding. It really is hard to resist the urge to pinch him silly when he’s like this, stifling yawns and rubbing his pretty little eyes, and I’m his mother.
Some things you just can’t get immunised against.
You can’t even build up a tolerance, which is a sad state for a mum.
“None of you guys can eat with your hands, so what do you want to do? We can have a learning session now, or I can get you forks and spoons”
Like a menacing teacher, she waggles her finger at us.
“But make sure you know that in this country, few things make you seem more like foreigners than not eating with your hands”
Never has “not eating with your hands,” sounded more positively diabolical. It deserved a musical accompaniment, it did.
“Really? I would have thought her being a blonde, me being green-eyed, and him generally looking too cute for this world would give it away”
Wolfram was deadpanning, a humour style that I never would have imagined he was capable of, as it required a total absence of emotion in the face of the sheer funniness of what was being said.
Since I tend to get teary-eyed when I have to throw away empty tissue boxes with pretty designs, I imagined that managing a straight face was a desperate, blind wish.
Good on you, Wolf, for showing there is hope for us Bielefelds!
“I didn’t think me staring at everyone like an idiot when they speak mah-lay helped, either”
Amalin actually laughs, and I stopped having my panic-attack. While true, it’s never a good idea for a child, and Wolfram will go grey with him still being a child in my eyes, to be sarcastic to an adult.
Especially here, since from what I’ve read, respect for your elders is highly rated, and is one of the more important values encouraged.
And I think I should warn Wolf to care for his mouth a little more; just because my friend didn’t get offended doesn’t mean absolutely no one ever will.
God, I’m such a responsible adult!
“We excuse that, actually. Especially in the city, we’re used to seeing ridiculously fair faces, and some of those fair faces speak Malay as well as local children-“
“Why only as well as children?”
Curious Marque. He deserves his own T.V show for being so cute.
Amalina is having slight bursts of laughter again, and pats his head for the question. Wolfram is leaning nonchalantly against the refrigerator, but his ears perking up at similar curiosity would have been hard to miss.
“Well, if I spoke with your mother the way I speak to my sister, she probably could only understand a quarter of the stuff I say. There’re different dialects, different slangs, different languages, and sheer speed when we talk. Foreigners without local parents, or who didn’t grow up here, wouldn’t have a grasp of the little differences between taught Malay and used Malay”
She points to herself, obviously enjoying how unwavering our attention is.
“Like me, I’m from Penang, a state up north. Drag a true-blue city kid there, and he would have trouble understanding, even if it’s all variations of Malay. Same goes for me, if you left me in Kelantan or most of Borneo”
“How on earth does a company work, if half the time no one knows what the others are talking about?”
Probably could have phrased it better, but I really am wondering. Little variations are of course normal everywhere, but not to the point where you get incomprehension from state to state.
“Well… There’s the bone-basics, the stuff we learned as children, that’s usually the same. And there’s English, and there’s only so much we could do to twist English”
She rubs her chin thoughtfully.
“Not that we don’t try, of course”
She claps her hands, like an imperious nanny would to a bunch of silly children, and I’m snapped out of my amazement-induced semi-trance.
“Nothing for you all to worry about, I’m here. Now let’s eat!”
By her tone, it’s obvious that she’s taking charge.
So dutifully, we each pick up a plate from the kitchen, and walk to the dining area, sitting at the table. Both boys flank my side, and I roll my eyes just a little at how silly we looked, occupying half the table and leaving the other half barren.
We stare at our plates, then stare at each other, and I hope quite hard that Amalina would be patient in the face of our cluelessness.
She came in moments later, holding a giant, silver pan, and a bowl of the steaming curry.
The pan, or “talam” as she said it was called, was set in the middle, and the curry was placed on it. She went back to get the rest of the cooked stuff, and I hear Marque’s stomach growl again. Curry, fish in this instance, smells wonderful.
A few more plates of fresh vegetables, some spicy paste and fried salted fish were put on the talam, and she walks to the opposite side, hands on her hips.
“Children, don't you think you’ll need rice to eat this with?”
We nodded mutely, and she gave us the look.
She grabs Wolf’s plate, and for a minute I thought he was going to tug it back. Territorial, is our Wolfram.
She demonstrates the complicated mechanics of walking to the rice cooker, opening the lid, and scooping out some fresh rice from within. She gave the plate back to Wolfram, who now looks perplexed as to how his plate, which had been in pristine condition, now had foreign substances, in the truest sense of the word, on it.
I laugh a little at how silly I was being, and stood up to repeat the method hesitatingly, scooping out some rice for me, then repeating for Marque’s plate.
I brought back both my son’s and my plate to where we sat. Amalina nodded like a pleased schoolmarm, and I wonder why exactly I’ve been doing so many school-related analogies.
Yet I’ve missed the most glaringly obvious one.
Like a bunch of confused school kids, we sat there in transfixed silence as she plated rice for herself, and sat down opposite us.
“Are there any prayers you guys would like to say?”
Umm… No.
Head, shake, please.
Shake shake.
“Well,”
She cups her hands, mutters something, and says amen before covering her face with her hands.
I’ve seen this at the eateries in Indonesia; it is kind of like saying thank you to God. The cupped hands are supposed to catch His blessings, and the put-to-face thing probably sings somewhere along those lines.
“Let’s eat!”
Right, let her lead the way for me, then I’ll lead the way for Marque, and he’ll lead the way for Wolfram.
Poor Wolf, he’s at the bottom of the chain right now. Wonder what’s going through his pretty little mind.
I bet if Wolf did have a theatre of the mind, it’d be pretty and bright and full of flowers. Like watching a movie in a garden.
Because Wolfram is garden kind of boy.
It didn’t require much effort to take spoonfuls of the curry and drown my rice in it, and at Amalina’s insistence I hazarded the crispy little fish bits, as well as a bit of the raw vegetables and the spicy paste thing.
It was a simple fare, really.
She demonstrated the fluid movements, catching the food with the tips of her fingers, using the thumb to move the rice and curry smoothly into her mouth. We stared at her in abject wonder, and what a strange sight we must have made.
The coordination of the hand was an exercise in willpower and dexterity.
Both of which Marque has, as he goes at eating with great and happy gusto. He’s always preferred the exotic tastes of Eastern cuisine than the meat-and-gravy stuff he’s more likely to get at western countries.
Amalina positively cooing over his every minor achievement didn't really help Wolfram’s and my self-esteem.
Wolf has dexterity, but was reluctant to dirty his girly fingers. Unlike the Fish Incident, he was willing to concede defeat to the challenge if it meant he was allowed to wrap his fingers around good ol’ fork and spoon.
I had the will to learn how to do this, but have the dexterity and the hand-eye coordination of an irate starfish attempting to make a poodle out of a balloon. The rice fell through the gaps in my fingers, several mouthfuls ended with me pressing the rice into my mouth with the palm of my hand.
Amalina’s movements were graceful and delicate, and I know she was laughing at me. Had I been anyone but me, I’d have laughed too.
Wolfram, after getting a no-nonsense glare from Amalina after asking for his beloved cutlery, went at it delicately, taking tiny bits of rice pinched between his fingers and nibbling at them when his hand reached mouth-level.
Wolf and me looked insane, and even Marque managed to tear himself away from his meal to laugh at us.
The food was delicious, the curry mild but leaving a strong after-taste somewhere in the nasal region. The little fish things were as crunchy as terrifyingly crunchy things, and the saltiness was wonderful.
Unhealthy though it is, I love salt, with the passion of a cult revering their leader.
The paste was not quite so pleasant, something distinctly fishy about it.
I asked, and apparently there’s dried shrimp in there somewhere.
Eew.
Same goes for the fresh herbs, which tasted like medicine, and therefore were not fun at all.
Marque helped himself to a second plate as I was still palm-feeding myself on the first.
Sadly, the meal ended with Wolfram being more adept at eating with his hands than I was with mine.
Halfway through the meal his eyes went hard, and from Aurel’s normal behaviour, I took it that Wolfram had made a Decision.
Granted, the decision was to embrace eating with his hands, but the way he went about getting the eating part down right means I will allow Decision to be spelled with a capital D.
“Thank you for the meal!”
We chorused just a little, all three of us, because the food really was lovely, for all of my silliness. Amalina nodded her acceptance, and was obviously well pleased that a bunch of overly white people had thoroughly enjoyed her local food.
She signalled for us to follow her, as she picked up her plate and walked back to the kitchen.
“Where’s the dishwasher?”
Good, Wolfram did know that at the very least one should always load one’s own dishes into the washer.
Bad, that Wolfram’s didn’t know that having a dishwasher here was considered luxurious and a waste of perfectly good electricity.
“Wolfrahm, no one uses dishwashers here. Just wash your hands and leave the plates in the sink, I’ll wash it with the tap later”
He blushes at his ignorance, but it’s a good sign that he knows when he’s being ignorant.
“We should wash our own plat-“
Amalina waved him quite.
“You guys are my guests, don’t worry about the chores. Just go rest for now, you’ve all had a long day”
We trudge to our separate bedrooms, Marque the only one chipper among us, the trip accompanied by the soft tones of Amalina singing to herself as she washed away all of our grime.
I meant plates. Plates.
God, I’m tired. I haven’t had to think that hard about how to eat since I was introduced to the steak knife and nearly skewered my own arm.
Scratch that. The steak knife was easier to handle than my own hand.
Why, hand, has thou betrayest me so?
The bed is a little harder than I like, but thanks the heavens, for it has a bolster pillow.
She told me what it was called, and I’ve forgotten.
I know what it means, I remember what it means.
Pillow to hug, pillow to embrace.
A pillow to sleep with.
See you on the other side.
oOoOo
I wake up and there’s a little warm body next to me.
Which, under normal circumstances, is wonderful.
These are not normal circumstances.
It’s ridiculously hot, and my clothes are sticky and I’m lethargic. Additional warmth is slowly driving me out of my mind.
So I shall be forced to poke Marque hard, enough for him to grunt and shift off of being draped over my side.
Ha, we were sharing the same bolster pillow.
He’s welcome to it himself, now.
Let’s go see what Amalina is up to. The sun’s down, it’s late evening, maybe dusk.
I’ll get used to telling time by the sun soon. It’s one of those random abilities people seem to have.
Anissina can scare men silly with just a look.
Amalina can use politeness like a lance.
I can tell time by the sun.
I fear I’ve been short-changed. Oh well. Having an excellent, accurate biological clock must have some uses. I will be very happy the day I find out what they are.
Legs swing off the bed, and I land on something squishy.
I scream, and I screamed louder when the squishy thing screamed back.
“Aargh!”
“What the hell Aunt Ru!”
“Don't what the hell Aunt Ru me! What the hell are you doing there!”
It was a question, but the exclamation mark edged out the question. Coherency is needed for a question; shock is enough of a requirement for a scared exclamation.
He gets up grumpily, lifting his pillow and clamping it under his arm.
“Marque left me alone in the room. I didn’t know where he went, and since I’m supposed to look after him, I decided to just rest here when I found out that he’d sneaked into bed with you”
Read: I was freaked out having to stay in a strange room in a strange place by myself, and I didn’t want to be alone. Marque left, so I followed. I’m so ecstatic to be together again aunt Ru!
Granted that last line was probably just me, but-
What the hell is that thumping sound?
Amalina appears at the door to the room, holding a baseball bat and looking absolutely menacing. She was an excellent athlete at school, and had an affinity for any sport that involved her swinging around clubs or sticks.
She was the bane of her opponents on the lacrosse field.
And the hockey field.
And on the one occasion when her brother had fallen ill and couldn’t play in a big tournament, the cricket field.
If she swung that bat, someone would die.
Probably the suspected attacker, but I didn’t want to say Wolfram brained.
“Calm down Amali! Just my silly little nephew surprising me, is all. Sorry I screamed so loud”
I really am. How embarrassing it is, for a grown woman to scream like a little girly.
Marque sleeps through the commotion. That’s my kid, right enough.
“You guys ah, you’ve been here only a few hours and already it’s so noisy!”
She eyed Wolfram’s tousled hair and the thin bed sheet I guess he’d used to sleep on. We certainly didn’t need a blanket in this weather.
“Told you the floors were clean enough to sleep on, Wolfrahm!”
oOoOo
the spacings are funny, because double-spacing dies between my word file and LJ. Plenty more where this silly fluffiness came from, please at least prod me to make me finish. I'm daringly behind, right now u_u
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(no subject)
Date: 2008-11-17 12:07 pm (UTC)You're awesome, dear!!
Pink-loli fetish of Mona Lisa and him being flamingly in love with Wolf XD
Rufus' monologue about pretty boy reminds me of myself a few years ago before I grew my hair. People used to mistook me as a boy. Not a bishonen though. Just look at my picture I posted on my lj. Then imagine me with Yuuri's hairstyle. Not in Maou-mode of course.
And yay! for Sharukh Khan!! XP have you ever watched 'Kabhi Kushi Kabhi Gham'? he's dancing with Kajol in Egypt-like place, all erotic and, uhm, you know... sexy?? we really are Asians, eh?
Ah, poor Rufus. But she's such a tough woman. A hard kick or a punch, or more, isn't wrong. Actually, I think it's necessity. Just try to let it out, although it may not solve the problem, but it's a way out (sort of), and a coping mechanism.
That hairy fruit, is that rambutan?? if it's true, I can assure you, it's sweet. When it ripe. If not, it's sour, but still tasty. And eating with your fingers!! So Asians. I like eating with fingers, it's depend on the food though. And the circumstance.
Thanks for the prayer before eating :)
Yup, my family and me love the floor. Usually, I sprawl out on the floor, be it sleeping, watching tv, or eating. With pillows, and that bolster 'guling' pillow. And a blanket. To make it short, I camp there. I'm a nomad at home. I can sleep, practically everywhere.
Nice explanation for the culture.
Good job!
(no subject)
Date: 2008-11-18 11:15 am (UTC)Who hasn't watched Kabhi Kushi Kabhi Gam??? It was a raya special three years in a row, I think. My brother has Lecha Lecha on his phone XDX South east asians are WIN
More on physical abuse=closure later. I like the way she thinks!
Rambuta, of course! It's totally lovely, I love how sweet it is. Poor thing is dead scary looking but tastes like an angel
>_> I'm already behind on the countries, when it comes to word count, so sorry I couldn't fit Indonesia in. The least I could do, pan-chan!
It's bantal dakap here, which i think is a million kinds of cuteness <3
here I thought I was being incredibly shallow and unperceptive when it comes to culture XD thanks for the wonderful, encouraging words, pan chan! Just you reading is enough to embarrass me into definitely finishing :)
(no subject)
Date: 2008-11-22 01:30 pm (UTC)hot, steamy, passionateConwolf moment?Oh yes, the first day of fasting, a national tv station aired it :)
Boli chudiyan! and dancing XD
This movie is a tear-jerker.
Yes!Yes! Rambutan!! My mother made a bottle of syrup from it *slurps*
Guling or bantal dakap, is made for cuddling ^^
I have two gulings and pillows and my blanket to cuddle at a cold night :D
There’re different dialects, different slangs, different languages, and sheer speed when we talk.
Once again, agree. I'm a rapid-talker. And my country is very multi-racial. You can learn curse words in a 100 different languages here. Cool, eh?