by Alfian Sa'at
“Chris, just now your girlfriend page ah?”
“Something like that.”
“Wah. Steady˚ already or not?”
“Two years.”
“Wah. Eh, Chris, what do you think ah, about people, 16, 17 year old, having girlfriend? So many of my friends got girl already.”
“Well, it’s up to them.”
“But I think if young you should study first. I mean, girls can come later. Chris you got girlfriend or not when you were 16?”
“You know I have about an hour and a half to go through your Maths with you.”
I felt myself blush and hesitantly showed Chris my Maths textbook. As he flipped the pages he kept asking me if I was comfortable with the various chapters. That was the first time I had heard anyone use the word “comfortable” when talking about Maths. That was something new. I frowned at each chapter he pointed out, and then I made up my mind not to take any chances. If I wasn’t sure about it I was going to say so. That was what my father was paying this guy 45 dollars an hour for. When he was finished Chris said, “We have a lot of work to do.”
Over the next hour, Chris made me do some examples from the book. The first topic was ‘logarithms’. As I was doing the sums, he would tap his fingers on the desk. He didn’t seem the sort to be able to keep still. His feet were crossed and knocking against the dinner chair leg. I found out that I actually didn’t know how to do the sums, and at different times, I tried to catch his eye to show that I was having trouble. I would write a few numbers and signs, and then cancel them out angrily. Chris was in a world of his own, staring blankly into space. Suddenly he said, “I miss chewing gum.”
“You can take those,” I suggested.
“Can I?”
“Yah, take as many as you want.”
Chris took one spearmint and one peppermint.
“You know what I miss most? When you have chewing gum in your mouth and then you’re drinking some cold drink. Like iced Coke. The gum hardens inside your mouth. You have to chew on it hard to get it soft all over again.”
“Chris, I’m not sure about these sums.”
“Okay, let’s see what you have.”
It turned out that I got every sum wrong. Chris patiently explained to me how logarithms worked, the laws I would have to memorise, and he showed me a few “shortcuts” and “tricks”. He stayed on for 15 minutes overtime. When he was done, I shook my head and wanted to ask why I had to attend all those boring lessons when everything could be explained so clearly by him. Maths suddenly seemed easy then, everything followed patterns, and if you knew the pattern, you were safe. When he walked out into the living room it was dark. My mother had a habit of not switching on the living room lights; since she was young, she preferred watching the television in the dark. On the screen was another episode of Hotel, this soap opera on Malaysian television. A Malay man with a moustache was sitting down and smoking a pipe. She asked me about payment, and I told her what Chris had told me, that he would collect only after four lessons. I told her something else, too.
Chris was looking for his shoes, and then my mother took them out from under the television rack. We had some good shoes stolen before when they were left out in the corridor. When Chris stepped out, he made a face, and I realised that one of our neighbours was cooking something spicy and pungent, some chilli paste, or shrimps. He sniffed, and then nodded at my mother, calling her “Auntie.” It was then when she pushed a handful of chewing gum packets into his hand. Chris had a puzzled look on his face, but he still thanked her. There were about 10 packets that my mother gave him. After he left, my mother stayed a while more at the gate. I thought she was going to take in the washing, her white linen turned ghostly blue in the evening’s dying light, but she said, “Such a smart and handsome boy.”
I went away but I could still hear what came next. “Which parents wouldn’t want a son like that?”
* * *
Chris taught me during the months of August and September. My ‘O’ levels were in November, so it didn’t give him much time to go into details. It was a “crash course,” like my father said, which was why he was willing to pay Chris any amount, just to see me through the exams. He didn’t mind if I didn’t score top marks, it was enough that I passed.
Chris and I got along well with each other. He never talked much about himself, and once in a while he would answer pages. I once watched him as he was using the telephone. He looked very relaxed, he smiled a lot, as if the person on the other line was telling him non-stop jokes. He gesticulated when he spoke, shrugging his shoulders, waving his finger sometimes as if at a naughty child. But when he made me do sums, he would still drift off into his own world. What kind of world was that, I often wondered? Once in a while he would mutter something, and a look of irritation would cross over his face. Once, I distinctly heard him say the word “sorry”. But not to me, of course.
There was this day when it rained. There was the sound of thunder and my mother told me not to play with the computer. I closed the windows as the first drops pelted the roads. I caught sight of a man running with a newspaper on his head. I heard the sound of doors slamming. Trees were bending in the wind, a rummaging in their leaves. My mother asked me if I had Chris’ telephone number. He was due for tuition any time now.
“I got his phone number. But I don’t know if he’s still in,” I said.
“Better call him and tell him not to come. It’s raining heavily.”
“I can page him,” I said. “But I don’t have his pager number. He never gave it to me.”
“You call him then. Tell him not to come today. Tell him some other day. Poor boy.”
I cleared my throat as the phone rang in Chris’ house. Garfield’s eyes were glaring at me, with their scratched pupils. Suddenly I heard a girl’s voice saying, “Hello.” But I wasn’t listening to her. I was trying to listen to the other sounds behind that voice. I was listening out maybe to the sounds of water, a fountain maybe, some classical music in the background. A dog’s bell, the shuffling footsteps of servants. But there was nothing.
“Hello? Hello?”
And then the phone went dead.
“Is he at home?” my mother asked. Before I could answer her, there came a knocking at the door. My mother opened it and it was Chris, the ankle part of his jeans wet, but that was all. He had an umbrella.
“I was lucky,” he said. “I was at the bus stop and I was about to rush across when this road sweeper came by. She was pushing this trolley, and she was wearing a rain coat. She gave me an umbrella from her trolley. I didn’t want it at first, but she told me to take it. Is that lucky or what?”
My mother nodded and smiled at Chris. While we were in the room she laid a newspaper under the television rack and placed his wet shoes on it.
* * *
“We don’t have much time left, Hafiz. And you’re giving me this.”
Chris had given some sums to do as homework, but I had rushed through them 10 minutes before he arrived at our door. Three out of the four sums I got wrong.
“You don’t seem to want to concentrate,” he said. “I mean, there are all these drawings in your textbook.” Chris sighed and leaned back in his chair. He looked at a spot on the wall. I took the textbook into my hands and slowly flipped the pages. One coconut tree after another. What was I – a monkey?
“You tell me now what I should do,” he said.
I scratched my forehead. Who could answer a question like that?
“You know, I don’t really have to do this. But you know what? I had to crash my dad’s car.” He put his hands behind his head and continued staring at his spot. “If it wasn’t for that I wouldn’t need the money so badly. You know I take the bus down to this place? If I had the car it might have been easier. But then again if the car was okay, I wouldn’t need to give tuition.”
“Was it serious?” I asked.
“Nothing much. We were racing after a night at Zouk. Do you know where Zouk is? It’s a cl
ub. Disco. Anyway the guys were all crazy, some of them were dead drunk, and they challenged me to a race. We went down to the Lim Chu Kang area, and went at 100, 110. Crazy.” Chris started laughing. “But I wasn’t drunk. When the police came and tested me there was no alcohol. It was just reckless driving. I’d just hit a post, that was all.”
“Wah, so fast ah?” I said it even though I had no idea how fast 100 was. My father didn’t drive a car.
“It got to a point where it felt like flying. They were crazy. But I don’t know why I’m telling you this. You think you’d understand? Anyway your dad doesn’t pay me just to sit around and tell you stories.”
For the next two hours Chris didn’t tell me any more stories. In fact he scolded me on many occasions. Previously he would give me encouragement, say words like “ok, that’s the way” and “you’re getting there”. But on that day he was frowning, and as I did my sums, he watched over my back and he made clicking noises in his mouth when I made mistakes. He sighed heavily. And then the swearing started.
“Eh, who taught you to do this way?”
“Nobody.”
“Then what is this? I just taught you how to do this last week! This is all fuck, you know that? I don’t know where you learn this from. Definitely not me.”
Then Chris made me do a few more questions. His pager went off, and when he looked at the number he went, “What the fuck does she want?” Then he looked at me and asked, “Why, stuck already ah? Want me to show you?” And then he smiled at me and shook his head, as if thinking to himself, I don’t know how else I can help you.
“I can show you how to do, fine, but I’m not taking your exam,” he said, as he made broad strokes across the work I had done.
“Chris I’m sorry you had to come down today, raining and all.”
“You know if I was your father, if only he knew where his money was going…”
“Chris I’m sorry.”
“Look at all this, Hafiz. What is this?”
“Chris I’m sorry. Don’t talk like this anymore.”
For a moment he stopped. And then I realised that the rain too, had stopped. I wanted to walk out of the house, as if I had something I was planning to do but the rain had spoiled my plans. Meet some friends for football, or just go down to the Nintendo shop to watch some of my friends play fighting games.
“Hafiz,” Chris said. “I’m not sure I can do this anymore. When I was told to do this tuition thing I was told ‘O’ levels. That’s sec four, sec three work. Or, maybe in your case, some sec five work. But I have to always start from the beginning, from sec one work, things you should already know, simple basics. I don’t know, Hafiz.”
When the session was over I saw him to the door. My mother was thankfully, on the phone, so she couldn’t have heard any of our exchanges inside my room. When she saw Chris, she told her friend that an important call was coming in. I wanted to tell her, Mak, go and tell that your son is taking tuition. It’s all right.
At the door I looked at Chris. He had a new haircut, and he slipped into his shoes without putting on the socks because they were dripping wet. He asked for a plastic bag and put them inside.
“Chris, not raining anymore ah, Chris?” I asked.
“Yah.” And then he said goodbye to my mother. “Goodbye, Auntie.”
As I watched him go, a sinking feeling gripped me. I saw his umbrella hooked on a water pipe just beside the gate. But I didn’t call out for him to collect it. I didn’t even shout out a goodbye. I just watched him, twirling his plastic bag into the air and catching it, knowing just when it would fall into his hands. A puddle had formed where his umbrella was standing.
* * *
That was three years back. Nowadays, I do a bit of waitering down at Clarke Quay. I had failed my ‘O’ levels for the second time, and after that we all had a big talk and I decided it was best if I just went to the army first, because sooner or later I’d have to do it. For my National Service, I was sent to the Civil Defence section. I made a few friends, generally well-behaved, none of them were into things like drugs and hanging out late. I met my first girlfriend during my NS days too, a girl called Nur Salawati. I call her “Wati” for short. Now and then I think of my secondary school days, and then sometimes I think of Chris. I think about what might have happened if Chris had stuck around with me, with us, a little longer, not gone off just like that, even though he never asked for payment for the four sessions he gave me. But when I do that, I don’t think so much about the day he left but what happened a few months after.
It was one week after my exams had ended, and I knew that I had screwed up my papers. I recalled especially during the Maths paper, drawing big zeros on the foolscap, and then turning them into coconuts, and from them I drew coconut trees. Anyway I was in the living room and my mother was asking for Panadol. She was having a headache, and there was none in the house. It was raining heavily outside, but I grabbed some money and proceeded to the corridor. After I had closed the door, I realised that I had no umbrella with me. Then I saw Chris’ umbrella at the water pipe. We had left it there, thinking that one day he’d come back to take it, without having to knock on our door. It would have saved both Chris and my family a lot of embarrassment. I took the umbrella and walked down with it.
At the void deck, the ground was like that of a fish market, slippery. I walked carefully, taking small steps, and watched as sheets of rain unreeled from the sky. Gusts of wind swept in and peppered bumps on my skin. And it was here when the funny thought struck me: Chris had actually walked through a rainstorm just like this to get to my place. I felt that we owed him something, even if it was just a “thank you” or a proper “goodbye.” I had called his number twice and on my second attempt, I heard his voice on the line. I waited for him to say “hello” a few times and I let him hang up on me. What could I have said? He’d want to know how I did for my ‘O’s. I would have said “OK” but since Chris wasn’t one of my friends he wouldn’t know how to save himself from a situation like that. He wouldn’t know how to ask me “OK or KO?” or tease me with, “You know what you got, I know what you got, no need to say anything.” Chris just wasn’t the sort.
I was about to step into the rain when a powerful feeling came over me. I opened the umbrella and I could feel drops of rain pelting its rim. What kind of person was lucky enough to be given an umbrella during a rainstorm? I wanted to walk like Chris. I wanted to step over puddles the way he would have. I wanted to stay dry like him. In the rain, I was Chris.
Suddenly lightning flashed in the sky and I winced as a thunderclap followed soon after. I gripped the umbrella tighter against the wind. I knew who I was. I knew that the umbrella didn’t belong to Chris, it had only passed through his hands to me. He had never left us anything after all. Not even a lousy umbrella.
Through the rain, I could vaguely make out someone’s blurred figure sheltering under a void deck. I imagined it to be the road sweeper standing beside her trolley. I walked towards her, carrying her umbrella, smiling. And I saw her smiling back at me like a mother to her son who had just returned from his first day at school.
BUGIS
Salmah is wearing her tudung˚ again.
For those who don’t know, the tudung is this scarf that good Muslim girls wear. People like Salmah just want to action, act like good girl, but later in school, she will meet her boyfriend, and hold hands with him. This wearing tudung also, I don’t know who teach her or where she learn. Last month she never used to wear, her hair was always tied at the back with a red scrunchie. She would often take it off to wear at her wrist, like a bracelet.
Just one month and Salmah has found God.
I never saw her hair after that. Maybe it’s now permed or dyed pink or itching with kutu,˚ but if I know about most girls who wear tudung, it’s that they don’t care about their hair. They just care about looking like good girls and kissing their mother’s hand at the front door and winning their mother’s trust so they can later hold their
boyfriends’ hands in school. I have seen Salmah do it, and I have also seen her punch Sazalie’s chest playfully. Action manja.˚ Sazalie is her boyfriend, quite cute, but he cannot pronounce his r’s properly. He says “argh” instead and when I hear him talk I tell myself I must get a boyfriend whose tongue is not so short.
So here we are in the MRT on the way to the poly. Salmah is trying to revise her notes, using a pink highlighter that is almost dried up. I usually don’t study in the MRT, so what I do is fan myself with a copy of The New Paper in my hands. (The headline today is: Will She Strip Again?) I do it not because it is hot, but because I want to ask Salmah if she is not hot wearing her tudung in the afternoon like this, but without opening my mouth. I don’t know if she is getting the hint, but she is looking down at the opened file on her lap and mumbling to herself.
Salmah and Sazalie. They sound like a happy couple, the names would look good on a wedding invitation card, but I have seen them fight before. Salmah is terrible when they fight. She will make her blackest face, and turn it away from Sazalie. Her lips will pout. When Sazalie looks at her right, she will look left. When he looks to her left, she will look right. Their faces will be the two like poles on two magnets. That is why I think that all this girlfriend boyfriend business should start only after you finish school. So young, and wanting to find romance, my mother calls it “cinta monyet”, or “monkeys in love”. I have tried talking to Salmah about it, but she will always ask me back, “Why you so kaypoh?˚ If I want to have a boyfriend, or 10 boyfriends, it’s my own business.” This coming from a girl who wears a tudung to school.
