Ten

by Shamini Flint

  Dad, who is watching the game with me because he is English and England is playing even though he knows nothing about football, is furious.

  ‘Cheats!’ he shouts.

  Mum, who is watching the game with me because England is playing even though she knows nothing about football, is delighted.

  Dad says Mum has a chip on her shoulder about the English because Malaysia was a colony (that means Britain ruled most of it) for so long. I think Mum just likes annoying Dad.

  For the second goal, Maradona doesn’t need God.

  He picks up the ball in his own half, jinks past five English players and scores low past Shilton.

  I’ve never seen anything like it.

  Dad falls silent.

  Mum bounces up and down. She says, ‘It’s Argentina’s turn to win!’

  Later, she explains that Britain went to war with Argentina to steal back a couple of small islands called the Falklands that the British insisted belonged to them even though they were right there next to Argentina. (Dad says that everyone on the Falklands was British and wanted to stay that way.)

  Maybe Maradona was right. Perhaps it was the hand of God, after all. Maybe God was giving Argentina its revenge after it got bullied by the British.

  I doubt it though.

  Sister Pauline made Batumalar stand in the corner of the classroom for the entire school day today. God didn’t step in to help her just because she was being bullied.

  If I’m going to be a professional footballer, I need ball skills. And the only way to get ball skills is to practise.

  First, I need a ball.

  I know that in Brazil, a lot of the children from poor families start playing on the streets using rolled-up wads of newspaper. I would do that but I’m already ten so there is no time to waste.

  I decide that it will be much better for my career to skip the newspaper ball bit and progress straight to a real ball. Unfortunately, this means my career choice cannot remain a secret.

  It’s dinner and we are having rice, fried fish, chicken curry and beans. We are sitting together at the glass-topped dining table. My dad is quite old-fashioned about that. Rajiv and I would much rather eat in front of the television.

  There’s not been much conversation. Whatever Mum and Dad were quarrelling about last night after the football is not over. It never is really. There are just different stages in the argument. Right now we’re post-match. That means they’re too tired to keep fighting but they can’t talk about anything else either because they’re still angry so they just eat in a grumpy silence.

  A good time to introduce a new subject, I think.

  ‘Mum, Dad, may I have a football?’

  Rajiv looks up with interest. ‘What do you want a football for?’

  ‘What do you think? To play, of course.’

  ‘But you can’t play.’

  ‘Yes, I can.’

  ‘No, you can’t.’

  We go on like this for a while until Mum puts up her hand and it is our signal to stop.

  ‘Why do you want a football, Maya?’

  ‘To play!’ I am getting impatient. What else could I possibly want a football for?

  ‘Are you sure? I know you love to watch football, but you haven’t really played, have you?’

  ‘That’s because I haven’t got a football,’ I explain in my best ‘this is your last warning – next time I’m sending you off if you slide in with your studs up’ referee’s voice.

  ‘You’ve never asked for one before,’ says Dad.

  ‘It will keep my nose out of a book,’ I point out.

  My parents are always complaining that I have my nose in a book and that talking to me is like talking to a wall.

  Amamma wades in, ‘Why do you want to play football?’

  Mum leaps to my defence, ‘She just wants to have some fun.’

  I’m not having any of that.

  ‘I’m going to be a professional footballer,’ I say firmly.

  Amamma shudders. ‘I can’t believe you’re my granddaughter! But why should I be surprised? I can’t believe your mother is my daughter.’

  I am about to respond when I see the vein in Dad’s neck writhing like a snake that’s been hit on the head with a shovel by the gardener. I shut my mouth. It’s good practice for when I’m a professional footballer and I’ve already been shown a yellow card. Knowing when to be quiet is a sure way of not seeing red on the field.

  ‘Girls can’t play football,’ interrupts Rajiv rudely.

  I kick him under the table.

  He falls off the chair, clutching his leg and yelling, the big whiner. I didn’t kick him that hard.

  Mum grins suddenly, ‘Well, Rajiv. She’s got a good kick on her. Maybe she should have a football.’

  Dad starts to laugh. Mum does too. Rajiv stops yelling.

  For a moment, we feel like a family at the dinner table. It’s almost better than Mum agreeing to get me the football.

  It’s one of the weirdest things about Mum and Dad. They quarrel all the time. But sometimes we can all have a laugh together.

  If they really hate each other that much, how come they can do that?

  If they don’t really hate each other, then why do they have to quarrel?

  That night in bed, I make myself a training program of all the skills I need to master – dribbling, passing (who will I pass to? I put a question mark next to ‘passing’), shooting, back-heels and step-overs.

  There’s probably more I need to know.

  What do you call it anyway when Zico drags the ball onto his foot with his back to goal, flicks it in the air over his own head, spins round on the spot and volleys the ball into the top corner of the goal?

  I chew the end of my pencil and add ‘other skills’ to the list. I can’t be describing every single magical thing Zico can do with a football – I’d never get around to practising.

  The next day is Saturday, which is good because we always go to the beach in the morning for a picnic. Mum packs the picnic – nasi lemak, rice cooked with pandan leaves (smells like vanilla ice-cream), anchovy paste with ground dried chillis in it, sliced cucumber and heaps of water because this stuff can blow your head off – it’s that spicy.

  Rajiv and I jump into the car in our swimming things so we don’t have to waste time changing. At the last moment, Amamma decides to come along, which spoils everyone’s mood for a while but there are football fields of open sand so we should be able to stay away from her.

  ‘If I had my football, I could have practised on the beach, Mum.’

  ‘Be patient, Maya,’ says Mum. Amamma just scowls.

  The sea is as beautiful as ever – green with frothy bits of white on top – like a football field with a sprinkling of snow on it.

  Kuantan may be a real ‘one-horse town’ – that’s what Dad calls it, I have no idea why, I haven’t ever seen even one horse – but it is fantastic to live on the coast.

  The sun is warm on our backs. Rajiv and I run down to the water. My dad starts yelling immediately. He’s a very good swimmer but so worried about us drowning that we’re not allowed to go any deeper than where he’s standing waist deep in water.

  I can see Mum unpacking the picnic under the shade of a casuarina tree. When it’s ready she waves her arms frantically – like a coach trying to attract the referee’s attention because the team is a goal down and he needs to bring on an extra striker two minutes from the end.

  We trudge up through the sand, sit cross-legged on the mat and stuff our faces.

  It’s another odd thing about Mum and Dad.

  For all the years we’ve lived in Kuantan, we’ve had a picnic by the sea every Saturday unless Dad is away on business or something.

  How come we do family things together and have a great time and yet every evening Mum and Dad start yelling at each other again?

  I run back down to the water, lie on the sand and watch the waves swirling around my feet.

  Amamma walks slowly down to th
e sea.

  I really hope she’s not planning to swim.

  Fat chance.

  It’s quite a sight. She walks into the water with her arms held up straight even though the water is not past her ankles yet. Maybe she’s worried about a big wave.

  She has no swimming gear.

  Mum says Indian women as old as Amamma would never wear anything that showed too much arm or leg or tummy or anything – only saris.

  She keeps walking and her white sari billows up like a collection of large mushrooms. The drape over her shoulder fans out on the surface of the water. After a while, the five metres of cloth (that’s how long a sari is) gets waterlogged and begins to sink.

  Amamma walks slowly back to the shore and beckons to my father, ‘I’m wet now. Time to go.’

  We pack and leave. That’s why it’s annoying if Amamma decides to get in the water. She only stays in for five minutes because her sari gets wet and sandy and she is uncomfortable, but then we have to go home because she won’t change clothes on the beach.

  And she’s really nasty to sit next to because she creates puddles on the back seat of the car. If you complain she says you have no respect for the elderly because you’ve been badly brought up by your mother.

  At home we stand outside while Dad turns the garden hose on us. He doesn’t like sand in the house – it scratches the wooden floors. Dad watches Amamma walk into the house and I wish he’d turn the hose on her too. Wouldn’t that be a laugh?

  He looks at me and I can see he’s guessed my thoughts. He smiles but shakes his head. He’s probably right. She might have a heart attack. It wouldn’t be right for him to kill his mother-in-law. Is it murder if you kill someone by turning a garden hose on them?

  I get my football that evening. Mum says it’s coming out of my birthday present. That’s fine with me. I won’t even need a birthday present now that I’ve got my football.

  It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. It’s round and made up of black and white pentagons and hexagons. How did the person who invented the football know that a whole lot of pentagons and hexagons could be stitched together into a ball shape?

  It’s firm to the touch yet soft, like a watermelon wrapped in cotton wool. It smells like new shoes.

  I hug it to my chest.

  What else could a girl want?

  Boots perhaps, and shin pads. Maybe not shin pads. I want to be like Zico and wear my socks around my ankles.

  It’s time to practise.

  It’s much harder than I thought it would be. The ball is heavy and hurts my toes, even inside my trainers. I try running with it: I step on the thing, my foot rolls over the top and I come crashing down.

  This is so humiliating. I’m glad Rajiv is watching TV inside.

  I get up and try running with it again. This time the ball escapes, rolls ahead and I am not so much dribbling as chasing it until it comes to a stop against the garden fence.

  Mum leans out of the kitchen window and shouts, ‘Are you doing it right?’

  I ignore her. This is what practice is about.

  Even Zico must have started somewhere.

  I settle for knocking the ball against a wall over and over again. Well perhaps not over and over again. My record for the evening is three bounces.

  Even Zico must have started somewhere.

  That evening, France lose to Germany in the semifinal – on penalties. The Germans are going to win the World Cup once more. Don’t they ever get tired of playing boring football?

  In the darkness, I can hear Mum and Dad. They are yelling about Amamma ruining our picnic that morning. I know she was annoying but surely not enough for two grown-ups to fight over?

  I wake up the next morning with the dawn prayers.

  The mosque is not far – on the other side of a row of houses and a monsoon drain. The call to prayer is played through loudspeakers attached to the shiny gold-topped minaret five times a day – the first one at dawn and the last at dusk. We’ve all learnt to sleep through it in the morning, even Dad.

  I guess I’m so excited about my new football, I was sleeping lightly for a change. My head is full of dreams of glory.

  I grab the ball and run downstairs, listening to the prayers. It’s almost like singing, except without music and in Arabic.

  I said that once to Dad.

  He said, ‘We’ll never be able to sell the house.’

  Why would we want to sell the house anyway? It’s our home. There’s the monsoon drain to fish in, a garden to practise football and for Mum to grow fruit trees (a cow got in last week and ate all the saplings) and roses (not possible in Kuantan’s sandy soil but it has become personal for Mum).

  Dad doesn’t do any gardening but he can spend hours sweeping the sickle-shaped leaves that fall into the garden from the acacia trees along the monsoon drain.

  We live near the sea. There is always a strong wind blowing. There has not been a day in our lives when there haven’t been as many leaves the next morning as Dad swept up the previous day.

  ‘Why do you do it, Dad?’ I asked him once.

  He was shirtless, pouring with sweat and had a cigarette dangling out of the side of his mouth.

  He took the cigarette out, had a fit of coughing from the smoke in his lungs and wheezed, ‘Keeps me healthy!’ Yeah, right. I practise kicking the ball against the wall. Up to four bounces. I decide that when I get to ten, I’ll try dribbling again.

  My plan to practise all day is ruined by Mum coming downstairs and reminding me we’re going to Kuala Lumpur for the wedding of one of my cousins.

  ‘Do I have to come, Mum?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can I bring the football?’

  Mum sighs.

  I know what’s bugging her. Football will be seen as the latest weirdness of her daughter by our large and nosey family.

  ‘Please, Mum?’

  ‘All right,’ says Mum.

  The drive to Kuala Lumpur is quite difficult. It takes about five hours. At least Dad can see over the steering wheel. A lot of the time is spent following the smog-spewing trail of timber trucks with logs piled high on the back.

  The logs are held in place by metal chains.

  Every time we overtake a timber lorry, Mum says, ‘I hope those chains don’t snap.’

  I hope that too as we’d be crushed by the logs rolling off the lorry. Overtaking is dangerous and not just because of the risk of falling logs. There’s always someone coming the other way trying to overtake his own smog-spewing timber lorry so there’s a lot of swerving back in at the last minute to avoid head-on collisions.

  Every thirty kilometres or so, there is an abandoned wreck by the side of the road – Dad says they didn’t manage to swerve back in time. The police leave the wrecks as a warning to others to drive carefully. It doesn’t seem to be working.

  The road is so bendy and curvy and windy that until I was eight years old, Mum used to carry plastic bags for me in case I chucked up. I don’t get carsick anymore – but we still sing during the winding bits to distract us. Usually, ‘The Bear Went over the Mountain’ and ‘The Grand Old Duke of York’.

  There’s a lot of puffing uphill and then speeding down the other side. Kuantan and Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia, are on opposite sides of a great mountain range that runs down the country like a pokey spine.

  We stop at Karak, a town so small it makes Kuantan look like a bustling city. We always stop at Karak because Dad’s favourite Indian restaurant is in a grubby row of shops along the road. Even though he’s white, Dad loves Indian food. He knows where the best Indian restaurant is on every high street of every small town in Malaysia.

  He used to say that he married Mum so she could cook Indian food for him every day.

  That was when they still made jokes about their marriage.

  We stuff our faces, eating from the banana leaves that South Indian restaurants use instead of plates.

  After that, we sit in the car in silence. I’m too
full to talk. Rajiv is asleep. Mum and Dad are getting tense because these family weddings can be tough.

  ‘Maya, you’re growing so tall!’ exclaims one of my aunts. ‘Isn’t she growing so tall?’ she asks a motley crew of relatives.

  There are murmurs and nods of agreement.

  I grit my teeth and hold fast to my football.

  It is not a compliment. Being tall is like being dark for a girl. It’s bad because no one will marry you – and that’s all these people think about. Even when you’re only ten.

  ‘Are you carrying the ball for your brother? What a helpful girl!’

  I bounce the ball and say defiantly, ‘It’s mine.’

  ‘Oh! Yours … I thought it was a football.’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘Oh …’

  My brother walks in.

  ‘Rajiv, you’re growing so tall!’

  This time the nods and murmurs are of approval. Boys are encouraged to be tall and play football.

  Mum sits inside with the women. She wears a silk sari with lots of gold thread.

  Dad stands outside smoking and talking to the men. That’s what the men do at Indian weddings – they’re not even expected to dress up.

  I’m forced to wear a pink dress with ruffles around the neck.

  Rajiv looks at me and starts laughing. ‘You look like a flamingo!’

  I don’t bother to get angry. He’s right. I look like a pink bird that stands on one leg.

  When I get a chance, I practise with my football in the garden. The pink dress doesn’t smell so good. The relatives watch me from the windows. I can see their lips move as they mutter to each other.

  My brother shouts from the porch where he is playing cards with some of the cousins, ‘Flamingoes don’t play football!’

  This one does.

  The wedding takes forever. We’re at the temple in an area next to the main courtyard. The main courtyard has lots of statues of different gods. There’s Ganesha, with the head of an elephant; Shakti, with lots of arms; and Shiva, looking dangerous.