dont depend on me

8/2/2019 Dont Depend on Me

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never overheard a conversation. I think they hardly talked. Maybe that is how things are when

you get older. The only sign I saw in my covert observations, like a view you get when a curtain

lifts momentarily in a short breeze, was the one time I saw Uncle Thomas pluck a leaf from

Aunty's hair. She put her heart in her eyes when she smiled at him.

After the visits stopped, Aunty tended our garden with a vengeance. "I don't have to depend onhim,' she would say with anger breaking her voice. It was during this period of manic gardening

that Uncle Thomas dyed his grey streaks black and brought his Vietnamese bride home. We saw

his friends come for dinner and barbecue sessions. We were never invited.

The garden grew erratically under Aunty's rage. The chillies shrunk in fear and the ladies fingers

dropped off before they were more than the size of a baby's thumb. The spinach, on the other

hand, grew larger with coarse, defensive leaves that were inedible. The watermelons split open

before they could ripen and soon, Aunty stopped trying.

Then, she started collecting men. Of all shapes and sizes. Men who rang our doorbell and opened

their car doors for her. Men who called and stayed on the telephone line for hours. Men shenever spoke about to me. Their names eluded me but I knew them by the cars they drove. There

was the one in a baby blue Volvo 740, a gaunt man who always stood outside the gate finishing a

cigarette while waiting for Aunty to step out in her high heels. One in a silver Ford Laser sedan

with glasses and broad ties. Another in a green diesel Pajero who always said 'Hello, young man'

if I answered the door. A balding dandy in a black two door Honda Civic hatchback, in jeans and

white shirts. A chauffeured executive in a Mercedes Benz who never got out of the back seat, not

even when Aunty was trying to lock the gate holding up her long dress in one hand and her purse

in the other.

I sometimes see Uncle Thomas do things I am not meant to see. Like when he checked Aunty's

tyre pressure when the car was parked outside. Or the time he picked up our morning papers and

put them under our porch because it looked like rain. Or oiling the hinges of our gate. Small

signs of care or remorse, I did not know which. Aunty never noticed or pretended not to see.

I often wanted to ask Aunty if she was happy but we never spoke of such things. Like the other

day, when the words were just behind my teeth. I opened my mouth and instead, told her that I

was doubling my allowance, just for this month. It was so that I could go to Pulau Tioman with

my girlfriend after the exams.

"Don't depend on me to take care of you," she said as she was wont to say these days. She knew I

knew I did. I relied on her income to put me through school. On her presence as the only living

relative I have. I depend on her to feed and clothe me the same way the garden depended on

Uncle Thomas. To be stopped from growing wild and unkempt from lack of care. I do not

understand why she says what she does.

Without warning, last Friday, she fell unconscious walking to the sink with the dinner dishes.

When I called, Uncle Thomas climbed over the dividing wall in our backyard and carried her

into the car. He drove like a madman to the emergency ward of the nearest hospital.


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A tiny clot had grown in the one of her many arteries. Like a miniature stopcock, it blocked the

free passage of blood to a part of Aunty's brain. Deprived of oxygenated blood to feed and keep

it alive, this part of her brain died and along with it the nerves and puppet strings it was attached

to. Aunty lost the use of her left side and her speech.

I saw frustration in her eyes and shame in the set of her head. When I fed her, her lower lip couldnot close over the spoon. Her eyelid sagged with her cheek as though her face was carved of

butter and left out to melt. Her tongue lolled in her mouth and I knew it could not mould the

sound coming from her throat into words. She could have spoken and I would have learnt to

understand her but she stayed totally silent for five months.

I suspected that she tried to speak when she was alone, away from prying ears. No one would

hear then that her consonants sounded like vowels and imagine her tongue like a wooden spatula

filling her mouth. I guessed at this because when she did speak, it was clearly audible and the

words were perfectly formed.

She said,"You can't depend on me now." There were no tears.

"It's OK, Aunty. You can depend on me," I said.

I wanted to hold her hand then but I did not. I wanted to say that I was so afraid she would die

when she was at the hospital and I would be a seven year old again in a funeral parlour. But I did

not. I said, "Uncle Thomas and I are going to start fixing up the garden."

Uncle Thomas and I tore up the wilderness in our backyard. We planted a carpet of soft, springy

grass, a border of tiny star-like purple flowers and a climbing plant with bold yellow trumpet

blooms which hugged the perimeter fence. The structured fronds of big palms shaded a multitude

of plants with variegated leaves. Begonias on the ground and hanging pots of flowering petunias

looked like candy kisses on some mornings. Our garden became a profusion of pretty things.

On some evenings, Uncle Thomas and I sit on the porch looking at the morning blooms close

into themselves and put their heads down. Occasionally, his wife would come over with 2 cans

of 100-Plus and dainty snacks laid out on a plate. She would sit with us for a while with a smile

on her smooth, young face. Sometimes, we would just sit in the gathering gloom of dusk and

wonder about what goes on inside my house.


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Someone Special

byLaura Bakri

I first noticed the little girl as I paused from setting up my stall with items stored overnight in

drawers under the tabletop. She was hanging back a little near the automatic doors to the car park,just at the corner by the newsagents next to its stand of multi-coloured plastic handheld

windmills and across from another retailer's rack holding row after row of plain white t-shirts

emblazoned with bastardised logos and sly puns on famous slogans.

Her big brown eyes were huge in a tiny heart-shaped face as she looked intently past the hanging

cotton blouses of the stall next door at my little white cart with its tiers of display shelves and red

latticed panels. As I continued laying out earrings and bracelets of jewel-toned glass Murano

beads and hanging up embroidered evening bags at eye level on hooks depending from the roof

of my mobile display, I watched from the corner of my eye as she scuffed the toe of one shoe on

the heel of the other, then took a step closer. Sensing that she was a little uncertain, I decided not

to go into my usual mode of cheerfully making eye contact, smiling and beckoning over withfriendly chatter and welcoming gestures potential customers attracted to my pretty goods.

Most such persons were female, teens to smart career women and shopping housewives, looking

to buy a trinket or two. This child of about five or six years, dressed prettily in a white frock with

puff sleeves and pink smocking on its bodice, looked much like any other little girl following her

mummy shopping on a warm sultry midday, and for a moment, as others walking by obscured

her, I wondered if she might be lost. Then, as she came into view again, a lady in a black baju

kurung and white lace selendang straightened up from whispering in the girl's ear, patted her

shoulder and handed her something, then moved away towards the travellator up to the main

floor.

Scrunching her fists into her skirts, the small child carefully made her way over to where I was

just putting out the last of the cute little handphone straps from Thailand, her tiny white shoes

tapping daintily closer on the cream tiled flooring. A sweet voice piped, "Excuse me, Auntie," as

I finally looked directly at my diminutive visitor.

"Hello adik, that's a pretty dress you're wearing!" was my cheerful greeting. It worked, as the

first smile I had seen from her shyly spread across her face.

She took a further step forward, releasing her right hand and placing it on the edge of the lowest

display shelf, tipping up on her toes to see the merchandise neatly laid out before her, now level

with her chin.

"Are you looking for something special?" I asked brightly as she carefully eyed each item in turn.

As she looked at me and nodded once, I stepped closer and handed her one of my small fabric

floral hairclips, adding, "Something special for someone special?"

The suddenly troubled look in her eyes surprised me, but she quickly veiled it with thick black

lashes and when she looked up again her face was resolute and smiling once more.
http://silverfishstories.blogspot.com/2006/12/someone-special.htmlhttp://silverfishstories.blogspot.com/2006/12/someone-special.html


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"Yes," she said clearly, "something special for someone special. Ibu says my kakak is going way

soon to a beautiful country. She will be with new people and learn many new things, so I want to

give her a present. Something nice so she will still think about me even though she's far away.

Something nice so she won't forget."

She looked carefully at the flowered hair ornament, then raised herself up on tiptoe again to peer

once more at the other items.

"I want kakak to always remember me, no matter what," she confided, raising her head to look

up at the hanging display of handphone covers clipped to a wire strung across the centre of the

cart. She seemed particularly drawn to one in red silk and black velvet, brightly standing out

from the rest of its fellows in the middle of the line, and following her gaze, I released it and

handed it to her, simultaneously relieving her of the purple orchid hairclip. She looked at the

cover intently, then glanced up at me and nodded twice.

"How much is this, please?" she asked politely, her left hand in which I saw the flash of red billnotes finally leaving her skirts.

Glancing at the price tag high above her head next to the line, I replied, "Fifteen Ringgit," and

looking at another tag on the shelf top, added, "And if you like the hairclip, that's only Eight

Ringgit. Would you like both? I'll give you a special price of Twenty Ringgit, that's Three

Ringgit off."

Shyly, she nodded thrice and confided, "Kakak loves orchids, so she will like the hairclip. Kakak

also likes red and she's always talking on her handphone, so - " she suddenly paused and bit her

lower lip, then looked up at me bravely and smiled once more.

Silently empathising with the little one, I rang up the sale. As I placed the handphone cover in a

white box and began to gift wrap it with cream paper, she shyly asked me to leave the hairclip

unwrapped. Puzzled but obligingly, after I tied a jaunty red ribbon on the cream parcel, I dropped

it and the hair ornament into a small plastic bag and handed that over to the girl.

"Thank you Auntie," she smiled, then carefully turned and walked off. Bemused, I watched her

taking quick little steps up the moving walkway, then driven by a whim, turned to my sales

assistant setting out flowered slippers by the side of the cart and said, "Could you keep an eye on

everything for a moment, please? I just want to pop up for a minute."

As I emerged by the side of the pharmacy, I caught sight of the little girl going up to the lady in

black who was by a food stall. As I moved towards them, I saw the lady bend down a little, nod

as the child mouthed something, and then take the hairclip out of the bag and place it in the little

girl's hair behind her left ear. Straightening, she took the child's hand in her left, picked up a

purchase in her right, smiled and nodded to the serving girl in her white apron and black tudung,

and walked towards the entrance.

Reaching the display of traditional Malay kueh, neat packets of nasi lemak and plastic containers


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of meehoon, I was surprised to see the serving girl, who sometimes pops by my stall during her

breaks, surreptitiously wiping away a tear.

In response to my enquiring expression, she inclined her head in the direction of her recent

customers, who were now getting into a dark blue BMW. "The family always buys kueh from

me," she said, and added, "it's so sad, such a pretty girl, the adik will miss her kakak so much ..."

"Well, it's always hard for a little sister when the big sister she adores goes away to study

overseas, but I'm sure they'll keep in touch, and her kakak will be back during the holidays, you

know ..." I hastened to assure her, then trailed off as I received a blank stare in return.

"No, no, you don't understand - the little girl asked her mother to put the orchid clip in her hair so

her sister could see her favourite adik wearing her favourite flower when they said goodbye. She

also asked her mother to put her sister's handphone safe in the cover she just bought so that they

could always be in touch," she explained, and at my continuing lack of comprehension,

elaborated, "The mother had just been telling me her eldest daughter passed away of leukaemia

last night and the burial would be soon, after Zohor, so she was quickly getting some lunch forher youngest girl before the funeral."

And as the azan sounded from the nearby mosque, I looked out to see the little girl's solemn face

silhouetted in the passenger window as the car pulled silently away.

dont depend on me

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