March 5, 2010
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Floating Cloud Chapter 1
I guess it was always obvious to me that I was different from everyone else around me. Seeing my reflection in the mirror and comparing it to my adoptive father and mother, as well as my adoptive sisters when they visited, I was the only one with blue, oval-shaped eyes, the only one who had brown hair, the only one with pale skin.
It is hard for a child in Chinese society to grow up that different, hard for a child to realise that being different means being special. As a young child all I wanted was just to fit in with the other children and be accepted by them, not be shunned for being different. But I was special in a way, although I never knew it until I first set eyes on Cao Ping. However, the intermingling of her life and mine does not start early enough for me to have realised that. Looking back, in fact, I could not have met her at a better time in my life.
My biological father was one of those men who made his millions in Raffles City. Singapore - home of the rich colonialists, home of the white colonial millionaires. Not that I knew – or wanted to know - much about him, nor about his money. He had already run off by the time I was born. Run off with the maid from Indonesia. He had already sold his millionaire soul for his sexual desires, my mother losing her grace, as well as her figure with the unwanted pregnancy that she refused to terminate. Today, when I look at the photos of her before my father impregnated her with me, I see a beautiful woman, with a figure that would put the likes of Marilyn Monroe or Grace Kelly to shame. An object of desire without doubt, that is, until I came around.
So I was the cause of my father running away with his whore, but that was nothing compared with the fact that my mother died after having given birth to me. She lost too much blood in her caesarean operation, and never recovered. She lost consciousness, and never awoke to even see me. Was it the stress of thinking she had to bring up a child alone that caused her to die? Did she give up the fight to live, knowing that it would shame not only her family, but also that of her husband? It was certainly unacceptable in Singaporean society for a young English woman to be seen raising a child whilst her husband was sleeping with the maid, and that last part was pretty much common knowledge throughout the ex-pat community. Either way, my own feelings of guilt have never really diminished, neither for her death, nor for my father running away like a coward, and also not for the break-up of what appeared outwardly to be the perfect marriage.
My father found out about my mother’s death, but only three weeks after she had died. By that time her ashes had already been scattered in the gardens of Mount Vernon crematorium. The official story was that he had business matters to attend to in India although everyone knew that he had taken HER with him. Hardly anyone bothered turning up for the funeral service, just a sprinkling of friends and Xi Ghong, the butler who had been in my father’s service for eighteen years. Wonderful Xi Ghong, masterful, the man who was to become my adoptive father!
My father found him in 1950, destitute, and with his wife expecting their third child. They had already decided that there were to be no more children after this one. Having had two girls was considered a failure, and this was his wife, Mei-Lee’s last chance to have a child, as she was nearing the end of her childbearing years. Please be a boy, they prayed. Please. Living in the slums of Singapore’s Chinatown with no job and no money, but a considerable love and respect for one another that my true parents never had. My mother maybe, but my father? Not at all.
My father had found him in the docks, contemplating taking his life, and in a show of emotion which Xi Ghong would always remember, my father gave him, Mei-Lee, their two daughters and the unborn baby not only a roof over their heads, but also hope for the future. A young millionaire, rebelling against his father’s wishes, knowing that no matter what he did, it mattered nothing. His father was about to die anyway, a scar left from the Japanese invasion, a bullet in the spine as he was returning to help his wife. Many long years of pain as the bullet worked its way deeper into his spine, slowly paralysing him, causing him agony, sleepless nights and yet more agony. Doctors could not operate for fear of totally paralysing him, and when it was too late anyway, it made precious little difference. Finally he became too weak to eat, but not too weak to give my father one last lecture on what was right and what was wrong. His own butler, brought in from England in 1932 was fine. Why not keep him on? "You can’t trust a foreigner my lad."
Yet was he not the foreigner? Are we not all foreigners, no matter where we are? Was my grandfather’s own son not foreign? He wasn’t born on the green island of His Majesty's colonial Britain, thousands of miles back west, the other side of India, and then some. No, the son of an opium merchant was born on this humid peninsular off the tip of Malaysia. A foreigner for a son, but no one saw him that way. He was the son of the almighty George Mason who knew no fear, who would defeat raiding parties of the Portuguese and French opium dealers, handing out his own form of justice – a bullet through the head. How ironic that he himself was dying from a bullet that had been inside his body for years.
Christopher Mason had married Isabelle Charles, a beautiful young woman, seven years his junior in the spring of 1961 after many a year of womanising. Many took it to be a sign of his maturity that he had finally found the right one, and the wedding was another one of those high-profile events, the press all over them, flashes of light in the Orchid Gardens where the happy couple posed for photographs.
But the womanising continued – it just took a different form to before, and when Nutsara entered the household as maid, my father could not keep his hands off her, nor his so-called private parts out of her. On my mother’s nights at the bridge club, he would use the time alone to take his whore to the bed where my mother would lie, just minutes later. Xi Ghong would be given the night off, and although he knew what was going on, his lips would be sealed for eternity. A matter of honour – he owed his entire existence solely to my father, and that is why, several years later I was burdened upon him. Everything is a question of honour in this culture.
When, at the age of seven, I asked Xi Ghong and Mei-Lee why my father did not want me, they looked at each other knowingly, as if they had rehearsed exactly this conversation many, many times. Xi Ghong led me to the garden in the courtyard downstairs from our apartment, with the pond full of golden koi fish in the middle, and told me the story.
“Your father is a good man,” he told me. “His job takes him all around the world, and he cannot look after you.”
It was only much later that I found out just how much Xi Ghong was being paid to father me, to keep quiet.
“But why have I never seen him?”
“He is a busy man, and thinks it would only hurt you if you saw him on the few occasions he can afford.”
Some years later, when I recalled this conversation, I remember thinking how much of a coward he was, running away from me. Surely at the same time, he was running away from the memory of his wife? Was I not all he had left from his marriage? He did not care about that. I figured that if he did not want me, then it was his loss, not mine. Maybe I could use the information to my advantage, but Xi Ghong brought me up better than that. I did not realise at that time that Xi Ghong was so much better off financially because of me.
Xi Ghong and Mei-Lee looked after me well, but from an early age, I noticed that I was not being treated as one of their own children, although their youngest – they did not manage to have their wish of a son - was 19, and about to leave the house to study in California. The physical differences, the fact that I grew up quicker than all the other children my age, all pointers to a child who was “yang gway tzr” – a foreign ghost, living in the Chinese part of the peninsular. I heard this phrase whispered so many times in my early youth, and grew up to despise it. How could they say I was foreign? I was also born here.
I was not given a family name, and so my name was limited to two characters – Fu Yun, Floating Cloud. Being different to all the other children was something I just had to get used to. Pointing fingers and whispers were the norm, and from a very early age.
Despite being a Caucasian, Xi Ghong and Mei-Lee brought me up in the Chinese tradition, and so I went to kindergarten in Chinatown, which is where I met Cao Ping. We would play together, kicking balls, rolling hoops, laughing and enjoying splashing in the puddles of the warm afternoon showers that rainy season in Singapore would bring. Great days, days where going home to Xi Ghong would seem miles away in the morning, but would always come around way too quickly. Cao Ping was the only one, even at that age, who did not discriminate between the obvious differences between a Caucasian and a Chinese Asian. Although there were many Caucasians in Singapore, the racial intermingling that Singapore is famous for is not all it seems.
I was given responsibilities from a very early age, clearing the table after dinner from the age of four, making sure that I poured Xi Ghong (he would not allow me to call him Baba, like every other child called their father, nor did Mei-Lee allow me to call her Mama) a whisky each night, imported Scotch whisky, nothing but the best for him. He had listened to my father’s tips on where to invest his money, my father had looked after him well, and he had made several hundred thousand Singapore Dollars in profit, and become, because of it, more like my true father than he would ever have liked to admit. He had also invested much of the one thousand Singapore Dollars that my father gave him each month for looking after me, money for him to keep quiet, money that changed the man.
So once the table had been cleared, and Xi Ghong had received his whisky (if I spilled even one drop, I would get beaten, and the first days of it, I lived in terror of the leather belt holding up his trousers), it was time for bed. I was, in one way maybe, lucky as being “yang gway tzr” I was given a bedroom of my own. Most children had to sleep in the same room as their parents or share with one another, but not me. I liked it that way too, as it gave me time to talk to my imaginary friends, and most of all to Cao Ping.
I would tell her in the morning what I had told her the night before in my imaginary conversations, she would always listen, and smile back at me. Her answers in my imaginary conversations were almost identical to the ones she would give me the next day – we knew each other so well, even at that tender age. When I look at the picture of us taken in our first year in kindergarten, Cao Ping and me holding hands, I realise that was when we started to fall in love, although no one could have seen it then. She was also beaten as a child, a girl when her parents wanted a boy. She was a disappointment to her family, although her parents tried hard not to show it. Cao Ping’s mother was told she would probably never have a baby, and so when she became pregnant in 1967, they spent as much time as possible at the temple, praying for it to be a son. They blamed the fact that it was a girl on them both going to the temple at the same time – a basic spiritual error, but one that was punished fully. The gods certainly did not smile on them this time round.
One day, when we were talking about how much our parents beat us, and how we didn’t understand why, we noticed our teacher looking at us, observing us. We started to whisper. We got a beating from the teacher because of that, and then, when I got home that evening, the story was already there, and there was a repeat performance. Cao Ping, in that respect, was lucky as her father was in Kuala Lumpur on business and so escaped an additional belting. After that, we made sure that our teacher was not around when we talked about that subject. It certainly didn’t take us long to learn that lesson.
Cao Ping was born on the same day as me; both of us liked that coincidence and we would sometimes share birthday parties together. It was good for me, as it was one of the only times when other children at school would actually talk to me. A very rare treat. Cao Ping was more popular, although she would spend more time with me than anyone else. On our fourth birthdays, Xi Ghong gave both of us a present, a jade monkey pendant on a silver chain – we were born in the Year of the Monkey. We were both amazed, but Xi Ghong was a clever man, very astute, and he knew that we would be friends forever. Both Cao Ping and I were as excited as only a child can be to receive such a present, although Cao Ping’s father was not happy that she even talked to me. Still, he accepted it, for the time being.
Since the age of four, I have never been parted from the jade monkey – it is the symbol of my eternal feelings for Cao Ping and nothing would take it away from my possession, although I have had to replace the chain twice, the first time being when I grew too much, and the second...well, that comes later.
After kindergarten, at the age of six, we were sent to the same school. It took some doing, as Cao Ping’s father did not like the fact that we were friends and did not want us to be together – it was bad enough that he had a daughter, but for this daughter to be associated with a yang gway tzr was – in his mind - totally unacceptable. But with a lot of luck, we found out where Cao Ping’s father was going to send her to school. Cao Ping listened in to her parents talking whilst she was cleaning vegetables for dinner, but trying hard to concentrate more on the subject of the conversation than on her chores. The next day at kindergarten, she was excited - she had successfully accomplished her first mission as a spy, and told me that she was being sent to Yishun. It then fell on me, at six, to persuade Xi Ghong that I also had to go there. Even at that early age, I knew that I could not just go and ask him out straight. I had to find a back door, weave a trail that he could not follow, and find out the information without him becoming suspicious. And that was certainly not easy with a man like Xi Ghong – he seemed to have a way of knowing what I wanted, even before I opened my mouth to talk.
So whilst we were eating our chicken, rice and vegetables one evening, I asked him why I couldn’t stay at kindergarten – after all, I liked it there. Why, if you like something, do you have to change it? Xi Ghong looked at me with his very stern face and I thought he had already looked inside my head, and seen through what I wanted to really ask him.
“We all have to do things we don’t want,” he said, very dryly. “It’s just a matter of honour and accepting that some things are out of our control.”
Honour? School? It was the first time that I had heard this word used for this, and I had no idea what he meant by it.
“What does going to school have to do with honour?” I asked.
Xi Ghong explained, between mouthfuls, that I have to learn hard, become responsible and honour him. He has looked after me, he will show me the ways of the world, and then I will owe him. I will be expected to look after him, if he ever needs me, most likely in his old age, especially as his own children were not likely to be around.
For a child the age of six, this kind of conversation was not easy.
“Do you look after your parents?”
“My parents are dead”
“What about Mei-Lee’s?”
“They are her responsibility.”
“But we never see them.”
“They are in Shanghai.”
“Where’s Shanghai?” I was losing the conversation, but I still knew that I had to talk, keep asking questions, keep making sure I got answers.
“Long way away.”
“It’s on the mainland,” said Mei-Lee. Usually she would say nothing at the dinner table, and Xi Ghong - for an instant - looked totally surprised.
“Malaysia?” I asked. That, as far as I knew, was the mainland.
“China.”
I had heard of China, had heard that there were things going on there that I did not understand, had heard the name Mao Tse Tung, but I had no idea that the two were related, nor where China was. I had never been able to understand the difference between China and Singapore, nor why people would call it Chinatown, when it was in the middle of Singapore. Wasn’t China big enough to hold all its people? But I had to get the conversation back on tracks.
“So I will go to school and work hard to make good my honour to you both?” I asked, still completely uncertain of what this all had to do with honour.
“Yes”
Mei-Lee answered my question for me, without me needing to ask.
“We’re sending you to the school in Yishun where you can learn hard – the school is very good.”
I tried so hard to suppress the smile that was welling up inside me.
“Don’t let us down,” threatened Xi Ghong in a way that was more serious than I had ever seen before. Even when he had beaten me with his belt, I had not seen him like that. Only later did I find out that he had used his own influence to get me a place at Yishun, to make sure that I would study hard. He also wanted to know where Cao Ping was going – he figured that if I had the motivation of being with my one and only friend, I would study harder. He was without doubt right on that one.
Cao Ping and I started to go to school in Yishun, and would meet each other at the bus stop near to Cao Ping’s home each morning. Our happiness at being able to be together was unsurpassable for children of six. The threat loomed large over me, though, to make sure that I made the grades that I worked hard and kept in line. I was the first “yang gway tzr” to be accepted to Yishun – not that we were not wanted, just that most foreigners went to school at the special schools for foreigners. Of course, the fact that many of the classes were taught in Mandarin meant that Caucasians would hardly apply for a place in the school. But I wasn’t a “yang gway tzr” like they all wanted to think. I was one of them, although I did not fit in there, not with them. Only when we played football on Wednesday afternoons was I in any way a part of them. I loved to play, and made the school team as striker. Xi Ghong, when told of the news (again it had reached him by the time I had got home), was especially happy. He even came to watch one or two games, although when the other children went to their parents, they would be shown some kind of affection, and get encouragement from them. Not me. A very dry smile was all that I got from Xi Ghong. Even if I had scored the winning goal, he would not afford me more than that.
Cao Ping though always said how proud she was of me, no matter what. By the time we were eight, we had both done well at Yishun, and she was top of the class, I was fifth. She excelled at maths and science, and would always help me if I could not understand the teacher’s explanations. She would without fail understand from the beginning, and know exactly what was meant. I could not grasp science, but Cao Ping’s help ensured that I got the grade I needed, just.
I would help her with English, as I could grasp the language a lot easier than she could – perhaps there was more Caucasian mentality inside me than I had ever realised - but the highlight of the week for me was the sports lessons on the Wednesday. At that time, the girls would take gym class, and the boys would play football. I was always the focus of attention for the other children’s hard tackles, but would always score goals, no matter how hard they all tried to stop me. I was bigger and stronger than all of them, and also a lot quicker. Even so I would always lay the ball to the smallest member of my team, to keep him involved. He was about twenty centimetres smaller than the next smallest boy, and did not run around like the rest of us. No one else would pass the ball to him, and he hardly ever managed to control it.
One time, he tried to pass the ball back to me, miskicked it, and the ball flew into the net. He was an instant hero. How he smiled, and how popular he was. He would not stop talking about the goal for weeks, despite the fact that he did not score another afterwards. The other children loved him for it, and I was jealous. Why could they not accept me like that?
It felt strange to have a common nationality, to be one of them, but not to be accepted by them. Were they resentful of the colonialists? If that was the reason I was not accepted, then why? Was it not the colonialists who had made Singapore what it was? Whatever reason the other children had for not accepting me it made no difference – in a way I was used to it by now. In my opinion, it was just very strange for the children to be nice to me when we were on the football field, but as soon as the game was over, so were their pleasantries to me.
By the time we were ten, Cao Ping had received the student of the year award three times. She had made her parents very happy, and they invited all her friends over for a party to celebrate this. I was not invited, despite Cao Ping’s protests. Her parents did not realise that they could not break us up, not then, not two good friends like us.
Half way through the party, she sneaked out and came to see me at Xi Ghong’s home. We talked a while, before she went back to her party. When she returned her parents were so angry that she had left without saying anything, that she could go and see me instead of being there for her own party. It was to celebrate her achievements at school, and there she was, leaving without a word. And to see that “yang gway tzr”. Oh, the shame of it all. Cao Ping was, according to her parents, the source of all her mother’s pain and anguish, and she was beaten once more for this episode.
“If you had invited him, it would not have happened,” she argued, only to get another two lashes of the belt.
“Don’t talk back to your father,” her mother said, holding her head as if really in pain. Cao Ping always thought that this was a show, just to give her and her father an excuse to beat her some more.
When Cao Ping told me this the next day at school, I was so angry. I wanted to go to her parents and tell them to leave her alone. She should be able to choose who she is friends with. Cao Ping cooled me down, made me realise that if I went to them it meant the end of us, that they would take her out of Yishun and move her some place away. There had even been threats of sending her to school in Malaysia. So I kept quiet, realising that I was powerless against the might of her parents.
One night I dreamt that Cao Ping sailed away from me – her mother and father were smiling, I was trying to get to her, but her parents were keeping me held back. I tried desperately to break through their hold, but it was too late, the boat sailed away, and I was left sobbing at the harbour, her parents walking away, smiling and rubbing their hands as though they had just got rid of all their problems.
That nightmare was one that I was always aware of, although it did not return to haunt me. However I had no idea at that moment of just how close to the truth it was going to be in the future.
