My mother
was born in the year 1956 in Johor Bahru, Malaysia. At the age of eight she had
to wake up at 5am to work in the rubber plantation along with all my aunts and
uncles except for my two youngest uncles, who were good in their studies. Every
day they cycled to the plantation and each of them had to collect rubber sap, using
the machine available to make the sap into rubber sheets which they brought
home. According to my mother, at the plantation there appeared to be blue or
green lights floating around in a distance whilst they were working and birds
sometimes pecked her on the shoulder
giving her a fright. Sometimes when they were heading home, their bikes slipped
on the moist soil and they fell. But the saddest part is that the rubber sheets
fell into the ditch they had fallen into and were damaged. The rubber would be
torn, as it was quite thin and could not be sold. Each fortnight a lorry would arrive
and buy the rubber sheets from them.
My mother stopped schooling at the age of
nine (Primary3) as her teacher always scolded her for being late and her
classmates often laughed at her. (My mother got very upset as she did not
intentionally wish to be late. The reason was by the time she came back from
the plantation and had a bath it was 12.30pm and school started at 12 noon.)
My mother stopped going to the rubber
plantation at the age of fourteen as she thought it would be easier to make
money in Singapore. She then came to Singapore to find a job. Everyday she
flipped through the newspapers and at last she found herself a job in a sewing
factory in Geylang. There were about 100 workers in the factory at that time.
Hostels were available for those who worked in the factory to live in. In a few
months she had already made some friends who became her clique but she did not
befriend the ones who were mean towards others.
One day when she was shopping with her
friends, my father walked past and turned back to ask my mother for her phone
number. My mother hesitated as my grandmother had warned her before not to give
her number to a stranger, especially a man. My mother agreed and gave her
hostel’s phone number to him. After he left, her friends all started teasing
her. That night she couldn’t sleep as it was the first time a man had ever
asked her for phone number.
After two weeks my father plucked up the
courage to ask my mother for a date and the first place they went to was an
open-air cinema in Chinatown. (The movie tickets in the past cost only 20cents
each) After the show they went for supper in Geylang, my father sent my mother
back to the hostel after supper.
After five years of dating, they got married when
my mother was 28 years old. She lost her
job as the factory had closed down. She bought a sewing machine to continue
sewing for her customers at home. My parents were staying in the two-room flat
in Redhill. After five years, my sister was born and followed by me three years
later. When I was three, my mother went to work as a factory operator in
Redhill which is about 300 metres from our house.
Although my mother is working, she still
makes it a point to cook for us when she gets back from work.
Billy Ng Chee Wan
2E4
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