Chapter 2:
Better Days
Lee grew up in this challenging environment and saw the face of poverty and deprivation from a very young age.
As the water pressure was low in these dilapidated buildings, often tenants on the higher floors had to shout to groundfloor tenants through the common air well to turn off their taps to allow water to get to their floor. The family nanny Ho Jie was kept busy the whole day accommodating requests from the upper floors.
For the Wong family, a large earthen jar served as a reservoir for bath water, and soap came in rectangular cubes which were cut from bars. These Sunlight soap bars were used for washing clothes, washing hair and bathing.
The building's staircase was made from rickety wooden planks that creaked with every step. Frequently on the dark and dimly lit walls and ceilings of the stairwell, the tenants could see large wellfed spiders pin huge cockroaches.
The rooms in the groundfloor homes had wooden partitions that did not reach the ceiling to help with ventilation, and little Lee was always terrified by the flying cockroaches at night and the unpleasant odour they emitted. The hordes of mosquitoes gave the children welts and extreme itches. The whining of these pests was almost deafening in the quiet of the night.
The woodenfloored rooms were elevated about a foot from the ground and the space below the rooms was used as storage for the Ho Bin Restaurant's dry foods and catering utensils. This dark, warm niche also became the breeding grounds for spiders, cockroaches, lizards and all kinds of strangelooking insects. Their appearance terrified Lee, especially at night.
Despite spending so many years living with them, Lee had a phobia for spiders and insects, especially cockroaches-a fear he couldn't shake off even in adulthood.
One day Ho Jie gathered the children and offered them snacks. On the plate were some roasted nuts cut into deliciouslooking pieces reminiscent of coconut kernel. The children gobbled down the snack and asked what nut this was.
Ho Jie laughed and told them, "These are the spiders you feared so much. I caught them and roasted them after removing their legs and body hairs." The children were surprised that such ugly creepies tasted so good.
"These were our delicacies during wartime Japanese occupation," Ho Jie added.
Cockroaches, spiders, hordes of mosquitoes and strangelooking insects were not the building's only pests. As there were hawker stalls and food outlets near the groundfloor shophouse where the Wong family lived, it was common to see large fat rats the size of kittens scuttling about in the house. Even cats stayed away from these rats.
Lee could struggle to walk but over the years his right leg ended up underdeveloped and much thinner than the left leg. The right leg was contorted and oneandahalf inches shorter than the left leg. Lee walked with a very distinct limp. Falling when walking became part of Lee's childhood. Bruises, cuts, sprains and fractures of bones in the weaker right leg persisted throughout his life. After every fall he always asked himself, "Why can't I walk like other children?"
His mother Bee Chu explained to him, "We worship Goddess Guan Yin in our home. Your elder brother bought you beef noodle soup when you were three and Guan Yin punished you by sending the evil polio spirit to attack you. Homes that worship Guan Yin cannot eat beef." Lee, not satisfied with the explanation, silently reasoned, "I thought a goddess was supposed to bless us only with good things. Why would she only punish me and leave my brother unharmed?" He harboured the sense that the gods, especially the Goddess Guan Yin, was unfair to him. Every morning when he prayed to Guan Yin, he always brought up this unfairness and begged the goddess to restore strength to his leg.
The neighbourhood children often taunted him by shouting names at him like "broken leg" or "cripple." It took many years for him to become immune to these provocations. Meanwhile Lee's mother Bee Chu, despite being busy in restaurant matters, relentlessly pursued a miracle cure for Lee. She visited countless temples and got Lee to drink water blessed with burnt charm papers. All the efforts came to no avail, and his crippled leg never improved.
One night she returned with a piece of wood chipped from somewhere and said, "Lee, this was sold to us by a grave keeper that papa's friend introduced us to. He chipped this piece from an old coffin and claims that drinking water with its ashes can cure all illnesses and paralyses. Be a good boy let us try it." She proceeded to burn the wood chip and mixed the ashes in a cup of water. Although swept by a wave of nausea, Lee drank the water with the coffin ashes as he was really moved by what his mama was doing for him.
Lee began his primary education. Bee Chu knew that only with an education could her children break out of this poverty curse. She insisted on sending all her children to school. She frequently reminded Lee, "You must study hard. Then you will succeed and become a doctor. Doctors make a lot of money like our neighbourhood's Doctor Aw. He comes to his clinic in a big car and stays in a big house."
School brought new challenges for Lee. The usual taunts and name calling from boys in his school never stopped. He was too weak to fight back. Polio was making him stoic.
Placing complete trust in what Ho Jie told him, he prayed daily for his leg to recover. Sometimes in his childhood fantasies he imagined himself to be a champion runner and an ace football player.
It was in his late primary school years that Lee had his first major injury. Lee fell from a flight of steps, he heard a thunderous explosion in his mind, and then extreme pain swept him almost into a blackout with a sprinkling of stars. The intense pain never receded. He had fractured his weaker leg, the right thigh bone. This intense shock haunted him for years and he always had to fight the fear of a similar experience happening again.
Instead of having the fracture treated in hospital as Ho Jie advised, Bee Chu called in a bone setting sinseh (medicine man). Lee almost fainted with pain as the bone setter pulled and pushed the fractured leg. His screams from the pain brought tears to Ho Jie and Bee Chu. Bing walked away as he could not bear to see Lee in such agony. At last, after what seemed like ages to Lee, the fractured thigh bone was set in place and herbs were secured at the fracture with swathes of bandages. The pain was now bearable. Ho Jie spoon fed Lee, sponged him when he felt hot and attended to his toilet needs while he lay on a firm table. She wiped his body every day, assuring him the wound would heal soon. During the recovery phase Lee felt an intense itch at the bandaged skin, and Ho Jie spent hours patting the bandage to provide some relief. Lee felt fortunate to have Ho Jie's loving care and became very attached to her. Bee Chu was at Lee's side every evening and assured him that once he recovered, his leg would be stronger as the herbs in the bandage nourished muscles. This claim by the bone setter sinseh proved to be false.
After three months the fracture did heal, but the bone was set in a twisted position, causing Lee to fall even more frequently and fracture his leg many times later in life.
Despite missing classes for three months to nurse his fracture, Lee came in second in his class's annual examination. He normally came in first.
More health problems plagued Lee.
After many days of intense pain and an itch in his left ear, Lee told Bee Chu, "Mama, my left ear is very itchy and painful."
Bee Chu brought Lee to an herbalist who told her, "Your son has some heatiness in the ear. Get some sap from the banana pseudo stem and pour it into his ear twice a day and it will cure soon."
After a week of this daily regime, Lee developed a foulsmelling pus flowing out of the infected left ear. The itch and pain was unbearable for Lee, and later in the week he developed a fever. The fever got worse and could not be abated with medication. Lee was admitted to the Parasol General Hospital and diagnosed with an acute ear infection that went deep into his middle and inner ear. The sap of the banana pseudo stem had caused irreparable damage all the way to the auditory nerve, and the ear drum was punctured beyond repair.
An operation was necessary to remove all the infected parts of the middle and inner ear. Lee took a few weeks to recover from the operation but lost his left ear's entire hearing organ. He lived his life from then on with hearing only in his right ear.
Lee had distinct memories of Bee Chu's mother's attap house in the plantation with two big fishing ponds. On a few occasions, Bee Chu brought the children down to grandma's house. The attap hut was nestled among a coconut plantation, vegetable plots, a forest patch and two fishponds. Lee loved the open space and the breath of fresh air and all the surrounding greenery. The splash of leaping fish in the serene ponds captivated Lee.
The whole place smelt freedom and away from the hemmed in stale air of the shophouse he lived in. He could distinctly remember the menthol odour that hung in the air for ages whenever Ho Jie applied medicated oil on his swollen ankle after a fall.
Grandma was an unsmiling lady with a weatherbeaten face who lived alone. She returned the greetings of the grandchildren perfunctorily. She certainly did not look happy.
Lee's brothers usually ventured into the...
