My time spent with my mother when I finally returned to her care was rather short-lived and in bits and pieces, really, that I barely even remember that time period. Sometimes deep down inside me, I wish I was back at the family's home, and until now, I tend to wonder whether they were upset that I was no longer in their lives or whether they just went on with their lives, relieved that I'm gone, or maybe just plain forgot about me (although when I was in high school I actually returned to meet them once and they were so happy to see me, talking about the good old days when I was around, and that was the last time I have ever seen them).
As I said before, I live with my mom soon enough in a double-storey home deep down the district after a public trekking park area, which was also the same route towards my dad's home. Going home was always something I hate a little because we would pass by the same route where my dad stay and my mom would taunt me about "that man" every chance she gets, making fake threats to just dump me to this good-for-nothing man and be rid of me. I really hate it when she does that. Like as if being constantly reminded of my dad's mistakes that had nothing to do with me at home was not enough.
Within weeks of staying in this new home, I soon got to know of my mom's boyfriend, the mystery man who sponsored the stay in that white-themed, swimming pool condo. I don’t know his full name, but he is known to me as Uncle John, or Pops as I officially made him my godfather of sorts. He is a nice man with a bit of monetary background and quite handsome in his own way, and he treats me very well, meeting my every whim and fancy. He's a heavy smoker who always has to clear out phlegm because of his smoking habits that affected his throat (which was kind of disgusting, come to think of it). He is also almost the perfect house husband with his delicious cooking and expert laundry skills, and best of all, he pays the bills.
There was only one flaw he has.
He was very possessive. A jealous possessive man.
It didn't really bother me much, because his possessiveness is targeted towards my mom. I don't mind him taking all the attention away from my mom, because then I get to do whatever I want in my own privacy. But the only thing that really bothered me a little was that he was a married man, or at least he had strings attached with someone, because he was only around in alternate days and would never really stay more than a week, which dawned to me then that my mother has become his mistress, despite the fact that it was my dad having an affair that got her divorced in the first place.
Can you taste the irony in that?
She was an angry woman when he wasn't around, being her old mood-swing demon self as she made my life a damned tightrope to walk on. But when he was around, she was the mother that would never lay a finger on her "beloved" child, and I often roll my eyes at times when she sugar-coated her words and treated me like a princess in front of him because I know she wanted to keep up appearances to not scare the man away.
Somehow, during that time period when I was with her, never once did she actually look after me when I was sick. When I had a bloody high fever or the worst flu ever, or just plain bloody sick, she take me to my dad's, making him look after me and cure me with his age-old recipes from his Chinese apothecary/pharmacy store. Even when I was still living in the family and had a bad bout of chicken pox, I was taken straight to my dad to recuperate, him using old herbs to bathe me so that I won't scar once I heal and all that.
Anything that had to do with medical was handled by my dad. As if she didn't want to have anything to do with me being sick. She claimed that this was her way of making my dad realize that I was his daughter too and that he should bear the responsibility of raising me, but I knew better than that. The only time she actually took care of me was when I had a nasty stomach bug and was having diarrhea all night, though I'm not sure it's because she really had no choice or she couldn't locate my dad.
Their relationship somehow didn't really last. For one, he was always gone for long periods of time. Another was that when he was around, he was a possessive bastard and can be rather violent at that. No, he never hit me (though he did scold me till I cried when I didn't win a drawing contest), thank goodness, but he definitely dominated my mother in ways that my dad failed to do.
There was one point where he and my mom had a rather heated argument over something that I never knew even today, and he just stormed out of the house fuming and refused to come home. My mom, despite the fact that I was sick with a light fever and was falling asleep, dragged me along with her in the middle of the night to look for him, crying to herself and screaming like a banshee "Why? Why? WHY??!!" while I was right beside her lying down trying to sleep on the passenger seat. I covered my ears, not wanting to hear her screams and she was like saying "How dare you? You don't want to hear my screams, is it?" and I lied and said "The roads are too noisy and making my head hurt" because, well, in reality, she was driving with the windows open.
She found him at the bus stop after dunno how long of driving, and I did glance up a while to see him sitting there with his manly pride, refusing to get in the car. I don't remember what happened next because frankly it sounded like everything was quiet (maybe coz my mom got off the car) and I was finally able to fall asleep, but it seemed that when I woke up, he was back and they've already kissed and made up.
Frankly, I think my mom is a sucker for punishment. You'd think a girl would learn.
The incident that really created a rift between my mom and Uncle John was when he got into a bar fight with someone over my mom or whatever issue that may incur his hot-headed pride. He came home with a huge gauze on the back of his head and I saw my mom making hard-boiled eggs to rub it on his black eye, and he couldn't talk properly because whatever the person used to hit his head (assuming it could be a bottle) had rendered him temporarily speechless, as in his brain literally cannot transmit message that he wanted to say to his mouth. Probably hit the vital part that controls his speech, I guess, and I was told to stay away and not try to communicate with him too much. Then I think he disappeared for a while to stay at his sister's and it was quite a while before he came back finally able to talk properly instead of grunting all the time.
I think probably at some point at that time, deep down inside I knew, things will never be the same again between us.
I remember vividly an incident that really brought my relationship another notch down with my mom. I was at my dad's and bathing in his bathroom (because only the master bedroom where he slept in has a tub, and I love tubs) and was having the time of my life. I don’t know what possessed me to thrash around the tub for fun, but when I did, I banged my head on the side and I immediately have a huge gaping hole on my forehead. It couldn't be stitched, because somehow there was no skin there, just a huge gaping hole and a whole chunk missing with nothing for the stitches to latch on and be stitched together, so they had to use medicinal casts to cover the hole as it healed by itself.
When my mom asked about it, I don’t know what compelled me to tell her a lie, saying that I tripped and fell. She badgered me into telling the truth, in which I did, and yet she still didn't believe me. I don’t know why she had the sudden mindset that the new bike that my dad bought for me was the cause of my fall, and even when confronted with the truth of my accident with my dad, she still REFUSED to believe it, saying that it's all the bike's fault and he should get rid of it. I think since then she hated bikes for some odd reason, and during the period of my gaping hole healing, again I spent it with my dad instead of my mom, which was in a way a blessing in disguise coz I get to be with my dad longer.
This wasn't the first time my mom made a fuss with my dad at his home. Plenty of times, whenever he doesn't pay up child support on time, she would drive all the way to his home, dragging me along with her, either as collateral or as a pillar to back up her argument to make my dad feel guilty, and I had to watch as they yelled at each other's throat (with my mom doing most of the yelling anyways). At one point, she was so mad that she drove herself to tears, and I think for the first time in my life, I came over to her in tears to stop her and comfort her, telling her not to fight anymore and just leave, when usually I would just wait in the car and ride out the fight.
Since then, I knew the only thing that kept me together with my dad and allowing me visitations was because of the money, and all she could think of was the money, nothing else. I had a feeling they never actually divorced properly, just separated, because I never see any divorce papers, and later on when I'm older, saw inconsistencies in which she claims that she was still married to my dad for the sake of maintaining her PR residence. Their marriage of passion has now turned to a marriage of convenience.
Somehow I was never allowed to spend the school holidays with my dad, but I was never really spending it with my mom anyway. Which comes to my other foster family I was living with. They are considered a holiday foster family because that's where I always go to during the school holidays. They are, by far, my most favourite foster family because I get to hang out with the siblings of my age. I can still remember their names: Diana (a year older than me), Jonathan (same age as I am) and Kelvin (the youngest son and runt of the family).
If I'm not mistaken, they are Fook Chow, which is a Chinese minority race, and the days I stay with them, I learn to understand them, if not knowing how to speak their language, but we usually converse in Mandarin just fine. Diana was a kindergarten student of my mom's and subsequently my mom's god-daughter, so the family was very close with us. The dad was the owner and manager of a brick-making company, earning his keep by having a factory up in the hill that constantly reeked of heat as they baked bricks for construction sites, which would probably earn him tons. I think the mother was a teacher.
I called the dad 'Uncle Donald' in homage of Donald Duck because I always imagine myself to be one of the trio nephews of Donald Duck along with Diana and Jonathan (kind of forgot who's playing Huey, Dewey or Louie), while Kelvin tagged along at the sidelines like the little runt he is, demanding to play a role in Huey, Dewey and Louie but we never allowed him anyway. I learnt how to properly ride a bike without needing the training wheels anymore, and I had fun fishing at a pond just right down the hill with Uncle Donald's Indonesian workers whenever it is their break time (although I ended up getting bruised on my thigh when my leg got caught between the gaps of a small dock, making me phobia of bridge gaps, and fell into the pond and almost drowned).
Being with them was like the siblings I never had, because we would play together, chat together, do activities together (trust me, living near a brick factory gives you plenty of fun and adventures and allowing your imagination to run wild), bathe together (they had the insufferable genetics of able to eat without getting fat, as I can see from their skinny structure whenever we bathe) and slept together. I even had an early puppy love marriage proposal from Jonathan, saying that he wants to marry me when we grow up, in which I agreed, not knowing any better.
I do feel homesick occasionally and sometimes cried for my dad or my mom (think about it now, don’t know why the hell I did that, knowing my mom is a demon), but all in all, they were a great family to be with. They never scold me because, well, I'm not really their kid, and I try to stay out of trouble anyway, but I do have my share of witnessing how the parents discipline the kids.
There was one that I vividly remember the most was we were eating our dinner quietly at the table when suddenly the parents came in, scolding them for something they did, not sure what. They were then being chased around the table being beaten black and blue while I was sitting there at the table, caught in the middle, watching them being beaten without a clue what was going on (because they were talking in Fook Chow) and hearing them crying and screaming for mercy. Then when things calmed down and the parents went away, they returned to eating their food albeit sniffling and cursing their parents quietly while I sat there in awkward silence, not knowing what to say to comfort them. Well, at least one thing was that the parents are tough but fair. Neither parent played the role of angel or demon, and they gave their discipline equally, which I personally think should be the way to raise a child.
The mother would sometimes ask me if I liked my mom better or my dad better. Trusting her that this was between us, I told her truthfully that I loved my dad more because of his angel role in the family, that he pampers me more and never once laid a finger on me, while criticizing the role of my mom as the demon in the household. It may sound like he's spoiling me, but at least it's his way of loving me and earn my love, not my loyalty.
Then I found out when I came home that she had tattle-taled to my mom, and my mom, being the insecure demon, beat me black and blue, threatening to send me back to my dad and be rid of me, grabbing and pulling at my clothes and throwing me across the room, and even throwing the nearest item her hand could grab on at me, accusing me of being an ungrateful child for all that she had done for me and that I loved my dad just to spite her. Then when she calmed down some she warned me never to say anything stupid to the mother ever again. I trusted her with confidence and this is what she done to me.
I learnt then the true meaning of betrayal.
As I said before, I live with my mom soon enough in a double-storey home deep down the district after a public trekking park area, which was also the same route towards my dad's home. Going home was always something I hate a little because we would pass by the same route where my dad stay and my mom would taunt me about "that man" every chance she gets, making fake threats to just dump me to this good-for-nothing man and be rid of me. I really hate it when she does that. Like as if being constantly reminded of my dad's mistakes that had nothing to do with me at home was not enough.
Within weeks of staying in this new home, I soon got to know of my mom's boyfriend, the mystery man who sponsored the stay in that white-themed, swimming pool condo. I don’t know his full name, but he is known to me as Uncle John, or Pops as I officially made him my godfather of sorts. He is a nice man with a bit of monetary background and quite handsome in his own way, and he treats me very well, meeting my every whim and fancy. He's a heavy smoker who always has to clear out phlegm because of his smoking habits that affected his throat (which was kind of disgusting, come to think of it). He is also almost the perfect house husband with his delicious cooking and expert laundry skills, and best of all, he pays the bills.
There was only one flaw he has.
He was very possessive. A jealous possessive man.
It didn't really bother me much, because his possessiveness is targeted towards my mom. I don't mind him taking all the attention away from my mom, because then I get to do whatever I want in my own privacy. But the only thing that really bothered me a little was that he was a married man, or at least he had strings attached with someone, because he was only around in alternate days and would never really stay more than a week, which dawned to me then that my mother has become his mistress, despite the fact that it was my dad having an affair that got her divorced in the first place.
Can you taste the irony in that?
She was an angry woman when he wasn't around, being her old mood-swing demon self as she made my life a damned tightrope to walk on. But when he was around, she was the mother that would never lay a finger on her "beloved" child, and I often roll my eyes at times when she sugar-coated her words and treated me like a princess in front of him because I know she wanted to keep up appearances to not scare the man away.
Somehow, during that time period when I was with her, never once did she actually look after me when I was sick. When I had a bloody high fever or the worst flu ever, or just plain bloody sick, she take me to my dad's, making him look after me and cure me with his age-old recipes from his Chinese apothecary/pharmacy store. Even when I was still living in the family and had a bad bout of chicken pox, I was taken straight to my dad to recuperate, him using old herbs to bathe me so that I won't scar once I heal and all that.
Anything that had to do with medical was handled by my dad. As if she didn't want to have anything to do with me being sick. She claimed that this was her way of making my dad realize that I was his daughter too and that he should bear the responsibility of raising me, but I knew better than that. The only time she actually took care of me was when I had a nasty stomach bug and was having diarrhea all night, though I'm not sure it's because she really had no choice or she couldn't locate my dad.
Their relationship somehow didn't really last. For one, he was always gone for long periods of time. Another was that when he was around, he was a possessive bastard and can be rather violent at that. No, he never hit me (though he did scold me till I cried when I didn't win a drawing contest), thank goodness, but he definitely dominated my mother in ways that my dad failed to do.
There was one point where he and my mom had a rather heated argument over something that I never knew even today, and he just stormed out of the house fuming and refused to come home. My mom, despite the fact that I was sick with a light fever and was falling asleep, dragged me along with her in the middle of the night to look for him, crying to herself and screaming like a banshee "Why? Why? WHY??!!" while I was right beside her lying down trying to sleep on the passenger seat. I covered my ears, not wanting to hear her screams and she was like saying "How dare you? You don't want to hear my screams, is it?" and I lied and said "The roads are too noisy and making my head hurt" because, well, in reality, she was driving with the windows open.
She found him at the bus stop after dunno how long of driving, and I did glance up a while to see him sitting there with his manly pride, refusing to get in the car. I don't remember what happened next because frankly it sounded like everything was quiet (maybe coz my mom got off the car) and I was finally able to fall asleep, but it seemed that when I woke up, he was back and they've already kissed and made up.
Frankly, I think my mom is a sucker for punishment. You'd think a girl would learn.
The incident that really created a rift between my mom and Uncle John was when he got into a bar fight with someone over my mom or whatever issue that may incur his hot-headed pride. He came home with a huge gauze on the back of his head and I saw my mom making hard-boiled eggs to rub it on his black eye, and he couldn't talk properly because whatever the person used to hit his head (assuming it could be a bottle) had rendered him temporarily speechless, as in his brain literally cannot transmit message that he wanted to say to his mouth. Probably hit the vital part that controls his speech, I guess, and I was told to stay away and not try to communicate with him too much. Then I think he disappeared for a while to stay at his sister's and it was quite a while before he came back finally able to talk properly instead of grunting all the time.
I think probably at some point at that time, deep down inside I knew, things will never be the same again between us.
I remember vividly an incident that really brought my relationship another notch down with my mom. I was at my dad's and bathing in his bathroom (because only the master bedroom where he slept in has a tub, and I love tubs) and was having the time of my life. I don’t know what possessed me to thrash around the tub for fun, but when I did, I banged my head on the side and I immediately have a huge gaping hole on my forehead. It couldn't be stitched, because somehow there was no skin there, just a huge gaping hole and a whole chunk missing with nothing for the stitches to latch on and be stitched together, so they had to use medicinal casts to cover the hole as it healed by itself.
When my mom asked about it, I don’t know what compelled me to tell her a lie, saying that I tripped and fell. She badgered me into telling the truth, in which I did, and yet she still didn't believe me. I don’t know why she had the sudden mindset that the new bike that my dad bought for me was the cause of my fall, and even when confronted with the truth of my accident with my dad, she still REFUSED to believe it, saying that it's all the bike's fault and he should get rid of it. I think since then she hated bikes for some odd reason, and during the period of my gaping hole healing, again I spent it with my dad instead of my mom, which was in a way a blessing in disguise coz I get to be with my dad longer.
This wasn't the first time my mom made a fuss with my dad at his home. Plenty of times, whenever he doesn't pay up child support on time, she would drive all the way to his home, dragging me along with her, either as collateral or as a pillar to back up her argument to make my dad feel guilty, and I had to watch as they yelled at each other's throat (with my mom doing most of the yelling anyways). At one point, she was so mad that she drove herself to tears, and I think for the first time in my life, I came over to her in tears to stop her and comfort her, telling her not to fight anymore and just leave, when usually I would just wait in the car and ride out the fight.
Since then, I knew the only thing that kept me together with my dad and allowing me visitations was because of the money, and all she could think of was the money, nothing else. I had a feeling they never actually divorced properly, just separated, because I never see any divorce papers, and later on when I'm older, saw inconsistencies in which she claims that she was still married to my dad for the sake of maintaining her PR residence. Their marriage of passion has now turned to a marriage of convenience.
Somehow I was never allowed to spend the school holidays with my dad, but I was never really spending it with my mom anyway. Which comes to my other foster family I was living with. They are considered a holiday foster family because that's where I always go to during the school holidays. They are, by far, my most favourite foster family because I get to hang out with the siblings of my age. I can still remember their names: Diana (a year older than me), Jonathan (same age as I am) and Kelvin (the youngest son and runt of the family).
If I'm not mistaken, they are Fook Chow, which is a Chinese minority race, and the days I stay with them, I learn to understand them, if not knowing how to speak their language, but we usually converse in Mandarin just fine. Diana was a kindergarten student of my mom's and subsequently my mom's god-daughter, so the family was very close with us. The dad was the owner and manager of a brick-making company, earning his keep by having a factory up in the hill that constantly reeked of heat as they baked bricks for construction sites, which would probably earn him tons. I think the mother was a teacher.
I called the dad 'Uncle Donald' in homage of Donald Duck because I always imagine myself to be one of the trio nephews of Donald Duck along with Diana and Jonathan (kind of forgot who's playing Huey, Dewey or Louie), while Kelvin tagged along at the sidelines like the little runt he is, demanding to play a role in Huey, Dewey and Louie but we never allowed him anyway. I learnt how to properly ride a bike without needing the training wheels anymore, and I had fun fishing at a pond just right down the hill with Uncle Donald's Indonesian workers whenever it is their break time (although I ended up getting bruised on my thigh when my leg got caught between the gaps of a small dock, making me phobia of bridge gaps, and fell into the pond and almost drowned).
Being with them was like the siblings I never had, because we would play together, chat together, do activities together (trust me, living near a brick factory gives you plenty of fun and adventures and allowing your imagination to run wild), bathe together (they had the insufferable genetics of able to eat without getting fat, as I can see from their skinny structure whenever we bathe) and slept together. I even had an early puppy love marriage proposal from Jonathan, saying that he wants to marry me when we grow up, in which I agreed, not knowing any better.
I do feel homesick occasionally and sometimes cried for my dad or my mom (think about it now, don’t know why the hell I did that, knowing my mom is a demon), but all in all, they were a great family to be with. They never scold me because, well, I'm not really their kid, and I try to stay out of trouble anyway, but I do have my share of witnessing how the parents discipline the kids.
There was one that I vividly remember the most was we were eating our dinner quietly at the table when suddenly the parents came in, scolding them for something they did, not sure what. They were then being chased around the table being beaten black and blue while I was sitting there at the table, caught in the middle, watching them being beaten without a clue what was going on (because they were talking in Fook Chow) and hearing them crying and screaming for mercy. Then when things calmed down and the parents went away, they returned to eating their food albeit sniffling and cursing their parents quietly while I sat there in awkward silence, not knowing what to say to comfort them. Well, at least one thing was that the parents are tough but fair. Neither parent played the role of angel or demon, and they gave their discipline equally, which I personally think should be the way to raise a child.
The mother would sometimes ask me if I liked my mom better or my dad better. Trusting her that this was between us, I told her truthfully that I loved my dad more because of his angel role in the family, that he pampers me more and never once laid a finger on me, while criticizing the role of my mom as the demon in the household. It may sound like he's spoiling me, but at least it's his way of loving me and earn my love, not my loyalty.
Then I found out when I came home that she had tattle-taled to my mom, and my mom, being the insecure demon, beat me black and blue, threatening to send me back to my dad and be rid of me, grabbing and pulling at my clothes and throwing me across the room, and even throwing the nearest item her hand could grab on at me, accusing me of being an ungrateful child for all that she had done for me and that I loved my dad just to spite her. Then when she calmed down some she warned me never to say anything stupid to the mother ever again. I trusted her with confidence and this is what she done to me.
I learnt then the true meaning of betrayal.
Comments