Karen Yeo Koh and Chen Qin Ting

Karen Yeo Koh: 

Ah Chin, short and skinny, was the eldest child in a family of six children. Her father was the sole breadwinner in this family. He worked hard as a clerk in a local company. Her mother was a housewife. It was a typical Hokkien-speaking family. Miraculously, Ah Chin’s father decided to enrol Ah Chin and her eldest brother into an English-medium school although her father was educated in Chinese school himself.

Ah Chin had four brothers and a sister. In this family, everything had to be shared among them. This morning, Ah Chin made her special effort to get up early so she would enjoy two slices of bread with coffee for breakfast. At home, each morning, there would only be a single loaf of bread to be shared among all; most times, Ah Chin would end up hungry till lunch. And it was mostly difficult focusing on lessons in school on an empty stomach!

Rarely did Ah Chin get a new pair of school shoes. In Primary 4, she proudly wore her new pair of shoes to school. But she had to take good care of her shoes, uniform and textbooks to pass on to her other siblings. It started to rain around midday. Ah Chin patiently waited at the canteen for her mother to bring her umbrella, raincoat as well as plastic bags to wrap up the shoes tied with rubber bands so she could walk home in the rain. Her shoes would not get wet then. Ah Chin was proud of herself keeping her belongings in good condition.

Life was simple and other than going to school, Ah Chin needed to help her mother iron clothes and rock her baby brother to bed. On this particular day, after washing all the dishes and completing her homework, Ah Chin finally got ready to go to bed. Eight of them slept in the same room. The room was on a raised platform with a big bed in the centre, a dressing table and a wardrobe on one side. When Ah Chin lay down, beside her sister and mother on one side of the bed, her legs would be under the bed. Her father, eldest and youngest brother slept on the big bed while the other two siblings slept at the other side of the bed with their legs under the bed too.

Ah Chin attended school and studied hard but she obtained average results as there was no one to help her in her studies when she needed coaching. Each week, Ah Chin tried to learn her spelling words well to obtain full marks. And this would be an achievement. Ah Chin dreamt of being a teacher when she grew up. She admired her teachers who would dress up neatly and taught in front of the class confidently. Once when Ah Chin was invited to her teacher’s home, she secretly tried to discover what her teacher ate for her meals. But in the end, Ah Chin did not become a teacher.

Chen Qin Ting: 

Ah Chin’s mother fell very sick just as she was about to enter Secondary 1. The doctors said that the disease was incurable, her father had told her. As though a part of her personality was also consumed by the illness, Ah Chin’s mother changed into a different person. Gone were the days of loving hugs and encouraging words, in its place were tough spankings and harsh scoldings towards Ah Chin. Cooking, cleaning, caring for her younger siblings… Whatever Ah Chin did never seemed to be enough and never could please her mother.

Misfortune never came singly. Ah Chin’s father lost his job that same month. As the savings in the family ran dry, so did Ah Chin’s love for the family. Ah Chin stopped going to school; she never seriously wanted to become a teacher anyway. She managed to find an odd-job that paid a decent amount to feed her and also provided a roof over her head. That was sufficient, hence, she left the family.

The root cause of all her suffering stemmed from poverty, she knew then at a young age. “I must become rich”, Ah Chin told herself. She continued to work hard for the next two decades and proved her capability by slowly climbing the corporate ladder. She was now in her mid-thirties and had achieved her goal. She was comfortably earning a six-figure sum and had her own office overlooking the Marina Bay skyline. Yet, what money could not fulfil was a sense of emptiness and the longing to be loved in a family. That is, until the day she received this letter sent from the address of her old house.

“Dear Ah Chin,
I trust that you are in a happier stage of life right now. The day the doctor told me that I had cancer was the day that all your lives changed forever. Your father never approved of my decision, but I knew that I had to push you into independence early, and the fastest way was to drive you away with your hatred for me. Your aunt and uncle who were unable to have children of their own were willing to take in your three youngest siblings. They were too young to have any memories of me as mummy anyway. Your grandparents were willing to raise your other two brothers on their own. Everyone had a newfound home except you.

Mummy fought very hard to convince them, but the reason was simply because you were a female. Life is unfair. It is not fair that all these happened, that my time on this earth was truncated, that my time with you as mother and daughter is even shorter. I am not telling all these to ask for your forgiveness. I simply wish that you stay true to yourself, to always remember your reasons no matter what path you take in life. And that we can be mother and daughter again one day.

Love always, 
Mummy.”