(image courtesy of Vintage Everyday)
When my mother discovered my father had another woman, her world ended and she howled and cried. A shaman was called. The shaman burned frankincense and bitter-sweet acrid smoke filled the house. She sprinkled rose petals and leaves of lime in a large earthen jar of water. The shaman chanted and prayed and as she scooped holy water and poured it on my mother’s head, she “washed away” all thoughts of the other woman. The cleansing soothed my mother but from then on, she went about her life like a knife was permanently stabbed in her side.
Though my siblings, my mother, and I, never met or had even seen the woman, thanks to my mother, she was embedded in our psyches and became larger than life. We knew three things about her: (1.) She had buckteeth and that was what we called her, Jongang, Bucktooth or That Bucktooth Woman or my mother’s favorite, Bucktooth-Prostitute-Stole-My Husband (2.) She worked as an assistant in the only deaf and dumb school in the state and (3.) She rode a motorcycle. The last two facts were amazing! Considering it was the 1950s in Malaysia, a conservative third-world country where women stayed home, and straddling a motorcycle for a woman then, was practically a sexual act.
When I was seven while waiting for a bus outside my school, I heard my name. I looked across the wide quiet street and there stood a woman. She was waving, calling me, and about to cross the street. I don’t know how or why, but I sensed it was her, I grabbed my school bag and bolted. My feet pounded the ground as hard as my heart in its cage. I was terrified of betraying my mother by being seen with Bucktooth. If my mother learned I had engaged in the slightest with That Bucktooth Woman, her heart would break.
At sixteen I left home and the specter of Bucktooth receded into the background. When I came home for the holidays my mother would update me, her words burned and seared, but it was ok, I would soon be out of there and the distance protected me.
One year we learned I had a half-brother. My mother was as excited as my brothers, my sister, and I. When someone caught a glimpse of him, we would barrage them with questions, like, which one of us did he look like the most? (My brother Jo, but mostly he looked like my dad.)
At twenty-six I got married and I told my mother I would no longer hear stories about Bucktooth or my father. Enough was enough.
Of the four siblings, my brother Jo was the only one who met Bucktooth. Jo never left our hometown and he was close to my father who brought him to Bucktooth’s apartment when Jo was fifteen. He told me this when we hung out in 2009, I was fifty-three. That year, my youngest daughter went to college and I went back to Malaysia for six months.
Jo and I were out one night, just the two of us. My father had passed away six years earlier and Jo was telling me stories about him, and suddenly, I was overwhelmed by how much I did not know my father— among other things, his 35 years with Bucktooth! What was he like? What was she like? What were they like together?
My brother and I don’t drink together, it is not our custom, but as I sat in the passenger seat of his car, moving through the dim streets of my hometown, I started to feel like every sentence about my father and Bucktooth, was like a shot of tequila, I was drunk with desire for answers, and before we knew it, we drove to Bucktooth’s apartment complex. For once we were not preoccupied with betraying our mother, our mission was too important. The only problem was, we did not know where she lived, and it was late.
That night we were two middle-aged lost souls, in and out of elevators, wandering through empty breezeways, knocking on wrong doors as the night got later and darker and quieter, until we snapped out of it, and drove home.
When I was thirty-nine and my father was sixty-five, there was a lady my age at his work who hit on him, hard, and my father acquiesced. When my mother found out, she was overjoyed and cheered them on! Finally, Bucktooth will get a taste of her own medicine. But my mother was deeply, disappointed. Bucktooth kicked my father out of her life instead! You go girl! I cheered on. To my mother, Bucktooth, unlike her, was untrue and disloyal to my father. To me, Bucktooth had balls, just like when she rode a motorcycle in the 50’s in Malaysia.
