Specks of Gold

Suraya Kiawan-Tessa

Content warning: Racial microaggressions, allusions to verbal abuse.

Exasperated, she looked away. The lush greenery and the deep soothing darkness offered by a rainforest’s canopy are not images that conjure when she thinks “tropical.” She grew up amongst manicured patches of grass and individually assigned palm trees that divided the common walkways from the apartment buildings where everyone lives. Well, everyone she knew. She loved the government-owned herbage and trees; they were not a respite from the concrete and heavy metals that built her neighbourhood. They were her natural world. She noticed and ignored the dull heartache as the thought came to her. The neutered palm tree that stood a little too close to their childhood bedroom window was the constant that she looked forward to when she sat at her foldable desk toiling over reading passages, math exercises, science worksheets, mother tongue compositions, and anything else her teachers had assigned for the week. Sometimes, the tree would grow a new spear. This was, of course, exciting. She would share the news with her brother, who out of love and pity, would take his time to join her by the window. Sharp but small, it is easily missed. Then over the weekend, when her mind was allowed to wander a little more freely and further away from her desk, the spear grows. Come Monday afternoon, she would tip-toe to see the appendage much taller but not quite willing to be a frond. She never quite catches the moment these spears finally relent. 

She glared back at the poster, not realising that any contempt directed at it will not burn through the paper and sear the hotel’s marketing team. The white font stands out bold against the layers of vegetation and the promise of a “singular experience.” Their guests will “experience untouched greenery and ultimate luxury” during their stay at a place that bull-dozed much of that untouched greenery. “Is honesty so crippling to profit margins?” She wondered, more curious than sardonic. There is nothing untouched about the lands that constrict the straits – there, Concrete is king. Earlier in the century, its rule spread across the entire archipelago, offering simple solutions to people who want to build homes, schools, hospitals, businesses, shelters. Its power is felt strongest in the capitals and cities, but by no means are the lands adjacent to them safe. It is possibly the only monarchy that holds as much power as it is productive. In other words, the “untouched” wilderness that surrounds this decadent, tempting hotel is a lie. “A lucrative one,” she muttered as her eyes follow the same advertisement repeating itself along the platform. How much longer before it will be seen for what it is? Just another part of the world where people live, thrive, struggle, love, hurt, and do nothing on some days. There’s nothing particularly romantic, eye-opening, or exotic, about a travel experience where you sit on a refurbished wooden boat with exaggerated motifs and eat a crowd-pleasing rendition of tempeh goreng, chia gio, and gado-gado. In such places, it is not uncommon for dishes with different histories and provenance to follow one another on a lazy yet inundatedmenu. Most diners are not there to make distinctions between the people that share this continental nook. For them, it is all part of the “singular” experience. Before she could convolute and delve into the complicity of locals, the 1705 train dashed with an urgent force. As with everything in this city, it almost seemed annoyed that she was waiting for it. 

***

She leaves the station grimacing at the wind. Her face always betrays her reaction to anything, it is the only thing she does not like about it. Since her first seasonal change, she has learnt to despise the wind. It used to be a friend when the sun beat down on her people for living so close to the equator. The school uniforms she started wearing at five years old right up until adulthood were fabric ovens that worsened the heat and humidity. Its breeze would relieve her of the sweat dripping down her nose and running down her cheeks, and sometimes trickling down her back. The first time the wind made her shiver was a horrifying night; standing alone past midnight at a bus stand in her late twenties, she learnt that there were still things that could surprise her. In reality, it should not have – she has been disappointed by family before, so why not a friend? The wind and dry air also made moisturising a health issue. She was proud of her casual skin routine (one acne cream) because the humidity would make the heat worse but it kept her skin supple. Now, she applies different creams, jelly, balms, butter to different body parts every day before leaving the house. Her lips – that never gave her any trouble in a tropical climate – acted out the most. If she forgets to balm it after a few hours, cracks threaten to form. Left untreated for a few more hours, a smart crimson ring outlines her lips and the smallest smile might draw blood. At least the humidity was a reliable foe – never once pretending to be well-intentioned, unlike the wind and some family. It knows its role very well: it is there to exacerbate any given weather conditions. That she could respect. 

They spoke about a snow spell between the meetings today, and snow spelt trouble for her. Before it happened, she could almost sense it, that universal sink, her gut telling her that his question was coming, a question just for her. “So do you like snow?” The contrived amiable tone hits its target. This is how the dance usually begins. To start, she reminds him that she saw snow in high school on a class trip to Japan, that she liked the snow for a few days then she tolerates it and that no, she is not afraid of the cold.  When she shared this, most found it interesting that she grew up in a place that only had sunny and rainy days, no spring, no fall, no winter. The initial intrigue faded away because most people had their own lives to love and mind. Not him. For some reason, the novelty of her particular foreignness had not worn off him. As the dance continues, she instructs her mouth to maintain a smile as her eyes grip him – the boring curiosity was not romantic, friendly, nor kind. It seemed vague but she could make out undertones of aggression and unhappiness. The only thing glaring was insecurity. His. He says it is adorable that it does not snow where her family lives. She thinks it is adorable that he makes countless spelling and grammar mistakes in his presentations, despite being “more native” than her in English. There were disapproving looks from the others when he said this, but no voice spoke out. He describes himself as “more native” to assert his supposed birth right over a language and display his outright racism in a socially acceptable way. She believes it is disquieting for someone like him that she feels at home in two languages – she decided a long time ago that neither of them were second. They were both first, which is not unlike two athletes sharing the first-place podium. No one gawks at the empty second-place podium scandalised, so why does this have to be different? It might be that she is not Anglo-Saxon, not from an Anglo-Saxon part of the world, brown, and yet, still very much native to the language. Just like him but with a stronger command. This unsolicited dance usually ends with sentences that sound like apologies, jokes, observations but are none of those things. It punctuates with his meaningless sheepish grin, an attempt to pilfer clemency from her. She holds her grip and lets him wait. 

***

The same thoughts accompany her on her walks home from the station. Fiercely unwelcomed, work is one of them. She fashions an empty list in her mind and with seasoned accuracy, make notes for the next day. She then flings it as far away as possible so Anxiety knows it needs to leave. When it fades away, her brother appears. She reaches for her phone, and checks on him. A perfect memory means that when she types “M-I-K” the device presents his name and account to her within seconds. The photo count is still the same, no new followers, nothing new, which makes sense. Two hours behind her, he is still at work. If you believe their mother, he was always behind her in the ways their mother deemed important. When the insults drew tears, they were too sensitive, too feeble-minded to comprehend her humour. She would be in disbelief that they would be so offended by a joke. Offended? No, that was not it, and not that it matters, but she could not remember ever laughing with their mother, only at her. 

When these memories got too difficult, her mind transitions to another thought: dinner. There is everything to love about dinner. It remedies her hunger, replenishes the energy drained from a day of labouring, soothes the noise in her head, and comforts her soul. For her to consider a meal as dinner, it has to be cooked and warm. Otherwise, it is just sustenance. After some reluctant snowfall in November, she has been convincing herself that it was important to use new spices in her cooking. She wants to blend new spices with familiar ones. Yet, there are still no new spices in her kitchen, but her conviction remains strong. She makes a note to start looking this weekend as her mouth waters at the thought of tonight’s dinner. She decided while on the train that this was a rough day at work which meant that there was only one thing to eat: Asam pedas.  

With asam pedas, you plan everything. Planning differentiates a good-enough meal from a remedy. In the latter, there are side dishes that tease out the sour and spicy notes of the tamarind and grounded dried chillies, like the dense fattiness of the hard-boiled salted duck egg yolk. Eating with her hands, she crafts a rice cocoon with the yolk, its salty egg white, delicate flakes of mackerel doused with the right amount of the red gravy. It depends on who you ask but some people say asam pedas is not complete until you taste the fluff and taste the crunch of a signature fried egg. There is also the sambal belacan that acts as the diligent understated harmony to this melody – no one notices its absence until they are scrapping the container it came in. Her sambal belacan comes from a wet market north-west of the island – homemade by an aunt who is not a relative and someone she has never met or seen in person. She imagines the old lady sitting at her kitchen table too early in the morning, gently pick up the belacan mixture from her blue plastic bowl with a metal spoon and tucking it into small individual clear containers. No labels on the containers, only the stunning orange-red mixture with yellow specks of chilli seeds and tiny shredded pieces of its skin; a mosaic in its own right. Then one day, she received bad news during a phone call, as one would in a cliché. On one of her routine trips to the market, the lady brought her nursery of sambal belacan containers but they told her that they had too many as it is and there was no longer space in their fridge. It seems that she had been making too many. (Rightfully) insulted, the old lady vowed to never return with more. She has not. 

Everyone forgets the rice at least once because it is a fixture – reliable and always there until it is not; that was a bitter day she never repeated. In any case, the rice needs to be steaming, steaming hot. She takes the rice paddle and scoops up as much as possible at one go, then bring it to the surface of a cool glass plate so it can rest. As a child she would put her face up to the rice enjoying the warm steam forming a thin layer of sweat and condensation against her skin, opening pores and nasal cavities, only to regret it later when she overheats. As a child, she imagined rice to smell like the colour white – she used to think clouds had the same nutty, mild, and sweet fragrance. Sometimes she thinks the rice does not smell nice, sometimes it smells weird, but you just accept it with gratitude. The rice is the foundation of your asam pedas days; it is the canvas to your masterpiece. 

When they were in primary school and finished a long week of intensive standardised exams, their mother would make asam pedas. She thinks this was a way to make them feel better after their brains went numb. They would come home drained and lifeless – shredded by the questions on papers that should mean nothing but determined so much of their academic careers, friends, and how they viewed themselves. Their mother knew this and kept it from them, to keep their innocence? She recalls feeling a lot better after these Asam pedas dinners like it was worth all that brain cramming. She also recalls them being messy eaters but only her brother would get scolded for getting splatters of the gravy on his white shirt – the frequent bleaching petrified the blue out of the school’s emblem, turning it white and a reluctant gold. Her blue pinafore gave her a great cover, so she was never called the same names their mother called him. Mawar reduces the hob to one. She reaches for her phone, and checks on him, again.