My late grandmother was a seamstress. I was a fairly new addition to the family, the firstborn of two wide-eyed individuals; and to top it off, both of my parents had 9-5 jobs so I was left in her care on most days. I remember having to spend hours in her little shop in Petaling Jaya, surrounded by pieces of clothing suspended on the ceiling beams like frail skeletons, watching her rusty sewing machine stab multi-coloured pieces of fabric; the needle narrowly missing her wrinkly fingers. She would give me small pieces of kain and we took turns on the sewing machine table. Her feet and hands orchestrated an effortless set of movements that I was unable to imitate no matter how closely I paid attention. To this day, I still don't know how those things work.
Her shop was in a two-storey marketplace, right smack in the middle of the upper floor. Sometimes, when I felt the need to escape the musty smell of damp cloth I would walk to both ends of the floor, just to spy on the other tenants. This was back in a simpler time, when toddlers could get away with these kind of expeditions. There was one Chinese uncle who sold fruits two shop lots away from my grandmother's shop. When I had luck on my side, he would flatten tufts of my curly black hair and hand me free apples. I'd spend the rest of the day annihilating my story books with streaks of crayon and ink doodles, sharing my looted treasures with my grandmother in that suffocating textile den.
When I grew a bit older, she replaced our sewing lessons with one-sided conversations of her past. The happier stories encompassed her stint as a teacher in a public school and stories of my father's antics when he was a young chap. Remnants of the educator in my grandmother was kept alive by her constant assessment of my school work. If I kept my work in check, we would take the bus to Jalan Masjid India and she would buy me ABC in the city, so I never really minded any of her inspections. Whenever my late grandfather's name came up, I had to brace myself. I never looked forward to these recounts. My grandmother married at 15 and was widowed before I came into the picture. I had a hard time believing that marital commitment necessitated so much suffering, but she made it seem like there was no other option. I would go so far as to say that her recollections of marriage gave shape to my current standpoint on relationships.
Writing this down has left me with an odd sense of guilt. It feels as though I've broken a glass safe which was previously set aside in the shadowy recesses of my subconscious, but I've awoken from dreams of spirits one too many times to leave these tales untold.
