Wriging

The sudden thought of an old childhood friend and her dog fills me with some vehemence of sadness.

May Hui was an unlucky girl who lived next door to my family's rented house. She was raised in a single family. Some one had told my parents that her mum was a hooker. I am unsure if the busy body was right but as far as my memory can bring me , she looked very trendy all the time with different men taking her home in various posh cars. May Hui had never liked them. She always told my mum of the obscene things they had mentioned to her mother in their lewd conversation . The only maid in her house had never taken a good care of her. She went out all the time. When she was in a bad mood, she would scold May Hui harshly and cane her mercilessly. It was sad that her mum did not believe in any of her complaints. Hence, my mum had always offered the girl a shoulder to cry on.

Since her mother and the under-maid were usually not at home, my mother had volunteered to look after her. She could be seen in my house from early morning until late at night, helping my mother to cook and to do other house chores. At a mere age of nine, she could do almost every thing well. My mother liked praising her in front of me and my two other siblings. I was very jealous of her. I thought she was going to steal my mum away from me. So, I busied myself trying to intimidate her with threats, pinches and punches . However, she had never complaint of any thing to my mother. I had never seen any kid who could suffer in silence like her. The more she smiled and talked to my mum, the more vindictive I was towards her. At one time, my mum caught me hitting her. As a result, I received four strokes of cane from her. I was crying, my mum was crying and so was May Hui.

I have no idea as to why my mum loved May Hui so much. Maybe May Hui had reminded her of her bitter childhood. My mum mentions very little of her now but deep in my heart I know she misses her a lot.

My hatred towards her was totally gone one day. My brother was being berated by my mum for not completing his Mathematics assignments. I overheard her whisper something to my sister, "How good to be scolded by a mother for not doing school work.' Moved by the wistfulness in her voice, I decided to forgive her.

Our friendship started budding when she brought a cute puppy into my house one idyllic afternoon. She wanted my sister to give it a name very earnestly. Having thought for almost thirty minutes, my sister finally named it 'Pi-Pi'. Like May Hui, she was a girl. she also had large, active eyes. The dog became our regular house guest from that afternoon onwards. She was a very active and beautiful puppy. It would arrive at my house door as early as 4 a.m. If we did not open the door, it would wail on top of its voice and wake up every one in the neighbourhood. May Hui would come to our house shortly after the strange but adorable puppy. We had plenty of rapturous moments playing with the new friend. In a few weeks, the puppy had practically become our house pet. It even slept in our house. Sometimes its owner slept in our house too. We considered them a part of our family.

Things started changing when my father's business was failing. He no longer had enough money to pay the rent. We were eventually given a one-week notice to move out. May Hui's life became different too. Her mum remarried and her new husband was a well- to-do businessman. However, May Hui did not accept him as a new father. In fact, her father was still alive. He and her mum had divorced when May Hui was only a year old.

Knowing that we would be moving out, May Hui was very miserable. The puppy which had grown into a dog by then seemed to be affected too. When the day came, we bade farewell to each other tearfully. The dog looked very much in alarm when it saw our car driving further and further out through the gate. When we hit the road, it chased after our car in a very startling manner. The road was full of heavy traffic then but it seemed to be making nothing of them. We kept begging our father to pull over but he just drove on. It had actually followed us closely from behind our car for almost one hour! At last, it was out of our sight when my father had decided to drive over the speed limit. Of course, the car was filled with the crying of me and my siblings.

We still kept in touch with each other despite the far distance between us. We would occasionally visit May Hui and Pi-Pi in her house. We always reminded her to chain the dog up before we left for home because it would spring to its feet once it saw us leaving. After several months, Pi-Pi gave birth to six beautiful puppies. It looked very contented and did not chase after us even when it was not tied up. May Hui seemed to have gotten more and more used to her new father. " Thank goodness that their conditions are improving.', said my mum to me one evening. Nevertheless, my family's situation kept getting worse. We lived in an uncle's house. He was never pleased to have us under his roof. Life in that house was terribly awful. My parents had become very hot-tempered due to the stress.

A year passed and it was May Hui's turn to move out of her house. A few days before the moving out we had paid her a visit. Nonetheless, neither she nor her parents were in except for Pi-pi. We were astonished to see none of its puppies. Apparently May Hui's parents had given them away. Pi-pi looked very dejected and underfed. After stroking her head and saying loving words to her. We left for home without expecting her to follow us from behind. When we reached the hellish home, we were so shocked to see her enter through the gate with us. My uncle would surely be unhappy with us. In desperation, we tried to shoo the confused dog out but to no avail. My uncle and his family started cursing when they saw Pi-pi. They sent their dogs out to scare the poor dog away. They lunged forward at Pi-pi and had a huge, bloody brawl with her. The two dogs were large male dogs but Pi-pi had managed to defeat them!I kept telling my uncle that it was just a hungry stray dog which needed a shelter. In sheer panic, I remembered throwing some stones at Pi-pi. To solve the problem, my mum decided to take Pi-pi back to its home. Pi-pi was never seen again. Coincidentally, May Hui's parents also did not want it in their new house. It had done the same chasing to her parents' car but had failed to gain on them. May Hui's relatives had come back to her old house for the dog but it was not there. We had tried to look for her too but it was out of our sight forever.

We had lost contact with May Hui for almost three years. One rainy afternoon I was surprised to see May Hui in the house. She was crying with bruises and cuts all over her body. Her stepfather had beaten her severely and her mum was deaf to all her cries. My mum was very angry and she rushed to her parents' house to 'interrogate' them. I did not quite know what was going on in the house as my siblings and I were told to stay at home. However, my mother returned home looking very frustrated.

A few days passed, May Hui was in our house again. Nevertheless the joy was short lived as her parents were showing their disapproval. The whole thing aggravated when May Hui unexpectedly made my mum angry. As mentioned earlier, my mum had become very moody because of the hard life in my uncle's house. Until now I have no idea what had angered her. What I am very sure is that May Hui could never be seen in our house again. I can remember her expressionless face very well.

After eight years, Some of her mother's friends told us that she had left her parents with her boy friend to Malacca. Worse still, she was forced to be a prostitute by her cold-blooded boy friend. After ten months, her mother told my father that she had killed herself. She had plunged to her death from an eighth floor window. My mum kept sighing and weeping in silence upon receiving the news. My father visited her mom one weekend and found her totally distraught.

Six years ago Pi-pi appeared in my dream. It had lost much of its once lustrous fur and was looking dolefully at me at the door(we were renting a shop house then). I fed it with a pot of milk but it refused to take it. Seeing it very tired, I let it sleep in the house. The next day(still in the dream), I found the dear dog dead at the door. I remember crying in my dream. When I woke up, my pillow was totally damp.

Would every thing have become better if my mum and I had had a slight change of decisions? Sigh! Please rest their souls, Lord.