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Marshall Cavendish International - Josephine Chia

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57 pages

English

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A coming-of-age tale of sixteen-year-old Eric Teo, who has a fraught relationship with his parents, particularly his mother, Clara, a successful financial adviser who imposes her values on Eric. Through an inadvertent conversation, Eric learns that he has a paternal grandmother whom no one had mentioned before. The novel pivots on Eric's search for his grandmother. Along the way, he befriends Rajah, who is blind and from a much less privileged family. The two boys become firm friends although they're from different backgrounds and vastly different social standing. Rajah helps Eric discover his own strength and capabilities in Eric's search for his identity.

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Publié par	Marshall Cavendish International
Date de parution	15 mai 2018
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9789814828314
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0450€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

2018 Josephine Chia
Published by Marshall Cavendish Editions
An imprint of Marshall Cavendish International

All rights reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. Requests for permission should be addressed to the Publisher, Marshall Cavendish International (Asia) Private Limited, 1 New Industrial Road, Singapore 536196.
Tel: (65) 6213 9300. E-mail: genref@sg.marshallcavendish.com
Website: www.marshallcavendish.com/genref
The publisher makes no representation or warranties with respect to the contents of this book, and specifically disclaims any implied warranties or merchantability or fitness for any particular purpose, and shall in no event be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damage, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.
Other Marshall Cavendish Offices:
Marshall Cavendish Corporation. 99 White Plains Road, Tarrytown NY 10591-9001, USA Marshall Cavendish International (Thailand) Co Ltd. 253 Asoke, 12th Flr, Sukhumvit 21 Road, Klongtoey Nua, Wattana, Bangkok 10110, Thailand Marshall Cavendish (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, Times Subang, Lot 46, Subang Hi-Tech Industrial Park, Batu Tiga, 40000 Shah Alam, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia
Marshall Cavendish is a registered trademark of Times Publishing Limited
National Library Board, Singapore Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
Name(s): Chia, Josephine.
Title: Big tree in a small pot / Josephine Chia.
Description: Singapore : Marshall Cavendish Editions, 2018
Identifier(s): OCN 1030617917 | e-ISBN: 978 981 4828 31 4
Subject(s): LCSH: Bildungsromans. | Grandparent and child--Juvenile fiction.
Classification: DDC S823--dc23
Printed in Singapore
To children who are estranged from their parents or grandparents
One
Eric Teo is angry. Not at anyone or anything in particular. That s part of the problem. If he only knew what he is angry about . It s just that there s this feeling gnawing at his insides and he doesn t really know what to do about it or how to act. Sometimes, the feeling of wanting to strike out at something or someone is so overwhelming it frightens him. He s not sure he can trust himself these days, which makes him angrier.
Little things have the capacity to rouse his ire. Take the spots on his face, for example. They are red and raw against the pale landscape of his skin. If he were brown like his dad, they will probably not be so obvious. But he has his mother s complexion. Whenever he catches people staring at him, he is acutely embarrassed, as if his pimples are oversized and prominent.
It s your imagination, his father, Benson, says. Nobody notices.
Can you buy me some concealer make-up, Mum?
That s more stupid! They ll aggravate the pimples more. Let them run their course and they ll soon be gone.
His mother, Clara, has an unfortunate shrill in her voice. It makes her sound as if she s constantly on the verge of hysteria. Eric wonders if she modulates her tone in the office, where she is financial adviser at Mackenzie Mercantile Bank. Thanks to daily workouts in a five-star gym after work to maintain her size six figure and makeup always perfectly in place, Clara is constantly chic and glamorous.
Growing up, Eric hardly saw her in the weekdays as she left for the office before sunrise to avoid the ERP and returned after he had gone to bed. In a country where just the licence to buy a car costs more than seventy thousand dollars, her Porsche made the kind of statement she wanted. Her mothering role was relegated to a series of maids: Indonesian, Filipino, Thai, Myanmar, Sri Lankan - the whole South East Asian gamut. Clara was easy to displease.
I ve got high standards, she said to Eric. I want only the best for you.
She did not know how difficult it was for Eric to adjust to yet another new maid, each having to decipher his cries and needs until he could talk and express his wishes. Clara left everything to the maids, now called domestic helpers, and yet felt upset when Eric got too attached to any of them. They might mother him but are not his mothers, she emphasised. To her credit, Clara does try to make weekends family time, hauling him and his dad around shopping malls on Saturdays - there are plenty to choose from in Singapore. She is fixated on shoes, Jimmy Choos, mostly.
One has to support a Malaysian designer, she likes to say, as if that was a good enough reason.
Family time also means going to church on Sundays. A devout Catholic, Clara never misses Sunday Mass, Holy Communion and Feast Days. She sticks religiously to the faith s many tenets and rules, convinced that God was a kind of divine Justice of Peace, meting out rewards and punishment.
Better go to Confession, she would insist to him and his dad.
Devout as she is, she still wears miniskirts to Mass and scans her mobile phone throughout the service, responding to text messages intermittently. She is not the only one; others too steal glances at their devices. Because it is a mortal sin not to attend Sunday Mass, people bring their bodies to church but didn t seem to bring either their minds or presence. Eric is irked by this, his faith in the religion wavering.
For the sake of appeasing his mother, even when Eric has nothing to confess, he enters the confessional box and invents some venial sins. That is better than being subjected to his mother s scolding and sour looks on Sundays. He has confessed to things like pulling the cat s tail when they didn t own a cat, tipping the neighbour s rubbish bin when they live in a condominium with a refuse chute, splashing paint on people s front doors, peeing in the swimming pool. Only the latter has some grain of truth. He suspects that his father is as inventive. Anything for peace in the home. Eric notices that his father hardly offers any opinion these days. Benson has developed a way of bubble-wrapping himself. He used to stand tall but now, his upper spine is curved in as if he is cowering into himself prematurely.
Eric! Don t touch your face all the time! You ll make it worse, Clara nags.
It itches, he complains.
We ll go to the pharmacy afterwards and get you some FreeDerm, Clearasil or something. Come on, get ready to go out for lunch. It s Salimah s day off, she says. I ve made reservations at Manis-Manis, a fine dining Peranakan restaurant at Seaview Tower. Your father can get his fix of buah keluak . And I know you will love the nangka lemak - it has made it onto the Makansutra list.
Like an old-fashioned woman, Clara finds that the best way to a man s heart is through his stomach. Only, unlike the women in the old days, Clara does not cook. Instead, she sources for the best places for the food that her husband and son desire. For someone who does not eat much, she takes pleasure in watching others eat - a kind of vicarious diet. She trawls through the newspapers and Internet for culinary offerings in Singapore and even Malaysia, and is always watching food programmes on TV. Tireless in her pursuit of good food, she directs them to stalls that have been given some mention in the media: white bee hoon in Sembawang, Punggol nasi lemak in Katong, mala hotpot in Geylang, chye tow kway in Bedok, pasta at Turf City, hamburgers at Vivo City - the list is endless. Sometimes they even spend the weekend driving up to Malacca just to eat a good itek tim or chendol , or to Kuala Lumpur for the best satay or Johor for seafood in a kelong .
The one thing Clara does not permit is anything spicy or with garlic to be cooked and eaten at home.
I don t want this luxurious apartment to smell like a curry house, she always says.
Their duplex condominium apartment, located in the posh District 10, is the envy of many. A magnificent, wrought-iron staircase spirals up to the bedrooms; downstairs, a Zen-style garden extends from the high-ceilinged living room. It is beautifully landscaped with smooth pebbles and a decorative wooden bridge over a pond filled with Koi carp. Property agents often pester them and their neighbours - many are foreign diplomats - to sell, but Clara does not take the bait. In land-starved Singapore, she is aware that she is sitting on a gold mine, and unless someone makes her an extremely good offer, she isn t going to budge.
You re right, Mum. This nangka lemak is so good, Eric says now in the bustling restaurant. The queue outside the restaurant snakes down the corridor. The smell of warm coconut milk from the restaurant s signature nangka lemak mingles in the air with the tangy aroma of asam pedas .
Eric gazes out the restaurant to take in the panoramic view of Gardens by the Bay, two mega-sized temperature-regulated domes housing flowers from different seasons and climates and a miniature mountain, complete with alpine flora, cascading waterfall and swirling mist. He takes in the ArtScience Museum and Marina Bay Sands. The whole of Marina Bay Sands was an engineering feat, created by forcing the sea back and reclaiming the land. Eric often wonders if he was created from nothing too. Who is he if he is not Eric Teo?
Yes. This nangka lemak is really good, Benson agrees, diligently paying his compliments to Clara to ensure his easy passage through the weekend. You really did your research well, honey. And this buah keluak is the absolute best I ve eaten. The quality of the buah keluak sauce depends so much on how well and how long the fruit has been soaked. Managed wrongly, the fruit can be poisonous
Wow, Dad. How come you know so much about Peranakan food?
I m a Peranakan, what. And you are half. That s why we have an affinity towards this kind of food.
I thought Peranakans were just Chinese people dressed up as Malays.
What a travesty! Our culture is reduced to a fashion statement, Benson moans.
I didn t even know