Reunion - A Rewritten Story

“Sin Yee,” asked See Wei over the phone , “are you going to attend our first reunion?”

“Sure,” I replied, unable to suppress my excitement.  “I’ve been waiting for this moment for a long time.”

See Wei, my ex-classmate, was organizing a reunion at a nearby restaurant.  I was among the first few to be contacted.  

See Wei was the only classmate I would see around, for his pet shop was situated in the vicinity of my neighbourhood.  The rest seemed to have evaporated into thin air.  After completing primary six in 1982, the majority of us moved to a secondary school in Lutong while the rest ended up in neighbouring towns or overseas.  By the time we finished the fifth form in 1987, we had gone our separate ways and seen each other less and less until our names lost their scent of familiarity.

As the day for the reunion drew near, a string of forgotten names resurfaced from the dark recesses of my memory.  Thankfully, See Wei had formed an alumni group on wechat.  Out of 52 friends, 35 had been located and contacted, but less than 20 had signed up for the group.  Apparently, most of us had spent the early part of our adult lives—the formative period of our careers—beyond Miri, our hometown.  No wonder it had been difficult to see each other. In recent years many friends had returned to Miri, either planning for their impending retirement or through the expansion of their businesses.

“How were you as a primary school pupil?” a colleague named Aida asked me.

“I was a loner, very quiet, perhaps girlish,” I replied.  “Many classmates liked to bully me.”

“Do you still harbour hatred towards them?”

“No, never,” I laughed.  “I am not a vengeful type.”

Of course I was lying.  As a matter of fact, my life at school had been traumatic, all because of a big bully, Yong Liang.  When I was in primary four, he transferred to our school from Bintulu and my life had never been the same.  He was taller and bigger than any one in my class, and, according to a classmate, knew some kung fu.  In only a few weeks, almost all the boys in my class became his followers.  One recess, he spotted me wiping sweat with a pinkish-red handkerchief and called me, “Missy!”  

From that day onwards, Yong Liang often caught me unawares, just to torment me.  One day he grabbed my crotch, squeezed it very hard until I gasped and exclaimed that it was the smallest one he had ever lain his hands on, making the whole class roar with laughter.

Since he was the only son of the chairman at our school, no teacher dared to scold him when I reported to them all the terrible things he had done to me.  He even enjoyed pulling up the front portion of my shirt and telling everyone that I had boobs.  One time I pushed him back and he reacted like a mad man, inflicting bone-crushing pain on me with his fists, and I ended up vomiting into a drain all the food I had eaten.

At secondary school, while sitting behind me, he would push my head and scribbled random shapes at the back of my shirt.  I sucked up all that in silence.  If I scored high marks in a particular subject, he would snatch the test paper from my hand and tear it into pieces.

One afternoon, I was en route to my classroom from the library, holding an English novel in my hand.  Yong Liang snatched it away from me and held it high in his hand, and shouted, “Missy want to be Mat Salleh!  Missy want to be Mat Salleh!”  I was trying to snatch the book back from him but since he was taller than me it was beyond my reach.

I pleaded with him to return it to me, but he laughed maliciously.  The rest in the classroom dared not say anything lest they should incur his wrath.

I began to tear up….With a smirk on his face, Yong Liang said, “See, how sissy you are.  Stop faking that you know English.  You're not fit to know it.”

“Please,” I begged.  “Return it to me.  I’ve done nothing wrong to you.”

“Nothing wrong?” Yong Liang tsk-tsked.  “Showing off in front of me is a sin.”

“Please, stop making fun of me!”

“Dare you raise your voice at me,” Yong Liang snapped.  “If you want the book back, you have to shake your butt and throw a kiss at everyone or I’ll tear it!”

“Over my dead body!” I yelled in English.

But Yong Liang, not understanding it, gave me a gawking look.

I picked up a pot of cactus and threatened to hurl it at his face.  Yong Liang gasped and the book fell to the floor.  I quickly grabbed it and ran downstairs as fast as I could.  The bell soon rang and I lingered around in the backyard garden of our school, hemming and hawing, scared to face the bully in the classroom again.  When I finally returned to the classroom, the teacher, who had come in shortly after I had run out, glared at me furiously and demanded an explanation.  Panicked, I burst into tears, unable to tell the truth through my stammer.  Then one witness after the other declared that I had been playing around outside, obviously telling lies out of fear.  So I was punished to stand in front, and the trouble-maker sat triumphant at his desk.

When the long-awaited evening of the reunion rolled around, I was the first to arrive at the restaurant, followed by Yien Fook, an insurance agent and Chui Wei, the proprietress of an electrical shop.  They did not recognize me at first because I had become a big, overweight man.  They were even more surprised when they found out I was an English Language teacher, a profession they had least associated me with as kids.

Time had made us strangers and we barely talked.  The awkwardness was broken when more and more classmates arrived.  Suddenly, the table was alive with chatter.  Thirty years had passed, and most of our hair had turned grayish, and our waists, particularly the men’s, paunchy.  Mee Ling, a housewife, took us down memory lane with her vivid recount.  Ding Ching, a contractor, cracked us up with his banter.  Chong Seng, running a family plumbing business, seemed to have a knack for knowing the whereabouts of almost every classmate since our school days.  See Wei kept surprising us with tales about our teachers' foibles. Yu Ngie, an active Lions Club member, dredged up some embarrassing moments that made me blush.  Nyuk Lan, the brainy one, looked arresting with her slender figure, reminded us with her presence how much weight we had put on.  

 Meanwhile, Zheng Xin, another shop owner, and I spoke very little, smiling and nodding now and then.

“Where is Yong Liang?” See Wei asked Chung Xin, Yong Liang’s childhood neighbour.

“He told me he would be late,” Chung Xin said as he glanced at his watch.

My heart was beating fast.  A part of me wanted to see him, to know how time had treated him.  But the other part of me did not…the mentality of me being an ex victim of his bullying.

I thought back to that fateful day at the end of a history lesson, when Yong Liang tripped a boy and the teacher scolded him.  Yong Liang snapped back rudely at her and they got into a heated argument.  Yong Liang threatened to hit the teacher and she quickly summoned the help of the principal through the monitor.  As a result, Yong Liang was suspended for two weeks.  For the first time in years, my days at school passed without anyone disturbing me.  I ought to have felt happy, but the way Yong Liang had rebelled against the teacher made me worry about his future.

When the period of suspension was over, Yong Liang returned to school a different person—very sombre and morose, often keeping to himself in one corner.  In less than a week, he had a clash with the same teacher again and disappeared for another two weeks.  This went on and on until the day of SRP, Sijil Rendah Pelajaran, an entrance examination to Secondary Four.  Yong Liang, academically weak and having missed a lot of lessons, flunked the examinations while the rest of us cleared the hurdle.  Without the bully around, I enjoyed school life very much.  Sometimes I could not help but recall all the times he had bullied me.  No matter how hard I wanted to forget it, the pain was still palpable in certain parts of my heart.

At 7.15p.m, we agreed to wait another twenty minutes for more classmates to come, but nobody else showed up, so we decided to order food. Our order ranged from steamed fish, various stir-fried vegetables and braised pork with salted fish that set us back a whopping RM250. All of us shared the cost.

The moment the inevitable postprandial lull settled over the table, our chatter turned into a dwindling murmur.  Around nine, Yong Liang finally arrived and my heart skipped a beat.  The way he looked was a far cry from what I had in my mind.  He looked much thinner, though still the tallest among us, yet there was a touch of sorrow in his voice when he spoke, and his eyes were full of drowsy resignation.  When asked why he had lost so much weight, he said that he had been swamped by the stress of life.  Then he saw me, looked a bit startled and extended his hand.  I rose and shook it, surprised that I was almost of the same height as him.  His grip was light, almost no energy.  Given my present size and weight, I could easily crush it.

Nyuk Lan had to leave early so Yong Liang took her seat, thus we sat side by side. We ordered beer and Yong Liang drank way more than any of us.  I stopped at three cans, but Yong Liang kept on drinking. The others plied Yong Liang with many questions.  Despite being unable to go to secondary four, Yong Liang had been managing his father’s business rather well and was married with three children.  He had been ill for quite some time, though I could not help but wonder why he had no compunction to drink in excess.  

He talked about how he grappled with the high turnover of his workers, how inconsistent his business profit was, as well as how sometimes he felt like letting his hair down and leaving his business behind.  The way he spoke still gave off some air of recklessness we had known of him as a child.  I could tell that despite not ending up in university like some of us, he had been leading a respectable life and earning quite a considerable sum of money.  However, when quiet, he appeared sad and ill at ease as if he had a lot of regrets.

“Sin Yee,” See Wai suddenly asked, “who among us bullied you the most at school?”

The question, as if testing my reaction, caught me off guard.

Shaking my head, and trying not to look at Yong Liang, I laughed, “No, I’ve forgotten everything.”

Yien Fook chuckled, “It seems that every one of us had more than their fair share of bullying you.  But you’ve grown so large now.  It’s time to get even with us.”

We all broke into laughter.

More beer flowed, and when the number of customers around began to thin away, Yong Liang seemed a bit drunk.  His head lolling to one side, he put his arm over my shoulders, giving my round blade a light squeeze, and whispering, “Sssy …. childhood…..so distant.”

Was he calling me missy again?  I could not really catch what he was saying, but he choked on the last word.  A little moisture came to my eyes and I patted his back a few times….Already I had forgiven Yong Liang.  The way his voice cracked had eased all the long-buried pain in my heart.  During the process of growing up, we had all lost and gained some things.  God was fair and square to us.

When Yong Liang completely gave in to drunkenness and snored away, I decided to take my leave, glad that we had the reunion for it offered us the oppor tunity to bury the hatchet and move on with life.