"Choose a partner that you can go to war with." Ancient proverb Part 4/5

How disappointing. Anna's dad still has not called. She must be starving by now, holding herself out for her father's visit and the joy and excitement of spending time with him. I cannot imagine a worse afternoon for an eight-year-old. Being hungry and forgotten. Bored as hell, she comes to the kitchen with her iPad. Looking for love and attention, she leans against Mona, standing with her legs crossed, head down with the iPad by her side.

"You hungry?" asks Grandma Mona.

Without looking up, she shakes her head.

Mona strokes her hair lovingly. "You better eat dear. God knows what time the father of yours will turn up."

At the exact moment, the lock of the front door turns. Anna, like a supercharged turbo doll, runs out of the kitchen towards the front door, "dadddddyyyyy!"

Then silence.

It is not daddy after all.

It is Anna's mum, Mona's second daughter.

"Hi." Anna's mum does not look like Mona. She is heavily built. She tried for the first year after childbirth to get back into shape but she eventually gave up because she wants the world to know what she has given up, what she has suffered to be here. Year on, even she cannot tell whether it is her holding on the weight, or the weight stubbornly refuses to leave her. Further burdening her originally small Asian frame are layers of winter clothes in different shades of black. Black is stylish, authoritative and regal even, but what people do not see is there are different shades of black, the shiny black after years of dry-cleaning, the faded black that survives numerous machine washes and the full of cat's hair black. Anna's mum has all these on her.

"Any chicken rice left for me?" Anna's mum laughs nervously.

"Of course! Here here. Take this to work with you. I know you like the sauce – I have asked Auntie Sin to make extra and saved it for you in the tub." Mona gushes. This is love. This is how Chinese mothers show their love to their children.

Then there are these sheepish-looking boys standing by the kitchen door. Who are they?

"Grandma." They whisper.

Mona, "You boys are here too! Good job we have made extra food. Come eat. Come eat."

They are Anna's older brothers and Mona's grandchildren. With small beady eyes, they look simple. With the same father, they look vastly different from Anna. They must be in their teens now but their mannerisms suggest they are mentally impaired. Even with their thick glasses, they do not seem to see that well. The younger one has a go at the spring rolls with the chopsticks while the older one looks on. Sixth attempt and the spring roll slips the sixth time.

"Use your fingers!" Auntie Sin cannot bear it anymore. Poor child.

He picks up the spring rolls with four of his fingers. The nails need clipping and there is dirt underneath them. Like his mother, his hair is oily. His mother pulls her hair into a tight ponytail, so tight you can see the skin along the hairline. Does it not give her a headache? Or does she simply accept it as part of her life? The boy's hair is short but one can tell it has not been washed or brushed for a while as the hair at the back of the head is all flattened out and stuck to the skull. There are dandruffs too on his head and shoulders. He stares at the spring roll through the thick glasses with the kind of intensity only a scientist would have. The lenses are dirty, and cloudy with fingerprints, and the left arm is taped to the rest of the glasses. He breaks the glasses all the time. He fell at school he told his mother. With cut lips too? She asked. She cannot afford to buy glasses every month so she fixes it for him with tapes. She is always short of cash. She cannot afford to keep Anna with her so she leaves her here with her grandmother. She does not want to know what is really happening to her son at school. She has enough trouble with their father already.

Never married, she has three children with this man. She gave birth to her first boy when she was sixteen. Three months later she was pregnant again. Birth control was not at the top of her list. Nothing was. Except for the drugs. Her parents' divorce hit her hard. She witnessed their fight right there by the kitchen door. The shouting, the name-calling, the crying, the howling, and all the pushing. She went into her bedroom and hid under the bed until the next morning. But no one came for her. She crawled out to use the bathroom. Maybe because of the drugs she was using at that time, the boys were born different. They did not speak properly until they went to primary school. They learn at their own pace or no pace at all at times. Parent-teacher meetings are always difficult. Schools have not been a happy place for her and this legacy lives on with her boys. It was where everything went wrong. By the time she had Anna, she had kicked her habit. Her mother begged her. She did not do it for herself. She did not do it for her mother either. The social services threatened to take her boys away. It was all his fault. He beat her so badly this time that she had no choice but to go to the hospital to sew her face back together again. She was bored. She bumped into her ex and they spent one night together. The ex bragged about it, that idiot! He found out and beat the living daylight out of her. She went to the hospital; they called the police. And like the old cliché, the rest is history. The violence, the drugs – all too easy for the social services. By the time Anna arrived, she was clean. And yes, she went back to him and had a third child. She hopes Anna is different from the boys. And indeed, she is. She is bright and does well at school. She put her in an all-girl school. Boys are always troubles, at least for her anyway.

The younger son drowns the spring roll in the sauce. Still, with four fingers, he puts it in his mouth with the sauce running down his fingers onto his palm. The spring roll is delicious. The best food he has had for the last couple of weeks. He tells himself he must lick the fingers. He licks the sauce off his fingers and his hand. He is happy and scratches his head with his sticky fingers trying to remember when it was the last time he felt this contented. He cannot remember. He has a bad memory; he never seems to remember anything he learns at school and that gets him into trouble. He violently shakes his head trying to get rid of that feeling. Everyone watches on.

And Mona's phone rings.

#adayinthejungle #loveandhate