Two Fish In A Bottle

After school, I walked towards the bicycle stand.

The key to bicycle is in the pocket of my shirt, I reached my hands into the pocket to search for the key.

I am a girl, the action of putting my hands in the shirt pocket is a bit indecent but I never really cared about this kind of stuff. I have my style, and I like the way I am.

Today’s sun is very fierce, causing my skin to be burnt painfully, I pushed the bicycle to the school gate, sat on it, placing both legs on the pedals, the wheels started spinning and the bicycle moved forward.

After riding for about a kilometer, I stopped beside a big tree. Sweat has already crawled all over my face, flowing along my nose and into my mouth. I stuck my tongue out and tasted it, salty…

I looked to my left, right, front and back, making sure that no cla.s.smates will appear in my surrounding,

I opened my bag and pulled out a long piece of cloth. This was stolen from Aunt’s room yesterday.

Don’t worry, I am not doing anything bad. In fact, this is a bolster cover that Aunt doesn"t need.

Aunt said if a girl gets too much sun, she would have a lot of freckles when she grows up in the future.

Aunt herself is a living proof of this.

Her cheeks looked like a few million flies just stayed on it, leaving uncountable numbers of “Flies feces”

Even though I don’t care about my deportment, but I still want to be beautiful. And this piece of cloth, is my “Secret Weapon”.

The bolster cover has several Peony embroidered on it, making it look a little tacky, on both ends of it are strings, I used a string on one end and hooked it to my left ear and circled the cloth around, covering my head and the parts below my eyes, then used the string on the other end of the bolster cover to hook on my right ear.

Just like that, my hair and face are hidden in the cloth, no need to worry about getting exposed to the sun.

Yesterday, I only had to use my brains for a while, and I thought of this great innovation.

I am more and more confident, that my future would have endless possibilities.

A lot of cars whistled past me, the drivers all saw that my face and head are covered with a big piece of peony and had a strange look on their face, are they thinking that I am a crazy old woman?

I don’t care. I frequently tell myself: It is fine as long as you are comfortable with it, doesn"t care about what others would think of me.

After riding through a long asphalt road, I turned into a small fishing village.

I stopped down and removed the “Secret Weapon” on my head.

This is where I live, a small fishing village in Kuantan.

Even though I am not familiar with the residents here, but they all know whose granddaughter I am. Despite me saying that I don’t care about how people look at me, but I still don’t want other people to think that my grandmother has a weird granddaughter.

I rode on my bicycle, pa.s.sing through rows and rows of tall houses. The houses are mostly made of wooden planks, but for those that are richer, their tall houses are made of concrete, making it look more high-cla.s.s. These tall houses are built on the seash.o.r.e, some at the front, some at the back, supported by numerous wooden or limestone pillars.

I stopped in front of an orange wooden tall house, Old Aunt was frying Kway Teow in front of the house.

“You"re back home?”

“Mm.”

I pushed the bicycle into a narrow corridor, leaning it against the wall.

After taking off my school shoes, I went to the water bucket on the front of the door and scooped water to wash my feet.

“Do you want to eat some salted fish fried Kway Teow?” Old aunt looks at me and asked.

“No, Grandmother left food for me.”

Old aunt is grandmother’s old friend, she existed from the moment I became sensible.Everybody calls her “Old Aunt”, you should know what does Old Aunt means.

Old Aunt lives behind grandmother, her house is small and ugly, and facing the dirty sea.

Grandmother’s house faces the road, so she pleaded grandmother to let her sell fried Kway Teow in front of grandmother"s house. Grandmother let her do her stuff and doesn’t make her pay rent. But every time we but Fried Kway Teow from her, she would still make us pay for it, grandmother said that she doesn’t know how to live.

I feel that her Fried Kway Teow is the best in the world. I fell in love with it the first time I ate it, and couldn’t stop eating it. However other people feel that her food is just normal and plain.

There was an incident which until now I still felt sorry towards her.

The words were that once upon a time, me and cousin Wen Han was hungry, so we ordered Salted fish fried Kway Teow. Old Aunt brought two plates of Kway Teow to us, and told us to call her to keep the plates after finishing it.

We ate and devoured the Kway Teow, in a blink of an eye, the plate was empty.

But Wen Han still kept on going on about how hungry he still is.

Suddenly, he held up his empty plate, stuck out his tongue and started licking the plate.

“Oi! That’s so disgusting! Stop it!” I immediately stop him.

But he seemingly never heard me and continued to lick the plate like a dog.

Not long later, the plate has been licked clean my him.

At this moment, Old Aunt came in to keep the plates.

When she saw Wen Han’s plate, she said:”So good ah! Helping Old Aunt to wash the plates! And washing it so clean!”

Me and Wen Han didn’t dare to say anything, only looked at the plates get kept back.

Don’t know which customer is so unlucky to be served with Wen Han’s “Saliva plate”.

From then on, I never dared to go and eat Old Aunt’s fried Kway Teow. Maybe it’s a psychological effect, but I feel that every plate is now stained with Wen Han’s saliva.

I put down my bag, washed my hands to prepare to eat.

“The Queen has arrived!” Wen Qiang Cousin was lying down on the floor to watch television. The house doesn’t have a sofa, so everybody lies on the floor when watching television.

I ignored him and headed to the kitchen table.

“The Queen is wants to eat! The Royal Kitchen quickly serve her!” Wen Qiang yelled out loudly.

I pretended to not hear him and went to the kitchen to get rice.

Grandmother came upon hearing him, and yelled at Wen Qiang: “You crazy, shout so loudly for what?!”

Wen Qiang stayed quiet.

“MiMi, there is a white promfret, remember to finish eating it!” grandmother opened the dish cover, pointing to a fish and told me.

That’s right, “MiMI” is me.

“MiMi” is my nickname, when I was an infant I was small and skinny like a kitten, the elders says that this kind of child is very hard to bring up, so they gave a nickname of “MiMI”, hoping that I would be healthy and strong. It was said that the more lowly the person’s name is, the more reverse effect it would have, the child would then be good. That’s why min the past people with nicknames such as dog s.h.i.t, idiot, a cow is everywhere, and they all have the same meaning to it.

“MiMi” This name makes me very uncomfortable, the person who gave me this nickname would be hated by me for ages! When I grow up, I will find this person! To let him know that I carried this disgusting name, bearing with it for so many years.

Luckily, the students at school does not know about my nickname, they call me “pisang”. They would call be this is because of my name is “Ping Shuang”, in malay it’s called “Ping Shang”, which sounds like “pisang”. I don’t care much about this nickname. “Banana(Pisang)” is at least not as disgusting as “MIMi(Kitten)”.

“Woah, the Queen have a fish to eat once the got home, us servants don’t even get to eat fish tail!” Wen Qiang complained again.

“You diam diam lah!” Grandmother raised her legs,  threathing  to kick him.

Facing Wen Qiang’s sarcasm, i ate the fish with much difficulty. Why is it just me who gets to eat fish, I know exactly why in my heart. I have to finish the fish, if not grandmother and Aunt will have a hard time “explaining”.