Shih-Li Kow

Mary Anne

Where I was Taken

This is about me, and I would like to start the story like a movie, with the opening credits rolling in. MARY ANNE’S STORY in capital letters. Where to start, however, is tricky. I guess a logical place would be the day I found out I was to leave behind everything that was familiar to me, which wasn’t much: St. Mary’s Home for Girls and the Methodist Girls’ Primary School, both in Brickfields in Kuala Lumpur.

I know being logical is boring. Logic is for adults and children who are old before their time, but if I don’t keep things simple, I’ll have to introduce you to an older version of me and then confuse you with flashback sequences which will take away any fun you might have imagining me growing up. You adults always need a kick-start when it comes to using your imagination. I’ll take a logical-chronological approach, and if you need to imagine anything, think quirky, random, and colorful. That’s the kind of movie I want this to be.

Imagine an eleven-year-old girl. You do not need to dream up an eight-year-old, or five, or three, or whatever. Just eleven, and hold that thought in your head for a while, like a knot at the end of your thread before you start sewing. When I was eleven, Sister Tan summoned me to her office one afternoon, with instructions to comb my hair before I came, and to bring my school bag. I did both and went to the office. I heaved my schoolbag onto Sister Tan’s table, and she patted the air with her hand, indicating to me to sit in a chair by the door. The visitors smiled at me. They were a man and a woman, not so young, not so old. They sat in the chairs normally sat in by people who came to write donation cheques to St. Mary’s.

“Yes, yes,” Sister Tan kept saying. “We’ve been very fortunate. God has been with us in our efforts.” Sister Tan was almost pretty. Her hair fluffed up nicely after a wash and she had this bohemian-chic fashion thing going. She wore kurtas, long skirts, and shiny bangles that she bought from the Indian shops in Brickfields. Almost pretty. She had two lines on either side of her mouth that cut deep into her chin. That, and the red lipstick she liked to use, made her look like a ventriloquist’s dummy. She kept smiling and smiling throughout, as though her face would split open and her jaw fall off.

I sat in the chair against the wall facing Sister Tan behind the visitors. Sister Tan rummaged through my school bag. I hated that. My bag was one of my few private possessions at the home. With thirty of us in St. Mary’s, there wasn’t much room for stashing things away: three to a wardrobe, four to a study desk, eight to a room, thirty to a home; that was how we lived. The crowding wasn’t too bad, just that it was near impossible to hide a journal or a dumb sewing project you didn’t want anyone to see. I wanted to start a campaign for all girls to have a personal locker, but realized Sister Tan wouldn’t like that, being told what to do. So I kept private things between the pages of my schoolbooks in my bag, and in spaces where the lining had ripped.

Sister Tan pulled out pieces of my homework, including an unfinished craft assignment that was a woven-paper book cover. She waved it in the air as though it were a masterpiece. I was embarrassed. It was not fancy like the ones the rich girls in class made, with ten different types of paper, all in pretty colors.

“She plays chess too,” Sister Tan said, although I didn’t know why that mattered. The only other time she commented on it was when she watched me playing against myself once. She had asked, “Is that chess or another one of your made-up games?”

“Chess. The white is three moves from taking the black queen,” I had replied, thinking that she was pretty slow not to see that it wasn’t even chess and that I was simply playing checkers on a chessboard.

The woman twisted in her seat to smile at me, “Good, she can play with Ming; I don’t play chess.” Ming was a dog’s name. If I had a Pekingese, I would name it Ming and teach it to play Chinese chess. The woman looked like someone strong enough to walk a big dog like a Labrador or a Chow-Chow. I liked Beagles. I thought their ears were cute, like silk socks.

“Say goodbye, Mary Anne,” Sister Tan said when they stood up to leave. The man named Ming winked at me. I frowned and looked at the floor. I decided that maybe I’d like him because of that wink, even if he had the name for a dog.

“Goodbye,” I said, and ‘Pretty Polly wants a cracker,’ I thought to myself.

The plan was that they would come back in a week to take me away to live with them. They would be my sponsors, Sister Tan said. She did not say parents. Nobody said the words ‘father’ or ‘mother.’ Sponsors, she said, as though I was Nicol David, the squash player, who had Milo as her sponsor. I wondered what skills she told them I had that they were willing to sponsor me. I was certainly not likely to appear on any billboard. I had not made the school prefect selection. I couldn’t even clear the high-jump bar on Sports Day to score a point for my house.

Sister Tan hugged me hard and said that I was a lucky, lucky girl. I should give thanks to God that they were such wonderful people.

“Imagine that, Mary Anne,” she said, more to herself than to me. “Out of the blue, just when I was about to give up on you. You should be so happy. Out of the blue.”

When I left St. Mary’s, no one adopted me legally. There were no papers to sign me over to my new owners. Some dogs had pedigree certificates. I did not. I was just a St. Mary’s girl on whom Sister Tan was about to give up. Therefore, I could not help being disappointed that nothing special marked this important, maybe even life-changing, event. I had expected, stupidly, to have a nice day out to get acquainted with my new owners, who I would then duly charm, in a newish dress that I would wear to make a good impression, and excitedly whisper about it with the girls in our dorm. Nothing, zilch, and no one showed any interest except Mary Beth, my best friend. I guess it was fair. I never cared much about what happened to any of the other girls either. I was nice to them and they were polite back, but I never huddled with them over magazines, sat giggling about which boy band lead singer was to die for, or traded information about who said what in school. They were not sad to see me go, maybe a little jealous or even relieved, but not sad.

Nobody asked me if I wanted to go. If you were chosen, you went. Always. That was how it worked. Sister Tan would tell a girl to go and that was that. Usually, the smaller ones went more easily.

I was more adoptable than Mary Beth. She was older and at fifteen, and with dark skin, pimples and frizzy hair, her chances of adoption were practically zero. I was prettier too. Mary Beth fancied herself as my special sister. She watched out for me, made sure I got my share of snacks and checked that no one messed with my things. Sometimes, she bossed me around too, but I let her. She was as real a sister to me as I would ever have.

Mary Beth was going to remain at the home, but she could only stay at St. Mary’s until she was eighteen. After that, she would have to move out. St. Mary’s would help her with an allowance for six months after her eighteenth birthday, and after that she was on her own. Those were the rules.

She tried so hard not to cry, poor Mary Beth. The card she made for me said, “I love you” and that put a lump in my throat because we did not hear that often at St. Mary’s. We were familiar with all sorts of love. Everyone loved us, including God and Jesus, but not an ‘I.’

Mary Beth had already been ‘abandoned’ several times. Before she turned her attention on me, she kept a four-year-old under her wing for two years until a couple from Subang adopted her. She had been tight with another older girl who ran away without telling anyone. I worried that Mary Beth might not recover from my leaving.

My last week at St. Mary’s passed strangely. The teachers in school asked me where my new home would be, but I was not able to tell them because I didn’t know. From the looks on their faces, I knew they felt sorry for me although they congratulated me loudly. I wanted to say goodbye to my favorite teacher, but did not because she didn’t know she was my favorite teacher, or that I had a girl crush on her.

I threw away all the bits of paper between my books, where I had written secrets about my mother, because I had to return them on my last day at school. I carried my empty bag to the van that sends us back to St. Mary’s, and its strange lightness made me cry. Kids gathered around the school gate as on any other day. I saw a few girls from my class laughing together. They did not care that I was not going to be in class on Monday. In the end, I said no goodbyes.

I asked for a map of Malaysia as a farewell present from Sister Tan. Although she looked at me rather strangely, she found me an old school atlas. She also gave me a rosary with a wooden cross. I didn’t have much else except for my shoes and clothes, and a snow globe I received in the Christmas-present distribution last year. What I really wanted to bring along was Mary Fairy, the kitten I had been feeding with my leftovers, but I didn’t dare ask.

In case you are wondering about all these Marys, there won’t be any more joining the story. There will only be me, Mary Anne, Mary Beth, my best friend, and Mary Fairy the cat. If you had been paying attention, you’d have figured out that the names were more than a coincidence, and you may have arrived at the conclusion that, maybe, everyone in St. Mary’s was Mary something. You would be quite right. Everyone was, except Sister Tan, whose name was Elizabeth.

When Mary Beth and I parted, it was with the awkwardness of strangers. “Please feed Mary Fairy,” I said. Our hugs and tears seemed artificial. Sister Tan was wet-eyed and kept her arm around Mary Beth who was crying like a squeezed wet sponge. Some of the other girls came to stare. I felt shy, with all the attention on me, and wished we would leave, to get it over with. I planted a smile on my face and waved madly at all the other Marys: Mary Claire, Jane, Lou through to Yvette, and Zsa Zsa.

I sat in the back of the car and as we pulled away, I did not look back. Not even once. I did keep my eye on the car’s side mirror though, and wished what they had said in Jurassic Park was true, that objects in the mirror were closer than they appeared. Or, was it larger? Whatever. I can’t remember much, except that it was an awesome movie.

Shih-Li Kow is a Malaysian writer born in 1968. She holds a degree in chemical engineering, and resides in Kuala Lumpur with her son and extended family. The French translation of The Sum of Our Follies won the 2018 Prix du Premier Roman Etranger (First novel prize, in a foreign language) in November. Her earlier book Ripples was short-listed for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize in the First Book category in 2009.