I Grew Up Poor

Part 5

One batch of chickens arrive late one evening. It is a cold evening after a heavy rain. Mom mutters something under her breath. Towards the late evening, a few of them have died. The rest look sick. My father is cursing by now. In the dim yellow light, I see Mom squatting there trying to feed the rest of the survivors some chicken feed. The dampness of the night hangs over everything in that kampong house. The stench from the chicken coop is unbearable. My parents throw harsh words of blame on each other. I cannot understand what is happening and feel cold but I know it is not from the rain.

Towards the last year of living in the kampong house, my parents had decided to build a chicken coop in our backyard. I did not like it because it stank badly. I did not relish seeing chickens' throats being slit and them being stripped of their feathers. It was gruesome and when my parents did it, I always hid in the bedroom and refused to come out. There were days I would hear the swoosh swoosh sound of flapping wings and then the next thing I knew, Mom would dash out with a bamboo pole in hand. The python would have made off with one unlucky chicken by then.

I had never seen the creature, but have heard stories about its sightings. And when it was not taking the chickens, it was lurking around the house. Mom swore that one day when she was in the toilet shed in the backyard, the creature was perched on that toilet wall, watching her.

I do not know if my constipation problems have anything to do with my refusal to go to that toilet when I was young. Those tiny sheds of course do not come with a flush. The nightsoil man comes in the wee hours of the morning to dispose of its contents. How thankful we were when we moved to a flat and it came with a flush! Squatting flush toilets were a luxury! How glad I was to be rid of slithering pythons on toilet walls!