I Grew Up Poor
One of the first things Sis tells me about the house is that the wooden threshold on the floor to the main hall is not to be stepped on. It is four to five inches high. After having to take off my slippers, I have to leap over it. She does not explain why. She just says it is a rule. I just obediently obey. Once inside the big hall, I look at the altar and see a huge array of little teacups, joss sticks and paraphernalia on it. The portraits of the various gods stretch all the way to the ceiling and with their swords and bulging eyes, they look intimidating. There are pictures of people who have passed on - my great grandmother and my late paternal grandfather. He looks down at me from his place on the wall. He seems to be scowling. I am afraid and I have so many questions but I do not dare to ask. I just make a mental note not to step on the threshold again. Much much later, I learn that it is a sacred thing, apparently to do with respecting the gods in the house.
I think of the house often and in my mind's eye, as I walk through its cavernous interior, I see once again the altar, the cream-coloured walls, the dark maroon floors with grooved lines. I remember that I like to take a piece of paper and run my pencil over those grooves and it just makes me happy to have those floor grooves printed on my paper. There is the bookcase behind the main hall with its broken glass door and I remember taking my first books from there, all old textbooks, probably belonging to some distant cousin. There is a glass jar with some awful looking yellow liquid which I never found out what. It probably belongs to Uncle Leong or my grandmother. There is an old desk where I love to hide under, just behind the TV. It is also the place where the cat gave birth to a litter of kittens. That part of the house behind the main hall is always dark for some reason. Maybe we did not have money for a light. Then there is one more room hidden by a cloth curtain. I never dare to go in, but it is always mysterious.
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