those roots”—she added, smiling—“I grew.”
. . .
Our Jakarta driver, Hassim, after driving our car east to Surabaya, stayed on the first month to help us find a new set of servants. We soon had the usual seven or eight, none of whom spoke English. They spoke the lingua franca, Indonesian/Malay, to foreigners such as John and me and Paul, and Javanese to each other. (To make sure we were all dealing with Paul from the same script, John and I also spoke Indonesian to Paul, so that the servants could overhear what we said to him.)
The Surabaya servant I remember best is our baby amah (Asian pidgin for maid). Her name was Mina, and she was small and dainty, with a round face and a husky voice. She had never worked as a domestic servant before, but I could see that her heart went out immediately to Paul. She was visibly intelligent and seemed determined to do whatever the job entailed to be with this beautiful child. Paul returned her affection, though he also loved to spend time with Buawi, our wonderful houseboy. Paul also adored being carried around in the late afternoons by our new driver, so that he could follow the meanderings along the upper walls of the house of our resident wall lizards—coral-colored chameleons that ate any mosquito or other flying insect foolish enough to venture onto the walls, outdoors or indoors.
I enjoyed sharing Paul with Mina and the others. To fully understand this, you have to know that I had been brought up—both before and after my parents’ divorce when I was eight—by my mother (who had to go off to work after the divorce) and my nanny, Louise, whom my mother hired when I was two and who stayed with her for the next fifty years. Louise remained like another parent to me all her life.
In addition, I acquired a charming stepmother, Jean, when my father remarried in 1948 when I was twelve. Jean survived my father and was present at our little ceremony when we were scattering my nanny Louise’s ashes in the East River a few years ago and I sang, “Sometimes I feel like a motherless child.” Jean corrected me afterward, pointing out that “nobody ever had as many mothers as you did.”
Mina and I had a mutual understanding on how to handle Paul from the first day. But I did not know she had children of her own until she had worked for us more than a month. One day she told me that she had two children, and asked if she could bring them to work the next day, so that I could see them.
Intrigued, I agreed, and the next morning she appeared with one little boy who looked to be four or near it and a babe in arms with huge eyes in a head almost as big as his shriveled body. Puzzled and alarmed, I said, “How old is this little one?” “Nearly two,” she answered, “but I had to stop nursing him to go look for work, and there was no other food for him.”
Rather shaken, I asked our houseboy Buawi to bring coffee for Mina and me, and she told me her story. Her husband had left her while she was pregnant with the younger child. Although she lived with her parents, they were poor too, and had recently moved to town. There was not enough money or other resources to feed the family. Mina had calculated that if she tried to feed both children, she would risk being too weak herself to find a job and then they would all die. The only logical solution seemed to be to feed herself and the older boy, who had a better chance of surviving than did the baby. Now, with this job, she could also feed the baby, but maybe it was too late? Unspoken was the fact that she had waited weeks before telling me about the problem for fear of losing her job with us.
When people talk about poverty and how smart people can work their way out of it, I think of Mina. Fortunately, we had found for Paul a fine Indonesian pediatrician in Surabaya, and I took Mina and her children to him the next day. Over the next months, the little one was nursed back to something like health, though I do not know to what extent his later physical and mental development was affected.
Before we left Surabaya, we racked our brains for months trying to come up with gifts for the servants that would not melt away with inflation or risk being stolen by the unpaid soldiers or police who wandered about the city’s streets, fully armed but underfed. John finally had a brain wave: dental care for our staff and their families. At least their teeth could not be stolen from them!
. . .
Our most memorable domestic servant, Ah Fong, did not enter our lives until some years later when we were living in Kuching, in the state of Sarawak, in Malaysian Borneo. Getting to know Ah Fong and her situation taught me a lot about what it was like to be an overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia.
Bob Duemling, John’s predecessor as consul for East Malaysia and Brunei, resident in Kuching, had brought Ah Fong over from Kuala Lumpur; she was what was known as a “black-and-white” amah and was said to be a pearl beyond price. I had written Bob to ask him to ask Ah Fong if she would be willing to stay on in Borneo to work for us. I promised that if either side was not happy by the end of the first month, we would pay her trip back home to Kuala Lumpur. She had agreed.
I already knew that black-and-white amahs (named for their long white starched cotton tunics over wide-legged black satin trousers) were famous throughout Singapore, Hong Kong, and Malaysia for being the best domestic servants you could hope to hire. They were unattached Cantonese women (often widows or runaway wives, escaping from life as near-slaves to their in-laws) who, upon leaving China, had joined together in what in Chinese coastal pidgin was called a kong-si and is best described as an organization halfway between a sorority and a trade union. At their kong-si headquarters in Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong (under the British), and Singapore, these women honed their skills as cooks and housekeepers and found jobs for one another, looked after each other, and set up group homes where they could retire in old age.
Our new black-and-white amah, Ah Fong, was tiny and neat as a pin. With her still black hair coiled tightly in a bun and a single jade circlet around her dainty wrist, she was as lovely as a costume doll. And, though probably about sixty, she had lots of energy and verve. A wonderful cook and cleaner and a gracious greeter of guests, she had the kind of personal authority I associate with Mary Poppins. Our six-year-old boy and four-year-old girl had fallen immediately under her spell, and she gave every impression of enjoying their company and being pleased to work for us.
The month’s trial I had set in motion by writing to her former boss was almost up when we received word that President Johnson was coming to West Malaysia and that not only John but I as well would be required to help with the presidential visit.
I liked the idea of going back, all expenses paid, to Kuala Lumpur for a brief visit, although it was a little soon to be leaving the children with a stranger, even one they liked as well as they did Ah Fong. I was sure, though, that she was equal to the task. And so, when I told her that I needed to leave her in charge of the children while John and I went back to West Malaysia for a week—to which she readily agreed—I also mentioned that our month’s trial was approaching its end. I said I hoped that she was as happy to stay on in Kuching as we were to have her.
There was a longish pause that set me back on my heels before she said, “Madam, would it be all right if I gave you my answer when you return?” Feeling a bit like a lover afraid of being jilted, I could hardly say anything but yes.
An hour or so later, Ah Fong reappeared with a box wrapped in brown paper and string—the Mary Poppins touch. She looked up into my face very earnestly and asked (in pidgin English), “Madam, would you take this package to a house in downtown Kuala Lumpur? I mean would YOU bring it yourself?”
Once again, there was no way I felt I could say no. I wondered fleetingly if this box could contain drugs or other contraband. But then I said to myself that she came highly recommended and John’s and my instinct told us to trust her with our children, so it was highly unlikely that there would be anything wrong with the contents of the package.
John and I flew back to Kuala Lumpur, where it seemed as if the entire city were involved
