daddy for sale part 3

“Don’t do that.” Yim said, his face all crumpled up in a frown, he sounded hurt.

“Do what?”

“Shock us. You are ever so surprising.” He said. When we received the news of our parents’ death, Yim was the one who could not take it. He would not speak for a week. Wim said that Yim had shock-intolerance.

Nina only smiled. “But it’s true. My parents are divorced. That’s my father’s girlfriend.”

Now that we knew who that woman was, we lowered our voices.

“Where’s your mom?” Fim said.

“In Penang, back in her parents’ home. My younger brother's with her.”

“Does she live here?” I said, my head gesturing to wherever the girlfriend was.

“Naah, but she hangs around a lot. Cooks for my father. Or they’d go out watch a movie or something. I don’t dare to eat what she cooks. I cook my food.”

“How did they meet?”

“My father’s a doctor, she’s a nurse. Convenient eh?"

“Why didn’t you follow your mother?”

“He wants me to follow him and god save me if he doesn’t get it. So I play along, see how things are, but I don’t think I’d stay long. Can’t stand all this.”

“So they divorced because your father has another woman?”

“Women.” She corrected Yim. “This is not the first. But this has done it. Took only a week to nullify the marriage. Thank God for His laws.” She said.

“Women? Women? How long has it been like this?” Fim said, disturbed.

“Too long. There was one when I was in Standard 3. If there was anymore before that then I don’t remember.” She replied. Deadpan face.

It was disturbing how she was being nonchalant like that. It was unnerving. Perhaps it looked so to us because we had never watched a domestic war, save those in the movies. If she was putting a front then we did not notice it. She looked so brave. I admired that. But when I asked what was it that had made her father so upset with her, she changed the subject.

She asked about our parents. She knew that we were orphans, someone at school told her to be aware of “The Bully Brothers.” We told her about the crash and all- we had stayed at home when father took mother out for her birthday and how a drunk driver had hit them from behind and their car had hit a tree, it blew up in a mega explosion, their death was instant. Uncle H had been called to identify the bodies. We told her of watching others’ fathers and fathers in movies, wondering how it felt like to do adult things with our father, of waking up in the middle of the night forgetting that they were no longer with us and having our heart broken all over again to find traces of them around the house, like father’s favorite mug or mother’s seasoned wok. It was the little things that shattered the worst. Three years and we still had not gotten used to it.

The ugly truth was that we had a wonderful father, the best in the world but he was dead. Nina’s father was good-looking, a doctor, pretty much alive and kicking but he was dysfunctional and had extra marital affairs. Our mother was just a homemaker, she did not even have the slightest idea of how to use a computer but she had a wonderful husband and five rambunctious sons, only that now we did not get to see them anymore. Nina’s mother had crap for a husband but she had a 25-thousand-ringgit-a-month job and drove a BMW, her kids were doing fine too. We never get everything but like one of my school friends, Zikri said we all want as much as possible. Greedy perhaps but it’s only true.

“Do I still have to pay?” Nina said.

“No.” Wim said decisively.

“What color is your mother’s car?” Fim said.

“White.” She paused then said “When are you going to stop bullying others?”

“We’re desperate, you see, but soon.” Sim said and smiled mischievously.

“Do you have food? Can you cook?” Yim asked, eyes shining with hope. Nina cooked fried noodle for us that day. Because we were boys and boys eat a lot, god save us, I was sent to the shop to get another kilo of noodles.

The bullying would not be long, anyway. Sim’s result would be out in two weeks, the whole bully thing was his idea of making use of his free time. He did not want to work, he told Uncle H, he wanted to stay home and then when the result came out, he would go straight to college. He had already prepared a list of oversea colleges that he was interested in. And like I said, we had never actually beaten anyone. We were just, well, I think deep inside we were all dissatisfied that we ended up as orphans. The way we saw it, we did not do bad things but our parents were still taken away from us. We were angry at the world at times, we believed everything was downright unfair. We were kids, and orphans. We wanted to be bad, for once. But when we though about it, things were also unfair for Nina. She was a good girl but who knew what torture she had to face at home. It’s all the same crap, only different people, different day. It teaches us a thing or two, lessons that we carry for all our lives.