Handpicked

By Siew Siang Tay

What is it like to give up everything you have ever known?To stake everything on marriage to someone you've met only through letters?
What is it like to stake everything on a relationship based only on letters?Laila is desperate to escape life in the longhouse in her Malaysian village. Desperate enough to travel alone to Australia to marry Jim, a fruit-picker living in Renmark, South Australia. Jim hasn't had much luck with women - they've always given him a hard time. He pins his hopes on Laila changing all that. Marital bliss, a new life.But when Laila and Jim finally meet, they each discover the reality of the other, and things don't go as planned. Handpicked is a subtle and sensitive exploration of the world of the mail-order bride. It is also a compelling and finely observed account of expectations and consequences, words and actions, truth and love.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Australia
• Release date: Jan 31, 2010
• ISBN: 9780730400134

Siew Siang Tay

Siew Siang Tay was born in Malacca, Malaysia. After working for eleven years in the petroleum industry in Malaysia, she emigrated to Australia in 1992 with her daughter. She currently works at the University of South Australia. Her short stories have been published in literary magazines worldwide including Meanjin and Dimsum. In 2007 she was one of the winners of the HarperCollins Varuna Awards for Manuscript Development for Handpicked. She lives in Adelaide. www.siewsiangtay.com

Book preview

‘THE PIG’S LIVER NEVER LIES.’

Her father’s voice thunders in the longhouse. Laila makes a silent prayer. She places her finger on her lips, then on the photo and shoves it back into the bag.

‘Look at your father, Laila. You’re making him upset,’ says her mother.

Veins pulse on her father’s temples, his nostrils flare. Laila keeps silent, as she did the first time she announced her plans, air ticket tucked in her pocket like a good luck charm. I’ll pray for you, Jim had written.

Laila lets out a breath. The end is in sight—she can finally extricate herself.

‘Why can’t you be like the other girls?’ her father says. ‘Gawai time last year, Tuai warned us: Your oldest child, your oldest child, he kept saying. He read it in the liver!’

Laila grits her teeth. She pushes the last items into the suitcase. For a moment, it feels as if she’s already arrived and her action is in reverse. Her quick hands are pulling clothes out. Coat hangers, the cushioned kind, in satin, lining the wardrobe are beckoning her to slip her garments over them.

Her father is striding up and down now, staring at the floor. The walls of the bilik vibrate, walls so closed-in even a sneeze would send them rattling.

Laila thinks of all the years of cleaning, ironing, weaving, chopping, cooking, eating, arguing, studying and sleeping in these sixteen square metres of floor space. Night after night, bodies colliding into each other, her mother and father lying against one wall, Jeannie, Krisno and her lined up at another, her parents’ feet brushing her arm, random breathing and her father’s snores swirling over their heads like a jumbled melody.

Next would come an arranged marriage to an Iban boy—at twenty-four, that was always going to be inescapable. But Laila doesn’t care if they can carve the most beautiful masks, plant the best crops, hunt the biggest wild boars. The day Viktor showed up, gifts wrapped in a sarong, among which was a mask carved out of ebony, the most prized wood, certain she would accept his hand in marriage, she refused even to come out of the bilik. She was determined not to end up like the other girls, chained to the longhouse for the rest of their lives.

No more cockroaches scampering over the mengkuang mats, either, and crawling up her neck at night. Their prickly legs on her skin and stench in her palm as she slaps them away nauseate her even now.

‘Australia—the other side of the world. You don’t even know this man.’

Her father’s assaults remind Laila of jungle leeches, latching onto her skin, sucking until they bloat up to twice their size. Her body sinks with heaviness, her mouth dry. Maybe she should just dash out without her things. She suddenly feels drained, she fears she may collapse onto the floor. An inkling of defeat creeps up on her: can she break free? When she rehearsed this scene in her head last night, last week, two weeks ago, she was unflinching. Now she feels herself buckling as her father continues to sap her strength.

Laila takes a deep breath. No room even for sentiment. Events narrow down to a single path, a single point. Like the produce the villagers plant in cleared jungle land, episodes sprout, grow and ripen. This is the fruit of her plotting.

‘I know him well enough.’ She holds her head up high.

‘What? Through letters?’ her father says.

A rattling sound comes from the back window. Birds perched on the corrugated-iron fence scratch on the metal. The sound seems to synchronise with the pulsating beat of her heart. She stiffens, turns towards her father and looks at him. She’s never dared to do this before. The anger scorching his eyes used to send her and her brother and sister dashing to the meat safe, the only furniture in the bilik big enough to hide behind.

‘Yes.’

‘Any decent man would come here to escort you.’

‘He did offer, but I said no.’

A ghostly silence settles on the bilik. Her father sits down on the floor in a corner, his arm dangling over one raised leg, staring ahead. Beside him her mother crouches, fiddling with her sarong, holding back her tears. When will Laila see her mother again after she walks out the door? The redness of her mother’s eyes, the lines long and deep, etching the sides of her mouth, tug at Laila’s heartstrings. Jeannie and Krisno are at school, thank goodness. She had said goodbye to them that morning, Jeannie tearing Krisno away, his gangly arms entwined around her neck, his pimply face laden with sorrow.

‘Why, Laila?’ her mother says, her eyebrows gathered into a frown.

‘I didn’t want him to see this.’

‘This?’

‘Yes, this hell hole.’

‘Laila!’ her mother screams. ‘This is our home. How could you?’ She beats the floor repeatedly with her palms and weeps.

Her wails draw neighbours from the entire longhouse to the gap in the front door. They poke their faces in, pushing the gap wider, straining their torsos, craning their necks. A boy balances on his father’s shoulders. Murmuring voices and scuffing sounds drift into the bilik. Laila wants to comfort her mother but finds herself stilled. She stares at the body huddled on the floor. Her father storms to the front door, slams it shut, then lunges across at her.

The blow of her father’s hand throws Laila off balance. She leans against the wall for support, blinking and widening her eyes, the sting on her cheek burrowing into her brain.

‘Don’t ever, ever say such things about our home!’ Saliva spits out. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and walks away. ‘Leave, and don’t ever come back.’

Laila steadies herself, rubs her palm over her cheek as if rubbing away dirt. No, she will not cry. She zips up the suitcase. Bending over her mother, she pecks her on the cheek and squeezes her shoulder. Then, carrying the suitcase, she opens the door. The crowd backs off. There is a loud gasp at the sight of her mother crouched on the floor. Utterances of shock and disbelief. Hands over mouths. Nudging of elbows.

Laila squeezes past them. The suitcase grates against the planks as she makes her way to the end of the longhouse verandah and struggles down the ladder.

The Rejang River unfolds before her. She breathes in the muddy scent, the familiar earthy odour. The flat expanse of the river spreads out like a lake. She’ll miss the river. She’ll miss the calming effect of lapping water, wind tossing her hair, currents swelling and roaring during monsoons. Shimmering water and wails of hornbills.

Torrents of memories engulf her in big bold strokes. The long froth trailing the speedboat as she goes to school at Nanga Ibau in Kapit each morning. Rainforests set back from the riverbank blurring past. The brrr-brrr of the engine vibrating through her body as the boat rocks from side to side.

In her mind’s eye she sees village folk emerging from boats at the Kapit waterfront, wild boars, chickens and jungle produce straddled on their shoulders. She hears the rafts of logs colliding as they float downstream, their sounds reminding her of gongs at gawai time.

The finality of her departure closes about her. In spite of her hatred for her life in the longhouse, and the sting on her cheek and the chaos of her feelings now, she knows she’ll take the Rejang River with her to Australia.

She takes a last look back at the longhouse, makeshift stilts holding up the structure, walls made of corrugated-metal sheets, flimsy ladder sagging from wear. Children are running along the dirt path, formed by years of trudging down the slope to the Rejang waterfront, where they throw off their clothes and plunge into the water, the same water the villagers use for drinking, washing and bathing.

Village women, elderly ones bare-breasted, are squatting on the riverbank in the distance, hitting clothes with wooden batons, rinsing, wringing, talking among themselves. Starbursts glint on the water. Laila places her suitcase down, opens her palms, and sees herself scrubbing and wringing as an eight-year-old, her mother showing her the correct way to wash clothes. She takes out her air ticket, places it on her chest and closes her eyes. Overhead, hornbills perched on a tree flap their wings. She touches the calluses on her palms, remembers the soreness and redness from washing the family’s clothes, and her eyes brim with tears.

Without turning again, she heads for the speedboat anchored at the waterfront. The attendant, cap worn low, hops off the railing, throws his cigarette into the river and swings into the boat.

1

ALONG THE ARMREST ARE buttons and holes, seven in total. Laila watches her neighbour, a thin Chinese man with thick glasses, pull out the headphones from the plastic wrap, place the arch over his head and plug the cord into one of the holes. He presses a few buttons and an image appears on the mini screen in front of him.

Laila follows what he does. Different sounds cough out of her headphones. She perseveres, her fingers press, twist and turn until the same image appears on her screen. She squeals inwardly with delight.

The aircraft hums. Cool air drifts from the overhead air-conditioning vents. After the meal, after watching Pierce Brosnan perform his antics in Tomorrow Never Dies, she notices passengers getting ready to sleep. They tuck cushions under their heads or blow up curved ones to sling over their shoulders. Some slide on eye patches. Laila tries to shut her eyes but her mind ticks away, absorbing the fresh scent of the cushion and blanket, the trolley of duty-free products, the way the batik uniforms of the Malaysia Airlines stewardesses hug their waistlines, the shimmering green of their eye shadow.

Magazines are bunched in her lap: Marie Claire, Who, House & Garden, Vogue Living, National Geographic. She leafs through the pages quietly, so as not to wake the Chinese man, who’s now fast asleep, his mouth open. Her eyes feast on the images and words: herringbone vests, choc suede pumps, cornflower blue, satin piping, floor-to-ceiling glazing, canopy windows, rectilinear oak cabinets. Glimpses of her new life, her new world.

The trauma of her last moments in the longhouse is already receding in her memory. Discarding her old life the way reptiles shed their skin, she’s about to enter another chapter, and in three hours will be face to face with her future husband. Her Jim, in the flesh, in the here and now. Their worlds will finally converge on this day, 4 March 1996. Changing your life is a matter of catching a plane, taking a long flight.

After what seems like only snatches of just an hour’s sleep, she hears a voice overhead:

‘…we are about to land at Adelaide Airport. The ground temperature is eighteen degrees. For those disembarking at Adelaide, we wish you a pleasant stay and thank you for flying with Malaysia Airlines.’

Laila’s heart leaps into her mouth and does somersaults. Euphoria pelts into her veins. She unbuckles her seatbelt. Press the handle to release the brakes, let it go to brake. The trolley starts and jerks, veering this way and that, seeming to have a mind of its own. So first she has to figure out how to work the luggage trolley. Then the questions from the Immigrations officer: does she have anything to declare; is she carrying any animal or plant products; what’s in that red drawstring pouch; how long is she staying for? After she shoves the contents back into her suitcase, she has difficulty closing it.

The drone of the aircraft continues in her head. Laila forces the suitcase shut, hoping the zip won’t give way. She edges forward, trailing a river of passengers, trolleys loaded with bundles of suitcases, musical instruments, packing boxes, backpacks and folded-up cribs. Her eyes jump ahead, locating the automatic sliding doors. The doors open and shut as each passenger goes through them.

She can see throngs of people choking the entranceway. There are hugs, kisses, laughter, slaps on the back, and bouquets of flowers to greet beaming faces. Laila casts her eyes over the crowd for a sign of Jim. A sea of heads with light-coloured hair—then the doors rumble, closing again.

At last she’s through. Where is he? Maybe he won’t show up. She’s heard of such stories. Shifty characters, no show when it comes to the crunch. But no, her Jim isn’t that sort.

Finally, Jim’s face appears. She recognises his smile immediately—corners of lips upturned, just as in his photo. He is standing in the back row. Over here, he mouths, waving his hand. A big woman with a trolley spilling with luggage in front of her suddenly seems twice as large. Laila lunges sideways to catch his glance. She waves back, her heart fluttering and leaping at the same time.

Then she comes face to face with Jim. All six feet of him.

He’s wearing a denim jacket over a shirt and cotton trousers. The shirt is snug at his midriff. To meet his gaze she stands on her toes. The first thing she notices is the gleam of his bald head. It throws her off. She didn’t realise he was bald on top. Then she remembers. In the photo, he was wearing a cap. What a cheat.

A sinking feeling takes her over. She looks around, bends to check her luggage, to avoid his eyes. Her eyes scan him and she notices the creases on his shirt, and the back hemline is sticking out. She looks around her, hoping the moment will pass. Then he produces a bouquet of light-coloured roses from behind his back. She’s never seen roses this colour or this huge before. He drops the bouquet into her arms. She brings the petals to her nose and sinks into the sweet heady fragrance. The smell floods her nostrils, lingers at the back of her throat. The petals feel soft, like velvet. Through gaps in the bouquet, she sneaks a peek at him and meets his eyes. They are green, soft, liquid, pulling her in. He smiles and the sparkle spreads like a flame, lighting up his cheeks, his jaw, blazing across the space between them. She sees the freckles on his nose, then she hears his voice, warm and luscious, a little hoarse like the sound of one’s first utterance in the morning.

‘Hello, Layla? Liela? Did I pronounce it right?’

No one has pronounced her name like that. She covers her mouth and giggles.

Jim laughs back. ‘Well, you’ll need to teach me.’

‘Later, okay…Jim?’

‘Damn right. Jim, as easy as it comes. Or as they say, as easy as A-B-C.’

‘Very easy…Jim.’

‘You bet.’ He chuckles.

She looks at the floor.

‘Well! Welcome to Australia.’

He gives her a brief hug and kisses her on the cheek. He smells of soap and shaving cream. She sees the buttons on his jacket, fine hairs peeping out from under his top, light brown, his skin a pinkish tinge. So this is what Caucasian men look like.

They manoeuvre through the crowd, stealing glances at one another, turning away when they catch each other at it. In between, more giggles and quick snatches of conversation.

When they step out of the building, a gust of cold wind hits them. Laila shivers. She clutches her clothing, and her hair, which is tossing in every direction. All she has on is a T-shirt and jeans. She knew she’d be arriving in autumn. Mild, Jim said in his letter. In Sarawak it’s hot all year round.

Jim releases his hands from the trolley. ‘Here.’ He removes his jacket.

He drapes it over her shoulders. As he slides her hair out from under the collar, she turns her head and peers at his face. She takes in the curl of his eyelashes, the sharp angle of his nose, the ends of his hair shimmering golden in the sun. And that mouth, those lips, even better than the photo.

At the café he guides her, a hand on the small of her back, to a table next to a window. She tries to take in her surroundings but notices only the outside tables with big umbrellas, Coca-Cola printed on them. Everything else is a blur.

She’s still in a daze, at having made the trip, having crossed ocean and continent, setting foot in Australia. Her Jim has finally materialised. His voice, his smell—bridging the space between them. His hand, resting on the table, is only centimetres from hers. If she reaches out she could touch him. All this is real.

Jim pushes his car keys and wallet to the edge of the table and hands her the menu. She takes it from him and forces herself to centre, to regain her bearings. Her fingers play with the corners of the menu, her eyes dancing over the list of dishes, some in strange words. She has no idea what they are. She looks up to find Jim’s eyes boring into her. When she meets his gaze, he turns away nervously. She looks in the other direction.

Running his hand over his bald head, Jim says, ‘So, what would you like to eat?’

‘Umm…can you order for me?’

It is not lunchtime yet, so he orders scrambled eggs, hash browns, grilled tomato, sautéed mushrooms, bacon, sausages, toast and coffee. As Jim gives their order to the waitress, Laila stares at her, at her black apron branded with the word Coopers, her kohl-lined eyes, her rosy cheeks. The waitress scribbles on her notepad, nose ring glittering, silver bangles on her wrist jangling, then repeats their order and walks away. Laila shifts her eyes back to the table, to find Jim staring at her again.

‘Sorry, I can’t help myself. You’re very pretty.’

‘Really?’

‘You sure are.’ He smiles. ‘I can be such a dingbat, can’t I?’

‘A what?’ she giggles.

‘Idiot, fool, you know.’ He makes a face.

She raises her eyebrows and chuckles. Then they both break into uncontrollable laughter, waves of it, until they clutch their sides. Then, with the floodgates open, an explosion of words follows.

With the aroma of food wafting around them, they talk about the flight, Australian weather, the crazy autumn winds, pictures on the wall, Italian cafés, why wood-oven pizzas taste better than normal ones, Australian slang, horoscope signs. They recount the little stories from their letters. Laila feels her shyness rising off her like steam from a damp garment being ironed. Every now and then, Jim touches her hand or elbow lightly.

‘I can’t believe you’re really here,’ he says finally.

‘I know, I can’t believe it myself. So happy to be in Australia.’

‘You speak English really well. I know you mentioned learning English at school and that, and your written English is perfect, but hearing your voice now, I can’t get over it.’

‘It’s not that good. Only average.’

‘You could have fooled me.’

‘Everyone speaks English in Malaysia. Some well, some not so well.’

‘I thought Malaysian was the main language.’

‘Yes, Bahasa is, but with friends and at the shops, everywhere, we only speak English.’

Now that they’ve broken the ice she can take in her surroundings. As if awoken, she sees everything with curious eyes: the glitter of the glass cabinet with cakes and ice cream, the row of upside-down wine glasses above the bar, the clean pavement, dogs sitting quietly while their owners sip coffee or read a magazine. The whiteness of people’s skins, multicoloured streaks in hair, exposed midriffs of young women, tattoos peeping up from their buttocks above waistbands. She’s entranced. The meals come. She eats.

‘Food okay?’ Jim asks.

‘Yes, yes.’ She shifts her focus back to him. ‘Everything so new, so different.’

‘A lot to take in, huh? You’ve plenty of time, don’t worry. A whole lifetime to discover your new home.’

Her new home. It still hasn’t sunk in that Australia is now home. But now that Jim has articulated it, the idea winds its way into her consciousness. Goose bumps rise on her skin, then she’s light-headed. She flashes him a smile. He takes her hand and plants a kiss on her fingers. The sensation makes her body tingle. Blood rushes to her face, so she lowers her head hoping he won’t notice.

She does not taste the food; she only sees his face, awash with sunlight streaming in through the window. She imagines him opening the door to his red brick home. Sweet fragrance, like that of the roses sitting on the chair beside her, wafts out from the front door. Music swirls in the air. Jim places her hand gently back on the table. She sees the fine golden hairs on his wrist, gazes at his lips and she wants to explode in happiness.

The red brick exterior will soon come into view, the image already imprinted in her head from his photo. She’ll recognise it at once. The white bay window will leap out first. Patience, she’s waited all these months. The drive to Renmark will be a long one, three hours at least. That’s what Jim said.

It is mid-afternoon and they’re heading out of the city. Buildings and traffic peter out, and vehicles speed along the two-lane highway.

‘Recline your seat if you want, princess,’ Jim says. ‘Press the lever, by the side of your seat.’

She presses the lever. The seat collapses and her body falls flat. ‘Oops.’

Jim pulls the car across, leans over and adjusts the angle for her. ‘There, better now?’

She nods, looks up at him and smiles.

The café meal and the quick drive around Adelaide have overloaded her senses. Less than a day in Australia and already she’s seen and experienced so much. She leans back, feels the softness of the seat, stretches out her legs and lets it all soak in.

Jim drives them through valleys that undulate and fold into expanses of bush scrub, past little towns of a few streets with names she can’t remember. At a roadhouse, he stops for petrol, and she sees massive trucks pumping fuel and people going into the eatery.

With the car still, she can see into the distance and the sprawl of the land over hillocks and rises. The landscape is completely different to Sarawak. So brown, so dry. Grass in shades varying from olive to ochre to golden give way to stretches of land broken by rock outcrops, shrubs and patches of red earth. A stark contrast to the lushness of jungles back home. Is this what wheat looks like? Or is it barley? She thinks hard and tries to recall what she studied in Geography. Soon, endless trees glide past, some with silvery trunks, layers of curling bark hanging off them. Jim tells her they are gum trees, native to Australia. When she catches sight of a leaping creature, she squeals.

‘Is that a kangaroo?’

‘Sure is. Just wait, we might see emus yet.’

‘Ee mews?’

‘Yep, E-M-U-S, also native to Australia. They look like ostriches.’

‘Really? Wow.’

Laila watches the landscape coast by, and catches an occasional view of Jim. She doesn’t notice his baldness anymore. She decides she likes his nose best, more than his mouth. It is the way it slopes, the pointy tip, prominent now from his side profile. It is what she’s always liked about Caucasian men. Unlike her own nose, round and

Reviews for Handpicked

[mich_yms · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Handpicked is a story about a Sarawakian girl, Laila, who travels to Australia to seek a new life. She desperately wants to leave her life in the Iban kampung and the longhouse in which her family lived in together with 30 other families, enough to give her the courage to pack her bags and fly off to be the wife of a man whom she has only known for a year, and only through letters.When she arrives in Australia, she is at first awed by the man who is to be her husband, Jim. But not too long after, as they arrive to the caravan where she is to call home, she realises that all her dreams of red brick houses, beautiful lawns and white picket fences were only that - dreams. The Australia that she had imagined is not what she gets.The story was pretty predictable. Laila meets another man, Sean, at a party and is immediately drawn to his good looks, good taste, and good wealth. Not too long after, she leaves Jim for Sean, only to find that Sean is abusive. But she sticks in that relationship for longer than she stayed with Jim (or at least, that's how the timeline felt like for me), until one fine day, with advice from a very good friend, she ups and leaves Sean. The both of them (Laila and Jim) then start mending their own lives. Jim finds himself a new job, and starts saving money. Laila leaves the women's shelter after a while, finds a job and rents her own place.Overall, I was just not impressed.