How Did You Get Caught? An Attempt To Essay.
How did you get caught? (Or not caught, as the case may be.)
Gnawing desperately at the slab of turkey breast I had hacked off the Christmas turkey in near delirium with a plastic fork, I ceased to pay attention to the surroundings. All I could think about was the turkey, the stuffing and my stomach. If ever there was a person fated to be caught doing the rare wrong thing at the exact, precise, worse possible timing… I suppose it would be me. And so, it happened.
He walked into the kitchen nonchalantly, and I balked in horror, strips of whitish turkey meat stuck in between my teeth, one finger greasy from the stuffing, the others caressing an especially sumptuously plump mince pie. Dropping the remainder of the turkey in one hand into my cavernous and ravenous mouth, I pushed the pie as far away from me as it would physically go across the slick, faintly oily marble kitchen top. I had been caught eating the leftovers from the Christmas lunch we had … that we were supposed to save for dinner. I cannot remember if we were forbidden to eat it before dinner, but nevertheless I will never, never forget the shame and agony of having my worshipped and idolised, immortalised crush watch me inhale turkey meat and just about devour a whole minced pie.
Being myself, I had chosen Christmas Day, of all days, to diet and eat daintily the multitude of food that had been heaped upon the red-clothed table. Coincidentally, I had also been doubly writing a screenplay I was convinced would be published, catapulting me to deliciously public fame, and finishing my first novella, the Malaysian version of a Philip Roth book. Naturally, the stress of such works coupled with the exhaustion from getting up to attend mass with my Cafeteria Catholic cousins had proved beyond durable for my appetite.
I stood my ground, inwardly fuming at myself, telling myself that I was better than this. I was a good student, a funny girl, the class comedienne, future political savant, quirky and witty- I shouldn’t have to reduce myself to the feeling of being ashamed and speechless! He was just a boy! I didn't have to play into gender stereotypes! Why on earth should I be ashamed to eat like a rational, starved and excitable human being just because I was a girl? Didn't boys do the same? All perfectly sound, cogent arguments that I frequently espoused, whilst talking to friends and family, causing me to be labelled, rather dismissively, a ‘social justice warrior’ which I took in stride.
Still, I said nothing. Neither did he, for that matter. Instead, he drank water coolly, holding the glass in steady hands, he walked straight out of the kitchen without a word. No eye contact besides the initial meeting of my horrified pair of orbs to his quizzical and perhaps, reflecting on it, queasy ones.
A part of me felt so stunned that I nearly exclaimed in idiomatic Mandarin my shock but remembered, with relief, that I was away from school where I would have been forced to converse with my classmates in reluctant and vaguely archaic Mandarin. A touch of sixth grade Malay came to the tongue, a product no doubt of too many eagerly ostentatious essays and poems written for a teacher who probably never demanded them, and I slid it back my stunned gullet. I could only think, in my rare moment of speechlessness, of a silently muttered assertion of joy, ‘Eureka…’
Yes, yes of course! The end to the screenplay would be solved! I had been for weeks agonising and debating, writing and re-writing the conclusion of the exploits of my heroine , the spunky and outspoken social activist, Andy, really Inderjit, and her best friend, Ping Pong, the half-Jamaican, half Thai British ping pong super star. I wiped my be-greased fingers down my aunt’s treasured tea towels, I grimaced realising my faux pas, then plucked primly a pencil laying on the counter and fished around in the pocket of my childish overalls for a notepad.
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