The Lean-To: Our First Home

Reading Little House Series awoke my own childhood memories from their slumber.  Let's begin the journey through the past:

Photo taken from: https://bogor.tribunnews.com/2018/09/06/kesabaran-mak-acam-10-tahun-tinggal-di-rumah-bilik-kota-bogor-kebocoran-bila-hujan?page=all

It was not even a proper shack, more of a lean-to. The lean-to was generously given by my grandfather. It stood ugly next to his brick, white-painted house. It was only made of wood and bamboo with no added colour. There was only one bedroom and a living room flowed into the kitchen. We didn’t even have a proper bathroom and toilet. I guessed Grandpa also generously built a toilet next to the well in his yard, which automatically served as our not-so-private bathroom. I had vague collections of my childhood life, but the house and the outdoor bathroom were vivid in my mind.

There was only one big bed that we shared together. Yes. My Dad, Mom, big sister, and me slept together on that big bed. The bed stand was not really sturdy. It creaked as our bodies shuffled around. And the bed was far from soft. But I remembered we never had any problem sleeping in that bed.

The kitchen was nothing but a wood stove made of bricks and clay, a small table for Mom to store little food that we had, and a dish rack. Of course we had no dining table. There was only a long armchair with patches here and there to cover the holes probably made by mice and a rickety table in the living room. Certainly a TV would be a luxury we couldn’t afford. The floor was hard-pressed dirt, not even cemented, so most of the time we had to keep our sandals on; otherwise, our feet would be soiled.

The only thing I remembered from our bedroom was the ceiling that gaped wide open. The bamboo ceiling was loose on one side—the side where the bed stood. Sometimes I was afraid it would fall right on me while I was asleep. I guessed Mom had no money to fix it, so she let it gape like that. At night, it exposed the darkest part of the house that sometimes gave me nightmare. I hated waking up at night and caught the sight of the ceiling because usually I couldn’t go back to sleep, or I would have a nightmare.

That was our first house. I didn’t have much recollection of that house. Maybe because I was really young. I also forgot how long I lived in that house. I would ask Mom when I remembered. But in that house, I remembered losing my little sister right after she was born. That day, so many people swarmed our shack. Mom was inside the bedroom, and I wasn’t allowed to see her. She was having a labour, a hard one. Not long after, a baby lay breathless on the long armchair. I remembered walking from one side of the chair to another while chanting something. I reckoned I was so happy that I had a baby sister. But that was the only time I saw her. The next day, there was no more baby lying down on the armchair. I could only remember she was a long baby with pale, white skin. She could make a beautiful girl had she made it. I learned much later that my baby sister was dead because of birth complication. The medicine woman—a midwife was not that common back then—could not save her life. I also learned later that my uncle was so mad at the medicine woman. He blamed her for not helping my mom’s labour carefully. He believed that the baby could have been saved had she been more careful.

That armchair certainly held so many memories—bitter and sweet. On that same armchair where my baby sister lay dead, my Mom often fed me and big sister with only rice. She would put a spoon of rice in her palm and sprinkled some salt on it. It tasted really good! I guess her hands had some magic that made the salted rice so savoury. We ate heartily.

Sometimes, Mom was able to afford buying an egg. What a feast! Rice and egg! To make sure that everyone could eat it, Mom would make a scrambled egg. She would then sprinkle the egg on top of warm rice and feed me and big sister. Most of the time, she would only eat the rice and let me and big sister eat the rest of the egg. Those days are precious and rare. Most of the time we had to be satisfied with only rice and salt. But, I could swear the rice tasted nothing like today’s rice! It was magically tasty!

Another feast that we could have would be hot rice with small roasted salted fish—the locals called peda­—, stir-fry kangkong, and sambal. Yum! Usually for this feast, Mom would eat as much as we did. She would have the same share of yummy food. I didn’t really like the saltfish, but it tasted great with the sambal.

Dad was rarely around. He went to Jakarta to work. Only occasionally would he come home and stay for a couple of days. I didn’t really have fancy memories with Dad in that house. I remembered how one day it was so beautiful outside. I wasn’t sure why, but it was one of the most beautiful days I had seen, and it was a perfect day to do the washing!

That day, a santri (a student of a traditional Islamic boarding school) came to do the laundry at “our” bathroom. I was so inspired by what he was doing that I decided I would like to do my own laundry. I went back to the house and grabbed all the dirty shoes. I was going to make them nice and clean. I also grabbed some soap and a brush. My small hands pulled the rope attached to the well to bring the bucket filled with water up. I was ready. I was brushing the shoes happily when Dad suddenly grabbed me from behind and scolded me. He took me back to the house. I was so upset because I wasn’t even finished. I was also embarrassed because Dad did that in front of the santri.