THE
BISCUITS by Jacqueline Ng
The tale of a 26-year-old: “six months as a six-year-old” My family and I migrated to Toronto, Canada when I was young. One summer, my grandparents flew over from Singapore to visit us. I was six. When they left at the end of that summer holiday, I left with them. Somehow over the course of that summer, my parents had decided that a move back to Singapore would be a better option. No one tells you about the emotional baggage that manages to sneak its way across geographical boundaries to the other side just when you thought you were getting rid of any and all that you had accumulated in Singapore. Life on the other side wasn’t always better like people thought. But what did I know? I was six. I can’t remember the farewell at the airport in Toronto. I can’t remember arriving in Changi airport. I can only remember my grandparents’ house and the time we spent together. The afternoons watching WWF with Grandpa and special nights staying up past midnight with Grandma watching funny Chinese movies on TV and eating instant noodles with sort-of poached eggs as a post-midnight snack. I also remember that my grandparents didn’t speak English well and I couldn’t speak a word of Mandarin.
I entered Primary One and the canteen was one of the best places because the canteen = recess = playtime. The canteen was also one of the scariest places for me, because my Mandarin was not up to scratch. The most cruel portion of the canteen experience? The canteen uncles and aunties who were all Chinese-speaking. And it wasn’t their fault as it's just the way things were but I felt trapped and lost. I couldn't approach them to order food or drink because I didn’t know how to. I believe I didn’t have anything to eat during recess for some time due to my pride and fear. I just told everyone I wasn’t hungry. The drink stall was the least intimidating and ordering Coke or Sprite was something I easily picked up. While ordering drinks became easier, buying food was still a huge issue. The most frightening was the Chinese noodle stall. There were so many options but there wasn’t a menu so I felt helpless watching people order their mini bowls of noodles. I gave up hope of ever ordering from the Chinese noodle stall and decided to observe other girls ordering from the neighbouring stalls. After another period of time, I came to understand that the biscuit and snack stall Aunty was a quiet one. And because biscuits didn’t really have special names like noodles, you could just point to whatever you want, Aunty tells you the price, you pay, get your change back from Aunty and sit down at a bench and eat it. It seemed simple enough. So one day, I plucked up courage, went to that stall and pointed to this particular bag of biscuits, and the Aunty said the price in