My Dad the Triad Boss

“Kai Jie, what does your dad do?”

That’s the question my English teacher gave me during Show and Tell in Primary school. The thing is, I didn’t really know or understand what my Dad did, so I just stood there and stared at her.

“What job does your daddy have Kai Jie?” she asked me persistently.

So I told her, “my Dad stays at home all day.”

Thankfully, she dropped the subject after thinking that he was unemployed, so she moved on to my classmate to present. Technically, both of my parents worked; my Mother was a manager for a stage makeup supplier while my Dad was a landlord. She worked long hours and I never really got to see much of her growing up, apart from when I got up to pee in the middle of the night and I saw her crash into the bed snoring as loud as a walrus. Meanwhile, Dad managed a few apartments in Singapore and some unspecified lands over in Malaysia, which was an hour's drive away. Since landlords earned their keep by asking people for money, he had a lot of free time; he became a housewife, rearing my brother and I as we grew up. But once a week, he would need to drive over to the old country to ‘take care of business.’ Sometimes, he would be gone for 3 days, and later be back in the middle of the night with a car trunk full of something. But Dad would never tell me what was inside.

And so for the longest time, I thought that my Dad was into something more sinister than just simply overcharging tenants. Until that fateful day when I became 16 years old.

I was sitting in the living room, scrolling through my holiday assignments on my iPad when my Dad had just arrived back home from running some errands.

“Kai Jie, pack your bags, we’re going on a road trip.”

I looked up from my iPad, as he sat down on the floor to take off his shoes.

“Why are we going there all of a sudden?” I asked.

“My gardener called me at the car workshop. He said that my durian trees are in bad shape. So I want to go take a look at the damage.” he replied.

“Can’t I just stay with Poh Poh while you’re gone? I’m going to USS with my friends on Saturday.”

I had no interest in visiting his lands, even if I could see a dead body or two I’m not in the mood to travel to bumblefuck nowhere in Malaysia. Besides, I wanted to conquer Cylon this weekend.

“Your grandma is going for her church retreat tomorrow, so you have to come with me,” he said as he then took off his sweat-soaked polo.

“Pa, this is unfair, you hadn’t even planned this properly and now I have to follow you to some place I can’t even find on a map. Can’t you just let me live alone until you come back? I can buy food while you’re gone.”

He turned to look at me, stony faced.

“Absolutely not. I’m your father and it’s still my house, so don’t get any funny ideas just because you’re a teenager. It’ll be a quick trip.”

I rolled my eyes at his comment. Bloody Hell.

The next day, I woke up before the crack of dawn. I checked the time on my phone; 3 am. It was worse than getting ready for Primary School. My Dad’s reasoning? To beat the morning traffic. We can’t even get up at 6 like normal people. I splashed some cold water in my face and got into a fresh change of clothes. I grabbed my gym bag and walked out of my bedroom. I saw my Dad sitting down, reading the Straits Times in his white singlet. He held a can of coffee in his free hand.

“Done dilly-dallying? Got everything you need?” He didn’t even look up from the papers.

“Yes,” I said.

“Then let’s go.” He put the article down and grabbed his duffel bag. We headed straight to the car. A Black Volkswagen Jetta.

“It’s going to be a three hour drive.” He took a sip of his coffee. “Do you want anything from McDonalds?”

“A sausage McMuffin would be great.”

After we picked up breakfast, we drove to Tuas and waited in line with the rest of the cars, buses and cargo trucks at the border checkpoint.

As I sank my teeth into my breakfast sandwich, I took a closer look at my Dad’s armsleeve tattoo. It was a dragon circling around the legendary warrior Guan Yu. He told me that he got it after a college night gone wild; while bar hopping around Osaka with his fellow international students, they stumbled upon a tattoo parlour. Under the influence of 20 beers, they dared him to get his arm tattooed.

That’s what he told me when I was 6, slowly adding in the more adult themes and details of that legendary incident as I grew older. But I was starting to question his story. It seemed to be way too detailed for a guy to do it all in a single night, especially for a small Chinese man completely wasted, probably puking all over the place. He was probably getting inked over multiple sessions. I stared at Guan Yu, and he stared back at me.

He was venerated as a warrior God not only by the Triads, but by the Chinese diaspora world over. He was celebrated as a mighty general who swore to never betray his sworn brothers. But only gangsters would have him on their skin. So why would a college student in Japan of all places get him tattooed on his biceps? What if it was some gang tattoo? A symbol of pride for my Dad?

“Kai Jie, stop staring into space and pass me the passports.”

Pa snapped me out of my trance. “Where are they?” I searched through the glovebox.

“They’re underneath the car manual, hurry up.”

I lifted the thick book and found the documents; I handed them over to the immigration officer. She took a good look at the passports and cleared us.

“Welcome back home sir,” she said to my Dad.

“Thank you, always glad to be back.” He rolled up the windows and sped off.

We had finally hit the Malaysian highway, driving in the early rays of dawn. Unlike the clean and orderly city I was born in, I noticed that there were huge billboards scattered amongst rows of palm trees. I got bored pretty quickly and slept for the rest of the journey. When I woke up again, we were now deep in the Malaysian bush, no longer driving on asphalt but on dirt roads. The bright morning light illuminated the rainforest.

“Pa, where are we?” I asked as I wiped the cold out of my eye.

“We’re almost there,” he cooly said as he drove with one hand.

I looked around at the dense vegetation. It was wilder than a mere fruit orchard.

“I thought we were going to see your durian trees, not a jungle safari.”

“Durians naturally grow in the jungle, you know,” he took a sip of coffee. “They don’t just magically appear from nowhere.”

“I mean why aren't your trees grown on cleared land?” I inquired.

“Well it was cheaper to buy the land here, and it came with wild durian trees,” he said while pointing at the surrounding trees. “We’ve reached.”

Pa drove his car into a clearing, where there was a tiny house. He had paid a few contractors to build a house in the style of a cottage orné. His fascination and fetishism for Britain’s ‘great’ colonial past hasn’t gone away. After he switched off the engine, we exited the car with our bags.

“Kai Jie, remember to always keep the mosquito screens closed,” Pa said as he unlocked the door. I’ll turn on the generator first, help me switch on the taps but do not drink from them. Let the silt water run off first.”

The cottage was dusty, the humid air didn’t help the fact that the fern wallpaper he had put up was now peeling and dusted with black mold. Nevertheless, I went to the kitchen and switched on the taps, watching the sink slowly drain the muddy water.

“Ah boy, you can turn on the air con and relax,” Pa stepped back into the house. “I’ll be out with the gardener later.”

I turned around and nodded. After the water began to clear up, I closed the tap and plopped myself down on the living room sofa. I took out my iPad and resumed my work.

Half an hour later, my Dad put on his Timberlands and left to see the gardener. He linked up with a swarthy fellow, who was sunburnt from working outdoors all day. I watched the two of them converse in Hokkien; I don’t understand the dialect, because my Dad never spoke it to me growing up. So all I could understand was that they were having a pretty fierce argument, probably something about the trees. Pa became very agitated and walked to his car. He popped open the trunk and took out a large parang.

As the curved knife gleamed in the sunlight, its lustre made my blood run cold. Wild thoughts raced through my mind; was I going to witness my Dad murder his henchman? For failing to guarantee the health of a bunch of fruit trees? Pa walked towards him with his parang facing down, when all of a sudden he swung down on a wooden vine growing on one of the durian trees.

Oh. He was just telling him to chop off the parasitic vines of a strangler fig. As Pa and the gardener proceeded to start weeding, a wave of nausea and exhaustion had completely taken me over. When I woke up, the entire forest was bathed in darkness; my Dad was sitting at the dining room table, scrolling through facebook. He had changed out of his singlet into a Ralph Lauren polo.

“Pa, what happened?” I asked him.

“I took care of some business,” he said, looking back at me.

“When can we go home?” I bemoaned.

Pa switched off his phone.

“Sure, about time anyway.”

It was close to midnight, but we were finally home; at last the adventure was over. I can finally get back on track with my hangout plans. I was so pre-occupied I immediately tried to bolt out of the car, but he stopped me.

“Where are you going? Come and help me pick up the goods.”

I froze in my tracks. I remembered that the Singapore customs didn’t even bother to inspect the trunk. So what goods were in there? What did he do when I was asleep? What was it that my father wanted me to haul? Crack? Vapes? Unpaid cigarettes? I dared not ask him.

We exited the car and he openedthe trunk. There were six neatly packed boxes, with red soaked newspaper lining the boot. My feet turned clammy. Now it's definitely not drugs; something got butchered, and it was large enough to fill up all of the space.

“Stop using eyepower and help me lah, there’s a lot to carry," he said as he took out a box.

Pa took four boxes while I took the remaining two up to our condo apartment. I couldn’t even grip the box properly. As we waited in the lift to take us up, I couldn’t believe what was next. Is he going to destroy the evidence in the bathtub, like in Breaking Bad? Surely the gardener didn’t piss him off that badly?

Pa placed the boxes on the kitchen floor. He grabbed the knife and announced to me, ““Now here’s the moment we have all been waiting for.”

“Pa please don’t do this,” I begged. Tears streamed down my face. “I'm not a part of this. You killing the gardener, I don’t want to be the son of a Triad Boss Pa.” I sobbed. “Please, don’t do this to me.”

I had never seen my Dad so shocked before, especially through my tear-blurred eyes.

“What are you talking about?” He cut through the seal and pulled out a slab of belly. “This is just pork, not human meat. I'm cooking your favourite, Babi Pongteh.” Pa put the meat back in the cooler box. “

Ah boy, I’ve never been a part of the criminal underworld throughout my life. Ever.” He said softly.

“I may look rough, and my tattoo may look scary, but that doesn’t determine who I am inside. I am your Dad, not a mob boss.”

He bent down to my level.

“I’m sorry to drag you on for so long Kai Jie, I just wanted to bond with you ever since you started Poly,” he said as he embraced me.

“It’s ok Pa. At least now I know we’re not cannibals either.”

Pa laughed for the first time in a month. I hugged him tighter.