THE report might have been sketchy but there was enough material to form the basis of a tragedy by an imaginative writer. Perhaps we can call it ‘The Little Big Woman’. (There is a 1970 movie called ‘Little Big Man’ starring Dustin Hoffman. It is about a Caucasian boy raised by the Red Indians in the 19th century who grew up to play a key role in luring General Custer to his final defeat.)
“Rain or shine, this little woman would be out there by the roadside selling lottery result slips. And she has been doing it for at least 20 years,” said my friend Peter. We were sitting in a coffee shop in Sibu discussing the newspaper report about a poor woman known to the townsfolk as ‘The Little Woman of Sibu’. She was found dead in a coffee shop toilet a few days ago. Her name was Ngo Giok Cheng.
HARD LIFE: Ngo’s little red bicycle.
Not much was said about her early life. What was known was that she was a single mother, a destitute single mother with a young son. She eked out a living selling lottery ticket result slips. She used to cycle around town on her little red bicycle with her little boy. They did not have a permanent home and often had to sleep on the five-foot-way when she could not afford room rental. Amazingly, the impatience of the punters (they cannot wait for the results to be published in the paper the next day and are prepared to shell out a few sen to buy the result slips) kept them going. I said “amazingly” because she was able to raise the boy into a young man who got married and gave her a granddaughter. The young family even managed to start their own home. So, the mother and son must have been on the streets for at least 20 years. In fact, she was such a constant sight in the town.
However, her life was no Hollywood movie. A feelgood movie might have scripted the son as growing up into a fine young man, who got a decent job, and raised a family, and the three generations “lived happily ever after.” Reality, sadly, can be rather cruel. The son, I gather, might very well have gotten a decent job. He even managed to buy a motorcycle which, tragically, actually led to his death. Last month, he died in an accident when his motorcycle collided with a bus.
It appeared that took away the little ray of sunshine of hope in the Little Woman’s heart, a ray that had kept her going all those years. The people who bought the tickets from her said that she never smiled after that tragic day.
A month later, she was found dead in a public toilet. There is no suggestion that it was a suicide. I fervently believe that it was not.
The widowed daughter-in-law said her mother-in-law used to collect recycled cans and bottles for her to sell to lighten her financial burden.
“She loved us and would visit us every day. Just a few hours before she died, she passed me another bag of used cans.”
“It is such a sad story. The mother and son fought so hard to survive and now … I just want to believe that there is a heaven,” said Peter. I am sure it was not an insect in his eye that made his eyes water.
As I ponder on this poignant tale of the mother and son I realise how easy it is for us, in our search for heroic acts of courage and fortitude, to look far and wide but miss those that are in front of our eyes. People are prone these days to post inspirational quips on the Internet. One that comes to mind is “when the going gets tough, the tough gets going”. Well, it is certainly tough to keep going in the face of the continuing adversity that was the life of the Little Woman.
I agree with Peter that hers was a sad life. It might have been hard and sad but it was not a futile and valueless life. To be able to raise a son, alone, with scant a roof over her head, uncertain of the next meal and not cowed by the harshness of life – well, that is indeed inspirational. In our moments of depression when we think that life has unfairly dealt us a bad hand, think of the courageous woman on a little red bicycle.
Ngo Giok Cheng might just have been known as ‘The Little Woman’, but to me, she was a ‘Little Big Woman’.