Yusof's Family.

We have to lay off school for a couple of days and stay in a safe place. The man who runs the store on the third floor of Pasar Chowrasta told Siva that the police is looking for three school boys in uniform who knock on beggars and drunkards to steal their money. Siva says, we'd better stay off the street for a couple of days, or maybe a week because it is too dangerous to be running around as if nothing happens. I say it's a good idea if only we can find a place so we can all stay together. I say you people can't stay at the house I'm staying because Kedah Road opens up to Transfer Road at a junction, and unless you are blind as a goat with high fever, Transfer Road faces the back end of Penang Road Police Headquarters. Yusof says we can stay with his family in Dato Keramat and from there it is safe for us to go to school as it is on the route of Bus Sri Negara. And so I packed my clothes in a bag and left the house to meet up with Siva at Penang Yellow Bus Station on Prangin Road.

Yusof lives in a house with his mom which they share with four or five other women. It's a nice house that can be crowded in the day but pretty much empty at night since the women leave the house around six in the evening to work as dance hostess but Yusof says they are actually prostitutes, including his mom. The women are nice people who ask you every five minutes whether you have eaten while they put on the make-up, painting the cheeks rosy red and lips that look like fire. Sometimes they wake you up way past midnight to eat mee goreng mamak with them and laugh at the jokes they tell about a middle-aged men who want to marry them and make them a real wife to live in a house with real kitchen and bathroom, and a bed-room with closet and dressing table. And they laugh some more looking up the ceiling to smoke on another cigarette and tell another joke to let out another burst of laughter. This will go on and on until I can't keep my eyes open anymore and the women will tell me to go to sleep and be a good boy and get good grades at school so I can be somebody and don't be like Yusof and Siva. Yusof laughs and asks, what's wrong with me? And they say, oh you will end up no where.