Teaching Cats to Jump Hoops Read online

  After some time and plenty of thought, I located a terrifying and disgusting colour illustration in a medical journal. It depicted one hand holding a red blood vessel that was being squeezed by the other hand. Flowing from one end of the vessel were streams of yellow, green, brown and black substances, showing the toxic chemicals that had accumulated in the vessels of a chain smoker. I cut out the image, along with a photograph of a late-stage lung cancer patient, who was gaunt and skinny as a rail. It was a ghastly image of someone who barely looked human. The photo was accompanied by the patient’s heartfelt thought: “I won’t touch a cigarette in my next life.” I glued the two images side by side and added the subtitle, “A year ago, great strength could uproot a mountain and imposing airs could subdue the world. A year later, the strength is gone and the mountain topples, covering the body in dirt”.

  Then I went to the supermarket to buy some candy with a heavy fruit fragrance that lingered in the mouth of anyone who ate them. I believed this would be a good aid to quitting smoking.

  When everything was ready, I asked Heng Yong to come to the staff room, where I returned his homework along with my masterpiece. I watched his reaction. He looked at the two, scratched his head out of habit, and then began to laugh soundlessly. I handed him the bag of candy and said, “Heng Yong, why not give quitting a try? It’ll be hard, but you must keep at it and not lose heart. Doesn’t the name Heng Yong represent your personality and potential—heng for perseverance, yong for courage? What you have is perseverance and courage, and this courage lasts forever, do you understand?”

  He looked at me pensively and nodded. “It’s hard to break an old bad habit,” he said. “Really hard. In addition to perseverance and courage, patience and time are also paramount. Before I went to the Boys’ Home, I smoked three or four packs of cigarettes a day. Each time the discipline master caught me, he would cane me in front of everyone. He beat me till I was numb, but after a while it stopped being a big deal. Later I even had an ongoing bet with the other students: If I finished a whole pack before the discipline master caught me, they’d give me ten dollars; I’d give them ten if I was caught, plus a free show.”

  “What kind of free show?” I was puzzled.

  “Public caning,” he replied with a smile. “I nearly died from the lack of cigarettes during my first few weeks in the Boys’ Home. But I didn’t die, so I vowed to spoil myself and smoke to my heart’s content once I was out.”

  If scolding and caning could not help him understand the problems with smoking, then any punishment would be a waste of time and effort.

  I fixed my gaze on him. Drawing out every word, I said, “Heng Yong, you must gain a thorough understanding of the crippling effects of cigarettes’ slow poisons before you try to convince yourself to eliminate the harmful craving once and for all. As the saying goes, heaven helps those who help themselves. Only you can help yourself.”

  He looked down at the candy I’d given him. A faint smile flitted across his face.

  “I’ll try, um, try to smoke less. Please give me time.”

  I nodded and changed the subject. “Are you doing all right at the Home?”

  “I hate it.” A look of extreme loathing appeared on his face. Not usually much of a talker, he now began to speak animatedly. “It’s bad enough to lose your freedom, but in there you lose your dignity too. The overseers yell, scream and curse at us for the smallest infraction. They make us exercise almost to death. In there I feel no different from an animal, except that an animal probably eats better and lives more comfortably. It’s an unfair world. Why should the worst of the worst be allowed to roam freely while I’m sentenced to two years for nothing more than picking a fight?” He grew so agitated as he spoke that he probably would have pounded the desk if not for the ringing of the school bell, which brought him back to the present. He continued in a soft, weak voice, “I accept my fate now, Madam Tham. I believe that one or more inescapable karmic obstacles exists in every person’s life, and that being sent to the Boys’ Home is one of mine.”

  The more I listened to him, the more disconcerted I felt. Apparently Heng Yong hadn’t learned anything from his mistake, which he blamed on fate. For the time being, he followed the school’s rules —except for smoking—and his homework was always neat and on time. One day, when I praised his behaviour in front of other teachers in the staff room, my colleague, Mr. Teo, said with a sneer, “Heng Yong is simply acting. He’s using his classes as an excuse to gain half a day of freedom. He’s not really into studying.” On reflection, I realised that Mr. Teo may have been right.

  I asked Heng Yong, “Do you really believe that detention for you is a karmic obstacle and not a punishment?”

  Seeing the stern look on my face, he held his tongue.

  Devious people who harbour evil intentions cause trouble everywhere they go. They commit all sorts of evil deeds for personal gain, even when they know that their actions bring pain to others. But some develop an unhealthy attitude towards life at a young age because their indulgent parents instil in them a value system that looks good on the surface, but is in fact misguided. Hence this boy who had strayed seemed intent on heading down the wrong path, when he was actually being pushed in that direction without realising it. Worse yet, he was completely unaware of his situation— hurt by what was going on around him, he didn’t realise that he was his own worst enemy. If I wanted to do something for him, my most urgent task would be to help him rediscover the right value system and the proper attitude towards life. But as the saying goes, it takes ten years to grow a tree, and a hundred years to form a person. It is difficult to straighten a twisted steel bar—very difficult indeed.

  My immediate and most daunting obstacle was time. Every day after class, Heng Yong’s father picked him up and drove him back to the Boy’s Home. This meant that I had limited time at school to teach and get close to him. The prospect of having a positive influence on him was pitifully weak. Nevertheless, I usually conducted our conversations in a light-hearted manner, and I could tell that he appreciated my effort and concern, because he was fairly open with me. In a word, we developed a good student-teacher relationship. Sometimes when I passed him in the hall, I would ask with a smile, “How many yesterday?” He always knew what I was getting at. Once he raised five fingers. “Too many,” I said, pretending to be upset. “Can’t you try to smoke less?”

  He smiled. “I’m working on it. Please give me time.”

  Confucius said that you should teach a person based on his ability. In fact, when dealing with a problem student, one also needs to guide him based on his personality. Heng Yong had been spoiled since childhood, so I would have met with resistance if I’d adopted sharp language and a heavy-handed approach to force him to change.

  I later discovered that he liked to sit alone in a corner of the campus and lose himself in martial arts novels during recess. When I brought it up, he told me that life at the centre was so monotonous and boring that martial arts novels helped him to while away the free time before he had to go to bed, and subsequently he had become hooked on them.

  Pleased to learn that he enjoyed reading, I began buying him books, pile upon pile of books, mostly biographies of famous people. I wanted to help him find his goal in life by reading about these people’s hardships and struggles. Most of all, I wanted him to understand and appreciate my intentions, that he would at least become an upright person if not a great, accomplished man.

  All my efforts and plans, however, were in vain. He turned out to be a terrible disappointment.

  3

  One morning, I walked into the classroom to find Heng Yong’s seat empty.

  That was unusual, since absence in class meant that he’d have to sit quietly all morning at the Boys’ Home, which he detested. As Mr. Teo had said earlier, Heng Yong “loved to use studying as a pretence to gain half a day of freedom.”

  I called his house and his mother answered. She was incoherent, and it was clear that she was in tears. In
fact, she was crying so much, I couldn’t understand what she was saying, apart from something about a police station. Could he have gotten into trouble again? And could it be so serious as to involve the police? I told her I would stop by after class, and was surprised to see her show up at school an hour or so later. She was sitting in the reception room—her hair a mess, her eyes puffy, with an expression of utter dejection. When she saw me, tears began to fall again, until she was sobbing so violently that she nearly choked. It took some time and self-control before she finally managed to say, “It’s my fault, Madam Tham, it’s all my fault.”

  It pained me to see someone tear herself apart like that. I handed her some tissues and made coffee as I waited for her to calm down. Then I asked her what had happened.

  It turned out that several nights before, when she and her husband had returned home after closing up their stall, they found to their horror that they had been burgled. The intruders had turned their place upside down and walked off with over ten thousand dollars in cash that Heng Yong’s parents had yet to deposit in the bank. They called the police, who suspected there was more than met the eye, because there were no signs of forced entry on the doors or windows. After a thorough investigation, the police quickly arrested two unemployed youths and proved that, indeed, something else was going on—the mastermind was the victims’ own son, Heng Yong.

  Amid tears and sniffling, his mother said, “Everything would have been fine if I hadn’t called the police. It’s my fault. I deserve a thousand deaths. I’ve ruined my child’s future! I delivered him straight to the police. I’m the stupidest woman on earth. I’ll never forgive myself.” She blew her nose and continued, “Please help me, Madam Tham. Help me plead with the police. Please tell them that Heng Yong is a good boy and a good student. Please ask them not to extend his sentence, please.”

  The heart she lay bare before me had been shattered by her unfeeling son. Yet despite her deep pain and open, bleeding wound, she was ready to fight the people who were charged with putting her child away in the name of justice. She would not allow anyone to harm a hair on her son. How stubborn, profound, helpless and foolish parental love can be!

  I felt sorry and awkward when I asked, “Did you ask Heng Yong why he needed such a large sum of money?”

  “He wanted to borrow eight thousand dollars from me earlier to help a friend get through some hard times. I didn’t give it to him, because it was an awful lot of money and I was afraid we might not get it back. But who would’ve thought—” Her sorrow got the better of her and she began to wail again. “I didn’t expect that he, that he’d give our house key to his friends. Madam Tham, if, if I’d known he would take such drastic actions, I’d have given him the money, and nothing would have happened. It’s all my fault. I’ve ruined my own child.”

  As I listened to her, I felt profound pity and sorrow spreading through my heart, like ink drops bleeding onto rice paper. She had indeed ruined him, due to indiscriminate indulgence that deprived him of a sense of direction and sent him into a downward spiral. Heng Yong’s seemingly honest, innocent face floated up from my memory.

  I couldn’t stop my own tears from welling up.

  4

  In the wake of the burglary, Heng Yong lost the freedom to attend school at all. Two months later, a judge re-sentenced him to two years in a juvenile reformative training centre. The only consolation was that he could still attend classes, and then sit for the national exams at the centre.

  After he left, I felt an ache in my heart whenever I saw his empty seat. It hurt, but since there was no remedy for the pain, I just let it be.

  Months after his departure, his mother showed up unannounced one day. Her hair was now completely grey as if she had come out of a snowstorm. Even her eyes seemed to glaze over as she stood awkwardly by my desk.

  “I’ve been to campus a few times, but couldn’t find you before,” she said.

  “Why didn’t you call and make an appointment?” I pulled up a chair for her and said, “Here, have a seat.”

  But she refused to sit. Instead, with her head lowered, she said, “Heng Yong told me I must find you and tell you something on his behalf.”

  I was all ears.

  “He wants me to apologise to you.”

  “Apologise?”

  “Yes,” she said meekly. “He wants to say he is sorry.”

  He was sorry. He wanted to tell me he was sorry.

  So he had not blamed his present situation on fate. Finally, he’d realised that he’d done something that he needed to apologise for. From those three simple words “He is sorry” I was pleased to see a light in Heng Yong’s future. However, I could not help feeling that he should have apologised to his mother and not to me. And his mother should have apologised to him. They had caused each other a great deal of pain and suffering.

  In all fairness, Heng Yong wasn’t a bad person in terms of his nature or personality, but his family environment had allowed him to commit errors time after time without any real consequences. Even after he’d made grave mistakes, his parents still tolerated and indulged him. Unable to tell right from wrong, he’d ended up living his life in murky water. Someone had to thump him to wake him up. Then, and only then, would he be able to understand how his mistakes had caused him such great pain. Now that he was in the reformative training centre, the place he feared most, it was time for him to face the wall and repent. On the other hand, if no one showed him any warmth and concern at a time when he could sink no lower and everyone considered him a bad person who deserved to be where he was, he might become cynical. In that case, once he was released, he could easily turn to a life of crime.

  So I began buying books for him once again. I sent him all sorts of motivational books to encourage him and let him know that someone was thinking of him beyond the dark, dank walls of the centre. Most importantly, he had been on the brink of drowning, and I hoped that these books on self-improvement would be the driftwood that could help him swim to shore.

  I wrote to him frequently, calling him a good boy each time. I believe that once a person gets used to a term of address, he naturally turns into a person who lives up to that term.

  Good boy, good boy, good boy, good boy. Good boy, good boy, good boy, good boy.

  I called out silently when I thought of him. I called it out repeatedly, never tiring of calling him a good boy.

  5

  After a long year of diligent studying, Heng Yong finally had a taste of the sweet instead of the bitter when he passed the national exams at the juvenile reformative training centre.

  His mother made a special trip to tell me when the results were announced.

  “He received excellent marks in several subjects, earning an overall score of eighteen!”

  Her once greasy, fleshy face looked like a dance floor that had just been waxed, and it sparkled brightly. I found her happiness infectious.

  Eighteen! With a score like that, he would be accepted into many good schools.

  “When can he go home?” I asked.

  “Soon, very soon.” She was so pleased that she was nearly incoherent. “With good behaviour, he’s eligible for early parole. He’ll be out in maybe a month or two.”

  I barely recognised Heng Yong when he came to see me at school.

  He looked lean and fit. His skin, however, was a pale white, probably from spending long hours indoors with little exposure to the sun. His fair skin made his onyx-like eyes appear especially bright and expressive. Gone was the lingering stink of cigarettes. What surprised me most though, were his teeth. The yellow, nicotine-coated teeth now gleamed like clean, white china.

  “How many yesterday, Heng Yong?”

  He laughed when he heard that.

  “Zero. You’ll never have to ask me that question ever again. The answer will always be zero. I’ve quit smoking for good. Do you know that I went to a dentist and got a thorough cleaning the day I left the centre?” He paused. “Yesterday, one of my mother’s friends came
to see her. He was chain-smoking in front of me, and I felt no urge at all. My craving is gone and I’ll never touch another cigarette again. I made mistakes in the past because I had a demon in my heart. But now I have a thorough and deep understanding of myself, and I refuse to be a slave to the demon. I want to be the master of my own fate.”

  I spread out a newspaper article I had been keeping with me.

  “Read it,” I said. “Go ahead, read it yourself.”

  The article was a special feature about how a rich man in Hong Kong had made his fortune. In 1982, a man named Chan Cheuk Yin had robbed a bank in Wanchai, for which he received a fifteen-year sentence. But he studied hard and became the first person in Hong Kong to complete his university education in prison. After he was released, he worked hard, started his own business, and was now Chairman of the Board of many corporations in Hong Kong. He could have anything he wanted—good wine, fancy cars, beautiful women, anything.

  Heng Yong read the article carefully and looked up. “That’s not the kind of life I want, Madam Tham,” he said, pursing his thick lips.

  His comment took me by surprise.

  Pointing at the picture of the impressive-looking and well-dressed rich man, he gave me a detailed and logical analysis: “This Mr. Chan worked hard to start a business after he was released, but he was after material comfort. I believe that spiritual happiness cannot be bought with money. I’ve done many things that have hurt my parents, and I’m going to make it up to them even if it takes me the rest of my life. After I got out, some of my old friends came to see me and I went out with them. But to be honest, I didn’t enjoy it. On the other hand, I’m happy and gratified when I help out at my parents’ stall, where I can spend time with them and talk about trivial things. I’ve applied to study Information Technology in polytechnic. I hope to find a steady job after graduation so I can support my parents with the fruits of my own labour.”