Adoption Stories : Birth Certificate

 This is a story of a very skilled Sarawak born Foochow hairdresser in West Malaysia I was fortunate to get her adoption story. As a  teacher trainer I was often in West Malaysia as a team member of specialist English teacher training. I had opportunities too to visit small towns as well as big cities for about 5 years.

I will call her Sister Lotus. She was 60 plus , white haired and lovely when I met her.

More than 30 years before Sister Lotus "escaped" to Singapore and then later to a West Malaysian town with the help of a travelling salesman from Sarawak.

The town where she was born is not revealed here for anonymity.

She was a "bought" girl who came to live with the adoptive family during the Second World war.  The man who sold her was not her real father, so even her origin was a mystery.

As a lively girl she was sent to school for only three years after the Japanese Occupation, as she had to do a lot of work at the shop. She was sent to school because the missionaries insisted that she could go to school for free in the morning.

She was asked to help in the shop, cleaning, sweeping and dusting. In her spare time, and even at night,  she had to help with the sewing at the back of the shop where her adoptive mother operated a dress making business. Sister Lotus had to do all the hemming because her work was very fine. Hand hemming was charged extra in those days.

As she grew into a young lady people started looking at her because she was quite a good looking girl. And she too started to have her dreams.

But then her adoptive mother decided to make her stay in the kitchen, to cook for several families she was catering for.  Lotus was made to sleep on top of a wooden box in the kitchen with just two sarongs to cover herself and not even a good pillow.

Lotus had no time to do anything else. She had to cook in fact for 5 or 6 families and the shop assistant would deliver the food containers to the homes of the relatives very punctually. Her adoptive mother took all the earnings and never gave her a single cent.

Just as Lotus was about 22 years old she befriended a Kuching man who came to have business dealings with her adoptive mother and he had noticed the pretty girl. He took interest in her and spoke to her.

After about half a year he "proposed" to the adoptive mother and said that he wanted to marry her. But the adoptive mother wanted the man to pay quite a hefty sum which he did not have. This was his way of helping Lotus get away from the family so that she could learn a trade and be free.

He then secretly helped Lotus make a passport in Kuching after helping her get some photos taken nearby. A kind teacher , who had been a customer of the adoptive mother for a long time, had been looking out for Lotus also lent her some money secretly. The teacher did not ask any question.

It was also a lucky time because curfew had been imposed and every one must carry a Blue IC, so Lotus was allowed to have it in her pocket.

One night Lotus disappeared from the kitchen.

For about 10 years her adoptive parents looked for her but no one knew where she was. They just cursed her and said all sorts of bad things about her. In fact they could not say they have lost a member of their family. She was after all an unpaid servant and even considered a slave to them.

In fact she and the salesman did not marry. He was a good man who helped her go to Singapore to learn hairdressing. Slowly Lotus paid him and later she married a man from Johor. She clearly had her vision and mission.

She was a loyal person and she managed to make contact with the hometown shop keepers very discretely when she was established herself.  When her adoptive mother passed away, she came to pay her respects and gave the adoptive father what the late mother wanted for her bride money. It really shocked the adoptive father and the family.

She said, "I have regarded her as my mother because she gave me food, and a place to stay.  And I did learn a lot, even though I did not complete six years of primary school. Now that I have my own business I can pay back what I owe the family."

When she gave the cash to her adoptive father, she demanded only for one thing : her pink birth certificate which stated her date of adoption but not her birth date.

She said, "Now I will never know when I was born. My adoption date is my birthday."

The adoptive siblings and father had never treated her as their own, just a kitchen maid all the 22 years she was with them. 

Lotus never had children of her own.  And she paid back the teacher manifold.

(A Pink birth certificate in Sarawak means that it is a late registration. In the 1950's it was quite easy to register adopted children without many questions asked. In fact the adoptive parents were named as parents.)