People come and go in our lives. Sometimes they stay for a short time in our memory, sometimes they don't. Sometimes they linger around, poke here and there and one morning you wake up and they are gone. Sometimes you want them to leave, but they stay and they go every where you go.
Sometimes they came into your lives when you were just a kid. You met them a few times and that was it. You never saw them again. You never heard of them again. But, from time to time you wonder their whereabout. Are they still alive? And when you think of them, you have this warm, bubbly feeling in your heart, the muscles in your face start to loosen up. The corners of your mouth turn up, and your mouth form a smile and it slowly spreads to your eyes. And you find yourself pray for their well being.
I met three special persons when I was a little girl. They were strangers to me when the first time I met them. But, they stamped a lasting beautiful memory. I like to think of them as angels in disguise.
The year my father went to Congo, we returned to Penang to live with grandmother for about two years.
A week after my father left I got sick, demam rindu as my mother liked to say it. I missed him terribly. Every night I went to bed with his worn kain pelikat (pelikat sarong) as my blanket. His smell from the sarong comforted me. I pulled the sarong over my head and cried quietly to sleep.
After I recovered from demam rindu, I mopped around the house for a few days. But this time nobody fussed over me anymore. Everybody was busy with their own things.
One morning, after the breakfast, I sat on the top step of the front stairs watching Kak N watering the pot plants. She asked me if I would like to help her. I shook my head. I wasn't done with feeling sorry for myself yet. Then I heard the loud male voice coming from the kitchen, followed by thunderous laughter.
I knew there was only one grown up male in the house. He was a nephew to Tok Uda, my grandmother's madu. I hardly saw him, let alone heard him talking. He lived in the front room on the first floor. He worked in the city and left the house at the crack of dawn and returned right before the sunset.
"Who was that?" I asked Kak N.
"It must be uncle Din Congo," Kak N answered me without looking up from her chore, "He must be....."
I didn't hear the rest. The moment I heard the word Congo, I sprinted down to the kitchen.
I slowed down when I heard grandmother's voice from the first floor yelling, "Who is running in the house?" I stood on top of the stairs and looked down at the man in the kitchen. He was the blackest man I'd ever seen. He was so black, he looked blue. He sat sideway in the chair at the kitchen table facing my mother at the sink. He had a cup of tea in his hand. When he heard my footsteps, he looked up at me and smiled.
He slurped the tea , srrruuuupppedd.. and set the cup in its saucer. "Aaahhhh........This is the famous beautiful *Kak Chik. Why is that a sour face? Did you eat sour mango this morning?"
I rest my right arm on the banister and stepped down slowly. My eyes never left his face as I put my foot forward one after another. I never met anybody who could talked and smiled at the same time. He had the whitest teeth and they were sparkling.
My mother beckoned me to sit down and poured the tea in my father's favorite cup which had become my cup. "This is Pak Chik Din," as she set the tea cup in front of me.
"Why is your name Din Congo? Have you been to Congo? My father is in Congo now do you know that?"
"No, no, I'd never been to Congo. I don't know where Congo is, but you must have noticed how dark I am. I am black as a charcoal. If I stood next to a pile of charcoals nobody can spot me." He threw back his head and roared. He smack his right hand on the table as it was the funniest joke he ever heard.
I liked him. I liked him a lot.
"So.....tell me. You didn't answer my questions. Hmm..hmmm..Wait a minute...." He put his hands on his temples and closed his eyes. "I think this morning you ate half sour mango and a half sweet mango heh?"
My self-pity started to crumble like a cream cracker falls apart when it dunks into a hot tea. I laughed for the first time in two weeks since my father left.
"Ooiiii...ooiii...sister Wawan...," he turned to my mother, "She has a dimple too.."
I laughed harder.
One thing that set Pak Din Congo from the rest of grown ups world was he never talked to me like I was a kid. He didn't tease me that my father might not be coming back like some grown ups did when they learned my father was in Congo.
"Oohh....your father might not coming back. He'll marry to one of those dark skin women...."
I hated them on the spot.
He never said I should not be wearing short and pants because I was a girl. He didn't comment about a slingshot that hung around my neck. He even carved me one from guava wood with his pocket knife.
Once, he found me sitting up on a big branch of rambutan tree, eating a juicy red rambutans and spitting out the seeds on the ground. Äll he said was, "Don't eat too much rambutan up there."
And I said, "Why can't I?"
"You will get fat up there and won't be able to come down."
I laughed so hard, I almost fell out of the tree.
He never said, "You shouldn't be climbing up a tree because you are a girl." I loved him for that.
When my father returned from Congo, grandmother moved back to her old house in Batu Maung. A year later my father was transferred to Pengkalan Chepa, Kelantan and a year later to Sungai Besi, Selangor.
I never heard of him again, but I never forget him. Pak Cik Din Congo, I never told you this, but I've always thought you were an angel in disguise, sent down here to cheer up the kids who missed their fathers.
I spent most of Saturday and Sunday outdoor. The weather was heavenly beautiful, breezy and patches of cloud scatterred across the blue sky. I would've been miserable if I stayed indoor. I didn't run though. I stuffed an old quilt , my journal and a paperback into a backpack and left the house around 9.30 a.m. I stopped at the gym for an hour for a cardiokick class. 
I didn't stay long at the show. After 30 minutes I walked to Hatch Shell. I stopped after an hour walk, spread the quilt and tried to finish Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales. 
