Smile for the Camera

A little girl in a blue ballerina-esque dress, starstruck by a cardboard cutout of the genie from Aladdin. A man with an arm around a woman and his other hand rested on the girl’s shoulder, his deep set chestnut brown eyes revealing nothing out of the ordinary. All smiles for the camera.

That was how Kathy Creuset remembered the trip to Cameron Highlands - a rose-tinted window to a life filled with some sort of childlike ecstasy and wonder that could only see dreams and love. Not pain or heartbreak. All that Kathy had known on that trip was that she wanted to become a doctor and that she loved Mommy and Daddy very much. And, oh, she wanted a baby brother to play with.

A girl frolicking in a sea of red drupes, dressed in a strawberry-patterned tee and bucket hat to match the scene.

The album was still stuck in the Cameron Highlands.

A baby boy cradling the face of the girl holding him as if she was the newborn. His shirt read ‘Little But Strong’, his eyes filled with a promise to live up to the saying (and boy, he did, more than any of them would have liked him to). He seemed widely distracted by the cherubic face of the girl.

Kathy realised her body had filled out more by the time this picture had been clicked, and she was in the company of the brother she had always wanted. She always liked to attribute his apparent curiosity to the contents of her enormous cheeks. He probably was wondering what she was hiding in there, and judging by his interests back then, his guesses would have been a soccer wall or remnants of the cake from the birthday party. Flip.

A family of four in full pyjama aura on the roadside, competing in a game of what seemed to be cricket with a soccer ball. The little boy had taken his position as the batsman (or ‘kicks’-man in this case) in front of the wicketkeeper, his dad. Which of the fielder and bowler was the mother and which the daughter was a question that would stump many. Either way, it was three against one, and tensions were running high on the makeshift tarmac pitch.

“Why hit a ball with a bat to make runs when you could hit it with your bare feet?” became Kathy’s mantra as part of her carefully curated sales pitch for ‘Leg Cricket’, a sport that her friends at school had invented. It was all fun and games until the Creusets would realise that no one could actually hit or catch the ball, following which they would fight over what to officially name Kathy’s brother. “It has to be Keith,” Kathy would say. “It goes so well with my name. We would be a team - Kathy and Keith.”

In hindsight, Kathy realised that she should have known better. There was no way a six-year-old’s pleas were going to be taken seriously by a father named Jordan with a wife named Karis. A male chauvinist hiding behind the guise of a feminist would have to have his share of the alphabet passed down the family. So, later that winter, Joe’s passport made its way by post to their front doorstep. 

Pictures only tell so much of the story. Not that there weren’t any exhibiting the family’s tantrums and skirmishes. Their eleventh annual family photo was tainted by Kathy and Joe sticking their tongues out - a joint act of rebellion for being whisked away from Disneyland before the fake snow made its appearance. There was also that other picture, Kathy recalled, taken at a rooftop garden where Kathy and Joe were having a conversation, though Joe’s furrowed eyebrows revealed that there was less of a conversation happening and more of a confrontation in the works. And half the pictures from their second and last visit to the Cameron Highlands had their mother looking like she had been run over by a truck. That’s how a perpetual migraine feels anyway. 

But nothing beats those photos of clenched jaws, shifting eyes, and pursed lips in telling the full extent of the tale. The Creusets argued that these moments were due to a gradual decline in their photogenicity, but maybe it was just the gradual surfacing of concealed emotions since they were, after all, poor actors. Amidst all the troubles, Karis had been the picture of grace, always with a winning smile for the camera (when she wasn’t sick at least), even though the whistle had escaped from her wheezing laugh over the years. Kathy herself was saving grace embodied, trusting that a show of teeth would equal to a show of happiness no matter how constipated she looked. Jordan was careful to never let his deep set eyes pop out of his skull the way they usually would if he heard anyone have an opinion different from his. And Joe looked cute and naughty pouting, but his eyes wore a distant look, and no one could tell what was going on in his head.

“Nothing serious here. It happens in all families,” an outsider would say. But what else could they say when they only had pictures and occasional encounters with the Creusets to base their judgements off of. And so, like in every other family, Kathy and Joe locked themselves in the prayer room when their father and mother were spitting venom at each other and coming to blows. Like in every other family, Karis would search for sympathy in her daughter for having to bear the lies of her husband on all financial matters. Like in every other family, Joe locked himself away in an inferiority complex only he created and held the key to because his sister had gotten too busy to play with him. Like in every other family, Kathy would summon her alter ego, Keith, blaming everyone for her shortcomings or giving them the silent treatment (that had once been accompanied by a spit, slap, and a profane utterance under her breath). Like in every other family, they sat scattered across the living room for lunch and dinner. Like in every other family, they would make a scene on what to order at a restaurant with a waiter to watch their display of pettiness and indecision. Like in every other family, they wouldn’t talk about things like attraction, love, dreams, passions, and honesty. “Like in every other family,” they said to themselves as consolation for what they had come to be. And it never had been one person’s doing. It was a team effort - a joint venture in making every living day hell, where no apology was ever enough to induce genuine change or forgiveness. 

So, when Kathy got spit on and punched in the gut a thousand times over in exchange for her one misstep, and when Karis got jolted out of her incessant complaints for never confronting her problems, and when Jordan got told off for being unbearable to live with, and when Joe’s lack of empathy for those who weren’t rich or pretty was met with reason and a wake-up call from reality, all the Creusets moved on. With the same gait as before. Living like strangers under the same roof, they put on a show of solidarity and togetherness for the guests and relatives and other non-blood-related strangers they bumped into every once in a while.

“How is Jordan? Patient as ever?”

An agonisingly long laugh later, Kathy would watch Karis say, “Oh, he is just fine!”

“How are the kids? Working hard at school? Joe is really lucky to have someone like Kathy to look up to.”

Another painful chuckle before Karis would muster enough delusion to say, “They are doing fine too. Just handling a lot of things.”

“It must be busy for you, right? Managing everything at home with no help.”

“It always is, isn’t it?”

Kathy would see Karis’ eyes turn weary as war flashbacks of the 4 a.m. alarms and half hour midday naps race through her mind. Somehow, every time, her mother would manage to dumb down her own efforts.

“Your profile picture of the family is so cute! Where did you all go?”

Some place you wouldn’t want to go, Karis would have liked to say. But she couldn’t. Not after all of them had smiled for the camera.