“Is this a true story, Mom?” Bea asked.

“Yes, of course! Che Eng was my best friend. Why would she make this up? After five years of replanting, nothing could be done and the family fortune was gone.”

Father tsked and said, “His problem was that he was buying the plantation in a mah-jong hall not at the plantation itself. It has nothing to do with a silly bird.”

“Laugh all you want, Ah Loy. It’s true!” Mother insisted. “Those who sign a deal while a crow is near never succeed.”

Mother asked to stop at Frank Slide, where a roadside plaque read: Here lie the remains of those who lost their lives in the tragic Frank Slide on the morning of April 29, 1903. I shuddered, looking around at boulders three times the size of our house dotting the landscape like grains of sand. I had never seen the innards of a mountain vomited over the land this way, fossilized, standing still as monuments.

At the interpretive centre we learned that the limestone face of Turtle Mountain came hurtling towards the sleeping town of Frank at around four a.m. The slide may have been caused by mining. It only took 100 seconds to cover the town with 110 million tonnes of rock, killing 110 of the 600 residents who lived in the path of the slide. The bodies of the townsfolk remain under the rubble. Some people survived only to learn that their homes and entire families had perished. An entire mining town gone in minutes.

Father turned from the information panel, reach in his pocket for his lighter, and put a cigarette between his lips.

I tugged Father’s arm and said, “When you work in the mine, are you scared?”

Once, on a school field trip, our yellow bus climbed the mountain towards Elkhills Mine, where Father worked. I saw the entrails of the mountain exposed by the open-pit mining. The mine that fed our town was alive, ripping the mountain apart from the inside out, stripping it down to the coal seams.

Father hugged me. “Things are different today than they were in 1903.”

“Will Elkhills Mine fall on us, too?” I asked.

“I don’t think so.” He laughed and tousled my hair. “Lily, there is nothing to worry about. We’re being told how to work safely every day in the mine. Why do you think I wear steel-toed boots and a hard hat? Why do you think we have foremen? To keep us in line. We don’t like them because they take all the fun out of it, right? Things today are much safer than they were in the past.”

“I wish you didn’t have to work in the mine,” I said.

“Lily, wo bo bang huat, I have no choice. It’s the only thing I can do with the education I have. I was stateless and I couldn’t finish school, not like you. In Brunei, I could not get a good job. Who wants to hire someone who doesn’t have citizenship? It’s a risk when the government can throw you out anytime. Do well in school, and you can work somewhere that’s not underground.”