When my grandma visited my boarding house, the Pinky house, her first statement was "This house has no fence, what if a rapist comes in? And look in the back, there's male boarding house right on the side, what if those men jump in to this house and rape you girls? There's no landlady or maid here, you girls live on your own, it's so dangerous."
Whattt???? She didn't worry about the thieves, robbers, con men, or even run away prisoners, but rapist. Right.
It never occured to our mind that such crook might be around. Could it? Really?
Thanks God we were perfectly fine till we left Pinky house. No such incident.
But, we did have a problem with one guy in the back boarding house. We called him "Si Gondrong".
Pinky house was kind of open house. It had the main house and some rooms on the side of the main house. In between was just open space, quite large, where we usually hung out and did some activities. There was an open second floor for drying laundry on the back which became the border with another boarding house, that male boarding house. And of course as a crucial spot, we went there a lot. The coincidence was, the male boarding house also had laundry-drying spot right across ours. So basically when we dried our laundry and they did too, we could see each other clearly. Or when those guys were on laundry-drying spot, they could see us if we were at the open space (sweeping the floor, having chit chat while doing house chores there, entering the rooms, lawn mowing ect).
Since some of us wore veil, we had to hide if we saw one of those guys at the laundry-drying spot (we wore casual outfit if we were in the house). We survived pretty well, though sometimes got caught for a glance before we actually had time to hide.
The problem was, there was one guy (Si Gondrong, or course) who was kind of interested more and more to catch us running. I didn't know when it started but we saw him staying on that spot more than others. When we gathered and had great conversation, suddenly we heard chuckle. And when we looked above he was there (wraaaaghhh... then we ran like rabbit). When we cleaned the house suddenly we felt that someone was watching, and it was right. He stood there, smiling and staring at us. Even when we went upstair to dry the laundry, he would know and immediately came out and stayed there to see us. He then tried to make comment, or tease.
His presence became a plague and we felt uncomfortable to be around in the open space, worrying he might peep on us. We didn't have that sort of issue before (the other members on that boarding house were polite guys and ever bothered us) and he ruined our routine.
I remember one day I dried my laundry, I didn't wear my veil at that time, and somehow he knew my presence then he stayed on spot. Not only stayed but also made effort to see across. I saw his head leaned to catch the glimpse. I had to stick and flat myself to the wall like spiderman to avoid his reach. Worst thing, it happened for a quite long time with the hot sun shone right to me that you could boil an egg on your head. I was glued to the wall, sweating, cursing and he just stayed there, made some noise drawing attention. That crazy Gondrong!
His friend ever said that si Gondrong wanted to know us that's why he did such thing, what a lousy excuse. Peeping was certainly not a good way to introduce youself, right?
Surprise surprise. When we had already branded him as "abnormal disease", we had to leave Pinky house to move to another boarding house since it would be sold. Guess where we lived? Next to his boarding house, right on the side, only separated by wall. Again. Huh.
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