The Rice Mother

by Rani Manicka

  To me, Mother is a fine woman. Without her, none of us would be here today. I am deeply sorry for my inability to make her proud of me. I would gladly become the successful extension of her that she worked so hard to mold us all into. How I wish I could have been in the picture that Mother painted in her mind. I can imagine that picture; it is a perfect birthday-party scene in a beautiful house. Perhaps it is the birthday of one of Lakshmnan’s children, and all of us are driving into his grand driveway in our expensive cars. We are all wearing nice clothes, with our husbands and wives smiling beside us and our children running forward to fling themselves joyfully at their smiling grandmother. Her arms are open to receive the many tiny bodies in their beautiful clothes. Then Lakshmnan bends his six-foot-two-long body and kisses Mother gently on the cheek. Lakshmnan’s wife smiles indulgently in the background. Beside her there is a table full of gaily wrapped presents and a delicious spread of food.

  Why, I sometimes wonder, does Anna not want this picture? Why does she have such carefully concealed contempt toward Mother for wanting it? I long for it. Anna behaves as if Mother has ruined this whole family. That is perfectly untrue.

  Lakshmnan’s wife accuses Mother of being a tan-colored female spider. She says that to avoid being devoured, our poor father brings home a brown envelope full of money every month. Yes, perhaps Mother is a tan spider. All her life she has spun from nothing food, exquisite clothes, love, education, and shelter for us all. I am the daughter of the spider. I can’t but think her beautiful. I have spent my whole life trying to make Mother happy. For when she is happy, the entire house rejoices, the walls smile broadly, the curtains flutter with joy, the light blue cushion covers laugh in the sunshine that pours through the open windows. Even the flame in the cooker dances with delight. As I look to her, inside me strange feelerlike things are unfurling in the wish to be like her, even though I know that it is Father that I resemble.

  I can’t think of a problem that has ever defeated Mother. She takes them in her hand easily, fearlessly, as if they are only handkerchiefs needing to be folded. Occasionally there are tears to be shed, but they too can be tidied away. When the Japanese left, Father was fifty-three years old. There were still seven mouths to feed in the house, and so Mother and I got on a bus to see Mr. Murugesu, a distant relative on Father’s side. He worked in a hospital. He ushered us into his bright, roomy office with whitewashed walls and a paper-filled desk as if we were important guests that he felt honored to have in his presence.

  “Come in, come in,” he invited earnestly. You could tell straightaway that he was the decent type. Behind him large bay windows opened out into a pretty square garden. A covered corridor ran through the middle of the garden, joining two buildings. Nurses and doctors chatted and walked along the corridor. Mynah birds rested in the trees, and two boys played conkers. Outside it looked rather fun, but inside, Mother was crying. Mr. Murugesu had visibly shrunk in his chair. Mother dabbed her eyes with one of Father’s large handkerchiefs and begged Mr. Murugesu to offer Father a job.

  “Look how small my youngest is,” she implored, her face turning to me. “How will I feed and clothe them all?” she asked the bewildered Mr. Murugesu. A few more minutes of this, and he shot up from his chair as if his seat had suddenly become too hot to sit on. “Don’t worry, don’t worry,” he assured her gruffly, adjusting his glasses and opening a drawer on his left. “Ask your husband to come and see me. I’m sure we will find something in the accounts department for him. We can talk about his salary when he gets here.”

  Mother stopped crying and thanked him profusely. Big, warm waves of gratitude came out of her to envelop the discomfited man. “Pleasure, pleasure,” Mr. Murugesu mumbled. From inside his drawer he produced a square tin. With the tin in his hands, his eyes were losing that bewildered helpless look. He opened it and offered the contents to me. Inside was a selection of Indian cakes, glazed with sugar and shiny with temptation. I picked out a ladhu. “Thank you,” I said shyly. It was big and substantial in my hand. The aroma of sugar and cardamom wafted tantalizingly up into my face. By now the benevolent Mr. Murugesu had completely recovered himself and was wearing a delighted smile.

  “Don’t eat it here. You will make a mess of Mr. Murugesu’s office,” Mother advised in her don’t-you-dare-show-me-up-in-front-of-strangers voice.

  “No, no, let the child eat it now,” Mr. Murugesu insisted in his high, happy voice.

  I bit into the bright yellow-and-red round ball. Instantly, soft round crumbs fell on my nice going-out clothes and rolled onto Mr. Murugesu’s polished gray floor. I remember looking up surreptitiously at Mother. She was glaring at me angrily. Her eyelashes were still wet, but by then all her tears were already neatly folded into Father’s white handkerchief.

  The war was over, and there was much to rejoice about. Old Soong was turning sixty. Third Wife had decided to throw him a gala birthday party. A fortune-teller had predicted that this might be the last birthday for Old Soong. So it had been decided that it would be a celebration to rival all celebrations. All the wives and children would be there. For days the cook had soaked, stuffed, tied, marinated, baked, fried, and stored in airtight tins all sorts of delicacies. Mui Tsai cleaned, polished, washed, and helped in the kitchen. The whole house had been decorated with red banners painted with special writing for even more prosperity.

  Even Third Wife spent a great deal of time in the kitchen, tasting, advising, and scolding. Cook had prepared the master’s favorite dish, dog meat, in three different guises. In one she had dropped powdered tiger’s tooth for continued vigor, in another powdered rhinoceros horn for sexual vitality, and in the last aromatic roots for good health. Special long noodles had arrived to bestow the master with longevity. There was a glazed suckling pig grasping a gaudy orange in its mouth. There was even a dish of bearded wild boar. To start the meal there were two types of soup—shark’s fin and bird’s nest.

  Everything was ready. Even Mui Tsai had been given a new plum-colored outfit for the special occasion.

  On the appointed day the guests began to arrive. In large shiny cars they poured out, their prosperity evident in their corpulence. In beautiful clothes they entered Old Soong’s house. Mui Tsai had passed by our house in the morning, and in her tired eyes had been barely contained excitement that Mother said she had not seen for a very long time.

  “My sons will be here today. I will see them all,” Mui Tsai whispered to Mother.

  It was a very big occasion, so the whole neighborhood came out onto their verandas to watch. From our veranda I could see Mui Tsai flitting in and out of the kitchen, keeping an eye on the arriving guests, waiting impatiently for her first look at her stolen sons. Eventually, the First Wife arrived, Mui Tsai’s sons flanking her. They were dressed in identical flame-red Chinese costumes embroidered with colorful birds of paradise. They stood erect and proud beside her, looking around them curiously. I could see Mui Tsai standing by the kitchen door, transfixed by the sight of her second- and third-born. Then came Second Wife, and she had the other two younger boys. They wore blue silk and pushed each other boisterously.

  At the sound of crashing cymbals the lion dance began. Six men inside a colorful lion costume pranced and danced to an enchanted audience.

  After the children were fed, they were allowed out to play. While everybody was inside eating, I saw Mui Tsai slip out to watch her children playing, going as close to them as she dared. She stood very still, watching her sons. They rushed about with sticks, pretending they were guns. Perhaps they were the victorious British, for spotting Mui Tsai staring at them, they pointed at her and, shouting in Chinese, they began picking up handfuls of sand and small pebbles from the driveway and bombarding their Japanese enemy, Mui Tsai. I saw her go rigid with shock.

  “Hey!” Mother screamed from our veranda. Putting on her slippers, she ran toward Old Soong’s house. “Hey, stop that!” she called out angrily, but in the throes of their cruel game and their own whoops and shouts of vict
ory, Mother’s voice was lost. Second Wife appeared at the doorway and said something in such a stern voice that the boys hung their heads in shame. Mother stopped running. The boys ran to Second Wife and kissed her hand in apology. She said something else in a gentler voice, and they ran to the other side of the house, where a selection of sweet Nyonya cakes specially ordered from Penang waited. Second Wife went back into the house without looking at the stone figure of Mui Tsai.

  At the gate I saw Mother call to Mui Tsai gently.

  She walked toward Mother in a daze. There was a small cut in her forehead, and blood was trickling out.

  “When I was young, I used to throw stones at the pregnant stray dog at the marketplace. Sometimes we even threw stones at the beggars who came to our houses. This is my punishment,” she said softly.

  “Oh, Mui Tsai, I’m so sorry. They don’t know,” Mother consoled the poor girl.

  “And they will never know. But they look well, don’t they, my children? Their eyes are bright, and one day they will inherit all that is my master’s.”

  “Yes, they will.”

  She turned away sadly and entered the house through the back door. That was the last time Mother saw Mui Tsai. Suddenly she was no more, and in her place was another Mui Tsai who went about her business without a smile or the slightest inclination to befriend the neighbors. For a time no one knew what had happened to our Mui Tsai or where she was. Then one day, Old Soong’s cook answered Mother’s query by making a circling motion with her index finger against her temple. “No,” Mother said, her head shaking, her feet moving backward. “No, no, not her.”

  Ayah

  It all happened such a long, long time ago, and to return to that time so full of hope is horrendously painful now. I was a young man then, and it didn’t seem wrong to gain a bride with a bouquet of lies, but I have paid dearly for it, and yet I wouldn’t change one moment of my life with Lakshmi.

  Not one moment.

  I wasn’t allowed to see the bride until the day of the wedding. When I heard the drummers quicken their beat, I knew it meant she was approaching. Unable to wait another moment, I looked up to see the face of my new bride, and I couldn’t believe my good fortune when I saw your grandmother. The only secret aspiration that I had ever harbored was to stand in a cave of ice, but here in my grasp was something far better than my wildest dream. Here was a girl of unimaginable wild beauty.

  As I stared at her, she looked up, but because I was so big and ugly, the first emotion that came into her face when our eyes met was horror. She looked like a small, frightened deer caught in a hunter’s net. And if she had remained so I would have cared for her dearly and tenderly like I did my first wife, but as I watched, a wonderful transformation occurred. Her spine straightened, and her eyes became fierce and bold. I watched a deer turn into a large and beautiful tiger. And quite without warning my drab little world turned upside down. Inside me I felt my stomach slip, slide and softly sink right down to the bottom of my body. “Who are you?” my shocked heart whispered inside my body. Then and there I fell in love. So deeply that the organs inside my body moved.

  I knew straightaway that she would never be just someone to bring up my two children or the companion of my old age, but the woman who would turn me into a puppet on a string. With one fair hand she had jerked my motionless limbs into life. Ah, and what exquisite movements my limbs made under her bold hand.

  I can remember my wedding night like the most beautiful dream. Like a pair of wings. Suddenly having something so precious in your hands that your pathetic life changes forever. Not with happiness, but with fear. The fear of losing it. And because I knew I was undeserving. Those wings had been gained through deceit. Soon even the gold watch, that much-admired thing of beauty and status, would be no more. It was only borrowed from the same friend who had lent me his chauffeur and car. In my guilty heart I loved her already. Deeply. I would have done anything, gone anywhere for her. My soul bled to think of that day when she would come to despise me. The old witch Pani had deceived her mother with tales of riches only a good woman would believe—and yet how could I condemn her, when her net of lies had caught such a rare butterfly? I fooled myself that one day my rare butterfly might be persuaded to love me. The years, I thought, would wash away my disgrace. The years passed, and no, she did not learn to love me, but I pretended that the special butterfly cared in its own special way.

  She was so small I could span her hips with my hands. My child bride. There was no way to love the girl without hurting her. When she was sure I was asleep that dark night she sneaked out to bathe in a neighbor’s well. When she returned, I could see she had been crying. Through the black slit between my eyelashes I watched her watching me. In the emotions that crossed her young face I saw a child’s hope and a woman’s fears. Slowly, slowly, as if against her will but pushed nevertheless by an innocent curiosity, she brushed my forehead with a tentative hand. Her hand was cold and damp. She turned away from me and fell asleep quickly, like a child. I remember the wedge of her back, sleeping. I watched its gentle rise and fall, gazing at skin as smooth as if woven from the finest silk thread, my mind wandering to the stories the old women in my village used to tell when I was a young boy. About the lonely old man on the moon who enters the rooms of beautiful women and lies down to sleep beside them. She was so beautiful, my wife, that that night I saw the moonlight shine through the open windows and lie softly on her sleeping face. In the pale light she was a goddess. Beautiful as a pearl.

  My first wife had been the gentlest soul alive. She was so gentle and so tenderhearted that a fortune-teller had predicted that she didn’t have long to live on this earth. I had cared for her dearly, but from the moment Lakshmi’s eyes had challenged mine at the wedding ceremony, I was passionately and deeply in love with her. Her clever dark eyes had flashed with a fire that burned the pit of my stomach, but she knew me for a fool, and I suppose that is what I am. Even as a child I was slow-witted. They called me the slow mule back home. I wanted more than anything else to protect her and shower her with all the riches that her mother had been promised, but I was only a clerk. A clerk with no prospects, no savings, and nothing of value. Even the money I had earned before my first marriage had gone to make up my sisters’ dowries.

  When your grandmother and I first returned to Malaya, she used to weep late into the night when she thought I was asleep. I would wake up in the early hours of the morning and hear her weeping softly in the kitchen. I knew she longed for her mother. During the day she could keep busy with her vegetable patch and household chores, but at night the loneliness swelled inside her.

  One night I could bear it no longer. I got out of bed and made my way into the kitchen. Like a child she was lying on her belly, her forehead resting on her crossed forearms. I watched the curve of her neck, and I was suddenly filled with aching desire. I wanted to take her in my arms and feel her soft skin lying against mine. I walked up to her and put my hand on her head. She reared up with a hiss of terror, clasping her right hand to her heart. “Oh, how you scared me!” she accused. She leaned farther back and looked at me expectantly. Her eyes gleamed wetly, but she had closed her face like a drawer. For a while I stood looking at her unyielding figure and her cold, tense face, and then I turned away and went back to bed. She didn’t want my love or me. Both she considered abhorrent.

  Dreaming in the night, I sometimes reached out for her, and even in sleep she moaned and turned away. And I knew again that I loved in vain. She would never come to love me. I gave up my children for her, and yet even now, after everything that has happened and everything that I have lost, I know there is not a single thing I would change.

  The day my Mohini was born was the biggest day of my life. When I first looked at her I actually felt a pain in my heart, as if someone had reached into my body and squeezed it. I stared at her in disbelief. It was Professor Rao who first told me about an Egyptian Queen of exceptional beauty. “Nefertiti,” I whispered.

  Nefe
rtiti—the beautiful one is come.

  She was so perfect that incredulous happy tears gathered in my eyes that I, of all people, had been responsible for producing this marvel. I looked into her tiny sleeping face, touched the straight, black hair, and knew her to be mine. Now as a present for thee . . . one human heart . . . mine. Your grandmother called her Mohini, but to me she was always Nefertiti. It was how I thought of her. In my mind Mohini was an illustration in an old Sanskrit book of my father’s, standing as slinky as a snake goddess, her hair long and black, her sidelong glance inspiring equal measures of fear and pleasure. Her reckless feet dancing gaily atop the hearts of many men. Boldly, proudly, she enjoys her corruption. No, no, my Nefertiti was like the most innocent angel. An opening flower.

  I was thirty-nine, and I looked at my useless life full of one failure after another and knew that if I never passed another office exam, never did another thing, that precious moment when the midwife handed me my Nefertiti, tightly bundled in an old sarong smelling of myrrh, would be enough.

  As the years went by, I found it easy to bear the supercilious looks of my juniors as they passed their exams and became my seniors. One by one they passed me, unvarying in their slightly contemptuous, slightly pitying look, and yet I was happy. The children had begun to appear—each one something special. I would cycle home, the wind in my hair, as fast as I could with a bunch of bananas or a quarter of a jackfruit tied to the handlebars, and as soon as I turned into our cul-de-sac, something would happen inside me. I would slow down so I could look again at the house where my family lived. Inside that small, uninspired house was everything I had ever wanted in life. Inside was an amazing woman and children who made me catch my breath. A part of Lakshmi, and to my unending joy, a part of me.