The Rice Mother

by Rani Manicka

  Still, when Dimple returns refreshed and glowing with brand-new uniforms for the new school year, the latest box-style school bag, books, and a fully equipped pencil case that dim Aunty Lalita has bought her, the feeling that Nash and I are excluded is like sandpaper on my skin.

  And the exclusion is all-encompassing and stands guard day and night through thick and thin. Like the time Dimple had measles, and Grandma Lakshmi phoned to ask Mother to tie together some branches of neem leaves and brush her skin with them. She said it would reduce the itchiness, but Mother rudely replied that Grandma was talking nonsense. Frankly, she told Grandma Lakshmi, she did not believe in such old-fashioned rubbish, and anyway, where on earth was she supposed to get neem leaves from.

  That was when neem leaves arrived in the post. They worked, too. Dimple brushed her body with the leaves, and the itchiness went away. Then Nash and I had the measles, but there were no neem leaves for us in the post. How small and petty our grandmother seemed to me then.

  “Has she no feelings for us at all?” I asked Papa.

  “Oh, Bella,” Papa replied, exasperated. “There is a large neem tree growing in Mr. Kandasamy’s backyard, two doors away.”

  I agreed with Mother. That was not the point. Mother was so angry she almost didn’t send Dimple to Grandma Lakshmi for the December holidays, the longest and best holiday period. It caused a terrible argument between Mother and Papa, but I heard him come into our room and tell Dimple not to worry because she would be going to Grandma Lakshmi’s house—as long as she did very well in her exams.

  Yes, I resented that too. The soft spot Papa has for her. The more he tries to hide it, the more obvious it becomes. He treats her as if she is a princess made of spun sugar—so softly, so delicately, so as not to break the little pink sugar hearts that decorate her white princess gown.

  Then there was that Chinese boy who liked her when she was in Form Five. I never told anyone this, but I liked him. I used to sit under the trees by the canteen and watch him staring at Dimple ignoring him. I heard that his father was very rich. He must have been, to have a chauffeur drop off that massive box of chocolates for her. Once I unscrewed a note he had written to her and read the untidy scrawl. How fast my longing heart beat in my jealous chest!

  Then she began to record her dream trail. The piles of tapes in her box under the bed grew and grew, and one day I sat down and listened to them. Suddenly I saw myself as the frog that looks up into the cramped space under the coconut shell where it lives, unquestioning and satisfied that the world must be small and dark. I saw the richness of the lives of the people who loved her.

  Finally I understood the sad reason our Grandpa didn’t speak, and I heard for myself the pain, the dashed hopes, the frustrations, the failures, and the tragic losses that colored our Grandma’s eyes fierce. The floorboards of the past that Mother had nailed down so viciously groaned and tore apart, leaving her lies bare. In the middle of a gigantic web I saw an enormous spider. It wore the face of Grandma Lakshmi, but when I reached out and pulled away its mask, it was our own mother, her face full of cunning rage. It was all a damn plot to punish an old woman. A rich and precious association she has cost Nash and me, but for all her scheming, and all her machinations, I can extend my hand and touch her total, unrelieved unhappiness like a tangible thing. She is a connoisseur of excruciations, arranging her own insanity. Blackmailing the world with her suffering. Perhaps I have always mistaken my pity for love. Poor Mother.

  Even as a child I had felt pity watching her standing outside Robinson’s, craving the beautiful things displayed in their window. And even when times were better and I was standing quietly beside her as she bought, and bought, and bought things we could not afford, I still felt pity for the clawing dissatisfaction inside her. She knows I know, but she stares at me boldly, without the slightest shred of repentance, for she is a shrewd one. She understands that I can never get rid of her. She is a karmic acquaintance. A venomous gift from fate. A mother.

  I looked at my sister anew, and she seemed far, far more than straight hair and the most gorgeous eyes I had ever seen. She had everything I wanted. I should have hated her, but you know what, I loved her. I always have, and always will. Another karmic acquaintance. Another gift from fate. A sister.

  The truth is, I love her because she is genuinely enthralled by my unruly curls, ungloating about her exceptional grades, generous with her love, but also because I know what Papa doesn’t, the real reason for all the times she broke her ribs. This I can never forget. The first time I saw Mother’s back disappearing behind the green bathroom door downstairs, when Father wasn’t home, she held in her hand the rubber hose Amu uses to fill her washing pails with water. First the lock rammed into place, and then that fleshy thwack sound, followed by a small, muffled cry and Mother’s firm voice threatening, “Don’t you dare scream.”

  I stood with my ear at the door. Fifteen times I heard the sound. Thwack, thwack . . . my sister hardly cried. When I heard Mother’s footsteps turn toward the green door, I ran to hide behind the stove in the kitchen. The bolt slid back, and she came out of the room, her face serene, untroubled, unshakable, the coiled tube held easily in her right hand. In the far corner of the bathroom floor my sister cowered in a small green blouse with red dots and no underpants. I knew then that Mother did not love her.

  Poor pitiful creature. What was the good of straight hair, neem leaves in the post, and an uncle who could tell the future if they couldn’t protect you from Mother—if they could not even fetch a mother’s love?

  That night, after she had cried herself into an exhausted sleep, I stood over her evenly breathing form. I pushed her hair away from her swollen face and ran my fingers lightly over the frenzied welts on her suffering skin. So many hot waves for one small person to carry. And vowed then to love her deeply.

  The years passed, and the curls that had once so infuriated me are now a glorious thing of beauty. The forgotten old peacock under the bed has done his work. How the men run? See how they run. See how they run, Dimple. I look at myself in the mirror, and there are cheekbones and eyes grown so large they whisper to my ears, “Make haste. Time slips under the feet of beauty.”

  The peacock will not have labored in vain. Father says Dimple is spring, and I am summer. I know what he means. My sister is the quiet beauty of an unopened rosebud still green at the tips, and I am an exotic hothouse orchid, my fleshy petals open and voluptuous. A late-blooming summer flower with the colorful, elaborate beauty of a preening peacock. There is much to be admired—a waist like the tight mouth of an urn, breasts like fine jars, and hips that sway like carried wine flasks. Mother eyes my vivid blue eye shadow, my immodestly jangling bracelets, my nails that refuse to blush a pale pink like my sister’s, and my white knee-length boots.

  “The peacock adorns itself so heavily, it attracts the attention of the tiger,” she warns, not knowing that the peacock is my animal. It was to the peacock that I once entrusted my soul, but I sense her indifference, her ennui. I am the ignored, inconsequential child. She doesn’t resent me the way she does Dimple, but she doesn’t care. She has love only for Nash, who in turn looks to her to serve him with bored, superior eyes.

  “I will do what the peacock does,” I tell her brightly. “When the first raindrop falls, I will fly into the trees, for I know the prowling tiger uses the sound of the rain to creep up on unsuspecting prey.”

  The men stare longingly. I flick my mane of curls to one side. They offer me their insipid hearts on a plate, but I have no use for a weak man’s heart. I want a man who will have a thousand secrets in his eyes, and they will all open and shut like clams in the tide when he is talking to me.

  And now it seems Dimple has such a man. A man that I would have wanted, but I can see he has joined the army of people who adore my sister.

  And now she has even more of what I want.

  Dimple

  “I’ve got a surprise for you,” Luke said, stopping his car outside the wrought-i
ron gates of a house called Lara. It was very large, brand-new, and set on hilly ground.

  “Come,” he said, taking my arm. “We will appreciate the grounds better if we walk up.” At the touch of a remote control, the imposing gates swung open. I laughed. That the gates of a residential house might be operated in such a manner surprised me. We walked along a driveway, on either side a wall of conifer trees.

  “Good. They finally did get mature trees of the same size after all,” he commented to himself.

  I looked at the perfectly trimmed trees and knew without a doubt that the house was his. I had known he was rich, but . . . not this rich.

  At the end of the curved driveway, on a large piece of land dotted with big, shady trees, a house white and beautifully decorated with cornices and thick Roman pillars rose grandly from the ground. And at the entrance stood two huge stone lions. I let my fingers slide over their cool smoothness

  “They are beautiful.”

  “Look there,” he said, pointing to a statue under the shade of an angsana tree.

  I moved closer. It was a small statue of a boy, a pleading expression on his face, holding in his hands a man’s sandalled foot ripped off at the ankle. I shuddered.

  “Do you like it?” Luke asked, very close to my ear.

  “Not really. He’s a bit gruesome, isn’t he?” I said.

  “He’s just a copy of a very famous statue. Come, I want you to see inside the house,” he said, turning away and taking me by the hand. He fished out a key and opened the door. I gasped. The ceiling was painted with cherubs and robed figures from the time of the Renaissance. A curving staircase in the middle led to the first floor. Under our feet was an unbroken expanse of black marble, and on the walls hung sumptuous paintings.

  “Welcome to your new home, Dimple Lakshmnan,” he said, dropping the keys into my hand.

  I swung around in shock. “Mine?” I croaked. “This house is mine?”

  “Mmmm. It’s even in your name.” He thrust some papers he’d picked up from a side table into my hand. I stood shocked. His voice faded into the background. I turned my head speechlessly and beheld, on the far wall, a very large painting of me. He had had me painted. Dazed, I walked toward it. There I was. Looking sad. My eyes. Somebody else had seen into my soul and captured some essence of me with a brush and some oil paint. When had it been painted? Who had painted me with that expression?

  “Isn’t it beautiful?” he asked from behind me.

  “Yes,” I agreed faintly. Was sadness beautiful? I stared at myself, disturbed, excited, and unable to look away.

  “I like the eyes,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “I like that untouched expression.”

  “Who painted it?”

  “One of Belgium’s best forgers. I sent a few photographs, and voilà.”

  “Is this how I look?” I asked softly, but he had already turned away and was pointing out another wonderful aspect of the house. I tore my eyes away from the girl who watched me with such unhappiness.

  “Look, this is inspired by Nero’s golden palace. Press this button, and the mother-of-pearl squares in the ceiling slide back, and look—”

  I threw my head back and watched amazed as the mother-of-pearl decorations in various parts of the ceiling parted, and out sprinkled drops of perfume. My favorite perfume. He must truly love me. I couldn’t help beaming happily at him. Never in all my life had I seen so much opulence, such an excessive display of wealth. His face animated, Luke took my hand and marched me through an elegant, well-designed kitchen. The evening sun slanted through and made squares of light on a chunky farmhouse table in the middle. He opened the back door to a large garden. A high red-brick wall made it seem secluded, private. The way I had always imagined a walled garden would feel like.

  “This way,” he said, carefully maneuvering me down a small garden path.

  “Oh, a pond!” I cried, enchanted. Inside, under green netting, large gold and red carp swam in tireless circles. He looked pleased.

  A thought occurred to me. “Who’s your favorite painter?” I asked.

  “Leonardo da Vinci,” he said without thought.

  “Why?” I asked, surprised. I had not expected him to say that. Leonardo was restrained in his expressions. He made even grief mute, while the house and all its contents were almost gaudy. Perhaps gaudy is too ungrateful. Perhaps a little ostentatious, a little too nouveau riche. Perhaps not even that; maybe in my naive mind I had hankered for a small white house, and all that he threw at my feet seemed excessive.

  “Look,” he said, dragging me along by the hand.

  At the bottom of the garden stood a small wooden house. It was slightly raised off the ground, and had large windows with wooden shutters and a small veranda with a rocking chair. He led me inside. My heart missed a beat. The whole was only slightly bigger than my room at home, but it was all white. There was a white desk with a white lamp on it and a white chair. On the other side of the room under a window was a pretty white chaise. A white fan hung from the ceiling.

  The white house of my dreams? I looked at him inquiringly.

  “You told me about your white house just as the Taj Mahal over there was being completed,” he said, jerking his head in the direction of the house. “So I built this summer house.”

  Tears swam in my eyes. Yes, he definitely did love me. Only someone deeply in love would build a summer house in a country like Malaysia.

  “The answer is yes,” I said, wiping away tears of joy. “Yes, I will marry you.”

  “Good,” he said.

  We went to the Lake Gardens one day, strolling under the large trees hand in hand, engrossed in each other like all the other couples walking around the lake.

  “You’re the best thing that ever happened to me,” he declared under a huge tree. I looked into Luke’s compelling face like a greedy child, wanting more but not daring to ask. Sometimes I think he is too hard. All the edges of him are like badly cut sheets of tin. I feared I would cut myself, even though he has never said no, never said a harsh word, has never been sarcastic or cynical. Yet there is something dark, unreachable, and unexplainable about him. A place inside him that has a No Trespassing sign on it. I can see it clearly. It is on white board with black writing in capitals and underlined in red. At the corner of the board there is a picture of a fierce-looking Alsatian that looks quite ready to tear me to pieces.

  He conjured a pendant out of his pocket.

  “For you,” he said simply. It was a heart-shaped diamond as big as a five-cent piece. In the evening light it flashed in its dark blue velvet box.

  “I will lose it,” I wailed, thinking of the countless bracelets, anklets, chains, and earrings Grandma had given me that I had already lost in my short lifetime.

  “It is not irreplaceable,” he said, and that hard note crept into his voice, like an old servant who no longer knocks before he enters his master’s room. Then he looked into my suddenly apprehensive face and hastily bade the servant leave the room. With gentle hands he touched my hair. “We will have the damn thing insured,” he consoled softly. He took me into his hard arms. “Meet me for dinner?”

  I shook my head silently. I didn’t think Mother would buy two outings in a day. She already looked a little suspicious. I would have to hide the pendant very carefully. Sometimes I suspected that she went through my things. Bella said the same.

  He bent his head and kissed me very gently on the lips. There was no passion in the kiss, but his eyes screamed something that almost frightened me. The distance between the kiss he bestowed and the feeling in his eyes confused me.

  “Luke?” I whispered hesitantly.

  His hand tightened on the small of my back, and his head swooped down quite unexpectedly. Once I had been kissed in Form Six during orientation week, but that was a form of humiliation—an unwelcome pair of lips and an insolent tongue wetly trying to force open my mouth to the delighted jeering of a gawking bunch of seniors. So I was totally unpre
pared for Luke’s kiss. I forgot the long shadows made by the evening sunshine, the cooling breeze that blew from across the lake, the faint voices of children in the distance, and the staring eyes of passersby. The pendant dropped out of my hands. And still the kiss went on.

  The blood pounded in my ears. My toes curled in my shoes. And still the kiss went on.

  When finally he let me go, I stared into his face in shock. The suddenness of his passion astounded me. It came out of nowhere and then disappeared. It was as though a different person lived inside Luke, a violently passionate person whom he normally kept in check with cold-blooded precision. For one second he had escaped and showed himself to me. My mouth felt swollen. He looked out to the lake. I closed my mouth and tried to compose myself. He turned back and smiled. The transformation back into cold-blooded precision was even more marked. Whatever battle he had fought with himself had been won. He bent down and picked up the fallen diamond.

  “Yes, I definitely should insure this stone,” he commented lightly. “Come, I will drive you back,” he said, taking my arm. His hands were warm. I couldn’t speak. I followed him, confused. How could he switch off just like that? I gave him a sidelong glance, but he stared straight ahead.

  When I let myself in through the front door, Mother was waiting. I could see immediately that she was furious. She was sitting ramrod straight in her chair, her hands clenched stiffly, but when she spoke, she sounded so nice that I thought perhaps she was angry with Papa.

  “Where have you been?” she asked me.

  “To the park with Anita and Pushpa,” I said nervously. Mother in that mood frightened me. She was like a volcano getting ready to erupt, and I was so close, I could feel the blast of hot vapor and smelled the acrid smoke.

  “Don’t lie to me!” she roared, suddenly springing up from her chair and advancing toward me with big, fast strides. For precious seconds I could only wonder what had happened to her arthritis. It seemed miraculously cured. She stood before me, breathing hard. “Where have you been?” she repeated. “And don’t even think of lying.”