The Rice Mother

by Rani Manicka

  “Special Delivery letter,” a man’s disembodied voiced floated out of the intercom. I signed for the letter from Father’s solicitors. They needed to see me immediately about a matter of the utmost importance. I called and made an appointment with the senior partner of De Cruz, Rajan & Rahim.

  Mr. De Cruz came forward and completely enveloped my hand in his large, leathery ones. In his veins ran the Portuguese blood that manifested itself as a high nose in his proud face and a condescending attitude toward the “locals.” His hair sat like polished silver on his skull. From cavernous sockets his eyes shone with the merciless greed that made his forefathers famous. Underneath his skin, I imagined, writhed a creature deeply unwholesome.

  I had met him once before at a dinner in the Stock Exchange. He had smiled with great charm but had not introduced the tall girl with the blank eyes who stood beside him. I found him like all lawyers of my acquaintance, arrogant and too proud of his ability to have enslaved words to do exactly as he bid. He kept them inside his mouth and brought them out at the right time with the right inflection added. And look how rich it had made him.

  “I’m so sorry about your father,” he commiserated in his deep baritone voice. I couldn’t help but be impressed. It was surely a gift, this ability to sound so sincere at a moment’s notice.

  “Thank you. And thank you for the flowers too,” I said automatically.

  He nodded sagely. The words waited inside his mouth for the right moment. He indicated that I should sit. The office was large and cool. There was a well-stocked bar in one corner. I had heard the rumor that he drank. Heavily. At the Selangor club.

  He dropped into a large leather chair behind his table. For a moment he paused and studied me sitting in front of him. I imagined his thoughts. Very pretty, if only she would make more of herself. Then he let the words that had been waiting in his mouth jump out and scare the living daylights out of the poor thing who had not made more of herself. It was hardly his fault. It wasn’t he who had made all those bad investments that had brought her father to bankruptcy as he died in the hospital. It was the economy. The whole damn economy had fallen on its face after that fiasco with George Soros taking on the Malaysian ringgit and destroying the share prices like a fist on a house of cards.

  Blankly I listened as Mr. De Cruz used all the right words to tell me about the stock market crash, and the inevitable losses the high-risk investment portfolio favored by Father had incurred. Basically, he said, there was nothing left to will over to me but enormous debts. In fact even my expensive apartment would have to go.

  “Do you have any jewelry that you can sell?”

  Horrified, I stared at him. “But Father was a multimillionaire! How is this possible?”

  Mr. De Cruz shrugged eloquently. “The economy, as I said. Some unwise investments. A few sour deals. . . .” All kinds of soothing words slipped out of his mobile mouth. “There was even mention of fraud. . . .”

  “So basically I am homeless.”

  “Not quite.” Mr. De Cruz flashed an uncomfortable, oddly guilty smile. I gazed at him expectantly. The smile broadened, and the flash of guilt removed its unwelcome presence. No decent lawyer should suffer the likes of guilt too long on his person.

  “Well, your mother left a house for you. You were meant to come into it when you were twenty-one, but as you were comfortably ensconced in your apartment by then, your father decided not to concern you with the running of a decrepit old house. But as your circumstances have now changed, perhaps you should take a look at your inheritance.”

  “My mother left me a house?” I repeated stupidly.

  “Yes, a house in Ampang. Naturally the building itself is probably in a state of terrible disrepair, but the land is another matter. . . . Considering its location, it is quite a pile you are sitting on. The sale would solve all your problems, and of course this firm is perfectly qualified to dispose of it for you.” He set his lips in a businesslike manner and opened a file in front of him.

  I should have been told about the house when I turned twenty-one, but Mr. Cruz had suppressed the information because my father had asked him to.

  “Who has been paying the ground rent on the property?” I asked.

  “There was an inheritance from your maternal great-grandmother that automatically paid the required amount, but that inheritance has been almost used up. There is also the matter of a sealed letter that your father left for you in the event of his death. Here are the keys and the address to your property.” He handed me a bunch of keys, a deed with the address and my name on it, and a sealed letter.

  I was speechless. My mother had left me a house, and he had sat on such a vital piece of information all these years. Words were still pouring out of the man when I stood up suddenly. He stopped speaking.

  “Thank you,” I said politely and walked toward the glossy door.

  Outside the building, the muggy afternoon heat hit me like a blow. Everything I had taken for granted died yesterday. The home that I had thought was mine was not, and the mountain of money didn’t exist. Yet nothing mattered but the keys in my hand and the house. I walked along the road until I spotted the Cherry Lounge bar. There was a light throbbing in my temples, and the maddest desire to laugh in my mouth. I was poor. What a joke! A lifetime of wealth had left me helpless. A degree in social science overqualified me for the job of secretary and left me underqualified for everything else. It was impossible to imagine my father’s immense wealth reduced to a decrepit house in Ampang. I thought about the many politicians who came with arms outstretched and patted my father’s back. “Good, good. I know I can always count on Luke,” they said.

  How was it possible? I became certain that while he lay in the hospital, my father had been swindled and robbed blind. He was too shrewd, far too wily to have lost all the millions in real estate, shares, and secret accounts. It could only be a scam, but the thought of unraveling his empire made me feel ill. The people who could make such colossal sums disappear sat in very high places, and even my father had watched them very carefully from a safe distance.

  I saw the bar across the road, walked in, bought a double brandy from a flatteringly curious bartender, and found a dark corner to hide in. I leaned back into the seat. Was it possible for life to change in an afternoon? Of course. I lifted the heavy curtain at the window. It was raining outside. Obviously I couldn’t go and see the house that afternoon, and for reasons unknown the postponement was a relief. The house was more than just a house. I had felt its magic as soon as it fell out of De Cruz’s mouth. I took off my shoes, curled my legs under me, and tore open the letter.

  But the writing was not Father’s. I uncurled my legs from under me and sat up straighter. It was in a feminine hand and addressed not to me, but to my father. I didn’t want to read it there in that horrible and safe place, but my seeking eyes moved to the top of the page.

  Dear Luke,

  My dying wish is that Nisha should have the tapes. They are simply memories of people whom I have loved all my life. They have no power to hurt you. The diaries I leave to you to do with as you please. You will heed this last request of mine if you have loved me at any time at all. I only want my daughter to know that she comes from a proud line of amazing people. None of them as weak as I have been. She must know she has nothing to be ashamed of.

  Under her skin are fine ancestors. They are there in her hands, her face, and the shadows, happy and sad, that cross her face. When she opens the fridge on hot days and stands there cooling herself, let her know that they are the mist in her breath. They are her. I want her to know them as I have known them. Let her know that when they walked this earth, they were wonderfully strong people who braved far more than me and survived.

  I have been weak and pathetic because I forgot that love comes and goes like the dye that colors a garment. I mistook love for the garment. Family is the garment. Let her wear her family with pride.

  Please, Luke. Give her the tapes.

  The lett
er was signed Dimple.

  So my mother was Dimple Lakshmnan. She was not Selina Das, as the birth certificate Father showed me claimed. And she didn’t die giving birth to me. She knew me. And I knew her. Outside, big drops of rain hurled themselves at the smoked glass. “What a liar you were, Father!”

  Even from quite far away, I knew it was the house. I stopped the car and climbed out. Lara was a grand house, almost obscured by the weeds that grew up the gates and over the red-brick wall that surrounded it. Three young boys stopped their bicycles beside me.

  “You’re not going to go inside the house, are you?” one of them asked, curiously.

  “It’s haunted, you know,” another added quickly.

  “A woman died in there,” they all cried, their eyes formidable. “It was horrible. There was blood everywhere. Anybody who goes in there never returns,” they warned, completely caught up in the relentless need to shock the stranger.

  “This house belongs to me,” I said to them, looking through the iron gates at a winding driveway flanked by enormous conifer trees.

  The boys stared at me with openmouthed surprise while I slotted my key into the gate. At the metallic sound of the key fitting into place, they fled on their bicycles with hasty backward glances.

  The gates unlocked with a clang and a dark echo. I have been here before. As I drove up the winding road, I was filled with a sense of loss. Loss of what? The conifers on either side of me were dark green walls of silence. I parked the car by the house. Creepers covered most of the facade and the red overlapping roof tiles. The wretched grounds, it seemed, had lost their battle with the waist-high wild grasses many, many years ago. Rambling rose bushes were abundant and savage with thorns. All in all it was a dismal, ghostly sight.

  Yet it called to me, every dark window a beckoning eye. Under a tree, partially visible through the greenery, the statue of a small boy held something up in both his hands like an offering. I walked past two fierce lion statues that stood like guards at the entrance to a big, mahogany door. In my hand it swung open.

  Inviting me in.

  I stopped in the middle of the very large living room and smiled. The first real smile since my father died. The place was under a good inch of dust and cobwebs and quite ruined, but I was home. Without looking up, I knew that the lofty ceilings were painted with gorgeously robed figures from the past. I looked up, and sure enough, even the thick froth of cobwebs could not disgrace the grand paintings. A small sparrow flew into the house through a broken window-pane, its flapping wings loud in the stillness. Landing on the banister, it regarded me curiously. The banister had once shone with polish. I knew that as clearly as I knew what color the floor under my feet was. I swept my right shoe in a small arc on the floor, pushing aside layers of dried leaves, twigs, bird droppings, and the accumulated dirt of many years, and my own reflection looked back from a smooth, black surface. Ah, finally, the black marble floor of my nightmares.

  Disturbed by the noise, lizards scuttled on the ceiling over the unflinching, plump hands of painted maidens and cherubs frolicking on clouds. My footsteps echoed eerily, yet there was a feeling of welcome, as if the frozen people had been waiting for me.

  As I looked around, it seemed to me as if the inhabitants of the house had left with the intention of returning soon. There was a chunky vase of dried twigs, a fruit bowl of dust-covered fruit seeds, and alcohol in the crystal decanters on top of a baby grand piano. I moved to the grimy pictures on the piano and blew at them. There I was with the beautiful woman from my dreams. The face that escaped the memory-eating snake’s belly. Who was she? Dimple Lakshmnan? If she was my dead mother, then the woman in the picture that Father showed me must be another lie.

  On a rather fabulous low marble-and-stone coffee table was a stack of magazines. The top one was dated August 1984. The year—in fact, the month—I fell into that black hole. Well, well.

  On the wall at the far end was an ornately framed picture covered in gray dust. Standing on a chair, I cleaned the middle of the picture with my handkerchief. A woman’s chest emerged. Slightly higher, I found a face. A beautiful woman looked at me sadly, and I knew for certain she was my mother, Dimple Lakshmnan. I cleaned the whole picture, climbed down, and took a step back. Suddenly I felt as if I was not alone anymore. As if all the dead people on my mother’s side were huddled close to me. For the first time since I had climbed out of the black hole and known absolutely no one, I didn’t feel alone.

  Warm and strangely content, I walked away from the portrait and went up the marble stairs. I had a fleeting image of a small girl falling. I stopped, my hand rising automatically to my head. That small silvery scar. I had fallen down these stairs; I knew it without a doubt. I had tumbled down headfirst, screaming, “Mummy, Mummy.” It was not as Daddy said. It didn’t happen on a zebra crossing at all.

  For some horrible reason my father had uprooted me from this house where I lived with my mother. He left behind absolutely everything that was familiar to me and transplanted me into totally new surroundings. And because he had taken nothing out of the house, it looked as if someone had gone out for a pint of milk and never returned. I understood now why my father had taken nothing. He didn’t want anything from my old life to trigger my memories. He had always feared my memories.

  Upstairs, I opened the first door on the left. Immediately I saw a vision of a small girl lying on the bed, drawing. This had been my room, not the pink room my father had shown me to when I left the hospital. I recognized the blue curtains with the yellow sunflowers. The curtains were now gray with age, but I saw them billowing in my mind. Blue with bright yellow sunflowers. Mother chose them.

  I opened a cupboard curiously and drew back slightly at the unexpectedly strong waft of camphor. Inside was a wardrobe really too magnificent for a child of seven to have. What dresses! And in perfect condition too. My attention was drawn to a pair of red sandals with pretty pink bows on the top. I closed my eyes and tried to force the memories, but—nothing. “Soon,” I promised myself. “Soon I will remember everything.” I ran my fingers through the clothes, surprised at how well my old clothes had been preserved through time. From the back of the bed came scurrying noises. Rats. The wardrobe doors must be very secure.

  All of a sudden I saw myself in the garden outside, standing by a small pond filled with expensive gold and red carp. As suddenly as the picture had come, it was gone. I hurried to the window. A dirty pond sat glumly in the middle of the overgrown backyard, like the doubtful eye of the garden. I fancied it looked at me with some reproach, as if it was my fault that its waters were green with neglect. Leaving my old room, I walked along the curving gallery that overlooked the living room below. I opened another door and gasped.

  The room had been decorated in the same manner as my father’s bedroom in his house; everything identical. Curiouser and curiouser. Father had lived in this house with Mother and me! Something had happened here that had made him take me and flee, leaving everything behind. Seeing the room made my flesh crawl. I crossed the spartan room and opened a connecting door.

  The curtains in that room were drawn shut. It was pleasantly dim, the air so still I could hear myself breathe. Very gradually, almost imperceptibly, an impression swept over me that I was not alone. It was like falling asleep on a beach and being awakened by the soft warm lapping of waves against your feet. I felt safe and protected, as if someone loved and very dear sat beside me. So strong was the feeling that I went around the huge bed and looked behind the curtains. Of course there was no one there. I pulled the curtains apart, and evening sunshine filtered in curiously, turning the air into a dust-filled magic space but banishing that strange presence from the room. I felt an inexplicable sense of loss as I walked past the large four-poster bed, carefully made and hidden under the inevitable layer of thick dust, and opened the carved doors on a row of handsome, built-in cupboards.

  Rack upon rack of exquisite clothes, beautifully preserved, met my eyes. The opulent 1970s in all the
ir beaded, embroidered glory and rich colors hung before me. I thought I recognized a blue-and-green dress with an attached rhinestone choker. I thought I remembered myself saying, “Mommy, that’s pretty.”

  I closed my eyes and watched a slender figure twirl round and round so her pretty new dress cut on the bias could fly around her legs like a dazzling butterfly. It was Dimple Lakshmnan, my mother.

  Carefully, I took the dress off the hanger and, standing in front of a mirror at the other end of the room, held it up against my body. My mother had been almost the same size as I am. I took off my blouse and jeans and slipped the dress over my head. It smelt of mothballs and felt cool against my skin. I smoothed the satin carefully over my hips. The dress was beautiful.

  As if in a daze I dusted off the padded cushion stool in front of the dressing table and sat on it. I cleaned the mirror with some tissue paper and examined the collection of makeup on the long dressing-table surface. I pulled off the top of a blue lipstick case. Frosty pink. It smelled strongly of old petroleum jelly but appeared remarkably dewy. Christian Dior and still raring to go. I twisted it up and applied it to my lips. Then I brushed on some shimmering kingfisher-blue eye shadow that was all the rage in the 1970s. I stood in front of the mirror, and in the sunlight a ridiculous woman with bright blue eye shadow and painted lips looked at me. I felt sad. So unaccountably sad that I closed the curtains and sank, uncaring, on the dusty bed. It was then that I realized that with the curtains drawn, the room had taken on an altogether different feel. I was again conscious of that feeling of companionship. And when I looked at myself in the mirror across the room, I saw the woman in the painting downstairs. In the gloom I was beautiful, as beautiful as my mother had been. I didn’t look like my father after all. I stared, enchanted by my own image, until I saw not my surprised reflection any more but a scene from the past.

  Mother was downstairs, wearing this very dress. She was going to a party. I saw the Roman living room clearly, with its impressively grand flower arrangements and big crystal bowls full of fruit, the floor, the crystal chandelier, the lamps, the banisters, the cream Victorian daybed, the mahogany dining table, the nest of large sofas—all polished and new, without the dust, the dirt, or the animal droppings. It was gorgeous. While my mother waited for Daddy to return home from work, she was arranging flowers on the dining table and crying silently.