The Rice Mother (39 page)

Oh, I was glad to have Dimple! I even purposely fanned the poisonous thoughts in Rani’s head. She knew that her husband did not love her, but she wanted to believe he was incapable of love. She could not bear that he could love someone else, even his own daughter. That possessive jealous streak in her refused to lie down even for motherhood. The older Dimple grew, the more obvious it became that she looked nothing like her maternal grandmother and remarkably like Mohini. I saw Lakshmnan staring at Dimple with a mixture of wonder and surprise, as if he couldn’t believe how very much like Mohini his daughter looked.

And we, we waited for the thrice-yearly school holidays. Two weeks in April, three weeks in August, and then, best of all, the whole of December and part of January. The house seemed brighter, bigger, and better when Dimple was here. She brought a smile into Ayah’s face and put conversation into Sevenese’s mouth, and I, I finally found a place where all my hard-earned money could go. It wasn’t that I didn’t love Nash and Bella, but I loved Dimple the best. Nash and Bella had been taught to hate us anyway. I wished I could keep Dimple with me all the time, but no, Rani would not allow that. She knew that would be letting me win. No, she thought she would torment us both, my son and me. From the time Dimple was only five years old, she began to send the poor child back and forth like an incorrectly addressed package. Oh, what big, sad eyes she had. I counted the days until she would come to live with us and cried when the time of her departure neared. And after we had waved her good-bye and Lakshmnan’s car had turned the corner, the emptiness was indescribable. Then I would take out the calendar and map out her next visit.

Rani kept her Western ways and refused to teach her children their own mother tongue, but I decided that I would teach Dimple our culture and teach her to speak Tamil. It was her heritage and her right. I began to tell her our family stories, for there were many things I wanted to leave in her care. Then one day she walked in and announced that she wanted to save all my cherished stories like the aborigines in the red deserts of Australia do. “I have decided to make a dream trail of our history, and when you die, I will take over and be the new custodian of our family dream trail,” she said importantly. From then on, like a real custodian, she walked around with her tape recorder, re-creating the past for her children’s children. Finally there was a reason for my existence.

The years were passing, but I just could not find a bridegroom for Lalita. She had failed her Form Three exam despite sitting for it three times. With no qualifications, she wanted to train to become a nurse, but I wouldn’t hear of it. How could I let my daughter wash strange men in intimate places? No, no, such a dirty job was not for my daughter. I sent her to typing school, but whenever she went for an interview, she was so nervous she couldn’t stop making mistakes. By the time she was twenty-nine, I was getting desperate. The years were passing faster, and my health was worsening.

Sevenese took up the study of astrology and started telling fortunes. He practiced on his friends, and they dropped in with their charts clipped under their armpits. Before he left on his trips, he gave me envelopes full of his interpretations for his friends to pick up. It turned out that he was so good at telling fortunes that strangers started to appear at our door with their charts in their right hand.

“Please,” they pleaded. “My daughter is getting married. Will this boy be a good match?” The pile on his table grew and grew, but I realized that the deeper he delved into that shadowy world, the more he drank, the deeper his despair, the more cynical his disposition, and the more savage his charm became. He did not want to marry and settle down. Women were sharp-eyed playthings and children perpetuators of a disgusting species. “Man is worse than beast,” he said. “Crocodiles will climb out of the water during severe droughts to share the lions’ meal, but man will poison his neighbor before he shares his.”

He drank far too much and returned home late, staggering and muttering to himself, his eyes red and his hair tousled. Sometimes cheap perfume lingered. I did not need to ask where he had been. There used to be a dark place called the Milk Bar in town. He had been spotted going through the swing doors by ladies from the temple. Gaudily painted women, not so young but still smooth-skinned, smoked outside the establishment. Too often he lost his keys and banged on the door well past midnight, singing drunkenly in Malay for Lalita to open the door, “Achi, achi buka pintu.”

I feared he had become an alcoholic.

Jeyan had not even attempted to take his Form Three exams. He knew he couldn’t pass. He became a meter reader with the Electricity Board. When the time came for him to marry, Rani, who had taken up the practice of being a marriage broker of sorts, sent word that she had found him a wife. There were still no takers for Lalita. She was thirty years old. Almost too old to be married.

W
hen Rani found a bride for Jeyan, Mother took him to see the girl. She returned full of good humor and high spirits. The girl was fair and comely. Mother said in his last life Jeyan must have earned excellent karma to deserve such a girl in this life. Ratha was an orphan, brought up by a kindly spinster aunt who had managed to set aside a dowry of five thousand ringgit for the girl. It was a very paltry sum to negotiate with, but Mother was so determined to have the girl for Jeyan that she would have agreed even if there was no dowry on the table.

I watched Jeyan sit in a chair, looking at Mother mutely, blankly, as is his way. He could have been listening to her, but I know my brother too well. With the delight of a child he took out once again and carefully examined the precious memory of a reckless sidelong glance all for him. He thought only of a pair of hennaed feet that took turns to delicately burst out of the pleats in the middle of a green-and-red sari, and a pair of small hands that had served him tea and shyly passed the soft cakes around.

Behind his inattentive expression blazed a kind of suppressed excitement. An awareness of the essence of the woman was already in his being. He was dreaming of gleaming musk on tumid breasts, skin covered with silky down, and a body that moved beneath him like a gliding swan. He was dreaming of a sweet life with Ratha.

The date for the wedding was set. It was decided that it would be a small, simple temple wedding. It was really Mother who decided this. The girl had no relatives, and Mother was not inclined toward showy displays of wealth. A small wedding seemed logical. We locked the house and went to stay at Mother’s cousin’s home in Kuala Lumpur. His house was small and filled with savage children. All day long they rushed about screaming and shouting, falling over adults as if they were pieces of furniture. They fought each other, cried, then sang, and tumbled down the stairs as if they were not flesh and bone but India-rubber balls. From that house we were to leave for the simple ceremony planned in the temple.

On the big day my brother stood in the hall, resplendent in a white
veshti
and his bridegroom’s headgear. He stood straight and tall in front of Mother to get her blessing. For once his square face looked eager and animated. While Mother stood there savoring the pleasure of having secured such a lovely bride for her dull son, a small boy whooping like a Red Indian dashed into the hallway and promptly slipped on a patch of spilled oil. As we all stood and watched, he skidded across the floor like a bizarre giant eel with arms and legs. The eel crashed straight into my brother’s ceremonial preparations. A large silver platter of
kum kum
went flying into the air, red powder rising like a red mist before it plunged to the ground, rolling noisily, scattering fine powder all over the floor. The noise of the platter falling and rolling endlessly on the tiled floor was deafening. Mother’s smile fled and her face became a mask of stunned disbelief.

For a few seconds nobody moved. Even the little boy who had caused the big bang froze in fear. He lay on the floor and looked up at Mother’s terrible expression with big, frightened eyes. Mother stared at the mess on the floor as if it was not cheap red
kum kum
that you could purchase in any provision shop but a pool of blood collected from the bodies of her slain children. I stared at Mother, surprised, as she shook her head.

“Why, oh why did that stupid boy have to come here, of all places?” she muttered shaking her head. “It is a bad omen, but it has come too late. There is nothing to be done but what is already planned.” And with those words her face became like stone. She moved quickly. The gods had spoken, but they had spoken too late: the wedding must go on. She helped the stunned child up, shooed him away sternly and instructed a girl hovering nearby to clear away the mess, and then she stepped forward and blessed her son. “Go with God,” she said in a firm voice. Then Father stepped forward and blessed Jeyan.

The bridegroom got into a car decorated with blue-and-silver ribbons, and everybody else squeezed into any available vehicle. I walked beside Mother; her face was like granite, her steps as determined as a marching soldier’s. In the car she sat ramrod straight, saying nothing and staring blankly out of the window. Once she sighed softly, regretfully. It felt as if we were heading for a funeral house in inappropriate clothing, Mother in her mango-colored sari and me in my royal blue sari edged with the brightest fuchsia.

Secretly I thought Mother was overreacting, although I didn’t dare open my mouth to say as much. It was an accident, pure and simple. That it didn’t happen earlier was the miracle. Outside the temple the car slowed to a stop. Jeyan climbed out. In the midday sun his new white costume was blinding. Someone straightened his headgear for him. He was king for the day. He nodded. He was nervous.

Inside the temple, Mother smiled at women layered in jewelry. They stopped gossiping to smile back. As she passed, they resumed their talk, their lips alternately busy or pursed, but their dark eyes were forever alert, roving and weaving through the crowd. I was sure they looked at me pityingly.

We stood by the dais and watched the bride, escorted by her elderly aunt and friend. I thought she looked very beautiful in a dusky pink sari with small green and gold dots and an intensely embroidered gold border. She was slim and graceful. Indeed, Jeyan was extremely lucky. At the dais she folded her legs beneath her and slipped into place beside my brother. She did it with such natural grace that I wondered anew why someone so pretty would agree to marry my brother. She wore a lot of jewelry, but I guessed a sizable proportion was costume. We knew she was poor. As I contemplated her situation, I suddenly realized that from her downcast eyes unchecked tears were trickling onto the expensive sari that Mother had chosen and bought for her. A small dark patch was spreading steadily on her lap. Astonished by the sight of the salty stream, I quickly glanced at Mother, who had not missed the tears. She seemed as mystified as I was.

“Why is the bride crying?” Low voices buzzed. For sure, those were not tears of joy. The girl was crying her heart out. Within the huge pillars of the temple the small crowd that had gathered to see an occasion of marriage began to whisper and twitter.

“Look, the bride is crying,” they whispered among themselves. As we watched, baffled, the bride’s elaborate, press-on nose stud slipped from her nostril and landed on the darkening stain in her lap. Silently she picked it up and refastened it on her wet nostril. Nobody missed that. The murmur in the small congregation became louder, and a veil of red settled on Mother’s cheeks. She was embarrassed by what looked like the bride’s apparent distress or reluctance. But no one had forced her. Mother had spoken directly to the girl. She had been willing. “Yes,” she had nodded, dropping her head.

The drums were loud when Jeyan turned toward his bride and tied the ceremonial
thali
around her neck. I saw him start when he noticed his bride’s tears. Confused, he turned to seek out Mother’s eyes, but she nodded as a sign for him to carry on. Reassured that a bride’s tears was another mystery that he was not privy to, he turned back and finished tying the all-important chain that would bind them as man and wife forever. The ceremony was over.

At the reception Mother couldn’t eat or drink anything. The sight of food made her feel sick. We left for Kuantan immediately. The journey was silent. Mother was morose and unhappy. Why was the bride crying? Why had the little boy come from nowhere to kick to smithereens the very things that symbolize a happy marriage?

The next day the newly married couple arrived at our home. There were to stay with us until they could afford to buy a house of their own. Mother had offered to contribute some money toward their new home. From the window I saw Jeyan’s new wife alight gracefully from the car. She looked tranquil and composed. The tears were gone. Mother went out of the house to welcome the new bride with a tray of yellow sandalwood paste,
kum kum,
holy ash, and a small pile of burning camphor. Ratha fell at Mother’s feet, as the custom required. When she rose from the ground, I saw for the first time my sister-in-law’s eyes. They were blind with sorrow even as her mouth smiled politely and accepted Mother’s blessings. No sooner had she been shown to her room than she was out once more.

She looked for detergent and began to clean.

She cleaned the kitchen, washed the bathroom, wiped down the kitchen shelves, dusted and mopped the living room, rearranged the contents of the spice cupboard, swept the backyard, and cleared the weeds growing around the house. And when she was finished, she began all over again. The moment she was free, she volunteered to wash the clothes, clean the drains, or do the cooking.

Her beautifully tragic face smiled away help. “Oh, no, no.” She could manage. Not to worry, she liked cleaning. She was used to hard work. She spoke only when spoken to. In her cleaning rounds she found a dirty old basket under the house. Once my doll had lived in that old basket. Triumphantly, silently, she cleaned it and stood in the living room with it tucked into the crook of her elbow. “I can do the marketing,” she offered hopefully.