The Rice Mother (5 page)

Ayah had disappeared somewhere to the back of the house. Curiously I began to explore. I walked on a concrete floor and looked at wooden walls. The small living room held two rickety armchairs with tired old cushions, a small ugly side table, a dilapidated old dining table, and four wooden chairs with laminated seats backed into a corner. I went into the bedroom and was amazed to find a huge, iron four-poster bed painted silver. I had never seen such a big bed in all my life. Surely it was a bed fit for a king. I sat on the bed. The cotton-filled mattress was lumpy, but to me it was heavenly. I had never slept on anything but a woven mat. The curtains were faded to an ailing green. An old intricately carved cupboard made of very dark wood with a mirror on its left door creaked when I opened it. Silver cobwebs hung inside. I found some of my husband’s clothes and four saris belonging to his first wife. I took them out. They were plain and dull, the discreet colors of a dead woman. Standing in front of the mirror, I loosely draped a gray one around my body and I thought of her for the first time. Once she had lived in this house and worn these clothes. I touched the cool material and sniffed it. It smelt of the earth during the dry season. The hot smell made me shiver. The saris reminded me of her and her children, whom I had so easily abandoned. I put the sari back inside the cupboard and closed it quickly.

In the second bedroom two old beds crouched by the window. The prayer altar was a simple shelf crammed with framed color pictures of Hindu deities. Bunches of dead flowers crowned the pictures. There had not been a woman in the house for a long time. Automatically I pressed my palms together in prayer. Two pairs of children’s slippers lay by the door. Two small faces looked up to me. “We have no shoes,” they murmured sadly, their eyes desolate. Quickly I backed out, closing the door behind me.

The bathroom, I was surprised to note, was connected to the house. Back home I had to walk to an outhouse. I heard my husband moving out onto the veranda. I inspected the smooth gray walls, turned on a small bronze tap, and beautiful, clear water hurried out into the built-in corner cement water container. It looked almost like a waist-high well, and I was pleased with it. I flicked the old-fashioned, round black light switch, and yellow light filled the tiny, windowless space. Truly I was delighted with my new bathroom. I left the bathroom and walked into the kitchen, where I gave my first cry of joy. In the far corner was the most beautiful bench I had ever seen. Made of hard wood with beautifully carved legs, it was bigger than the bed Mother and I shared. I examined it minutely with real pleasure, running my fingers over the aged, smooth surface, not realizing that that piece of furniture would survive me and one day hold on its dark surface my dead husband’s body.

From the kitchen window I could see a cemented area for washing and outdoor tasks like grinding and milling, and a vast, neglected backyard with mature coconut trees. A large monsoon drain divided our property from the fields covered with wild shrubs and spear grass beyond. A small path could be seen leading away into wood-lands, where I imagined streams to be found.

With the energy of a fourteen-year-old I began to clean, clear, wash, and wipe. I was playing house. My husband sat on an easy chair on the veranda outside, lit himself a long cheroot, and proceeded to enjoy it. The aromatic smell wafted into the house as I bustled about importantly. Soon the small house looked neat and tidy, and finding some ingredients in the kitchen, I made a simple curry of lentils and cooked some rice.

While the food bubbled gently, I closed myself in my new bathroom, turned on the tap, and luxuriated in my indoor well. Wonderful cold water splashed down the length of my grimy body. Clean and fresh, I removed all the dead flowers from the prayer altar. From the jasmine shrub at the end of our overgrown backyard I plucked a plateful of flowers to decorate the altar. I prayed for blessings. Ayah came in, and I served him the simple meal. He ate heartily but slowly, as was his way in all things.

“What work do you do?” I asked.

“I’m a clerk.”

I nodded, but it didn’t mean anything to me. Only later would I learn the level of meniality the word represented.

“Where did the bed and bench come from?”

“I used to work for an Englishman, and when he was returning home for good, he gave them to me.”

I nodded slowly. Yes, it was a superior bed and a superior bench, meant for people who caught sunlight in their hair.

That night, as I lay in the unfamiliar bed, I closed my eyes and listened to the night sounds—the wind rustling in the bamboo reeds, the crickets gossiping in the dark, a lemur scratching in the rambutan tree, and the snake charmer’s flute. The lonely melody reminded me of Mother. It made me think of her all alone in her small hut. Tears rushed into my eyes. Tomorrow I would write to her. I would tell her everything from the lady with the crushed feet to the black-clad mine workers. And I wouldn’t forget the barefoot children or the row of ducks, their necks broken. I would tell her everything, except perhaps that her daughter had married a poor man. That there was no grand life waiting for her Lakshmi, and while there was a house where the kitchen was bigger than her entire house, it didn’t belong to her son-in-law. And I would never tell her about the soft clink that the shining gold watch, which had so impressed her, made when it fell into Bilal’s upturned palm, just before he nodded and returned to his real master. In the dark the stiffly starched sheets rustled, and his heavy hand came to rest on my stomach. And my tears fell faster.

My neighborhood was a circle of five homes. The splendid house that I had coveted on my arrival belonged to the third wife of a very rich Chinese man called Old Soong. Next to hers, in a house similar to mine, lived a Malay truck driver and his family. He was away a lot, but his wife, Minah, was a good-hearted and neighborly woman who welcomed me with a plate of coconut jelly on the second day of my arrival. She had the open, smiling face one comes across in every Malay kampong, a truly astounding hourglass figure, and a genteel manner. She wore soft grace like a long, beautifully cut costume. There were no hard edges about her. Everything was refined—her voice, her manners, her movements, her walk, her language, and her skin. When she left, I stood behind my faded curtains and watched the slow sway of her hips until her figure disappeared behind a bead curtain at her doorway. Inconceivably she was already the mother of four children. It was only much later, after the end of her fifth pregnancy, that I learned about the secret nightmare of a traditional Malay confinement—forty-two days of bitter herbs, a smoking-hot stove under the bed to dry out excess fluid and tighten vaginal muscles, a tenaciously bound stomach, and merciless daily massages from freakishly strong, wrinkled old women. But hardship has its rewards. Minah was living testament.

Next to her house was a confusingly plentiful Chinese household. All manner of people seemed to appear and leave from that small house, making me wonder where they all slept. Sometimes one of the women from the household would run out into the pathway after a screaming child and, catching it, pull down his or her pants and slap its white flesh till it turned bright red. Then, still cursing and swearing, she would leave the child sobbing pitifully on the roadway. Sometimes they punished one of the older girls by making her run naked around their house. She might have been nine or ten, and I felt very sorry for the poor mite as she streaked by my window, scrawny, red-eyed, and bawling. They were uncouth and brazen, but the reason I hated them with foul vengeance was because every day in the half-light of dusk the man’s two wives took turns to fertilize their vegetable plot with night soil. And every time the wind blew in our direction, the horrible stench disgusted me, put me off my food, and made me want to retch.

To the right of us lived an old hermit. Sometimes I glimpsed his face, long and sad, at the window. Next to him lived the snake charmer, a small, wiry man with straight blue-black hair and a hawk-like nose in a stern, wild face. I was fearful of this man with his dancing cobras and poisonous snakes from which he made snake medicine for sale, worrying that his escaped snakes were lurking in my bed. His wife was a small, thin woman, and they had seven children in total. One day while I was at the market I found myself at the fringe of a big circle of curious onlookers. I pressed my way forward. In the middle sat the snake charmer, closing the lids of his baskets, his act apparently finished. One of his sons, a boy no more than seven or eight years old, began to clap. Curly locks hung low, obscuring bright, laughing eyes. Dressed in a grubby white shirt and a pair of khaki shorts, he looked like a street urchin. He picked up a beer bottle. Suddenly, without warning, he smashed the bottle on the ground, picked up a piece of glass, put it in his mouth, and began to chew. The crowd gasped and went silent.

Blood began to pour from the boy’s mouth. It poured down his chin and seeped into his grubby white collar. Red trickled down his shirtfront. He picked up another broken piece from the dirty ground and stuffed it into his mouth. As I stood horrified and transfixed, he opened his mouth wide to show the blood-filled cavity, then pulled out a little red cloth bag from his pocket and, still crunching, began to collect coins from the crowd. I pushed my way out frantically. The feat, the trick, was beyond me. I felt disturbed and upset, even physically ill. Ever after that incident I avoided contact with the snake-charmer family. I was convinced there was skullduggery and black magic being practiced in that strange household, that in their half-darkened house they nurtured a presence that could not be described but made my flesh crawl and creep.

I sat on the veranda and watched the snake charmer’s son run barefoot to the truck driver’s house, his curls flying in the wind. I could still see him standing in the middle of a group of gaping spectators, a mess of crushed glass and blood in his poor mouth, his eyes not laughing but grave. He saw me watching him and waved. I waved back. The smell of my neighbors’ cooking blossomed in the air. The sweet fragrance of pork sizzling in hot lard made me yearn for something other than vegetables and rice. The cupboards were all bare, and we had been living on Mother’s carefully compiled collection of recipes to turn an onion into an edible dish for the last two weeks. But that day I was expectant with waiting. It was payday. I sat on the veranda waiting for Ayah to come home, impatient to feel housekeeping money in my hand for the first time. Just like my mother I too would plan and spread the money wisely, but first I wanted to treat us to some good food for a change. I saw Ayah turn into our road, his big body clumsy on the rickety bicycle as he maneuvered it on the loose stones. I stood up quickly.

Ayah parked his bicycle unhurriedly, smiling at me. I smiled back restlessly. In my hand I had a letter from Ceylon for him, and as I held out the light blue envelope to him, he delved into his pocket and brought out a thin brown envelope. We exchanged envelopes, and he passed me by and went into the house. I stared at the brown envelope in my young hands in complete surprise. All of it. He had given me his whole wage. I tore open the envelope and counted the money. Two hundred and twenty ringgit in all—a lot of money. Immediately I began to make plans in my head. I would send my mother some money, and a nice chunk I would hide together with my jewels in my square tin that once held imported chocolates. I would save and save, and soon we would be as rich as Old Soong. I would make a rosy future for us. I was standing there grasping the money and my fabulous dreams in both hands when a man in a Nehru-cut jacket, a white
veshti,
and leather slippers, holding a huge black umbrella, turned into our dirt road. Tucked under his armpit was a leather briefcase. He was walking toward me with a big smile. Soon the squat man with the bulging potbelly stood before me. His eyes drifted to the money clutched in my hands. I lowered my hands slowly, and his greedy gaze followed the money. I waited until his gaze managed the journey up to meet my eyes. The round face filled with false cheer. I disliked him on sight.

“Greetings to the new lady of the house,” he said brightly.

“Who are you?” I asked sullenly, unforgivably rude.

He didn’t take offense. “I’m your moneylender,” he explained with a large smile that showed teeth stained by betel-nut juice. He produced a small notebook from a pocket, licked a fat finger, and thumbed through the soiled pages. “If you will just give me twenty ringgit and sign against today’s date, I shall not bother you any longer and be on my merry way.”

I practically snatched the notebook from his pudgy hands. Bemused, I saw my husband’s name at the top left-hand corner and a row of his signatures against different amounts. For the last month he had paid nothing while he was in Ceylon looking for a new wife. The man’s eyes gleamed as he reminded me about the arrears and interest. In a daze I handed over the twenty ringgit for that month, the arrears, and the interest he demanded.

“Good day to you, madam, and see you next month,” he chirped as he turned away to leave.

“Wait,” I cried. “How much debt is left?”

“Oh, just another hundred ringgit,” he sang merrily.

“A hundred ringgit,” I mouthed silently and, looking up, saw another two men coming toward our house. As they passed the moneylender, they nodded.

“Greetings to the new lady of the house,” they chorused.

I shuddered.

That day the “visitors” didn’t cease until well after dark. At one point there was even a line outside the door, until eventually I was left clutching fifty ringgit. Fifty ringgit to last me an entire month. I stood silently in the middle of our shabby living room, embarrassed and fuming.

“I have only fifty ringgit to last me the whole month,” I announced as calmly as I could to my husband as he ate his last mouthful of rice and potatoes.

Dull eyes regarded me for a minute. I thought of a heavy animal, its lumbering slowness, its stoic endurance in the face of persistent flies, and its filthy, swishing tail as it just stood there. Stupidly.