The Rice Mother Read online

  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.

  “Don’t worry,” he said soothingly, unconcerned. “Whenever you need money, just ask me, and I can borrow some more. I have good credit.”

  I could only stare incredulously at him. A sudden gust of wind blew into our kitchen the smell of human waste. The food inside my stomach did a small back flip, and somewhere inside my head a hammering began, a loud insistent hammering that would last me for the rest of my life with only short breaks in between. I gazed away from the dull black eyes of the lumbering beast and said nothing.

  That night, by the light of a kerosene lamp, I sat cross-legged on my beautiful bench and made a list of all the debtors. I couldn’t sleep for the plans I was making. Finally, when all the night demons had flown over to the other side of the world, I lay on my stomach and watched through the open window a red dawn break over the eastern sky. The hammering in my head had relented a little. The plan was clear in my head. I made a strong brew of black tea and slowly sipped it, as my mother and her mother before her had done at the end of a long day. Before the birds began their day I bathed in icy cold water and washed my hair in coconut milk. Dressed in a clean cotton sari, I walked the one mile to the Ganesha temple just behind Apu’s provision shop. In the small temple by the dirt road I prayed with all my heart, so sincerely that tears escaped from my closed eyelids. I begged Lord Ganesha to make my plan work and my new life a happy one. I then put ten cents into the donation box by the Elephant God, who was ever merciful and tenderhearted, and rubbing holy ash on my forehead, I walked back.

  When I arrived home, my husband had just awakened. The crackle of the radio filled the small house. I made gruel and coffee for him. Watching him eat, I suddenly felt strong and protective toward him, our house, and our new life together. After my husband had left, I sat down and composed a letter, a very important one. Then I walked into town. At the post office I posted the letter to my uncle, the mango dealer. He lived with his wife in Seremban, another state in Malaya. I had a proposition for him. I wanted to borrow the total amount of debt that was owed by my husband plus a little more to tide me over until the next pay packet arrived. In exchange I would pay him some interest, and he could keep my box of jewels as collateral. My jewels, I knew, were worth far more than the amount I was asking. My mother had given me a ruby pendant nearly as large as my smallest toe, and that alone, I knew, was worth a great deal of money. It was a beautiful stone with a strange hot light inside that in the sunlight breathed red fire like a live thing. After I had posted the letter, I went to the market. In those days the market was a fascinating place full of splendid things I had never seen before.

  I stood before piles of black salted eggs, one or two on top of the pile left open to expose yolks the color of blood. Chinese men in wooden clogs squatted on the ground selling little clouds of birds’ nests. Inside wire cages large lizards scurried about with nervous, jerky movements at the sight of slithering snakes in other cages. There was fresh everything in woven baskets, and Malay women traders with gold teeth sold soft turtle eggs in wire baskets.

  In one corner an ancient Chinese woman, barely able to walk, hobbled about selling strangely twisted mud-colored sea cucumbers, hardened black seaweed, and a whole cornucopia of unidentifiable creatures swimming in water-filled wooden buckets. Trappers chewing betel nut waited patiently behind stacks of wild roots and bunches of medicinal leaves. Sometimes in their hands they held the tails of four or five live snakes that writhed and stretched themselves out on the pavement in front of them. People bought those slim, multicolored, snakes for medicinal purposes. There were vats full of yellow noodles and rows of roasted ducks hanging by their greasy necks, still dripping fat. Of course the frogs were the real surprise; white and disemboweled, they lay spread-eagled on slabs of wood. But on that day I didn’t linger. I was on a mission.

  I quickly purchased a very small piece of meat, some vegetables, a bag of tamarind, and a dulang washer’s large, broad-brimmed hat for five cents and made for the jetty, where I bought a handful of shrimp. Mother had a very special recipe for shrimp, and I was certain I knew how to make it. Head bent and totally lost in my own thoughts of a rosy future, I retraced my steps home. In front of me my shadow was very long and eager. I was so intent upon the execution of all my carefully hatched plans that I jumped when another shadow joined mine. I looked around and found the face that had stared so curiously from the open window of Old Soong’s house, smiling a shy, uncertain smile. Two long black plaits ending in childish pink bows hung on either side of her face. Why, she was only as old as I was. A pair of jet-black eyes sparkled in her round face.

  Mui Tsai (Little Sister) in reality, I later found out, was a pitiful domestic slave. I smiled back tentatively. I had found a friend, but it was to be the beginning of a lost friendship. If I had known then what I know now, I would have treasured her more. She was the only true friend I ever made. She tried to communicate with me in Malay, but the language was still an unfamiliar mixture of sounds to me, and we only managed a series of hand gestures. I decided to ask Ayah to teach me to speak proper Malay. We parted company at the gates of her house. She hurried indoors with her basket heavy with market produce.

  As soon as I got home, I hunted around in the kitchen and found a very long, rusty old knife that in its heyday had probably been used to crack coconuts. Then I donned the petticoat that one wears inside the sari. On top of that I wore an old frayed shirt that belonged to my husband. The shirtsleeves came over my hands, and I looked at the overlap with satisfaction. Then I placed a huge man’s handkerchief over my head and tied it under my chin. I popped my new dulang-washer hat on top of my head and, satisfied that I was completely protected from the cruel sun, opened the green back door and began to clear aw
ay the weeds, long grasses, and nasty brambles that cut my hands and made them bleed. Stinging plants grew abundantly in every square yard, but I was absolutely determined. Then, I didn’t know how deeply buried were the hearts of unwanted vegetation. For years we battled until the day I returned the land to them, but that day I stopped, curving knife in hand, believing the hard earth had been tamed, ready for planting.

  When finally I came in, sweat dripped off me and ran down my body in rivulets. My back ached horribly, and muscles in innocent places screamed with pain, but I felt pleasure, real pleasure at a job well done. After a cold shower I soothed my swollen hands with sesame seed oil. Then I began to cook, following Mother’s precise instructions carefully. I marinated the meat in spices and left the potent mixture to gently simmer in a heavy closed pot for the next few hours. While it simmered, I cleaned and pounded the shrimp. Then I grated fresh coconut for a special sambal of chilies and onions. I cooked eggplant in a little water that had turmeric and salt in it, and when it became soft, I crushed it into a chunky paste, adding coconut milk, and let it come to the boil. I sliced potatoes and fried them with a little curry powder. The onions and tomatoes I chopped and mixed with fresh yogurt. A meal fit for a king nearly ready, I set about cleaning the house. I was feeling quite pleased with all the lovely aromas coming from the kitchen when I found pieces of a ripped letter inside Ayah’s tobacco tin. Stupidly I stared at the bits of neat handwriting. I know I shouldn’t have, but I couldn’t help myself. I scooped up the pieces and, laying the fragments of blue handwriting flat on the bed, read the letter that had arrived for my husband yesterday.

  Dear Ayah,

  The village is poorer than ever, but I can never hope to leave and prosper as you have done. This impoverished land is where the funeral pyre for my old bones shall light the skies for a short while. But the past few weeks have been a joyful godsend for me for I have learned to love your two children like my very own flesh and blood. At least now I will not die alone.