The Rice Mother (13 page)

From his thick rubbery lips came mysterious tales about a legendary monster living at the bottom of Lake Cini, with a horned head as big as a tiger’s and a giant undulating body that created waves that could easily overturn a boat. He told his wide-eyed audience that the monster supposedly traveled up the Cini River and into the Pahang River along the route on which we were traveling. The tales were greeted eagerly, but later, when we reached choppy waters that rocked the boat, the children screamed with real fear, convinced that the monster was indeed underneath us and trying to secure a meal.

Once an iridescent orange bird sat on an overhanging branch, looking at its own reflection in the water. We passed a large tree with mighty branches full of small monkeys. The boatman cut the engine. In the sudden silence came an answering silence. The colony of small monkeys the size and the gray-brown color of rats froze into stillness, watching us watching them, their many eyes shining like wet marbles. Then one dropped into the water with a soft splash and began to swim toward us. Others followed with more soft splashes. The water was soon filled with them.

The children were dumb with fascination and secret fear. Would they bite? Would they snatch, scratch? I looked at the boatman worriedly, and he smiled back reassuringly. Obviously he had done this before. He took a small knife out of his pocket and cut a bunch of yellow bananas from his large comb, quickly covering the rest of the bananas with a brown sack. He handed the children a banana each.

First to arrive at the helm of the boat was presumably the leader of the tribe. His wet fur clung to his little body. Big round eyes scanned us quickly and with interest. Tiny black hands flashed out to grab the banana that Lakshmnan held out, peeling it with astonishing agility. The skin he flung into the water, where as it sank, it looked for a moment like a pale yellow flower. The banana vanished into his mouth in three bites, the small mouth chewing quickly. The miniature hand stretched out for more, his clever round eyes never leaving our faces. Mohini held out her banana, and another monkey closer to her grabbed it quickly. More monkeys began to climb aboard the boat. Soon all the bananas were gone. They began to chatter and quarrel among themselves as they lined the helm of the boat, wet and curious. Their sweet faces considered our empty hands greedily. In the leader’s eyes I was sure I saw speculation, as if he knew there was more under the sack. More monkeys were swimming across, in groups of brown. In the water they were silent and fast. Suddenly there seemed to be hundreds of them swimming toward us. And suddenly the harmless furry things took on plaguelike proportions. I was a mother with very small children in the boat, and none of them knew how to swim.

“Let’s go!” I shouted to the boatman.

With neither fear nor hurry he turned on the engine, and all the little creatures fell simultaneously and gracefully into the liver-colored water. We watched them swim back to land. Soon they disappeared, hidden by the green foliage until they reappeared again as brown flowers on the large trees’ outstretched branches.

About a mile after we passed the monkeys, we sat back, amazed. Unexpectedly, the river became an avenue of blooming lianas. Flowering vines draped down to the water’s edge and spread themselves into the dense trees overhanging the river, shamelessly promiscuous, smothering them in bright lilac hues and creating the most amazing tunnel effect, like a magic cave in a dream. And everywhere the most beautiful orange-and-black butterflies with fringed wings flapped and rose in clouds of wondrous color.

At last the journey was over. Kuantan was so silent, it was eerie. War had arrived. Ayah was standing at the doorway. He had his hands in the pockets of his trousers. From his nervous face, I knew that something was wrong.

“What’s the matter?” I asked, disentangling Lalita’s monkeylike grip from around my neck and setting her down on the ground.

“The house has been looted,” he said gloomily.

I walked past him and stepped into our house. Not a single thing remained. Pots, pans, clothes, tables, chairs, money, the children’s beds, with even their old stuffed mattresses, the framed pictures of embroidered flowers that I had sat up nights sewing—everything was gone. Even the worn curtains that I was waiting to replace. All we had left were the things I had taken with me to the wedding—all my jewelry, thank God, four of my best saris, and the children’s best clothes. Our house was bare save for our heavy iron bed and my bench; too troublesome to carry away.

It wasn’t the Japanese soldiers who were responsible. No, they came a little bit later, and they were choosy about what they took. It was coolie workers from over the main road, an Indian settlement of very poor laborers brought over from India to do backbreaking work like laying railway lines and tapping rubber trees. In India they were the untouchables or the very lowest castes, the Christian converts. Protected by our cloak of superiority, we had watched them over the years get drunk, curse and swear, beat their wives on a regular basis, and at least once a year bake a new barefoot little hooligan to run into our clean, safe world. Now they had their revenge. They must have watched our house and noticed that Ayah was out all day, so they helped themselves. My savings were buried in a tin outside, and I rushed out and was relieved to note the ground was undisturbed.

M
emories? Yes, I have memories, but they are vague and far away, like butterflies. Tiny magic pieces of flying color that the curious little boy of time has played with. No one dares tell him, “Don’t touch them, or the dust comes off their wings and they will blur and fly no more.”

I even have memories of peculiar events that I think couldn’t possibly have happened. Perhaps I dreamed it, but in my memory banks is a clear picture of me curled up in Mui Tsai’s lap, suckling her breasts. Tears roll down her sad face and drip onto my hair. Of course no such thing ever happened, but the vividness of the image has often confused me.

The butterfly with the biggest, best wings I call Mother. When I was young, she was a big bright shining light in our house, undoubtedly the strongest influence in all our lives. From the moment I walked into our house from school, I felt her in the air. I smelled her in the food she had cooked, saw her in the windows she had opened, and heard her in the sweet, old-fashioned Tamil songs that she listened to on the radio. Before I was old enough to go to school, I trailed her silently around the house, troubled by the sight of her moving, restless back. As soon as Father left the house in the morning, she fiddled with the largest knob on the radio, making the little red dial on its dull yellow face move. And as it moved, it made spooky, desolate sounds, sawing in half voices it met along the way until she found the right home for the red dial, and happy music and dulcet voices filled the house. Then she began her endless chores for the day.

I can never forget the time when she went away for two days to visit a friend. It was as if she took with her the very essence that made our family. The house stood deserted and empty in the afternoon sun. Coming home from school, I stood at the threshold and knew then what it would feel like if she died suddenly. Like a blow in the stomach under my blue uniform, I realized that in her strong, sure hands were love, laughter, fine clothes, praise, food, money, and the power to make the sun shine brightly into all our lives. But after that terrible thing happened, her powerful will reached out and pulled out not bright skies and sunny days but dark clouds, blue thunder, and angry storms to lash in on us.

The truth is that she stood in the middle like an enormous English oak tree, and from her mighty branches we whirled round and round soundlessly like painted figurines on a ghostly merry-go-round. All of us. Dad, Lakshmnan, Mohini, Sevenese, Jeyan, Lalita, and me. All the decisions big and small were put into a large platter and placed at her feet, and that incredibly quick, clever brain of hers made choices based on what she felt was best for us. And she wanted the very, very best. Nothing else would do.

At fifteen, Mother gave up her life for us, and she took that as the right to live through us. She channeled her furious energy into us, wanting for us what she never had or could be. And there was so much she had never had, so much she couldn’t be. Her barrier was my father. She was often angry with him.

I suppose it was because he seemed satisfied with his dead-end job while all around him his colleagues got promoted and took home more money. She could never forgive him his kind, pardoning heart that refused to recognize human beings as the corrupt, mean, and greedy creatures who unfailingly cheated their fellow beings. He wanted to help every soul that crossed his path.

Once he brought home yet another friend needing to borrow money. They came with signed IOUs, ready to explain to Mother the repayment terms, but she was so sick of the same scenario that she didn’t even bother listening. She took the IOUs from Father’s large hands, and as they watched in openmouthed amazement she tore the carefully signed slips of paper into tiny pieces and threw them up into the air. “My husband’s money is for his children. Whatever money we have is for our children,” she told the gaping man, and with a beaming smile disappeared into the kitchen.

That was the same smile that she presented to our headmaster, Mr. Vellupilai. He didn’t know it, but it hid an almost obsessive streak that wanted the best so desperately that she was willing to sacrifice us all in the process. Our happiness seemed unimportant in the grand scheme of things. Mr. Vellupilai had come to say that Lakshmnan was bright enough to skip Standard Two and move straight into Standard Three if Mother was willing. She watched the mustached man eat her shell-shaped biscuits, nodded politely, and agreed with his suggestion, but as soon as his correct figure had turned into the main road, she shed her skin and became a different beast altogether. Picking me up off the ground by my armpits, she swung me round and round in uncontrollable excitement. Unable to contain herself, she threw me up into the air and caught me, her eyes merry and her lips curved into an inverted, laughing rainbow.

Being better, brighter, and bolder was everything. Failure was a badly trained dog that lived in other people’s houses. And when we did fail, which happened often, she took it as a personal affront. The sad undeniable fact was that all of us put together didn’t quite come up to the ability or the intelligence that sat in one of her little fingers. We were none of us favored with her capacity, a fact that was very quickly apparent to us and eventually also to her. As the years went by she became an inconsolably unhappy woman, and in turn she made us all unhappy.

But first let me tell you about the happy time. Let me tell you about the time before the blue sky broke into two. Before that thing that nobody talks about happened. When people used to admire the wonderful way Mother curled herself over her family and made us all look perfect. It was such a long time ago that I sometimes wonder if it existed at all, but it did. It was before the Japanese occupation, when Lakshmnan used to come home with chocolates wrapped in plain green paper from the British army camp near our house. Today the best Swiss chocolate cannot equal those simple slabs of confection that my brother brought home like prize trophies for Mother to divide equally among us. I took so long savoring the warm smell of my portion that it half melted in my fingers before it ended its life as a smooth paste in my mouth.

“Come here, lad,” the big, burly British soldiers used to call out to Lakshmnan. They tousled his hair affectionately and taught him to speak the kind of English we were never taught at school.

“Bloody fool,” he used to come home and say.

“Bloody pool,” Mother would repeat.

“Noooo, bloody fool.”

“Bloody pool,” Mother said earnestly.

“BLOODY FOOL,” Lakshmnan would say very clearly and very loudly.

“Bloody pool,” Mother would say, and listening quietly in the background, we would begin to hear the irritation creeping into her voice.

“Yes, very good,” my brother would agree.

And those I remember as the happiest times of my childhood. When my mother was happiest. When she used to laugh with her mouth open and her eyes twinkling like bright stars in a night sky. Lakshmnan was my big, handsome brother and still the wonderfully clever apple of my mother’s eye. Those days, everything he did and said brought a smile of pride and joy to her heart.

I remember the mad panic one afternoon when clumps of Lakshmnan’s hair came loose in Mother’s hands as she was oiling it. She swept her hand through his hair, and many more strands clung to her fingers. Bald patches stared defiantly into Mother’s eyes.

“
Aiyoo,
what is this?” she asked in a horrified voice.

Lakshmnan looked at the clumps of hair in confusion. He too was frightened. Was it some terrible disease?

“Am I dying?” he whispered, with the uncanny ability all males have to exaggerate any kind of physical affliction or illness.

Mohini stood with her worried arms crossed in front of her, Jeyan stared mutely, and Lalita sucked her thumb. Mother bombarded him with fast-flying questions. A few short answers later, she found out that he had carried home the sack of
ragi
flour on his head. Mother grew
ragi
in our backyard and harvested the seeds, and Lakshmnan took it to the mill to have it ground. When my brother had gone to pick it up, the flour was still hot. The heat from the sack was what had made his hair fall out in tufts. Once the culprit had been hounded out, peals of relieved laughter flew into the afternoon sun. Mother alternately scolded, laughed, and kissed my brother’s bald spots as he smiled uncertainly, not sure if he had done right or wrong. Then Mother made us all little steamed cakes filled with brown sugar and green beans. We had three cakes instead of two, and Lakshmnan had five instead of three. Those were the sunny afternoons I remember, before my brother became a cruel, sadistic failure in life.