The Rice Mother (35 page)

“He’s a bit dark, isn’t he?” I ventured carefully.

“Dark?” she queried. And that solitary word she cast as a net of disapproval. Struggle was pointless. “Of course he’s dark. He’s a surveyor. He spends all his time in the jungles.”

And so the matter was decided. I was to marry Ganesh with the burning eyes.

Mother and brother began to make plans. Lakshmnan fell upon the brilliant idea of a double wedding. “Eliminate an unnecessary expense,” he said, talking Mother’s language. Finally they agreed. Now he could seek his bride.

When news reached my prospective in-laws that Lakshmnan was seeking a bride, they immediately sent word. What luck, they said, they had a daughter of marriageable age! They proposed an intermarriage. Although Mother was not keen on the idea, Lakshmnan insisted that they at least look at the girl. So Father, Mother, and Lakshmnan traveled all the way up to Klang to see the prospective bride. Mother said her heart literally dropped when they arrived at the address. A tiny house in a slum area, for some peculiar reason it had been draped with chicken wire so it resembled a giant chicken coop. She believed in the future potential of the surveyor, but the prospect of giving away her precious son to people who lived in that sort of house was impossible for her to digest. In fact, she wanted to turn around and leave straightaway, but Lakshmnan argued reasonably enough that they had after all come this far. “What is the harm?” he asked—words he lived to regret.

When the bride’s mother came out to greet them, Mother saw her look past them toward the Wolesley before turning to assess my brother. Mother looked at Lakshmnan and saw what the bride’s mother saw. If not for his thick glasses he would have been perfect. With broad shoulders and a handsome mustache, he was quite a catch. Until one chanced upon his gambling habits, of course. They entered the chicken coop.

The furniture was poor. The chair under Mother rocked unsteadily. Father looked uncomfortable in his chair. A girl walked into the room with a tray of tea. Mother swallowed her surprise. A match-maker friend had given the impression that the girl was good-looking. In fact, the girl was tall and angular, with broad shoulders and a disproportionately large chest. Her face was not soft and kind but fierce, with her mother’s high cheekbones, a large mouth, and eyes that were daring and sensuous. They boldly assessed Lakshmnan before turning to rest on his parents, softening into a shy maidenly gaze.

Oh, but Mother was not buying. The girl was a madam. Mother saw instantly that she was trouble. Big trouble. It was in every line of her face.

Mother sipped her tea, and into her conversation she slipped the fact that her son was a terrible, actually a compulsive, gambler. She told them that she didn’t want the responsibility of hiding that fact and ruining both marriages, and frankly told them that she did not believe in intermarriages.

After Mother dropped her bombshell, there was a moment’s silence, but the bride’s mother had seen the car and the upright beauty in Lakshmnan’s face. Her daughter couldn’t do better. In fact, she probably didn’t believe Mother at all. She must have thought that Mother was lying because she didn’t want to give her son in marriage to their daughter. “Oh, don’t worry about that,” she assured Mother, her sharp eyes flashing. “My husband used to be an appalling gambler. Addicted to horse racing for years, and yet I had a happy life. I went short for nothing. My daughter is a clever girl, and I have confidence in her ability to handle the situation.”

They were pushy, and thick-skinned as well. Mother sat there fuming but unable to leave because she didn’t want to jeopardize my match. She could well understand their eagerness for her son. Their daughter was no beauty; she thought the girl hideous, with rashes that disappeared into the sleeves of her sari blouse and ended God only knew where. Little did she know then that what in her time was angular and unattractive would today be universally considered good-looking—height, good straight shoulders, large breasts, long legs, slim hips, and wonderfully high cheekbones. But she was certainly no soft, round-faced Indian beauty, and sitting there viewing the bride critically, Mother could never have guessed in a million years that waiting quietly inside the bride’s tummy was her favorite grandchild. That one day her son would rush home and announce with tears in his eyes, “Ama, Mohini has come back to us. She has come back as your granddaughter.”

No, she will not marry my son, Mother thought to herself that day.

The parents were shifty, and their lodgings so poor that Mother found it hard to imagine they could have a dowry of ten thousand ringgit sitting in any bank. Besides, if the girl really was a qualified teacher, as her parents claimed, why then was she not working? Either they were lying or the girl was unimaginably lazy. Either way it did not bode well for Mother’s plans and hopes. The girl simply would not do.

Lakshmnan began grinding his teeth in the chicken coop. He had made great plans for the money, and Mother was spoiling everything. In his fevered imagination he had already doubled and tripled his dowry at the gaming tables. For so long now he had nurtured the intoxicating illusion that if he sat at the tables with enough money behind him, his luck would have to change sometime.

They said their good-byes politely.

In the car Lakshmnan announced abruptly, “I want that girl.”

“But you’ve always wanted to marry a fair, working girl,” Mother said, surprised.

“No, I like this girl,” he insisted.

“As you wish,” Mother said. She sat in the car in a cold rage. Father looked out of the window in silence. He enjoyed looking at miles of green rubber trees. It calmed him. It made it easier to ignore the waves of rage coming out of his wife and his eldest son.

That night, my brother Sevenese had a dream. He was sitting on a stretch of barren land. For miles as far as the eye could see was dry, red soil. In the distance a buffalo-driven cart was trundling toward him in a cloud of red dust. Around the buffalo’s neck was a bell that tinkled softly. My brother had heard that sound somewhere before. The driver of the cart wore a long white beard and said, “Tell him the money will be lost in one sitting.” In the cart behind him was a long black coffin. The bell tinkled in a gust of strong wind. Yes, my brother had heard that sound before. “Look,” the old man said, pointing to the coffin, “he never listens to me. Now it is dead. You tell him. The money will be lost in one sitting.” Then he hit the poor buffalo with a long stick, and the cart continued on its journey through the barren landscape.

“Wait!” my brother cried, but the cart moved on in a cloud of dust. Only the memory of the twinkling sound remained, like the little bells Mohini had worn on her ankles. He woke up, and his first thought was, “He must not marry her. The marriage will be unhappy.” Until he had dreamed it, nobody had realized that my brother’s sudden interest in marriage had everything to do with the dowry. But of course, it all made sense. The burning compulsion to marry that unemployed, dark girl with the scary rashes had greed for a mother.

Lakshmnan and Mother looked up from their breakfast. Sevenese felt like a deer in a den of snarling tigers.

“The money will be lost in one sitting,” he told Lakshmnan. There was a dead silence in the room. Lakshmnan stared at Sevenese with a strange shocked expression.

“Don’t marry her. It is a mistake,” Sevenese said. The same thought zigzagged around the room. Once before we had disregarded Sevenese’s warning and had regretted it. Could we afford another mistake? This one could be colossal.

“I heard the bells that Mohini used to wear on her ankles,” Sevenese added.

Shock was replaced by cold, implacable anger. Lakshmnan did not grind his teeth or haul Sevenese up by the collar. “You are all wrong,” he said, so quietly and so out of character that we were far more stunned than if he had ranted and raved. Then he walked out.

Mother sat down immediately to write a letter to the girl’s parents. She explained that on our return she had found the oil lamps on the prayer altar had been extinguished. It was an ill omen, and she had been advised not to proceed further with the match. Sevenese took the letter into town and posted it.

A letter came back, addressed to Lakshmnan. Lakshmnan tore it open and read it in the vegetable garden with his back turned to us. Then he crumpled it in his fist and threw it into a clump of banana trees. He turned around and came back into the house, a preoccupied expression on his face. He went to look for Sevenese. By then Sevenese was already a health inspector with the Malayan Railway, traveling up and down the country to inspect the cleanliness of facilities offered by the company. He was down for the weekend but was in the bedroom packing to leave in the morning.

Lakshmnan stood in the doorway. “Did she actually say I would lose it all in one sitting?” he asked abruptly.

“Yes,” Sevenese said simply.

For perhaps an hour Lakshmnan prowled the house restlessly, deep in thought. Finally, it seemed his turmoil was over. He went to Mother and announced that he would marry Rani or no one. What his thoughts were with regard to the dowry, he told no one. Perhaps he thought he wouldn’t gamble it all away. Perhaps he had big plans of starting a business like his Chinese friends.

As soon as he left that evening to play a game of cricket in the school playing field, Mother rushed out to retrieve the crumpled letter from the banana grove. I think that letter still exists in her wooden chest.

Mother was livid, so angry her hands shook. She had disliked the girl on sight, and she had been right to. The sneaky madam was waving the dowry money like a red rag to a bull. She turned on my father.

“It’s all your fault,” she cried unreasonably. “It was you giving her the idea by talking about Lakshmnan’s good business sense. Why couldn’t you just shut up? You knew that I had brought up Lakshmnan’s gambling habit to put them off.”

Father was silent, as he usually was. In his eyes was dumb acceptance. Didn’t he know that that very look infuriated Mother all the more?

Lakshmnan had his own way. He had his double wedding. It was a horrible day. Mother was in a terrible mood. She refused to wear flowers in her hair and wore a dull gray sari with hardly any patterns on it. She stood to one side, stiff and unhappy. Lakshmnan, too, far from being happy that he had got his own way, was sullen and unsmiling. He seemed impatient to get the ceremony over with. That night Lakshmnan’s new mother-in-law came quietly up to him to delicately confide in him that they didn’t have the ten thousand at that moment, only three. In the softly lit room her inky black eyes shimmered with cunning. The many years of being a compulsive gambler’s wife, of playing hide-and-seek with the fishmonger, the butcher, the baker, the vegetable man, and the coffee seller, had taught her well.

“Obviously we will give you the other seven thousand when we get it. A cousin in financial trouble has borrowed the money. We couldn’t say no. You don’t mind, do you?” Her intonation and diction were flawless. She must have come from a family of good breeding.

Of course Lakshmnan understood. He was not my mother’s son for nothing. The rest he would get in never-never land. She held the bulky envelope out. Take the cash, waive the rest. He was being cheated. He knew it. Blood began to pound into his head. He had married their ugly daughter. He was due ten thousand. All his elaborate plans, of starting a new business, the deals he would cut—they hung in tatters. A justifiable rage was building inside him. “No,” he wanted to say, “take your ugly daughter and come back when you have the full dowry.” But the silken invisible vines that clung inside his being pulled and pressed against his chest. Cold alabaster chips lay waiting, their tongues clicking, whispering, “Take it, take it. Oh, make haste.”

The outrage of being cheated allowed Lakshmnan to rush out of the house and lose all the money in one sitting. His wife, he soon found out, far from being happy with plain rice and water, expected to be able to dry-clean her saris—a notion that made my mother rigid with shock, and even Father choke on his hastily swallowed tea.

M
y mother named me Rani so I would live the luxurious life of a queen, but when I was just a baby, a sorrowing moth landed on my cheek, and though my mother recognized it instantly and brushed it away with a howl of dread, the grieving dust on its downy wings had already settled into my skin. The dust was like a spell on my soul, outwitting happiness and embracing for my poor body the terrible rigors of existence. Even marriage, the one thing that had shone like a polished paradise of true love and everlasting happiness, has been just another disappointment in my life. Look at me, living in a small wooden house, with creditors baying at the door day and night. I have only relived my poor mother’s wretched life.

I curse the day that black widow spider, my mother-in-law, came into our house spinning her silken lies. Like strings of silver they flowed out of her terrible mouth and caught me struggling in their web. The truth is, between them all they forced me to marry Lakshmnan. Before he came into my life, I had doctors, lawyers, engineers, and even a London-trained brain surgeon who came to ask for my hand in marriage, but it was I who hesitated. Spoiled for choice, I managed to find imperfection in all of them. A crooked nose, too short, too skinny, too something. In my dreams I had seen a prince, tall, fair, good-looking, and rich. I thought patience was a virtue. Finally look what I got.