The Rice Mother (44 page)

Often Granddad and I sat quietly on the veranda, watching the evening sun turn red in the sky to settle for the night. I read the Upanishads aloud for him. Once he fell asleep in his reclining chair. When I woke him up, he looked startled for a moment, squinted in confusion, and called me Mohini.

“No, it’s me, Dimple, Granddad,” I said, and he looked disappointed. I thought then that maybe he didn’t love me after all. Maybe he only loved me because I looked a little like her.

The rest of the holiday always flew by, the sun setting faster and faster, bringing the holiday’s end nearer and nearer. On the last night I always cried myself to sleep. The thought of going back to school, to Nash and Bella’s jealousy and to Mother’s fury, was almost too much to bear. She was always angriest when I returned from Grandma’s.

While we were growing, Mother and Father were the most unpredictable element in our lives. They were like gunpowder and a match, looking only for a flint or a rough surface so they could legitimately explode in a spectacular display of fireworks. In their time they found many flints and rough surfaces. Grandma said they were enemies from a past life, tied together by their sins, like two cannibals who feed on each other to live. They could have a conversation about the nuns in Andalusia, or how the breakfast egg should be cooked, that could end with a black eye and a set of broken crockery.

“And what are you doing, spying on us?” she would turn to me and scream hysterically.

“I’ve got a meeting in an hour—why don’t I leave you at Amu’s house, hmmm?” Papa would suggest, his handsome face sad.

Dear, darling Amu. I can’t remember a time when we didn’t have Amu, when I haven’t gone outside in the mornings and seen her sitting on a low stool surrounded by plastic pails, scrubbing and scrunching our dirty clothes. Mother could never do housework because of her arthritis, so she hired Amu to wash, mop, and wipe. She was there every morning, squatting outside with our pails of dirty clothes when we awakened. When she looked up and saw me, her small, triangular face would light up.

“Mind the water,” she would say.

And I would carefully arrange my dress around my knees and sit on the kitchen steps, watching her.

“Amu,” I would complain peevishly, “I caught Nash trying to rip out the pages of the book Uncle Sevenese sent yesterday.”

“Oh, dear, oh, dear,” she would say, clicking her red tongue. And then instead of sympathizing with me, she would launch into a long convoluted tale about her brother’s spiteful wife and her sisters, or she would produce a long-lost evil cousin out to swindle Amu’s poor unsuspecting parents, tales so full of intrigue and horrible people that I soon forgot my own petty troubles.

There were good times too. So exquisite you knew they could never last. Times when the entire family celebrated one of Papa’s deals with a big Chinese meal in one of the better hotels, eating abalone and lobster. When Mother was in such a good mood that I would wake up in the night and hear her singing to Papa. In those intoxicated days it seemed she was consumed by her love for Papa, burning so brightly I was scared to touch her glowing face. Then it seems she was even jealous of the Malay dancers on TV that Papa glanced at. But the money was soon gone, and they hastily returned to their ritual fighting once more, as if I had dreamed the happy lapse.

Once Mother took Bella with her to beg a loan from an old friend. Bella said he pushed an envelope of money very slowly along the table with his middle finger, all the time staring at Mother intensely.

“Next time come without the child,” he called after their departing backs. The financial situation became so dire that Amu had to bring rice and curry from her house for us. I remember tears running down Mother’s cheeks as she ate a piece of curried egg. She didn’t save any for Papa. When he came home, there was no food.

Three days later Mother went to see her friend again. She didn’t take Bella with her. She came home with a brand-new pair of gold-and-brown shoes for herself, a large grocery bag full of food, and a pair of strangely glittering eyes. When Papa returned, they fought viciously, and Mother shredded her new shoes in a fit, hurled herself on the bed, and howled like a wolf. They did not speak again until the rainy weather arrived, and Mother couldn’t do anything but sit with her feet up. Her knees troubled her, but her hands were so stiff and painful with arthritis, she could hardly open a jam jar. Then I thought Papa must love her, for he cleaned her every time she went to the toilet.

One day I came home from school, and Papa told me Granddad had fallen off his bicycle. By the time I was able to see him, he was so thin his hands were like long pieces of bone covered with skin. He cried when he saw me that time. I knew then that he was dying. A shriveled box full of history, stories so precious I knew I must save them all on paper or perhaps on tape. I did not trust my memory. One day my daughter’s daughter must know them. On my next trip back to Grandma’s I found a boxed tape recorder waiting for me. “Make your dream trail,” Grandma said. And that is what I did.

After I had read the Upanishads to Granddad, I switched on my machine and let him talk. He spoke sadly but beautifully. Behind me, where his eyes focused, I turned around and saw his Nefertiti. More beautiful than anything I could have imagined.

Every day Grandma fed him a small, very special medicinal black chicken that she cooked in herbs for him. It was very expensive to buy, but Grandma planned to give Granddad a chicken a day until he was better. She cooked a chicken a day for nearly a year. Granddad died on November 11, 1975, leaving in my care his voice. All the grandchildren stood around his shrunken body, carrying lighted torches. Grandma did not cry. Mother came for the funeral too. She asked Papa whether there would be a reading of a will. I saw Papa slap her and walk out of the room. “No, of course there won’t be. The spider has it all, hasn’t she?” she screamed after him.

When I was nineteen years old, a man dashed out of MINB bank’s elevator and told me the craziest thing ever. He joked that he had looked out of the eye of a telescope and fallen in love with me, but his eyes seemed as surprised as I was. I thought he was a madman in an expensive suit, but I let him buy me an ice cream.

“Call me Luke,” he said, with a lopsided smile. He looked attractive then, terribly sophisticated and out of my league. In the basement food court I listened to him as I ate my strawberry ice cream and wondered how to eat the banana in the bowl with him watching me so closely. In the end I didn’t. It was too embarrassing. Leaving it was embarrassing too, but not as embarrassing as eating it in front of his opaque eyes. They were strange eyes. That day they were filled with a wonderful light and questions. Thousands of questions.

Where do you live? What do you do? How old are you? What’s your name? Who are you?

“Dimple.” He tried it experimentally on his tongue, and then he told me that the real beauty of a snake is not that its poison can kill a man in seconds but that, even armless and legless, it has buried terror of its species deep into mankind. So deep in our genes that we cannot get to it and are born to fear them. Instinctively.

For one second I was terrified. Instinctively.

Something inside me went cold. Like a dollop of strawberry ice cream. God whispered a warning, but Luke smiled, and he has such a beautiful smile, it transforms his face. I forgot the warning. I forgot that his eyes when he spoke had been cold and opaque. Like a snake’s.

“You, bright eyes, are keeping a table full of important people waiting,” he said with his charming smile.

I blinked. I thought men only said things like that to Bella’s breasts. His ice cream melted in its glass bowl. Suddenly bold, I stared back. He wore no jewelry. His teeth were straight and his cheekbones sharp. He looked at me with an extraordinary intensity. It held every line in his face together. Yes, I was definitely drawn. It is human nature to want the dark side of the moon. I knew that he was my destiny. He meant to have me. If you stay, his eyes said, I will pour you into myself until you are no more. And yet I did not run away. Perhaps for the same reason the skylark sings while it soars, dips, and dives as it is pursued by the talons of a hungry merlin. Perhaps I have always wanted to be in somebody else’s skin.

I agreed to phone him. I didn’t think Papa would approve, so I did not give him my number.

“Call me,” he ordered softly as he walked away, and I saw the footprints he had left behind in the golden sands of my dreams and in my heart. I was so caught up with my own thoughts that I did not even see the blue car that followed me home until I was standing before our gate.

Two days later I stood in the lobby of Kota Raya shopping center and called his office. Earlier the card with his direct number on it had fallen into a drain while I was trying to pay for a glass of soya bean juice. The card floated, white and pristine, in the murky green water for a moment before sailing away underneath the loose concrete drain coverings. A snooty receptionist asked me which company I was from.

“It’s personal,” I said.

There was an audible pause. “I’ll put you through to his secretary,” she said, sounding so bored that it made me fidget uncertainly with the coins in my pocket. His secretary when she came on the line was cool. She made me regret calling. “Yes, can I help?”

“May I speak to Luke, please?” I asked hesitantly.

She told me he was in a meeting and could not be disturbed, and so smoothly suggested I leave a message that I suspected she had done it millions of times before. Doubts that Luke would even remember me began to creep in. I imagined him a millionaire playboy, hundreds of girls bugging him at the office. Maybe I had dreamed everything. I didn’t even have his phone number.

“Er, actually he can’t call me. Maybe I’ll try later,” I babbled, embarrassed and with no intention of ever calling back. I felt young and stupid. Whatever must I have been thinking of?

“Wait a minute. What is your name?” the cool voice demanded.

“Dimple,” I whispered miserably.

“Oh.” The voice sounded undecided for a moment. “Hold on, please. He is in a very important meeting, but I’ll check if he will take the call.” The line went quiet, and I put another ten cents into the money slot, my poor stomach in knots. Just getting through to him had so unnerved me I was almost trembling.

“Hello,” Luke said abruptly.

“Hi,” I replied shyly.

He began to laugh. “Why didn’t you call me on my direct line?”

“Your business card fell into the drain,” I said, reassured by the sound of his laughter. I knew then that it was going to be okay.

“Thank you for calling,” he said softly. “Thank God I mentioned your name to Maria. Would you like to meet for dinner?”

“I can’t really go out at night—you know, my mom, my dad . . .”

“Well, tea, lunch, brunch, breakfast, whatever?”

“Mmm . . . maybe I can do dinner on Friday, but I can’t stay out past nine o’clock.”

“Fine. What time do you want to be picked up?”

“Six o’clock outside Toni’s hairdressers in Bangsar.”

“Done. See you at six, Friday, but will you call again before that just to speak to me? This time use my direct line.”

“Okay,” I agreed. He gave me his number, and then he had to go back to his important meeting, but by then I was happy again. He really did want to see me, and I really did want to see him.

I got ready for my first date with Luke with a thumping heart.

“What shall I wear?” I had asked.

“Jeans,” he had said emphatically. “I’m taking you to have the best satay you have ever tasted.”

“Okay,” I agreed gladly. His voice on the phone did strange things to my heart. I felt helpless and gauche in his worldly presence. Jeans would even out the score a little, I hoped.

I didn’t let him pick me up from home. He was not the right color. Mother would have a fit to think I was going out with a man who was not Ceylonese. It was the main criterion. I wore a white shirt and jeans, caught my hair in a clip, and wore too much makeup. Then I looked into the mirror and, utterly disgusted, took all the makeup off and started again. A touch of mascara, dark brown eye-liner on the top lid, and pale pink on my lips. I slid the clip off my hair and shook it loose, still dissatisfied with my appearance and feeling fat in my blue jeans. He would look at me and wonder why he had ever thought I was attractive.

After much to-ing and fro-ing I left the house wearing stretch black jeans, too much makeup, and a clip in my hair. I was early. As I waited nervously, a group of young boys stopped to chat and flirt. They were so persistent, I began to think the stretch jeans and the makeup were a bad idea. I turned away from them and began to surreptitiously dab away at the lipstick and the blusher. They milled about in a group behind me and tried to tease me into conversation. When I saw Luke’s car, I practically ran into it. He looked at me carefully.

“You all right?” he asked, eyeing the smudged lipstick.

I nodded quickly, feeling like a fool. His gaze moved to the youths, who were already moving on good-naturedly. How to compete with such a car? I pulled the visor mirror down, and I looked a mess. Self-consciously I repaired my face. It had all gone wrong. I felt almost tearful, thinking I had ruined everything.

At the traffic lights he took my chin in his firm hand and turned me to face him. “You look gorgeous,” he said. I stared into those dark eyes. He was not a beautiful man, but there was something compelling about him. In a room full of people he would shine like a light. It felt as if I had known him for a thousand years. As if we had spent a thousand lives together. We didn’t speak anymore. He didn’t want to know about my family, my friends, my likes, or my dislikes. All of it was unimportant. He put a tape into the cassette player. A woman sang a sad song in Japanese. I watched his hands. They had felt right on my chin. Strong and familiar.