The Rice Mother Read Free

my glance demurely as I had been instructed to do in the presence of benevolent adults and sharp-eyed diamond buyers.
    “Come and sit by me,” Aunty Pani called softly, patting the bench beside her. I noticed that on her forehead was not the red kum kum dot customary for married women but a black dot signifying her unmarried status. I walked carefully toward her lest I should trip in the six yards of beautiful cloth that swirled dangerously around me, humiliate my mother, and amuse this sophisticated stranger.
    “What a pretty girl you are!” she exclaimed in her musical voice.
    Mutely I looked at her from the corner of my eye and felt a strange, inexplicable revulsion. Her skin was unwrinkled, smooth, and carefully powdered, her hair scented with sweet jasmine, and yet in my enchanted kingdom I imagined her a rat-eating snake woman, oozing like thick tar out of trees and gliding into bedrooms like a silent ribbon. All the while, black and hunting, she flicks out a tongue, long, pink, and cold-blooded. What does she know, the snake woman?
    A plump, beringed hand delved into a small beaded handbag and snaked out with a wrapped sweet. Such treats were rare in the village. Not all snake women were poisonous, I decided. She held the morsel out to me. It was a test. I didn’t fail my watching mother. I didn’t snatch. Only when Mother smiled and nodded did I reach out for the precious offering. Our hands touched briefly. Hers were cold and wet. Our glances met and held. She hastily looked away. I had outstared the snake. I was sent back to my room. Once the door had closed behind me, I unwrapped the sweet and ate the snake woman’s bribe. It was delicious.
    The stranger didn’t stay long, and soon Mother came into my room. She helped me with the complicated task of getting out of the long swathes of material, folding them, and putting them away carefully.
    “Lakshmi, I have accepted a marriage proposal for you,” she said to the folded sari. “A very good proposal. He is of a better caste than we are. Also he lives in that rich land called Malaya.”
    I was stunned. I stared at her in disbelief. A marriage proposal that would take me away from my mother? That land of the bird’s-nest thieves, so many thousands of miles away. Tears welled up in my eyes. I had never been parted from my mother.
    Never.
    Never. Never.
    I ran to her, pulled her face down to mine, pressed my lips against her forehead, and cried desperately, “Why can’t I just marry someone who lives in Sangra?”
    Her beautiful eyes were wet. Like a pelican that claws at its own breast to feed its young.
    “You are a very lucky girl. You will travel with your husband to a land where there is money to be found in the streets. Aunty Pani says that your husband-to-be is very wealthy, and you will live like a queen, just like your grandma did. You won’t have to live like me. He is neither a drunkard nor a gambler like your father.”
    “How could you bear to send me away?” I breathed, betrayed.
    There was aching love and pain behind her eyes. Life had yet to teach me that a child’s love can never equal a mother’s pain. It is deep and raw, but without it a mother is incomplete.
    “I will be so alone without you,” I wailed.
    “No, you won’t, because your new husband is a widower, and he has two children, aged nine and ten. So you will have much to keep you busy and plenty of companionship.”
    I frowned uncertainly. His children were almost my age. “How old is he?”
    “He’s thirty-seven years old,” Mother said briskly, turning me around to release the last hook on my blouse.
    I wriggled around to face her. “But Ama, that’s even older than you!”
    “That may be, but he will be a good husband for you. Aunty Pani says he owns not one but a few gold watches. He has had plenty of time to amass a huge fortune and is so rich he does not even require a dowry. He is her cousin, so she should know. I made a terrible mistake, and I have