The Rice Mother

  Every day at dusk when the sun had sunk over the shop-houses and the threat of the Japanese soldiers had been laid to rest for the night, Mother let Mohini walk in the back garden. It was my sister’s favorite time of the day. Sunset, when the sky was still tinged with unreal purples and moody mauves just before the mosquitoes got too avaricious on her skin. She walked along Mother’s rows of vegetables and sometimes filled a plate with blossoms for the prayer altar from the jasmine bush at the end of the garden. It was her much cherished walk into the world outside, but this I knew to be the most fearful time of all. For lying flat on his belly in the bushes and trees was Raja, watching me, watching her, watching us. I learned to stand by the back door and worry, watching her in the gloom until she came back in and closed the back door. Sometimes I would even walk beside her, keeping so close to her and peering so worriedly into the bushes that, touched by my concern, she tousled my hair.

  “What’s this?” she asked tenderly as her fingers brushed the deep creases in my forehead.

  But of course I could never explain to her. I knew Mother had plans, big plans for the jewel of our family. A great marriage to a great family. So “this” became my secret shackle. I had fixed it to my own leg, and I had to bear it. “This” was what I knew lay motionless behind the still bushes.

  I wanted to tell her about cobras. Tell her what I knew, what I had seen. Warn her that though they are fascinating creatures, she must fear them, for a cobra recognizes no master. It will dance for you if your song pleases it, and it will drink the milk you leave by its basket every day, but it owes you no allegiance. You must never forget that, ultimately, a cobra never betrays its own nature, and for reasons known only to it, it may turn around any day and sink its poisoned fangs into your flesh. In my child’s head Raja was a big black cobra. I wanted to tell her about Raja. I thought constantly about his eyes glittering coldly in his face. He meant to have her or harm us. I felt certain of that.

  One day, dashing home from school, I found him leaning against the wall of Old Soong’s house, waiting for me. He unwrapped a black cloth package and took out a small red stone. It sparkled in the sunlight. When he put it into the palm of my hand, it was neither light nor cool, it was strangely heavy and as hot as a newly laid chicken egg.

  “I have a present for your sister. Put it under her pillow as a lovely surprise,” he said in that velvety voice that I had learned to hate.

  I threw the strangely hot stone on the sand and ran away as fast as I could. He didn’t follow me. I could feel his burning eyes on my back. When I reached the steps of our home, I turned around, and he was still standing by the red-brick wall watching me. There was no anger on his face. He raised his hand and waved at me. I was full of fear that day. How I longed for the days when he was a brave warrior called Chibindi.

  That evening I saw Mohini bend to pick something up from the grass, something that sparkled in the dark. Petrified, I screamed and pretended to fall. My sister came running. As if in great pain, I asked her to help me into the house. She forgot about the bright, shiny thing on the ground. Later that night I tiptoed out of the house. It was moonless, and I could barely make out the object in the grass. I bent to pick it up, and Raja’s bare feet came into my vision. I straightened slowly, dreading what I would find before me.

  “Give her to me,” he ordered. His voice was hard and emotionless.

  The blood ran cold in my body. “Never,” I said, but to my disgust my voice sounded small and weak.

  “I will have her,” he promised, and turning away, melted into the darkness. I peered anxiously into the inky night, but he was gone like the wind, taking his despair with him.

  That night I dreamed that I was hiding behind some bushes, watching Mohini walking by a river. There were colorful birds singing in the trees, and she was laughing at the antics of some cheeky monkeys with silver-rimmed faces. I saw her drop to her hands and knees on the bank and, holding her heavy hair away from her face with one hand, drink like a small cat. A few feet away was a shape in the water, a pair of terrible watching eyes, unblinking and full of menace. A crocodile. I fear crocodiles. The most frightening thing about them is that you can never tell by looking at their eyes if they are dead or alive. They keep the same blank expression. It makes you wonder if they come into this world through a different door.

  The crocodile pretending to be a harmless log, glided silently toward her until without the slightest warning it intended to snap its powerful jaws over her head. Pull her in with a sickening splash. I wanted to warn her, as I wanted to tell her about the black cobra in the bushes, but I couldn’t remember her name. The monster opened its massive mouth. I ran to the edge of the water screaming, but it had already fitted her head easily between its yellow teeth. In my baggy shorts I stood at the edge of the river, paralyzed with a mixture of horror and disbelief, and stared at the wild thrashing in the river. The brute disappeared into the water, taking her with him. She was no more. The water turned calm. The river had fed. From the bank on the other side Raja’s distorted face screamed out words as he ran into the crocodile-infested water, but he spoke in that dream language that I cannot understand while I am sleeping and cannot hear when I am awake.

  I woke up with a jerk, sweating and so frightened that my heart thumped hard in my chest and my throat was tight and painful. Beside me my brothers slept peacefully. They had not been playing with the devil himself. Disturbed and full of foreboding, I crept up to the girls’ bed to look down at Mohini sleeping. Lightly I ran my fingers along her smooth arm. She was warm.

  Mother’s slightly exasperated voice filled my head. “Once when Mohini was about eight years old, your father and I quarreled, and because we weren’t speaking, he asked her to make him some coffee. I stood in the kitchen and watched her put nine teaspoons of coffee to one teaspoon of sugar. So I stood hidden behind the cupboard and watched. He drank every last drop of that coffee without changing his expression. That is how much your father loves your sister.”

  Regret and shame came upon me. I had betrayed her. Passed on her secrets and made a mess of everything. All my guilt was reserved for my sleeping sister. Raja’s hopeless despair didn’t touch me. I made myself a bed beside her on the floor, determined to guard her with my life. Something horrible was about to happen, but I wouldn’t allow it. I lay absolutely still, gazing at the dark ceiling and listening to my sisters’ breathing. Somewhere far away some animal called, the sound remarkably human. It was a very long time before the rhythmic breathing of all my sisters lulled me back to sleep. My last thought was, I should tell someone. Anyone.

  Lakshmi

  The first thing the Japanese soldiers did when they came to our sleepy neighborhood was to shoot Old Soong’s dogs dead. One moment they were in a frenzy of ferocious barking, and a firecracker later, their huge bodies were still, their red blood seeping quickly onto the black-and-white gravel.

  “Kore, kore,” the soldiers barked, fiercely rattling and banging the locked gates with the butts of their rifles. I watched from behind our curtains with my stomach in knots. Mohini’s hiding place was clever, but I was still petrified that they would find her. Their savagery was beyond comprehension. We had seen the bodies skewered right from the groin through to the mouth, like pigs ready for roasting, lining the streets. And we knew about the execution grounds in Teluk Sisek on the way to the beach where they killed people in pieces. A trembling hand, then a frantically jerking foot, perhaps the rest of a shocked arm, a bleeding leg, and finally the condemned head. We even knew about the wife of the owner of the cold storage shop in town who alone by moonlight went to collect the pieces of her husband so she could give him a proper burial. It was the way of the Japanese. Cruel and barbarous.

  Crouched under the window, my husband, Lakshmnan and I saw Mui Tsai’s timid figure appear at the front door.

  “Kore, kore,” they shouted at her. She ran out to unlock the gates. They pushed them open roughly and eyed her narrowly. That look. I felt her shiv
er from where I stood. She bowed low. They talked aggressively in a loud and ugly language. Carelessly stepping over the dead dogs, they entered Old Soong’s house. They were hungry, very hungry. They roamed the house, consuming whatever they fancied and taking anything small that they could carry on their persons. They knew in a few days they would probably be fighting in the jungles of Java or the poisonous swamps of Sumatra.

  They looked for jewelry, pens, and watches. The master was not at home, but his expensive watches lying by the bedside they strapped onto wrists already lined with watches. They put the point of their long swords in the mistress’s soft belly and pointed at the empty showcases. At first she pretended not to know what they meant, but then they gently nudged the point of the sword a little deeper into her pampered flesh. Sobbing, she screamed to the cook to dig up the jade figurines from under the rosebush. They seemed happy with their find. They pointed at the rosewood box. The servants rushed to open it. The soldiers seemed especially pleased with the ivory chopsticks.

  The strangers wished for sugar. They made signs and guttural noises. The mistress frowned, the servants looked back helplessly. The unshaven, unkempt beings grabbed the terrified cook by the hair, soundly cursed and slapped her. They began overturning all the containers. What extraordinary impatience! Finally pure white grains flooded out of a falling jar. “Aaah, the sugar.” They stopped upending containers.

  They came very close to the mistress. She held her breath. They bore the nauseating stench of unwashed bodies in combat. A foul-ness impossible to forget. They stank like people with no souls. They made their rough signs once more. Ghastly white, she stared at them, but they only desired an open fire in the back garden. They wanted to cook their own food. “Firewood.” The servants rushed to find firewood. The strangers lolled on the ground outside, their guns lying casually beside them, waiting for their outdoor feast to cook while the terrified household stood in a row and watched. The strangers ate like hungry dogs. Then they left.

  We saw them walk toward Minah’s house.

  We saw her open the door of her house, muttering, “Ya Allah, ya Allah,” wearing the loose white, shroudlike prayer costume of her religion. It was not prayer time but a shroud to hide her magnificent curves. Only her frightened face showed, a small, frightened circle. Her five children gathered around her and stared at the men as they searched the poor house. They made a circling motion with their fingers around their wrists and necks. Minah understood. She was prepared. She handed over a handkerchief tied into a knot. Inside was an old chain, an even older ring, and two bangles bent slightly out of shape. They threw it back in her face in disgust. They did not stay long. You see, I have not told you that before they left Old Soong’s house, they threw poor, unloved Mui Tsai on the kitchen table, lined up in an unexpectedly orderly fashion, and used her until they were all satiated.

  At the Chinese man’s house next door, they broke a mirror and carried away three suckling pigs. The two older boys had run out through the back door. They climbed into our backyard and streaked past the open fields, disappearing into the small jungle.

  My heart was in my throat when their hard boots climbed our wooden steps. I felt it flutter with fear. They burst through the door like a hurricane. Why, up close they were tiny and yellow. No higher than my husband’s chest. They stared up into his black, ugly face. What hard, mean eyes they had! Like the elephants trained to make obeisance to the Sultan in the glorious days of the Mughal Empire, we all bowed respectfully, deeply, in unison. They stomped around the house till the floorboards shook. They opened cupboards, lifted the lids of boxes, looked under tables and beds, but they did not find my daughter. In the backyard they snapped the necks of the squawking chickens, and grabbing three or four by the neck in each hand, they pointed to the coconut tree. Lakshmnan ran to climb up the tree. They drank the sweet water and discarded the coconut skull where they stood. On their way out of our neighborhood they pulled Old Soong’s impressive black iron gates out of their hinges and carried them away. The Japanese were greedy for iron in those days. Most houses stood without gates or any fear of thieves, for the Japanese punished the smallest crimes with torture and beheadings. Crime fell to an all-time low. In fact, nobody bothered to lock their doors anymore when they went out during the entire period of the Japanese occupation. No, do not envy us our crime-free lives, because in the end those dogs made us pay in blood. They were arrogant, uncouth, cruel, and unforgivable, and as long as I live I shall hate them with a mother’s wrath. I spit in their ugly faces. My hate is such that I will not forget, even in my next life. I will remember what they have done to my family, and I will curse them again and again so that they will one day taste the bitterness of my pain.

  As soon as they arrived, the Japanese banned the locals from any sort of looting. Two men accused of it were blindfolded with their hands tied behind their backs and brought to the square where the night market was held every Thursday. The soldiers diverted passersby into the square like sheep until a decent number of onlookers had been gathered. The accused men were forced to kneel. A Japanese officer cut off their heads one by one, carefully wiping his blade with a piece of cloth after each execution. He spared not even a glance for the rolling head, its mouth open in a silent scream, spraying blood on the sand, or the truly frightening sight of the severed body jerking on the ground, gushing fountains of blood from the neck, its legs kicking spasmodically. The officer only looked at the hushed crowd of shocked onlookers and nodded his own head in silent warning.

  Their message quickly established, the Japanese indulged themselves on a grand scale. They not only looted but also desecrated the homes they visited. They never asked, they never compensated, they simply reached out and took whatever they wanted. Land, cars, buildings, businesses, bicycles, chickens, crops, food, clothing, medical supplies, daughters, wives, lives.

  At first I didn’t curse them. Their brutality didn’t actually touch me. The heads on the roundabout I learned to ignore very quickly. Their imperialist propaganda did not even rate as a nuisance. Did I care that they had forbidden wearing a necktie in public? I understood war made for horrible atrocities, but I would not let such a foul and ugly race beat me at a game I knew so well. I was arrogant in those days. I knew how to produce food for my children from thin air if necessary. I will survive this too, I told myself confidently. My husband had lost his job as soon as the Japanese regime started, so we lost our entitlement to the precious ration cards. Ration cards meant rice and sugar. We were considered useless people, people the regime would rather not waste their limited resources on. Suddenly I had eight mouths to feed and no income. I had no time to moan and groan or to appreciate the pitying looks from the ladies in the temple whose husbands had managed to retain their jobs.

  I sold some jewelry and bought the cows. They made my life hard, but we would never have survived without them. Every morning, come rain or shine, while it was still dark I sat on a low stool in the cool air and milked them. The coffee stalls and shops paid us in Japanese currency bills with pictures of coconut and banana trees on them. They passed nervously from hand to hand, for these banana notes, as they were called, had no serial numbers and were worth less and less every month. Tobacco was worth more than Japanese currency. Some people converted their money into land and jewelry as soon as possible, but as I had barely enough to keep the children going, it was hardly an issue in our household.

  Without the ration cards, rice could be purchased only on the black market at exorbitant prices. Rice had become rare and precious. Vendors took to moistening rice to increase its weight and return a better price. People hoarded it by the grain and kept it for special occasions, birthdays or religious celebrations. We had tapioca most of the week. Those were the days when tapioca ruled. You saw it everywhere—baked into bread, processed into noodles. Even the leaves could be boiled and eaten. The daily job of shredding, boiling, cooking it, saved our lives, but I hated it. Hated it with a vengeance. For years I had tried to pers
uade myself that I really liked it, but I hated its slimy taste. The bread was like rubber. It bounced on the table, and when it was between your teeth, it stretched. The noodles were terrible. But eat it we all did.

  I tried growing whatever I could lay my hands on, even turmeric that for some strange reason bore only shriveled, oddly malformed fruit. Toward the end of the first year of occupation, though, I had made friends with Mrs. Anand. Her husband worked in the Food Control Department, and he managed to smuggle rice from the north of Malaya from the Japanese army rations. I hid our illegal rations of rice in the rafters of our roof. Our cows and my garden shielded us from the severe food shortage that attacked the whole state of Pahang. So severe was it that finally the governor suggested that people eat two meals a day instead of three. Perhaps he didn’t know that people were already consuming only two meals a day, supplemented with snacks of tapioca.

  Anything imported became like gold dust. Before the occupation I had always washed the children’s hair with a special seedpod from India. It came tied in bunches. You soaked the bone-hard dark brown pods before boiling and mashing them. The resulting dark brown mush was the perfect shampoo. It cleaned the hair until it squeaked. I improvised and washed all my children’s hair with ground green beans. During the Japanese time I made my own soap with leaves, tree bark, cinnamon, and flowers. We brushed our teeth with our index finger dipped into finely ground charcoal or occasionally salt. We used the soft branches of neem leaves as toothbrushes. I made my own coconut oil, for the price of a tin of coconut oil had shot up from six ringgit to three hundred and fifteen ringgit by 1945. People were selling ten small eggs for ninety ringgit. But what is that compared to the price of a sarong, which increased from one ringgit and eighty cents to almost a thousand ringgit? I did try to make cloth from pineapple leaves and tree bark, but it was rough and could only be used as sacking material.