To buy food for my children, I pawned my new two-thousand-ringgit necklace for a measly three hundred and ninety ringgit. I can remember the eyes of the Chinese man behind the iron bars lighting up when I nudged my necklace over the barrier toward him. I remember him pretending to study it reluctantly under a cracked magnifying glass. Six months passed, but I didn’t have the money to redeem my necklace. Lakshmnan took the pawn ticket to the spider to see if she wanted to redeem it and keep it until we could afford to buy it back from her, but the spiteful creature said, “No, I want nothing to do with your wasteful ways.” And my beautiful necklace was thus gone to the Chinese man with the unholy light in his eyes. Lakshmnan and I began to argue badly. How we fought! We could come to blows over the way the egg had been cooked that morning. Very quickly we learned the muffled music that flesh on flesh makes. I stopped cooking. Most of the time I just had a take-out for my children and me, and I think I heard him cook some lentil curry and make a few chapatis for himself when he returned in the evening. He ate by himself downstairs. By the time he came upstairs, I was already in bed. To irritate me, he used to hold his mother up as a shining example: “She has never had a take-out in her entire life.” There was less and less money for me. Food was so expensive, and there was nobody left to borrow from anymore.
Then suddenly when Nash was nine years old, his father cut another deal. He came home with nine thousand ringgit. That night we started talking again. And that is when I said, “Enough is enough. It’s time we all moved to the big city. Try our luck in Kuala Lumpur.” I was sick and tired of living in a backwater small town where everybody knew everybody else’s business. I had no friends left in Kuantan anyway. Even the neighbors were giving me the cold shoulder. I was glad to leave. The only person I could bear was my father-in-law. He never stopped being nice to me. When I was really desperate, I used to visit him at his workplace, and he would slip me a few dollars for the children’s food. When all our belongings were on the truck, I turned to look at the house once more. And I thought, God, how much I hate you.
Lakshmi
Aah, you want to know about the flying durian skin. Sit down beside me on the bed, and we will travel back into the murky past together. It was during that beastly time when Lakshmnan’s gambling habit had turned life into hell on earth for all us.
“Ama,” Anna called out to me.
I ignored her call. I had seen her arrive with the durians. I had just had an argument with Ayah because I had seen him slipping money into Lakshmnan’s hands, making me look like a monster and giving our son the impression that gambling was okay. I was hard on my children because I love them and wanted what was best for them. If it was an easier life I wanted, I too could have slipped him a few notes now and again as a peace offering, but I wanted to change Lakshmnan for the better. I wanted him to kick the habit, and I deeply resented his father’s weak stance.
“Ama!” Both Anna and Lalita were calling to me now. I snorted and ignored their calls. Footsteps approached my bed. I turned on my side and stared resolutely out of the window at the deserted neighborhood. It was too hot outside. Everybody was indoors fanning themselves. I felt Anna lean against the bedpost.
“Ama, I’ve brought you durians,” she breathed softly. In her early twenties, Anna was not the raving beauty Mohini had been, but she made that intriguing Malay expression “tahan tengok” come alive. The longer you looked, the more you found to appreciate and enjoy. That day, the profile she saw was stiff and inflexible. I heard the slight fear in her voice and was somewhat mollified by it. Also, I could smell the durians. My favorite fruit. If she had waited one second longer, I would have turned my head and smiled, but instead I heard her turn and leave. I was disappointed and hurt that she hadn’t insisted, hadn’t tried harder to persuade me. They will bring it on a plate, and that is when I will accept the offering, I thought to myself. I heard her footsteps head toward the veranda.
“Papa,” I heard her call her father. Her voice was noticeably happier and lighter.
No matter what I did or what sacrifices I suffered for my children, they always treated their father with a special regard and gentleness. Surely it was me who deserved the credit for everything that they were! The joy in her voice was especially irritating to me that day. They moved to the kitchen, laughing and happy. Without me. I could imagine the scene. Newspapers spread on the floor and the whole exciting ritual of opening the spitefully sharp fruits, holding onto each one with the help of a thick pad of rags and striking it with a large knife. The dull crack and the anticipation . . . How soft the flesh? How creamy the fruit? How good the buy?
It must have been a good fruit, for I heard a low murmur of approval. Someone laughed. Easy conversation flowed. I waited for a while, but no one came bearing my share on a plate. Had they simply forgotten that I loved this fruit, that I even existed? Listening to their relaxed chatter, new, more deadly hostility filled my stomach. I shot out of bed. My chest was heaving with anger. I never know where the anger comes from, but when it appears, it blots out everything. I forget reason, sanity, everything. It is an intolerable force inside me, and I simply want to transfer it. Get rid of it. Panting with rage, I rushed into the kitchen. The happy tableau turned their faces, mouths filled with creamy messes, and stared at me almost in horror as if I was an intruder. Perhaps I looked to them like a monster. I was so furious, my vision blurred. I didn’t think. Something burning hot and ugly rushed up from my stomach and exploded at the base of my skull. Black. The world became black. The monster inside took over. Picking up a discarded durian skin full of vicious thorns, I slammed it straight at Anna. Thank God she ducked. It flew whizzing over her head like a cream-and-green bullet full of hard thorns and crashed into the kitchen wall. And there it stayed, embedded in the wall.
We stared at each other, she with incredible shock and I, the monster now gone, with confusion. Nobody moved. Nobody said a word when I turned away and walked back to bed. There were no words for the emotions that came into my heart. Nobody came to hold me or talk to me. The house just became silent. Then I heard them moving about, cleaning, opening doors, a broom sweeping the floor, durian skins being dropped into the dustbin, water flowing from the tap, and the rustle of newspapers from the veranda. Nobody came to see the dejected old woman with the hunched shoulders and broken heart.
I hadn’t meant it. I loved my daughter. Again and again I saw the durian skin whizzing inexorably through the air, heading for her shocked face. I could have killed her or certainly disfigured her for life if she hadn’t ducked. I felt tired and drained. I could hardly bear myself. I cried for the woman that I was. I cried that I had not the courage to make the first move, and I cried for my crippling inability to put my arms around my own daughter and say, “Anna my life, I am so sorry. Deeply, deeply sorry.” Instead I could only wait. If only someone had come in to talk to me, I would have apologized. Said I was so very sorry. But no one came, and nobody ever spoke about the incident again. Isn’t it funny that after all these years, no one has ever mentioned it to me even in passing?
Anna got married and left with her husband, and my new daughter-in-law Rani came to live with us. I had not been wrong about her. She was a madam. In every way she could, she wanted to show us that she was “city folk,” impressed by nothing and blasé about everything. Far from the humble ways of a family that lived in a larger version of a chicken coop, she surprised us with expectations and behavior more suited to the spoiled daughter of an extremely wealthy family or even minor royalty. Expensive saris were carelessly left bunched and hanging on the washing line outside for a good few days before being sent to the dry cleaners. When she did it the first time we were shocked, as she had intended us to be. Beautiful saris are precious heirlooms that are handed down from mother to daughter. I still have the saris that my mother gave me, carefully folded in lining paper and stored away in my wooden chest.
Lalita asked, “Shall I bring it in? Take it down from the clothesline?”
&nbs
p; “No,” I said. “Let’s see what she does.” By the second day I could see that all the areas exposed to the direct afternoon sun had begun to fade. Even on the third day she did nothing. The exposed parts were turning powdery red. The deep red sari was already ruined forever.
“Mother-in-law, do you know a good dry cleaner somewhere around this area?” Rani asked doubtfully on the fourth day.
It was only then I understood that a beautiful sari had been unnecessarily ruined so she could appear sophisticated in our eyes. She had a good brain inside her head and a clever tongue, but she was lazy. Lazy to an unexpected level. All she wanted to do was boast about the doctors, the lawyers, the businessmen, and the brain surgeons who had come to ask for her hand in marriage. I didn’t want to ruin our relationship at that time by asking her what had made her choose a gambling teacher instead. I just pretended I had never seen that letter she had sent to Lakshmnan, begging him to marry her. Once she offered to cut vegetables. Horrified, I watched her washing sliced onions and grapple with potatoes as if they were alive in her hands.
At ten o’clock she locked her door, to reappear at lunchtime. After lunch she returned to her room to sleep until her husband came home. It was the most shocking thing I had ever seen. Never in my life had I encountered such sloth. When she became pregnant with Nash, she refused even to enter the kitchen, claiming the smell of food made her feel ill. She tied a cloth around her nose and sat chatting in English with Ayah in the living room or the veranda. She liked him because he was always slipping her money on the sly. She remained in bed, and her food had to be taken to her in her bedroom. In the evening she wanted to go to the movies or to have dinner out. Is it any wonder that no amount of money was ever enough for her? Money ran through the gaps between her fingers like fine sand. She is the only person I know who once asked someone who was going on holiday to California to buy her two ready-made saris from a boutique in Bel Air. It is an extravagance that is still gossiped about when her name is mentioned.
The years of milking cows in the cold early-morning hours had taken their toll on me, and my asthma was quite severe by then. In the night, when I couldn’t sleep with it, I heard her whispering fiercely to Lakshmnan. Instigating. Like matches to tinder.
Then one morning Lakshmnan came out of their room and said to me, “Since I didn’t get all my dowry money, I think it’s only fair that you give me some. After all, you have a lot in the bank that you don’t need, and it was mostly through my efforts that you managed to save that much.” The moment the words left his mouth, I knew them to be hers. She wanted my money. The wasteful madam wanted me to finance her foray into the high life. She was staying in my home, eating my food, and poisoning my son against me late into the night. I was livid but even if it killed me, I refused to fight with my son because of her. I knew she stood behind the door of her room, listening to her poison work.
“What do you want the money for?” I asked calmly.
“I want to start a business. There are deals going that I would like to invest in.”
“I see. Even though the dowry should be given by the wife’s family, as I have given to Anna, I am prepared to help you—but first you must show me that you and your wife are capable of saving and can be trusted with a large amount of money. Since you and your wife live here paying for nothing, show me that you are able to save a sizable amount of your wages for two months, and I shall be glad to give you the money then.”
“No!” he shouted. “Give me the money now. I need it now, not in two months’ time. The deals will all be gone by then.”
“In two months there will be other deals. There will always be deals.”
“It is my money. I helped in its accumulation, and I want it now.”
“No, it is my money at the moment, but I have no intention of using it and can’t take it up with me. It is all for my children, and I am happy for you to have the lion’s share, but only when you show me that you can be trusted with it. That is not so unreasonable, is it?”
A rush of anger filled his face. He made a strangled sound in his throat and lunged blindly toward me in frustration. I saw his face, black and twisted, charge at me. He rammed me hard into the wall. I banged my head and hurt my back with the impact of his shove. With my back to the wall, I stared at him in disbelief. I could hear Lalita crying useless tears in the background. He had raised his hand to the woman who had given birth to him. I had taught him this. I had created this monster, but it was my darling daughter-in-law who had breathed life into it. I cannot explain the grief in my heart. He stared back at me, dumbfounded and horrified by what he had done. My son had become my enemy. He dashed out of the house, and she stayed in her room.
When I looked into the mirror that day I saw a sad old woman. I did not recognize her. Like me, she wore a plain white blouse made of cheap cotton material and a faded old sarong. Her neck and hands were bare of jewelry. Her hair was already gray and pinned into a simple bun at the back of her head. She looked so old. Who would believe she was only forty? She stared at me with heavy, pain-filled eyes. As I watched her, her deaf mouth opened, but no sound came out of the black hole in her face. I felt sorry for her because I knew the black hole couldn’t express her unimaginable loss, even though every cell in her body screamed out with it. For a long time I stared at that defeated stranger standing in my clothes before I turned away. When I reached the doorway and looked back, she too was gone.
They left the house two days later. Moved to a one-bedroom split-level house near the market. Rani didn’t even bother to say good-bye, and I did not see her again till Nash was born. Ayah, Lalita, and I went to see her at the hospital. The baby was dark like her but with big, round eyes and bursting with health. She had named him Nash. She was very proud of him, and not too happy when I tried to carry him. I brought him the usual gold rings, bangles, and anklets that one gives to a grandchild. I put them all on his little body with my own hands, and she took them all off and placed them in the pawnshop as soon as she left the hospital.
Then Dimple was born, and Lakshmnan came running to the house. “Mohini has come back as your granddaughter,” he babbled foolishly. Poor boy. He has never recovered. And yet in the hospital I stood and stared, for the child did look remarkably like my lost Mohini. I picked her up, and suddenly the years fell away. I thought I was holding my own Mohini in my arms. I thought I would turn around and see her twin, curly haired and gurgling, in the other cot. That I would have another chance to do it right this time, but I looked up and met my daughter-in-law’s eyes. The black eyes were watching me very closely. “She looks exactly like my mother,” she said.
And I knew then that there would be no second chance. She wanted no ties at all with us, and she would have cut Dimple off completely from us, as she did with Nash and Bella, had Lakshmnan not loved the child so much that it made her jealous. That’s why only Dimple and not the other two came to stay with us for the school holidays.
Oh, I was glad to have Dimple! I even purposely fanned the poisonous thoughts in Rani’s head. She knew that her husband did not love her, but she wanted to believe he was incapable of love. She could not bear that he could love someone else, even his own daughter. That possessive jealous streak in her refused to lie down even for motherhood. The older Dimple grew, the more obvious it became that she looked nothing like her maternal grandmother and remarkably like Mohini. I saw Lakshmnan staring at Dimple with a mixture of wonder and surprise, as if he couldn’t believe how very much like Mohini his daughter looked.
And we, we waited for the thrice-yearly school holidays. Two weeks in April, three weeks in August, and then, best of all, the whole of December and part of January. The house seemed brighter, bigger, and better when Dimple was here. She brought a smile into Ayah’s face and put conversation into Sevenese’s mouth, and I, I finally found a place where all my hard-earned money could go. It wasn’t that I didn’t love Nash and Bella, but I loved Dimple the best. Nash and Bella had been taught to hate us anyway. I
wished I could keep Dimple with me all the time, but no, Rani would not allow that. She knew that would be letting me win. No, she thought she would torment us both, my son and me. From the time Dimple was only five years old, she began to send the poor child back and forth like an incorrectly addressed package. Oh, what big, sad eyes she had. I counted the days until she would come to live with us and cried when the time of her departure neared. And after we had waved her good-bye and Lakshmnan’s car had turned the corner, the emptiness was indescribable. Then I would take out the calendar and map out her next visit.
Rani kept her Western ways and refused to teach her children their own mother tongue, but I decided that I would teach Dimple our culture and teach her to speak Tamil. It was her heritage and her right. I began to tell her our family stories, for there were many things I wanted to leave in her care. Then one day she walked in and announced that she wanted to save all my cherished stories like the aborigines in the red deserts of Australia do. “I have decided to make a dream trail of our history, and when you die, I will take over and be the new custodian of our family dream trail,” she said importantly. From then on, like a real custodian, she walked around with her tape recorder, re-creating the past for her children’s children. Finally there was a reason for my existence.
The years were passing, but I just could not find a bridegroom for Lalita. She had failed her Form Three exam despite sitting for it three times. With no qualifications, she wanted to train to become a nurse, but I wouldn’t hear of it. How could I let my daughter wash strange men in intimate places? No, no, such a dirty job was not for my daughter. I sent her to typing school, but whenever she went for an interview, she was so nervous she couldn’t stop making mistakes. By the time she was twenty-nine, I was getting desperate. The years were passing faster, and my health was worsening.