The Rice Mother Read Online Free PDF Page B

pulled outrage or even sheer fear out of my thumping heart, but I was so green, so new at the game of life, that it still stretched out as a great adventure that I wouldn’t miss out on.
    Inside it was cool and dark. The house was sleeping, quietly and softly. Not for long, I thought. Burning with a new sense of purpose, I opened all the windows in the small living room. Fresh air and weak, slanting evening sunlight streamed into the little house. Suddenly it didn’t matter at all that it wasn’t a grand house or that I wouldn’t have servants to command. In fact, the challenge of making something out of nothing beckoned, far more exciting. I could still be the lady of the wooden house.
    Ayah had disappeared somewhere to the back of the house. Curiously I began to explore. I walked on a concrete floor and looked at wooden walls. The small living room held two rickety armchairs with tired old cushions, a small ugly side table, a dilapidated old dining table, and four wooden chairs with laminated seats backed into a corner. I went into the bedroom and was amazed to find a huge, iron four-poster bed painted silver. I had never seen such a big bed in all my life. Surely it was a bed fit for a king. I sat on the bed. The cotton-filled mattress was lumpy, but to me it was heavenly. I had never slept on anything but a woven mat. The curtains were faded to an ailing green. An old intricately carved cupboard made of very dark wood with a mirror on its left door creaked when I opened it. Silver cobwebs hung inside. I found some of my husband’s clothes and four saris belonging to his first wife. I took them out. They were plain and dull, the discreet colors of a dead woman. Standing in front of the mirror, I loosely draped a gray one around my body and I thought of her for the first time. Once she had lived in this house and worn these clothes. I touched the cool material and sniffed it. It smelt of the earth during the dry season. The hot smell made me shiver. The saris reminded me of her and her children, whom I had so easily abandoned. I put the sari back inside the cupboard and closed it quickly.
    In the second bedroom two old beds crouched by the window. The prayer altar was a simple shelf crammed with framed color pictures of Hindu deities. Bunches of dead flowers crowned the pictures. There had not been a woman in the house for a long time. Automatically I pressed my palms together in prayer. Two pairs of children’s slippers lay by the door. Two small faces looked up to me. “We have no shoes,” they murmured sadly, their eyes desolate. Quickly I backed out, closing the door behind me.
    The bathroom, I was surprised to note, was connected to the house. Back home I had to walk to an outhouse. I heard my husband moving out onto the veranda. I inspected the smooth gray walls, turned on a small bronze tap, and beautiful, clear water hurried out into the built-in corner cement water container. It looked almost like a waist-high well, and I was pleased with it. I flicked the old-fashioned, round black light switch, and yellow light filled the tiny, windowless space. Truly I was delighted with my new bathroom. I left the bathroom and walked into the kitchen, where I gave my first cry of joy. In the far corner was the most beautiful bench I had ever seen. Made of hard wood with beautifully carved legs, it was bigger than the bed Mother and I shared. I examined it minutely with real pleasure, running my fingers over the aged, smooth surface, not realizing that that piece of furniture would survive me and one day hold on its dark surface my dead husband’s body.
    From the kitchen window I could see a cemented area for washing and outdoor tasks like grinding and milling, and a vast, neglected backyard with mature coconut trees. A large monsoon drain divided our property from the fields covered with wild shrubs and spear grass beyond. A small path could be seen leading away into wood-lands, where I imagined streams to be