The Rice Mother by Rani Manicka

allowance to buy a newspaper or a cup of coffee from the canteen at work, but he could borrow no more money and was to refer to me on anything pertaining to our financial health. He nodded and tenderly stroked my hair with his big hand, but his dull eyes were ravaged. “As you wish, my darling wife,” he agreed.
    “And one more thing. Will you teach me to speak Malay?”
    “Boleh.” He smiled at me.
    I knew that word. It meant “yes.” I smiled back.
    “Terima Kasih.” Thank you, in Malay.
    By the end of that week, my vegetable garden was planted. A man from across the main road built me a chicken coop, and I filled it with soft yellow chicks. As I stood under my dulang washer’s hat proudly surveying my new plot of cultivated land, my uncle, the mango merchant, arrived groaning under the weight of a huge sack of mangoes. At the sight of his familiar brown face I dashed away tears of joy and ran to hug his round figure. I didn’t know how lonely I was until I saw him. He had brought the money I had requested, heartily laughing away as ridiculous my idea of collateral. After he left I ate six mangoes in quick succession and then, inexplicably, walked to the stove, picked up a piece of charcoal, and began to nibble at it.
    That was when I knew I was pregnant.
    The weeks were swallowed by the hungry months that lay waiting in my garden. My little plot prospered. I ran my fingers down the velvety skin of a new crop of okra, was surprised by the redness of my bird’s-eye chilies, and grew especially proud of my shiny purple eggplants. And my chicken coop was a success even before my belly filled out the space in front of me. I was happy and satisfied. The debts were taken care of, and I had even begun to save a modest amount inside a small tin that I hid in the rice sack.
    At night, after all the human voices died down, after the plates had been washed, light switches turned off, and the neighborhood put away to sleep, I lay awake. Sleep refused to rest awhile upon my eyelids. He crossed his arms and looked at me wickedly from afar. So I spent many hours lying flat on my back, staring out of the window at the star-filled night sky, learning Malay, and filling my head with impatient dreams of my unborn baby. I imagined a cherubic baby boy with gorgeous ringlets and sparkling eyes. Always in my day-dreams he wore clever, large eyes that darted about in alert intelligence, but always in my nightmares a thin, emaciated infant with small, dull eyes and stretched shiny skin would stare beseechingly at me, begging for a little love. I would jerk awake suddenly. Guilt for my abandoned stepchildren like a small furry bee inside my heart lifted its furry front legs and tapped a soft little reminder. My young heart would miss a beat in pure shame. Before dawn I would bathe and make my way to the temple. There I would make offerings and earnestly pray that my child would look nothing like the waif of my nightmares.
    My husband was solicitous to a degree that made me want to scream. He would worriedly inquire after me every morning and every night, and wait for my answer expectantly as if I might say something other than, “I’m just fine.” For nine months it never crossed his mind not to ask worriedly and wait expectantly for my reply. He refused to let me walk to the market and would insist on going himself. At first he came home with stale fish, gray meat, and rotting vegetables, but after a few false starts and cold sulking silences from me he made friends with a kind stallkeeper who felt sorry for his predicament. He returned with fish, whose silver-bright eyes were still bloody with freshness, fruit ripe with color, and choice pieces of meat that I myself would have been pleased to have chosen.
    One day he brought home some strange fruit called durian. I had never before seen a fruit covered with such menacing-looking long thorns. A durian falling off a tree onto a man’s head can kill him, he told me. I had no trouble