Free The Rice Mother by Rani Manicka Page B

prayed under her breath before turning to my husband and muttering, “There is another baby in her belly.”
    And that was how simply my son’s twin was born. She slipped easily out of me into the midwife’s waiting arms. The midwife was an old Malay woman Minah had recommended, called Badom. “Her hands are her gift,” Minah had said, and nothing could be truer. I shall never forget the strength that flowed like a charging river from her sinewy hands or the confident knowledge that shone from the depths of her rheumy eyes. She knew everything there was to know about mothers and babies. In her withered skull lay intimate and vast knowledge of all that counted, from forbidden cucumbers and powdered flowers to shrink the womb to magical potions of boiled nettles and herbs to return a stretched body to its former bloom.
    She put into my arms two gorgeous babies.
    My son was everything I could have hoped for. A gift from the gods. All my prayers answered in fine black ringlets of hair and a perfectly formed hearty yell to proclaim his health—but it was really my daughter that I stared at in something amounting to disbelief. I should tell you straightaway how incredibly special she was. For she was fair beyond anything I could have imagined. Badom, when she put the tiny bundle into my arms, raised her sparse eyebrows and said in an astonished voice, “But her eyes are green. ” In all her years of delivering babies, she had never seen a baby with green eyes.
    I stared in amazement at her pink skin and the beginnings of a curtain of shiny, straight hair. It could only be Mrs. Armstrong’s blood that ran through her veins—Mother’s famous grandmother who had been called upon to give a posy of flowers and shake the gloved hand of Queen Victoria all those years ago. I looked at the small, fair creature in my arms and decided that all the names my husband and I had spent hours discussing were useless. I would call her Mohini.
    Mohini was the celestial temptress of ancient legends, so incredibly beautiful that one accidental sip from the liquid depths of her eyes was all it took to make even a god forgetful. In Mother’s stories they drowned one by one in their urgent desire to possess her. I was too young then to know that excessive beauty is a curse. Happiness refuses to share the same bed as beauty. Mother wrote back to warn me that it was not a good name for a girl. It was bad luck. Now I know that I should have listened to her.
    I can’t even describe those first few months. It was like walking into a secret garden and discovering hundreds and hundreds of beautiful new flowers, the colors, the incredible new scents, and the wonderful shapes. They filled my day. From morning to night I was happy. I went to bed with a smile on my lips, stunned by the beauty of my children, and dreamed of running my fingers down their silky skin with awe.
    Perfect from the top of her soft little head to her tiny toes, my Mohini was without flaw. People stared at her with unconcealed curiosity when I took her out. They looked at plain old me, then at her ugly father, and then I watched envy drop sharp roots into their small, petty hearts. I took the responsibility of my daughter’s beauty very seriously. I bathed her in coconut milk and scrubbed her skin with lime quarters. Once a week I crushed hibiscus flowers in warm water until the water turned the right shade of rust, and then I lowered her wriggling little body into it. She splashed and laughed and threw handfuls of reddened water into my face. I won’t bother to tell you what great lengths I went to, to protect her milky white skin.
    No little girl could have been loved more. Her brother simply adored her. While they lacked any kind of physical similarity, there was a special, invisible bond between them. Eyes that spoke. Faces that understood. They didn’t finish each other’s sentences, rather it was the pauses they shared. As if in those stolen moments of pure silence they