The Rice Mother by Rani Manicka

on one of the green stone chairs, her elbows resting on the heavy stone table. Head bent, she was staring at the ground. Her straight hair had fallen forward, hiding her face. Slipping my feet into my slippers, I hurried clumsily to the wall that circled Old Soong’s property. I called out to her, and she turned her head dully. For a moment she simply stared at me. At that moment I felt as if I didn’t know, had never known her. She was a different person. Then she stood up reluctantly and walked over to me.
    “What happened?” I asked, although I knew.
    “Second Wife has the baby,” she said expressionlessly. “But the master says I can keep the next one. Where is Anna?” she asked, and a trace of emotion came into her face.
    “Come and see her. She’s getting very big very quickly.”
    “I shall come to visit soon,” she said softly with a small smile. “You had better go before the mistress sees you. Good-bye.”
    The curtains at one of the windows twitched and fell back into place. And before I could say good-bye, Mui Tsai had already turned away and was walking back toward the house.
    I didn’t worry about Mui Tsai for long because that afternoon word came that my husband had met with an accident. While he was cycling to the bank, a motorbike had crashed into him. I swallowed the news that he had been taken unconscious to the hospital as if it were a solid object. It had the feel of a weathered brown stone in a shrinking riverbed, tasteless and hard but smooth.
    The stone was very heavy in my stomach when the children and I took a taxi to the hospital. I was sick with fear. The thought of bringing them up on my own without a breadwinner terrified me. I herded the children into the emergency ward and arranged them on one of the long benches in the waiting room. They squeezed their small bodies between a groaning woman and a man with a terrible case of elephantiasis. I left them staring at the poor man’s hugely bloated leg and walked along a corridor. There I saw Ayah’s still body lying on a narrow trolley pushed up against the corridor wall. I ran toward him, but the closer I got, the more frightened I became. A gash had opened his head like a coconut, and red blood had gurgled out, matting his hair, spilling on his shirt, and pooled under his head. I had never seen so much blood in all my life. In his bloodied face, four of his front teeth, the very ones that I had taken such exception to at our wedding, were gone. A hole blacker than his face gaped at me, but the real shock was his leg. The bone had broken clean off and was pushing through his pink flesh. The sight of it made me feel faint and peculiar. I had to grab something to stay upright. The nearest thing was the corridor wall, and I fell back against it heavily. With the wall solid against my back, I called his name, but he was unconscious.
    Some male orderlies came rushing along the corridor and they wheeled him through the swinging double doors of the emergency ward. I stood leaning against the wall in a daze. My knees felt weak. The baby inside me kicked, and I felt tears start at the back of my eyes. I looked at the bench, and the children were sitting quietly in a row, staring at me with large, fearful eyes. I smiled at them and walked back to the bench. My knees felt like jelly. They huddled around me.
    Lakshmnan put his thin arms around my neck. “Ama, can we go home now?” he whispered in an odd little voice.
    “Soon,” I said in a choked voice, hugging his small body so tightly that a whimper slipped past his lips. The children and I waited for hours.
    It was night before we left with no news. He was still unconscious. In the taxi the twins looked at me solemnly. Anna fell asleep sucking her thumb, and baby Sevenese blew bubbles. I watched them and felt as if I knew how the widow who threw her sixteen children and then herself into a well had felt. The thought of bringing my children up on my own was terrifying. I stumbled alone in a