MENIKA

Menika slipped into our lives very quietly. I really cannot remember when she came to us. I do remember that it was a colleague whose aunt or family friend mentioned that she had a cook to spare and then she came to us. She had a soft voice and answered my questions in monosyllables when we brought her home that rainy night.

Once home she quietly went into the kitchen and took over. A big made fair girl, she was rather flabby, her face plump. The fat spilled over her cloth at the waist into a perfect tyre. Looking at her one noticed her luxuriant hair and nice colour. Not so long ago she would have been both comely and pretty.

But now she had a sullen expression most of the time. And that did not contribute to any beauty. She hardly spoke, except to answer a question. She suited us, somehow. We were not great talkers either. She listened to the radio a lot, but could not read.

The months went by.

After about six months with us she wanted to send all her money home. Why all of it, I asked her. Surely she would like to save some?

"I have two children at home; the money is for them."

She had been barely sixteen, fourteen years ago, when her father decided that she should be given in marriage. Her mother demurred a little. "She grew up only last year. She can help with the harvesting this year next year perhaps," her mother protested feebly.

"Next year? You want to keep this girl till she is too old for a good man? Don't talk rubbish, woman, get her ready. I have already compared her horoscope," the father thundered.

Later she realised that the man was old, fifteen years older than she. But his family was well off, her mother told her.

"They have a big house, and coconut and two acres of paddy there is grain in the atuwa from yala to maha. They also have a couple of cows and a goat. There will be enough food and you will be able to bear healthy children," her mother explained, patiently, sadly.

The thought of a dowry bothered the old woman.

"Dowry? What dowry?" her husband asked her reasonably. "Here is this virgin girl, fair as the moon, healthy and young with so many years of work ahead of her. She can help with the harvesting, she can husk the paddy, tether the cows in the grazing land, help the old woman with the cooking and other chores. Dowry?"

Menika shed a few tears when she left her mother and small brother. Malli cried loud and long, because his mother and sister were both crying. He even walked behind the wedding party for some distance till someone carried him home.

In her new home Menika found out about the other woman before the month was out. He brought her into the house and moved in with her. Her mother in law shook her head at him. She gave Menika an extra mat and pillow and she slept in the lonely room. Often at night she thought of her little brother and wept a little. She never went home and they did not come to see her.

She stopped talking and wiped her face with the back of her hand. I watched her grind the mustard on the stone, her arms moving in a slow rhythm, her fingers plump and deft. She scooped the gooey mess without leaving a trace on the stone. But she washed the stone carefully with a little water and poured the yellow coloured water into the ash plantain curry. She sat back on the coconut scraper and tied her hair high on her head, hitched her cloth more tightly at her waist and stood up. I saw her palms, bright yellow with the saffron stains.

The sleeping arrangements had gone on for quite some time. Then the man started coming to her mat again at night, once in a while, usually smelling of toddy.

She didn't mind. She was lonely, and didn't even have a kitten for company. She welcomed him.

The other woman left her alone. But when they went to the river to bathe, she often cleaned Menika's head, picking the lice with two sharp nails, her face puckered, her lips screwed up.

She was old. At least as old as the husband. Perhaps that was why there was no child, Menika speculated as she bathed. The cloth kept slipping from her swollen belly and she found it hard to raise the bucket. The other woman poured the water over her as she sat on a stone on the river bank.

The following year there was another baby for Menika. Both were girls. The other woman fussed over them, hushed them to sleep when they cried and fed them when they were hungry. Most of the time Menika slept, tired with the effort of breastfeeding the younger one. Her body had become slack, her breasts no longer firm. She hardly ever helped with the chores. Her mother in law was often heard muttering about her laziness.

The pestle rose rhythmically as she pounded the rice into flour. It was a graceful movement, at odds with her clumsy body. She scooped the flour into the sieve, tucked her cloth and, sitting on the ground, sieved the flour daintily on to a piece of newspaper. There were beads of sweat forming a pattern on her forehead.

After some months he had stopped coming home altogether. The girls grew up and never asked why their father did not stay with them or why they had two mothers. Like their mother they accepted their life without any questions.

The years passed. The harvesting seasons came and went, with monotonous regularity. Menika helped the mother in law to bring the paddy home, roll out the huge mats and dry the damp grain in the sun. She and the other woman husked the paddy, working late into the night, their pestless falling in perfect unison, a calm camaraderie binding them in their effort to get at the dark pink grain to feed them all.

I watched her wash the rice, twirling the water round and round to pick out the stones. She picked a stray grain of unhusked paddy or a mung seed that had strayed into the rice and tossed it into her mouth. She squatted by the kitchen door, pouring water into the strainer, washing, washing the rice till it sparkled clear; she was putting on more fat, her face was getting sadder.

After more than three years the man came back. The other woman ranted and raved. Have you no thought for these children, she demanded, your own flesh and blood. How are they going to grow up healthy women with only rice to eat how will you give them in marriage, you wastrel, drinking your money without a thought for their dowry;

The man said nothing. He merely walked up to her and slapped her mouth shut.

Menika watched him talking to the two girls, giving them some sticky sweets he had brought, watched him surreptitiously pass some money to his mother. Menika went into the kitchen. She served him a big plate of rice and dry fish with a little coconut she scraped sitting astride the dilapidated scraper. She watched him eat, gave him water to drink and a match to light a stub of a cigar he pulled out from his pocket. But when night came she locked her door.

I watched as the oil bubbled and frothed. She coaxed the oil cake into a shapely mound, twirling the ekel in one hand and basting the cake with hot oil with the other. She tossed each cake into a wicker basket and turned to the flour and treacle mixture to make the next cake, the next and the next; Sweat poured down her face as she added another bit of firewood, and bathed her skin in an unaccustomed glow. She looked relaxed and happy.

That night was the last she had spent in her husband's home. The locked door had started it all.

The old women had at last risen from her stupor and turned on her son.

Even two women are not enough for you, you good for nothing wild boar?

Both these women are too good for you, you drunken sot coming here to disturb our peace and have the whole village talking what kind of a future are these two girls going to have with a father like you?

As she heard the sounds from the kitchen Menika opened the door and stood in front of her husband just in time to save him from the kitchen knife the old woman was brandishing.

You bitch! He turned to Menika and taking her by the hair pitched her against the wall and assaulted her without mercy.

You should have let me kill him, the old woman muttered, leaving her to him.

Next day her father came and took her home. All along the way she kept looking back at the two girls, standing one on each side of the other woman who stroked their hair and spoke softly to them.

She oiled her hair with both palms and combed out the coils. She wound the long strands round her fingers into a knot low on her neck. The jacket was tight across her chest and there was a tear under one arm. That didn't matter, she said, the saree pota will cover it. She stepped into a pair of sandals and, taking all her money from her purse, tucked the bundle of notes inside her jacket.

She would be back soon she said.

I will leave the money for the girls with their father. He will put it by for their dowry.

It is true he drinks and has this other woman, and he hit me and we even had to go the police station and make an entry.

She took the wicker basket with the fragrant oil cakes in one hand, and stepped out of the door. She looked back at me and smiled happily.

"He is a good man," she said, unfurling her umbrella.

Vijita Fernando
Author's Note - This story was inspired by a poem by Yasmine Gooneratne.
