Read Online The Rice Mother by Rani Manicka - Free Book Online

her and pinches her. That’s abuse, isn’t it?” I demanded hotly.
    He shook his head, and the words that walked onto his thick tongue appeared like uncouth foreigners who entered a temple with their shoes on. “Firstly that is not considered abuse, and secondly, although Mr. Soong himself does not come to collect the rent, he is our landlord. He owns every house along this curving road.”
    “Oh,” I said, giving up my revolutionary ideas of marching into strange offices to denounce Old Soong. The problem really was much bigger than me.
    One night when the trees were silvery with ghostly moonlight, Mui Tsai’s mistress called her into her bedroom. She wanted a massage. Her back, she said, ached from eating too many cooling foods. She took off her satin garments and lay facedown on the bed. Mui Tsai began to massage her, running her firm brown hands down the soft white skin of her mistress’s back. Without her clothes, the mistress was inexorably running to fat.
    “You have such an excellent way with your hands,” Third Wife complimented Mui Tsai, gathering up her satin robe. “I shall let you massage the master tonight. He is very tired.” As if choreographed beforehand, the master walked into the bedroom in his silken yellow robes with the black embroidered dragons on them. The robe whispered against his flabby white legs. Mui Tsai froze in shock. Her mistress did not meet the master’s eyes; instead she fixed Mui Tsai with a warning stare and admonished in an irritated voice, “ Ai yah, don’t make such a fuss.” At the sound of her soft slippers dying on the terrazzo tiles, the master sat on the slightly ruffled bedspread. Mui Tsai, kneeling on the floor by the bedside, looked up at him in disbelief. After months of hot looks, the game was about to be won. The winner sat in a yellow robe. The robe parted further, and his belly was large and hard in front of him as he reached over and switched off the little bedside lamp. In the moonlight his face with its sheen of moisture was suddenly masklike. Mui Tsai was filled with terror. Intoxicated by the forbidden excitement implicit in the situation, the eyes deeply buried in pale folds of flesh glittered hot. He stank of liquor. She felt the first small prick of loathing.
    “Come, come, my dear,” the master invited gently, patting the bed beside him, his voice quickening. She knew his thoughts as if he had spoken them. The girl was not destined to be a great beauty but in the first charming flush of youth undoubtedly pretty, and a virgin would give him much-needed vitality. Always good for a man of his age to take the first drink of a girl’s essence. Her purity and innocence was like a flower waiting to be picked. And in that garden he was master.
    He smiled an encouraging smile and disrobed his rotund body.
    Poor girl, she was still staring at the wrinkly worm nestled between his legs in frozen disbelief when his hot hand fell upon her shoulder. Something hard entered her painfully, and to her surprise loose wet flesh jiggled all around her. He grunted like a wild pig and groaned very close to her ear until without any warning his whole weight suddenly collapsed on top of her. Crushed, she gasped for breath. He rolled over and panted for a glass of water.
    It was over. In a daze she pulled her trousers back on and went to get water for the master. Tears stung the back of her eyes, and her chin wobbled with the effort not to cry. When she returned with the water, he made her disrobe completely. While he drank his water, the hot dark slits in his face studied her with unsmiling intensity. She felt his sticky passion running out of her and down her bloodied inside thighs. She stood naked and vacant in the pale moonlight until he reached out a fat hand and pulled her down once more. When he fell asleep, snoring heavily, Mui Tsai stared up unseeing into the silver shadows on the ceiling until quite suddenly and with a start she found herself staring into the