Boiled Chicken and Running Away

Inspired by 'Who's Irish?' (1999) by Gish Jen, I attempted to write a short story in a very colloquial manner, almost like what it would sound like, if the character, not so good in her middle-school English, would write. It is a satirical story of a girl who has just attained in age and has elements of Sri Lankan culture in it. So unless you are a conventional Sri Lankan, you will probably not understand the sarcasm. Either way, enjoy and feel free to comment! 

She no small girl now. She big. Blood coming from between her legs every month now. Everybody knows it. Embarrassing! She can’t see boys for five days, not even Father. She can’t play with boys now after this day. She must learn to cook rice, dhal curry, scrape coconut and make a Sambol. She must learn to wash clothes, bashing them on the granite rock and know the exact amount of whitening powder to put for white clothes. She must also wear long skirts now and talk softly. Can’t shout, even when she see a big iguana across the road. If iguana attack her, she can’t shout. If iguana eat her, she can’t shout. Now she is woman. Can have baby if not careful. Imagine having baby at thirteen! Boys in village will now come to flirt with her. In five years, one will be lucky to take her to his mother’s house. 

Now she must be cautious. Every month, she will have tummy aches and head pains. She will be allowed to sleep during the day and skip school if she want to. She can’t wear white skirts. But school uniform white skirt. Poor girl. Oh no. Poor woman! So, in five days, at 06.43 in the morning is the auspicious time. She cover herself with a white cloth and go to have a bath with lavender flowers. She crack open a coconut. She can’t even carry the cleaver. She is so petite. Not five feet tall and weight less than 40 kilograms. Opposite of her tall, fat sister. She open the coconut. Good luck came! Then come inside house and wear gold and pink dress. Gold and pink! Mother put a thin gold chain on her neck. Now she can look at boys. So, Father put two thin gold bangles on left arm. Grandmother put big, chunky, rose-shaped, gold earrings on her ears. “Ouch” she say. She doesn’t like earrings. “Pull my ear down”, she say. “Now you must wear earrings all the time. You are a girl” grandmother say. “I always a girl” she say. Mother frown. Sister laugh. 

In afternoon, Mother, Grandmother and two aunties serve a grand lunch. They cooked fried rice, chicken curry with extra chilies, potato and dhal. Always have dhal in special occasions. Dhal is a must! They have fried papadam. She can’t eat papadam. She can’t eat fried rice, because have oil. She can’t eat oil, until blood stop. Otherwise her stomach will hurt more and she will get ugly. She grab plate and serves a big papadam. Grandmother hit her hand. “No papadam for you! You want to be ugly skin with pimples like your sister?” Sister make a face. Mother bring plate full of white rice and boiled chicken for her. Mother has served vegetables also. She hate vegetables. “So bitter” she say. Her chicken have no spices. It is yellow. But chicken for guest is nice brown curry. Now she make face. Boys from the village eating tasty food, laugh at her. One boy wink. She turns and looks behind her dress. She have to be extra careful now. Can’t jump, can’t run, can’t sit.

She gets lot of small, small gifts. A few big gifts. She get another gold chain and a few earrings. And she get another three bangles. A small pendent. She get a few ornaments. Pink dolls with green dresses. She doesn’t like ornaments. She get some cloth for making dresses. Some fancy things like chains and bracelets. She wants a makeup set. But no. No one give her makeup set. She put them in a small box. She is happy because now she can run away when she is fifteen. She can’t runway now because she want to run away with O/L results. Otherwise can’t find any job after runway. She want to hide the gold under her bed. But Mother come and take it. “Safe with me” Mother say. She make a face. 

Three days later, she not go to school. Blood still coming from her private part. She thinks blood never stop. If she can’t go to school for week, she will miss so much. An exam also. Then, in two years, she can’t pass O/L exam. She can’t runaway then. Fourth day blood is still there. She gets dressed and go to school. Cloth between her legs is uncomfortable. She walk slow. She make a ugly face. “Give this to Teacher and worship” Mother tell and give a bundle of beetle leaves to her hand. “Why? It is no Awurudu still!” she ask. “Don’t talk back! You are a big girl now! Big girl don’t talk back to Mother”. Class is uncomfortable because of the blood coming between her legs. She don’t want to stand. But teacher ask question. “Name three national parks in Sri Lanka!” She names them. She knows them well. She knows a lot of things well! She reads. She smart girl. Smart woman!  She want to pass O/L and run away. But now can’t run away because mother has gold. How to run away without gold?

For lunch, still boiled chicken and dhal with white rice. Sister eats left over tasty food. Next door boy comes and ask her to play hide and seek. “Go! She won’t play” Mother shouts and next door little boys get scared and runaway. She want to play hide and seek. After few hours she is hungry and boring. She scrapes the wall. “What you doing child!” Grandmother shouts. “Big girls not supposed to shout” she tell Grandmother. Sister laugh. Grandmother angry. Mother complain. “No use, these girls.” She pout. She go to table. Remaining boiled chicken in a pot, is covered with a cloth. She put little hand and take a piece. She open her history book and study. Boring. She eats chicken. Boring. But she somehow reads the history book. Must pass O/L and runway. Must get that gold. She fall asleep on the page about King Dhutugammunu...

The Cinderella Blah

To be ‘ugly’ according to conventional standards of society is a terrible misery. I don’t know who said that mere brains get you to places, but trust me, brains are no good unless they come with beauty. And that brains too, used for the 64 whatever-women-are-supposed-to-master only. But the irony is that you can be pretty with no brain and man, can you get to places! I was once a believer of wisdom, because that is what society tells you. “No man wants a hottie with puckered lips and an empty head”, but men believed the contrary. No one flirts with intellectuality and a man in his right mind doesn’t fondle with it anyway. A typical man, evolved to be vision indulgent and all, prefers a woman who can take him to places with her mouth shut. Maybe that is the reason why I repelled almost every guy who dared to even ask me on a date – a first date to never call back, just so you know. Day after day, through middle-school and high-school, I repelled man after man in my life. And bit by bit, with every passing rejection I turned bitter. Oh, I was once nice and all – I would help old women carrying shopping baskets cross the street and feed a lost lonely pooch in the street corner. I once even sacrificed my knitted scarf to warm up a little beggar with sore feet. But as each year dawned, I turned in to a miserable snob, even more miserable than my cellulite packed butt. It all started with a bit of sneering. Then came the snobbish remarks. Then came the thrashing and stealing and lying and cheating and then came Cinderella! 

My mom is alright. I mean, she is not that ugly, but her old man, my daddy, left her for a prettier woman he met at the carnival. She then met this man, who is now my stepfather and not a bad one at that, who kinda swept her off her wrinkled feet and she sure was swept off. He was a divorcee (because of ‘incorrigible differences’). Before I, or my twelve year old sister knew it, Mom was off on late night dates with extra rouge and before we could express our concerns, she was married to this guy. He was no rich man, probably why his wife dumped him. But my mother took hold of his business and worked hard to get it to the level it is now. We are now one of the richest and the ugliest families known in Once-upon O’Land. Mom was sure a hard working gal, but she was also a control freak. She wanted to show off to the world that life was good, by adorning us with ridiculously large feathered hats and frilly dresses. She painted my acne-drenched face with a coat of foundation and drew up my lips so that they look fat. She crammed my blubber in a corset so that it sounded like I wanted to throw up whenever I spoke. The tightness made me aggravated too. So basically, the tighter the corset became, the wickeder I grew. I guess holding your breath too long makes you callous. I was at the peak of loneliness and desperation, when Cinderella walked in through our Mahogany door. The unfortunate blonde’s mother has passed away on an overdose of rich wine. (Oh did I mention that she got carried away by her newly acquired rich life with her new husband?) 

Something in my unshapely heart shuddered at the sight of this fair-skinned, blue eyed, blonde. She wore a cobalt dress with a white sash and her thick hair which was braided symmetrically flowed down her toned back. Imagine her in a silk gown and she’d look like she was straight from up there. The moment Cinderella walked in, the room filled with jealousy and the sound of my stepfather’s uncertain voice. “This, my daughter, has no place to go now. I took her in”. First of all, I don’t know how he took her in, because the house belonged to my mother now. She had seduced him into signing the deed a couple of years ago. She deserved it anyway, because without her work, the house would still be leaky, musty and cramped. At first, Mom didn’t mind, because she could always use an extra hand around the house while she was off either balancing cheque books or lying around in the spa. Cinderella was pretty submissive. She scrapped clean tarred pots, while we complained, because they made our dark hands darker; she scrubbed the floor left to right, as we complained of our back aches; she watered the flowers at noon and we complained because sun made our dull skin duller. The complains, genuine mind you, made us lazier and uglier and fatter. 

What became of my intellect, you may ask. I kinda evolved to keeping my mouth shut, because when I spoke, people felt threatened. My croaky voice didn’t help much either. As for Cinderella, she could sing a shallow song about tender flower petals and deep blue eyes and walkers-by would lean on the fence to listen. The moment I realized why even the ugly guys didn’t call me back and my few friends refused to keep in touch, was because of my know-it-all-ness, I began to give up on my Einstein dreams. First of all, I started watching Gossip-Girl instead of Disocvery-Plus on TV; I traded my thrillers to Cosmopolitans and I spend time plucking my eyebrows thinner and thinner, rather than spending time on homework. By the time I turned 17, my eyebrows had vanished and so had my intellect. I was no more interested in Harvard or even the local community college. All I wanted was to be beautiful! 

Sadly, I didn’t know how to. Cosmopolitan advice is for the thin chicks. Even the workout clothes advertised on them come only in sizes 0 through 6. What about something that a size 14 can fit into? I sought comfort in chocolates and fries. I cried myself to sleep on bed, at least thrice a day, I scrubbed my skin with all the beauty stuff I heard of or saw. I colored my hair blond and red and blue and black, I painted my eye lids in every shade of magenta. The more I tried the more depressing it became and the bitterness was expressed by anger. That was my part of the story. 

It was all bad, but not closely as bad as the day of the long awaited royal ball. Prince Charming, was the one man around, I had a massive crush on. Ever since I saw him on telly, when I was six and he was some ten-years, standing beside his mother, the queen, I wanted to marry him. I would spend hours dreaming about his hazel eyes and dimply smile and scribbling his name in curly letters all over my notepads. Ever since I heard that it was customary that princes throw a 21-year old birthday gala, I counted the days to see his face in real. Since six months to his 21^st birthday, I tried very hard to look better. I went on a celery stick diet, jogged to the spa every day and even did a thousand ab crunches morning and night. My dress for the ball wasn’t that amusing. Well, when you look like me, nothing thrown on you, even if it is designed by Vera Wang, would disguise you. No coats of Mac or conditioned, heat-styled hair would look appealing. But I did try. I hoped that Charming would see me for who I am. My long tarnished personality didn’t help much either. Before a could blink off the leaking mascara off my eye balls, there she was, Cinderella, dressed in the perfect gown, hugging her 25-inch waist, in the arms of the one man, I’d have given my right arm to share a kiss with. Need I say more?

Years after Cinderella’s story was penned, I the ‘ugly’ step sister seemed like a good-for-nothing villain, to millions of young and old readers. Everyone rejoices at the fortune of the ‘poor-hardworking girl’ who acquired the life of a goddess, but no writer talks of the three nights I stayed locked up in my room, out of sheer misery of knowing, believing, that I was going to age into an ugly, wicked, lonely old woman. The later versions of the story turned me into a joker with no desire to be nice too. Would the story have been any different if Cinderella didn’t look so good or she didn’t sing like a nightingale? Would I still be misjudged if someone asked why I was the way I was? 

But what I want you to know is that, there is always, ALWAYS another perspective to every story. Don’t embrace the obvious. Maybe, just maybe, things aren’t always what they seem.