I chewed over her insistence that she loved her husband, worrying at it like a chipped tooth. Intimacy and trust, I’d learned from a young age, were very different from sex or what passed for it in our society. It was easy enough to divorce one from the other, but for her to have that trust with Rashid, to say she loved him, all while giving her intimacy to someone else … I couldn’t fathom it. My brain refused to process it. No, that’s wrong. My brain had no trouble comprehending it. The part of me that struggled was something else. Something mobile. Something that slithered from my mind and sat heavy on my sternum.
Baba walked around his little kingdom, hands clasped behind his back like a general inspecting his troops, and admired the green shoots and little buds sprouting all over. His skin was darker than usual from hours spent in his garden while the weather was agreeable. He stomped up and down every so often, pushing to test the firmness of the dirt. If it was too soft, I heard him grumble about the houseboy over-watering – ‘Leaves the hose on and goes to talk on the phone, that donkey.’ Every so often he called to where I sat in my white plastic chair, soaking up the sun, and said something like, ‘Look how tall the tomato plant has gotten,’ and I would nod and smile like an indulgent parent. ‘The radishes will start popping up soon,’ he said, squatting low to the ground for a better look. When everything was deemed satisfactory, he pulled up a chair by me, sinking into it with a ‘Ya’Allah,’ and a happy sigh.
We sat in comfortable silence for a while. Unlike Mama, my father never felt the need to fill pauses with mindless chatter. I inherited that, and some of my fondest memories of him contain no words – just blessed silences. That morning wasn’t one of them, though.
‘So nothing came of that boy then?’
I kept my eyes closed, feeling the sun through my lids. ‘I guess not.’
‘Your mother hasn’t heard from them …’ I couldn’t tell if that was a statement or a question; either way I chose not to respond. ‘It’s fine.’
‘I know it’s fine.’
‘I think she has another one lined up for later this week.’
My heart pounded, once, twice, all jangly, and I suddenly felt like crying. ‘She hasn’t said anything to me.’
‘You know how she is. She likes to wait till the last possible minute to tell you. I think she thinks it makes you less likely to find a way to escape.’
‘I don’t know why she thinks the situation is so desperate.’
He chuckled, folding his arms over his gut. ‘Your birthday is just around the corner.’
‘Have you approved of the guy?’ I asked, pushing my fingers through my tangle of curls.
‘On paper, yes.’
I nodded; it was important for things to line up on paper. ‘Do you know when they’re coming?’
‘Thursday, I think.’ The houseboy passed us on his way to the gate, talking on his phone, and Baba took the opportunity to yell at him about over-watering and how he’d break that phone if he kept doing it. The houseboy pocketed it, nodding like a bobblehead, and scurried out the gate. Baba leaned back in his seat, attention once more on me, and said, ‘Shidday hailich.’
‘What does that even mean?’ I replied, sitting up and turning to him. ‘Can you stop and think about that phrase for a minute? Really think about it. What exactly am I supposed to “try harder” at?’
‘You know—’
‘No, Baba, listen. You and my aunties and Mama, you spit out that phrase like it’s no more than a punctuation point, like it doesn’t cut me every time I hear it. How am I supposed to try harder at something I have zero control over?’ I said, slicing the air with my hand. ‘I sit here waiting for someone to choose me. Not only does the mother have to approve of me, but then I have to appeal to the guy. How can it work with odds like that?’
He accepted my mini-rant with a pensive nod, looking back out over his garden. My eyes followed. Was he thinking, like I was, how much simpler it would be if life followed such sure rules as seeding, watering, and reaping? Was he wishing he could control all our lives with such certainty?
It had worked with my sister. Nadia had played by the rules; she had never so much as had a personal conversation with a man until she’d met the one she would marry. Their marriage was arranged by Mama and her sisters when Nadia was twenty-three, and the first time she’d met Sa’ad had been at our house when he’d come to see her. Baba had given him an ultimatum; he could talk to Nadia on the phone for one week, by the end of which they would either make their engagement official or sever contact. Four months later they were married. That was fifteen years ago; Sa’ad had given her a beautiful house and an easy life, and Nadia had given him two sons and a daughter.
It had all worked out exactly as it was meant to. As sure as the cycles Baba went through with his garden. Almost too easy, some would say, which is probably why they got me.
I am the tree that falls in the forest, needing proof of my own existence. When I look in the mirror, I don’t always recognize the reflection. I don’t mean in the way older people sometimes see their younger selves; I mean, I don’t recognize me. The way my eyes, dark brown no matter the light, dip down at the inner corners like commas on their sides strikes me as new each time. I look at my hands and knuckles and think them strangers. The single tiny hair that sprouts from the top of my right foot is not mine.
I need reminders that I’m here, that I exist, that this isn’t all just a dream within a dream.
Seeing myself bleed is real. Blood is a living thing you can’t explain away. It pushes out, sticky and inconvenient. It demands attention. Simple and real. I only cut myself a few times, back in the days when I couldn’t get the feeling of fingers creeping along my thigh out of my head, when I couldn’t stop feeling the squeeze of a hand on the barely-there rounds of my newly adolescent butt, or the sensation of slimy rubber lips brushing my cheek. I swore I wouldn’t make the cutting a habit because a) I liked the feeling; the pain (that was real), the blood, and the mark it left behind, and b) even then I knew it was something that would demand escalation, and I have a fear of scars.
I find a perverse delight in accidental bleeding, though. I cut my finger on a bit of broken glass once. It sliced through the knuckle, skinning me clean. I stood at the sink, finger under the tap, and let it bleed and bleed. The red streaming from my fingertip, swirling pink in the drain, felt more real than the wooziness in my head, more real somehow than the pain in my hand. I could see it. And I often believe what I see over what I feel.
My feelings are like my reflection, like the commas in my eyes and the hair on my foot. I struggle to verify them.
Thursday. Another dress on my bed. This one was cream with a floral pattern, big pink roses splashed across the bodice and down the full skirt. It was even frillier than the last, and I wondered whether Mama knew me at all, or whether she thought that was the mold I had to fit in order to land a husband, after which I could revert to being myself, the way some married women eventually stop shaving their legs.
I rubbed the fabric between thumb and forefinger. It was new, strong, and rich. Which shoes would I pair it with? In the closet was my black dress, fresh from the dry cleaners. I ran my hand over the comforting organza, fingering the small buttons down the front, and wondered if it was possible for a dress to be disappointed in me. Pulling it off the hanger, I spread it on the bed, pulling and draping until it covered the other one, until the flowers appeared more mauve than pink.
I