Henna House (16 page)

“Adela, you have several options.” She reached behind the bottles and pulled one out. “The distillation of this herb is toxic. It is best mixed with wine to mask the bitter taste. But be leery of it; sometimes it only works halfway, and to halfway kill someone makes one a murderer twice over. Another option is this powder. But that will cause you horrible agony and convulsions that last six days. Another option is a diffusion of the contents of this little green jar. Lovely, isn't it?” She uncorked it, sniffed, and then put it under my nose. “Smells like salty apricots, don't you think? I got it from a trader from the east. Puts a sufferer to sleep, and escorts her tenderly over the threshold of death. Better you die in your sleep and dream your way into the World to Come. But before you act too hastily, may I ask you why you want to possess such bitter knowledge?”

“Look, I will be a woman soon.” I stuck out my chest, and showed her my swelling little bosoms. “And I have awful pains. My belly feels like it has been punched. Like I have a bruise in my womb. I am afraid that my blood will come before the new moon. And then I will have to marry Mr. Musa.”

She examined me with her eyes. Then made me open my antari, so she could look at my nipples. She even made me raise my skirt and lower my linens. Then she told me to cover up again and said, “No, you will not become a woman for some time. And by then Mr. Musa will be dead.”

I balked. “But he is not ill.”

“Oh no, you are wrong; he is a very sick man. He has a terminal malady of the liver, I suspect, and perhaps also a blockage of the heart.”

I wasn't used to people speaking of livers or hearts, unless they were
referring to the slaughtering of goats or chickens. I almost laughed. Her diagnosis made me think of fat Mr. Musa slung out on a butcher's table, his organs glistening under the threat of a cleaver.

“How do you know this? Are you a doctor, Aunt Rahel?” I had once heard a story of a lady doctor in Aden, a British woman who helped bring babies into the world. But Aunt Rahel didn't answer, and then I heard myself turning mean and saucy. “Or are you a sorceress, like my mother says?” The words were already out of my mouth before I knew what I was uttering. My face got hot, and I tried to hide in the folds of my gargush.

She shook her head again, this time with a pained half smile. I could see that she wasn't the least bit angry, even though she had every right to be. “No,” she said, “I am not that either.” She had the little embroidered satchel on her palm, the one I had chosen. “Adela, perhaps you are the sorceress among us, because you yourself reached for my most deadly mixture. You brew tea from these dried leaves and it kills in five sips. But perhaps you knew this already. Maybe you already have all the knowledge you will ever need to save yourself.” She tucked the little satchel back in its spot—just to the right of a long fluted green glass vial, and to the left of a big basket of dried henna leaves.

I left the little house with the red roof and walked home thinking about poor Mrs. Musa. Was Hani right? Was the poor girl hiding bruises under her antari? A split lip? A blackened eye? And how would I really behave if Mr. Musa hit me? Would I cower? Or fight back? I had never fought anyone, and when my mother beat me, I curled up deep inside myself until the blows had passed. I thought about Aunt Rahel's vials and pouches.

Later she would prove herself to be a woman of healing. When one of Masudah's sons fell and a branch stabbed his thigh, making a deep slash, she rubbed on a poultice and wrapped the wound with linen. When one of Masudah's babies got a bad cough, she gave Masudah a decoction of powder in wine, which eased his cries, and in the morning he was well again. When my brother Elihoo got a blistering, oozing sore on his lip that festered, she gave him a paste of henna and tea, and the sore was gone in two days. Eventually women I didn't know visited Aunt Rahel and would leave with little pouches tucked in their dresses. I supposed Aunt Rahel was sharing her cooking spices. But Aunt Aminah—who never hesitated to give me a proper education—
told me that Rahel gave the women love charms, and “worts and roots to sprinkle on their husbands' stew to assure potency.”

But then, in the early days of the Damaris' time in Qaraah, we still didn't know what she was capable of. That night I lay awake in bed for a long time thinking about her herbs and potions, and about convulsions that would leave me strangling on my own tongue, foaming at the mouth. The next day when Hani came into our house, I was at the table, shucking walnuts with the big silver cracker. I said, “Hani, your mother cured my bellyache. Please tell her that I feel so much better.”

That night in my dreams I slept on a soft carpet like Hani's mother's. My own boudoir was curtained by fuchsia and azure silks from China and wood-blocked drapes from Zanzibar.

I
continued to deliver Sabbath baskets to poor Mrs. Musa. Three months after my engagement, she invited me in. That's when she took off her veil, and I saw that Hani had been correct. One week her right eye was black, another week, she had a bruised cheek. Another day she opened the door missing a front tooth. I grew to dread these visits, thinking that one day she would come to the door a corpse, and I would still hand her the basket and she would still say, “Thank you, little sister” even though she was already departed for the World to Come.

Once I tried to tell my mother about Mrs. Musa's injuries, but she rolled her eyes and said, “I hear that she is a clumsy girl, that she falls on her way to the well. Also, she has bad eyesight and bumps into things.” She wiped her shiny brow with a kerchief and said, “You will be a help to her, and will be able to do the chores that her poor eyes make onerous.”

More time passed. My breasts swelled, my hips grew rounder. In the market, from afar, I examined Mr. Musa for signs of the illness that Aunt Rahel had diagnosed. His skin did look yellow to me. And the man was shorter of breath. Perhaps Aunt Rahel was right. But would my body wait for Mr. Musa to die? Or would I become a woman before he was dead in the ground?

*  *  *

It was late spring when I awoke with pain gripping my belly so badly I was nauseated. Surely this meant my blood was coming. As I carried water from the little well, I sweated more than usual. As I ground wheat, my head throbbed, and all day long the pain in my belly grew worse and worse. Soon, sleepiness came over me. I swooned when trying to straighten up the kitchen. I lay down on my pallet and closed my eyes. In the morning there was a wad of rags between my legs. It was soaked
through with my blood. My mother helped me to the chamber pot, and she washed me herself, sponging the blood from my thighs. Then she helped me back to my pallet.

“I am sorry, Mother.”

“For what?”

I shook my head. I didn't know what I was apologizing for.

“You have nothing to be sorry for other than becoming a woman.” She scrunched her face, left me, and returned a few minutes later with Aunt Rahel, who bent over me, smelled my breath, put her hands on my heart, and then lower, quickly undressed me, exploring my body.

“Ooooh,” I moaned, when she pressed my belly. “Not there, not there.”

I tried my apology again. “Aunt, I am sorry.”

She put a hand on my sweaty forehead. “You asked me if I was a sorceress or a doctor. I told you I was neither.”

“So what are you?”

She cocked her head to one side. Bit her top lip, and then said, “The ancient mothers believed that a girl's menarche rearranged her organs, putting the womb in the heart and the heart in the mouth.”

“So my heart is in my mouth now?”

She shrugged. “Do you feel rearranged?”

“No, I feel like I am one of the ancients. I hurt everywhere. Like I have become an old woman overnight.”

“Not an old woman, but a baby one. You are a baby woman, poor thing. You will feel better and worse tomorrow. You have indeed become a woman. Here, drink some of this.” She handed me a small flask. “It will help with your cramps. But it won't help with anything else. Mr. Musa isn't dead yet. But he will die soon, leaving you a widow, but I am sorry to say, already a wife. Your blood came quicker than his death. I am so sorry. I wish there were something I could do for you, but there isn't, there simply isn't.”

*  *  *

My cousin's and sisters-in-law's preparations for me were elaborate. In the two weeks before my wedding, they dressed me up and practiced prettying me. They plucked the hair under my arms, rubbed my whole body with pumice, and then powdered and scented me with myrrh, spikenard, and coriander oil. Sultana shampooed my hair with lavender
soap and waxed my eyebrows with beeswax, then darkened them with burnt matchsticks. Hani stained my lips with geranium and poppy petals and rouged my cheeks with a cream Masudah cooked out of vinegar, isinglass, nutmeg, honey, and red sandalwood. Aunt Rahel made me drink a tea brewed out of a root she called kava kava. She said it would give me fortitude and calm my nerves. Masudah gave me new amulets to hide in my sleeve pockets and put under my pillow. Yerushalmit gave me a coral bracelet that she said was my mother's. Hani experimented braiding my hair in an elaborate coiffure.

I let them pummel and pound me into a bride. But we all knew the truth of it—I was miserable, and my wedding day was no real cause for celebration.

“Will Elohim send a ram in my place?” I blurted out as Sultana rubbed kohl on my eyebrows.

Yerushalmit snapped, “Haughty girl, who are you to compare yourself to Isaac our Father? You are no sacrifice.”

Yerushalmit had been younger than I when she married my brother Mordechai. She had no patience for my complaints.

“Leave her be.” Masudah wiped the tears off my face with her apron. “Sha, sha, little girl, now we have to clean you up and prettify you all over again.” She turned to Yerushalmit and shot her dagger eyes. “All brides blaspheme. Elohim is merciful and has nothing but forgiveness for virgins taken by old men. Sha, sha, all will be well in the end.” Then Masudah hugged me to her big bosom and whispered little lewd things in my ears that I never thought I would hear from my sister-in-law—ugly bedroom tricks on how to make my husband “finish his work before it even started” so I would not have to “suffer like a cart horse under the yoke of him.” In those final days leading up to my wedding, the only thing that aroused in me any emotion other than dread was the fact that I would finally get to have my own henna. I couldn't help but feel a twinge of excitement. As I was to be a bride, my mother couldn't deny me a Night of Henna. To do so would be against the custom of our people and would arouse talk of the evil eye. She may have been a spiteful woman, but even my mother wouldn't launch her only daughter into matrimony under a cloud of ill omen.

But the promise of henna wasn't enough. Three days before my wedding, I stole away. I ran through the dye mistress's yard to Auntie Aminah's, and then back past the frankincense tree. I hadn't been to
my cave in a very long time. I ducked into the entrance and found it almost as I had left it. The chalk boy and girl were faded, and the chalk horse was missing snout and ears. I picked up a chalk stone and redrew the outlines, and then I backed against the wall and fit myself into the image of the girl who held my place in the darkness. I reached for the chalk boy's hand, and I shut my eyes and prayed that Asaf would come back for me now, right now. That he would miraculously appear, rescuing me from Mr. Musa. I missed Asaf. I missed him so much that for a moment I became emptier than the chalk girl. I was a shadow of myself, aching with longing for my boy cousin.

I left the cave and returned to my parents' house. The next day, I waited until I knew that the other Damaris were out of their house, and I stole inside. I stood looking at Aunt Rahel's potions and tonics. My eyes fell on those she had described as deadly. There, the little embroidered satchel. I reached for it, took it in my hand. Outside, a cock crowed, a dog barked, and a goat bleated, but the most powerful sound was that of my beating heart, my own animal noise joining their earthy chorus. Do I kill myself? Or kill Mr. Musa? I raised the satchel to my nose and sniffed—turnip root, goat dung, jasmine flowers, burnt olive oil, freshly baked bread. The satchel smelled of everything and nothing. The dog barked again, and I fled the little house clasping that little parcel of death in my hand, burning a dark star in the middle of my palm.

The next morning, I rose before my parents and lit a small fire on the outside cookstove. I boiled water and took the satchel from my sleeve pocket. What would it be like to die? And what would it be like to lie in unsanctified ground? Would I be lonely? Of course you will be, I told myself. Lonely as bleached bones. I opened the satchel. The strange smells wafted out and I breathed them all in, packing the scent of far away and long ago deep into my lungs. Then I felt movement behind me. I turned. The dye mistress was there. She had come into our yard. She squatted and whispered something in my ear. She said, “Adela Damari, I have brought you a present.” In the buttery dawn light, she unfurled a black and red lafeh cloth, fresh from the drying line. “This is my present to you.” She nodded at the satchel, and I cinched it up, then took the cloth from her. A married woman's lafeh, for me to wear over my gargush.

“Thank you, but I take no joy in my wedding.”

“Of course you don't, but still, you must act the part.
I often take
no joy in my spinsterhood; I have no babes to fill my arms, and yet by acting the part of it, I convince myself that I am not lonely. And sometimes it works.”

I let her kiss me on both cheeks, and then she left me alone. I folded up the lafeh cloth. Then I swung Aunt Rahel's satchel from my fingers, letting it swish back and forth in the air. I watched it swing, realizing that I would not kill myself, not yet at least, and that I would marry Mr. Musa, pretending that I was still a flesh-and-blood girl, when really I had traded places with a girl of chalk. I put Aunt Rahel's satchel back in my sleeve pocket. I went back inside the house thinking about all the different kinds of loneliness there were in the world, and wondering if my own loneliness would smell like turnip root, goat dung, jasmine flowers, burnt olive oil, freshly baked bread, or like the dye mistress's troughs—colorful wells of water that she scented with roses to mask the stench of stagnation.