Henna House (11 page)

The same night my father brought the revocation home from the scribe, I stole it from out of the chest where they still kept Uncle Zecharia's deerskin Torah. While my parents slept, I threw the parchment into the hearth. As it crackled and burned, I saw strange things in the glowing flames—chief among them a vision of a dancing deer, which I took as a sign that Uncle Zecharia's Torah approved of my vandalism and that the deer who had sacrificed its hide for the words of the Law was a protective spirit, a totem of good luck and an intermediary between me and my uncertain fate. Before I returned to my pallet I thought of stealing other things—a piece of jewelry, a set of three silver spoons my mother treasured—in order to make it look as though we'd been ransacked. But in the end, I went to sleep without taking anything else or doing any further damage. That night, I dreamed of the young groom in Aden who flung himself on the Torah to protect it from burning. But in my dream it was Asaf who was the hero, and when he perished, it was the words of revocation that leapt from his body, like the mystic name writ in flames.

What I didn't know was that in addition to the revocation, she had paid the scribe to write two copies of a letter to Uncle Zecharia, informing him of the revocation. Then she paid a messenger to take one copy of this letter to Sana'a and a caravanner to take another copy to Aden—both letters addressed to associates of Uncle Zecharia. But I was ignorant of her treachery—had I known, I would have chased those letters to the far corners of the earth. Everyone would have spoken of me. I would have become a legend—a girl from Qaraah who turned herself into a mountain cat in order to overtake the messengers and dig her claws into their backs before they could tamper with her happiness. But I knew nothing of the letters, so I remained only a girl who sharpened her teeth and claws on nothing more than petty domestic trivialities. Just a few weeks after I destroyed the document, my mother went into the chest and saw that it was missing. She put me over her knees and beat my behind with a wooden spoon. Then she said, “Stupid girl, this was only a copy. There is another draft with the rabbi for safekeeping. Who do you think you are to try to thwart my plans?”

M
ore than two years passed. I would be lying if I said that I spent those years doing anything other than praying for Asaf to come back. No one knew, of course. I kept my single-minded devotions to myself. The only ones to rebuke me were my little idols, my only true confidants, who grew tired of my doleful lamentations and urged me to stop pining for a boy who would never come back. At least that is what I imagined they said, as I offered them grain and sage and bowed my head to their altar.

Nothing remarkable happened in those years. But when I was eleven everything changed. One day my father stumbled on his way into our house, almost falling, catching himself with a surprised grunt. It was the winter of 1930. He had news to share. A letter in his hand. My mother worked at the table, stretching out jachnun dough. He explained that his younger brother, Barhun, Barhun's wife, Rahel, and their youngest daughter would be leaving their home in Aden and coming to live with us. My mother relinquished her tender hold on the dough and swore that Rahel Damari wouldn't cross her threshold, let alone come to live in her house.

“He is my brother.” My father's voice rose and wavered at the same time; he was incredulous, angry.

“If they come, they won't leave,” my mother yelled. “And if
she
comes here, I will leave you.”

My mother had threatened many things in their twenty-four years of marriage, but never this.

“And where will you go?”

“Back to Taiz.”

“You'll go nowhere, Sulamit!” My father coughed, a great heaving rattle, then grabbed my mother by the wrist and pulled her arm toward
him, while at the same time almost pushing her shoulders away. They remained that way for a moment, locked in an insurmountable stasis.

“Make me stay and welcome the other Damaris and I'll poison your jachnun.”

He hadn't let go of her, but she twisted her body and turned away from him. A great big glob of sputum flew from her lips and landed in the middle of the dough. It didn't soak in, but rested there like the white of an egg.

“Why?”

“They will ruin things. You'll see. They will ruin everything!”

I had been standing near the doorway. I stared at that spit, a glistening token of my mother's crude audacity. My father let go of my mother's wrists. But she wasn't the least bit cowed. She left the house slowly, arrogantly, not bothering to turn around and look back. My father and I were left alone together with that spoiled dough. Ignoring me, he sighed, went to the door, walked outside, and stood there for a moment with his hands up, as if beseeching the heavens for guidance.

I went over to the table and did what I thought my mother would do if she were in her right mind, which she clearly wasn't. I took a knife and cut out the glob of spit from the center of the jachnun. I pressed the remaining dough on top of itself and threw the spoiled dough in the slop pail. Then I took my mother's place at the table, rolling, stretching, and pressing. After all, I thought, whether the other Damaris were welcome or not, we still had to have dinner.

In my opinion, the other Damaris couldn't be coming at a better time, for I needed allies now more than ever. My aunt? If she were really a witch, then perhaps she could brew me a potion I could use to kill myself or to kill the man my mother was currently scheming to make my husband. My father still coughed and was thinner and sallower than ever. The Confiscator cast a long shadow over our lives. In the time since Asaf's departure, my mother had failed to find me a new groom. She had recently chosen Mr. Musa, the jeweler—the fattest and richest man she could find—to court me. She rightly believed that his girth and wealth would insulate him from the rumors and innuendos concerning my marriageability.

Just the week before the letter arrived from the other Damaris, she had made my father pay a visit to Mr. Musa. He was the sort of man who stayed fat even when others died of starvation. He was very old,
wrinkly, smelly, and wealthy. His first wife had died childless, and his second wife was rumored to be an old toothless woman, who came to the marriage with three grown children of her own—though no one ever saw her, as she stayed confined in the house. Whoever married Mr. Musa next would be her sister-wife. According to my brother Hassan, Mr. Musa was looking for a “virgin” to make his Isaac days sweet as manna. “Isaac days” is what people called old age because Isaac, our Father, lived to be one hundred years old, the longest of the patriarchs. I had no intention of marrying a man as old as time, and swore to my mother that I would kill myself before agreeing to such a union. As usual, she paid no heed to my threats and snorted that I “would be made to marry a dog” if I continued to act “like a little bitch.”

I knew that my parents made up the night that the letter came from Uncle Barhun, though the urgent sounds of their coupling were ordinary enough. As I lay on my pallet, I wondered what my aunt and cousin would look like, what clothes they would wear, and whether my cousin was skilled at cooking or sewing, or both. I wondered about my aunt. I didn't know why my mother hated her so much and I dreamed that she or my cousin could possibly help me avoid marrying Mr. Musa, as help me they surely must.

In the morning I overheard my parents discussing logistics. My brothers lived next door to us, in a little two-story house that my father had built before I was born, when my mother bore their sixth son. One by one, when they began to grow hair on their chins, my brothers had moved into the little house with the charming red roof. When they married, they moved out of it. Now only two were left—Hassan and Aaron. “Ephrim or Pinny can make room for Hassan and Aaron,” my father said, referring to my two eldest brothers, both of whom had extra corners in their houses where one could lay a pallet.

“Mmpfh,” my mother responded, adding, “Bad enough I have to welcome her, now you throw our own boys out of their beds?” I almost never saw Ephrim or Pinny or any of their many children. They lived on the other side of Qaraah. Later I heard my mother grumbling to Mrs. Bashari that she was on the “worse side of a bad trade. My beloved boys for that Adeni witch? Bad enough that she is coming to Qaraah, now I have to breathe the same air as her, and probably share my dinner table.”

A few days later, I went to Auntie Aminah on the pretense of asking
her to help me with my knitting. We bent over my wool; she tsked-tsked at my purposefully clumsy stitches and corrected my technique. I thanked her for her help, and made a few more mistakes simply so that she would have more opportunity to instruct me. But she knew that I had come for more than stitchery. She didn't disappoint and began to speak about my other aunt as if we had been in the middle of a conversation about her.

“I've never known the circumstances that led to Rahel meeting your Uncle Barhun,” she said, “But what I do know is that it was a love match, not an arranged marriage. And your mother met Rahel only once—at Rahel and Barhun's wedding. Your mother came home from that trip saying that her brother-in-law had married a cow. Of course, I thought she meant that Rahel was fat and ugly, but what she really meant was that Rahel has an animal nature . . . though I do admit this was a strange way to put it.”

“Are you saying that my mother called Aunt Rahel a
woman of valor
?”

This was a euphemism. It was taken from the Sabbath hymn of the same name that lists the attributes of a pious woman. But when muttered with a wink and a whisper, it referred to a woman who took pleasure in bed, not in the usual manner of wifely subservience, but with abandon, power, and passion, like men.

“Psha, girl, of course not. How would she know? I have no idea what she actually meant. An animal nature? For all I know she was referring to her stink, or her laugh. Maybe your Aunt Rahel smells like a goat or brays like a donkey. But I do think your mother is right to defy your father, right not to want them to come. Suli's fears may be justified”—Aminah and my father were the only ones who ever used my mother's nickname, Suli for Sulamit—“Your Aunt Rahel is the sort of woman who inspires gossips to flap their tongues.”

“About what?”

Auntie Aminah squinted at me. “It is not for me to fill your ears with trash, filth, and misery. No, I will not repeat the rumors. But there are other reasons your mother doesn't want Rahel Damari to come. Reasons that have nothing to do with gossip. You see, with your brothers Hassan and Aaron still to be wed, she doesn't want any trouble. She doesn't know anything about Rahel Damari's daughter. She is a year older than you. What if she is a seducer? What if she is a bad influence on you
and causes you to lose your morals? And what if she comes in between your brothers and their intended girls? The fact of the matter is that the child isn't engaged or married, even though she is of age. In Aden there is no fear of confiscation so there is no hurry with engagements, but of course once they are here, arrangements will have to be made.”

Auntie Aminah was quiet for a moment. The clicking of our needles seemed like the chattering of insects engaged in their very own conversation. When she began again she said, “There is also the matter of Rahel Damari's profession.”

“Henna?”

“Yes, henna.”

“Why is this a problem?”

She snapped, “I didn't say it was a problem. Henna is henna, that's that.” Startled by her rebuke, I felt my cheeks color and I looked down at my hands. I knew that was the end of our conversation. We worked the rest of the time in silence. I was knitting a pair of sleeping socks for my father. The wool was gray and knobby, but it was soft enough. I planned on giving him the socks for his birthday, just two Sabbaths hence. I didn't understand what my aunt meant. Even though I'd never had henna myself, I'd seen plenty of henna dyers, and none of them ever seemed dangerous.

*  *  *

All of my sisters-in-law had had Nights of Henna before their weddings. And every so often they went to one another's houses to adorn one another, either for festivals, or for no particular occasion. I had been in the room during their Nights of Henna, but was sternly forbidden to get even a tiny dab of my own. Jewish girls were always welcome in the henna house, but almost never wore elaborate patterned henna until they bled. Little girls were indulged with a smear on the palm on special occasions like marriages and births, and if a girl was very lucky, she emerged with a few elegant scribbles on her hand. But not me. I watched greedily as the women of our community adorned one another. And I would sulk home afterward, feeling so jealous that I thought my heart would burst. But my mother was adamant, and I knew better than to defy her on this.

By the time Uncle Barhun's letter arrived, even though I had never had my own henna, I knew enough about it to understand quite a lot about the process—simply from being a girl in Qaraah. I knew that
for the most part, henna dyers were family members with fine, steady hands. They were knowledgeable in the usage of herbs and aromatic oils, and either volunteered their services for a bride, or agreed to the payment of a small sum for a more elaborate application. In our tradition, the hennaing of brides lasted from two to four days. The ceremony began with an application of a solid coat of henna paste up and down the bride's feet, shins, hands, and forearms. Then the bride was wrapped in special cloths known as
mehani
. The next day the cloths were unwrapped, the paste was washed off, and the bride's skin was revealed to be a deep reddish orange.