Henna House (15 page)

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The next afternoon, after I finished my chores, I went to visit my sister-in-law Masudah. Masudah had two babies on her lap, ten-month-old Suri, and her newborn, Shalom. She handed me Suri, who had a tiny upturned nose and very long dark eyelashes. Her cheeks were big and rosy, like her mother's. Around her neck was a strand of cubical amber beads. Masudah had bought them from a Muslim bride. Jewish brides didn't wear amber, yet Jewish mothers sought out the beads and draped them on their babies, to borrow the protection that the stranger magic could confer. Little Suri reached a hand up and pulled my hair. I uncurled her fingers from my locks and kissed them. Then I leaned back with her on the pillows of the divan and let her play with the cowries on my dress. I loved Masudah's house. It was an airy, lighthearted place filled with a bustle of children, toys, a riot of color. Masudah had a red rug on the floor, blue and green tapestries on the walls, as well as drawings that she drew—pictures of people or places in Aden, where she was from. I loved looking at Masudah's pictures. She was very good at faces and expressions. She had sketched me a couple of times, but I liked her pictures of other people much better than my own portraits. She didn't only make the drawings, she also made the paper herself.

There was nowhere to buy paper in Qaraah, and Sana'an paper was very expensive. Once or twice a year, Masudah boiled a big vat of rags in lime and then rolled the rags up into balls and kept them damp in
a barrel behind her house. The water fermented the rags and helped break them up. After several months, she took them out and beat them to a pulp. Usually my brother Dov would do the heavy beating for her—he even fixed up a barrel with a blade in the bottom that you could turn using a handle on the outside. This made the work much easier. They would put the fermented pulp inside and turn the handle until the mixture was a creamy paste. When the paste was ready, she mixed it with fine sawdust that she procured from a carpenter. Then she poured it into a rectangular sieve and pressed it with a heavy wooden block to squeeze out extra water. She put the “sheet” between layers of felted cotton and squeezed it again and again and laid the sheets out in the sun to dry.

Masudah and my brother lived near the ritual bath. Women were always trooping by, either on their way to or returning from their monthly dip. Masudah liked to look out her window and see who was coming or going. She always laughed that she knew who was expecting long before anyone else, because if a woman didn't visit the ritual bath, it was a sure sign that a baby was on the way. But Masudah generally kept confidences, and gossiped only when she had a compelling reason.

“Mmumph—” I opened my mouth and shut it again.

“What is it, Adela?”

“Nothing.”

We sat in silence. I didn't know whether to ask directly or to take a roundabout approach. Finally I opted for directness.

“Masudah, what can you tell me about the scandals that nip at the hem of Aunt Rahel's skirts?”

More silence. When Masudah finally spoke, she was direct too.

She said, “What the woman at the wadi said was nothing more than lies and slander. Your Aunt Rahel is not a seductress. She is an honorable woman. But I am not surprised that such a thing happened—what I mean is, I am not surprised that someone objected to Rahel's presence.”

“Why?”

Again silence. I waited, dandling the baby on my lap.

“Adela.”

“What?”

“What I am saying is that your aunt is the sort of woman people blame. For everything. They blame her equally for good or for evil.”

“Blame her for good? That makes no sense.”

“Sense? There is no sense. There is only blame, blame, and more blame for all the good or evil that befalls a soul. Adela,” she sighed, “let me tell you two stories. I can see that it is no use
not
telling you. Who am I to deny you what everyone else already knows? These stories are not secrets. But we do not prattle about them. I don't want to hear you repeating them to anyone. Understand?” She took a deep breath, shifted the rooting baby at her bosom, and began.

“Many years ago, Rahel hennaed the hands and feet of a laboring woman. The woman gave birth to triplets, all of whom lived. After the blessed event, people began to whisper that Rahel was not a proper Jewish woman at all, but a priestess of Anath, masquerading as a Jew. Those spreading the rumors insinuated that Rahel had called on the old goddess herself to multiply the babies in the mother's womb and to see them safely born.”

She paused, switched the baby to her other breast.

“And now the second story . . .” Before she continued, she gave me a remonstrative look, which let me know that even though she was being generous with information, she was uncomfortable with the subject, and cross with me for asking her to venture forth into it.

“This story is in many ways the opposite of the first. Last year, a bride whom Aunt Rahel had hennaed gave birth to a two-headed baby. A pathetic creature. Both the baby and the mother died, of course, and some would say that it was God's mercy to send them to the World to Come. But the family of the bride blamed Rahel. They said that instead of inscribing charms and murmuring incantations against the owl-footed demoness Lilitu, she had called Lilitu forth, and that because of her dark arts, the demon mother had possessed the bride, and caused her to bear the two-headed demon infant.”

“But that's—”

“Sha, Adela, let me finish.”

“I don't understand.”

“What I am saying is—”

“That Aunt Rahel is a sorceress?”

“Of course not. What I am saying is that even if there hadn't been trouble for Uncle Barhun, they would have had to leave Aden anyway. It wasn't . . .”

“Wasn't what?”

“Wasn't safe for her there anymore.”

Masudah reached for my arm, and gripped my wrist tightly. “Know this, Adela . . . regardless of what anyone else says about her, your Aunt Rahel is an honorable woman, and the best henna dyer in all of Yemen.”

Suri tugged so hard on my hair that I had to pry open her little fingers. I kissed the little palm of her hand. “Masudah?”

“What?”

“Are there other stories about Aunt Rahel?”

She wrinkled her nose. “Don't be greedy for bad news, little girl.” She put a hand under my chin, while spearing me with a gaze that was both rebuking and forgiving. Then she put the baby down in his basket and went to make us tea.

After all the trouble, Aunt Rahel didn't go often to the wadi where the other women gathered, and she never lingered in the market, gossiping as other women were wont to do. I continued to wonder about her. But when I dared to ask more questions, I never received answers, only more rude innuendo and conflicting stories cackled by the women at the well.

“W
hat goodies do you have for me today, sweet Adela? Have you brought some of that yummy citron jelly? It is so tart. Makes my lips pucker up, my mouth water.”

His voice was low, phlegmy. He smelled tart and wormy, like moldering melon rinds. I backed up against the wall and held the basket out in front of me for Mr. Musa to take it. Every time, it was the same. He reached for the basket and put it down at my feet. Then he reached up under my antari, shoved aside my underlinen, and pleasured himself, while I stood there shaking. He thrust his fat fingers inside me while I grimaced in pain, swallowed my cries, and watched his face contort into an ugly mask of pleasure. Afterward he wiped his hands on his shamle and then patted me on the head, like a dog.

This was my nightmare.

I dreamed it over and over. And in the morning, I would wait until my parents were out of our room and I would take off all my clothes and examine my body for dreaded signs that womanhood was approaching. To be a woman was to be a wife. To be a wife was to be possessed by Musa. To be possessed by Musa was to be as good as dead. Two months after the other Damaris arrived in Qaraah, I found a hair on my pubis, and I yanked it out. It was early spring and I cursed my own body for sprouting this scrubby mountain grass. When my nipples grew dark and wide, I tried to press them back into my chest. When that didn't work, I cut a length of cloth and bound myself each morning. If I didn't give my breasts room to grow, I reasoned, perhaps they wouldn't swell and betray me to marriage. Sometimes a hard little nut of a thought flashed in my head: When I was engaged to Asaf, I wanted to be a woman right away. Now that I was engaged to Musa, I wanted to stay a girl forever.

In my waking life, as in my dream, I did visit Mr. Musa's house. But,
thank Elohim, he was never there, as he was always at his stall in the market. My mother insisted that I go to his house on Friday mornings before Sabbath, and deliver a jar of our citron jelly and a share of our kubaneh bread. My new cousin, Hani Damari, came with me. Mr. Musa's wife always answered the door, swathed from head to toe like a Muslim woman, even though everyone knew she was a Jewess from a village to the west of Sana'a. All I ever saw of her were her eyes, tiny little blue slits of light peeking out of her coverings. Those eyes didn't look old, and they didn't look crazy or like they belonged to an invalid. She seemed young enough to be one of my sisters-in-law and walked by herself without a cane. The stories about her had been false. She never invited us in, and all she did was reach for the basket and whisper a quiet “Thank you, little sister” in the dialect of her people. She didn't have any grown children, but a single baby, a little boy with a snub nose whom she carried in the crook of her arm.

One Friday, when we were walking home, Hani asked, “Do you think Musa hits her to give her pain, or to give himself pleasure?”

I balked, “What do you mean? What a horrible thing to say.” I was blushing.

“Well,” Hani said, “clearly she covers her face to hide bruises, and she doesn't appear in public so people won't gossip about her injuries. And when a man hits a wife, sometimes it is for punishment, but sometimes it is to open the gates of paradise. For him, I mean. For her? Well, a man's paradise can be a woman's hell.”

“How do you know such things?”

Hani snorted. “My older sisters taught me more than my aleph bet. And I will teach you, so you will know the ways of the world. The dark ways, as well as the light. For it is not enough to know just one of them.”

“If those are the ways of the world, I am sure I don't want to know them. When I am married to Mr. Musa, if he hits me like that, I will cut off his grapes.” I spoke with crude bravado, pretending to be audacious, even though I wasn't.

“Oh, Adela.” Hani stopped, wrapped her arms around me, and kissed my nose. “Don't worry. Mr. Musa will not hit you.”

“How do you know?”

“Because he won't marry you.” Hani spoke with authority. “You will be free of him.”

“What is to stop him?”

She smiled a coy, all-knowing smile but wouldn't say any more.

“What is to stop him? Can you tell fortunes? Free of him?” I gulped. “I will never be free. Have you heard my father cough? If my father goes to the World to Come before I am married to Mr. Musa, I will be confiscated, and if he doesn't? Well, I don't think Mrs. Musa looks very free, do you?”

Hani looked down at her feet, and then looked up at me. She had a strange expression, as if she half knew something that I would like to know the whole of.

A few days after this conversation, I went next door, to the little house with the red roof. I was delivering some soap that I had just finished making with my sister-in-law Sultana. I knocked, but no one answered. I knocked again, and still no answer. The door swung open under my hand. I found myself walking in, breathing in the scent of Eden on the sixth day, and soon I was standing in front of Aunt Rahel's herbs and unguents. All those little colored bottles and the satchels filled with mashed roots and dried leaves. I picked one up, and then another. I couldn't make out any of the writing on the little vials, because I didn't know how to read. But I knew enough about roots and herbs, from listening to my sisters-in-law discuss the treatments they found for their many female maladies, to know that a storehouse of herbs always contained bitter little treasures that were like coins—two-sided, deadly when taken in certain doses, healing when taken in others. My eyes fell hungrily on my aunt's stores. I breathed in deeply, wondering how I could discern what I needed from this wheaty, earthy amalgam. But as I couldn't tell one from the other, I just reached out and grabbed a little embroidered satchel with a cinch top. I had almost slipped it into the sleeve pocket of my antari when I heard a noise.

Aunt Rahel had walked in, quiet as a cat. She stood before me, her eyes flashing over the vial in my hand. She reached for it, appraised it, and raised an eyebrow.

“What do you need, Adela? What ails you?”

I opened my mouth. I was going to lie. I was going to say, “Aunt Rahel, I am interested in learning about healing. Will you teach me which herb stops a fever? Which stops blood? Which causes vomiting? Which reduces swelling?” But when I looked into my aunt's eyes, I saw oceans and deserts. I saw a world not yet created, and worlds that had died long before I was born. In other words, I saw eternity, and in
eternity, I also saw myself. So I told her the truth. I said, “Aunt Rahel, I need a deadly poison.”

Aunt Rahel was not like other women. She didn't say, “Child, it is an abomination to speak of such things.” She didn't hug me to her bosom either and comfort me, trying to lift me out of my morbid sense of doom. She said, “Do you plan on killing yourself or some other?”

I let out a big sigh. “To kill Mr. Musa I would have to poison the citron jelly that I deliver for the Sabbath. And that would mean that if they had a taste of it, his wife and baby would die too. And I would not like to hurt them. So unfortunately I have to kill myself.” I was relieved to give voice to what had been weighing so heavily on my mind.