Gardens of Water (10 page)

The women stood on the other side of the room, away from the men who gathered around the bed. Mehmet and Yigit Akay held the sheet in the air like a screen for a
karagöz
puppet show so that the operation was hidden from the rest of the guests.

Sinan stood away, as the father should, but watched his son’s face during the operation.
smail held his jaw tight and looked at the ceiling. The sound of the knife made Sinan’s stomach turn. He and the rest of the men said, “Allahu Akbar.”
smail’s face turned white and his lips quivered and his eyes filled with water, but he didn’t let out a sound, and the water did not spill down his cheeks.

The
sünnetci
dressed the wound and said, “May it pass quickly.”
smail lay there staring up at the ceiling, his face still pale, as ashen as if flour had been sifted over his skin.

Chapter 6

S
HE WAS ACTING LIKE A FOOL. “CAN I TAKE YOUR COATS?”!
Aptal!
It was burning hot out!
rem spilled a plate of rice in the potted fern and poured tea into Mehmet Bey’s coffee, and she was so scared, so entirely out of breath with panic, that she couldn’t even bring herself to go over to where Dylan and his parents sat. She thought a month of secret meetings could be read in her face, and even though she could see that they were out of tea and that they needed dessert, she let them wait until her mother made it to that side of the room.

“Don’t forget about the Americans,” her mother scolded.

“They make me nervous,” she said, relieved to reveal part of the truth.

“Oh, you sound like your father!” Her mother left the kitchen bearing yet another pot of tea.

When the time had come for the circumcision,
rem had been genuinely scared for her brother. He was babied by her parents and allowed to do whatever he wanted, but she had held him as an infant and fed him at night when her mother was exhausted and he was crying. She listened to him in the darkness of early morning when he spoke funny gibberish in his sleep. So when she heard the knife, she held her breath until it was done, and she forgot, at least momentarily, about the American boy, Dylan.

Afterward, though, her mother and father went to
smail and held his hand and kissed his cheeks, and she was left alone to pick up the dishes. She delivered a stack of plates and cups to the kitchen and returned to the living room for another stack. Everyone crowded around
smail now—his white bed and clothes shining in the lamplight—and showered him with tinsel.

For her there had been no big party, no money or fancy clothes. She simply woke up one morning two years ago with blood on her legs and stains on the sheets. When she told her mother, her mother quietly stripped the bed so as not to wake the still-sleeping
smail, wadded up the sheets, and stuffed them at the bottom of the clothes hamper.

“You surprised me,” she said. “So early.”

She had whisked
rem into the washroom and showed her what to do to contain the bleeding while her father waited outside the door, knocking occasionally, and complaining about being late to the
bakkal.

“
rem. You’re a woman,” her mother had said, smiling, whispering as though it were a conspiracy. “You must stay away from the boys now.”

She had gone to bed a child and awoken a woman, and she had had to stand there in the locked bathroom—the glaring white light shining down, the pad bunched uncomfortably between her legs—and listen to her mother deliver new rules in hushed tones that made her feel ashamed.

And for a week afterward her father hadn’t said more than three words to her, and that was only after she finally resorted to sitting on his lap one night after dinner. “No, please,
rem,” he said, brushing her off his lap. It was like she was suddenly contagious.

Now she dropped a stack of dessert trays in the sink, the shredded remnants of baklava sliding off into the dirty water. She returned to the living room and pictures were being taken: her father with his arm around
smail, smiling as though the boy had just been born, smiling in a way she rarely saw anymore. She wanted that smile showered upon her.

She balanced dirty teacups in her arms and went to the kitchen and dropped those in the sink, hoping they would break, wishing she wouldn’t have to wash them, wanting everyone to stop smiling and notice her for once, even if it meant being yelled at. She dipped her hand in the water and washed the rim of a teacup with the sponge while she listened to the laughter in the other room.

After her father had gone to the
bakkal
that morning, her mother had sat her down in this kitchen, pinned back her hair, and wrapped it away in a scarf. She wasn’t trying to hurt her,
rem knew that, but she scraped her scalp with the pins, and pulled her hair back so tightly her eyelids turned up at the corners. She remembered the smile on her mother’s face—not quite happy, but satisfied in some strange way. When she was done, her mother kissed her and held her and
rem watched the morning light filter through the dirty plastic skylight. A pot of burning rice steamed on the stove.