Authors: Shamim Sarif
She had cried continuously afterwards, not hysterical, but helpless. There was nothing she could do, and no one she could tell. Even if they believed she had been raped, she would be worthless to her husband now, a damaged thing, and she would be sent back to India. Perhaps they would want to keep her son as well. She could not speak of it, and so she spent the night blocking the thing that had happened from her mind, and wondering if there was some way she could ask her husband to fire the African. As it turned out, she did not have to – the next day he did not come to work, or the day after, and after five days her husband hired another man, cursing under his breath the unreliability of
kaffirs
.
As her young, coltish body began to fill out again, she worked hard to keep the rape and the possible consequences from entering her mind. But now she sat in her bedroom with a child that did not look like her husband, and she rocked herself back and forth, and pulled at the baby’s hair with gentle fingers praying that they would not notice.
They did notice, within the space of a fortnight. Her confinement was over, and she was up and around in the kitchen when she heard her husband and brothers upstairs, talking together in undertones, and she knew instinctively that she was the subject of their discussion. They said nothing to her that night, and although her husband hit her once, he did not directly accuse her of anything. But the accusations came quickly the following day and she defended herself as best she could; she swore to them that two of her grandparents had had curly hair, that the child was his, how else could it be? They did not listen, only cursed her and told her she would have to go back to her own family and then the beating began.
So it was that she came to be lying face down on the floor of the kitchen, with the pain of the sticks no longer felt. She rolled her eyes, looking up at the wall before her, and then she used them to look down at the stone floor beneath her, simply to feel that some part of her body were still within her own control, even if it were only her eyeballs. She felt her mouth opening, and words coming out, a weak protest perhaps, a pleading to stop, and then she felt a wave of tension leave her body and she realised, helplessly, but with some relief, that she was about to pass out.
When she had stopped moving altogether, they stopped hitting and looked at the inert girl lying on the floor and thought for the first time that they might have in fact killed her.
“She’s strong,” said her mother-in-law, spitting onto the floor. “She will get up.”
They all accepted this remark as a kind of absolution, and they left the kitchen, passing her husband, who came in from the dining room where he had been sitting, motionless, for the last twenty minutes. He looked down at his wife’s beaten body. She was only nineteen years old, and now more than ever looked like a child, curled motionless on the floor. He made a half-hearted gesture to the young maid, who acknowledged him with a slight nod, waiting while he followed his family back out.
Once they were alone, the maid knelt beside the girl and tentatively touched her forehead. She could hear her mistress breathing still, and was relieved. She did not know what to do – calling a doctor without the permission of her master was out of the question – so she just knelt there and waited, stroking the head of the injured woman and murmuring softly into her ear.
Four weeks later, Begum sat on the edge of the bed, with some difficulty because of the pain in her back and ribs, and regarded her suitcase without much feeling. She had always known that her personal possessions were few, but she was still shocked that everything that could rightfully be considered her own after four years in South Africa could fit easily into one medium-sized case. Her children, thank God, were hers. For them she had fought tooth and nail in the last month, while her husband’s family had refused, and then argued and then bargained with her. She had watched them make her travel arrangements back to India, had watched them pack up her things, and she had become almost deranged from fatigue and from the unending pain in her back and stomach. She wondered continually what parts of her body they had broken with their sticks, and whether she would ever be free of the throbbing pain that consumed her nights and days. Through it all, however, she had fought against them and she had sworn on her own mother’s life that she would not leave if she were not allowed to take her children with her. They offered her the curly-haired girl at once – it was only her son that they wanted – but she refused to leave him, and did not listen to their shouts and arguments that she had no right to refuse. She continued to resist, until her mother-in-law gave in to her one day with surprising grace, confirming that she could take both of her children, but stipulating that she must go back to India without further delay or further demands. She agreed, relieved at the outcome, for she knew that she had no real rights under the religious laws that governed her marriage, and she had prayed hard that night for the first time in two years, a prayer of thanks to God for letting her keep her children.
For a few brief seconds as she stood on the platform, she was swallowed up by a blast of steam issuing from the train behind her. She was blinded, surrounded by the billowing shrouds of white, and she held on a little more tightly to her son’s tiny hand. She carried the baby in a large cloth that they had wrapped around her back. The added weight upon her only increased her pain, and so she had gone to board the train to Durban as soon as it had arrived, but her husband and his family had held her back.
“There is no need to hurry,” he had told her in Gujerati. “You will have a long enough time sitting on that train.”
So she waited with them in silence, watching people milling about, and she tried hard not to cry. She was still in shock at the difference that six weeks had made to her life. In that time she had given birth to another child, had been beaten senseless by her in-laws and was being sent home in disgrace to her family in India. She no longer had a husband, or a home. She was nineteen years old, and all acceptable avenues to a normal, respectable life were now closed to her forever. She did not even know that her father would allow her back into his house after what had happened. Perhaps she would be made to marry an older man; a widower perhaps, or a poor farmer who couldn’t afford anyone else. She had shuddered at this possibility and cried herself to sleep at night, but now as she stood on the platform, surrounded by these people, she felt very little. Mostly, she felt a desire to get onto the train and sit down, to try to relieve some of the pain that coursed in thick, winding streams through her body.
The little boy began to cry and, with some effort, she picked him up, pressing his hot, salty cheeks to hers. Finally, the warning whistle sounded, and she looked expectantly towards her husband. He nodded and picked up her case, walking towards the back of the train, where he found an empty carriage, with the sides open to the summer weather. He climbed aboard and deposited the case, and then came back out and stood aside from the door for Begum to enter. He watched her from outside as she settled the children, looking only at his son, and he gave her no word of farewell.
“Hold him out so I can kiss him,” was all he said and she looked up in surprise at this and tried to look into his face, but his eyes were cast down. He is sad to lose the boy, she thought, and though she blamed him for his choice in sending her away, the unusual tenderness of his request made her feel sorry for him. So he has feelings after all, she thought, and she nodded to him, and laid the baby down on the seat, and then took her son in her arms and stood with him at the side of the train. The boy was calmer now, and smiled down with questioning brown eyes at the family he was leaving. Begum’s head was hidden in the darkness of the carriage, and her husband could not see her smile as the train began to sway as a preliminary to setting off. She looked down at them, at her mother-in-law, the two youngest sons, each bearded, and their wives regarding her from beneath covered heads. These people who had been her family, and whom she had hardly known. She would not be sorry to leave them, but her husband? She could not comprehend how easily it was that this man who was supposed to be tied to her for a lifetime was now lost to her forever. She watched him with sadness, and something almost like pity, for he was sending her away for something that was not her fault, and he was doing so even though she knew he cared for her in his own way.
The train began to move, edging slowly down the track, and she held up the boy’s hand so that he should wave to them. They walked down the platform with her, alongside the train, until it began to pick up speed, the wheels turning with a slow, inexorable movement. Her husband still walked alongside them, and began to run a little now in order to keep up, and he shouted to her again to hold the boy down so he could kiss him goodbye. She leaned forward, and held the child out, and his father’s hands reached up to touch him, she thought, to caress his son, but the big hands were grasped suddenly around the child’s waist. She pulled back, not understanding what it was he was trying to do, but she was already leaning too far forward and his strong hands gripping and pulling at her son were unbalancing her more, and the train was quickening over the track, and she could not hold on to the boy, try as she might to cling on to his clothes. She could hardly conceive what had happened when she looked at her hands and they were empty. She stared back at the group that stood together, triumphant on the platform, her son in their midst in her husband’s arms. She stared as they passed away into the distance, as she lost sight of their faces, until they were only tiny figures on the platform.
The figures did not linger for very long in the station, but moved hurriedly to return home, because they, and everyone else who remained in the station could hear the screams of the woman on board the train even after it was long out of sight.
“I didn’t mean to make you cry,” said Amina. Miriam looked up, wiping her eyes.
“I can’t imagine losing a child like that. She must have wanted to die…”
Amina sighed. “I think a part of her did die that day. It made her hate everything that had led to it. For as long as I can remember, she was always warning me about the dangers of losing yourself in a marriage, or being ruled by family.”
“Is that why you haven’t gotten married yet?”
Amina smiled, but her eyes held no trace of teasing or amusement as they looked into Miriam’s. “No,” she said. “That’s not the reason at all.”
Miriam looked down, and her glance fell on Amina’s watch. “It’s two o’clock,” she said. “We should both try to get some sleep.”
The sound of the baby’s cry pierced the quiet darkness and they both looked up. Quickly, Miriam pushed back her chair and hurried to the stairs.
“Miriam…
”
Amina said. Miriam turned, one hand on the banister and waited. The girl looked thin and frail sitting there in the kitchen in her tiny pool of light, and Miriam felt bad. She had been relieved to hear the baby, for it had provided her with an easy escape from the tumult that Amina was stirring in her mind and heart with her stories and her very presence in the house.
She took a step back towards the girl and looked at her kindly.
“What is it?” she asked.
Amina studied her hands for a second and then looked up and shook her head. “Nothing,” she said. “You’d better go, the baby needs you.”
M
IRIAM WAS AWAKENED THE FOLLOWING MORNING
by the unfamiliar brilliance of the sun beneath her curtains. She sat up and squinted at the window, her thoughts still heavy with sleep. Something felt very wrong. She could not remember ever having woken up in this house when the sun was already so high. She looked at the clock that sat on Omar’s side of the bed. Seven o’clock.
She got up swiftly and pulled on her robe, running to the children’s rooms to wake them, for they had only half an hour before the school bus would arrive. Bursting into their room, she found herself entreating two empty beds to wake up. She whirled around, thinking that they might be behind her, playing hide and seek, but this morning, neither child jumped out, giggling and excited.
She went next door and checked the crib. Her baby at least was still there, sleeping. She could see an empty bottle beside her, and knew that Robert must have fed her in the early hours. How had she slept through that? Across the hallway, the door to Amina’s room stood wide open and the bed was neatly made up. Miriam peered out of the tiny window. Her children were outside by the vegetable patch, fully dressed, and Amina Harjan was kneeling down in the soil, showing them something.
After a hurried detour to wash, Miriam rushed downstairs, and went straight to the back door.
“Sam! Alisha!” she called. She waited on the threshold, impatient. Within moments, the children came running.
“What are you doing?” she asked, knowing that she had nothing to be angry about, but somehow disconcerted by the change to her usual routine. The children looked at her with wide eyes, similarly confused by the tone of the question, pitched somewhere between curiosity and anger.
“Nothing,” said Sam.
“Something!” corrected Alisha. “Amina was showing us the garden, Mummy. Do you know in a month we will have vegetables there?”
“Aunty Amina,” Miriam told them. “You call her Aunty. She is much older than you.”
“I’m twenty-four,” said Amina, approaching the back door. “Not an old lady yet.”
Miriam smiled, a little embarrassed, and ushered the children into the kitchen.
“I like to make sure they are respectful to their elders,” she said as she set the milk to boil. “They’ll be late for the bus,” she continued, but Amina was still lingering at the back door, and did not hear. Miriam beckoned her in.
“Come and have some breakfast with us,” she said, and Amina kicked off her boots and came inside.
“Thank you.”
“They are going to be late for school,” repeated Miriam. “I haven’t even made their sandwiches yet.”
“I’ll help you,” said Amina. “Where’s the bread?”
Miriam seemed unconvinced, but nodded to the covered loaf on the table, then opened a drawer and handed Amina a bread knife. She took it and balanced it on the tip of her finger. When the children laughed she looked up as though she had forgotten their existence altogether.
“What are you having for breakfast?” she asked.
“Porridge,” they answered.
“Are you going to eat it straight off the table?”
They shook their heads.
“Then,” she said, slicing into the loaf. “Why don’t you help your mother and get the bowls and spoons ready?”
They both ran for the crockery and within moments had set four places at the table. Miriam stirred the porridge and turned once to glance at Amina. She was focused on cutting the bread, but saw the movement of Miriam’s head from the corner of her eye and looked up.
“I never imagined I’d be so domesticated,” she said, and laughed.
Miriam hesitated and then spoke. “I never imagined anything else,” she said.
“Mummy, the milk!” Alisha shouted, and Miriam looked down, startled to find the pan seething with bubbles. Before she could even think, she felt Amina’s hand by her own, closing around the handle of the saucepan and dragging it from the heat.
Amina smiled at Sam and Alisha. “Another breakfast saved.” She turned to Miriam. “I don’t know what to put in their sandwiches. Why don’t you make them, while I give them the porridge?”
They changed places and Miriam worked quickly, speaking little, content to observe as Amina spooned out the children’s breakfast, chatting and joking with them as she did so. It was a new experience for Miriam, this help in the kitchen, this fun over breakfast, this care for her children from someone other than herself, and she liked it.
Amina ate with the children, by way of encouragement, and they had almost finished when Robert came in from the shop to announce that the bus was coming. He laughed when Amina jumped up and ordered the children into a short line behind her. She stood with the solemn rigidity of a toy soldier, waiting while Miriam gave each child a satchel and lunch bag, and then she began a stiff march through the kitchen and the shop, with Sam and Alisha following in step behind her. They marched all the way out to the porch and down the front steps, where she turned and saluted them with great seriousness. Giggling, they saluted back and ran down to the bus.
“Mummy?” shouted Alisha, from the door of the bus. Miriam came out onto the steps.
“Yes, sweetheart?”
“Can Amina…can Aunty Amina live with us all the time?”
Miriam glanced sideways to the girl who stood behind her, but Amina kept her amused gaze fixed upon the children. The women waited in silence, at the foot of the porch steps, watching until the bus was out of sight and all that remained was the vast plain before them, that huge stretch of land that Miriam had once dreaded, but had now become so accustomed to.
“Would you like some more breakfast?” she asked. “It’s our turn to eat now.”
Amina turned and watched her intently, as though she were weighing up an offer of much greater importance than porridge, and once again, Miriam had to look away from the searching eyes.
“I think I’d better be getting back to work.”
“Are you sure? We have fresh eggs delivered on a Wednesday.” Omar allowed her eight eggs each week for cooking and baking.
Amina smiled at Miriam’s persistence.
“Eggs?” she said. “Well, that’s different.”
In the kitchen, Miriam set a heavy black pan to heat while Amina stood nearby, covertly watching. As soon as the oil was hot, three eggs were cracked into the pan, where they spread out and lay sizzling and spitting. Miriam dragged the pan slightly away from the heat and watched them as they cooked.
“I didn’t sleep for a long time after hearing your grandmother’s story,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” Amina replied.
“Don’t be. I appreciate it very much that you told me. It can’t have been the easiest thing for you.”
She sprinkled salt, pepper and a little cumin powder over each egg and then turned them over, with an easy motion, holding each yolk intact. She slid two eggs onto a plate for Amina, and the remaining egg onto another for herself. On the table between them she placed a dish of
rotlis
.
“You know,” Amina said when they sat down, “every now and then, when I think back to my grandmother, I understand her story a little better because of what I have learnt or seen as I get older.”
“What do you mean?”
“Yesterday, for example. For the first time, I really felt it inside, the agony of how it must feel to lose your own child. So brutally. Maybe it was seeing you with Sam and Alisha, or maybe it was just that I told it out loud to you, but it meant a little more to me last night than ever before.”
Miriam broke off a piece of bread. “I’m glad you told me.”
“So am I. Anyway,” said Amina, “family history or not, I am glad we came back here. It was the best thing that could have happened to me.”
“Why?”
Amina laughed. “Can you imagine me being able to start my own business – so easily anyway – in India?”
“It’s unlikely,” Miriam admitted. “But then, it’s unlikely here. But you still managed it.”
“Yes. It was Jacob who had the idea and he put up most of the money. I met him when I was working at the house of one of his relatives. His nephew, I think.”
“What work were you doing?”
“Painting. Window frames and things.”
Miriam smiled. “Is there anything you don’t do?”
“Very little,” smiled Amina. “That’s why I’m such a good source of gossip. Anyway, Jacob helped me more than he realised. He ignored all the criticism we got early on and he trusted me; he gave me a chance that no one else would have given me.”
“You like your work?” Miriam asked.
“I love it.”
“Don’t you ever think of getting married and having a family instead?”
Amina wiped a piece of
chapati
over the yolk that spilled across her plate. “It’s that word ‘instead’ that I don’t like. That I don’t understand. Won’t understand, some of my family would say. Why can’t a woman do both - if she wants to, that is?” She looked up at Miriam, waiting.
“I..I don’t know,” Miriam replied. “No reason, I suppose. It’s not usual, is it?”
“No, but neither am I,” said Amina, smiling. “And neither are you. And neither is any human being. People should look at themselves, how they feel, how they think, and then do what is right for them. Most men do that. Your husband didn’t stop working when he married you, did he?”
“No. But someone has to earn a living.”
“Why not you?”
“Because he has always worked.”
“Why haven’t you?”
“Because it wasn’t expected.”
“Why not?”
Miriam smiled this time. “Because I am a woman? You have got me with your logical argument, Amina. There is no way out for me.”
“There is a way out. Although you could argue against me for hours if you really believe that the old, traditional ways are right. But you don’t,” Amina told her. “You don’t believe it, you believe me deep down, and that’s why you like my logical argument.”
“Perhaps.” Miriam was looking down at her hands.
“You don’t like to commit yourself to anything without thinking it over a lot first, do you?” Amina noted. Now that she had finished her meal, she gave her full attention to watching Miriam.
“Is that a bad thing?”
“Not at all. I am much too impulsive myself, and I always admire patience and thoughtfulness in other people. I need someone with those qualities with me, to keep me balanced.” For some reason, Amina’s dark eyes made Miriam look away again.
“Like Jacob,” Amina continued, with a half-smile. “He stops me from ruining the business with my crazy ideas.”
“More eggs?” Miriam asked, half standing.
“No, thank you.” The girl remained seated for a moment, wishing to continue the conversation, but Miriam seemed restless, or perhaps nervous. Amina politely looked at her watch and exclaimed at the time.
“That garden will be growing weeds if I leave it much longer,” she said, picking up the plates. “I better get to work. Thanks for the breakfast.”
“It’s nothing,” Miriam replied reaching to take the dishes from her.
“I’ll wash them,” Amina said. “It’s the least I can do after you cooked.”
“No, no. It will take me two minutes. Come on. You have a garden to make.”
Amina yielded the plates, and went to the back door. As she stepped out, she pushed her worn felt hat back upon her curls.
“What time does your husband get home?”
“He should be here any minute.”
“Oh.” She sounded disappointed, Miriam thought. “Well, thanks for the breakfast. And for the conversation,” she added, glancing at Miriam from beneath the brim of her hat. “I hope I didn’t worry you with my strange ideas.”
Miriam shook her head. “You don’t worry me. You make me think. And that’s a good thing, isn’t it?”
Amina grinned at her. “That depends on who you ask,” she said, as she walked away. She raised a hand as she reached her new patch of garden. “I’ll show you where I’ve planted everything later,” she called, and Miriam nodded and stood watching for just a few moments, as Amina rolled up her sleeves and set to work once more.