The Girl from the Garden (10 page)

Rakhel looks away from the old woman and rises to leave. She steps out of the dim room and into the blinding sunlight. She sees a blurred figure stop and turn expectantly toward her. She squints her eyes until she makes out Ibrahim’s face, his eyebrow raised, his eyes wide open, his hands clutched behind his back. She steps out and shuts the door behind her and stands before him. He waits for her to speak, to explain something about what happens in that
secret place, what meaning there might be in the mystery of his wife’s screams, if the suffering is much too much to endure. Rakhel says, “She’s fine. I have to get the water,” and walks quickly away from the inquisition of his eyes. She rushes back past him as fast as the boiling pot of water allows her to move without scalding her own hands and feet. With her back to him, she places the pot on the floor, cracks the door open, pushes the pot through, and slides in herself.

Ibrahim waits as the afternoon drags its weight, each minute going so slowly that it seems to forget nightfall. Sometimes, it appears to him that time does not move at all. That time notices the insistence of his own path and, tired of the drudgery, sits down in the shade of the willow tree by the well, so that the shadows remain changeless, the butterflies cease their panic of encroaching death and settle on honeysuckles, unhurriedly extending the curl of their nectar-seeking tongues and dip their heads into the sanctum of the flower to drown in the possibility of infinite being. Time ceases for Ibrahim and his wife’s screams orchestrate the motion of all things, the sound of the other women in the room, the birds in the courtyard, the footsteps of strangers passing in the streets.

In the room, Rakhel stands beside the servant girls. She holds the pot of water in her hands, uncertain of what to do with it. Finally, she places the pot on the floor and crouches on her heels beside it. She clears her throat a couple times, but Naneh Adeh does not notice her. In fact, no one notices
her return.
As though I am invisible,
Rakhel thinks.
The servants more necessary than I.

Naneh Adeh tells Khorsheed to rest a moment. The girl’s chin settles on her chest, drops of beaded sweat dripping from her nose. “Just let me be,” she pleads. “Please, let me be. Just let me be.” Her legs give way and the women release her arms so that she can steady herself on her hands and knees. Zolekhah dips a rag into the bowl of rosewater, twists the excess water from the fabric, and places the cool cloth on Khorsheed’s back and neck. “Let me be,” Khorsheed screams.

“Child,” Naneh Adeh says, “it isn’t good for the baby to be taken back so many times. This time, give him up into the world. I promise, no harm will come to him.”

Khorsheed throws her head back and clenches her teeth. She strains, her breath whistling. She attempts to squat again and all the women rush to lift her. The old midwife turns to Rakhel and says, “Come, child, this is no time to stand idle, bring over that pot of water, my hands must finally welcome our guest.” Rakhel lifts the pot of hot water and walks slowly, hesitantly toward Khorsheed.

Then, suddenly

a head, soft hair covered in film, a face, eyes clenched, nose crinkled, shoulders, the fold of the flesh of arms, clenched fists, tiny fingers, the chest, buttocks, the two legs, bent, tiny toes, a long black dripping cord, the whole body wet, shaking in the wrinkled hands of the old midwife,
whose expert fingers dip into the toothless mouth, then turn the baby, and

Then, suddenly

a piercing cry. And everything falls into motion. The specks of dust that paused momentarily in the stream of sunlight resume their dance again. The birds in the trees, the women’s voices, the animation of the streets, begin again.

“A son,” the old midwife says.

“A son?” Zolekhah asks.

“If memory serves me.” Naneh Adeh takes a knife from her belt and cuts the cord. She holds the trembling, screaming baby and rubs his body vigorously with a dry cloth. “Ten fingers, ten toes. Fine arms and legs.” Zolekhah rushes to the window and pulls the curtains aside. She pushes the window open.

“Ibrahim? It is a boy! A son for my son!” Zolekhah shades her eyes with her hand and searches the courtyard for Ibrahim. He rises from beside the pool and runs to the window.

“Really? Mother, really?”

“Yes, Ibrahim. A son, you have a son. May G-d bless him. May He see my Asher also fit for such joy!”

Ibrahim covers his face with his hands. For several moments, he remains silent, then looks up, wipes his eyes with the back of his hand and says, “May I see him?”

“Not yet. Let us clean the room. Wait a few moments here.” Zolekhah closes the window.

Rakhel watches as the rest of the women gather the soaked blanket beneath Khorsheed and wash her arms and legs, between her thighs, her face, beneath her breasts, her back. Naneh Adeh picks up the afterbirth and wraps it in a cloth, all the while muttering to herself. “It is best for the husband to wait,” Naneh Adeh says. “Allow time for the power of the birth to dissipate. Men frighten easily.” She takes the baby from Zolekhah and places him on Khorsheed’s chest. The child, blindly, with the hunger of his lips, finds the nipple and clasps with such force to the young mother that she gasps and moans while the baby suckles. “It will hurt less once your nipples toughen up,” Naneh Adeh says as she pinches the swelling pink of Khorsheed’s other nipple between her fingers and chuckles. “A little olive oil, though, will help. Rub it in good, after he feeds.”

“I’ll bring in Ibrahim, now,” Zolekhah says. She walks by Rakhel without even seeing her, to the door and opens it wide into the courtyard. Ibrahim walks in hurriedly, almost knocking Rakhel over in his haste. He stops a moment, mumbles an apology without looking at her, then rushes to the side of the bed.

“Is this him, this mewing creature, this miracle?” Khorsheed nods wearily and smiles. The baby struggles to find her breast again. “You have done well, Khorsheed,” he says. “You have done well.”

Naneh Adeh walks about the room as if looking for misplaced objects. “Forty days, child, you are impure to your husband’s touch. And see that someone is with you
during those forty days, at all times. Keep a lamp burning throughout the night.” She stoops beside Khorsheed’s bed, reaches beneath it, and takes out a large pair of iron scissors. Then she hands them to Ibrahim and motions to the alcove above the bed. “These should be placed up there and not removed. Only boiled water, if she must drink at all. And sheep fat, as much as she can stomach. And on the fourth day, a broth of rooster and hen, cooked together. I’ll be back on the sixth day.” The old woman walks out without looking back. “Your son has a birthmark like a snake. He’ll turn whatever he touches to gold. Put a little soot on his face,” she says. “To keep him safe.”

Rakhel picks up the pot wordlessly and walks after her. “Not yet, child,” Naneh Adeh calls out. “I have business with that water.” Naneh Adeh turns toward Rakhel and walks slowly in her direction. She stops, looks Rakhel in the eyes, then blows three times over the surface of the water. “To protect the mother and child,” she says to Rakhel. “Against the evil eye.” She winks, then nudges Rakhel toward the garden. “Wait for it to cool, then pour it out at the base of a fruiting tree, daughter, and pray with a pure heart, so that you too may yield.”

The ceremony requires
that the mother of the infant boy hand the child to another woman, one who is childless, and this woman carries the infant to the father, who in turn will place the baby in the arms of the man honored, usually the
father of the father, who will hold the baby in his lap as the rabbi proceeds with the covenant. Ibrahim decided that the honor of holding his son during the ceremony belonged to Asher, who was like a father to him, and so it could only be that Khorsheed herself placed Yousseff in Rakhel’s arms on the morning of his Brit Milah, who walked the boy over to the chair and gave him to Asher.

Mahboubeh tugs at a vine that grows at the base of one of her rosebushes. The leaves are hardy, green, with fine hairs that irritate the skin of her hands. “I don’t remember planting you.” She follows the vine to its root, digs with the tips of her fingers into the soil, and pulls the vine out. She throws it on the small pile of similar weeds she has spent the morning uprooting. She rises heavily from the ground. The rosebushes are bare. She picks the dead leaves of a stem. “Spring will come,” she says. “And with it, the blooms.” She stops and looks up at the empty skies, then turns back to her roses.

Ibrahim must have instructed Khorsheed to give Yousseff to Rakhel on that morning. Perhaps the first time Rakhel held him. Mahboubeh looks up at the cloudless blue skies again, as though waiting for a sign. A distant airplane. Crows flying toward the brown mountains. She imagines Rakhel waiting impatiently, watching Khorsheed and her child with a heart brim full of longing.

Khorsheed bends her face down to smell the perfume of her son’s head as he sleeps in the cradle of her arm. Rakhel steps forward to take the child from her into the crowded
room, toward Asher, who waits in the ceremonial chair. Khorsheed hesitates a moment. In between Khorsheed and Rakhel, in the ray of light that separates them, the baby sleeps.

Khorsheed ignores the waiting guests, the impatience of her mother-in-law, the haste of the rabbi. She looks at the infant’s clenched fist, the delicate curve of his nostril, the stir of his breath. She marvels at his perfection. He is just that, perfect. For seven days, when she is not asleep beside him, she studies him, the shimmer of his fingernails, the pattern of the hair on his head, the glow of his skin.
Not human,
she thinks,
angelic.
Or human as meant to be before the dust of this world settles and dulls the shine.
This morning she asked Ibrahim, again, even though she knew it must be, if they must circumcise him. “But he is so beautiful as he is,” she said. “All of him.” He did not respond to her but continued to dress himself in preparation for the event.

“But, Ibrahim, what about the pain?”

“Not another word,” he said. “What nonsense to even think of.”

So she carries her baby gently and whispers into his sleeping ear, “Yousseff, you must be brave. I will be here to hold you, after. Rakhel will carry you to the chair and back to me when all is done, because she is childless and this act may bless her with a son of her own.” She steps to the door of the great guest hall and Zolekhah tells her to hand the baby to Rakhel. Rakhel will carry her son and give him to Asher, who will sit, holding her baby upon his lap, and wait
for the prayers, who must hold the infant still until the blood and then. . . .

“Then he will be pure,” Ibrahim told her.

“But he is pure,” she said.

Khorsheed continues to stand in the doorway holding the baby and a hush falls upon the room. Rakhel waits, her arms extended to receive him.

“Khorsheed,” she whispers. “Give him to me.”

Khorsheed looks up from the sleeping baby in her arms at Rakhel, at the frantic look in her eyes, and she leans in, almost touching Rakhel’s chest with her own, and gently places the sleeping infant against Rakhel’s breast. Outside, a fine rain begins to fall.

“He is my heart, my whole being,” Khorsheed whispers. She looks into Rakhel’s eyes and smiles. She steps back to watch Rakhel walk away with her son.

Mahboubeh stands
in
the kitchen, staring at her mud-caked shoes. She’s scraped her knees. Her dress is ruined. She sobs and hiccups, sucking her thumb.

“A girl of nine and your finger still in your mouth?” Rakhel says. “What man will want a bride like you, huh?” Rakhel pulls on Mahboubeh’s arm.

Mahboubeh whimpers in protest. She hears a distant ringing.

“So a group of goyim boys chased you home from school and taunted you, eh? Pushed you in the mud, eh? I
told you to stay home. Stay home, learn to keep a house. A girl who sucks her finger and reads. Fine bride you’ll make. Covered in dirt. Don’t know a thing about cooking. Couldn’t darn a sock.”

The ringing in her ears continues. Mahboubeh stops crying. “Your father got beat, too. When Yousseff was just born. A whole group of them beat Ibrahim like a mule in the streets, a group of goyim men, a whole mob of them,” Rakhel says. “We found him outside the door bleeding, half-dead.”

There is an urgency to the ringing. Mahboubeh continues to look at her shoes, ashamed for sucking her thumb, ashamed for her father being beaten.

“They hit him too hard in the head,” Rakhel says, knocking on her own head with her fist. “He stopped doing much after that. Let my husband do all the work, and just sat around and read all day. What man sits all day long and reads? Can you answer that?”

Mahboubeh’s cheeks burn hot. The ringing becomes louder and louder.

“And all you got today was a little taunting, huh? No bloody nose? No broken ribs? Go on. Go bury yourself beneath your books. Don’t bother me with your sniffling.”

The telephone.

The kitchen is dark. Mahboubeh starts for the phone. “Hello?” she says. “Hello?” She waits for a moment. No response. She puts the receiver back down. She turns on the lights. The propensity of familiar objects. The bulk of the
refrigerator, kitchen table, stove. The reassurance of cabinets, drawers. The sink. The kettle.
You are here, not there.
She touches the kettle to solidify this fact. It is cold. She turns on the faucet to listen to the sound of running water. She cups it in her hand and splashes her face. It feels cool. She has been crying. “Foolish old woman,” she says. “Talking out loud to no one and nothing, even crying about it.” She looks at her shoes. They are caked with dry mud, her legs splattered with it. Her dress is torn at the hem. Her knees hurt.

Ibrahim told her that story once, and only once, the day she asked him if it was true, if a mob of men attacked him and beat him in the streets. “Like a mule, Father. Dada said like a mule.”

He looked at her for a moment. There should have been anger in response to even repeating such a sentence, but Ibrahim just looked at her, then began talking about what had happened.