The World Unseen (22 page)

Miriam had been waiting for her but, at the critical moment, she found that her thoughts were away from Amina. There were three people waiting to be served in the shop when the girl walked in, and Amina found herself having to hold back the first breathless sentences she had willed herself to speak immediately in case she should lose her nerve later. Miriam saw her at once, and Amina smiled to notice that she blushed and avoided looking at her any more while she went back to serving her customers. The room had darkened under the rain, and Amina watched as Miriam switched on a lamp, so that she could better see the roll of material she was cutting. Her angular hands grasped the cutting shears a little awkwardly, but the line she cut was straight and smooth, and the waiting customer looked satisfied.

The tableau continued, Amina watching as each person was served, and money was exchanged along with some pleasantries and news. Robert helped on one side of the counter, and within ten minutes the shop had emptied again.

“Hello,” said Miriam, clearing her throat. “You look very thoughtful.”

Amina smiled and glanced out of the window. “I was just thinking, we always seem to meet when it’s raining. Or often when it’s raining, anyway.”

“Yes,” said Miriam. She hesitated. “These dark, rainy afternoons remind me of you now.”

Amina looked at Robert and said hello, and Miriam read the meaning of her look and took off her apron.

“Robert, mind the shop please.”

“Yes, madam.”

“And the baby.”

“Yes, madam.”

Amina had not noticed the cradle, tucked behind the counter, as though the child too were keeping watch over the shop with her mother.

“Amina, will you come up with me? Sam is sick in bed. I want to check on him.”

Amina’s eyebrows raised – she had not expected to find a sick child at home with them. She wished she had brought a toy, or a book or something for the boy. She liked him, and had noticed that despite being the eldest, he was always overshadowed by his talkative sister. Amina followed Miriam’s light steps up the stairs, her eyes focused on the back of her slim ankles, and at the top they stopped abruptly at the open door to her son’s room. They waited and listened, one behind the other, Amina’s lean frame watching over Miriam’s shoulder. The child was asleep, and Amina’s eyes went to Miriam’s face as she watched her son, and then the girl looked down, frowning slightly. She stepped back from the door, silently, and Miriam turned to her, pulling the door of Sam’s room closed behind her.

The movement brought her close to Amina, and the girl did not step back. Instead, she just waited, her eyes fixed on Miriam’s; a few faint lines of concern lay feathered across her forehead. Her hand moved to her hair and then back again. The gesture was an awkward one, and Miriam knew the girl was extremely nervous.

Miriam watched her. “You didn’t come today to give me a driving lesson, did you?” she said.

“No.”

“I didn’t think so. What did you come for?”

For the briefest moment, Amina’s eyes, when they came up to meet Miriam’s, contained that flash of mischievous suggestion that Miriam recognised so well from her early exchanges with the girl.

“To see you,” she replied, her eyes intent again. “And to talk to you. I have to tell you something.”

Miriam felt her heart moving down her body until it came to rest somewhere near the base of her stomach. So, she thought, is this how it ends, before it even begins? She pointed to the open door of her own bedroom, and Amina went in, and waited awkwardly for Miriam to follow. She came in behind her and sat on her bed and waited.

Amina cleared her throat and then rolled up her shirt sleeves, as though preparing to take part in a fight. Miriam watched the slender, tanned arms slowly revealed, and then looked expectantly up at Amina. The girl took a breath.

“When I kissed you the other day,” she began, “I did it because I could not stop myself anymore.”

Miriam felt her face flush, and Amina smiled slightly again, that roguish smile that somehow reassured Miriam, because it was familiar. Then she bit her lip and studied her shoes, and then leaned on the dresser next to her with such ostentatious casualness that she looked completely ill at ease. Miriam touched the bedspread.

“Do you want to sit down?” she asked.

Amina looked relieved and took her place beside Miriam. She said something else then, but Miriam did not hear. She was conscious of nothing except the bare arm of the girl that was lying so very close to her own arm. They were not touching, except for the outer fold of Amina’s shirt which barely brushed against Miriam’s shoulder, but she could feel the warmth of Amina’s skin and when the girl moved slightly, she felt her own arm shiver under the touch of the light down on Amina’s.

“Did you hear me?”

Miriam looked up, startled, waiting.

“I love you,” repeated Amina. Miriam found she couldn’t breathe, but her face must have remained expectant, because Amina continued, her tone earnest and desperate:

“I’ve tried and tried, Miriam, I really have, to forget you, and not think about you, and not be in love with you, but I can’t help it. I can’t. And I know you feel the same. Or similar,” she added, qualifying her presumption.

“I don’t,” Miriam said, in a small voice. “How can I? It’s not right. I am married, and you are a girl.”

“Yes, you do. I know it. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here.”

Miriam said nothing, just looked down at her hands. She could hear the pattering rain, and Amina’s voice, the voice she now spent all her days longing to hear, speaking gently above it, and she could feel the heat from her body, and she could smell the fresh scent of her neck and hair. She wanted to look at her, but she could not make herself look up, could not raise her head to find those eyes and that mouth only an inch away from hers.

“I should never have let you come,” Miriam said, so quietly that Amina had to lean even closer to hear her.

“Miriam,” Amina said, ignoring the last comment.

There was no response from the bowed head beside her.

“Miriam?”

“Yes.”

“Miriam, look at me.”

Miriam looked.

“I have to ask you something.” Miriam’s head fell again, but this time, Amina caught her with a finger beneath her chin, and turned the reluctant face towards hers again. She put her head back slightly and studied Miriam from a slight distance, her eyes narrowed a little, and interested.

“Come on. Let me ask you something. Do you love me?”

There was no reply.

“Whose is the first face that appears before you when you wake in the morning?”

Amina’s.

“Who is the last person you think about before you sleep at night?”

Amina.

“Miriam, do you love me?”

“Yes.”

“I wish you would say something,” Amina sighed, and Miriam realised that her reply had been so whispered that the girl had not even heard it. “Anything. Even tell me to go away.” She ran her hand across her eyes, which carried a frown.

“I said…yes,” repeated Miriam, and Amina stared at her and Miriam felt the months of pent up fear and tension pooling up inside her, and felt the hot tears come streaming down her face. Amina put an arm around her and pulled her back onto the bed where she lay holding her, stroking her head, waiting, feeling the tears fall wet against her neck.

“It’s okay, it’s okay. It’ll be fine. Everything will be fine.” They lay like this for a few minutes, until Miriam laughed.

Amina turned her head, and smiled

“What is it?”

“Nothing. Just…I’m happy here with you.”

“Then stay with me all the time.”

Miriam looked into the girl’s eyes, hopeful and sincere, and so young, and she felt her logical mind return. Abruptly, she sat up, and edged forward so that she was sitting on the corner of the bed.

“I can’t, Amina. I can’t even stay with you for a day. Or an hour.”

“Why not?”

“Do you really have to ask?” said Miriam, her voice full of desperation.

Amina stood up, and looked down at her. She turned with deliberation and walked up and down the room, looking back at Miriam, and at the bed where she sat. Her husband’s bed. On the dresser was a new photograph of the whole family, evidently taken just after Salma was born. She made herself stop and examine it. Omar stood behind the chair in which his wife sat with the baby. He looked handsome, if cold, and his jacket and tie were immaculately straight. Miriam was looking away from the camera, at her new baby, and Sam and Alisha stood on one side of her, their father’s hand resting firmly on his son’s shoulder.

Amina looked away, then made herself look back. She felt sick again, and jumped when she felt Miriam’s hand on her arm.

“I can’t. I have a husband. Three children, who I will never leave.”

“I don’t want you to leave them,” said Amina, her tone defiant.

Miriam almost laughed. “What should I do, bring them with me?”

“Yes.”

“What you want to do is crazy. We would be outcasts. Where would we live? How would we live?”

“I have money. I make a lot with the business. We would move – away from here.” Her hand went to her curls, making them even more unruly.

“You’ve always wanted to see Cape Town,” she said to Miriam, with a short laugh. Her eyes were flickering all over the room, as though she saw it now as a prison cell, and she carried on talking, explaining how things could be, in a voice that grasped for breaths during even short sentences.

“I will look after you, and the children. It would be fine…
”

“Stop it, please.”

“No, I’m serious. I know you think I don’t know what I’m talking about, but I’ve lived this way, my own way, all my life. It can be done, Miriam, it can…
”

“Amina, please stop…
”

The girl looked at her, eyes desperate, her strong, straight shoulders down, and Miriam felt a rush of love and pity.

“Come here,” she said, and she pulled Amina to her, and held her head down against her shoulder, and listened to the girl’s erratic breathing, and closed her eyes, and kissed the forehead that was level with her mouth. Her lips touched Amina’s head, then the sharp planes of her cheekbones, and her closed eyes, and she tasted salt there, and knew the girl was crying, and she kissed her, looking for something, her mouth, and when she found it, she kissed her again, with some hesitancy at first, but then with a delicate decision. She pulled away quickly, before she should allow herself to fall too deeply in, and held the girl’s head down against her neck. For a long moment they stood like this, until Miriam turned to look at the clock.

“Alisha” she said. “She’ll be back any minute.”

Amina nodded, and reached to touch Miriam’s cheek, but Miriam pulled away.

“I can’t. This is wrong.”

“Because we are women?” said Amina, through clenched teeth.

“Because I am married.”

“To a man you don’t love.”

Miriam reached up and kissed her softly on the cheek and then on her neck, breathing in the clean scent that she now wondered if she would ever know again. She could not allow herself to look into Amina’s eyes and still do what she intended to do, so she stood before the girl, and looked at her chin and mouth and at the bones that ran from her long neck to her shoulders, and she touched the open neck of Amina’s shirt and the clear buttons that held back her cuffs.

“I can’t,” she said again, and then she closed her eyes, turned her head and walked out of the room and down the stairs, through the kitchen and out of the back door, where she paced up and down, staring at the grass beneath her feet, blurred through her falling tears.

By the time she had recovered herself enough to go back into the house, her daughter was waiting for her at the kitchen table, her son was descending the stairs, bright-eyed after his sleep, and Amina had left without leaving any trace that she had ever come.