Three Daughters: A Novel (35 page)

Approaching the crest of the hill near her daughter’s modest house, Miriam stopped and placed one hand above her knee to reassure herself of the strength of her thigh. It was early morning and she watched—as she had done countless times—as the sun cut through the mist, miraculously unveiling the brown hills, the blue sky, and the deceptive ashen gray of the olive orchards. She had intimate knowledge of each bend and cut of the road. She could count on a shady respite under the pines, but there would be no cover from the skimpy cypress. She had stopped at the point where she could see the remains of the terraced gardens that had been her father’s triumph. Those had been innocent and satisfying days requiring only physical effort. But now, today, she felt emotionally murky. It was resentment of such long standing she could barely guess at the true origin. She had, at times, felt anger toward the boys. Sometimes despair. But Nadia was the one who could make her weak with resentment.

“This would really do much better near a window. If you don’t give it more light, it’ll stop blooming.” Miriam was picking dead leaves off a potted white cyclamen, but she was also aware of Nadia tapping nervously on her knee.

“Mama, why are you talking about the cyclamen?” Tap, tap, tap. “There are hundreds more just like it outside. It doesn’t matter whether this one gets brown leaves or blooms or dies. Anyway, that’s not what you really want to know.”

Miriam sighed and brought her hands down on her lap, a signal that she had surrendered. “I would have thought that you’d be living in the big house.” This was not how she had envisioned her daughter’s life with Samir—making do with this funny little house. It worried her that perhaps Nadia wasn’t taking her position seriously.

“I don’t know. We just stayed here. I like it because I can walk to town.” She knew it was just this type of vague answer that drove her mother crazy.

“All of your cousins have some involvement that keeps them busy. Rheema’s with the Children’s Care Society. She serves milk and warm lunches to children who can’t afford to eat.
Haram
. Poor things.” She paused. “Rheema’s sociable and gets around. And it doesn’t interfere with her children and her husband. She keeps her house. She sews. When she goes to bed at night, she’s lived the day.”

“There’s no need for me to sew.”

“It isn’t just the sewing. That’s just one—”

“Well, all those things. Why shouldn’t I give someone else the business to sew for us and pay them? As for the Children’s Care Society, those women have never liked me. If I do anything it will be with the horses.”

Horses. Horses. Always those infernal horses. “It’s strange. I grew up terrified of horses. My uncle Daud always liked to scare me by riding up very close to me.”

“That’s awful.”

“No. He was angry because I was taller than he. We were almost the same age.” She began to pick at the cyclamen again. “Some people have resentments that they don’t understand.” It had occurred to her more than once that Nadia was punishing her by not getting pregnant. “It can poison their lives.” She folded her hands across her lap and looked to her right, where a window allowed her a view of a charming flower garden. The blue of her eyes was fading, but she was still a striking woman with no gray in her hair. “Have you forgiven me?” she asked suddenly.

Nadia ignored the question. “You mean do I love Samir?”

Miriam looked surprised that her daughter understood her so quickly.

“I’ve never used that word.” She curled her lip and sneered. “
Love
is a word for your generation. Our word was . . .” She thought a moment. “Duty, I guess. Or obedience. My father told me to marry Nadeem. That was it.”

“What good did it do me to be independent?” said Nadia. “You got what you wanted.”

“But it was the right thing,” said Miriam vehemently.

“Then why are you asking me if I’ve forgiven you?”

Miriam looked down at her hands and massaged one with the other. “You don’t seem settled.”

“What shall I say then? That I’m content?”

“I can see you’re content.” She felt as if she were speaking to her daughter underwater. “But—”

“Oh, we’re back to that. What I do with my time.”

“Nadia, I’m not trying to make you account for yourself. But it’s not healthy to have so much time on your hands.”

“You want me to give lunch to the orphans with Rheema? The orphans are being suffocated with care.” Right after saying that, she finally understood what was disturbing Miriam. “You want me to tell you that I’m sick at heart because I can’t do anything as simple as getting pregnant? I am sick at heart.” She was silent and tears formed in the corners of her eyes. “I think Samir is horribly disappointed.”

“Oh . . .” Miriam moved closer and put an arm around her daughter so that they were head to head. The pose was stiff and she realized she hadn’t embraced Nadia in many years. “Shush,” she said. “He’s not disappointed. I had the boys and look—where did that get me? Esa died. Khalil and Hanna are in America. They don’t even see each other. They live thousands of miles apart.” She shook her head. “Who knows if I’ll ever see them again.”

“Mama”—her face was serious, as if she were confessing something for the first time—“there’s something wrong with me.” After saying that she had a troubling epiphany. She wanted her mother to say it was all right. She wanted to be forgiven for not living up to the grand marriage Miriam had arranged. “I’ve let you down. And Samir.”

“There isn’t a girl in this village who doesn’t envy you. Of course you can carry a baby. Has Samir said anything?” For the first time, she looked worried.

You mean does he blame you. You don’t want to know if I’ve forgiven you. You want to know if Samir has forgiven you.
“No. He hasn’t said anything.”

“There. You see!” Her relief was unmistakable. “If you want my opinion, you should forget about it. Put pregnancies and babies and all of that out of your mind. Just forget about it. Then it will happen.”

“How does your husband enter you?” She froze with embarrassment. The doctor had just completed a lengthy manual examination that she perceived as having yielded damaging evidence. “Is it ever from behind?” he asked casually.

She almost fell off the table. She shook her head and then felt guilty. At times Samir did enter from the back, rotating her until he could get himself in. The contact with her vagina from the lower lips was so pleasurable she often put herself in a position that invited it. He always turned her over at the last minute.

“That might be something for you to try,” offered the doctor matter-of-factly. He was a short, bald man with small, well-padded hands. “If the semen can be directed straight up, it might do the trick.”

She found it nearly impossible to relate the conversation to her husband.

“But he must have said something,” Samir prodded.

“He said . . . Samir, what he said was so intimate, I can’t say it. I just can’t.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Nadia, he’s a medical doctor. He wasn’t flirtatious, was he?”

“No. Nothing like that.”

“Then what? Did he examine you? Are you all right?”

“He examined me and he didn’t say I wasn’t all right.”

“Then why aren’t you conceiving? Didn’t he have any suggestions?”

“A position.”

“A position? What position?” He finally caught her meaning. “Oh . . .”

“From the back.”

“He said that! Oh, my God. I should do it from the back?”

“You should aim straight up. He said that might do the trick.”

“Oh, my God! Well, we can try it.”

He aimed straight up for twelve days and it did the trick. Her period stayed away.

He was at a council meeting, idly drumming on the table while reminding himself to bring up the issue of allowing the open produce market to operate on Wednesday as well as Thursday and Saturday, when he noticed his mother-in-law in the doorway. It was so unlikely for her to be there that his heart moved in warning. “What is it?”

“You must come quickly.” This was all she could force herself to say.

“The meeting . . .” He motioned to the men at the table who were watching them. “Can I come a little later? Are you in some difficulty?”

“Your wife is bleeding to death.”

Without warning—it was the sixth month, they had both felt the tender kicks—the baby had ripped away. “When the tenth one comes, you won’t remember this,” said the midwife, but Nadia didn’t want to be consoled. She wanted facts.

“How can a baby be healthy one day and dead the next? I didn’t do anything strenuous. I didn’t fall. How could it just happen?”

Helene, the midwife, threw up her hands. “There could be a dozen reasons, but what does it matter? We can’t bring the baby back.” She was purposely vague, because privately she wasn’t optimistic. The placenta had torn away long before the miscarriage. The cervix was overly dilated. There were certain women whose wombs didn’t close properly. Sooner or later, the pressure of the growing baby forced them open. Next time she would make Nadia stay in bed.

The second time Nadia got pregnant she went to a specialist and his only warning was to cease intercourse immediately. He gave this advice to all his patients. “Don’t let your husband put it in here,” he said, touching her vulva. “I’m sorry to be so crude, but you’d be surprised how many I get who don’t know anything.”

She carried the second baby four months before a glossy red mass released from between her legs after a few mild cramps. She was drying herself in the bath at the time and quantity of blood against the white enamel was so dramatic she began to scream and was heard by the egg woman.

The packing between her legs soaked up the remains of the conception. “What am I going to do?” she whispered into the fist held against her teeth. If she didn’t clench her mouth, she’d have flown apart.

“We’ll never have a child,” she said to Samir when they were alone. “I can’t carry it. I can’t do it right.”

“You’ll conceive again,” he soothed. “You’ve done it twice and the next time we’ll take more precautions.”

“Just please don’t say one thing.”

“What is that?”

“Please don’t say the only thing that matters is that I’m all right.” The litany of what he might have said ran without ceasing throughout her head:
It scares me to death that you can’t have a baby.
Or:
If you can’t bear children, this thing is going to go rotten.
Or:
Look at all the women I could have had. Why did I marry you?

Would it have been better if he had become angry and blamed her? Yes.

She had been wrong about her love for him. It wasn’t that flimsy, dreamy longing that played along the surface of her heart. It was this deep pain and despair because she had been the one to disappoint him.

He put his face beside hers on the pillow and lay still with his lips against her cheek.

The doctor had a name for what had happened to her babies, and he threw it at her with unintended cruelty during the final visit. “An incompetent cervix,” he pronounced. “You can keep on conceiving, but I don’t recommend it.” She sat perfectly still, her hands clenched, her jaw stiff. She was defenseless. She couldn’t imagine ever feeling carefree again.

Cousins who had never liked Nadia were eager to befriend her now. Her bad luck, by some logic, made her more acceptable. But socializing was the last thing on her mind. She needed hard physical activity. Samir eased the way by announcing (almost on cue) that his wife needed to rest and regain her strength. She recuperated at the farm, working as hard as the burliest man. Her shoes were dusty, her hands callused, her face red and then brown. If the men were embarrassed by it, too bad. She needed to be exhausted to sleep and stop thinking. Spring and summer passed and with them her third wedding anniversary. Julia, three months pregnant with her second and reeling with morning sickness, didn’t argue when her brother requested that she not make a party.

By year’s end Nadia felt strong and healthy and knew it was time to try again. This time her body wouldn’t let her down. She became obsessive about it and if Samir sighed or yawned after dinner she would fidget.

“Something wrong?” he would ask.

“I was hoping we could try . . .” She had to spell it out and it made her cringe.

“Nadia, we’ve tried three times this week.”

There! He knew how many times. That meant it was on his mind, too.

“This might be the moment.” Her lips squeezed together, losing their exotic dips and curves.

He winced. It was something he couldn’t quite admit, but it gave him an extra jolt to have his wife so intent on intercourse. He even liked the fact that she was almost businesslike about it. The combination of her earnest eyes and her voluptuous mouth set him off. He could feel an erection begin and his imagination, in the grip of arousal, translated her directness into sexual forthrightness.

I want you to put it in me right now
, he imagined her saying with those wide gray eyes no more troubled than if she had asked for a glass of water. He felt absurd having such adolescent fantasies and somehow disloyal, but he also knew they never touched his deep respect for her.