Dancing In The Shadows of Love (5 page)

‘Help me pull the weeds out, Lulu,’ she said one morning, as she tended the
Prioress’s
rose garden, a hard job in the heat and dryness of a place where dust was the only profitable harvest.

‘I need
Sub-Prioress
Kapera’s advice on this,’ she would add. ‘Run and take this note to her, Lulu. No one else, mind. No one else.’

I darted through the holding camp corridors until I found
Sub-Prioress
Kapera. She flinched every time she took one of the notes from my alabaster hand.

‘Wait here,’ the elder Controller ordered. She managed never to actually look at me for my dancing eye, another physical malady for
Pale Ones
to bear along with all the others, scared her. ‘You can take my reply straight to
Sub-Prioress
Dalia.’ I waited, while she nibbled her pen, and scratched a few words. She folded the paper into a tight wad. ‘Don’t read it,’ she said, as she handed it over. ‘It’s not for you.’

She never called me by name, that one, never in all the years I ran back and forth between them. I took the note and almost sneered at her. She wanted to call me what the others do. Freak. The
Levid’s
Child. Witch. But she couldn’t do it to my face, for she feared my nature. So she never called me by name or by curse. That freed me to glare at her as she made the
sign of the nova
. I slammed the door behind me and forgot her as I rushed to return to
Sub-Prioress
Dalia.

• • •

Another time, seeking out
Sub-Prioress
Dalia to find out if I could do any more that day, I pushed the door to her room open without knocking.

She sat in a claw-foot tub, the chipped enamel a legacy of its faded elegance, her naked back towards me. Her mousy brown hair, wet with sweat, hung loose over her shoulders as she slapped a pungent mixture on her back with a bunch of dried buffalo-thorn branches.
Sub-Prioress
Kapera, a hint of self-righteousness in her stony face, stood sentinel at the foot of the tub.

‘Purge me with palm oil,’ I heard
Sub-Prioress
Dalia chant, as she scrubbed and scrubbed until the blood showed close under the skin. The deeper scratches were raw with blood and palm oil and sand she must have collected from the dried up river bed near the hedge where I hide.

‘I shall be clean; wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.’ Cracked and hoarse, her voice didn’t sound like her own.

Her arm continued to pump over her shoulder, up and down, faster and faster.

‘Scrub harder, Dalia,’
Sub-Prioress
Kapera goaded, and licked her lips as she kept her eyes on the other woman’s bleeding, swaying flesh.

As her chanting turned into sobbing, Dalia applied herself more vigorously. Water sloshed in the tub around her and lapped over the edge as she scoured herself harder and harder. I caught glimpses of a heavy white breast that shocked, even enthralled, me. I had never seen a woman’s breast before; nor had I guessed there was skin more pallid even than mine.

But where my skin was pale and translucent, with the ghostly look so common to
Pale One
s, Dalia’s skin was a warm creamy-white. It called, beckoning me until my fingers tingled with the desire to touch that undulating white flesh and my mouth burned with the desire to suckle it, as I had never had the opportunity to nurse at my own mother’s breast.

The image of that heavy breast—so devout, so maternal—fascinated me. I wanted to bury myself in it; feed from it; let it nourish and nurture me the way the Great Mother suckled the child
Spirit King
, so the child gained its strength from her core, as clean as spring water, and as chaste. Frightened by the vision, overwhelmed by my thirsting, I ran. I ran away to the hedge of the spirits.

I took with me the sight and smells of Dalia scrubbing herself pure in the bathtub, on the day she became my beloved.

• • •

Months dragged by.

I lay alone and hungry in my bed after another day of unhappiness. Still
Sub-Prioress
Dalia came and, before she left me, I raised myself in my bed and laid my head there, on her bosom, where I had seen the naked softness, the glory of her white flesh, whiter even than mine.

‘Ah, Lulu,’ she said. I clenched my eyes tight. I didn’t want to see the rejection when it came. Instead, she murmured sweet words of love. ‘The
Spirit King
loves you, child,’ she said. ‘I promise he does.’ She rested her hand on my colourless curls and I dreamt they were a soft and sooty black under the tenderness of her touch.

‘Do you love me,
Sub-Prioress
Dalia?’ I dared to ask.

‘Yes,’ she sighed and, as an afterthought, added, ‘The
Spirit King
loves you too. He loves us all.’

I slept the sleep of the good that night.

• • •

With Dalia to love me, I began to hope.

‘You’re good for Luyando,’ I overheard the
Prioress
say to Dalia. She often used my full name. Lulu, she said, was too frivolous. ‘The poor child is calmer now; not so troublesome.’

I smiled, for Dalia’s love filled me with a purity that ate away at the rage skulking within me every time someone hated me without looking at who I was beneath my too-pale skin.

I kept busy. I helped Dalia with her chores. We would go into the small court and there, in a comfortable silence that spoke of love, we cleaned and dusted the dullness into the gleam of gold.

‘You must kneel and pay your respects to the Spirit-King,’ Dalia said, as she passed the small altar and made the age-old
sign of the nova
.

I refused, for my knees ached with too much unhappiness. Until, in that quiet corner where the sounds of the holding camp were distant with peace, the joy Dalia found in the
nova
of the
Spirit King
became my joy too. Sometimes, I knelt with her, touching without touching. And the shield of her goodness blanketed me, and there was no way I could tell where Dalia ended and Lulu began.

• • •

There came a Holy Day when, after the
Prior
with his charity toys had left, I saw Dalia run after Kapera, stopping the older woman with a tentative clasp on her arm. She asked her a question. Kapera shook her head. I saw her lips twist and frame the word,
No!
Dalia’s fingers tightened their grip; she pleaded; her body surged forward, iron filings to the magnet of Kapera, who angrily shrugged her off and walked away, leaving Dalia blinking hard and covering her mouth with two trembling hands.

That night, when Dalia brought me my white rose she said, as always, ‘The
Spirit King
loves you, child.’

I rested my head on her breast, and asked, as I asked every night, ‘Do
you
love me,
Sub-Prioress
Dalia?’ I smiled with anticipated pleasure, for each drop of Dalia’s love fed the fresh flower within my heart. This one bloomed in love, where before it bloomed in hatred.

That night, there was no answer and, as unexpectedly as it had blossomed, the flower of love wilted. I jerked away, but she stopped me. Clutched harder to that soft bosom, I choked for lack of air. But soon I didn’t care, for that night was special; that night was a night when miracles happened.

The sobs teemed in her chest until there were too many to contain. Her tears fell on my face, and on my head, but I forgot them, for that night Dalia, my Dalia, first said ‘I love you, I love you, I love you…’

The liturgy of love continued until it saturated my essence and leaked into my body. Alive, complete, my heart ached as love garlanded me with dreams. I threw off the covers and risked everything, for I knew that the
Spirit King
had answered my plea. He had sent me a friend; he had sent me a beloved. I put my arms around her, clumsy in my haste and my love, and I kissed her tears away.

When the notes between Dalia and Kapera stopped, I believed.

• • •

After I kissed Dalia, I drank from the fountain of her love. Each time I rested my head on the altar of her bosom, I found the strength to say, ‘I love you.’

The words tinted me with a happiness that suffused my body, controlled it, so another Lulu resided inside my skin. One who didn’t care what others said when they saw her. One who smiled at them, smiled from within, from where my Dalia’s kisses, her soft words, soothed away the hurt and tamed the anger.

I learnt one miracle begets another. For soon, the holding camp girls no longer called me names. I was not The Freak to them, but Lulu. I even received a rare treat from the
Prioress
as a reward for good behaviour. I remember the crunchy sweetness of the Snacker—a chocolate-covered oat bar—that flooded my mouth as I took the first bite, and how all the girls in the holding camp laughed, their faces alight with understanding, as they watched me lick every smear of melted chocolate from my fingers.

There was never any love in
Sub-Prioress
Kapera, but she could not hurt me. She and the charity
Prior
, with his collection of used toys to make him virtuous, hated me with a fervour that perplexed me. They huddled together on the days he arrived to deliver his leftover kindness, and fell silent whenever I walked into the room. The
Prior
’s hands, his nails bitten down until the tips of his fingers shone red, patted and patted away at
Sub-Prioress
Kapera’s arm, her shoulder, anywhere he could reach. She leaned in towards him as I sidled past her to collect the box of toys he had brought. She whispered her hate to him and it pursued me as I left the room.

Those were the days my Dalia cried the most. My kisses were helpless against the storm of her tears. I wept with her. For her pain was my pain; her sorrow mine, and I protected her as best I could. I told her, over and over, how much I loved her, the
Spirit King
loved her, I loved her…

• • •

There was the day I walked past the small court, where Dalia and I spent so much time. I heard them arguing:
Sub-Prioress
Kapera, the charity
Prior
and Dalia.

‘Mind your own business,
Sub-Prioress
,’ the
Prior
said. ‘I made the vow of celibacy—I can break it.’

‘You break the
Spirit King’s
vow, not your own!’ Dalia cried.

I would not have Dalia unhappy, not amidst my own happiness. I did not walk past; I cracked open the door, and peered in to see
Sub-Prioress
Dalia, on her knees, in front of the altar. The other two faced her, their backs to the
nova
. They challenged her with a hatred that, in this quiet place, was obscene.

‘You’re jealous,’ he said to Dalia, and even from where I stood, I heard her gasp of pain. ‘Jealous because Kapera loves me.’

He slid his arm, his black-clad arm, around
Sub-Prioress
Kapera’s shoulders, black against the white of her
pandita
, black as the meanness of his spirit, and drew her next to his body. There was no end between his
chuba
and hers; they were a cruel reproachful figure, which knew no mercy.

Dalia pulled herself upright, with a simple dignity that made me aware of the kindred tears on my own face, as she said, ‘If I’m jealous, it’s no less an
ezomo
than yours.’

‘No less?’
Sub-Prioress
Kapera snarled. She poked Dalia’s chest, poked those breasts that had succoured and saved me from the lonely hell the Kaperas of this world would have condemned me to. ‘You and the freak. Every night. That’s not breaking the
Spirit King’s
law?’

‘I spend a few hours giving the child some motherly cuddles and kisses. Where does it say in the
Eden Book
that loving a child is against the
Spirit King’s
law?’ Dalia said. ‘Cruelty is a human law. There’s no harm showing that poor child a mother’s love.’

‘A mother’s love!’ The
Prior
gave a bitter laugh. My hands clenched into fists as my hatred, absent for months, for years even, leapt into life again. ‘That’s not love,’ he said. ‘That’s consorting with a child marked by the
Levid
himself.’

I wanted to shout at him that it was love: a greater love than any he ever knew. But all that spewed out was the same rage that poured forth the day I earned the small round scar on my palm.

At the sound, they turned as one and stared as I clattered down the aisle. They were as frozen as the
nova
behind them; this one made of cold white porcelain, the emblematic coral bead aglow with the same fire fuelling my steps. I reached them and grabbed
Sub-Prioress
Kapera’s arm, the one that defiled Dalia’s breast.

In that smoky courthouse, redolent of herbs and incense, pandemonium erupted. The
Prior
snatched Kapera’s other arm and clawed at my face. I stepped back, back into Dalia’s arms, into the safety of my beloved’s arms.

The holy man was small, and weak, and
Sub-Prioress
Kapera was neither. As I released Kapera, he stumbled and pushed her away so she didn’t drag him down. She fell heavily and her head caught the end of a
pitha
. She lay inert, her
pandita
skewed from the force of her fall. Blood dribbled from her forehead, soaked invisibly into the black of her
chuba
, and her breath rattled out in a final, dying sigh.

Into the silence that followed, Dalia screamed and screamed and screamed. She stumbled to her knees beside the limp body of Kapera, and moaned, ‘My love, my love, don’t leave me, don’t leave me.’

‘I’m here,’ I said, and touched a hand lightly to her shoulder. She brushed it away, as one would brush away an irritating fly. With frantic hands, she stripped away Kapera’s
pandita
and began dabbing the sluggish blood from her face, all the while sobbing, ‘I love you, don’t leave me, I love you, love you, love you…’

The charity
Prior
turned to me, his face flushed, his breath heavy with panic and self-preservation. ‘You did this.’ He spat the accusation out, but my clenched fists told him I would not let him lie. ‘Disclose that you did it,’ he said. His flat, brown eyes followed me as I stooped beside Dalia to rest an arm around her shoulders and they held no love for either of us. ‘Or I’ll say Dalia did it.’