Not a Fairytale (13 page)

S
ALENA
’
S MOTHER HAS SENT HER ON AN ERRAND
to buy new dress material. The occasion is the wedding of a distant relative. Her mother has asked for peach satin with matching lace for herself, white for Zuhra, and Salena is allowed to choose whatever colour she wants. Salena stands for a long time fingering the various cloths before a tiny, grey-haired shop assistant asks if she needs help. Hafsa has given her precise instructions regarding the lengths required, and soon she has the correct fabric for both her mother and sister, but she finds herself incapable of choosing her own. Sky-blue or sunflower-yellow? Her mother has never allowed Salena to choose her clothes, and she finds herself incapable of making a decision. The shop assistant suggests a shade of pink and Salena agrees gratefully.

Soon she finds herself back outside the busy shop, the city booming around her with a clamour that won’t go away. Her throat is parched, but she cannot get anything to drink, as Hafsa has provided her with the exact bus fare and the precise money required for the shopping. As she makes her way to the bus stop she hears her name screamed above the noise of the street. She turns in time to see Yaseen, a boy she remembers from primary school, hurrying over to her, grinning. She has a distant memory of pain associated with his name, but it is blocked out as he embraces her and the parcels she clutches to her chest. He is talking non-stop, words that stumble past her ears incomprehensibly, and she finds herself being led by the hand away from her destination towards the leafy shadows at the top of the street.

They are walking in dappled sunlight, the oak trees providing a cloak of protection against heat and noise, although she can’t concentrate on his words. Salena is light-headed. No one except her baby sister has ever touched her with affection. She feels the texture of his palm, smooth and soft against the work-thickened skin of her hand. He says something that appears to require an answer and she nods, her mouth curving into the beginnings of a smile.

She sees the policeman behind Yaseen at the same moment she feels a heaviness settle on each of her shoulders, pushing her feet deeper into her shoes. At the police station she perches on a corner of a scarred brown bench, staring sightlessly down at her nails digging into her palm. The nails are too soft, they cannot penetrate the skin, and there is no comforting release of blood.

Her mother arrives to prove her identity, with Zuhra. Her little sister comes over and snuggles into her body, kitten-like, and her proximity releases the tears that Salena has held back.

Once she is home, locked into her bedroom, she takes out the seashell with its brittle sharp edge. When Hanif arrives to inflict his punishment, she is in an unreachable space.

Z
UHRA RUNS AHEAD THEN SPINS IN CIRCLES
, the skirt of her turquoise-and-white checked uniform lifting to show the tops of her rounded thighs, as she waits for Salena to catch up. It is her first day at school and she can’t wait to learn how to read the words in the books that have been a mystery to her for as long as she can remember. Salena has warned her that she won’t be able to read at the end of the school day, that it takes time to learn the letters, but Zuhra doesn’t believe her. At the classroom door Salena hands over a tiny brown school case, filled with Zuhra’s favourite cheese sandwich and a bottle of orange juice. A smiling nun takes Zuhra by the hand, and she doesn’t glance back at her sister.

Salena stands awkwardly for a moment, looking after her, then tiptoes lightly on the sweet-smelling passage to the door that leads to the garden. She imagines how hard it must be to clean these wooden floorboards, the effort involved in creating the perfumed shine that spreads across the ground.

Outside, she sits down on a small stone bench under a tree, the smells of summery flowers all around her. A ladybird settles on her palm, its plump red and black body belying its fragility. She cups her hands together and encloses the tiny insect in both palms, bringing her hands to her nose as though she wants to inhale its winged freedom.

An elderly nun walks by, tilts her head to the right and suggests Salena complete her prayers in the chapel, behind the bench. It takes Salena a moment to understand her accent, her words spoken in a gentle pattern, like a bedtime nursery rhyme. She makes Salena get up and waves her over to the prayer room. Salena dutifully does her bidding, releasing the ladybird onto a speckled carnation. She steps from the sunlight into the cool chapel.

The interior is tinier than Salena’s bedroom, as if it were made for dolls. There is a single brown bench, its back to the door, facing a wall against which a life-size statue of a golden-haired woman stands, her lips smiling at the yellow-haired fat baby she holds tightly in both immobile arms. The baby and mother have their eyes locked together, excluding the world forever. Near the statue is a low table on which a short white candle is burning, its flame flickering like an inquisitive snake’s tongue.

Salena sits down, puts her hands under her thighs, palms down, and feels the bench, wooden, warm, slightly rough. She rocks slowly, forward and backwards and, behind the statue, her watching eyes find a tiny picture, its size more suited to the room. She sees a glowing man, head bowed, arms spread, blood dripping down one cheek like tears, red drops falling from his palms. He seems unaware of the hurt, his eyes glancing away from himself. It is a look she recognises, and which she carries home with her. And though she will never enter the chapel again, that gaze lives with her until she dies.

S
ALENA WALKS INTO THE FRONT ROOM OF THE HOUSE
carrying the tea and semolina cake which Hafsa has cut into syrupy diamonds. The three strangers are sitting on Hafsa’s new rose-pink leather lounge suite, which she has bought especially for this visit. There are matching pink curtains covering the windows, which Hafsa finished sewing the night before.

When Salena walks in, her parents and their visitors, Mr and Mrs Parker and their son Zain, are talking about mutual acquaintances. Someone’s second wife has run off with her stepson, who’s the same age as she is. Their shocked voices don’t match the half-smiles on their faces.

At Salena’s appearance, the group falls silent. She pours the tea into her mother’s special cups – each pink cup is gold rimmed with three gold feet and a matching gold saucer. Usually this tea set is displayed in Hafsa’s glass cabinet, but today, like Salena, it has been brought out for show.

She offers a cup to Mrs Parker, who adds four teaspoons of sugar, fixing a pleasant expression on her face so that her mother cannot accuse her of being rude. She would like to look directly at the guests, especially the son, but she never raises her eyes to meet those of the people she serves, and she is scared her mother will accuse her of being forward if she looks at the man she may marry – if the Parkers like what they see.

Weeks later, her mother comes back from town with white satin and lace, and that is how Salena learns she is to be married. His parents had liked her fair skin, her parents had liked the sound of a lawyer son-in-law, and the date has been set. Her mother decides on the style of the dress – a satin bodice with Princess Anne sleeves and a skirt comprising seven frothy tiers, each succeeding tier larger than the one before.

On her wedding day, Salena vanishes into the dress, an armour of lace and satin, leaving just her face exposed to the flashes of photographer’s bulbs. She remembers nothing of the day; her only reference is the huge wedding album her mother-in-law constructs to display to the endless stream of visitors. In the photographs, Salena-the-Bride sits on the huge stage in a local school hall, submerged in a sea of white, her head bowed under the weight of 22-carat gold necklaces and earrings, arms covered in bracelets. Seven bridesmaids, who are dressed in varying shades of orange, green, lilac and red, surround her.

In the first few pages of the album, she and her bridesmaids are alone on the stage, but later, after the nikah in the mosque, after the bride-price had been paid, the photographs show Zain with her on the stage. Her father has told her to ask for a hundred rand – so much money, groceries for a month – and Zain has paid it. He must really like Salena-the-Bride.

There are no photographs of her wedding night, but she has vague pictures in her head. In one such memory-photograph, Salena sees Mrs Parker, her new mother-in-law, removing Salena’s dress, petticoats, jewellery, helping her into an ivory nightie. In another blurred image, she sees a stranger, a naked man, fitting a part of his body into an immobile woman. Salena herself is not there; she has slipped out of the body that naked man is penetrating. For years, her mother told her only prostitutes had sex. She cannot participate in this act.

The next morning, Mrs Parker, her new mother, comes in to change the sheets, smiling at the red stains, evidence of money well-spent.

Thirty-eight weeks later, Salena gives birth to her eldest son, Muhammad, and discovers the true purpose of sex: procreation. A year after that, almost to the day, the twins, Raqim and Makeen, are born after a protracted labour which results in a botched emergency operation, and the doctor says there may not be any more babies.

Sex becomes truly pointless, except as a means of escape into other realms. At night, when Zain pushes and prods her body, she imagines herself standing next to the bed, her arms crossed, examining the abundance of hair on his back and buttocks. Or tucked up next to the milky limbs of her sleeping sons.

Once, when Zain is particularly intent on exploring her orifices, she visualises floating all the way to London to visit her sister, just to be a breeze against Zuhra’s skin as she sits on the balcony watching the crescent moon, perhaps thinking of her.

Years later, when Zain is gone, she finds her wedding album, opens it at random to a picture of herself surrounded by bridesmaids. Trapped in their photograph prison, they smile back at her like a giant bowl of colourful jellies. Salena, in the centre, is the whipped cream in this human trifle, offered up as a dessert, sold for a hundred rand.

Trifle

1 l custard

1 Swiss roll

500 g colourful fresh fruit to taste – sliced bananas,

berries, mangos etc.

250 ml fresh cream, whipped

50 g flaked almonds

1 Cadbury’s flake for garnish

Prepare the custard according to the package instructions. Allow to cool completely. (Or purchase ready-made custard.)

Slice the Swiss roll into large pieces, cut into chunks and cover the bottom of a large glass bowl with approximately one third of the roll. Add a layer of prepared fruit, then a layer of custard. Repeat the process until you are out of ingredients or the bowl is full. Top with whipped cream and garnish with almonds and chocolate.

When Father comes home, wearing that look, I know he has screwed up again and expects me to clean up after him, as usual. He says, “My dear, you know, you’ve always been my favourite.” I wait, sniffing the red rose he has somehow acquired in the middle of winter. Another gift he pretends I’ve asked for. I don’t like flowers. All they do is shed petals and create a mess for me to clean.

He says, “My sweet, you have the power to make me very happy or very sad.”

I say nothing.

He says, “My daughter, I love you.”

I remain silent.

When he believes I am suitably softened, like ice-cream forgotten in the sun, he tells me what he really wants, what it is I have to do.

After a while, I can no longer hear his words. I feel like I’m in one of those nightmares in which you find yourself trapped in a small space slowly filling with water, and you’ve forgotten how to swim.

But a girl must do as her father says, and the next morning I set off for the Beast’s castle.

Inside, the castle is spotless, kept immaculately clean by unseen hands. You’d think this would make me happy; instead, it reminds me of the hospice where my mother was left to die. My cupboard replenishes itself with new dresses every morning. But the richness of the fabric weighs me down, making it impossible to walk, even in the soft pig’s skin shoes he gives me to wear. His jewels leave faint discolourations on my wrists, and the heavy gold chains around my throat force me to speak in a strangled whisper.