was. Arthritis gnarled her fingers into claws and too much bleach made her scalp look like parched earth. ‘You think it matters how shapely your mouth is, how long your nails are?’ she would say to me, leaning in close enough for me to taste her cigarette breath.
On my tenth birthday she made white cupcakes frosted purple and dropped them off at my school after lunch. As she stood in the classroom doorway holding the tray, she peered around the teacher to find me, her squinted eyes darting among the rows of children. I gave her a quick look of thanks and turned away, hoping no one would see her. That afternoon we had a classroom party and wore pointed hats. Beneath colorful streamers and floating balloons my friend Oni kissed me on the mouth in between bites of cake. Disney songs played from a small cassette player on the teacher’s desk and the teacher, Ms. Nolan, was busy showing a student how to properly take Harry the hamster out of his cage, how to hold him with cupped hands so he felt safe.
Licking frosting off my lips, I giggled at Oni, who smeared more frosting on her mouth and leaned in to kiss me again, but within inches of my face she was snapped back by Ms. Nolan’s hands and led outside. I put down my cupcake and looked around at the other kids. I wondered if they had been watching us. What had they seen? Some of them crowded near the window, pushing and pulling one another to get a look. Through the glass I watched Ms. Nolan’s mouth move rapidly as she spoke and Oni’s lips tremble like she might cry.
A sudden scream caused us to turn away from the window to see the kid who had been holding Harry chasing the hamster across the room. Soon, more than two dozen students were on the hunt, trying to catch Harry and put him back in his cage. But the hamster was frightened and wouldn’t stop scurrying, kept weaving his way between backpacks and books, desk legs and human ones. It wasn’t long before laughter gave way to shrieks. Papers flew through the air and kids tripped over one another in pursuit. By the time Ms. Nolan heard the racket and rushed back inside, it was too late. Someone had stepped on Harry and one of his beady black eyes had popped from its socket, dangled at the end of a thin bloodied nerve and stared at the carpet.
**
You wake, stale smoke clinging to your tongue, whiskey rising from your skin. The first few drinks of water scrape like sediment against your throat and you force yourself to swallow. At the bathroom sink you scrub smeared liner from your lids but a faded gray rims your eyes, impervious to soap and water, insisting on its permanence. You brush your teeth and gargle and brush a second time as you turn on the coffee maker in the kitchen. When you comb your hair, the finest strands come loose from their follicles and fall. After five, ten, fifteen years on your head, they become invisible when they reach the carpet beneath your feet. What else do you shed unaware?
Between sips of coffee you squeeze beige paste from a tube and rub it into your skin until even freckles disappear. The mascara is dry and clumps between your lashes, and you hold its wand beneath a trickling faucet for a second, two, and push it back into the tube, give it a shake and again twist it open. Count to five strokes per eye. When you run lipstick across your lips you feel their dryness, the creases where the color will gather and form threadlike veins of red. You button a blouse and as you pull on a pair of tights, you notice a run in one of the legs. The skirt, despite its length, cannot cover it. When you open the window a fly buzzes past your ear and over your shoulder. Perfectly still it perches on the dresser, facing you, its eyes examining you.
As you fall you wonder what you will sound like on the asphalt, if your face will look like those in movies, wide-eyed in surprise. You hope the bleeding is mostly internal so no one will become sick at the sight. Moments pass before you realize the fall has slowed, that you are adrift in the air and that while you cannot control where you go, you may turn in any direction you like. You feel your eyes changing, pushing against their sockets as each becomes a thousand eyes, and though they no longer move, they see all things, millions of images converging to one.
That is when you see them, standing side by side. The eldest among them is garbed in black and the second glows like the sun. Only the youngest draws near, hands you one of two swords she holds and whispers in your ear. What does she say? She asks why you have stopped calling her from the rooftop in worship, why your children no longer bear her name. You tell her you have neither rooftop nor children and that you never learned to pray. You try to follow her, to float as she does, but again you begin to fall.
**
When I was seventeen I had sex for the first time in the laundry room of my boyfriend’s house. His parents were in the kitchen making dinner and we were supposed to be in the family room listening to music and studying for a physics midterm. Instead the music’s volume was turned low so we could hear approaching feet as we reached for each other beneath the open textbooks on our laps. He had leaned over and kissed my neck, his fingers reaching farther down, and though we’d touched each other before, it was the first time it felt fervent, nearly urgent.
Aside from the washer and dryer the room had shelves of cleaning products and mops and brooms that hung from hooks. I wrapped my fingers around his neck and kissed his mouth, and again I felt the same rise and swell inside me as I pulled down my pants and then his. He let out a small laugh and I did too and we kissed again to silence our nerves. For the first few minutes our movements were careful and cautious as we fumbled with each other’s bodies and tried to quiet our breaths.
When finally we got going, pushing against one another in that small space, I felt my body birth desire and fulfill it, felt this to be significant and myself significant with it despite where I was. The room was hot and we were sweaty and my body began to slip from his hands. But he tightened his grip and hoisted me higher and held me closer. ‘You’re so fucking pretty,’ he said and he pushed himself deeper inside me. ‘You’re so fucking pretty,’ he said again and I felt his arms grow strong against mine.
**
Zaynab’s second marriage was to a man with clear blue eyes and a dark mustache. Though he had a large belly and limbs like meatless chicken bones it was agreed he was a handsome man. During her engagement party, she changed outfits a half-dozen times, in and out of dresses beaded and sequined, pumps and sandals high-heeled and shiny. Her husband clasped strands of pearls around her neck and slid thick gold bangles over her wrists. By then she was nineteen and even more beautiful than before. The envy of every girl in the neighborhood, my grandmother said. Those who were not invited crowded around the windows to catch sight of her, to watch how she styled her hair for each dress, how her eyes glowed bright yellow.
Still she remained as brazen as ever, smoking cigarettes and drinking beers with her new husband and his friends well into the night. Her dresses grew shorter and her hips wider and everyone who saw her offered warning. ‘The smoking will make your skin sallow,’ they said. ‘So much beer will make you gain weight.’ She sent them off with jokes and stories, pinching the fat of their arms and pulling on the skin that sagged from their faces. But at my grandmother’s insistence she began to wear an amulet, a sapphire eye that hung from a chain around her neck and rested in the space between her breasts.
When, after five years of marriage, she still could not conceive, everyone agreed there was no one to blame but those who had envied her, had quietly cursed her health and beauty for so long. My grandmother took her to healers, to soothsayers and sheikhs, and finally, to the best fertility clinics in Europe. It would take my aunt Zaynab another five years to get pregnant and give birth to my cousin, Reem. It would take only three months after that for her to walk in on her husband in bed with another woman, his bulbous belly bouncing atop her behind.
Here the story gets murky. Soon after discovering her husband’s infidelity, Zaynab lost control of the left side of her face. Her eyelid drooped and even when she slept, remained ajar. Half of her mouth sagged so she could no longer smile. My grandmother said a stroke had caused the paralysis. My mother thought it was shock. After all, how could Zaynab bear the news that the woman was not only her husband’s lover, but also his second
