Jasmine
The day
begins at dawn, painting your prayer mat in pink and gold. You find Mecca on the floor of the Red Roof
Inn, bow to the light, and begin. By the
time you’re done the sun has risen to paint the sole window white gold – you pick
up the phone and order breakfast. Two
egg whites, wheat toast, fruit salad, juice, and milk for you; pancakes,
sausage, bacon and fruit salad with Rice Krispies and
orange juice for her. You shower and paint
your eyelids orchid and plan the day. The
only solid thing in the world is the hard fact of the date; tomorrow is the
twentieth. Tomorrow means Evansville;
the next day means rest. And Mother’s Day.
She
sleeps through all of this. Typically,
you’re dressed in your burqa before she even stirs
one little finger (her laziness appalls and delights you, but she is no worse
than the husband you would have been caring for had you been stranded in Daraa). Breakfast is
eaten to the tune of the morning news (oil crises, gas shortage, spending
crises, local sports teams are faltering again). Then you gather up the gear and head down to the
gym.
For her,
it’s a cursory exercise to show the powers that be she’s interested in keeping
fairly healthy. You spend twenty minutes
on the oscillating bike, your spine stiff and your chin tilted high to keep the
burqa from getting caught in its wheel (she calls you
Almira Gulch and you have no idea what she’s talking
about). The light weights follow – then another
shower. You dose yourself in jasmine
perfume before heading back into the world.
There’s
nothing to do for five hours. These wrestlers
you’re surrounded by are adept at filling in the missing hours – with pranks,
music, video games, tv, email
or pursuit of the flesh. None of these
things tempt you – you ask the front desk for a suggestion.
Somehow
you end up a few miles out of town at the Fantastic Caverns “America’s Only
Ride-Through Cave”. Two tickets buy you a
berth in a tram attached to a cherry-colored Jeep, which is driven through a
large cavern filled with beautiful rock formations. You don’t even notice the space the tee-shirt
clad fellow riders give the two of you, you’re so stricken by natural
beauty. The pink and purple shaded rock is
unspeakably enticing to you – the colors making you homesick for the flower
festivals of the Sudan. Then you’re
literally stricken with motion sickness.
The ride operator glares at you as he takes you back to the gift shop
early – you feel miserable. You won’t apologize
for being yourself, but you didn’t mean to throw up on him.
She drives
you back to the hotel while you clutch an old McDonald’s bag in your hand,
hoping not to disgrace yourself all over the front seat. “You shouldn’ta had
the butter,” she grumbles – the only time she’s spoken to you all day or will
speak to you. But things stay where they
belong – she drives you to the house show, where you have to listen to her work
out the details of a match with ODB.
You know
your part – no one explains it to you – interference. The wicked foreign woman
spreading her evil again. (It’s
still better than living in the Sudan). Your
orders received, you watch the rest of the pageantry with half-opened eyes,
remembering festival days and your finest silks. The match is an anticlimax – you do the same
things without feeling much. The alchemy
is making it all look fresh night after night, and you think you do a good job
pulling it off. You understand your
motivations (the real motivation is to keep yourself as far from your mother’s
world as possible) – you defend her with ferocious intensity, and she does the
same for you.
Nighttime
means dinner and driving and the highway to Indiana – black skies and twinkling
stars in the heavens. She does the work –
it’s her job, she says. She’s pampering
you and you don’t understand it, but you’re not too holy to take advantage of this
generous turn. You would slaughter a
sheep for her, but she gets the creeps when she sees a knife in your hand.
You fall
asleep wishing you wish you were in Tennessee.
They have okra there.
((It’s
midnight. Somewhere in the wretched hot
night your mother is in her blue-painted kitchen making Koftah
with Shata and Molokhiya; you
can almost smell the Crème Caramela, see it jiggling on
her best plate, see its crown of candied cherries glowing in
the firelight like a mysterious English jewel from the back of a My-T-Fine
package. If she thinks of her daughter
at all, she cries. You say nothing because contact is unthinkable
- your father will know where you are – and you will be dragged back home and
beheaded as a matter of honor. It’s
better for her to cry in your absence.
You cut off her memory like an overgrown fingernail and turn toward
Mecca.)The End