The Shaytan Bride

by The Shaytan Bride (retail) (epub)

  Ammu and her friends from all parts of the South Asian, African, and Western Asian continents would also organize get-togethers in each other’s homes, decorated with colourful tapestry and unique objects that were not available in Canadian stores. They played Farsi and Indian music. We’d all fill our mouths with mantu, biriyani, and kabobs while watching Bollywood films. We’d also gather in a circle and twirl our arms to traditional Afghan music, and then the young daughters would demonstrate their new belly-dancing skills.

  I would play Karam and Ludo with Abbu and Ammu while a cricket match was on our television in the background. On the same day, I’d ask them to buy me expensive Wayne Gretzky skates and the brightest Maple Leafs jersey I could find.

  In the same neighbourhood, mothers worked long hours in factories and fast-food chains while struggling to make time to help their children with homework, fathers were deported and families separated, and teenagers were told to avoid wearing certain colours, as they could be mistaken for a gang member and shot dead.

  I looked forward to our trips to BiWay every Saturday, and the McDonalds beside it that sold soft-serve ice cream. BiWay was my favourite because it was the only store where Ammu would spend a little more freely. In Thunder Bay, Pori Khala would take Ammu to the fancy stores. She’d pick up shirts made of twill, silk, cotton, or poplin, rubbing them between her index finger and thumb. “Hmmm,” she would say under her breath, her lips pursed, the same way Ammu inspected the fine details of gold in the hustle bustle of Dhaka’s Newmarket shops. Pori Khala would investigate the sweaters next, made of cashmere and wool, and then her fingers would slide along the vertical ridges of solid corduroy, which too required time and careful attention. Ammu and I trailed behind her for hours until we found ourselves at the cash register. Pori Khala would have a couple of pieces cradled in her chest, Ammu’s hands would be empty. Ammu would look at the tags hanging from Pori Khala’s selection, and her face would crumple like a pop can. “We’ll go to a different store,” she would say to me.

  I would stretch my arm outward, reaching to feel the sweater Pori Khala held. Its softness as subtle and serene as a thousand sleeps. At BiWay, I could find my own version of such things.

  One day in BiWay, as Ammu pushed the shopping cart through the aisles and I jumped on and off it, I noticed a pair of bright-pink snow pants from afar. I pointed instantly, then turned my face to Ammu with a slight pout and raised eyebrows, as if to say I want this. Ammu, very mindful of what we spent, first shook her head, and then I pleaded, “Please? It’s pretty!” As I said this I imagined the thrills that I’d get sliding down the great green hill next to our apartment while wearing them.

  “No!” Ammu said. “We’re in a new place and we have to be careful with what we spend.”

  I jumped off the cart and ran to the pants, brought them back, and dumped them in the cart. “Please, please, please!” I said. “I want to toboggan.”

  Ammu by now was flustered. She also had my younger sister in her arms and was looking through a pile of mismatched socks. My sister began crying and Ammu’s face became flushed pink.

  I stomped my feet, then decided to negotiate. “I’ll clean my room, or the living room. I won’t make any more messes.”

  Ammu looked up from the pile of socks and squinted. “Fine,” she said. “But only because you’re my eldest.” Then she ruffled my hair.

  These became my favourite snow pants.

  In Jungle, there was always a buzz of activity in our apartment. Ammu was working for the first time, as a classroom assistant; she had never done so in Dhaka. She was also taking classes at the local college to upgrade her English and learn teaching skills. There were often papers scattered across our tangerine sofa and the Persian rug where we sat. Ammu and I scratched our heads and scribbled with our pens, moved by creative spirit and a roaring tenacity. I had now become Ammu’s English tutor. We spent countless hours practising so she could find employment and pay for things like my Superwoman Barbies.

  Over the years, despite all her efforts, I’d hear Ammu say from time to time, “I didn’t get the job.” Wrinkles on her face forming and deepening, the queen of Dhaka would sometimes look as tired as a rag doll. I would find her often on the jai-namaz, crying. She worked part-time for years, the permanent positions always, in the end, given to younger, whiter, and less experienced Canadian university graduates.

  Seeing how busy Ammu was, I would often drag our green plastic bucket into the bathroom tub and fill it with water and detergent, as well as one squirt of shampoo, just to add a fruity scent. I’d tug the overflowing bucket of water out of the bathtub with every ounce of strength I had and use it to scrub the floors, imagining myself as Cinderella. When Ammu would open the apartment door, she would see the floor sparkle like the white of teeth. The smirk pressing on her cheeks. My acts of service always opened the door to Ammu’s heart.

  Abbu, at the time, was often out, searching endlessly for employment. He was also enrolled in college to complete a new degree in computer programming, which helped him successfully apply for a position that was more aligned with his skills, although in a totally different field. Abbu had started off with a door-to-door sales job, despite having been a distinguished engineer before emigrating. We had entered Canada during the tail end of a recession. On his feet all day, he was often tired when he got home, unable to play with me like he used to in Dhaka. During this particularly arduous time of our lives, when Abbu was often gone for most of the day, I sometimes sobbed, longing for his gentle presence and words of advice. When he was there, my world always did change for the better.

  For example, there was the time when I got eliminated from a spelling bee. There were annual competitions, and this particular year I had made it to the semi-finals. During the critical moment, which at the time felt like it would determine my future, I was asked to spell Jedi — the Star Wars Jedi — which was not a familiar term to me, as I didn’t have cable television and didn’t visit movie theatres to watch Hollywood films with my family, like some of the other students did.

  It was terrible, that dryness in my mouth when I couldn’t spell this random word that everyone else knew so well. Ammu’s lips were turned down the entire car ride home. Later she said to me, “You are so irresponsible! How could you fail? You spent all summer riding that bike, instead of practising!”

  It was true; I had done that. It was a new bike that Abbu had gifted me with the money he had made. I fell while riding it a good ten times or more, but I had been so determined that summer to learn.

  “I know that you like trying new things, challenging your mind,” Abbu had said.

  When Ammu stood there, her arms across her chest, Abbu manoeuvred in between us. He turned to Ammu and said, “She may not have won the spelling bee, but she learned how to ride a bike. That’s certainly something.”

  Then he turned to me. “Congratulations, my dear.”

  In our little family, there was also my two younger siblings, with whom I played school, teaching them different topics. For them, I once organized our very own Olympics. Couch cushions overturned to practise our gymnastics on and smooth socks to slide through the hallways as if we were figure skaters. Of course, my siblings also received front row seats to all the movies I’d act out in different costumes.

  It was all a world of play and wonder; of new beginnings.

  The apartment we lived in had four windows. Ammu and I both took to staring out of them. I loved to watch animals and people walk by, and Ammu, well, she liked to watch me. It was her daily ritual to keep an eye on me as I sauntered to and from school, as though her watch could protect me from all the world’s dangers.

  From all of the windows, I could see a surrounding patch of green grass embellished in dozens of bright-yellow dandelions. I’d dance through them often, stopping to pluck and smell, then blow the puffy seedlings away. It was my little secret garden, like the kind Ahsan Khalu and Pori Khala had in Thunder Bay, the one in their grand glass greenhouse
. I must have made a thousand wishes, now drifting to every corner of the earth.

  I wish for a saxophone.

  I wish to climb a volcano to see the lava.

  I wish to see Billy at the library again.

  I wish for Ammu to pass her ESL test today.

  One day, from one of these windows, the one facing the back of the elementary school, Ammu saw me get picked up by a stranger, and her protective watch could not prevent it.

  It happened during winter. I was coming home from school for lunch in my new snow pants. I saw Ammu’s face peering, as usual, from the windowsill. I went past the hill I often tobogganed down, which now stood as an observer, witness to me counting my steps as my boots crunched the snow. I also passed the daycare playground, the red and yellow slides and rusty blue monkey bars still wet from the earlier snowfall.

  With my depth perception misled, I dipped my right boot so deep into the snow that I just couldn’t lift my leg up anymore. Trapped, I yanked, pulling myself backward and thudding onto my little bottom, my gloveless hands stinging. I continued to pull and pull but my leg wouldn’t move from out of the snow. Beyond my blurry vision, the taste of salty tears and snot on my lips, was Ammu at the window like a mannequin. Twenty minutes passed of me trapped and writhing in the snow with my hands and feet stinging from the cold, and then a fuzzy shadow appeared from behind and grew. I turned around. The shadow belonged to a man who I thought of as Viking because he was broad boned and red bearded, with heavy gladiator arms, the way Vikings had looked in books I had read. He brought his colossal stature down so that he was on his knees. His chest was eye level to me.

  “Do you need help?” he whispered, gutturally.

  I nodded.

  “Where do you live? Where are your parents?”

  I pointed to the window where Ammu stood watching.

  “Do you want me to take you home?” he asked.

  I wondered if I should say yes. Although, from afar, Ammu’s expression seemed unchanged, I thought how alarmed she would be if I went with him. My stomach panged with the guilt of how I may cause her to question her ability as a mother if I was brought home by a stranger, although I could not articulate this at the time. I also worried I would disappoint her by ignoring her motherly pleas to stay away from strangers. At the same time, it seemed a matter of survival because the frost, its bite feeling like death.

  If the Viking did take me, Ammu might at first shout and scream. She would think that I had made myself vulnerable to this man’s innate tendency for something she called rape. Rape was something she referenced in plenty of indirect ways, as well as its consequence: shame and disgrace. When she’d see it on television screens — this mysterious thing that looked like men who were animals and women that screamed — she’d put her hands over her mouth or widen her eyes, a cavernous caution. When the characters brought their lips together and kissed, she also had this same reaction. And during conversations with her friends about young women and men, the message was persistently the same: Guard your body or there will be consequences.

  I didn’t know then that these warnings and whispers were not particular to my family. It didn’t seem like a bad message as a child, but what stuck was the strange sensation of power and responsibility over my own body; the understanding that my awareness of it should be so great, but at the same time, knowing women’s and girls’ bodies could, in an instant, almost become disposable at the hands of men, people, and the general world.

  I wished Ammu would not worry so much, but then I wondered if she should worry more. Was there such a thing as too scared when it came to rape?

  I decided to let him help me.

  The Viking picked me up with his thick arms, pulled me over his shoulder, and marched toward the building. The hard bone of his shoulder pressed into my stomach. My head bobbed as quickly as my heart pounded, and as quickly as he took his steps. I sniffed his musk. Was Ammu thinking the man had kidnapped me? Was she frantically searching for me now? What had she been afraid of that she hadn’t come down herself? Or did she not realize I was stuck? What if the government takes me away, like what my classmates said happens to some children?

  My stomach knotted. The urge to scream was there but I gulped. When he reached the building gate, he climbed up the stairs to the third floor where we lived. The closer the Viking got to our apartment door, the more my toes stung. I decided then that as much as I told myself that Ammu didn’t come down because she didn’t love me enough, or I wasn’t worthy enough, she was probably just too scared and confused by what it all could have meant. It was also possible she couldn’t leave the apartment because of her newborn son, my younger brother, or my growing toddler sister, who needed her to stay.

  When Ammu answered, the Viking immediately and pointedly asked her, “Is this your daughter?”

  Ammu nodded, her eyes frantically searching his face and then mine. It was a look I recognized, concerned for my well-being, but also hers, and then the opinion of the rest of the world, and how the situation must have looked.

  “She was sitting alone in the cold out there in the snow. You’ll have to take better care of her. And these snow pants, they look very big. You should buy her ones that fit.”

  I began to squirm myself out of his grip as a method of resistance to his recommendations. He had brought me home — why did he feel the need to make speeches? Teach lessons?

  Viking pulled me down from his shoulders. I hated him suddenly. Ammu was a busy woman. In between her long study sessions, she made us meals that we wanted. With a duster in one hand and my bookbag in the other, she simultaneously cleaned the entire apartment while checking that I had read my books. She worked part-time, sewed clothing for her neighbours, took driving lessons, made biriyani for Ramadan iftars to serve people at our local mosque, organized socials, and babysat for friends.

  “Thank you,” Ammu told the Viking softly, and then brought me inside. She closed the door.

  I thought Ammu would ask more questions of both him and I, but she didn’t. Instead, she pulled a wool blanket over my legs. She was shaking. In that moment, I wanted so very much to pull the wool blanket from my toes and wrap it around Ammu instead. The impulse was tantamount to my longing to rip my own heart out of my chest and place it at her feet, as that’s where the gates to heaven would be. And somehow, in this moment, I realized all I actually wanted was for her to never stop loving me, and her forgiveness.

  One day I was playing dodgeball with a handful of the other girls and boys at school. We were playing near a special tree on a hill, where the other girls said Bloody Mary was buried.

  “I dare you to call her name three times,” they said. “Do it in front of a mirror.”

  I wondered then if Bloody Mary was a jinniyah, a female jinn, like the ones I heard about in Dhaka. Curious, I followed the girls to the bathroom, where they stood outside the door. I hastily ran to the mirror. The stalls were grey, the tiles were stone, and the porcelain sink was only a few inches from my pelvis. I stood there, my hands shaking but my chin upward and eyes straight.

  “I will be brave. I will be brave,” I said to myself. I slid my fingers over the sullied mirror as the giggles of the girls outside grew louder. I called out “Bloody Mary! Bloody Mary! Bloody Mary!” but nothing happened. So, then I said, “Shayṭān Bride! Shayṭān Bride! Shayṭān Bride!” expecting to see a woman with long black hair, maybe some blood on her lips dripping down to her breasts, but, once again, nothing. There was no magic, no metamorphoses, just my plain reflection in the unremarkable school bathroom. The hinge of one of the stall doors squeaked. I noticed the piece of toilet paper under my feet. The recess bell rang. I ran out of the bathroom. All the other girls were gone.

  Not too long after this incident, I was traversing home, following the grey pavement trail, as I always did, passing the row of marmalade-orange–brownish houses, over the silver railing bridge, down the street, Ammu in the window, as usual, peering at me. The whole journey down there was a
pounding on my abdomen walls, my body calling attention to itself.

  At home, I saw the blood that came from between my legs. I nonchalantly told Ammu, who wrinkled her face, then spent the rest of the day and evening pacing back and forth. I wanted to tell her about Bloody Mary, that it could have been her doing, or maybe the Shayṭān Bride, who could have paid a visit without my knowing. But also, that I had heard about girls bleeding from my friends.

  Instead, I asked her, “What’s wrong?”

  “Why did it happen so fast? You’ll have to be more careful,” she replied. There were wafting clouds above our heads, signalling that things had changed.

  Then she cried.

  Where did it come from, this concern, this anguish, that would now never go away? I resented her for this sadness and also myself for causing it. At the same time, I could also feel what she did: the tenderness of an open wound. Ammu was like an ocean, and I a river; we were connected, with no end or beginning. Bodies of blood, bodies of water, Ammu and I flowing into each other. I wondered if God got angry when the capacity for life was not appreciated.

  Abbu bled in the brain a few years after. It was a brain hemorrhage from falling on ice and hitting his head. The bad news came to me while I was in the middle of fourth-grade French class, learning the appropriate use of prepositions to signify figurative locations.

  “Dans la situation actuelle; dans ces conditions,” said Mr. Dubois, as he chalked the blackboard. The librarian, Mrs. Evans, whose outfits were often embellished with scintillating beads, knocked on the door asking for me. She took me to the office, where Ammu stood with an obscure look, my eight-year-old sister, with her pink-and-white floral dress and curly black hair, holding her hand.