Dervishes

by Beth Helms

  “How,” says Grace, once John has left the room, “did you pry him away from Simone? And for God’s sake, why?”

  The blender slaughters ice cubes; a chartreuse froth bubbles up in the pitcher. Paige tastes the mixture with her finger and grimaces. “He’s useful,” she says. “And Simone loves to have him where she isn’t going to be, in case you haven’t noticed. He’s like a familiar, sent by some horrible witch who’s otherwise occupied—baking children and so on.”

  “He gives me the shivers.”

  “Taste this? I think it’s absolutely poisonous.” She hands Grace a glass. “Of course he gives you the shivers, he entirely intends to.”

  “Why would he?” Grace pours the drink into the sink. “Battery acid. Please throw it away.”

  “I think someone will drink it,” she says, “don’t you? Hand me down those big glasses? Those. Oh, Grace, you must find him a little sexy. That’s all part of his appeal.”

  “Not as far as I’m concerned. He’s oily.”

  “Really? Well, I daresay Simone would not agree. Speaking of your type, has he arrived?”

  “Is Bahar coming?” Grace turns on the taps at the sink and runs cool water on her wrists.

  “Please,” says Paige. “I might invite your lover and your husband to the same party but never your lover, your husband and your lover’s former lover. Though I did hear from her. Just back from some cosmopolitan jaunt. Have you seen her?”

  Grace has, actually, just the week before. Still, she thinks she will keep the details to herself. She looks at Paige with affection. Her hostess is flushed, valiant, drinking the blender concoction, washing it down with swigs of scotch from the bottle.

  “Briefly,” she says, and stretches past her for the scotch; she screws the cap back onto the bottle.

  She hears Ahmet’s voice at the door just then: his big laugh, the noise of greetings and the bustle of coats and scarves coming off, being swept away by obedient children stationed for that purpose. She senses Paige’s eyes, kind and shrewd.

  “I’m fine,” she says to her. “Just fine.”

  But that is not entirely true.

  Two days before, Bahar had stood arch and knowing in her doorway, filling it up with silver-tipped fur, clearly amused.

  “So what have we been up to?” she said, and then, before Grace could think of a sidestep or a retort, she went on. “Forget it anyway. I am very busy at the moment and this is not a matter on which a friendship should be broken. Look, I’ve brought baklava. Shall I come in?”

  She held up a box tied with red string. When Grace stepped back, she breezed in as if no time had passed at all and threw herself down on the couch in the living room, pulling off her trendy shoes and sighing as she dropped them one at a time.

  “Much better,” she said. “Now, I wish to discuss another thing which has come up. We will not talk about this silly business with the horse man; it is a subject I am quite weary of. I am very happy for you, et cetera, et cetera.”

  Grace had taken a seat, warily, and she studied Bahar. She couldn’t imagine where Bahar had come across this information, though it did not much surprise her that she had. Bahar took a cigarette from the silver case on the table and began tapping it briskly against her watch. “Ali tells me you have come to him with the matter of your pregnant maid and this procedure you have in mind. Perhaps he has told you it is a bit late for that remedy?”

  Grace nodded. She had been fretting about it nonstop, and Firdis, though not appreciably changed in bulk, was given to bursting into wet, snotty tears at the slightest provocation. Firdis had presented the problem to Grace as if it was hers to solve, and she was eventually made to understand that it was, if she wished to keep her household running smoothly. And Grace could not, she was ashamed to admit, imagine getting by without Firdis. She was maid, cook, babysitter, negotiator and intermediary. Grace had made some gentle inquiries at the American hospital but they had rebuffed her smartly. Even Ali had been less than encouraging; he had, in fact, been brusque. Grace considered Bahar in her living room and inventoried her feelings on the matter.

  “I believe his words were: that ship has sailed,” Grace said. “She should have come to me much earlier. Or I should have noticed something.”

  Bahar smiled and leaned forward; she wagged her unlit cigarette in Grace’s direction. “That is true, except I was thinking the other day and there is this interesting something that occurs to me.”

  “Which is?”

  “Some while ago, I remember you are telling me about this friend of yours from America—a friend who is also in the military. When you told me about this friend you mentioned this friend has a lack of a baby problem, which is a difficulty for her. Remember this? Yes, well, I remembered it as well. And so I think, Do we have a solution to the problems of not one person but two, perhaps even more?” Bahar leaned back, beaming: she opened her hands at Grace. “Voilà.”

  Grace had stared at her. “Voilà, what?”

  The music filters in from Paige’s living room. Voices—men’s and women’s, a shout of laughter, glasses clinking. Grace imagines Ahmet moving through the party—ever easy, ever relaxed. He will kiss the offered cheeks—skin creamed with rouge, matte with powder—shake men’s hands. He will surely encounter Rand there and they will step to the bar together, touch glasses and toss back a drink. Ahmet will be wholly untroubled; it does not concern him at all to be in this position. He had affected the very same nonchalance running into Ali at the cavalry grounds. Once, in her own home, she watched as Ahmet held a match to her husband’s pipe and Rand bent forward to meet his cupped hands, their bodies and faces drawn quite close and momentarily illuminated. It was merely a gesture, of course, a nicety between gentlemen—you would see such a thing every day between strangers on a train. But it had made her neck prickle.

  Still, Grace stays where she is, leaning against the counter, even after Paige has left the kitchen carrying her sloshing glasses. She lingers in the kitchen for some time, listening to the party, considering Bahar’s proposal and what she, Grace, has said or done to lead them all here.

  It was certainly true that she’d described Edie to Bahar, she’d mentioned the time on Olson Loop, the interminable days and the incessant wild noise of the children. It had been months earlier, when the two of them had walked the Ankara streets together, had lunched in small cafés and spoken of their lives, in the way that one will bring a new friend up to date. Bahar had said once, while folding a grape leaf neatly between her fingers, “This sounds like a strange woman. This staying in the house all day, in the dark, polishing silver and saying rosaries and whatnot. It seems very, very dull.”

  Grace had tried to explain. The heat and the circling street, the smell of burning grass and hamburgers, the stoop-women, the men returning in the evenings smelling of beer and cramped offices, picking at their dinners—stuffed peppers and meat loaves, rice pilafs and mixed vegetables—then throwing their feet, in damp black dress socks, onto the inherited coffee tables and falling asleep in front of the news. But Bahar was unimpressed. It seemed to offend her, their shared impotence, all those helpless, commiserating hours. And so perhaps Grace had revealed such a thing, in the hopes of distracting her new friend, of excusing their behavior. My friend was sad, she might have said, she would so like to have a child.

  “Don’t you wish to help your good friend?” Bahar said. She leaned forward, conspiratorially, “This could be arranged. I have seen such things happen. It is not novel. Ali himself has facilitated such matters. It is a supply-and-demand type of business, like any other.”

  “Business?” said Grace.

  “Arrangement.”

  “You’ve done this before,” Grace said, and it dawned on her suddenly. “The trips. The orphanage.”

  Bahar did not move a perfect muscle for a long moment. Then she sighed. “Are you so naïve?” she said. “I had thought you had seen what I had to show you. I thought you were not just another selfish American.” And t
hen Bahar lit the cigarette with a twisted mouth, as if she’d been driven to it, and regarded the room with a disgusted expression.

  “You’ve shown me things?”

  “That people suffer and children have no homes. I took you to these places.”

  Grace exhaled. “So?”

  “So indeed. I am fixing this in a small way. I am helping people, saving the children.”

  Grace remembered standing on Tunali with Bahar on that sweltering afternoon. A street vendor had held up a glittering bracelet. The sun struck it hard, sending prisms into her eyes. “You said: I went to get rid of a baby.”

  “Did I?” Bahar’s hands moved; scarves of smoke drifted languorously away. She stubbed the cigarette out in a crystal ashtray and shoved it away with the heel of her hand. It thudded heavily across the table. “I am so glad I am quitting these things. They are that bird on your neck, that albatross.” She leaned back and then forward again, just as quickly. “I am merely presenting an opportunity to do something good. To do a charity.”

  Grace lit another cigarette and smoked in silence for a moment. “So this is all the traveling?”

  Bahar shrugged her shoulders. She was wearing a soft sweater nearly the color of her summer skin.

  “Listen,” she said. “You were at the orphanage, you sent your girl there. Where do you think those children come from? They come from families like those of Firdis. Families who can’t afford to feed their children, not on what you foreigners pay them.”

  “So,” said Grace, “money is involved?”

  Bahar made a huffing noise. “Consideration,” she said. “Consideration for your maid, who is very poor, as we know. Of course, a small amount of consideration for Ali, who will go out of his way to make this possible.”

  “My maid wants to sell her baby and you’re going to arrange it?” said Grace.

  “That surprises me,” said Bahar. “Perhaps I made a mistake in you. In sending Ali here to care for this troublesome husband of yours. In being so quiet about all this scandal”—she waved a hand in the air—“you and the horse teacher, everything.”

  “I thought we were friends,” Grace said, and to her own ears the words sounded pathetic.

  Bahar smiled, and her voice turned a little emphatic: “We are friends. Yes, we are. This is exactly what I’m saying. Will you listen?”

  “All right,” said Grace—suppressing a desire to get up, to leave the room, the city, the country. “Go on.”

  But then Bahar rose abruptly from the sofa in a cloud of perfume. She crossed the room and kissed Grace on both cheeks, bending to reach her. “You think about it,” she said. “Ali has already discussed it with Firdis and she is very much in agreement. She likes the idea very much. She is çok grateful.”

  “Really? What about her husband?” said Grace. She turned around in her chair as if expecting to find Firdis standing there, nodding furiously. “It can’t exactly be ethical.”

  Bahar looked down at her; her hair moved softly around her face. “The husband will not know,” she said. “That is not necessary. There are always mishaps with babies and births. It is a dangerous business when one is poor. And I think,” she went on, “that I will not broach the topic of morality at the moment. I will not use a word such as hypocrisy, because that would not be in the spirit of our friendship.” She glanced at her watch. “Bok,” she said. “Shit. I must dash. We will speak again soon. You see what your friend thinks at least. What can be the harm in that?”

  And so Grace had made a few furtive phone calls from Bahar’s apartment, while Bahar sat nearby like a voluptuary or a sultana, with her cat-ate-the-cream expression, her knees tucked beneath her. And Edie had been nothing but overjoyed; she had not hesitated for a moment. Grace thought of the woman she knew—though barely, really, when she thought about it—sitting with her chilly bowls of tapioca and her sun-starved house, her milquetoast husband and downy thighs, and of the words that came through the line across the cities and deserts between them, into Bahar’s opulent living room: How much? No, never mind how much. How long?

  And hearing Edie’s gratitude, brushing away her thanks, Grace had felt (she couldn’t say she hadn’t) the magnanimous sensation of having given a showy and extravagant gift.

  This, of all things, she’s kept from Paige—though she has confided far more, on infinitely more personal subjects. But she wonders, standing in that woman’s grease-filmed kitchen, pouring careless fingers of scotch into a smeared glass, listening to the party rise in volume, what Paige and Bahar might have to say to each other about her. After all, they have known each other for some time. It was Paige, in fact, who’d introduced them, who had taken Grace into the group of Turkish and embassy ladies and advertised the benefits of afternoon card games and pleasant, uncomplicated female society.

  December 1975

  13

  WHEN CATHERINE TURNED UP AT SCHOOL AFTER OUR PRANK, I couldn’t bear her not looking at me, the tilt of her head when she joined the queue in the courtyard, the way she held her books protectively to her chest. Kate stood behind me in line, jabbing me in the ribs and snorting with laughter. I angled my body away from her. Quit, I said. She kept on; her breath was warm on my neck and her long, witchy fingers dug into my side.

  At lunch, Catherine turned her body away as I approached and kept her eyes fastened on her apple, rubbing at it with her sleeve. I ate with Kate and the younger children, sitting on the edge of the sandpit, all of us kicking at a line of ants. Kate built obstacles for the ants to navigate, bits of sticks and stones, a plastic shovel, a young Swedish girl’s hair clip, the last of which she took roughly, provoking indignant tears that drew no adult attention. Eventually the smaller children gathered around her to watch, even the little Swedish girl with the flyaway curls, her tears drying in rivulets on her fat cheeks. She snuck her hand inside Kate’s and Kate shook it away. She was too busy for comforting and she disdained tears; they moved her not at all.

  I watched Catherine, seated above the pitch where we used to huddle, picking at her food. Leaves scudded across the dirt, rustling. I heard the boys’ shouts. They were out of sight, down the steep hill in the pitch. I pressed my knees together and warmed my hands between my thighs; my tights were faded and scratchy, covered in pills and the beginnings of ladders.

  “Look,” Kate said. She pointed at the ground. She was trying to break the line, the strict linear formation the ants seemed bent on maintaining. It was shaping up into a little battle. She put the hair clip down and the ants swarmed over and then around it, falling back immediately into their configuration. It didn’t matter what she did, even when she stomped on a cluster of them, the rest scrambled over the corpses of their comrades and rejoined the line. “Plucky buggers,” she said. “Un-bloody-deterrable.”

  We moved the little hurdles so the ants had to turn right and left quickly to scale each peak. We made a little mountain range of summits, forcing the ants to backtrack and zigzag, which they did with no sign of frustration. We eventually gave up and crushed them under our shoes. Catherine never looked over, even when Kate worked the younger children into a frenzy, encouraging them to scream, “Die, commie ants. Die!” This, eventually, did bring the glowering attention of a teacher and we were all marched back inside, in a line much more ragged and reluctant than that of our victims. I looked over at Kate, saw her face glowing pink with cruelty and happiness.

  “Well, they were red ants.”

  Later, when I walked home from the bus alone—Simone had picked Catherine up and whisked her off—I kicked along the crumbling sidewalk and constructed an apology. I had plenty of experience apologizing, but only at my mother’s command, under threat of violence, being frog-marched out to a relative or a guest with her hand under my elbow. Walking down to Catherine’s apartment, I felt unusually grown-up: perhaps I even imagined a mending of our friendship that afternoon, that we might sit around in the kitchen, hoisted up onto the counter, watching John cut fruit or brew tea. He might show us a
new way to fold napkins or to ribbon a lemon the way he did, in one beautiful, curling strip.

  I climbed the steps to the second floor of her building, holding the grubby orange rail tight in my hand, dragging myself along it until I reached the landing. I stood outside the front door and inhaled. I set my back straight and raised my fist to knock. My palms were wet and my thighs itched furiously beneath my tights. I took a moment to compose myself, scratching between my legs with a fingernail and thinking of what I would say.

  The door swung inward suddenly and John stood there in profile, holding a bag of garbage in one hand. He was not looking at me but had his face turned inside while he worked his sock-feet into his shoes, which were lined up with the other family members’ on a small rush mat just inside the door. I cleared my throat.

  His head turned and we looked at each other, both of us quite surprised. He straightened his back and stared at me, the bag of garbage dangled from his hand.

  “Sen!” he said. Then he laughed. It was not a pleasant noise, though it held traces of genuine amusement.

  “Is Catherine home?”

  He didn’t say anything for a long moment. Then he stepped out into the hall, forcing me to move back, and shut the door softly behind him. He was standing very close. I smelled clove cigarettes on his breath and lemon on his hands. He kept a lemon half beside the sink and brushed his fingers against it to freshen them—another little compulsion of his.

  Perhaps it seems strange that just then, in that instant of over-closeness and intimacy, when I saw lucidly every perfection and imperfection of his face, in that deserted, echoing stairwell, I thought for a moment that he might finally kiss me.