Dervishes

by Beth Helms

  We hung breathless in the tree, the silence loud as bombs all around us. We were paralyzed by the sudden color, by the actual, astonishing moment of slaughter. Even Kate, so cool, so gaily blood-thirsty, went altogether white in the face.

  The men took their hands away and the lamb staggered away from them. In diminishing revolutions it circled the courtyard, tilted awkwardly to one side, just as Kate had said it would. I had not really believed it; I suspect she hadn’t either. It was a strange, macabre version of blindman’s bluff: the lamb spinning with the rag tied around its head, the hooves beating a frantic little patter on the ground and around its white neck a wide scarf of blood, startlingly red. Little splatters of crimson sprayed the ground and the onlookers—the men, the women and children, the skinny dog. We heard the thud of the animal’s last steps before it collapsed, and then cheers went up. One man, the one who had waved, stomped a little dance in the sodden earth, kicking away the too-curious dog, and then, taking a little boy in his arms, he raised him, high, high above his head, circling as he turned—an airplane game I remember my father playing with me, years before, on some distant tree-shaded lawn.

  Kate recovered quickly. She scrambled down through the branches. “That was absolutely fantastic,” she said. “I could eat a horse. Are you staying?”

  I couldn’t, I said, and before I had let myself out the side gate, Kate was running the short distance to the house shouting for her mother, demanding lunch.

  In the alley behind the house, leading to the shortcut I took to get home, I relinquished breakfast, and then all the contents of my stomach. I brushed my hair back, spit, and looked up to find a pair of eyes regarding me over the edge of the ragged stone wall. Josephine’s placid eyes, bright blue beneath her home-cut bangs, her arms in a heathery sweater resting on the uneven stones. She smirked at me. I brushed my arm across my face.

  “Bugger off,” I said, and she disappeared. I heard her feet hitting the frozen earth as she ran. Walking home, I could only imagine what she would or would not say, sitting across from Kate’s piercing gaze, subject to her familiar, tormenting manner, her taunting queries. I saw their huge dining table, the stained oilcloth, the smeary bottles of vinegar and the gritty plastic saltcellar. I saw their mother coming in from the kitchen, smelling of sausage fat and chips, and slumping into a seat beside them, her hands and apron grease-stained: she would press them for all the details in her rough, chiding, affectionate tone.

  The day only got worse. At home, Firdis was missing and John was in my mother’s kitchen, wiping out crystal punch cups with a soft towel. I recognized him from behind immediately: his back and shoulders, the tapered fit of his white shirt against his body, the way he stood resting his weight on one heel, his toe tapping out a slow, soundless beat. For a moment I thought I must have taken a turn and walked into the wrong apartment.

  I opened the door to my parent’s bedroom and slid inside. My mother was on the bed, one arm thrown across her eyes, a coverlet up around her ankles. Her mouth was closed, her nostrils distending and closing. She was wearing a slip and one leg was bent, her knee pointed toward the window. She was not asleep but she wasn’t quite faking either. Her eyes blinked open.

  “Yes?” she said.

  “What’s he doing here?”

  She rubbed at her eyes with her elbow and shifted on the bed. “Party tonight,” she said throatily. “I’m lying down.”

  “I see that. What’s he doing here?”

  “I have to take a bath.” She lifted her body slightly and then fell back heavily against the pillows. “What time is it?”

  “Why is John here?” I said again. “You hate him.”

  Her skin was greasy with night cream; she reeked of orange oil. “Can’t be too fussy,” she said thickly. “Everything went haywire today. I borrowed him.”

  I thought about it. “Where’s Firdis?” I said. “He’s mucking everything up in her kitchen.”

  My mother sighed; she made that little Turkish harrumph of disgust. “Firdis,” she said. “I can’t worry about everyone’s feelings right now. I need someone presentable.” She got creakily up and swung her legs onto the floor. “I feel like hell,” she said. “I’m going to need your help tonight. Passing and so forth.”

  “No one told me about this,” I said. “I didn’t hear a word.”

  She patted my back lightly with her hand, a friendly little slap. “Who’s a grump-bunny?” she said. And then, in a tone I recognized better: “Sorry you didn’t receive the engraved invitation.”

  She stood and stretched her arms above her head. Her armpits were stippled with black hairs; her pallid upper arms had developed a sag.

  “You wouldn’t have him here if you knew anything,” I said. “You wouldn’t let him past the lobby.”

  “Huh,” she said. She was already bending into the mirror above the dressing table, pulling up the skin around her eyes. She smeared something onto her face. A scent rose in the room, medicinal, like the one my father had given off lying there all those weeks.

  “Is Firdis having a baby?” I said. “Daddy said she was.”

  “Did he?” she said, turning slightly, taking me in. “Well, I wouldn’t take everything he says as gospel. Though I know it goes against everything you believe in.”

  I left the room and closed the door behind me, as hard as I dared.

  My mother fussed in the living room in that strange, formal period before guests arrived. The house was immaculate, candles lit, the silver gleaming on the table. A bar was set up in hallway outside the kitchen and John stood behind it, his hands clasped behind his back. He wore no discernible expression. In front of him were glasses and bottles, the twisting ribbons of lemon peel he made, olives and onions, toothpicks, a white fan of squared napkins. His eyes did not even flicker—not once—in my direction.

  People came. They streamed, milled, chatted and kissed one another near the front door. I took their coats and carried them back to my parents’ room, laying them across the bed, where they quickly grew into a disordered mound of material and hides. Just a few months earlier I would have buried myself under that pile, crawling beneath it and breathing in the mingled perfumes and tobaccos, the rich foreign scents of strangers. But such childish activities no longer interested me and I tossed the coats down without a thought and left the room.

  Men clustered at the bar and John served them silently. Ice clinked, voices rose, perfumes combined with liquors and smoke. I saw his hands moving efficiently, the robotic turn of his head. The smell of borek baking drifted from the kitchen. I wandered by him in makeup stolen from my mother’s drawers, clinking necklaces, a stuffed bra, a floating, twirly skirt; he did not look up.

  Bahar didn’t seem pleased to see John either: coming in the door later in her fur and heels, with Ali behind her, she paused and spoke quickly over her shoulder. Ali helped her with her coat—she shrugged and it seemed to drop like a great soft animal into his arms—then he put his hand briefly on her shoulder, as if to calm her. My mother was flustered: she wore a long, pleated skirt and a black sweater shot through with silver threads. She greeted people and fussed, at a too-high pitch, full of empty compliments and banter. She had a fall pinned to her new shorter haircut and her bracelets moved musically on her arms. Ahmet arrived alone and he spoke to me briefly in the hallway, his hand against my hair. If you could weave scent, I believe my mother and I would both have wanted a sweater, or a blanket, made entirely of the one that enveloped him.

  Soon the apartment was full of Turks and internationals. Music played on the stereo, food piled up on small napkins, drinks glasses became smeary with lipstick and were mislaid by their owners.

  Generally my mother’s parties were exceptionally boring, composed of the right people doing the right things, working diligently to impress one another. But that night my mother was unusually gay and wound up. In the hallway she took Ahmet from me and swept with him into the living room, in the manner of a woman whose date has just arrived. It w
as what she meant people to think; it was certainly what she meant me to think. But Ahmet, always gracious, seemed unfazed; he went about on her arm as though it was nothing to him, as if he was accustomed to being co-opted by strange women, to being temporarily owned by them and shown off.

  My mother must have been trying to re-create the atmosphere Paige Trotter conjured so effortlessly in her own dirty, whimsical house—the lightness, the bohemian gaiety, the abandonment of diplomacy and politesse. But it would not come off; I could sense it from the start.

  The music she played went unnoticed: no one was moved to dance, and when she tried to pull one man and then another from his seat, each politely refused. The guests didn’t mix, but instead formed little national cabals in respective corners. You could hear Turkish in the dining room, English near the window, something Scandinavian from the front hall. The room stiffened like meringue and even Paige, with her loud laugh and strange outfit, couldn’t alter its disposition.

  For hours people drank steadily, though the general mood did not improve. The room slumped. More ambitious guests took the initiative and left, gathering their coats, making their excuses. Paige read cards quietly on the coffee table, and in the unforgiving light of our living room her bare feet looked less exotic than horny, and a little dirty at the edges. Only Bahar formed a small bright spot near the fireplace, where she had gathered a group of admirers and was holding court. Standing in the doorway, a plate half full of meze in my hand, I realized that the party was missing my father. Without him, my mother seemed desperate, half of something that, if not quite a whole, was still an expected convention, and entirely necessary to everyone’s comfort.

  Edgy and a little frantic—from the atmosphere or the booze, it was unclear—my mother fairly clung to Ahmet. As things declined, as more people made for the door or shifted uneasily in their chairs, trying to catch the eye of their spouses, she goaded them into antiquated parlor games: she suggested charades and forfeits, concentration, blindman’s bluff. Over and over again she changed the records, leaping up and pulling them off midsong, sending the needle shrieking across the vinyl. I heard Judy Collins being killed again and again by cats.

  Maybe my mother had underestimated the importance of social rules and regulations, of the intricacies of guest lists and suitable pairings, gatherings that hummed quietly around a shared understanding of their purpose. She’d forgotten how such protocols were needed in those circles, how without the boundaries and little rules the whole delicate illusion began to unravel. The people in that room were not truly friends, and they seemed thronged but solitary, like dancers we’d once seen on the Antalya coast: isolated, spinning endlessly in place.

  I passed John once on my way to the kitchen. He was behind the bar with his hands folded behind his back. “My mother doesn’t even like you,” I said. “Our maid is having a baby, that’s the only reason you’re here.” Of course he didn’t respond, but turned and took a glass from a uniformed man standing nearby and refilled it.

  My mother had had far too much to drink: when I left for bed she was seated too close to Ahmet on the couch. He looked stiff and uncomfortable for once, his hands gripping his knees, his gaze on some spot on the far wall. I stood in the doorway and saw Bahar catch his eye from the across the room, where she lounged against the mantel, rolling an unlit cigarette between long fingers. She was momentarily alone and she stood with supreme ease; her body had the draping posture of a great cat and her eyes were slitted. I saw her flick one eyebrow upward—a minuscule gesture, but laden. Ahmet glanced away and my mother sagged against his shoulder and then pulled herself together. Her face was puffy and her skirt wrinkled: I saw Bahar delicately smooth her own hips, smiling, as some eager man came toward her. I saw her again in the hallway a little later, arguing with John. She put her hand on my head as I passed, and her rings tangled in my hair. “It does not matter what you think,” she was saying, and she paused for a moment to extricate her jewelry. “It is not your concern.”

  He replied in Turkish and I was surprised by his anger, so out of place, so unexpectedly raw and masculine. It was as though he were any man, arguing with a woman of any station. Bahar made that noise Turks are so fond of and gave a contemptuous gesture with her hand, rings flashing. I saw his face as she moved away; whatever it was they were discussing, it was not finished.

  As I closed my door my mother was pushing herself off the couch and saying, in a smudgy voice, “Now, who will dance with the hostess?”

  For hours I listened to the activity outside, the muted traffic back and forth between the bathroom and the living room. Once, the phone rang. I kicked the covers off and pulled them on again, stared at the window above my head and traced through the room the strange bluish light that entered through the blinds.

  It was quiet when I woke, there was no light from the windows, and the hall beyond my door was silent. I got up and slid into the hallway. I wanted to see the remains of her disaster: the smoky living room, the jumble of glasses and ashtrays and discarded records. I wanted to see if she and Ahmet were tangled on the couch, in a heap of limbs and torn-off clothes. I wanted to see all that human and material debris, the smut they had left behind.

  My mother and John were standing in the hallway, the light from the living room showed them clearly. She had her hands at her throat and his hands touched her waist. She seemed to bend backward for a moment and then fall against him, laughing at herself. He stepped away, releasing her, and she steadied herself against the wall and stood watching him. She was in her nightgown and he began to gather together the things that were near the door—the bags and boxes and bottles. I saw him pull his loosened tie from his neck and stuff it into the pocket of his slim pants. He slung his jacket over his shoulder, patted his head in that way I knew so well, that old preening, self-conscious gesture. I’d seen him do it a thousand times on Tunali, passing a shop window, half turning to watch himself go by. Vain as a peacock, Catherine had said once, in a proprietary, womanish tone, as we lingered behind him on the pavement.

  He turned as he opened the door, placing the garbage and the clinking bottles outside it. He said to my mother, “I think you should see to your daughter. It is far too late for children to be awake.”

  “Oh,” she said uneasily, and put her arms around herself. “Good night then. Thank you for everything. Coming at the last minute like this. You’ve been a godsend, such a help.”

  And I heard the door close behind him, her little sigh as she stood there in the deserted hallway.

  Sometime before morning I dreamed of her in that same pale nightgown, standing surrounded by dark-faced men in the courtyard outside my school. She was turning in circles, holding her own head by the hair, swinging it in wide and casual arcs. The gown, green as grass, was gorgeous with blood, and John was painting her with the point of a great knife he held in one hand, dipping it into her neck and drawing the blade from her throat to her ankles. He painted her in fine stripes, the sun shone and somewhere, someone was whistling like a bird.

  My mother had said once that no one, not even one’s lover or mother, is interested in the tedious details of another person’s dreams.

  16

  IT WAS THE SECOND DAY OF THEIR TRIP TO REHOBOTH BEACH and Edie was napping on the sand, her cotton shirt anchored with her hands across her face. A breeze lifted it, and from where Grace stood near the shore Edie was merely a golden torso and splayed legs, a pink and green madras shroud billowing around her head. Grace waded out into the water; goose bumps rose on her pale arms and legs, scraps of seaweed twined around her ankles. She felt the current at her feet, a sinuous living thing, tendrils of water, coiling shackles that she shook off with a gentle kick as she waded deeper—to her knees, her thighs. The water reached her belly and she recoiled at the cold, suddenly at the core of her and so unexpectedly intimate.

  Farther out, Greg and Rand were treading water, speaking in little shouts across the green hills of waves. She had something to say to Rand, a que
stion about lunch, a warning against sunburn, some trivial thing. She waved her hand; he waved back, absently. Greg’s body was slight and dark beside Rand, who wore a sodden white undershirt and a hat. Greg smiled, head bobbing with the motion, his fingers playing on the surface of the water. Grace took one more step and the current tightened around her legs, a wave loomed, sudden and larger than she could have expected, and her balance was suddenly gone, her feet swept from under her. Then she was under water with her eyes shut tight and her head slamming against the wave-smoothed sand, little rocks and bits of grit pounding at her eyelids. The moment was a swirl, a froth of panic, and she gulped seawater and flailed with her hands and there was the sensation of dragging, a strange deafening silence and the green solitude of drowning. Then she was upright again, her hands grabbing at the body that had lifted her: her nails raking skin, lips gulping air, the light of the surface weird and blinding.

  She was in Greg’s arms, not her husband’s, and he was carrying her back to the shore and murmuring kind words and patting her back to make her cough, though she didn’t need the help, and then he knelt beside her on the sand and watched her, his whole face and the lean of his body a portrait of concern. And when she sat up, Rand was just wading to shore and laughing, and saying something she couldn’t hear because water and sand still filled her ears and then he stood over her, blocking the sun, his thick legs, red-kneed, above her, and his face twisting with laughter he was trying to disguise and behind her Edie woke and said, “What’s happened?” and Rand shouted out, “Just Grace, doing her ostrich impression.”