‘I agree to your condition. Do you agree to mine?’
‘I’m not sure. You’ve surprised me. I have to think about it. When it comes to family … lies always hurt. Is that what you want?’
Nayeema considered his furrowed brow. Just below his eye, she saw a bladder of grief, a puffy darkness. This was where sadness was stored, in the thin membrane above the cheekbone, not far from where tears are born. The sight of it took her breath away. She cleared her throat. ‘This is a small secret.’
‘It’s a big fat lie, is what it is.’
‘Secret.’
‘Lie.’ His molten eyes folded warmly to meet her smile.
‘Hey, what’s going on up there?’ shouted Goldie, who had swung her head out from the cabin door below.
‘Good news, Goldie. We celebrate about the kiosk being successful,’ Nayeema shouted back.
‘That’s it?’ Goldie pulled a face before disappearing back into the cabin.
Nayeema turned to Tom, who was slouched low with his elbows resting against the deck’s metal rail. Any person could look vulnerable from behind, even Tom, and Nayeema felt a strange desire to offer this large, thundering man her protection. What silliness, she chided herself, he of all people needed nothing. And yet, she wanted to stand beside him and put her arm around that sturdy waist.
Instead, she stood beside him and scrutinised the curvy passage of water that shifted and slunk between the scraggy wetlands, mangroves and beaches that lined the banks of the waterway. She followed the passage of the shivering blue as far south as her eye could see, where the sway of its tail seemed to fall away before disappearing entirely.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Nayeema wiped her hands down the front of her apron and listened with satisfaction to the clatter of plates, forks and voices on the houseboat. These were comforting sounds. The din of these communal pleasures summoned for her the memories of other people in other times and places. The sudden yelp of laughter conjured her youngest brother in the full sway of a story, indelicately harbouring some food in his cheeks as he spoke; the smell of mint evoked the breath of her nena; the sound of a plate being moved on a table recalled her father’s habit of pushing his plate away when he had finished eating; the satisfied sighs were of Jehan in the Paprika Triangle.
Goldie passed by Nayeema in tight lemon-printed trousers and flashed a smile, all radiant and edgy. Now was Nayeema’s moment to clear her conscience. ‘Goldie, I want to tell you about my talk with Tom.’
‘Ah. Yesterday’s chat with the big boss man looked heavy. I was wondering why he came to see you. It all seemed a bit, you know, suspicious.’
‘He thinks the fossil discoveries are good for the kiosk so he wants to make changes to the houseboat … Make the kitchen bigger, give us new appliances, fix up the deck. Very good news, eh?’
Goldie shrugged. Her indifference felt like a slap. ‘Is that all? Honestly, honey, I’m surprised that the big boss man cares so much about this little kiosk when he’s building that eyesore.’ She nodded towards Serpentine Heights.
‘He wants to make me his partner. Business partner. Fifty per cent.’
Goldie’s eyes widened. She opened her mouth as though she were about to speak then pressed her lips together. She stared silently at Nayeema for so long that Nayeema felt the sharp bite of tears.
‘Well. This is going to change everything,’ said Goldie, finally.
‘No. Not really.’ Nayeema bit back the sting in her mouth that was the lie she’d just swallowed. Goldie was right. Her financial partnership with Tom would change everything. Most of all, it would mean she was abandoning her original partnership with Goldie. Her single greatest fear was that Goldie would leave her and the kiosk and fly away from Burraboo like a migrating bird that knew it was time to move on. I am a terrible friend, she thought.
‘He will give me a loan and there will be no more active interest for me. Instead, there are profits. This is good for me … it will give me money for my earring palace in Sydney.’
‘Honey, I know you think he’s all right but don’t be too quick to trust that man. Be careful, use that clever head of yours. You don’t know what he’s up to. Or what he’s getting up to.’
‘And you do?’
Goldie laughed lightly, her voice as breezy as the loose, thin singlet she was wearing. ‘I’m just waiting for something to hit the fan. When that happens we’ll all know what he’s been up to … but until then, promise me, hon, that you’ll keep your guard up with him?’
Nayeema gazed mutely at the pink camellia pinned behind Goldie’s ear. She remembered Tom’s own cautionary words about Goldie and about the Rainbow Lilies visiting the houseboat. ‘Goldie, who is the man that comes to see you … the one with the burns on his face?’
‘Oh, he’s just one of our regulars. Sylvester, I think that’s his name.’
‘He comes for you, not for the food.’
‘Correction. Everyone comes for the food. This cat, Sylvester, he likes to chat a bit, you know the type, a bit of a chancer.’ She winked.
‘You think he is from the Rainbow Lily commune? Like your other friend with the red hair?’
‘Dunno, honey, maybe. He does have that look about him.’
‘You don’t know? But you are friends with Sylvester?’
‘Hmm? He’s harmless. A sweet guy.’
Nayeema looked at her doubtfully. It struck her that perhaps neither of them was being completely honest with the other.
* * *
Nayeema peered out of a small window that looked onto the deck and sighed with more drama than she’d intended. ‘Your friend from the hippy farm, with the big skirts and the white sunglasses and the long red hair, she is on the deck, waiting for you. Tell me, who is she?’ Nayeema disliked this woman with her wavy red hair, full of flowers and feathers like the crazy singer, Janis Joplin. She was annoyed at Goldie for keeping this woman a mystery, but even more, she was irritated that she should feel any jealousy at all.
‘Oh, Jayney?’
‘She is here every day to talk to you.’
‘Yeah, that’s Jayney.’
‘Must be good friends. You know her for long time?’
‘Not that long. But she’s cool to hang out with. Killer chill, you know what I mean?’
Nayeema kept scraping away at the plate. ‘From where you meet her?’
‘Oh. Just around.’
Nayeema banged the fork against the plate, which made a sharp peal.
‘Hey, honey, are you trying to scrape the enamel off that plate?’ Goldie teased. ‘We met a few months back when I was on one of my long walks, and I’d just about had it with Uncle Frank. I bumped into one of her dogs on a trail, he’s a beautiful mongrel of a dog, kind of reminded me of the dog I had when I was little. Anyway, the dog led me to her. We got to talking.’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘After that, we bumped into one another a few times more. She invited me to listen to some music at her house. Oh, look. There are food crumbs in your hair.’ Goldie released a tinkle of a laugh, as light as rain drops falling into a puddle. She reached out with those sleek, slender arms for Nayeema’s hairline. Ever so delicately, Goldie picked at Nayeema’s hair.
‘She’s cool, you know.’
No, Nayeema did not know. But she did know that she didn’t like Jayney. Not one little bit.
* * *
With her legs splayed limply on the sofa, Nayeema listened to the sounds of Hungerford Place as the afternoon light began to collapse and the trees started their whispers. Her feet throbbed. Her head was a circus of thoughts. From the back of the house she heard the first strains of the butcherbird. There was intent in that initial call, the serenade was about to begin. She shuffled through the house to the back verandah. A cold, grey blanket was claiming the decaying light of the afternoon.
The butcherbird was in the garden, she could hear him, cajoling and seducing with his birdcall. She wobbled down the stairs and into the garden where she took three steps and sat.
The earth was cold; she felt it through her clothes, felt it reach for her ankles and backside as she sat cross-legged. It was darker in the garden, more beautiful and dangerous than on the verandah, and as her eyes adjusted, she looked through the arms of the sprawling eucalyptus into the frigid sky.
At last, the song began. Melodic and sorrowful and flutelike. A second butcherbird joined the music and together they sang in slow, short bursts, unseen on a tree branch above.
She looked up, hoping to catch sight of the birds. A single leaf detached from a branch and began its graceful descent towards the ground. She watched the leaf as it swirled and fluttered. Between sky and earth the leaf swung before it lurched away from her, over the boundary line of the fence. An old sadness drifted over her. It had followed her from Alexandria to Sydney to Burraboo. In that halfway place, between exhale and inhale, between sleep and dream, belonging and longing, night and morning, in the gaps between words, she had spent so long waiting for the beginning to begin.
She touched her birthmark lightly with her fingertips. The surface of the skin was lumpy and there was an undeniable tingle that usually came before a severe prick and prickle. Her birthmark carried two stories, one she knew well; about the feverish night when the skin on her chest broke and a new pomegranate-coloured stain was formed. But there was another story, a secret story that her mother would not tell her about; a story that was too alarming or hideous to be spoken of, one that was steeped in superstition, Nayeema was sure of it. It had given her some comfort to know that her birthmark experience was not entirely unique, but it troubled her that the story had never been revealed to her. Fawzy had told her that, in his professional opinion, the irritation of her birthmark was nothing more than a reaction to the stress of change in leaving Sydney. He would never understand the night her birthmark had appeared or the loss of her childhood pebble. These were nothing more than superstitions. Coincidences. In the early days of their marriage, Fawzy was astounded to hear Nayeema talk about bad winds blowing as if this were a concrete fact.
She felt the pebble from the inlet press against her body from inside her trouser pocket, bringing her back to the smell of the bay, the sand, the gnarled shrubs, and the houseboat. This couldn’t be her story. The beautiful bay in the no good hick town belonged to someone else. Her beginning was somewhere else.
For as long as she could remember, her idea of happiness was woven tightly with the ear and homage to the ear. Her commitment to study of the ear came early. At the age of twelve, and at great personal risk, Nayeema learned the correct sterilisation techniques from a gypsy woman. The very act of soliciting instruction on the fine art of piercing from the gypsy was her first true courageous moment. For it was commonly understood that one should never look a gypsy woman directly in the eye, lest she put a spell on you. To glance into the eyes of a gypsy woman was to invite any number of maladies. Nayeema had heard about unfortunate women whose eyes had turned milky overnight, whose bodies had become as spotted as a leopard, of ears that had turned into fish scales, of dreams drained away like tea leaves.
There was a forn, a large communal oven, near Nayeema’s home that was used by the women of the surrounding streets. They named it El Forn Lucia after the elegant signora from Rome, who had lived in the neighbourhood for five years with her husband, Signor Giancarlo, and who had masterminded its creation and design. There were communal ovens peppered all over the streets of Alexandria, but this was the finest. The oven was used for baking large items of bread and little pastries filled with sugar and dates and ground nuts, drenched with rosewater and vanilla. El Forn Lucia had become a meeting place for the women of the neighbourhood, a private place they could smoke their cigarettes, tell stories about their husbands, brag about their children and whisper their bedroom secrets.
If anyone knew how to safely pierce ears it would be the gypsy women. One afternoon, without telling Soraya, Nayeema went to El Forn Lucia to find herself a gypsy woman. She stood at the perimeter of the oven until she saw a woman with half-a-dozen earrings studded all the way along her ear. She was the one. Nayeema took a cautious step towards this gypsy, uncertain as to how she might converse with her while avoiding her eyes.
She tapped the gypsy on the elbow and looked past the woman’s face, at a point above her right shoulder. ‘Excuse me, madam. Please, can you teach me how to pierce ears? Safely … without causing infections? Please, madam?’ From the periphery of her vision Nayeema could discern the heavy black kohl that framed the gypsy’s eyes.
The gypsy woman’s fingers bore scratchy inky markings and her hands were sensationally oversized, as large as a man’s, rough and calloused, a seeming aberration on her otherwise delicate frame. The gypsy woman made a clicking noise at the back of her throat and Nayeema watched her tongue thrash in her mouth like an eel in Soraya’s kitchen sink.
‘Strange. You have only one earring in each ear, little girl. And yet you wish to learn about ear-piercing?’
‘Yes.’ Nayeema averted her gaze.
‘Are you in some sort of trouble?’
‘No. Can you help me?’
From her throat came three rapid clicks as loud as two knitting needles in collision. ‘Young girls do not ask strange questions unless there is trouble.’
‘I am not so young. I am almost fourteen,’ Nayeema lied.
‘But here you are coming to see me, and all alone.’
Nayeema’s face crumpled, all her hopes of understanding piercing from a masterful hand were dissolving as rapidly as red lentils in a bean stew.
‘You are such a pretty thing …’ The gypsy woman tutted and clicked.
Nayeema suddenly felt alarmed. Her throat was starting to constrict and she felt an irresistible desire to make the same clicking noise with her tongue that she had observed. She hoped it was not catching. No one had mentioned an itchy throat could be had from just speaking to a gypsy.
‘I will teach you. But you will have to pay me.’
‘I have a little money.’
‘Money is good. Come tomorrow at the same time. I will bring the equipment we will need. Do not bring your miserable face, I cannot bear a miserable face on a pretty girl.’
Nayeema did as she was told. She learned quickly. From the gypsy woman, she was given the opportunity to dance on that fringe of pleasure and pain from a young age. At first, she offered her ear-piercing services to those in neighbouring apartment blocks. Soon, her reputation as a clever and gentle ear piercer had spread to apartments in suburbs nearby. She developed a mobile piercing protocol that let her execute the procedure in other people’s homes. All she required was her kit bag, a clear space, a small table, and good light. When she did mobile piercings, she was chaperoned by one of her brothers. Over time, she was able to increase her piercing fees. All transactions were negotiated or vetoed by Soraya who, after punishing Nayeema for her reckless consort with the gypsies, became a champion of her daughter’s piercing expertise.
Perhaps, after all, it had been Soraya who had inspired Nayeema’s torrent of feelings about a pierced earlobe. From Soraya, Nayeema had learned that pleasure could be made sweeter with pain. At the start of every winter, for as long as Nayeema could remember, Soraya had a predilection for lemons and limes. She sucked the juice and nibbled the rind of lemons and limes with such pleasure that she ignored the sting of acid in her mouth and sucked until her lips were swollen. Ulcers and perforations gored her mouth. Lemons and limes interrupted her dreams. She woke from sleep anticipating that first explosion of the quartered lemon squirting its juice on her ulcerated gums. She savoured the sensation of pleasure laced with the discomfort.
Nayeema had always planned to study after finishing school, without any clear grasp of what might be a useful path of study. It struck her that the study of ears, while endlessly fascinating, was probably not useful to anyone but a doctor engaged in the specialist treatment of ears. She was clever but had no expectation that she might study medicine. A month before her eighteenth birthday she h
ad married Fawzy. They left Egypt almost immediately after they were married.
The possibility of working with ears in Sydney, a city that appreciated the decorative flair of a piercing, was no longer a shapeless fantasy. She had seen firsthand, after only six months of piercing the little girls and ladies of the Paprika Triangle with her mobile kit, that the potential for a piercing parlour was immense. She allowed herself to ruminate on the small details of owning an earring parlour, and like the bowl of yoghurt cheese, labneh, left overnight in a sieve to strain away the liquid and whey, she felt her vision solidify from what was previously a runny blob.
She was excited by what she had learned from her Indian neighbours in the Paprika Triangle: that multiple ear-piercings were part of the Hindu tradition. This tradition inspired women to pierce from their lobe to the curved top of their ear. Their ears were studded with rubies, garnets, and diamonds. Some ears were adorned in plain gold. Oh rejoice! No longer was the earring limited to the lovely lobe.
Then there was the nose. Some of the Indian women had piercings on their nose to show that they were married. The Indian piercing traditions flowed like a river after the rains. The stories kept coming. About an ancient Indian medicine, called Ayurveda, which believed that a woman might endure less pain during childbirth if she had a hole in the left nostril. A health benefit for the piercing, no less!
The possibilities for piercing the little girls of the Indian ladies of Sydney thrilled Nayeema. She would do more than offer an earring parlour, so much more. She would play music that soothed and relaxed. She would apply Fawzy’s philosophies about merchandising by selling jewellery for the ear and the nose. She would hang visually pleasing images on the walls as focal points for her nervous customers. She would offer a sanctuary for the ear and a dominion for piercings.
Fava Beans For Breakfast Page 16