First Comes Marriage

by Huda Al-Marashi

  At the small, metal door to the side of the gate, the director, a brusque, unsmiling woman named Viviana, motioned for me to enter and led me straight to the homework room where twenty-three girls from ages five to thirteen sat hunched over notebooks. As soon as we entered, the girls stood up in front of their chairs and said, “Buenos días,” in unison. They wore mismatched combinations of hand-me-down clothing. Their eyes covered the entire spectrum of brown, from nearly black all the way down to one pair of striking hazel, and their hair was uniformly cropped just under the ear. My heart swelled. I had never seen anything as beautiful as the faces before me.

  Gabriela was the first to walk away from her table and take my hand in hers. She looked up at me with deep brown eyes, a nose sprinkled with freckles at the bridge, and asked, “¿Còmo te llamas?”

  I told her my name was Huda and nodded when she answered, “Joya?” I couldn't take the risk of children mishearing my name. I'd recently been informed by a mortified woman that my first name sounded distressingly similar to joda, the command form of the verb joder, “to fuck.”

  Following Gabriela's move, the rest of the girls abandoned their notebooks on the tables in front of them and surrounded me. Their little hands reached out for my hands and up to feel my hair, and as I answered their questions about my curls, my laundry detergent, and my funny accent, I vowed to stay with these girls until the day I left Mexico.

  What I didn't know was what I was doing in the classroom with the girls. Not only was I an inexperienced teacher, but I also had no knowledge of how an internado ran, what the children were like, or how they learned. During my first week, every time I tried to organize the girls into games to teach vocabulary, they begged me to write things on the board so they could copy the words into their notebooks. When I relented and threw things up on the board, they pleaded with me to grade their notes and draw them pictures that they could color.

  But in spite of our slow starts, by the end of the week, English fever had swept the internado. There were exchanges in every corner of “What is my name?”; “How are you?”; and “Good morning.” The alphabet song rang through the courtyard. And I was falling deeper and deeper in love with these girls who fought over my lap before class, cupped my chin in their hands, stroked my hair, and caressed my cheek; who performed choreographed dances for me before lunch; and who cried on my shoulder when they missed their families.

  At the end of each day, thoughts of the girls stayed with me. Some days these thoughts soothed my own disgruntled spirit, and I floated home thinking, To hell with grad school. The work I am doing here is far more important, and other days, I came home feeling heavy and lost. I'd spend my evening hours picturing Mariana's broken soles, Lucia's wild cries after a weekend when her mother failed to come for her, chubby-cheeked Carla asking me if she could pretend I was her mother, and Ariana trying to tape her long, stringy locks of hair back onto her head after getting her hair sheared because of lice. Come nightfall, these images wrapped themselves around me tight, squeezing away all hope of sleep.

  But as much as my time at the internado unsettled me emotionally, it quieted me maritally. Being around so much deprivation made me question my right to complain about anything. Growing up, I'd shared a home with my parents, siblings, grandparents, and visiting relatives. I'd eaten meals at a dining room table, with family at my side. I'd been educated in private schools, I'd graduated from college, and I had a husband who loved me.

  I started to pay closer attention to the things Hadi did. I wondered if they were a kind of love that I had missed. Wasn't it love to irrigate my ears when they grew so clogged up with wax that I could barely hear? Wasn't it love to squeeze out the in-grown hairs on my leg as if we were a couple of grooming chimpanzees? Wasn't it love to wage war against the bands of invading cockroaches that crawled up our drains and into our showers and onto our countertops? Wasn't it love to deal with the cat-sized rat that had been living under our stove when it showed up in the kitchen in search of its next meal?

  In those weeks, my attitude toward Hadi softened enough for him to recognize the change. “It's like you hate me a little bit less,” he said one evening after dinner.

  I laughed and feigned innocence. “What are you talking about? I never hated you.”

  A breath of levity had been blown into our relationship, and with that, Hadi took on a new confidence, a willingness to make me laugh. That fall, we'd gotten new upstairs neighbors, an American medical student, his wife, and their three children. Right away, it was clear that we were not going to be instant friends. This couple embodied almost every stereotype about Americans that embarrassed me in Mexico. Rather than attempt to learn Spanish, they spoke English only at a higher volume. Their first order of business was to install a huge satellite on our roof so as not to interrupt their access to American football and reruns of M*A*S*H. And, in well-dressed Guadalajara, their children often ran around barefoot and without shirts. Our landlord once inquired, “Are your neighbors—what do you say? Okies?”

  Sound traveled so clearly between our two apartments it was as if both units were connected by giant megaphones. Because we did not want our new neighbors to hear us griping about them, Hadi and I took up something we'd never done as a couple before—speaking in Arabic. Until then Arabic had been a language solely reserved for parents, grandparents, and our parents’ friends. Since we'd picked up the language entirely from our elders, our speech lacked youthfulness; we had no slang, no way to sound under fifty. The phrases that came out of our mouths felt as if they'd been lifted directly off our parents’ tongues: “Black on my face” and “Long live the hands that prepared this meal.” To avoid this sudden verbal aging, Hadi had started speaking Arabic with an American accent, and this had me in stitches. Rendering such an inflected, guttural language flat was hysterical.

  Every time a giggle escaped my lips, he'd say, “You're so cute when you laugh.” Then he'd add, “See, I can be funny sometimes.”

  Hadi grew so committed to keeping me laughing he agreed to spice up one boring Sunday by trying on all his misfit clothing, the too small, the too colorful, the clothes family members had brought back from abroad with random English words and American cartoon characters, such as Mickey Mouse and Wile E. Coyote. This was something he'd sworn off doing because of the giggling fit it had sent me into the last time we'd cleaned out his closet. Now Hadi tried them all on for me, the thin yellow golf shirt that showed his nipples, the too-tight Lakers sweats, the rip-off Members Only jacket from Iran, and he strutted around our room as if on a catwalk while I laughed so hard on our bed that my sides ached and my eyes watered.

  And since Hadi had taken up finding ways to make me laugh, the evening he sat me down in front of the television and told me he had a video for me to watch, I was certain it would be a comedy. He'd borrowed Life of Brian from a friend last week, Robin Hood: Men in Tights the week before. But now he offered a preamble that confused me. “I thought this might help us, but you don't have to watch it if you don't want to.”

  A blurry FBI warning later, a sex therapist appeared on the screen, a mousy woman in Sally Jessy Raphael glasses with a billowy poof of blond hair, speaking in hushed, soothing tones about becoming comfortable with one's body.

  I gave Hadi a curious look. He put up his hands as if to declare innocence and said, “It's up to you.”

  I returned my gaze to the screen, perplexed. This man could barely coordinate his special occasion shopping, and he'd planned ahead and actually bought this the last time we were in California. My cheeks grew hot. Hadi had voiced his concerns over my lack of interest in sex, but I assumed the fact that we still managed to do it with some regularity made up for my reluctance. Merely considering otherwise rooted me in my place. I was no longer the sole proprietor of all the gripes and quibbles in this relationship, and to discover this just when I thought things were getting better between us was both novel and terrifying.

  I'd hinted to Hadi at the guilt I felt over the intim
acy we'd shared before we got married. I'd asked him questions like, “Don't you think it's terrible what we did?” and “Doesn't it make you feel rotten that our parents think we were so good when we were so bad?” To his answers of “No. We loved each other, and we were getting married, if not already married in the eyes of God,” I'd argue back, “Of course, you don't feel bad. You're a guy.”

  Hadi had taken offense to my answer—he said it was as if I was implying men had no judgment when it came to sex and that I continuously discounted the ceremony we did with my grandfather when Hadi truly believed that had sanctioned our time together—but I didn't apologize and admit that the real problem was that I was ashamed. That I believed, as the woman, I should have been the one to push him away. I should have kept the big kiss the DJ requested at our wedding to a restrained peck. And, yet, even without me stating any of this, Hadi heard it all.

  That evening, listening to Dr. Susan discuss taboos and shame, I felt called out for clinging to things that I knew intellectually were not right. I did see my naked self as dirty. I did see sexual desire as something far more sinister than a natural biological drive. I did steal peeks at the clock to make sure Hadi hadn't spent too much time with my stinky that. And I never admitted to Hadi (or to myself for that matter) what I wanted or what I liked.

  Dr. Susan introduced us to three couples who'd be demonstrating the points she'd discussed. Taking a look at the average couples on the screen, I prepared myself to be disgusted by their nakedness but found that I was relieved. These people looked just like we did when we had sex. They changed positions and had bad haircuts, jiggly bellies, and splotchy thighs. This was fascinating, a revelation, the adult equivalent to the book Everyone Poops.

  I didn't make eye contact. I held onto a throw pillow, and Hadi fiddled with the tangled fringe on the chenille throw blanket draped over the couch's arm.

  After the video ended, Hadi said, “I hope you don't think I was trying to say anything with this video. I just thought it might be helpful.”

  The idea that sex was something that could be “helped” overwhelmed me. I didn't want sex to become a point of discussion or an area for improvement. I wanted it to stay relegated to a small, tidy corner of my life where I ideally never had to confront any of my childhood hang-ups.

  “I don't know if you get what it's like to grow up hearing all these things about how a woman is supposed to be around a man,” I said. “It's hard to go from being told not to talk to boys and not to be interested in sex to, ‘Okay, everything is allowed now. Go have sex all the time.’”

  “I've never heard that.”

  “Why would you?” I said, suddenly defensive. “You're a man.”

  “No, that's not what I mean. I just think maybe you're confusing messages for unmarried women with those for married women. We're married. It's good for you to want to be with your husband.”

  “I know that, but when you've been told ‘no, no’ for so long, it can be hard to switch that off.”

  “Okay, but this isn't just about sex. I'd be happy if you touched me more. Anything. A hug, a pat on the hand. I know you care a lot about where we go and what we do, but for a guy, that's how we feel loved.”

  This wasn't the first time Hadi had told me this, but I'd always dismissed the suggestion as irrelevant. What could touching him more really fix? Now I wondered what would happen if I listened to Hadi for a change, if I tried to offer him something other than steady proof of my unhappiness.

  I scooted in next to Hadi on the couch and rested my head on his shoulder. He brought up a hand to stroke my hair and said, “See, now this is the best. I just want you to let me love you.”

  “I know,” I said and prayed that I'd find the way to love him back.

  At the internado that winter, a few of the older girls approached me, first Natalia with her darkly stained two front teeth, then Miranda with her smooth white skin and baby-like whisper, and finally Rosa with her reddish-brown hair and freckled nose. They nudged each other until Rosa asked me, “We've started preparing for our confirmation. Will you be our sponsor?”

  I'd told the staff that I was not Catholic, but they simply chalked this up to another aspect of my foreignness. I was an American; I spoke English; and I was a Muslim, which was something like being Jewish, verdad? But I didn't know how these girls would take to discovering I was different from them in yet another way. I gathered up their hands in mine and said, “I would love to be your sponsor, but I can't, because I'm not Catholic.”

  They nodded slowly, curiously. Then Rosa tilted her head and asked, “Then what are you?”

  “Soy musulmána,” I answered, feeling the sense of oddity that had struck me many times before in the girls’ company. In America, I was a minority, but here I was a symbol of the United States and the English language.

  “Do you believe in God?” Rosa asked.

  “Yes,” I said, and this elicited no vocal reaction, just a shrug and a dash back to the homework room.

  Mama had asked me on more than one occasion if I had told anyone at the internado that I was Muslim. I'd told her that I'd mentioned it and that they didn't care. The internado may have been a Catholic institution with the girls going to chapel every day and nuns boarding with the girls, but our days were too busy to discuss the faith I practiced at home.

  “You should tell them again,” Mama had said, “so they can see that there are good Muslims in this world.”

  But what Mama didn't realize was that the internado wasn't a part of this world. Behind its tall gates, there was no television blabbing on about the ills of Islam, no internet, no newspapers. (That was until 9/11. Then even those tall gates wouldn't keep one of the girls from asking me during a return visit if all Muslims were terrorists.) At the time, however, I would've had to make the issue of my faith relevant because as far as the internado was concerned, I was just Joya, the norteamericana who wore the same jeans, jacket, and tennis shoes every day because it made her feel guilty when the girls asked her how many shirts, shoes, and earrings she had.

  The internado had done exactly what I needed—it had filled my days and my thoughts with something other than myself. After realizing how behind the children were in their regular school classes, I scrapped English lessons in favor of working with them in small groups on math and reading. Some days, I stayed behind for bath time and for lunch, but this meant I was there long enough to see the director, Viviana, losing her temper and spanking the children or, on one occasion, threatening the girls who did not follow the rules with punishment by electric chair. I was there to watch their bodies freeze in terror while I looked on speechless.

  At night, I dreamed of the internado and confronting Viviana. Some nights, I'd see myself in the office, telling her that things had to change. Other nights, I saw the girls pleading with me to do something. In the mornings, guilt would unfurl inside my chest. I'd tell myself that the only way I could be more useless was by not showing up, but still I struggled to stay awake long enough to get up and get dressed.

  I was certain that I was unwell, plagued by some kind of worm or bitten by a traveling tsetse fly. When Hadi was home, I'd pick his brain with questions like, “Do you think I could have African sleeping sickness? How about chronic fatigue syndrome?” It never occurred to me that this sudden onset of overwhelming drowsiness might have had something to do with my failure to speak up, with the knowledge that I'd been presented with the first real moral dilemma of my adult life and chosen silence over action.

  Finally, I'd get out the door, the hilly walk to the bus becoming more and more taxing each day. A walk that used to take me fifteen minutes took thirty, and as I walked, I'd think about my decision to get married, to give up school, to remain silent in the face of Viviana's ridiculous threats, and these thoughts consumed me with an emotion I'd never had cause to feel before—pure self-loathing. At the bus stop, I'd struggle to catch my breath while an undercurrent of thought babbled below my awareness. Get pregnant, it said. Then you
would have a reason to visit the internado less. The girls would love the baby. You could put the baby in one of those little backpack things and cut your visits to the girls down to twice a week.

  Over the last few months, Hadi and I had gone through the last two tapes in Dr. Susan's video series, and although I'd never admit this to him, he was right. I'd needed someone to normalize sex—to separate it from the shame and guilt that had been such a part of my identity as a virgin. None of our issues disappeared—this wasn't a cure by any means—but now that our sex lives had improved, we argued with less tension, less defeatism. I wished somebody had told me to trust that if I gave in to my body more, my mind would get there later; that there was a direct correlation between the quality of our lives in and outside the bedroom; that the more sex we had, the better we'd get along.

  Around the same time, I reached the end of my tolerance for the adult acne that covered my face with hard, red welts. It had been a problem ever since I'd started taking birth control pills. Facial products hadn't helped. Switching brands of pills had not helped. I could pretend people didn't notice the red mounds on my face when I was back home because Americans, for the most part, refrain from commenting on a person's appearance. But, in Mexico, a culture where feminine beauty is paramount, maintaining this illusion was not an easy task. Some days I felt as if everyone, from Viviana to my Spanish teacher to women on the bus, had an opinion or a remedy for my affliction. Try oatmeal. Douse each pimple in alcohol. Why is your face still like this? Did you try the oatmeal? Wash your face with a jabón neutro. Go see the cosmetologist Maria Sánchez Villañueva at her clinic.

  I didn't try everything they suggested, but I did go see Maria Sánchez Villañueva. She happened to be conveniently located in the strip mall a short bus ride away from my house. She wore a lab coat, called her clients patients and her office a clinic, and offered a wide array of services from waxing to wrapping women in gauze to help them sweat off their weight. On our first meeting, she explained to me that cosmetology was much more advanced in Mexico, and I desperately wanted to believe her. But after a series of painful zit-squeezing facials with one of the clinic's many assistants, I began to question the merits of her treatment. I told Hadi I wanted to see if it would help to stop taking the pill.