Did you really fail to understand why I ran until I staggered rather than ask you to slow down? You seemed confused then, but you’ve never stopped expecting me to stumble after you. You’ve never hesitated to see if I will obey your commands, no matter how wild and cruel, any more than you hesitated that night to see if I would follow you past the palace threshold to a place I’d never been.
Maybe it wasn’t ignorance that made me fear your men in the fog. Maybe it was prescience: things have never ended well for me when you’ve led me out of the world of women and into the world of men.
Clytemnestra completed preparations to leave the palace by noon. She packed me in the wagon with the clothing and the yarn and the dried fruit. I was one more item of baggage to bring to Aulis: a bride for Achilles.
Mother placed Orestes in my lap to hold while she supervised the loading. If she noticed my stillness and silence, she must have believed they were part of a bride’s normal reticence.
The wagon set off under a full day’s sun. Our wheels churned dust into the stifling air. It swirled through gaps in our canopy. Choking grains worked their way into our eyes and mouths. I braved more dust to peek through the curtains; beyond our car, the air hung heavy and motionless.
Orestes jounced on my lap as the wagon tumbled over dirt and rocks. He twisted up to look at me, enormous eyes blinking against the dust. He grabbed a lock of my hair in his fists and put it in his mouth, chewing contemplatively.
“Stop that,” said mother, tugging my hair out of his mouth. She inspected the ragged, chewed ends and sighed.
I was content to allow Orestes to chew my hair. During his two short years of life, we’d always communicated by gestures. I understood what he meant by taking an expendable part of me into himself.
Oh, Orestes, so steady and sincere. He never rushed into anything, least of all trivial matters like speech. He took his first steps long after his age-mates were already toddling around the palace, getting into mischief. When he did begin to walk, it was with slow, arduous caution, as if he were always gauging whether independence was worth the risk of falling.
Do you know these things about him? You must. And yet, you never knew me. Why should you know your son?
Really, how could you know him? Even when you were at home, you only saw him at feast evenings, during the chilly twilight hours before we women scooped up the babies and took them back to our spaces. I knew Orestes like my own skin. I worried about the day when he would begin the imperfect translation of his thoughts into speech. I worried that words would obliterate the easy understanding of our hands and faces. This is one fear that your betrayal has made moot. I’ll never know what words might have passed between me and my brother.
Orestes began to fuss. I rocked him and sang a ditty about a fleet-footed nymph and the god who loved her. Halfway through the second verse, my memory of the song decayed. Orestes fell asleep anyway, tiny fists still clutching my hair.
I began another song. Mother put her hand over my mouth. “He’s already asleep, Iphigenia. Give our ears a rest.”
She released me, and I turned to regard her. Through the fog of my dissipating mind, I knew there were things I needed her to tell me.
I couldn’t ask the questions I didn’t remember so I asked the questions I did remember.
“What is it like to be married? Will I have to live with Achilles’s family while he fights in Troy? Can I go to live with father in the army camp instead? How long will the fighting last? Is Achilles a good man? When Orestes is grown and becomes king of Mycenae, will you come to live with me so that I can take care of you as you’ve cared for me?”
Clytemnestra let me ask questions until my words ran out. The wind had spoiled her elaborate braids, and the dust emphasized the lines of her face, making her look weary. Her eyes were wet and red.
“Every marriage is its own,” she said. “Achilles will decide where you’re to live, and you’ll wait for him there, as I wait for your father. Achilles is a hero, which is a good judge of a man, although a good man is not always a hero. I’ll visit you when I can, but I’ll never be as happy as I was yesterday, with all my children in my house.”
Mother worried her hands as she spoke. Her knotted knuckles had grown larger in the past few years as her arthritis worsened in proportion to her worry over the crisis whirling around her sister Helen and the scoundrel who abducted her to Troy. Mother wouldn’t have sent a pig into battle for her whore of a sister, but the kings had been called to war by their oaths, and all her men would go. She’d always known she’d be left to raise Orestes without you, but until that morning she’d believed that she would have me with her to share both loneliness and companionship. Now I was supposed to wed a stranger and disappear as completely as if I’d gone to war.
My mother, stern and sentimental, always happiest in that moment after she set things in their designated places: dyes by hue, spices from mild to pungent, children in their proper rooms-easy to assess and admire.
The first thing my mother told me about Helen was, “She is my sister, but not my sister. Zeus fathered her when he was in the shape of a swan. We share the same mother but she was born in an egg. I was born the normal way. Helen distorts the world around her. Never look at her too closely. You’ll go blind.”
I was young when she told me that, still so young that I stretched up for her hand when I wanted to take an unsteady, toddling step. Nevertheless, I still sensed that she had said something important, even though I didn’t understand what it meant.
When Helen came to Mycenae during my ninth summer, I was old enough to walk on my own, but I still didn’t understand the things my mother said about my famous aunt. Helen seemed glamorous and mysterious and unfathomable-like you.
I wove through the maze of the servants’ feet and legs, trying to catch a glimpse of her. Hushed words of praise drifted down, all uttered in the same awed tones, whether the speaker was a slave, a servant, or a hequetai, a man or a woman. They marveled over Helen’s skin like beaten gold; her deep blue eyes the shade of newly fallen night; the smooth swell of her high, brown-tipped breasts.
You were busy with your brother Menelaus, the two of you clapping each other’s shoulders as you exchanged information about recent military encounters. You didn’t even glance at your beautiful sister-in-law, or at the way your wife paced uncomfortably, barking at the slaves to carry out orders they were already rushing to fulfill.
Your men retreated to the megaron to drink and discuss. We women went out to the courtyard. Slaves erected a canopy to shelter us from the sun, and set up benches for us to sit on. Clytemnestra walked among them, shouting that the canopy was hung too low, the benches were in the wrong places, bring more food, bring thicker blankets, and don’t forget to set aside lamps and oil to set out at dusk.
Helen arrayed herself on a bench near the front of the canopy, where fresh breezes would reach her first. She arranged her garments fetchingly around her form as she lay down. She brushed her hand through her braids, allowing the breeze to blow through her stray hairs so that she looked tousled and intimate and all the more beautiful. I thought she was very vain to pose like that.
A girl my age nearly collided with me as I stood watching Helen. She gave me a glare, and then turned abruptly away as if I wasn’t worth her time. “Put my bench there,” she directed a slave, pointing to a spot near Helen. I wanted to ask her who she thought she was, but before I got the chance, my mother caught me by the shoulders.
Her grip was harder than normal, her fingernails digging into my skin. “Come sit down,” she said, guiding me to the bench where she sat near Helen.