Our Woman’s brain ached, as though fingers were separating it inside her head. A pain above her eye. Surely to God the washing up liquid could not induce such misery, it must be something more.
Should she be disturbed by her behaviour? Was this headache the manifestation of it? Had it caught up with her now, nipping her viciously and variously through her day to remind her of the plunge she’d taken into that man’s groin? She wasn’t sure. The revisiting of the plunge, yes, well that made her wince, but in truth, she was merely consumed plotting how soon she could repeat it all over again.
*
Is there anything as lovely as a nimble, young man the way that sweet Halim is nimble? I thought as I put the butter onto my husband’s bread. He loves his butter thick. The pristine condition of Halim’s skin, all flat and elastic and not swinging and flopping and clouting ya with the remnants of every pint he ever downed. God love them all for youth is far from wasted on the young, it is age that is wasted on the old. Give us some sweet suck at youth instead of all this wallowing and wounding. I’m sick with the wounding. For what have I done to have that twit deliver me such news? Fifteen years I waited on a sodden marriage proposal that was fifteen years coming. And these days I’d duck whatever is coming, for I am sure there’s to be more. I have my hand out now for whatever might fit in it. There are times of the day I don’t give a flat toot about what I am after doing. I think bally-ho and off I go and why not, but then I think of the face on the girls were I to tell them and how they’d suck air in so swift they’d fall over. Ah. I’ll have a piece of fruitcake and think no more on it ’til this lunch is made. I must go to Ballina again and look for better washing-up liquid.
*
Halim visited again. No pie, no preparation. Just tea. Just could you help me with my English. That morning she read his essay, but was busy thinking of the parts of his body she had yet to see. The upper arm area between collarbone and triceps and inside his arm. The aforementioned left and right sides at his groin to higher up the sides of his stomach to his armpit. Areas that have become unappealing, drifted to paunchy droop, on her calloused, crocodilian husband.
The essay read. The tenses corrected. A few spellings changed.
— Tell me about your pregnancy. I want to hear everything, Halim said.
She offered a hot drop as distraction, which he accepted, but in doing so patted the sofa. Come sit. She asked him if he likes college?
— How many children have you? Halim, sitting, but not as close as she indicated.
— Three. All grown up. London, London, Dublin.
Does he want to see pictures, but he was not interested in pictures. He was not interested in their lives. He was singularly interested in how they arrived in the world.
— How long you married when you conceived the first one?
She thought about the question, considered correcting his grammar, and found it peculiar but was it any more peculiar than the aged helping themselves to his young flesh? Help The Aged she mused, Help The Aged Help Themselves to the Young. She can see the poster campaign. Watch her! Paws off! Stamped across it.
— I don’t understand the question, she admitted.
*
Now she understood the question.
His trousers remain open and the back of her cardigan still rumpled where he lifted it. Slightly startled she lifted her head, pressed her hair behind her ears and both her hands return and resume sharing the book. She plunked half of it upon his left knee and the discussion about the book recommenced. His hand stayed at the back of her waist, as though it might respond again with sufficient invitation, she does not press her weight against it. But she did steal a glance at him, to see what, if anything had he made of what just took place, and he smiled at her, a knowing nuzzle of a smile that confirmed that whatever had taken place was damned alright by him. It was important in these situations not to say too much, she thought. There was a relaxation at her she hadn’t known in a very, very long time.
— You have sexed with many men, he announced.
She shakes her head, her eyes say it all. Not at all.
— You have sexed with a man who has made you pregnant three times.
— Uh ha. Yes she has three children so if you wanted to see it that way you could.
— How did she know?
— How did she know what?
— That her husband would make her pregnant where another did not.
He infers she has had a long line of men. Glory be to God. But there is a man beside her on this couch with his trousers open, so how can she avoid this question?
— What precisely is it you want to know?
— I want you to sex with me and tell me if you can tell any difference?
— Grand, she says, but right now she has to get the dinner on and must put the potatoes on to boil.
*
She wants to consume, rather than be consumed. She wants to consume exactly as her husband has. She calculates there are two or three more things she must understand until she can release him from their arrangements. And in seeking to understand them she had overlooked he may have his own demands.
*
A drop to discontentment. Halim goes awful quiet on Our Woman.
Fatigue at the prospect it might never be repeated, that she’ll not have her answer drills her into the ground, she caves in at the kitchen table, spreads out her arms and folds her face on them and allows herself to dissolve. The bump of her skin against the dining wood, water from her eyes puddling where it should have no permission, she gives everything up to that wood. What if he will not come back?
All reason and common sense are being squeezed from her forcefully like remnants of toothpaste out of the tube. I have ventured into wasteland I’d rather not tread. I am broken, she thinks.
*
Halim she hears nothing from. All dwindles to silence. An inescapable silence for she’s certain he’ll send a signal. If nothing else he’s a man full of questions, and there’s few in this neck of the woods who’d answer them. She tries to imagine Bina responding to his inquiries about childbirth, Bina’d crack him about the kisser. These days Bina is besieged with conspiring. She’s a morning, noon and night conspirer and she concludes every story with the words you see there might be something going on we don’t know about. There might be something more going on, Our Woman thinks.
In her mind endless scenarios play out from Halim having died under the wheels of a bus, despite the erratic nature of local buses (two per day), to him raw with despair at what he allowed her to do. What if he’s devout? What if he’s some kind of devout she cannot spell? A kind of devout where the punishments are high. Perhaps he’s gone to his religious person overcome with gloom, wailing she seemed like an ordinary housewife. I had no idea she was going to attack me and to be honest I felt sorry for her.
*
— What’s wrong?
— Can she help him?
— Of course she can.
A work locker. A lost key. Shirts in locker. Only one shirt. College this evening. He needs his single shirt washed and has no way to do it between work and school and he fears they are trying to sack him at work and can give them no excuse to aid them. They’ve talked to him about personal hygiene. They’ve complained about the state of his uniform. They won’t let him cut the padlock off. No because they want to sack him.