She held her granddaughter but kept her eyes roaming around the living room, looking for evidence that her son’s home was not being kept well by his two wives. She had a talent for masking criticisms with compliments.
“The colors of your carpet finally show! Looks like someone took the time to beat the dust from it, eh? How long had it been? I had to wash my dress last time I went home from here.”
Neither Shekiba nor Gulnaz replied to her comment. It would only feed the flames.
“Gulnaz-jan, those cookies that you sent over, they were delicious! How lovely that you’ve finally started baking sweets!”
“I cannot take the credit for Shekiba-jan’s hard work. She made the rosewater cookies and sent them over for you,” Gulnaz said, pretending to ignore the snide comment.
“Oh, well, I wondered how it was possible that after this much time you would have started to treat your husband’s palate to something tasty. Shekiba-jan, they were better than the cookies Khanum Ferdowz makes every year for her family and neighbors.”
“Noosh-e-jan, Khala-jan,” Shekiba said quietly as she refilled her mother-in-law’s teacup. “Please help yourself to another.”
“Maybe I will. It’s not often that my aroos makes such goodies.” She shook her skirt, a shower of crumbs raining down on the newly cleaned carpet.
“Who knows, Madar-jan, maybe it’s just not often that we get to taste them,” Parisa said, laughing. Parisa was Aasif’s eldest sister. She often accompanied her mother on visits, leaving her four children at home as she joined her mother’s social circuit.
Aasif’s mother smiled at Parisa’s comment. Her lips curled up at the corners and the dark hairs on her upper lip cast a shadow. Shekiba opened the teapot and, although it was still full, headed back into the kitchen to refill it.
Gulnaz and Shekiba breathed a sigh of relief when Aasif’s mother and sister finally left. Shekiba beat the cookie crumbs from the carpet and tossed the larger pieces into the cage for the canaries. They chirped and tweeted with excitement, watching Shekiba as they flitted from one side of the cage to the other.
Two had bald spots where the aggressive one had pecked their feathers away. Still, they looked content. They watched Shekiba cautiously, occasionally hopping a few inches closer to her for a better look. She reached her finger through the wires and wiggled it. All three birds retreated to the opposite side of the cage immediately, horrified that she would dare trespass into their home.
Shekiba withdrew her finger and watched their wings relax, their syncopated chirping less alarmed.
CHAPTER 59. SHEKIBA
Shekiba did not have to guess. Though she recognized the signs, pregnancy was no less of a shock to her. She chewed on a piece of raw ginger and tried to ignore the nauseous rumblings in her stomach.
I will be a mother. I will have my own baby. Is this possible?
It meant a permanent break from her previous life. She could no longer float between genders like a kite carried by the wind. No more binding her bosom to disguise her figure. She would fool no one.
She watched Shabnam pull on her mother’s sleeve and try to pull herself up. She had learned to crawl only one month ago and had already tired of it. Shabnam was a beautiful girl. She had dark curly locks and lashes on her pleasantly plump face. Her loveliness softened her father’s disappointment. But Aasif only smiled at her when he thought no one was looking. He let her crawl onto his lap and paw at his face until he heard footsteps.
“Come and get your daughter! She’s driving me mad!” he would call out.
“Shabnam, come and leave your father alone,” Gulnaz would say as she swooped the smiling baby off her father’s lap.
Shekiba had seen him caress her cheek, the corners of his mouth turning up in a quiet smile as he watched her slap her palms together clumsily. He laughed at the way she rolled around on her back, her feet in her hands.
“But he’ll always resent her,” Gulnaz said with a sigh.
“That’s how it is for girls. A daughter doesn’t really belong to her parents. A daughter belongs to others,” Shekiba explained. Gulnaz should have been wiser in such matters, Shekiba thought.
She tried to hide her condition from Gulnaz, thinking her husband’s wife might be envious. Shekiba dallied in the washroom until the waves of nausea had passed and her stomach had emptied itself. She knocked basins over to mask the sound of her retching. Gulnaz was so preoccupied with Shabnam, Shekiba needn’t have worried so much.
Aasif did not notice either. After Shabnam’s birth, disappointment temporarily cooled his fire. He opened Shekiba’s door less often and she was thankful for the reprieve. There was nothing about his sweaty grunting that appealed to her and she hated the way he pressed her face to the side, as if her disfigurement might spoil his momentum even in the darkness. But after three months, he had a renewed determination. Shekiba could hope only for her monthly bleeding to save her from her wifely duties.
With her queasy stomach, Aasif’s visits were even more repulsing. He suddenly had an odor that made her stomach reel. She would hold her breath for as long as she could, taking deep gasps in between, which her husband mistook for pleasure. He paused and looked at her, surprised.
“So, you’re enjoying this, aren’t you? Such a performance you put on!” he said with a crooked smirk.
He did not notice her belly growing until she had missed six cycles of her bleeding. He looked at her curiously as she leaned against the wall to rest after dinner. Gulnaz was knitting while Shabnam slept beside her. Shekiba instinctively tried to bunch her dress over her growing abdomen. Aasif’s eyes zeroed in on her belly.
“Maybe there is hope for this house after all!”
Shekiba’s face reddened. Gulnaz’s lips tightened, just enough that Shekiba could see the tension in her face. Gulnaz had confronted Shekiba two months ago, having noticed the way she kept Shabnam’s kicking legs away from her belly.
When Shekiba had nodded, Gulnaz smiled, but with hesitation. She knew what it would mean if Shekiba delivered the son Aasif so desired.
Aasif let out a guffaw, an awkward sound in a room with air so thick.
“We’ll see what Shekiba can do.”
Gulnaz had whispered to Shekiba as she scrubbed the pots clean.
“He’s so different from a couple of years ago. Can you imagine that he used to like to take walks in the evenings with me? This same man! The last two years have soured him. I don’t know what he’ll become if he’s handed another daughter. There’s nothing you can do now, is there?”
Shekiba lay awake at night pondering that very question. She thought back to all the mechanisms Mahbuba had described but it was too late for any of them. Someone had told her about the powers of chicken livers, she remembered, and headed to the market the very next day to buy as many as she could find. She did not miss a single prayer and whispered to the ceiling, her palms open, with a fresh desperation.
Please, merciful Allah, I am begging you to give Aasif the son he so desires. Satisfy his wish so that we may live in peace with this bitter man.
Whether it was the chicken livers or the prayers or just God’s will, Shekiba gave birth to a son.
Aasif walked with his head high, a smug smile on his face as his family came to visit. Shekiba hardly noticed him. She was fascinated with the ten fingers, the perfectly formed pink lips and the tiny chin that nuzzled against her bosom. She had checked him over head to toe but there was nothing wrong — nothing about him was marred or mangled.