The Allspice Bath

by Sonia Saikaley

  Samira looked at her then turned to Youssef, raising her eyebrows in question. But he didn’t answer her. Then she knelt in front of her daughter, resting her hands on Adele’s knees. “What did the doctor say?” she asked in Arabic. Her voice was quiet, almost a whisper.

  “I can’t have children,” Adele said in an equally inaudible tone. She opened her mouth, closed it, then opened it again, afraid that more words would make her cry.

  Samira got up from the floor and stared across at Youssef again. “What does she mean?” Sadness overtook her. Her voice broke.

  “What are you? Fucking deaf? You heard her,” he snapped.

  Adele looked up at her mother’s face; it had turned as red as a poppy. She wanted to defend her, shout back at her father but she couldn’t. She felt depleted, completely empty. The tears began to stream down her face. Finally, she let the deep-throated sobs fill her entire body. Her shoulders rose up and down.

  “But why? Why can’t she have children?” Samira almost shrieked, horrified with this possibility.

  “She’s defective. Her female part isn’t good. It needs to be taken out. That’s why she’s in so much pain.”

  “But…” Samira paused, her gaze flitting between Youssef and Adele. “She can’t have children?”

  “Are you fucking dumb?” Youssef shouted. “Why can’t you understand? It’s not complicated. She’s defective. Not a whole woman.”

  “How will she get married now?” Samira asked in a loud voice. Another low sob escaped Adele but her mother paid no attention. Samira was still looking to Youssef for an answer.

  “No man would want her anyway,” Youssef muttered. He finally raised his head and looked across at Adele, his deep-set eyes glaring in disappointment. “She let the doctor break her. She’s no longer a virgin.”

  Samira raised her hands to her mouth and said in an exasperated voice, “Oh, Adele. Why did you do that? Why did you let the doctor touch you down there?”

  Adele dragged a sleeve across her eyes. She took in a deep breath and stopped crying. After a few moments, she replied, “I had no other choice, Mama. I’m in so much pain. I had to find out what’s wrong with me.”

  “But couldn’t the doctor do something else?” Samira folded her arms across her chest. Her eyes darkened.

  “No, the doctor said…”

  Samira sighed. “What doctors want to do, they do.”

  “What are you saying, Samira? You think it’s all right that Adele let the doctor touch her down there?” Youssef said.

  “No, I don’t think it’s right but I know how some doctors can be. You remember when they removed my womb. Don’t you remember that, Youssef? They didn’t give me a choice.”

  Youssef interrupted, raising his index finger. “No, wait. This is different.”

  “No, it isn’t,” Samira said. Adele glanced at her mother and lifted her mouth in a small smile. For once, Samira was standing up for her.

  “Canadian doctors don’t understand our culture, our ways,” Youssef grunted. “You’re not clean now, Adele,” he added harshly. “What good Lebanese man will marry you if you’re not a virgin?”

  “That’s old-fashioned thinking. Thinking from the village. We don’t live in a village, Babba. This is Canada not Lebanon. Nobody cares if you’re a virgin or not.”

  Suddenly, Youssef lifted his arms above his head then flung them back and forth, grasping onto his temples. He began to shout. Adele jumped. “Allah, why did you give me such a stupid daughter? Nobody cares if you’re virgin! Lebanese men care. You think they want a dirty woman to be their wife, to bear their children? Do you think they want that?” He cast his eyes at Adele.

  Adele whispered, “I can’t have children, remember? I won’t be able to give them any.”

  And at this comment, Youssef stopped and stood silently. He glared across at Samira. Then as if remembering her place, Samira roughly rubbed Adele’s face, wiping the tears and asked, “How could you let the doctor touch you? Wasn’t I a good mother? Didn’t I teach you to remain clean until marriage? Your sisters listened to me. Why are you so stubborn? How could you disobey me, your Babba?” She turned and looked at Youssef again, who sat with his hands dangling between his open legs. Then she faced Adele again. “How could you?” she said, her voice dropping.

  “I had no other choice, Mama.” She felt her mother’s hands slipping away from her cheeks. Through the tears, she looked at her mother as she joined Youssef on the sofa.

  “I don’t know you at all,” Samira said, sitting next to Youssef, shaking her head.

  Adele rose from the steps. She stared at her mother. “You’re just figuring that out?” Then she stumbled up the stairs.

  A week later, Adele had a hysterectomy. When Adele awoke from the surgery, she lifted the covers off from her body and stared hard at the large white gauze on her abdomen. She had a scar in the exact same spot as her mother. Now they were inseparable. Samira stood beside Adele’s hospital bed and gazed at Adele’s belly. Adele could hear tears catch in her mother’s throat. Samira gently stared at her and whispered, “You’ll be all right, habibti. We’ll get through this together.” After all, Samira couldn’t bear any more children and Adele would never have any of her own, would never know the joy and chaos of carrying a child in her belly. Now more than ever, Adele was a second-class citizen. She turned her eyes from her stomach and fixed her gaze on the snow that fell from the sky. Tomorrow was Christmas day. The gift of barrenness was hers. She watched the snow as the wind blew it around in a playful way while the evergreen trees caught the snowflakes in their needles.

  “I’m sorry this happened to you, habibti,” Samira murmured. Then she tenderly kissed Adele on the forehead and sat in the chair next to Youssef. Adele lifted her head and looked across at her father. The hospital room looked bare with only two chairs and another bed, which was empty, fresh linen perfectly tucked under the corners of the mattress. There was a vase of flowers on the bedside table and Adele could smell their scent. Yellow roses were her favourite. They looked beautiful in this sterile space. She turned from the silky petals and stared at her parents. They were now both slumped on the chairs opposite her bed, eyes dull and worry lines engraving their skin. Their frowns made Adele think of all the times she had failed as the good Lebanese daughter. And now all of a sudden she felt relief that she no longer had to follow tradition. In the past week, she had done the unthinkable: she had allowed a doctor to break her hymen, then a surgeon to take out her womanhood. She looked away from her parents and directed her gaze to her sisters. They stood quietly in the room. Their faces were withdrawn, the colour drained from their cheeks. Rima hadn’t even broken into a smile, something she was known to do in the most sombre of situations. She was always smiling and talking. But she remained silent now. Words seemed pointless at this time, Adele thought, sighing. Her sisters were all married and had children of their own. They married young and had children right away. What could they possibly say at this moment to make things better?

  The next morning, Adele opened her eyes to the sound of her father’s voice in her hospital room, but she quickly squeezed them shut and pretended to sleep. She heard her father say in a muffled tone, speaking Arabic, “You can’t ever mention this operation to anyone. This is our secret. If an outsider finds out about her problem, then no one will marry her. Make sure you tell your husbands to keep their big mouths shut too. There’s no need for anyone to know about this. It’s ayb, disgraceful, a virgin having this type of surgery. But this is what Allah wanted, so be it.” Adele heard the sound of palms rubbing together. She then shifted her legs. “Shh,” Youssef said, “she’s waking up. Remember what I said, not a word, you understand? Not a damn word.”

  Adele opened her eyes. She stared at her parents and sisters, her gaze fluttering between them.

  “Good morning, habibti,” Samira said, rising from her seat. She stood next
to Adele’s bed and bent down to plant a kiss on her forehead but Adele turned her head the other way.

  “Don’t touch me. Don’t ever touch me!” she hissed under her breath, now clenching her fists. Her arms rested straight by her sides.

  “Adele, please don’t be mad,” Samira said, tears filming her eyes.

  “Come on, Monkey,” Rima coaxed, now standing beside the bed. She put her arm around Samira’s waist. “Don’t be like that. We know you’re going through a hard time but things will get better. We’re family. We’ll get through this together.”

  Adele pursed her lips. “Yeah, that’s coming from someone who has children.” Her vision blurred with tears and her voice cracked, “I’ve disgraced the family like Babba said.” She looked at her sisters, then at her mother. They all turned and faced Youssef who sat in the chair with his eyes directed at the window. “I heard every damn word. I can’t have children, but I’m not deaf!” Adele twisted her head towards the wall. The room was suddenly quiet. Her mother and Rima pulled away and Adele continued to stare hard at the white wall. After a few minutes, all she could hear were the dwindling footsteps of her family on the linoleum floor. She closed her eyes again and tried to fall asleep.

  A few hours later, Adele awoke to the sound of a baby crying. She blinked her eyes before she realized that a new patient had been placed in the room with her. Adele glanced at the woman, guiding the infant in her arms to her chest. Her gown was opened wide, revealing her breasts and the baby, his dark head slightly bobbing back and forth. Small gulping noises filled the room. Adele couldn’t help but stare at the woman and her newborn. When the baby grasped at his mother’s breasts, Adele studied the young woman gazing tenderly down at her child as if they were the only two people in the room.

  The new mother looked up and smiled. Adele tried to meet her eyes but she couldn’t. She quickly looked down at her body. Loathing it, she squirmed under the covers. The other woman frowned, then smiled again as she stared down at her son. Adele moved her legs, ran her hands over the bed sheets, frantically searched for the rod to call the nurse. Once she found it, she pressed the button over and over until a nurse came running into the room. The nurse was a middle-aged woman with short brown hair, bangs slicked away from her weary face. She was new, someone Adele had not seen before during her stay in the hospital. “Are you all right?” she asked in a hoarse voice. She stood beside Adele’s bed, rested her hand on her arm. Adele didn’t respond but lifted her chin in the direction of the mother and child. The nurse shook her head, not understanding. “What’s the matter, dear?”

  Adele remained silent, a vacant look on her face. Walking to the foot of the bed, the nurse picked up the clipboard that listed Adele’s condition. She gently put the clipboard back, letting it dangle from its chain. Then she quickly grabbed the curtain, slid it around the steel rod until Adele was enclosed like a caterpillar in its cocoon. The nurse stood beside Adele’s bed, touched her arm again and asked, “Is that better?”

  Adele nodded her head and then closed her eyes before the tears slipped out.

  A few hours later, she felt someone gently tugging at the waistband of her pajamas. It was a young nurse, who exposed Adele’s belly and removed the bloody gauze covering it. Adele stared at the foot of her bed while the nurse’s fingers brushed against her stomach, efficiently replacing the soiled bandage with a fresh one. She briefly looked up at the nurse’s face; she had the youthful look of someone barely past the age of twenty-five with her red hair pulled back in a ponytail and her face free from make-up. When her eyes met Adele’s gaze, her pale lips widened into a grin but Adele quickly twisted away. But the nurse continued to beam as she said, “It’s a beautiful day today. I hate winter but when the sun’s shining, it’s almost bearable. Don’t you think?”

  “Yeah,” Adele mumbled. She clenched her fists and stared at the wall while the nurse finished tending to the incision. The nurse’s fingers gently pressed clear tape over the gauze. After she was done, she patted Adele’s hand and said, “Everything will be okay. You know that, right?”

  She pulled her hand away and faced the nurse. She squinted angrily. What the hell did this woman know? She wasn’t the one suffering, wasn’t the barren one, the defective woman but more importantly, Adele thought, she wasn’t the Lebanese woman who had failed miserably. She looked hard at the nurse’s red hair and freckled skin. She inhabited the white world, not ancient scriptures and Corinthian columns. Adele said nothing.

  The nurse smiled sympathetically, gathering her supplies and placing them in a bag. She walked to the door and stood in the threshold, looking back at Adele. “Take care. Remember the pain is only temporary. It’ll go away. You’ll see. Everything will work out.”

  “Thank you,” Adele said reluctantly, thinking, you have no idea.

  After five days, Adele was sent home to continue recuperating. It was better to be in her sunny bedroom, under her own comforter, but her belly still throbbed from the centre of her pelvis to the right side of her ribs in a steady, dull beat. Over the past few weeks, her skin had turned pale but the sun tinted it now as if she had a faint tan, only she hadn’t vacationed somewhere warm, hadn’t left the confines of her bedroom since her discharge from the hospital. The sunlight grew bright. Adele lifted her hands again to protect her eyes. After the surgery, she had insisted the curtains be closed. She didn’t want the sun to touch her, warm her “defective” body. But on this particular day, she wanted to feel connected to the outside world so she had allowed her mother to open the curtains. She imagined her womb floating in a jar of formaldehyde under the glaring lights of a sterile lab. She imagined the doctor’s gloved hands holding the diseased uterus; its grapefruit-sized tumour sliding out with one quick slice from the thin blade held between the physician’s fingers. Golden-orange rays flickered on the walls, and on her withdrawn face. A squirrel was perched on the branch of a tree with its claws holding a crumb of bread to its mouth, nibbling at a speedy rate. Adele smiled. She hadn’t smiled since she had learned that she’d never be able to carry a child of her own. Suddenly, she turned away from the window and lifted the covers off her body. She stared at her belly then listened to the cars driving down the street of her neighbourhood, the wheels treading on snow-covered pavement. The maple trees stood naked in the cold, their branches swaying in the mid-morning wind, the heavy, wet snow bending them like weeping willows. She pulled the covers up over her stomach once more. She looked out the window and thought again of the nurse’s naïve promise.

  The nurse was wrong. Everything did not work out. Adele slid into a deep depression, refusing to get out of bed, not even sitting up until her mother forced her to. “Come on,” Samira said, bending down and wrapping her arms around Adele’s upper body. She lifted her and pulled her out of the bed, then slung Adele’s arm over her shoulders. Samira dragged her to the bathroom. There, she stripped off Adele’s pajamas and placed her on the toilet seat while she squeezed a warm, wet cloth over the sink. She bent slightly to wipe Adele’s body, moving the wash cloth down her neck, around her collarbone, then between her breasts. Adele rested her back against the cold tank of the toilet, tilted her head and stared up at the ceiling. For one brief moment she lowered her head and looked at her mother’s hands as they glided the cloth over her naked protruding hipbones. She looked down at her emaciated body, barely able to raise her arms to wipe the tears that now poured out of her mother’s eyes, down her sunken cheeks.

  Though the daily bath was routine, the tears were new. On other occasions, there had been muscles straining in her mother’s neck, around her mouth when she asked Adele if she was still in pain, whether her gentle sponge baths were too much to endure. Pretending they didn’t hurt, Adele had let her mother continue the regime. But this morning, Adele began to shake uncontrollably until her mother gripped her by the shoulders, steadying her. After a while, the quivering stopped and Samira began the task of cleaning the incision. Adele
rolled her head to the side but her eyes caught glimpses of the sutures on the lower part of her abdomen. The once smooth, taut skin was now blemished, imperfect. Samira’s dark eyes flitted over the carefully stitched flesh. A redness encompassed Samira’s cheeks and Adele could tell that her mother suddenly felt at fault for her predicament. On most of these mornings, when her mother bathed her, Adele had avoided her mother’s eyes, but now she met her gaze. Pity and disappointment shone there, like the time Adele had refused to continue going to the Arabic school.

  She had failed in so many ways at being the good Lebanese daughter. She wasn’t like other Lebanese girls.

  Her mother’s fingers traced the scar as if memorizing its length, its contrasting colour on Adele’s olive skin, the meaning it held in seven inches of space. Adele flinched, pressing her spine on the toilet tank. Her mother continued to whimper. She suddenly said, “May I ask you something, Mama?” Eyes still pasted on the ceiling.

  “What is it, habibti?” Samira replied softly, clearing her throat.

  “Do you think I’m half a woman, that I’m worthless?” she asked, swallowing hard.

  Samira shook her head and opened her mouth, but no words came out. She then fell forward, rested her forehead on Adele’s shoulders. A warm, wet sensation slid down Adele’s chest, back. Adele lifted her right arm with difficulty and patted her mother’s head. “It’s okay, Mama,” she whispered over and over.

  From the corner of her eye, Adele watched her mother stand up straight and drop her hands into the basin. She squeezed the cloth, turning the water pink. Adele noticed the way her mother’s arched, finely-sculpted eyebrows came together, how they put pressure on her eyelids, how sad she looked with her hands submerged in the dirty water. Adele quickly wrapped a towel around her body. She shivered while the steam of the bath transformed into drops of condensation, sliding down the mauve walls.