by Cheryl Reid
I wanted to run downstairs and go home with Elsa, back to my father’s store. My face burned.
The sun dipped below the horizon.
He walked toward me, sitting on the bed, when I did not obey. This would be the price to pay for crossing the railroad tracks, for this house, for his name, for what I wanted. My mouth was dry and I could not swallow.
He said, “Anna, don’t worry. I’ll be gentle.”
“Your mother and my aunt are downstairs.” I could not look at him.
“They will leave soon.” He touched my shoulder.
He would want me to remove my clothes and he would see me naked. What came next I imagined would be humiliating.
“They’re not paying us any attention,” he said.
Dusk settled into the room. The white lamp glowed weakly.
“Want me to put out the light?”
Unable to speak, I nodded. He walked to the other side of the bed and switched off the lamp. The room was gray except for the slight glow of the coverlet and my gown.
I moved toward a corner. I did not undress. I prayed he would have mercy and leave.
“Do you want help?”
“No,” I answered.
“I’ll leave for a minute if you like.” He crossed the room and reached out as if to a cowering dog. He leaned over me and smelled of the anise liquor and cloves.
I pressed against the wall. Dishes clapped as they were stacked in the kitchen.
Voices carried upstairs. “You will take these to the church?” Nelly said to my aunt.
He worked his hands between me and the wall and then his fingers nimbly undid the buttons down my back. “Turn around,” he said.
I cringed, but I did as he said. I pressed my forehead into the wall and prayed it would collapse on me.
“Thea will help me,” Elsa said.
“I can do it for you,” Nelly said.
“No, you won’t.” Elsa did not want to be obligated to Nelly. The two women chided each other in Arabic and laughed heartily.
I held my breath and hoped to pass out and save myself the humiliation.
“You are too modest,” he said. “It’s okay. This is supposed to happen.”
The buttons were undone and the air hit my skin. Shivers ran through me.
“The wedding was nice.” His long fingers ran down my back and he pulled me near. “Everyone had a good time.” Goose bumps rose on my skin.
“Can we wait?” I mustered. “Until they leave?”
He undid the last buttons and pulled my arms from the sleeves. He slid the dress off my shoulders. My heart beat fast—like a flock of blackbirds taking off.
“I’ve waited,” he said.
Today, or for his whole life—I did not understand his meaning. “Not yet.” I gripped the bodice of the dress to guard against him seeing me. I was near tears.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I will be gentle.”
“What’s going to happen?” I asked.
He laughed a quiet laugh, and my skin burned with shame.
“You will see,” he said. “It’s not bad.”
I wanted to know how he knew, if he had done this before, but the idea of his experience mortified me.
“Take these to the car,” Elsa’s voice drifted up. “Be careful.”
The screen door slapped shut and Thea’s steps could be heard across the porch, through the pea gravel, and back again into the house.
He took his shirt off. His chest thin and lean, but strong. He was a handsome man. I had wanted to marry him. I had seen his naked chest on a hot day when he was doing heavy work at his store.
“You have to calm yourself.” Elias pulled my wrists away and broke my grip on the bodice. The dress fell in a cloud of silk to my ankles. “Or this will be no good.” He guided me out of the long skirt. “There is no reason to be so upset.” He gathered the long slip and brought it over my head.
I lifted my arms as he wanted.
He kissed my neck with dry lips. “You are shaking. Don’t be afraid.” He undid my brassiere and pulled down my stockings and underpants. He ran his hands up my sides and over my breasts. He touched me gently and I began to breathe more slowly to calm myself.
“I am leaving,” Nelly yelled to the house. The screen door slapped shut.
Elsa shouted, “Thea, let’s go.”
“Get on the bed,” he said.
He took down his pants and underpants. For the first time, I saw him and what it was. It seemed unnatural and unkind to put that inside me, and kind of terrible that he and all the men I knew had to be burdened with such an appendage. I closed my eyes and got on the bed as he said. My jaw chattered as if I were naked in the cold winter wind.
“You will be fine,” he said. “There’s no reason to worry.” He pushed me backward until I was flat. He opened my legs and lay on top of me. He placed my arms around him and nuzzled my neck with his stubble. To him I was a frightened animal being prodded and coaxed.
The bed was hard with his weight on me. It had never been slept in and the starched linen scratched my skin. The porch light flickered outside the window. I lay motionless and repeated his words inside my head, You will be fine. The pecan leaves made shadows on the ceiling. I held my breath against his weight and counted the leaf shadows on the ceiling and tried to ignore the unfamiliar pressure between my legs.
The front door shut. I heard Elsa outside talking. “Everything was nice,” she said. “The food was good.”
Thea replied, “Yes, it was. Hard to believe Miss Anna is married now.” Except for the kind words she whispered to me, Thea had been silent all day. She had said Mama would be proud of me, and the idea of my mother helped me calm down for a moment. Car doors shut and the engine started.
He pushed between my legs and his weight spread my hips wide. There was pressure and a sharp pain. My face burned with ignorance. I had not known how to comply. I held my breath as he moved for what seemed a long time. He clutched and groaned and then warm moisture took his place, and my thighs itched with dampness, and what had happened was over.
He left the room and water ran in the tub. I did not want to interrupt him, so I cleaned myself with his undershirt that he left on the floor. I dressed in the satin gown Elsa had bought for my trousseau. I shivered on the edge of the bed and waited. A light clicked on and off. In the doorway stood his dark shadow of strong shoulders and thin waist. He ran his fingers through his hair. I lay my head on the pillow.
I could have said, “Are you coming to bed?” He seemed to be waiting for an invitation, but I did not know what to do. I was nineteen, barely older than a child and not any wiser. I expected he would return, because we’d never discussed sleeping in separate rooms. If he had come back to my bed, maybe we would have laughed at my ignorance and felt close, but when he entered the other room, I did not call after him. Part of me felt relief to be alone.
The house was cool and dark. I wound myself in the damp coverlet and sleep came fast. In the early morning, I woke before sunrise. I put on a new dress and listened to him snore in the room across from mine. I lay on the bed and looked out the window at the dark morning. I wondered how often he would come to me, and how long before I would be with child. I wondered if he would want to do the act again that night, and I felt certain I would not be so scared. I was embarrassed how pitiful I must have seemed. I planned to swallow my pride and tell him that he had been right, that I should not have been so worried.
I noticed the smell of coffee and heard footsteps in the hall.
Nelly appeared in the door of my room.
I popped up and straightened my dress.
“You are up before the sun,” she said. “Good.”
In the dim morning light, she saw the wedding dress heaped on the floor. She whipped it above her head and hung it on a padded hanger. “Elsa waited on you like a maid. You are the woman of the house now, not a child.” She made the bed and tidied the pillows.
She strode across the hall and barke
d at Elias. “Haaze kaslane,” she said. Don’t be lazy. She flipped on his light switch and slapped his bed. “Get up now,” she said. “You have the store to open. The honeymoon is over.” She laughed at her joke.
She motioned to me. “Come. I’ll show you how Elias likes his eggs.” She waddled down the hall toward the stairs. One last time, she called out, “Elias. Get up.”
Nelly poured me coffee and cracked two eggs in hot olive oil. She slid the greasy eggs onto his plate and then made mine. Elias walked into the kitchen in sock feet, a blue tie draped around his white button-down shirt. I cast my gaze to the floor, so bashful to look him in the face. I wanted to tell him privately that I was fine, that I had been silly to have been so scared. If I told him that, he might hold me as he had in the hallway the day before, but Nelly sat between us. The sun peeked on the horizon. He looked at his plate of food without a word to either of us.
“Don’t get used to this,” she said. “Tomorrow, I will not cook you breakfast.” I wondered if she had a key. I wanted to ask if she would be coming and going as she pleased, but dared not. She talked fast, and everything she said seemed important to her. I was to help her with the homemade goods for the store, stock the house with groceries, and that afternoon, I was to meet with the best dressmaker in town. She said, “You should look like something, now that you are my son’s wife. You’re not in colored town anymore.”
I was starving and ate, even though the eggs fried in olive oil were not to my liking.
“I am glad you are eating. You are too thin,” she said. “You need meat on your bones to have babies.”
Elias coughed and his face turned red with embarrassment. His mother noticed too.
“She must eat.” She waved her hands toward me. “Look at her. She is a scrawny bird. Having a baby will break her in half. If you don’t break her first.” She cackled and my skin flushed.
“I have to get going.” Elias kissed his mother’s cheek. I was surprised when he stopped and kissed mine too. His lips were warm from coffee and he smelled of cloves.
I wanted to follow him outside to have the chance to speak to him, but Nelly grabbed my wrist and stared at me with hawk eyes. “Do you bake?”
I told her, “Only a little.”
“Your mother was a good baker. You would like it?”
“I can try,” I said.
All day long, I prepared my words for Elias. I had not known what to expect, but now I did, and now I would do better. The words felt embarrassing inside my head, and I would blush as they left my mouth, but I was sure he would treat me kindly and calmly, as he had the night before.
On the second night, his mother stayed late. She talked and talked. I went to bed, and after she left, he came into my dark room. Elias said, “Anna.” His voice was gruff. “Turn over. Get on your hands and knees.”
His words did not register because I was rehearsing what I had to say to him. “Can I tell you something?” My heart pounded in my chest.
“No.” He undid his belt and took off his pants. “Do as I said. Hands and knees.”
I obeyed, but I said, “I wanted to talk about last night.”
He stepped out of his underpants and climbed on the bed behind me. “We talked enough last night.” His voice was all business. “You are my wife. This is your duty.” He kneeled and grabbed my waist. “I don’t want to discuss it.” He lifted my gown and yanked at my panties. He pulled me backward and put himself inside me.
My jaw clamped shut. It felt unkind this way. I could not breathe. I thought that last night had been the worst of it, but each time he thrust and hit a new depth, I felt sick.
He held tightly to my sides, and then my hip bones became his grip. I could not hold myself up against his weight and I collapsed beneath him. When it was over, an intense sensation spread down my legs and up into my chest. It was all I could do to breathe. He left me facedown on the bed without a word. He washed himself in the bathroom and slept in his own bed.
I crawled onto my pillow, embarrassed by what had happened, by what I felt. I was sore from the thrusting, and yet it was not horrible. I wanted to be alone, but then I did not. If he had come back, I would have let him hold me. I lay wondering what he felt for me, if he felt more than a dog mounting another.
My skin burned. I prayed morning would not come, and that I would not have to show my face. I was more than ignorant. What other ways might he humiliate me? I prayed that the earth and sky would be still and for it to always be nighttime, after he had left me alone. I was a stranger in this place, without Elsa, without Papa or Gus.
I had begged my father to let me marry. He must have thought this was what I had wanted. Did Gus know? Or Elsa? Was this the reason why she never wanted to be married?
Nelly knew. She had two sons, so when she looked at me, she knew what had happened. Maybe that was why she stayed so late. She must hate me for knowing her son in this way. Thea should have told me, but it was not her place. My mother was the only one who could have prepared me, and I had to trust she would have warned me what to expect.
At the thought of waking and cooking his breakfast with Nelly to teach me, followed by the chore of baking for the store with her at my side, of coming home again to cook his dinner while she tortured me with her wisdom, to sit and eat with them both, only to be used and left once again upon my bed, I wanted to run. But I was married in the eyes of God, of my father, of all who knew me. I was spoiled. Maybe that was why Papa would not look at me the afternoon of my wedding, knowing what was to come.
In the night, my stomach cramped with worry and I grew sick. I did not wake Elias as I switched the lights in the hallway or when I retched over the toilet. I rested on the cool bathroom floor of black-and-white marble, clean and new, unlike the scarred linoleum in my father’s home. This room held beautiful things—a large white sink with thick chrome legs, a mirror etched in leaves and flowers, a claw-foot tub and a wall of gleaming white tiles. My father built it for me—this house that should have been my mother’s.
I stumbled back to my room past his door. His body stretched the length of his bed. His black hair against the white pillow. The sheets draped like a tent over his toes. He stirred but he did not wake. I went to my bed and listened as he slept. The sound of his breath was like a wave washing on shore and rolling back out, not a care to his soul. I thought, how wonderful to be him.
What Is Real
Marina’s dark figure filled the doorway. She wore a billowing black dress, and her face and arms were more swollen than the night before. She looked like a hot-water bladder, full of fluid, ready to burst at any moment.
“Hello, Aunt Louise.” In her arms she held a Mitsy’s dress bag.
Louise shuffled across the kitchen and nudged Marina toward the table. “Sit.”
“I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.” Marina touched her dark hair, pinned in a neat chignon. She looked at me. “You’re not ready.”
Louise moved back to the stove.
My hands shook. “I was remembering.”
“Really?” She squinted and shook her head. “I can’t believe you’re sitting around, daydreaming, with everything there is to do.” Her lips were painted pale pink, her cheeks rouged, and her skin heavily powdered. The heat would melt her makeup. She did not need it anyway. Her beauty was striking—the pale olive skin and the bright eyes, as bright as spring leaves.
“I sat in this spot, watching Elsa and Thea on my wedding day,” I said.
At hearing Elsa’s name, Louise stopped stirring a pot and gave the sign of the cross.
Marina shook her head. “Why must you keep on about this Thea?”
“She was my mother’s friend. She helped raise me,” I said.
“I know who she is.” Marina’s ire was up. She kneaded her temples. “She’s the reason we’re in this mess.”
“She was here cooking for my wedding party, and then the next morning, your grandmother was here, working and working me. Now Louise. Now you are here too.”<
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Marina scanned my housecoat, my bare feet, and my hair. She draped the dress bag over the chair. She asked, “Are you okay?”
I looked out the window.
Marina said, “There is so much to do. So many people are coming.” I imagined who was going through her mind: Junior League women, church ladies, and Michael’s colleagues. She said, “I need you to get ready.”
All she cared about was my appearance, the surface of things. “Have you seen Eli?” I asked.
“He’s at the paper.” She sat, and her eyes winced in discomfort. “Going over the obituary.”
I felt a wave of relief. He was safe, though I could not help but worry for him and for her. She was too headstrong to know the danger her body was in.
She breathed out slowly. Her time was near. “He went to Mounds last night.” She sounded like a scorned wife. “The two of you will be the end of me. I have to live here,” she said. “And everyone thinks you have lost your minds.”
I ignored her reprimand. “You shouldn’t be driving,” I said. “You should have called me to get you.”
Marina huffed. She would not be slowed down.
“The baby will come soon,” Louise said, bringing Marina a cup of coffee. “Be careful.”
“She’s right,” I said. “You need to take it easy.”
Louise nodded in agreement as she moved back to the stove.
Marina sipped the coffee and pushed it away. “It’s too hot to drink coffee.”
I looked past Louise and out the window at the sky. The sun had burned off the last of the clouds. I joined Marina at the table.
Marina’s swollen hand pressed my forearm. “You need to get dressed.” She shifted toward me and touched my tangled hair. The heat in the kitchen was melting her makeup. Beads of sweat rolled down her temples. “I smell liquor. Is it you?”
I said, “Lila made me a drink last night.”
“Of course she did.” Her voice had a sharp edge. “Lila would make you a drink.”
