Dancing in the Shadows of Love

by Judy Croome

  She doesn’t dignify it with an answer. Instead, she turns her face away and begins to apply her mascara. ‘How much did you have to drink last night?’ She sounds like her mother, nagging and nervous, so she drags a smile from somewhere to add, ‘Did you enjoy the dinner?’

  ‘Gerard had a new speciality on the menu.’ He rubs his stomach. ‘Duck in orange and chilli sauce. Delicious! Samanya had it too.’

  The mascara wand stops. Without a tremor, she replaces the lid and slips it into her make-up drawer. ‘Samanya? Daren Samanya was there?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Dawud takes out his toothbrush and spreads his green-and-white striped toothpaste in a haphazard row along the bristles. The mint-flavoured paste is his favourite, and Jamila always makes sure he has a new tube available. ‘He’s CEO of Brumer Pharmaceuticals.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Marr…d,’ he mumbles through his vigorous brushing. ‘Bru…r’s …ghter.’

  After a moment of confusion, she guesses, ‘Married to Brumer’s daughter?’ He nods. ‘Oh.’ What does he expect her to say? ‘Is she pleasant?’

  He bends forward over the basin to spit out the froth and rinse his mouth before he washes his face, careless of the water he splashes on the floor. ‘Who cares what she’s like?’ Embroidered with a curled “D,” the fluffy hand towel he dries his face with muffles his laugh. ‘She’s the heir to Brumer’s fortune! Samanya’s always been a lucky Levid.’

  The Levid part she can agree with. But would Dawud rather have someone like Samanya’s wife? Jamila came to him without decent clothes on her back. All she had was her allegiance to the Spirit King and her innocence. Dawud tells her he loves her, but…she shakes off the hollowness inside her, sighs and rubs the emptiness around her neck.

  Where is her faded wooden Spirit King-pendant? She tucked it away somewhere she can’t remember. These days she wears a real gold necklace, a triple string of yellow, white and red gold, locked in her bedside drawer. She wishes she could forget today is Friday. Three months to her wedding day, and the day of the week she dreads meeting Prior Ajani.

  • • •

  ‘Good morrow, Jamila,’ he’ll say, and add as he always does, ‘Shall I listen to your disclosure today?’

  ‘Yes,’ she’ll say, as she always does, although she hasn’t given a proper disclosure for years.

  She lives with Dawud, in the same house where Prior Ajani himself took her to meet Granny Zahra, and she feeds her ezomo in the middle of the night when Dawud rolls off her body. He pants out his thanks as he falls into the deep sleep of a clear conscience, while she lies sleepless, trying to remember what the Spirit King she loved for so long was like, before she left him behind.

  Prior Ajani never comments on her life. Not even when he’s behind the burgundy velvet curtain that separates them in the disclosure chamber. And she never tells, although her nova is heavier to bear since Dawud asked her to marry him. As if now that their love will be blessed by the Earth Palace—if the invitations are finished on time!—she needs a clean heart before she binds herself to Dawud for eternity.

  Perhaps, when she arrives at the Court today, before the others arrive, she’ll say, ‘Forgive me, Prior, for I have erred.’

  She’ll ask Prior Ajani to bless her. Then she’ll tell him the truth.

  Perhaps.

  She edges the towel Dawud used into perfect corners, manoeuvring it until it lays dead centre on the towel rail. She pats the damp, fluffy material, knowing that, in the end, she’ll disclose the usual small errors: her occasional curse; the small bursts of anger that sometimes catch her unawares and, mostly, her fear and dislike of the Pale One.

  For, in the catharsis of a real disclosure, she may let slip her Great Error: that nagging desire for Daren Samanya, born on a moonlit summer night when first she kissed her ezomo.

  • • •

  Dawud’s soft monotone shakes her out of her dormant sorrow. ‘You’ll meet Samanya’s wife,’ he says. ‘When we have dinner there next week.’

  ‘Dinner where?’

  ‘At Samanya’s house.’

  Her answer is instinctive, birthed from the ezomo that prowls her memories, scared and dangerous and hungry for more. ‘No,’ is all she says.

  Dawud stares at her with blank astonishment. Her guilt usually ensures her compliance; coupled with her urgent need to ensure that he can find no fault in her and forget she came to him poor, and a no-body, she cannot refuse him anything he wants.

  ‘I don’t like Samanya,’ she explains in a half-truth. ‘I don’t want to go.’

  ‘I’d appreciate it if you would come with me,’ he says. ‘There’ll be other people there, people you’ll like.’

  ‘Is it important business?’

  ‘Crucial,’ he says. ‘If Samanya approves the purchase of the Templeton pharmacies, I’ll never have to work again.’

  ‘You want to stop working?’ Papa had never worked a day in his life. Dawud was supposed to be different, but here he is, talking about not working. Her hands flutter up to cup her face. Sordid memories of food parcels collected from Prior Devin flood her and, in her imagination, she hears the sound of coins clattering into a beggar’s tin cup. ‘What will we do?’ she whispers. ‘How will we live?’

  ‘You can carry on with your good deeds at St Jerome’s and I’ll fish.’

  It suits Dawud’s nature to walk to the edge of the ocean, to stand on the rocks and cast his line as far beyond the waves as he can throw it. It never matters to him whether he catches a fish or not; his peace comes from standing on the rocks, monotonously flicking the rod over his head as he casts his line into the sea, and watching the bright yellow bubble-float on the line bob and bounce to the rhythm of the waves.

  Solid as the roots of the oak tree that grows next to the gates that guard the entrance to the Templeton mansion, Dawud is as real as she is not. A whisper trickles into her mind: if you are not real, it taunts, who then is the Jamila you have become?

  For in the city life she carved out in her search for a Jamila who belongs, Jamila Johnson has lost her way. Despite the triple strands of gold to chime her success, the barrenness of her neck cries out in silent reproof. Not even a strip of pale flesh remains as evidence of the youthful faith she’d had in the Spirit King’s promise of love.

  ‘Come with me, Jilly! You’ll enjoy it. Samanya’s not that bad, when you know him,’ Dawud pleads. ‘If I can pull this deal off, it’ll be so good for us.’

  In the end, Jamila agrees to go to Daren Samanya’s house. What else has she to give Dawud, if not to do what he asks? As she yields, the ezomo within her, fed by her fear, gives a greedy rumble and slinks back into the dusk to wait.

  • • •

  She leaves Dawud at the breakfast table and drives to the relative safety of St Jerome’s small court office. She parks the car and walks to the office with slow, dull steps. Lulu waits outside the court office, shivering in the chill wind that blows inland off the bay.

  Jamila greets her with a warm smile, as she would welcome a friend. Today, as she unlocks the heavy wooden door carved with scenes depicting the Spirit King’s miracles, she can do no more than offer a dull hello.

  She buries herself in the routine of waking the court office, pouring enough milk for the day into a jug, checking the fax machine and opening her e-mail, all the while sensing that Lulu, her eyes distorted by her thick spectacles, watches her every move.

  ‘Has someone upset you?’ Lulu eventually asks in her forthright manner.

  Jamila wants to smile and reassure her. Yet, somehow, when she sees the determined impassiveness on Lulu’s face, the threads holding her fear inside snap. A sob tears at her chest and embarrasses her as it erupts from her throat. She fights for control while tension thrums through the air. The Pale One hesitates and Jamila is grateful for the time it gives her to marshal her inner strength. When Lulu puts out a hand, ashen on her dark navy jersey, she’s able to pat it naturally.

  ‘Can I—can I help you?’ Lul
u asks.

  She gives a firm shake of her head: no. She is safe here, in the Spirit King’s Earth Palace, and she continues to count out spoons of fresh ground Brazilian coffee into the percolator. Prior Ajani likes his coffee strong and hot.

  The office sinks into calmness until Jamila hears the soft scratch of metal on plastic as Lulu digs for a paper clip in her stationery holder. As she screws the lid back on the coffee canister, she pauses to watch Lulu clip a receipt to the accounts of the Court with methodical precision. A smile comes unbidden; she imagines some invisible observer will see the same fierce concentration on her face as she bends over a task herself. A pulse of curiosity, a thread of commonality, both forge an invisible and, unwanted, connection with Lulu.

  A thought, once formed, impossible to dismiss, comes into Jamila’s head: neither of them belongs in this old city, where appearances and bloodlines are all that matter.

  Dawud has introduced her to many friends. Beautiful people, confident people, rich and untroubled by hunger or shame. Sometimes she hears a mocking echo; not from behind the school gates of her childhood, but from all around her, blanketing Jamila Johnson in silence and leaving someone else in her place. The Pale One is silent, too, whenever Enoch is around.

  Jamila’s disclosure spills out before she can stop it. ‘I’m angry with Dawud,’ she says.

  Lulu freezes in mid-shuffle. With a slight shake of her head, as if she heard incorrectly, she continues the slow classification of the papers she works with. After a few pages, she stops again and looks at Jamila. ‘Did you say something?’ She tilts her head in enquiry.

  Like a beggar with a pot of gold, Jamila thinks. Too scared to hope, yet still she hopes.

  ‘I said I’m angry with Dawud.’ She adds, ‘He wants me to join him at a dinner with a business colleague.’ As she speaks, she senses in Lulu some indecipherable yearning. It touches some part of her she’s kept inviolate since the days of her childhood. For the first time in a decade, the real Jamila doesn’t want to hide any more. She wants to be free.

  The smell of liberty touches Lulu too for, with a less-than-usual abrasive bark, she asks, ‘How bad can one dinner party be? It won’t last more than a few hours.’

  ‘I’ve had some’—how much can she tell her?—‘some unpleasant experiences with this man.’

  ‘Personal experiences?’

  ‘Very personal.’

  ‘Tell Dawud. He’ll understand.’

  ‘He was there,’ Jamila says. In the beginning. ‘He says I misunderstood; that I’m oversensitive.’

  Lulu curls her lip. ‘Only someone who hasn’t been hurt can believe that.’

  ‘True.’ Jamila puffs a soft laugh, pleased the other woman understands. ‘Dawud’s been loved his whole life. His parents died in The War when he was a baby, but Granny Zahra’s always loved him.’

  ‘And you?’

  Jamila moves across to the cupboard to retrieve her files. Prior Ajani tells her it’s safe to leave the cupboard open; she prefers to keep everything out of sight. ‘She does love me,’ she agrees. ‘Maybe.’

  Lulu tilts her head to one side, a curious, wistful cat. ‘I meant…have you always had someone to love you?’

  ‘Dawud,’ Jamila says. ‘Dawud loves me.’

  ‘He’s lucky to have someone like you.’

  The door slips loose from Jamila’s grip. It flaps wide open, too wide for her comfort but, flustered, she stares at Lulu. Admiration shines out of Lulu’s eyes. Uneasy with the look, Jamila says what pops into her head.

  ‘My Papa was a beggar. He made me beg with him, because a child brought in more money.’ Shocked to hear those hated words, words she has never spoken aloud, Jamila reaches inside the cupboard. She takes out a file, any one, and slams the door shut.

  There. One of her dirty secrets is out and she can’t take it back. So, before Lulu has a chance to answer, she adds, ‘No one else knows.’

  Prior Ajani said the Pale One is intelligent. Lulu proves him right. ‘I’ll not tell anyone,’ she says.

  Jamila gives her a thankful smile and walks to her desk. The clack of her heels is loud in a silence so companionable she struggles with the urge to tell Lulu more about her life. About her loneliness, about how Jamila Johnson has lost her way and how Jamila Templeton does not yet exist, but the habit of solitude holds fast.

  ‘Dawud’s a good man,’ she says. ‘I’m the lucky one.’ She remembers all that’s happened since she came to the city, how changed her life is because of Dawud’s love. ‘I should go with him,’ she says aloud. A car door slams; the gate squeaks; men murmur ‘Good morrow.’ These distant sounds warn Jamila that Prior Ajani and Enoch have arrived, and she takes a final comfort in Lulu’s words.

  ‘After all,’ she adds with a rueful smile, ‘how bad can one dinner party be?’

  Chapter 12

  Zahra (The Past)

  “This is the night

  That either makes me or fordoes me quite.”

  We lay there in the dirt, Grace and Enoch and I, wrapped in each other’s arms and surrounded by the silence of death and the indestructible old mountains. It was safe, then, to remember my Daddy did not die the day Zahra was born; the day she rose out of Little Flower’s sorrow and pointed his own gun at him.

  ‘Come now, Daddy’s Little Flower,’ he said. ‘Put that away. Good girls like you don’t play with guns.’ He smiled confidently and held out his one hand as he walked towards me, the other already undoing the buttons in his trousers.

  ‘I’m not Little Flower,’ I said, as I watched him sit on the edge of her bed. ‘I am Zahra.’

  ‘That’s right,’ he agreed. ‘It’s your birthday today! You’re fifteen, a young lady. I’ll buy you a pretty dress at the store tomorrow. A lady’s dress. You’ll like that, won’t you?’ He ignored the gun Zahra held and leaned over to rub my breasts, his breathing heavier as he stroked his manpart through the gap in his trousers. ‘Be Daddy’s good girl. Let Daddy love you.’

  He did not comprehend Zahra’s steel: nor did I, until that moment.

  ‘Take your hand off my bosom,’ I said, calm and in control. The hand holding the gun did not shake in the slightest as I added, ‘Or I’ll shoot.’

  He didn’t believe me and squeezed tighter. So I squeezed the trigger. There was blood everywhere as Daddy slumped against my chest. Dead, I hoped, and watched, dry-eyed, as his brains bled all over Little Flower’s crumpled nightgown.

  The door flew open. It swung back on its hinges and the landlady and her skinny young lover ran into the room. I opened my fingers and let the gun fall. Removing my Daddy’s hand from my bosom, I let it slide to the floor with a dreary clunk. I looked at them, as they clung to each other, the woman’s mouth open as she wailed and wailed now she was too late to make a difference.

  ‘Be quiet,’ Zahra said, as Little Flower sank and sank, deep into the sediment of her soul, to lie there, poised and waiting. ‘There’s no reason to cry.’

  The landlady’s din gargled to a stop, and she asked, ‘Is he…dead?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ I said. ‘I hope so.’

  Her shrieks started again. I said not another word. Not until the police and the medics came and, between them, moved my Daddy’s body away from where it lay across my chest, trapping me to the bed for the last time.

  ‘He’s alive,’ the one said, as another wrapped the gun in a plastic bag. For evidence, he said.

  I did not cry, not until the day Enoch held me close and Elijah was transfigured by his belief in a Spirit King I could not know and did not believe in.

  • • •

  On my next visit to the clinic, I sat and listened to my Daddy cough, as old Elijah had coughed before he died that dusty morning, another casualty of a war that should never have drifted so far south.

  This silent, moribund old man, as pitiful as he was, was not my Daddy. Yet he was. No one had wanted me to go near him after what he had done. My husband thought he was a senile old uncle of mine and admired my regul
ar visits to the red brick clinic, with its ivy-covered walls and wide expanse of lawn. From the day we married, Barry paid the bills without questions, although he never joined me. I didn’t care about that; all that mattered was that I had moved him from the state hospital he’d been in since he lost his mind.

  As he had for all those years, my Daddy lay there, wrapped in the innocence he had plundered from Little Flower. The scar from the bullet marked his forehead and my heart. The judge, the people who became my foster parents, all acquitted me. They said I was too young; that ten years of my Daddy’s type of loving had broken me.

  They were wrong. It made me. It made Zahra. For it was Little Flower who was weak and, yes, broken by her ezomo.

  How often had she appealed to a Spirit King who did not exist? She had talked to a Prior, but his answer was always the same: ‘Don’t tell such lies, Zahra. Lying is a vice; it’s your ezomo. You must resist it!’ He’d cup the top of my head and bless me, appealing to the Spirit King to remove the errors from my nature, and add, ‘Your Daddy’s a good man. He does all that charity work for underprivileged children!’ He would send me away with the admonition to, ‘Say three Hail Spirit King’s, child, and make three petitions every day. The Spirit King will forgive your Great Errors because he loves you; he’ll always love you.’

  As she knelt in front of the nova, Little Flower would weep and make supplication to the Spirit King to help her, but her ezomo was too insidious. My Daddy still went to her. Every night he went to Little Flower, until I drowned her foolish cries with the sound of the bullet that turned my Daddy senile and, out of her depths, Zahra had arisen.

  Since that glorious transfiguration, I never appealed to the Spirit King again. Never. Why should I petition a Spirit King who allowed such wickedness to exist? Instead, when I sat between Barry and Grace, Saint Grace, in the pithas at the Court of St Jerome’s, I moved my lips in time to the songs of praise, but my mind flew free. I believed in what mattered in this world. My silver sugar shaker; my solid mahogany cupboard; whatever I could squeeze with my fingers the way I squeezed the solid, real trigger on the gun that banished Little Flower’s ezomo forever.