What To Say To Someone Who Knows Everything
2nd generation. Year 1840:
My mouth throbs with a yearning for remembrance, to be able to recall the taste of sweet sesame sauce on a numb winter day.
A pale hunger rises with the sun and Zohra turns to the body beside her, under a thick blanket with twenty shades of brown. Her eyes trace the muffled curves and land on the face of her husband, calm muscles that lie smooth under the folds of his skin with many shades of brown. The bones that she calls to respond weakly, sorely missing the restful state of sleep. After yesterday, a long day of twisting and slashing in fields with tall friends of grass and grain, Zohra’s body wanted to be still and hum a healing song. But her head, her mind, was a wild thing that scrapped and fought at every waking moment – never resting to decide what exactly it wanted.
Zohra prepares herself for the day, another one where the sun would be shy, and the wind would be bold. During the routine, she pauses on the last step. She runs her fingers through her hair and reminisces at what she once had. The sureness of the dark strands, the knowing gleam they let out, and the heavy way they signaled that this was a woman standing in front of you. Now though, light silver peeks through the metallic red henna-dye and what was left of the treasure trove hangs on with hope and not much else.
Giving her head one shake, she briskly buttons up her jacket and steps into her shoes. The Earth hears her firm stomps that morning and understands that this is a day she is set to control and dominate once again. Her capable hands grip the bucket with feed and hoist it onto her hip. Her hands are splotchy in the cold, some parts bleach while and other parts a sharp pink. The chickens cluck and shuffle around her, but not close enough to push her, no, never that. Even they knew better.
She gathers the eggs, one for each hen exactly the way it should be. The warmth makes her pause and listen for a moment. The lovely hum of a life is there, it raises a feeling in her - but she is quick to put it aside for the rest of the chores that need to be done. For a moment, she was entranced by something she knew she couldn’t control.
When she makes her way back inside, her shoes slip off and the basket of eggs glide onto the table. Two eggs leave the basket. Rubbing her hands together with the remaining warmth, she starts on making breakfast. There will be no spinach entrenched omelet today because there is no daughter to eat it. Yuna had set off from the village years ago to climb up to places Zohra couldn’t. Soon though, she will come back.
Yuna was special to Zohra as more than a daughter but as a second chance at life. Unlike any other relationship, Zohra never felt that familiar spike of competitiveness with Yuna. It was always a satisfaction and urge for her to do more, be everything Zohra couldn’t.
--
The bus rumbled and argued with the ground over who dominated what space at what time. Us humans though, we just strapped ourselves in and let ourselves be slung around. I grip my bag’s strap tightly on the seat next to me so it won’t tumble over and make this journey any harder than it needs to be.
The window pulls at my attention, it’s the only place I can look without seeing peeling red upholstery, loud blue paint shocked with white, and the various sizes and shapes of luggage hiding the people behind them. There, I see green. The Earth is boasting and booming in a prideful voice, remembering the way She was shunned over with concrete in other spaces of the world.
The bus rolls into the large patch of dirt it was assigned to and we lug our bags out with our bodies that are numb from disuse. I swing my limbs, trying to make them feel again by looping them through the chilly air. With this bizarre movement, I make my way over to the main village area. The houses huddle together with room for some gardens and pens, the green jumbled together with oranges, yellows, and browns surrounded by the valley walls like a pot of fried rice.
Some shops are set up along the main road, they stand on stilted legs in front of talent hidden from the world. The market air wins over the smell of rain and grass that surrounds us with the cooking scents from pots of soup, fresh vegetables sizzling in spices, dumplings enticing with unbearably soft skins. I come across a woman cutting through stiff white sheets of daikon radish. I walk behind the plant on the table and stop to peer through thin dying bamboo leaves, giving a green and gold frame to her hands setting up traps with her sly vegetable knife.
I want to belong here again, but I know I am fundamentally changed from when I lived here. I used to know every one of these shops and even which seasonings they used to flavor their dishes. I used to know who gave out sweets on holidays and who hit their kids.
The woman’s knife stops dancing around its prey, and I look up to meet her eyes, a little disappointed that the hunt had ended.
“Can I help you ma’am? Or, um, sir?” Her stocky figure stood unmoving, her hands stable, but her voice was hesitantly unsure, as if trying out this feeling of being at a loss.
I decline and keep walking, continuing on the path, but I smile and feel my eyes and cheeks smile too, as if I had a piece of sweet ginger candy in my mouth. As if there was more room in my body for my spirit.
I keep walking towards a plot of land I know well. This patch of Earth knows me well too. It learned who I am before I knew it, knowing me from the pulse of my mother’s womb. She knew me from my first steps, whose child I was and who I was going to become. That’s why She did not welcome me with any shock, but with a knowing hum.
I face my house and my parents’ voices pour through the walls. I walk towards the house that held me during childhood, each flower stretching a wild welcome. I found my mother, watched her turn to face me.
My mother stared at my head. My head that was completely bald and what I’m sure was a world apart from what she knew. She shut her eyes and I could see a fluttering behind her eyelids, a sudden loss of density in her frame.
--
Zohra lifted her gaze from her cooking and felt a rise in her chest, an unbearable swell to see her daughter. She laid eyes on her daughter, a smile that grazed Yuna’s whole body then stopped, struck by a realization.
A return to reality and a loss of what she thought she knew of her world. Her gaze lifted from her daughter’s sound body back to her head. It was a feeling that replicated the one she had when Yuna was born, an impulse to check for 10 fingers and 10 toes that came back every time she laid eyes on her baby. This time though, there was no need to worry about fingers or toes because it wasn’t Yuna’s hands or feet that changed. Their head, with no hair. The thought came floating back to Zohra again and again, just like that impulse, but this she had to sit with. It wasn’t something she could satisfy and send away. It wasn’t hers to send away.
Zohra recoiled from this turn of reality and shrank away from the sight as if she woke up one morning having switched genders. She herself, felt like a stranger in her body.
“Why would you even do that?” Zohra skipped any formality, left behind the joy of seeing her daughter, and went in straight for the kill. She reached for this, parched, and wanted a reason she couldn’t fathom.
“Because I wanted to. It’s not even important. It’s mine and I can do what I want with it.” Yuna turned her back on Zohra, their lips suffering an onslaught of teeth in disappointment.
“I want to know why you did it! ‘I wanted to’ is not an answer.”
“Yes it is! I can do whatever I want with my hair because it’s mine and no one else’s.” Yuna turned around again, diving into the rage concocted between the two of them.
“It’s mine too!”
At that, Yuna had to laugh. It was a harsh laugh with a mean humorous edge.
“You always want everything your way! You don’t own me! I’m my own person!” Yuna’s voice had no air in it, it wasn’t wholesome, it was a sound a cornered animal would make.
“When did I get what I want? Did you think I wanted to get married before I even got to go to college? Did you think I wanted to be the pride of my family, the little daughter who did what she was told? After all that, all I wanted was you.” Zohra’s teeth were bared and her eyes were wet.
“You didn’t want to love me, you wanted to control me.”
“That’s not true! I let you go off to a place I’ve never even been to just so you could get a good job and you wouldn’t have to work 12 hours a day just to survive!”
At this, they both came to a point where they were too tired to shout. They reflected each other, their shoulders rising and falling like ancient mountains over time. Both their throats hurt, from the strain of forcing out words and from holding back tears in their anger.
“No one is going to marry you like this. Now we have to wait until it grows out, by then most of the good ones will be gone.”
“Why is marriage the only thing you think about when you look at me? It’s the only thing you talk about! Am I not worth considering for anything else?”
“It’s what you need to do! It’s what everyone does as an adult! You need a family! What will people think?”
“No, I don’t! I don’t have to do anything except be myself and die. As long as I love myself, that’s enough. I don’t care about what anyone else thinks.” Yuna stood as if claiming that square foot of floor as their own kingdom, ignoring the seed within them that said it was their mother’s land.
Zohra threw her head back at that, exasperated and incredulous. The foundation of her experience on Earth was attacked by her daughter’s perspective.
“You have to care - about other people!” Zohra’s voice shook. She was furious with herself for that.
“You don’t need me anymore huh? You’re fine with your self-love, right?” Zohra’s nostrils flared out and her throat rejected air, it burned in bile.
Yuna put down their shoulders at that. This was a crack in their mother’s armor they could attack if they wanted to. If they did though, there would be no going back.
What Yuna really wanted though, was their real self and their past to reconcile.
“Mama, I do love myself, but I want your love too. Loving myself is tiring, and I just want to be loved. It’s hard work taking care of myself and I need your support so I can live without killing myself to feel alive and loved. I can’t live how you want me to, but that doesn’t mean I don’t care about you. There’s a difference between caring about you and caring about what you think of me.” Yuna swallowed, tasting their own blood from their lips.
Both of them took a breath. Once again, they mirrored each other. Zohra was fighting time and age to stand straight. Her hair was limp and hung on with sheer strength of will. Yuna stood on land they were afraid of not belonging to, but their stance was tall as their mother had taught them.
“I still feel beautiful without my hair. I think you’re beautiful as you are too.” Yuna offered.
Zohra breathed slower. She looked down at her body. For all her life, the only power she thought she had was her power of femininity. Belonging into her gender role, she had the privilege of finding a husband that was kind. She knew what would have happened in her life if she had decided to throw off her family’s expectations. Was that threat them or was it within her? She thought of others that defied and went to go chase their dreams, her old classmates that went ahead. They were unmarried but maybe they weren’t lonely. She thought of the ways she pushed herself down and forward into what was expected of her. What if she had gone to college? But Zohra knew she chose to be married when she was told to, and there was no point in dwelling on the past.
She knew that the only way that she lived through each pain and joy she experienced was in the fact that she chose this life. She couldn’t choose her demanding nature, but she chose to be in a place that she felt was appropriate for her. Over time, the Earth understood who she was and what she needed. It folded to accommodate her life, so it was livable.
Maybe life will never be easy, but at least you chose the pain you carried. With that, Zohra met Yuna’s eyes. Tear filled, Zohra put forward the most vulnerable question yet.
“Are you hungry?”