Mariam lost count of how many times the belt cracked, how many pleading words she cried out to Rasheed, how many times she circled around the incoherent tangle of teeth and fists and belt, before she saw fingers clawing at Rasheed"s face, chipped nails digging into his jowls and pulling at his hair and scratching his forehead. How long before she realized, with both shock and relish, that the fingers were hers.
He let go of Laila and turned on her. At first, he looked at her without seeing her, then his eyes narrowed, appraised Mariam with interest. The look in them shifted from puzzlement to shock, then disapproval, disappointment even, lingering there a moment.
Mariam remembered the first time she had seen his eyes, under the wedding veil, in the mirror, with Jalil looking on, how their gazes had slid across the gla.s.s and met, his indifferent, hers docile, conceding, almost apologetic.
Apologetic.
Mariam saw now in those same eyes what a fool she had been.
Had she been a deceitful wife? she asked herself. A complacent wife? A dishonorable woman? Discreditable? Vulgar? What harmful thing had she willfully done to this man to warrant his malice, his continual a.s.saults, the relish with which he tormented her? Had she not looked after him when he was ill? Fed him, and his friends, cleaned up after him dutifully?
Had she not given this man her youth?
Had she ever justly deserved his meanness?
The belt made a thump when Rasheed dropped it to the ground and came for her. Some jobs, that thump said, were meant to be done with bare hands.
But just as he was bearing down on her, Mariam saw Laila behind him pick something up from the ground. She watched Laila"s hand rise overhead, hold, then come swooping down against the side of his face. Gla.s.s shattered. The jagged remains of the drinking gla.s.s rained down to the ground. There was blood on Laila"s hands, blood flowing from the open gash on Rasheed"s cheek, blood down his neck, on his shirt. He turned around, all snarling teeth and blazing eyes.
They crashed to the ground, Rasheed and Laila, thrashing about. He ended up on top, his hands already wrapped around Laila"s neck.
Mariam clawed at him. She beat at his chest. She hurled herself against him. She struggled to uncurl his fingers from Laila"s neck. She bit them. But they remained tightly clamped around Laila"s windpipe, and Mariam saw that he meant to carry this through.
He meant to suffocate her, and there was nothing either of them could do about it.
Mariam backed away and left the room. She was aware of a thumping sound from upstairs, aware that tiny palms were slapping against a locked door. She ran down the hallway. She burst through the front door. Crossed the yard.
In the toolshed, Mariam grabbed the shovel.
Rasheed didn"t notice her coming back into the room. He was still on top of Laila, his eyes wide and crazy, his hands wrapped around her neck. Laila"s face was turning blue now, and her eyes had rolled back. Mariam saw that she was no longer struggling. He"s going to kill her, she thought. He really means to. And Mariam could not, would not, allow that to happen. He"d taken so much from her in twenty-seven years of marriage. She would not watch him take Laila too.
Mariam steadied her feet and tightened her grip around the shovel"s handle. She raised it. She said his name. She wanted him to see.
"Rasheed."
He looked up.
Mariam swung.
She hit him across the temple. The blow knocked him off Laila.
Rasheed touched his head with the palm of his hand. He looked at the blood on his fingertips, then at Mariam. She thought she saw his face soften. She imagined that something had pa.s.sed between them, that maybe she had quite literally knocked some understanding into his head. Maybe he saw something in her face too, Mariam thought, something that made him hedge. Maybe he saw some trace of all the self-denial, all the sacrifice, all the sheer exertion it had taken her to live with him for all these years, live with his continual condescension and violence, his faultfinding and meanness. Was that respect she saw in his eyes? Regret?
But then his upper lip curled back into a spiteful sneer, and Mariam knew then the futility, maybe even the irresponsibility, of not finishing this. If she let him walk now, how long before he fetched the key from his pocket and went for that gun of his upstairs in the room where he"d locked Zalmai? Had Mariam been certain that he would be satisfied with shooting only her, that there was a chance he would spare Laila, she might have dropped the shovel. But in Rasheed"s eyes she saw murder for them both.
And so Mariam raised the shovel high, raised it as high as she could, arching it so it touched the small of her back. She turned it so the sharp edge was vertical, and, as she did, it occurred to her that this was the first time that she was deciding the course of her own life.
And, with that, Mariam brought down the shovel. This time, she gave it everything she had.
Chapter 46
Laila
Laila was aware of the face over her, all teeth and tobacco and foreboding eyes. She was dimly aware, too, of Mariam, a presence beyond the face, of her fists raining down. Above them was the ceiling, and it was the ceiling Laila was drawn to, the dark markings of mold spreading across it like ink on a dress, the crack in the plaster that was a stolid smile or a frown, depending on which end of the room you looked at it from. Laila thought of all the times she had tied a rag around the end of a broom and cleaned cobwebs from this ceiling. The three times she and Mariam had put coats of white paint on it. The crack wasn"t a smile any longer now but a mocking leer. And it was receding. The ceiling was shrinking, lifting, rising away from her and toward some hazy dimness beyond. It rose until it shrank to the size of a postage stamp, white and bright, everything around it blotted out by the shuttered darkness. In the dark, Rasheed"s face was like a sunspot.
Brief little bursts of blinding light before her eyes now, like silver stars exploding. Bizarre geometric forms in the light, worms, egg-shaped things, moving up and down, sideways, melting into each other, breaking apart, morphing into something else, then fading, giving way to blackness.
Voices m.u.f.fled and distant.
Behind the lids of her eyes, her children"s faces flared and fizzled. Aziza, alert and burdened, knowing, secretive. Zalmai, looking up at his father with quivering eagerness.
It would end like this, then, Laila thought. What a pitiable end.
But then the darkness began to lift. She had a sensation of rising up, of being hoisted up. The ceiling slowly came back, expanded, and now Laila could make out the crack again, and it was the same old dull smile.
She was being shaken. Are you all right? Answer me, are you all right? Mariam"s face, engraved with scratches, heavy with worry, hovered over Laila.
Laila tried a breath. It burned her throat. She tried another. It burned even more this time, and not just her throat but her chest too. And then she was coughing, and wheezing. Gasping. But breathing. Her good ear rang.
THE FIRST THING she saw when she sat up was Rasheed. He was lying on his back, staring at nothing with an unblinking, fish-mouthed expression. A bit of foam, lightly pink, had dribbled from his mouth down his cheek. The front of his pants was wet. She saw his forehead.
Then she saw the shovel.
A groan came out of her. "Oh," she said, tremulously, barely able to make a voice, "Oh, Mariam."
LAILA PACED, moaning and banging her hands together, as Mariam sat near Rasheed, her hands in her lap, calm and motionless. Mariam didn"t say anything for a long time.
Laila"s mouth was dry, and she was stammering her words, trembling all over. She willed herself not to look at Rasheed, at the rictus of his mouth, his open eyes, at the blood congealing in the hollow of his collarbone.
Outside, the light was fading, the shadows deepening. Mariam"s face looked thin and drawn in this light, but she did not appear agitated or frightened, merely preoccupied, thoughtful, so self-possessed that when a fly landed on her chin she paid it no attention. She just sat there with her bottom lip stuck out, the way she did when she was absorbed in thought.
At last, she said, "Sit down, Laila jo."
Laila did, obediently.
"We have to move him. Zalmai can"t see this."
MARIAM FISHED THE bedroom key from Rasheed"s pocket before they wrapped him in a bedsheet. Laila took him by the legs, behind the knees, and Mariam grabbed him under the arms. They tried lifting him, but he was too heavy, and they ended up dragging him. As they were pa.s.sing through the front door and into the yard, Rasheed"s foot caught against the doorframe and his leg bent sideways. They had to back up and try again, and then something thumped upstairs and Laila"s legs gave out. She dropped Rasheed. She slumped to the ground, sobbing and shaking, and Mariam had to stand over her, hands on hips, and say that she had to get herself together. That what was done was done.
After a time, Laila got up and wiped her face, and they carried Rasheed to the yard without further incident. They took him into the toolshed. They left him behind the workbench, on which sat his saw, some nails, a chisel, a hammer, and a cylindrical block of wood that Rasheed had been meaning to carve into something for Zalmai but had never gotten around to doing.
Then they went back inside. Mariam washed her hands, ran them through her hair, took a deep breath and let it out. "Let me tend to your wounds now. You"re all cut up, Laila jo."
MARIAM SAID SHE needed the night to think things over. To get her thoughts together and devise a plan.
"There is a way," she said, "and I just have to find it."
"We have to leave! We can"t stay here," Laila said in a broken, husky voice. She thought suddenly of the sound the shovel must have made striking Rasheed"s head, and her body pitched forward. Bile surged up her chest.
Mariam waited patiently until Laila felt better. Then she had Laila lie down, and, as she stroked Laila"s hair in her lap, Mariam said not to worry, that everything would be fine. She said that they would leave - she, Laila, the children, and Tariq too. They would leave this house, and this unforgiving city. They would leave this despondent country altogether, Mariam said, running her hands through Laila"s hair, and go someplace remote and safe where no one would find them, where they could disown their past and find shelter.
"Somewhere with trees," she said. "Yes. Lots of trees."
They would live in a small house on the edge of some town they"d never heard of, Mariam said, or in a remote village where the road was narrow and unpaved but lined with all manner of plants and shrubs. Maybe there would be a path to take, a path that led to a gra.s.s field where the children could play, or maybe a graveled road that would take them to a clear blue lake where trout swam and reeds poked through the surface. They would raise sheep and chickens, and they would make bread together and teach the children to read. They would make new lives for themselves - peaceful, solitary lives - and there the weight of all that they"d endured would lift from them, and they would be deserving of all the happiness and simple prosperity they would find.
Laila murmured encouragingly. It would be an existence rife with difficulties, she saw, but of a pleasurable kind, difficulties they could take pride in, possess, value, as one would a family heirloom. Mariam"s soft maternal voice went on, brought a degree of comfort to her. There is a way, she"d said, and, in the morning, Mariam would tell her what needed to be done and they would do it, and maybe by tomorrow this time they would be on their way to this new life, a life luxuriant with possibility and joy and welcomed difficulties. Laila was grateful that Mariam was in charge, unclouded and sober, able to think this through for both of them. Her own mind was a jittery, muddled mess.
Mariam got up. "You should tend to your son now." On her was the most stricken expression Laila had ever seen on a human face.
LAILA FOUND HIM in the dark, curled up on Rasheed"s side of the mattress. She slipped beneath the covers beside him and pulled the blanket over them.
"Are you asleep?"
Without turning around to face her, he said, "Can"t sleep yet. Baba jan hasn"t said the Babaloo prayers with me."