Now I got up from my bed and saw the funeral procession from my window. I stood right in front of the window, which was against my parents’ rules, with my arms folded across my chest, staring directly outside and when I thought someone turned in my direction, like the obedient daughter, I ducked and waited a few minutes before peering outside again. The old man’s body was wrapped in white sheets and his sons had carried him, two on each side of him, struggling with his body while they walked down the stone steps of the crypt.
When I was about eleven, I had once snuck into the crypt without anyone knowing and dust swept into my small face and I had started to cough but no one came running inside or shouted out my name to come up. Glancing around, I saw those white sheets grown flat and there was this odour that I can’t explain now but it smelled like rotten vegetables. I remember covering my mouth with the end of my sleeve and lifting one of the cloths back and when I saw the skull of someone, I jumped and dropped the sheet, stumbled up the steps until I was outside again, the sun shining brightly on me that when I bent over and saw my knee, there were droplets of blood there, dripping down from my thighs. I started to shriek and rushed home where Mama wailed, slapping her hands on her forehead so hard that I thought she might hurt herself. She asked what I had done and I told her, her lips closed in a tight line. She slapped me hard, said I had brought this on myself. I didn’t know what I had brought upon me and when I asked her, she hit me again. “Your period!” she shouted, then grabbed my hand and dragged me to the outhouse.
My period, I thought. Mama pushed up my loose skirt, past my thighs and pulled down my white cotton underwear. When I saw that they were stained with blood, I started to cry. She wiped my tears with her palms and ordered, “Be quiet!” She pushed me down. I sat on the wooden opening and didn’t know if I should relieve my bladder or not but I did anyway. Mama shook her head in disgust. She left the outhouse but returned in a matter of seconds with a handkerchief-sized cloth and clean underwear, which she pulled up my legs roughly. “Stand,” she said coldly. Then she placed the cloth on my underpants and explained that I would have to learn to do this myself, every month.
“Every month?” I asked, exasperated.
“Yes,” she said harshly. “You shouldn’t have scared your period into coming early. Who told you to visit the crypt? Were you getting it ready for me? You’ll drive me to an early grave, I swear, Amal.”
But Mama didn’t die and I got used to those monthly menstrual cycles. For a long time, I had thought that God was punishing me for seeing corpses, disturbing their resting place. But I was smarter than that. Madame Leila had said that I was one of her brightest pupils and even told Mama and Babba that they should send me to the American University of Beirut. I had been serving my teacher some coffee when she’d said those words to my father first, then Mama who had come out of the kitchen with a tray of freshly-baked baklava, the honey oozing from the filo pastry. “Shukran, Leila,” Babba said politely. “But we don’t have the money for university.” My mouth opened and when I said, “Please, Babba,” my voice cracked.
“With her high marks, she can get a scholarship,” Madame Leila said, winking at me. “She’s smarter than the boys.”
“Sometimes she acts like a boy wearing those slacks all the time and wandering to the cave and up the mountains,” Mama said coldly.
But Madame Leila only smiled, the dimples on her round cheeks deepening.
“I’ve always believed that a girl can do the same things as boys and even better.” She laughed but my parents didn’t.
“Amal will marry like her older sister Dunya and maybe she’ll move to Beirut like her. She needs to concentrate on getting a husband, not a university degree.”
I bit my lips. Then picked up the empty plates and cups and rushed into the kitchen, where I slammed the dishes in the sink while I washed them and before I knew it, Mama stood behind me and whispered into my ear, her hot breath tickling my ear lobe. “Stop acting like a child!” she hissed. “We have a guest in our house.” She pushed a bowl of figs into my wet hands and told me to serve my teacher like a good daughter.
But I wasn’t a good daughter. I continued standing at the window in open view of everyone who would happen to turn in my parents’ house direction but no one did; they were preoccupied with tears and grief to even notice me. With my cheeks burning, I returned to my bed and lay flat on my back, the covers thrown to the side and pressed my fingers into my belly. There it was, hard underneath, inside me. I began to pound my fists against my stomach until I turned to the side and threw up on the floor. I fell back onto the mattress and clasped my sheets with my hands, the smell of my vomit rising and I knew that when my parents returned from the funeral, they would berate me and probably make me clean my mess but I vowed that I wouldn’t do it.
****
