Until they sleep, p.3
Until They Sleep, page 3
Frona’s hair was right there on top of her head for the whole world to see, and so it couldn’t be bad. She need not keep it hidden, like other bad things. Lying in bed, she willed her hair to change. Let it become more, draw attention, evolve into something to desire and behold. She brushed and brushed it every morning and every evening, thinking just a little bit more smoothness would be the catalyst needed to make touch come to her.
And one morning, Frona swore her hair seemed a bit darker, a bit shinier, maybe even a bit smoother. Frona ran and found her mother standing at the hearth, leaning over a pot. Angling into her line of sight, she tossed her head back and forth. She needed her mother’s confirmation of the change.
“Mama?” she questioned, getting a distracted grunt in return. “Can you please braid my hair?”
“Ask Hekta, agapemou,” her mother said, reaching overhead for the oregano dangling from the rafters. “And take your brothers outside to pee.”
S Hekta couldn’t help but pull when she tied back Frona’s hair. She apologized, explaining why it was hard to gather, the way it all puffed out in different directions. If Hekta had noticed a difference, anything at all, she failed to mention it, but Frona refused to give up. Her hair was the key. Receiving appropriate affection would be the ladder to her salvation. If someone would run their hand through her hair and pet her head, she was positive other parts of her would cease to cry out for attention. Sometimes—although she knew she was not supposed to ask God for favours—Frona even prayed for the hair of her dreams. She saw it as a way of banishing the demons and so reasoned it was acceptable. She wanted to be cured.
For all her praying, Frona woke up one morning the recipient of a different physical change. Whereas the previous day she had been looking up to her mother, she greeted her on this day by looking down. She was not only taller, she was several inches taller. Her skirt was no longer an appropriate length. Walking was no longer natural, and she had to learn how to coordinate her legs again. Frona’s mother acknowledged the change with her usual assessment of practicalities: she tasked Frona to lengthen the hemline of her skirt, which she deemed necessary before Frona would be allowed to go to the church, or ever leave the house again. Frona retreated to a corner with her sewing needle and pulled off her skirt. She made sure her back was turned to Mary and the baby Christ as she sat in her underclothes.
Frona cast glances at her legs and feet between careful stitches. Was it only those two limbs that had grown longer, or had her whole body stretched out? Were both legs growing at the same speed? She pointed her toes and compared the distance each foot could stretch, noting the dirt on her legs with mild embarrassment. It had only been two days since she last bathed, but she should go to the spring later today and do it again. She licked her finger and scrubbed at her ankle. The dirt didn’t come off. She set down her sewing to lick and scrub with more vigour, but it could not be removed. Shame burned bright. Her mother would not be pleased if she knew how much Frona had neglected her cleanliness. She pulled her ankle across the opposite knee to get a closer look at the offending grime.
It was not dirt. Not all of it. Her hands clapped over her mouth to stifle her alarm.
It was hair.
Frona glanced around, listening for familiar sounds to make sure she was alone. The distant voices of her mother and siblings in the garden assured her, so she leaned in closer to examine her legs. More hair. From her toes to her knees, dark and quite long. She tugged at one, and the skin rose up around it in sharp protest. It would not let go of her skin. She followed the hair up and up from her knees and it did not stop. The room spun. She looked around once more, listening carefully for the sounds from outside to make sure she was still alone. She had been diligent in the avoidance of her own body since the shame of the fig tree, but her curiosity at this moment outweighed her fear, and she allowed her eyes to search farther. Ears alert, she pulled up the bottom of her underskirt and then whipped her hands away. How could it be? Frona was in such a fragile state, she cried out when Hekta burst through the door.
“Have you seen a ghost?” Hekta said, looking around the room. Frona grabbed her skirt—not yet complete—and put it on as quickly as she could manage to cover up the newly discovered atrocities.
“You startled me,” she managed to say, leaning forward to put a few more stitches in, temporarily holding the fabric in place. She used her teeth to cut the thread and hastily swept everything back into the sewing basket. She would finish it later. Frona walked through the doorway at an urgent pace and, excusing herself, ran until she reached the cover of foliage. She pushed on through the brush, wanting the stay out of sight. Instead of praying as she normally would, she berated herself with unabating ferocity. She was a fool. How could she have been so stupid as to pray for long, dark hair without specifying from where it would grow?
Once she had run far enough to ensure complete privacy, she was able to take full stock of the situation. It was worse than she imagined. There was hair everywhere. Her arms, of course, but her stomach? She could even feel some on her face if she used her fingers to pull. It was under her arms, too. She twisted her body past the point of warning muscle spasms and found hair on her back. And the worst part: the place between her legs, the source of so much anguish, was now wearing a dark, conspicuous tuft. Was it punishment? A warning, a test, a branding of her impurity? She grabbed at it but couldn’t pull it off. She tried pinching one hair at a time between two fingers and plucking it out. After a few tries, she managed to pull one, and another. Tears pricked at her eyes and blood bubbled to the surface of her skin, and the thirty-one hairs she managed to pull out were drops of water in a well. She collapsed on the ground and cried.
In the weeks that followed, Frona prayed as if feverish. She fretted and suffered in silence. Nervous and jumpy, she feared someone would catch a glimpse of her secret. Her body was there, in the world, where anyone could see it. She slept as close to the edge of the bed as she could, worried Hekta would brush against her and feel something amiss. Was this punishment for her vanity? She had wished for hair that could be touched, and the hair had chosen to concentrate there.
What she longed to hear, from somewhere, anywhere—words tumbling down from the mountaintops, falling from heavy clouds, carried on messenger’s wings, however they managed to find her ears—was you are good, you are good, you are good.
That night, dreaming beside her sister, the sun grew the ears and the tail of a cat, beaming rays of whiskers. The tail stretched down from the sky, a cylindrical beam of light, and stroked from her face to her toes and back again, a pressing heat drawing her up and up and up, until she burst into a thousand pieces and scattered to the wind.
* * *
And the years passed, as they do.
Aiming thread through the eye of her needle, Frona focused to see one hole instead of two. The evening shadows grew longer, and the jumping light of the fire made her task all the more difficult. She pulled the thread through her lips for a third time, trying to tame the stubborn frayed end. Her steady hand was guiding the thread in the right direction when she felt a sharp jolt deep inside of her, and the needle fell to the ground. She pressed the flat of her palm against her gut, shaking off a wave a dizziness. It didn’t seem to be her stomach, but a strange ache persisted, somewhere.
An image—unassuming, yet assertive—sat itself in her mind’s eye, and she could think of nothing but an egg. Not an egg she had eaten nor any egg of the sort she had encountered in her life, yet an egg, nonetheless. The idea prodded her, persistent like the ache, both crying for her attention. She set down her sewing for the next day.
By the time Frona pulled the blankets up to her chin in bed, she knew there was an egg inside of her. Even though, as far as she was concerned, creatures like the hens in their yard and the birds in the trees were the only things that should contain eggs within their bodies; even though she knew human babies were born without a shell, had peeped at the midwife at her work through many a window and saw the new bodies, wet and soft; even though she knew eggs had a bit of weight to them, that you could hold them in the palm of your hand; even though she knew all of these things, she also knew the thing inside of her, beyond explanation, was an egg. Tinier than she thought it possible for an egg to be, yet an egg. Its purpose remained a mystery, and—as with most thoughts occupying her mind—she dared not speak of it to anyone.
Though its arrival caused her pain, Frona decided it had been unintentional. A way of getting her attention. The question of friend versus foe was settled: the egg would be her companion. She lay in bed and felt the egg travel, making minute but definite progress through tunnels inside of her she had not known existed.
It was passing something on to her, emanating an excited anticipation combined with the utmost patience. She couldn’t help but suspect something wonderful was about to happen, as if the world was about to be turned inside-out and everything would be fine; all she had to do was wait. It was a comfort, this thing. She eventually drifted off to sleep and woke up the next morning with a smile on her face. Her steps felt lighter, and there it was all day, glimmer of pleasant ache, deep inside of her. Here I am, here I am.
As Frona stirred a pot of beans, she swayed back and forth, imagining she was rocking her egg to sleep when —as suddenly as it had appeared—its energy started waning. She pressed her palms to her stomach, trying to grasp what she did not have access to. It hadn’t occurred to her that the egg might go away. She considered their time together to be the beginning of a new relationship, a new constant. She was not ready to deal with the loss of something she had only just begun to appreciate. The egg was fading, along with its contented demeanour, dissolving into a fog of unmet needs. Frona’s legs began a violent shaking. She reached for something to steady herself, and her hand collided with a collection of jars. The loud clatter brought her concerned mother to her side.
“I’m fine. Sorry to startle you,” Frona said. She straightened the jars as her mother returned to her siblings in the bedroom without another glance. The egg was gone without the slightest trace of what had been. It must have been her fault, but she couldn’t figure out why. Deep sadness gathered like moisture into rain clouds, building and building, developing into a black storm that lasted for the next twelve days—a swirling darkness sweeping through the house, lightning strikes of anger splitting her skull, booms of thundering disapproval at every member of her family. Their actions, their words, wrong, all wrong. Infuriating. Not even Hekta, who was always permitted by her side in her robust, amiable way, could escape her fury.
“Hekta, that’s my sewing needle. Fetch your own—you’re messing up what I started.”
“You’ve been in my way all day. I’m going to trip over you. Leave me be!”
“You are such a complete nuisance. Give me some space!”
“The only thing you seem to be good for is bothering me. I wish you’d disappear!” As the torrent of hatred left her mouth, Hekta’s sweet face crumpled beneath its weight. Frona regretted every word she was saying, even as they passed her lips, but she was powerless to catch them and reel them back in, to stop more from following. A trickle of anger had turned into a spray, and then the whole dam had burst, and all Frona could do was speak more and more cruelties while listening to herself in disbelief.
“You can go to the church any time. Why must it be when I’m going?” Intense loneliness begged Frona to gather her sister in her arms and tell her she was sorry. Tell her she liked her company, that she couldn’t explain why her emotions had run amok. Instead, she aimed for the church in a solitary huff, and Hekta turned back down the path to their home.
The egg was gone. She needed to mourn it, and no one else—not even her dearest sibling, her closest friend —would be able to understand anyway, so there was no point in trying to explain.
The storm broke on the thirteenth day, when Frona awoke cocooned in calm. She could think, and the haze of confused anger had dissolved. The world was not against her. Hekta rolled over beside her, bumping Frona with her elbow. “I’m sorry!” she cried, bracing herself. Her small body had bounced away from Frona’s, cowering. “I didn’t mean to. I was half asleep and turned over and I didn’t know you were so close—”
“It’s fine. Let’s go get breakfast,” Frona said. She was glad her little sister had decided to stop being such a bother. Everyone had been so intent on aggravating her for the last couple of weeks. Finally, some respite.
* * *
Later that day, in the privacy of the fields, when a strange dampness implored Frona to reach under her skirt, an animal red painted her retreating fingers. Had a part of her died? Was she breaking? It hurt. She imagined the demons, tearing her flesh with their sharp little sticks.
It was hard to stay on her feet, but she found her sister.
“I think something is wrong with me.” She explained the bleeding, and bravely, with many false starts and hesitations, where it was coming from.
“Does it hurt?”
“Not really. But it aches and feels full, like something has burst.”
“Mama will know what to do,” Hekta said, still under the youthful impression that mothers could fix anything. Shame tore, worse than any cramps. Tell their mother? The last thing she wanted was another encounter with her mother related to that particular part of her body.
“I’ll be fine. Let’s keep walking.” She forced a smile and continued along the path, fighting the urge to double over with every step. Cold prickled her forehead, and it was wet to the touch. She checked her fingers to see if there was blood there, too. A wave of intense dizziness brought her to her knee.
Hekta was at her side in an instant. “Look at me,” she said, pulling Frona’s chin up to meet her eyes. “Oh, you look terrible. You’re completely pale. We have to get help.”
“No,” Frona whispered, but it was all the protest she could manage. She allowed Hekta to pull her to her feet and lead her back home. Goings-on between her legs were the exact things she had fought for so long to keep to herself, yet she was desperate for someone to take charge and tell her everything was going to be all right. Maybe this blood was the result of her urges, or the sin of the fig tree so many years ago, or perhaps it was punishment for her dreams, which had been getting more and more vivid. What would be worse: her impending death, or having to speak of its origins to her mother? Bright points of light twinkled from somewhere deeper than her vision.
“Can you tell her for me?” Frona asked.
It was clear she felt honoured to be able to help her older sister with such a serious matter. Hekta was not ashamed to speak her mind, and in fact often spoke too much of it without a second thought.
They found their mother in the yard, pulling wet blankets from a basket and hanging them to dry on the line, as though this were the same as any other day. The hot mountain air had almost no humidity, and the thick blankets would be dry well within the hour. Frona watched her mother, focused on her task, blissfully unaware. Would she know what to do? Would she panic as well? She wanted her mother to stay insulated, to stay in this place where she didn’t have a daughter with blood between her legs, where she wouldn’t immediately be reminded of the fig tree and what her daughter had been doing with it. Frona wanted to remain the good girl she had been trying so hard to be, a girl who closed off those parts of herself and resisted her impulses.
“Mama, we need help,” Hekta called, quickening her steps as Frona stopped her own. “Frona has blood coming from the secret place between her legs.” The words themselves might be her cause of death. How could her sister speak of sensitive matters with such aplomb? Their mother’s hand paused in midair, blankets flapping around her, a wooden peg pinched open between thumb and finger. She turned and disappeared into the house without a word.
Maybe she was going to get the icon? Her Bible? Her rosary?
“Maybe she’ll have to look at it?” Hekta said. “Or maybe the doctor will?” Frona squeezed her legs together. If anyone looked at her there, her nature would surely be exposed. There must be something emanating from within. A heat. Or, they would find the demons, scrambling for cover. Whatever they found, the truth about who she was would be obvious, beyond doubt. Maybe her mother was packing up Frona’s things right now, in preparation for the worst, knowing the only thing to do was to send her sinful daughter away. Maybe it would be a relief, not to carry this secret anymore—soon everyone would know who she was.
“Can I look at it?” Hekta asked.
The door slammed behind their returning mother, who was wearing a grave expression. She handed Frona a scrap of fabric, a wad of cotton, and her sewing kit, and with a finality permitting no further questions, said, “You are a woman now. Make something to hide it.”
Hekta burst into tears.
* * *
Womanhood was met with action, and not long after the appearance of her blood, Frona’s father informed her that she was betrothed. In four years, she was to be the bride of Kimon Soltanis—the nephew of a cousin of the local doctor from the foot of the next mountain. In four years, just after her eighteenth birthday. In four years, after Kimon Soltanis finished his compulsory military service. In four years.
Frona lowered her eyes and replied, “Yes, Baba.” Her eyes aimed forward, her mouth a grim line of determination, she slipped out of the house and took the path up to the church. She gripped her prayer beads until they bit into her palms.
She could leave. Steal one of the donkeys, no, borrow one of the donkeys. Pick up work cooking and cleaning and minding children in some wealthy home, far, far away, where she could change her name and wouldn’t have to mention anything about her past. She could let people assume she was an orphan. And maybe she could bring Hekta with her. They made a good team. But no, that would be selfish. She could return later, once she was too old to be married, when all would be forgiven and she could reunite with her sister. Would all be forgiven?
