The Lost Sisterhood (4 page)

NORTH AFRICA
LATE BRONZE AGE

T
WO FIGURES APPEARED ON THE SHIMMERING HORIZON.

It was the bright, burning time of day, when heaven and earth came together in a silvery haze, and it was impossible to tell one from the other. But slowly, as they made their way across the salt flats, the two quavery forms materialized as women—one fully grown, the other not quite so.

Myrina and Lilli had been away for many days, just the two of them. The purpose of their trip was evident, for all species of prey and weaponry dangled from their shoulders by leather straps, and their steps quickened as they approached the village ahead. “How proud Mama will be!” exclaimed Lilli. “I hope you will tell her how I snared that rabbit.”

“I shall leave out no detail,” promised Myrina, ruffling her younger sister’s matted hair, “except perhaps the part where you nearly broke your neck.”

“Yes—” Lilli drew up her shoulders and did the funny turtle walk she always did when she was embarrassed. “Better not mention that, or I shall never be allowed to come out with you again. And that”—she glanced up at Myrina with a hopeful smile—”would be a shame, would it not?”

Myrina nodded firmly. “A great shame. You have the makings of a
fine hunter. And besides”—she could not help it, she had to giggle—”you are an inexhaustible well of amusement.”

Lilli scowled, but Myrina knew she was secretly pleased. Small for a girl of twelve, her sister had been desperate to prove herself on the trip, and Myrina had been happily surprised at her endurance. Come hunger or fatigue, Lilli never refused a task, never shed a tear. At least not when Myrina was looking.

Being a whole six years older than Lilli, and easily as capable as any man her own age, Myrina had seen it as her duty to teach her sister the art of hunting. The idea, however, had met with visceral resistance from their mother, who had never stopped thinking of Lilli as her baby, and who still sang her to sleep at night.

Walking home with Lilli now, seeing the new pride in her bearing, Myrina could not wait to place it all before their mother’s feet: the glorious catch, the many tales, and the youngest daughter returning from the wild safe and smiling, with the bloody mark of the hunter drawn upon her forehead.

“Do you think they will roast it all at once?” asked Lilli, interrupting Myrina’s thoughts. “It would be quite the feast. Although”—she looked down at a bundle of tiny fish hanging from her belt by a woolen string—”some things are rather small and perhaps not worth mentioning at all.”

“In my experience,” said Myrina, “it is the small ones that are most tasty—”

She stopped. They had turned the bend by the pasture, and the Tamash Village lay immediately ahead. This was where the dogs always came to greet her, knowing that her appearance heralded meat scraps and marrow bones.

But today, no dogs came. And when Myrina paused to listen, she heard none of the usual sounds from the village, only the hoarse cries of birds and an odd, persistent buzzing as of thousands of honeybees in a patch of flowers. The only signs of life were a few thick columns of smoke rising from somewhere among the huts and wafting away into the infinite blue.

“What is it?” asked Lilli, her eyes widening. “What do you hear?”

“I am not sure,” said Myrina, feeling every little hair on her body rise in apprehension. “Why don’t you stay here.” She took Lilli by the shoulders and held her still.

“Why? What is wrong?” Lilli’s voice was shrill, and when Myrina started walking, the girl followed her. “Please tell me!”

Now at last, Myrina saw one of the dogs. It was the spotted pup that always came and slept at her feet during storms—the pup she had nursed back to life once, and which sometimes stared at her with eyes that were almost human.

One look at this dog—its slinking, obsequious manner, its nervous yawn—told Myrina everything she needed to know. “Don’t touch him!” she cried, as Lilli stepped forward, arms outstretched.

But it was too late. Her sister had already taken the pup by the neck and started rubbing it fondly. “Lilli!” Myrina pulled the girl abruptly to her feet. “Did you not hear me? Touch nothing!”

Only then did she see the first tremor of understanding in Lilli’s face.

“Please,” said Myrina, softening her voice so much it began to quiver, “be good now and stay here, while I”—she cast another uneasy glance toward the silent houses ahead—”make sure everything is well.”

Walking into the village, both hands clenched around her spear, Myrina looked everywhere for signs of violence. Certain the place had been attacked by rival tribesmen or wild animals, she was braced for gruesome sights, yet wholly unprepared for what she found.

“You!” A hoarse, hateful voice reached her from inside a hut, and a moment later a hunched woman came out, sweat beading off her body. “It was your mother who did this to us—” The woman spat on the ground, her saliva crimson with blood. “Your witch of a mother!”

“Nena, my friend—” Myrina took a few steps back. “What happened here?”

The woman spat again. “Did you not hear me? Your mother cursed us all. She called down a plague and said she would kill everyone who didn’t approve of her whoring ways.”

Walking on, Myrina found sickness and grief wherever she looked. Men, women, and children were clustered in the shade, trembling with
fear and fever; others were kneeling at smoldering fires, silently rubbing themselves with ashes. And the place where her mother’s hut had been was now nothing but a bed of black coals with familiar objects unceremoniously thrown in.

Unable to fully comprehend what she was looking at, Myrina knelt down to pick up a small blackened circle sticking out of the ashes. It was the bronze bracelet her mother had worn on her wrist, and which she had always claimed would remain there until her dying day.

“I am so sorry, my dear,” said a faint voice, and Myrina turned to find her mother’s old neighbor standing there, leaning on a cane, a ring of open sores around his mouth. “You had better go. They are looking for someone to blame. I have tried to speak reason, but no one wants reason now.”

Pressing a hand to her mouth, Myrina began walking away, ignoring the comments following her through the village as she went. “Whore!” yelled the men, not because she had ever lain with them, but because she hadn’t. “Witch!” cried the women, forgetting it was Myrina’s mother who had come at night to hold their hands and deliver their babies … and forgetting it was Myrina who had made playthings for those babies out of animal bones.

When she finally returned to Lilli, the girl was sitting on a rock by the roadside, stiff with fear and anger. “Why couldn’t I come with you?” she said, rocking back and forth, her arms crossed. “You were gone a long time.”

Myrina stuck the spear into the ground and sat down next to her. “Do you remember what Mother said when we left? That no matter what happens, you must always trust me?”

Lilli looked up, her face contracting with premonition. “They are all dead, aren’t they?” she whispered. “Just like the people in my dream.” When Myrina did not reply, Lilli started sobbing. “I want to see Mama. Please!”

Myrina drew her sister into a tight embrace. “There is nothing to see.”

It is a dreadful thing, sir, To awaken again an old ill that lies quiet.

—S
OPHOCLES,
Oedipus at Colonus

THE COTSWOLDS, ENGLAND

M
Y FATHER PICKED ME UP AT THE TRAIN STATION IN MORETON-IN-
Marsh, looking surprisingly dapper despite the hour. I had expected a bristly grump and was touched to find him dressed in a pair of fairly decent corduroy trousers instead of the pajama bottoms he had started wearing around the house on weekends. It was only a matter of time, I had begun to fear, before those bottoms would venture out in the front yard to get the newspaper, and very possibly even find their way into the car for the odd informal outing.

“One hates to pry….” My father did not find it necessary to complete the sentence. It was his way of saying, “Why on earth did you want to leave Oxford at seven in the morning?”

“Oh—” I looked out the window at nothing in particular, struggling with a childish urge to blurt out the real reason for my visit. “I thought we were overdue for a little inconvenience. Privilege of the only child.”

My parents lived in a rambling cottage built with golden stones by some distant ancestor who could not have stood much over five feet tall, judging by the knee-high doorknobs. To him the building must have seemed a lofty mansion; to me—ever tall for my age—it had always
felt cramped, and as a child I had often entertained the idea that I was a giantess imprisoned in a small forest mound by two trolls.

After leaving home, of course, even the vexations of childhood had assumed an enchanted glow of their own. For every time I returned to the house now I found that I had grown a little more blind to its shortcomings … even to the point of relishing its comforting snugness.

We entered the house through the garage as usual, and paused in the small mudroom to take off our shoes. Spilling over with coats and drying flowers and hundreds of hazelnuts hanging from ceiling hooks in nylon stockings, it was undoubtedly the messiest room in the house. And yet I liked to linger here, for it had such a soothing, familiar smell about it—a smell of waxed jackets and chamomile, and still, years later, of the basket of apples we had once forgotten on top of the furnace.

As soon as he had his slippers on, my father continued into the kitchen and from there into the dining room. A little puzzled by our route, I tagged along and saw him approaching the bay window in a stealthy sort of way.

In the garden outside stood a new birdfeeder, obviously intended for my father’s feathered friends. On the feeding platform, however, sat a black squirrel, gorging itself on the seeds laid out for the birds.

“Him again!” My father barely paused to excuse himself before storming out through the garden door, slippers and all, to put a stop to the evil schemes of Nature. Seeing him like this, bustling around in the backyard with his knitted vest on backward, it seemed nearly impossible that this man, Vincent Morgan, had—until recently—been headmaster of the local school where, for many years, he had struck terror into the hearts of little boys and girls. Throughout the region my father had been known as Morgan the Gorgon, and whenever I had left the house alone as a child, I had run the risk of being trailed through town by a pack of boys chanting “Morgan the Mini Gorgon” until the butcher came out in his blood-smeared apron and shooed them away.

It was only after his retirement that my father had turned his cannons on the garden. Never one to embrace change, his persistent narrative about this small, ancestral plot of land was one of lament and
nostalgia. The apples were never as tart as he remembered from his youth, nor did the raspberries ever yield quite as much as they had when he was a wee lad, picking basket after basket to bring to Mrs. Winterbottom in the kitchen.

These romantic cameos were always carefully cropped to exclude troublesome details. Gone was the workaholic father and hospitalized mother. Gone was the fact that Mrs. Winterbottom—a housekeeper by profession—was a stern, plastic-gloved presence in whom efficiency and cleanliness left tenderness no quarter. Left was only a little boy and his garden, framed by seasonal foliage and ever so lightly dusted with glitter.

Poking my head into the basement I found, as expected, a handful of women astride stationary bikes that were positioned toward an exercise video. “Hello, Mommy!” I called. “And hello, ladies!”

“Hi, sweetie!” My mother was dressed in the yellow jersey I had given her for Christmas, her silver bob pushed back by a bandanna. She was one of the only women I knew who were not afraid of sweating, and from being a source of tremendous embarrassment this had, over the years, become one of the things I admired most about her. “Ten more minutes!”

As I returned upstairs to find my father still fiddling with the birdfeeder outside, a sudden swarm of nerves hatched in my stomach. Ten minutes. Precisely what I needed.

M
Y FATHER
’
S STUDY WAS
a dusty cubbyhole with all the trappings of a Victorian gentleman. The walls were completely covered in sagging bookshelves, and here and there among the books sat his special treasures: bugs pinned in wooden cases, worms and snakes preserved in glass canisters, and extinct birds with bright glass eyes watching from the top shelves like predators perched on a crag. For as long as I could remember, I had found the smell in this room dangerously compelling; it was the scent of history, of knowledge, and of childhood trespassing.

Older now but nonetheless nervous, I accidentally knocked over a wobbly mug on the desk, and for a few anxious seconds, pens, rulers,
and paper clips skidded in all directions. Jittery with guilt, I fumbled everything back into the mug and placed it on top of the monthly bills, where it belonged.

My father appeared in the door.

“Why, hello there!” he exclaimed, his bushy eyebrows colliding. “Should I be flattered that you find my correspondence so interesting?”

“Terribly sorry,” I muttered. “I was looking for my birth certificate.”

His brow softened. “Ah. Let me see now—” Sitting down heavily on the office chair he opened and closed a few drawers before finding what he was looking for. “Voilà!” My father took out a fresh new folder with my name written on it. “These are all your papers. I’ve been cleaning up a bit.” He smiled at last. “Thought I would spare you the mess.”

I stared at him, trying to see beyond the smile. “You haven’t been … throwing things out, have you?”

He blinked a few times, baffled by my sudden interest in his projects. “Nothing important, I think. I put most of it in a box. The family papers and all that. You may wish to burn them, but … I will leave the decision to you.”

T
HE DOOR TO THE
attic was squeaky, and it had always been nearly impossible to keep one’s visits to the room a secret.

When we were children, Rebecca and I had kept a small box of keepsakes in a corner of this gloomy room tucked under the roof, and we would sneak up to check on it only as often as we dared. There was a miniature bar of soap from a hotel in Paris, a dried rose from a wedding bouquet, a golf ball from the Moselane Manor Park … and a few other treasures that could not fall into the wrong hands.

“What are you two doing in the attic?” my mother had asked one day at lunch, causing Rebecca to spill her lemonade all over the kitchen table.

“Nothing,” I had said, with forced innocence.

“Then go play outside.” My mother had spent most of a roll of paper towels cleaning up Rebecca’s mess, but had not said a word about it.
Rebecca was, after all, the vicar’s daughter. “I don’t like you being in that dusty room.”

And so, just as children learn to please their parents by riding bicycles and falling asleep on Christmas Eve, they furtively work up darker skills, often involving perilously stored cookie tins, and, in my case, the ability to open and close the creaky attic door with no sound at all.

Although I had not needed the trick for many years, I was happy to see I still had it mastered. Pausing on the doorstep, I briefly listened to the sounds from below, but all I heard was the occasional clinking of china. Through the day, my parents really had only one predictable habit, and that was to share the newspaper after lunch. It was no use trying to engage them in a three-way conversation during this time; once the dishes were aside and the coffee poured they were happily lost in a world of cricket and corrupt politicians.

Even so, I was only too aware they were both downstairs as I flicked on the lonely bulb that appeared to be hanging from the attic ceiling by thick strains of spiderweb. As I made my way across the floor I tried to remember which floorboards squeaked and which were safe … but soon realized that many years had come between me and the path I had known so well.

Pinched under our steep roofline, the attic was essentially a triangular vault with no source of natural light except a half-moon window in the north-facing gable. Although it was dusty and deserted, the place had always held a strange fascination to me; whenever as a child I peeked into an old leather suitcase or wooden trunk I fully expected to find something magical. Perhaps it would be a forgotten jewelry box, or a ragged pirate’s flag, or a bundle of brittle love letters … there had always been a promise of family secrets and portals to other worlds in that dusky room and its quaint smell of cedar and mothballs.

And one day, when I was nine years old, the magic door finally opened.

Granny.

I could still see her standing there, back turned, looking out through the half-moon window for hours on end … not with the wistful resignation
one might expect from someone kept under lock and key, but with active determination, as if she were keeping watch for some inevitable attack.

All I had ever known about my father’s mother was that she was ill in a hospital in a country far away. The bit about the country far away had been my own invention, probably to explain why we never visited her, the way we went to see Grandfather during his own long, nameless illness. Without giving it too much thought I imagined her lying just like him, with plastic tubes going in and out of her clothes, but in a foreign setting with whitewashed walls and a crucifix hanging over her bed.

Then one drizzly afternoon, with no forewarning, I came home from school to find a strange, tall woman standing in the middle of our living room, a small suitcase on the floor beside her and a look of uncommon serenity on her face. “Diana!” my mother said, waving at me impatiently. “Come and say hello to Granny.”

“Hello,” I muttered, although, even then, I felt the greeting to be utterly inadequate. There was something about this long-limbed stranger that was completely out of place, I could see that much, but I remember being unable to determine what it was.

It might have been the fact that she still wore her raincoat, which made her look as if she were merely a random passerby waiting for the bus, and who might be off again any moment. Or perhaps I was confused because, in my experience—obviously rather limited—she did not look like a grandmother at all. Instead of the cauliflower perm favored by the local village ladies, she wore her gray hair in a braid down her back, and her face was almost without lines. In fact, it was almost without expression altogether. My new granny merely looked at me with an open, straightforward stare, and there was no particular curiosity, nor a hint of emotion in her gaze.

I remember feeling disappointed by her impersonal behavior, but I also knew, with the unwavering certainty of a child, that because she was my grandmother, she would inevitably come to love me. So I smiled, knowing we were destined to become friends, and saw a tiny flicker of amazement in her gray-blue eyes. But still no smile.

“Good afternoon,” she simply replied, with that curious accent of hers which made it sound as if she had rehearsed the words without fully understanding what they meant.

“Granny has been ill,” my mother explained, taking the schoolbag from my back and pushing me closer, “but she is feeling better. And now she is going to live with us. Isn’t it wonderful?”

Nothing else was said on that particular occasion; Granny moved into the attic room, which, I now discovered, had been cleaned out and furnished, and although she was unusually tall with—in my nine-year-old estimation—exceptionally large feet, she was so quiet you would never have known she was there, were it not for the attic door’s squeal whenever I went to see her.

Years later, I would look back on this period and laugh at myself for having been fooled by that serene air, and for thinking Granny’s silence was somehow a consequence of her long, mysterious illness. It used to unnerve me that she could sit on a chair in our parlor for hours doing absolutely nothing while my mother would run to and fro, cleaning and fussing as if her mother-in-law were just another piece of furniture in her way.

“Lift your feet!” she would demand, and Granny obediently moved her feet out of the path of the vacuum cleaner. On a few occasions there was no immediate response, and the vacuum cleaner was unexpectedly brought to a stop, until it eventually occurred to my mother to add “please.”

In her better moments, my mother would chastise herself for her own impatience toward Granny, reminding us both that, “It’s the medicine. She can’t help it,” and pausing briefly on her way through the room to pat the sinewy old hand lying on the armrest, even though there was rarely a response.

Several months went by after her arrival before I had an actual conversation with Granny. When it finally happened, we had been sitting in her attic apartment for the better part of a Sunday afternoon, left to each other’s less-than-riveting company while my parents were in town for a funeral. I had been laboring over a particularly boring school essay, and for quite a while—somewhat to my growing irritation—I had felt
Granny’s eyes on my pen as I wrote. At one point, when I paused for inspiration, she leaned forward eagerly, as if she had been waiting for an opening, and hissed, “Rule number one: Don’t underestimate them. Write that down.”