Three Daughters: A Novel (22 page)

18.

THERE’S NOTHING WE CAN DO. WE CAN’T MAKE HER PETITE.

W
hen she was fourteen, Nadia grew five inches in seven months. Her clothes suddenly shrank and her features, especially her nose, grew out of proportion.

If she smiled, her nose splayed out and she became (in her own eyes) grotesque. When she sat, she twisted her legs and arms toward her. Everything made her perspire. She saw pity in the eyes of her relatives. Pity and relief—
at least my daughter has a sweet, round face, some meat on her bones.
“Miss Bailey says I’m the athletic sort.” She tried to make light of it, but she was frightened. Her breasts were growing. Little plump cones jutted out and took shape. They looked like the budding horn stumps that appeared on the baby goats.

“Athletic,” muttered Miriam, swallowing her criticism. The image people had of Nadia was not that she was quiet or shy or athletic but that she was difficult.

“She’s tall,” said Nadeem to Miriam when Nadia had turned sixteen. Miriam knew he was concerned, not over his daughter’s lack of beauty—he loved her blindly—but for what it did to her personality.

“Her face is long and too strong.” Miriam felt disloyal but she, too, wanted to unburden herself.

“Does she ever tell you anything? Does she say, ‘Mama, I like the school. I’m doing well. The girls like me’? Does she have friends? Do you think she feels comfortable there? What’s the sense of making her go to a place where she doesn’t feel comfortable?”

“She feels comfortable there,” said Miriam tersely. “It’s here that she feels ill at ease.”

“Why do you suppose that is?”

“Probably it’s her age. She doesn’t want to think she needs us. She’s out of step with her cousins. They’re intimidated by her schooling and she feels they band together against her.”

“She seems to be suffering deep inside, Miriam. I don’t know what we can do about it.”

“There’s nothing we can do. We can’t make her petite. We can’t make her face fill out. We can’t make her sociable and gracious.”

“Do you think we can get her interested in a boy? Nabile Thomas has a boy and he asked me about Nadia.”

Miriam shook her head. “If you mention anything like that to her, she’ll refuse. She won’t cooperate.”

“But we’re her parents,” said Nadeem, and his voice was righteous. “She can’t always have things her way.”

Miriam looked at her husband with surprise. She had always felt powerless when Nadeem protected Nadia. Now the idea that he would demand her obedience gave her a childish thrill. “You’re right,” she said. “We’ll do what we think is best.”

By night she thought better of it. “Nadeem, she’s only sixteen. She loves the school. Would you really make her do something now? I’ve never talked about this with her.”

“It’s about time you brought it up then.”

“I’m afraid to bring it up.”

“Afraid?” He looked surprised. “Afraid to talk to your own daughter about her future? This boy is a good choice for her and there may not be another as good.”

“Nadeem, there’ll be others. Let’s wait.”

“There won’t be another that has everything right like this one has. We have to do it now. You’ll see. The excitement of it will work on her and she’ll come around. Her cousins will be envious and she’ll be the center of attention.”

Nadeem made the arrangements, but Miriam knew Nadia wouldn’t come around. She knew what he wasn’t saying and it made her feel sad and helpless. He feared Nadia wouldn’t receive many offers and perhaps her youth was the best asset she would ever have.

“Why do you want to go to such a rigorous school? My sister goes to Mar Yusef. It’s a good enough place.”

She looked at the boy as if he had spoken an obscenity. What made him an authority on what was good enough for her? “It’s the best school in Palestine,” she said firmly. “The American consul says so and the British consul agrees. Every visiting scholar makes it his business to stop by and lecture to us. Anyone who graduates can pass the London university exam or the national matriculation exam. How can you ask such a question? If you had a choice between having something that was just so-so and having the best, which would you choose?”

The boy was frowning. He wasn’t expecting such aggression and it confused him. She could see he was deciding whether to be aggressive in return or to be polite. He sighed and shifted so that instead of sitting squarely on the couch, he was angled toward her. “How do you like to pass your time? Or perhaps you don’t have any free time in this fancy school.” He said
fancy
in a sarcastic way so she knew his feelings were hurt.

From out of nowhere she had this sense of freedom to say anything she pleased. It was wonderful not to care how someone reacted. “I pass my free time playing tennis. I’m mad for tennis.” She was trying for an offhand brittleness precisely because it would annoy him.

“Tennis? Where you hit the ball back and forth?”

“Well . . . that’s not all of it.” To explain the finer points of the game would be useless. He would scoff. “How do you pass your free time?”

“I don’t have much of it,” he said proudly. “My father and I have the franchise for the Singer machines. Do you own a Singer? Do you sew?”

“No. I never learned.”

“No? That’s strange. It’s hard to manage a home and family without knowing how to sew. Without owning a machine.”

“Is that what you tell the ladies when you’re trying to sell one of your Singers?”

He smiled for the first time. “We don’t have to try to sell them at all. Orders are waiting before the shipment is unloaded off the boats. We never have enough machines to fill the demand.”

She thought for a moment. “Well, then, what’s your job? I mean, if you don’t have to sell them.”

“I still take orders,” he said, slightly offended. “And I demonstrate and also service the machines.”

“Oh.”

“Are you interested in a home and a family?” he asked, sounding a little like an exasperated parent, and she thought,
He’s too young to be so serious.
But then something about the way he kept scanning her face quickly and looking away helped her catch on that this meeting was no casual encounter. Her mother had taken his mother out in the garden for lemonade and left them purposely alone.
Oh!

This boy was meant as a suitor! Her face colored and she couldn’t trust herself to speak. She answered with a shake of her head. “I’m surprised,” he said accusingly. “I thought this was something that was on your mind.”

“Well, you’re mistaken.” Unhappily, her voice shook and diminished the effect. “I’m sorry, but you were brought here under false pretenses. I’m not the girl for you. I’m sure there is a girl for you, but it’s not me.”

He was stunned—like an animal caught by a bright light. He digested the full blow to his ego and gathered his dignity with more presence than seemed possible under the circumstances. “You’re right about that,” he said scornfully. “You think you’re too good for me, is that it? Do you have so many offers that you can be so high and mighty? I don’t think so. Whatever else they teach you at that school, they don’t teach you to be realistic. Let’s see who marries you, miss!”

While he was still in the room, she was furious, but when he left she was scalding with shame. Her cheeks were flaming, her eyes burning. She could stand anything—her height, her looks—but she couldn’t stand the idea that her father wanted to protect her from life by marrying her off. She remembered the boy’s haircut that had exposed his ears in a pathetic way. He had groomed himself especially for her.
Ya Allah!
Stood in front of a mirror and imagined how he would appear to her. Then he must have been so disappointed. She remembered the way his feet had been exactly together, toe to toe. She had probably appeared more pathetic to him than he to her. Otherwise, why would his voice have been so cocky with confidence, as if she would be thrilled with his attention? As if he were her lord and master and she had to obey. That’s what her parents had in mind for her future? They wanted her to go to some small plain house and obey that boy for the rest of her life.

One of her cousins on her father’s side had been chosen by an old man who had become rich in Argentina and returned to find a wife. During the ceremony, Nadia had been almost weak with relief that she wasn’t the bride. There were dreadful stories of girls who thought they were marrying one man and, when they removed the heavy wedding veil, found themselves married to another. She was appalled that Nabile’s daughter went so meekly to her doom. No one else saw it that way.

She was disappointed with her father, but felt rage toward her mother and a need to hurt her.

“Do you think Dr. Max would like what you did?” She confronted her mother when they were alone and was satisfied to see Miriam’s face turn white. They had never uttered that name between them. “He sent me to FGS for a reason. He wanted me to be well educated and learn something about the outside world and be a part of it. All you wanted was to turn me over to the first available man—some idiot who asks why I have to go to such a fancy school. As if it’s too good for me. As if I have to answer to him.”

Her mother remained silent. She shook her head and looked frightened and then turned and walked out into the yard.

Instead of feeling triumphant, Nadia felt miserable. For a few days, she considered writing the boy an apology. One horrible night she even considered that he was right—no one would ever marry her. But time passed and she never wrote. She felt worst over what she had done to her mother and fantasized achieving something so impossibly grand it would wipe out all her mother’s sorrows. She imagined herself marrying the most desirable boy in the village and elevating Miriam to a place of influence and pride. Oh, how it would thrill her mother if she married Samir Saleh. She wasn’t foolish enough to believe it would happen, but it was satisfying to drift off to sleep imagining the triumphant scene.

At the end of her sixteenth year, Nadia had a physical transformation. As sometimes happens after puberty, there was a dramatic shift in the proportions of her face and body. She stopped growing and her features balanced out. Her face appeared to have been carved to expose its understructure. It was a powerful face, the kind that quite often can be more compelling than classical beauty. Her hair settled to a rich reddish brown. She wore it long, hitched up on either side by combs that created a smooth, demure pompadour around her forehead but left the rest of her mane to spread out in an extravagant, dramatic cloud that added width to her face and softened her features.

It was a face full of contradictions. The pale-gray eyes, not particularly large but heavily lashed, were private and distant. The nose and chin and jawline were angular and prominent. Then, amid all the Teutonic sternness, there was the most seductive mouth imaginable, with generous, sculpted lips that peaked twice and whose voluptuous pinkness was framed by a unique ridge. When she opened her mouth, even the slightest bit, it was an invitation to be kissed—there was no other way to see it. Yet kissing was the last thing on her mind. She was a serious person dedicated to her studies and the sport of tennis.

As if to rescue her from a grim, humorless life, along came Margaret.

“No, no, no!” The sobs were loud and exasperated.

Nadia raised her head and called over, “Are you ill? Shall I call Miss Bailey?” Dark-blonde hair in need of a good washing hung in sections hiding much of the face.

The weeping stopped. “Don’t call anyone unless it’s a man who’s prepared to elope with me and take me away from this cold, dank room.” The new English girl sat up. “I’m going to become ill,” she predicted with resentment. “Everything is so . . . uncomfortable! How do you stand it?” She surveyed the room with such distaste that Nadia put her head down not to be included in her line of vision. “Where are you from?” asked the girl. “Italy?”

“No. From here.” She was pleased to be thought from such an exotic place.

“Here? You can’t mean right here. Where, exactly?” Her voice was upper-class British and the clipped words made her sound impatient.

Nadia bristled. The English could be so insulting. “Yes. From right here. In ten minutes I could walk to my house and find my mother.” Now why had she brought her mother into it?

“What? You’re a native?” Her upper lip lifted awkwardly when she spoke and her
What?
came out
Whot?
“Why don’t you leave?”

“I want to stay,” Nadia answered. “I like it here.”

“Aw, Gawd, don’t be insulted. In a way”—she stopped to blow her nose—“it’s a backhanded compliment. I watched you play tennis yesterday when they were showing me around, and I was certain you’d had dozens of lessons in some fancy European club. And now . . . well, it’s quite the opposite. You’re from here.” She mulled this over, then came to sit with Nadia.

“You’d better hurry and make your bed.” Nadia threw back the covers and got up. “We’re supposed to tidy the chapel and prepare it for the meditation. They won’t tolerate lateness for chapel.”

“What? They’ll chuck me out?”

“I’ll show you the routine if you like.”