Folio Two, Page Three (svegra mos biet)
Everything changed seven weeks after my seventh birthday.
People embraced on the streets. They loitered outside the closed train stations, hardly speaking a word, staring at the news projections. The confirmed dead rose higher and higher by the hour. On the adult news channels, I watched the rescue footage with my uncle. People shimmied down to the canyon floor on ropes. Arms, heads, legs—everything was fragmented and charred, some of it completely cooked. I screamed.
When they counted my mother’s name among the dead, others screamed. The streets rang with mourning cries thick like loud recordings. I stared at the latest ksibja she had given me. I followed the ancient geometric patterns with my fingertips. The family treated me like a ghost.
At the time, no one outside of my family knew that Salus was my mother. People always assumed that an illegitimate was the product of a male relative—Hiret, in my case. While he had married out to a rich Menashi family (similar to your circumstances, perhaps, especially the shaky footing!), Hiret practically lived in our house. My aunt gave up trying to run him out when I was four and the rumors at school began to percolate. Pretending he was my father protected my real mother from the kind of bad press that ruins good families.
Hiret and I looked nothing alike. My uncle was tall, and his skin was the color of fired red clay bowls in the kitchen—the bowls he filled with fruit early on weekday mornings as he pored over newspaper proofs, an input pen resting thoughtfully against his lower lip. Eternal sweat drenched the fabric under his arms and down his back, regardless of the weather. He had eyes like soggy driftwood and hair that made him appear to have suffered an unfortunate accident with an electric socket.
Two days before the official funeral, the school our family had attended for generations held a memorial service. As the confident child of the Niksubvya line, I was thrown from my family’s shadow onto the stage. My eyes stung from the painstaking hours I had spent memorizing my speech. I tried to imitate the way my mother spoke. People loved it. One man said it brought tears to his eyes; another gentleman would confide when I turned fifteen that he was sorry I had not gone into politics. I thought I sounded like a pompous ass. The glory of the crowd—her glory—would end as soon as I left that raised platform to rejoin my classmates. But, I thought, why does it have to stop?
My mother’s portrait hovered behind me like a phantasm. Younger than I ever knew her, its hazel eyes glistened with lifelike intensity. My mother had had fairer skin than most Narahji, but not quite as fair as mine. We had the same facial shape and sharp mouth. A silver gyena covered her beautiful dark brown dreadlocks. At seven, my hair was thick, straight, and black as pitch—free for the world to look at. We both wore mourning red.
The speech ended just as I had eased myself into the crowd’s adoration. I stared lustfully at the curving wood of the stage, not feeling the pinches of my classmates. What would it take to have that forever?
When the assembly finished, one of the school’s alumnae, a man who had worked with Salus, stepped up to me and clasped my shoulders. His hands were strong and broad. He smelled spicy. “What a beautiful speech,” he said in Tveshi.
“Thank you, sir,” I mumbled. “I hope I paint a picture proper.” They had not taught us the past tense in my Tveshi class yet, and I had too little contact with the language to infer it on my own.
His hands moved to cup my face. He tilted it up towards the light. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my aunt, perhaps, or my cousin Anumë. “What a remarkable resemblance. Are you ... ?”
I stepped away from him and stared. It was a sign from God. If I could—where were the words printed?—if only I could—
“I’m sorry for disturbing you.”
I do not know to this day who overheard, but I will remember forever what was done about it.
The night before the funeral, Anumë brought me sweet nut milk to drink. She helped me lay out my red funeral clothes and tucked me to sleep as though I were one of her own children. “I am sorry that your mother has died,” she said softly, brushing her fingertips across my forehead. “I know that she was your last chance.”
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