Sworn Virgin (5 page)

‘Now I'm going to show you a store where we can buy some of the things you need,' Lila says, once again on her mission. ‘In the next few days we're going to have to think about what to do with your hair.'

They walk into a huge store. Young assistants. Shrill voices. Dazzling smiles. Belly buttons of all kinds on show. Lila points out the fitting rooms, but then drops her arm. Her eyes betray her confusion. Which changing room? The men's one, with women's clothing? Hana looks at her, amused.

‘This whole belly button thing,' she says, ignoring Lila's perplexity. ‘It's not always such a good thing.'

‘You and I have more serious things to think about!' Lila is getting nervous. ‘Why didn't I think of it before?'

Hana doesn't want to try anything on. She's only there because she doesn't want to go against Lila's wishes.

‘You can't go around like this,' her cousin
says.

‘I'll go around just as I've been going around up to now,' she mutters. ‘Who's looking anyway?'

‘I wanted to start doing something useful. Time shouldn't be wasted,' Lila answers.

‘We're not wasting time. We're together, and that's what counts.'

‘Have you taken a look at yourself in the mirror, Hana?'

‘No, I never look.'

‘There, you
see?'

‘What do you mean?'

‘I'm sorry, I didn't want to hurt your feelings.'

‘You haven't.'

‘I'm useless at this.'

There was no need for mirrors in Rrnajë. Hana would leave the house and the first person she greeted on her path would be her mirror.
Tungjatë
, Mark. That was it. She had men's clothes and a flask of raki in her pocket, and these had also been her mirrors. She had needed nothing else. Up there in the mountains, time and place had been equal partners.

It is nobody's fault if at this precise moment she's so far away from there. She grabs her cousin by the arm and coaxes her up. They wander around the mall with no particular aim. It feels weird for Hana to spend time this way. She's never done it before.

‘
Tungjatë
, Mark,
bre burrë, a je?
'

‘I'm sorry for all this, Hana,' her old uncle Gjergj Doda had
said.

‘Don't say that, Uncle. It's not your fault.'

‘Let me die. I'm tired. What is there for me to live
for?'

‘You can live for me, you're like my father.'

‘A father marries off his daughter, he doesn't hang round her neck.'

‘You're not hanging round my neck, Uncle Gjergj. You'll get better. I'll bring you your medication.'

‘You know there's no cure. Hana, why sacrifice yourself? You have to get married. You should be the sunshine in a house full of children.'

Hana hadn't said anything. Her uncle had hardly been able to breathe, there wasn't a blade of grass for the animals to eat, and she, at nineteen, had Walt Whitman's poems in her unopened suitcase. She wanted to get back to that book, but her uncle was there in front of her, more dead than alive. She was the only girl in the village enrolled in college. She hadn't wanted children, all she had wanted was books. But in the mountains you couldn't say these things if you were born a
girl.

‘May God help us, Hana, my little girl.'

‘Amen, Uncle Gjergj.'

Her eyes are suddenly welling up and she doesn't try to hide it. The tears run down and tickle her lips. She licks them and tastes her homesickness. A boy is running into a shop called American Eagle and a young mother is running after him. ‘Eddy, where are you going?' and then more words she can't understand. The way black people talk is hard for her to follow. More tears. She shuts her eyes, her jaw is trembling and she feels pain in the pit of her stomach.

‘Hana, what's wrong?' Lila is shaking her, alarmed. ‘What is
it?'

‘Nothing. I'm
ok.'

‘How can you say you're ok? You're crying.'

‘I'm fine, Lila.'

‘Why are you crying then?'

‘I don't know. I feel like crying and so I
cry.'

‘You must be really
sad.'

‘Not even a
bit.'

‘Tell me the truth.'

‘That is the truth.'

‘Don't drive me crazy, tell me what's wrong with
you.'

‘Leave me alone, will
you?'

Two Asian girls are following the scene without paying much attention, staring at Hana with their thoughts elsewhere. They speak to each other fast in a language full of vocal spikes. Hana tries to control her tears.

‘I'm starting to get worried,' Lila
says.

Hana moves closer to
her.

‘You don't have to worry. This is my battle, not yours.'

‘I want to help you. I want you to be a normal woman as soon as possible.'

‘You're ambitious, cousin. Ambitious and impatient.'

‘That was the deal.'

‘There's no hurry,' she mumbles. ‘It's my soul more than anything, and I can't hurry my soul.'

‘You're thirty-four,' Lila says. ‘That's no joke.'

‘It's not even half of my life.'

‘You spent fourteen years as a
man.'

‘They're not lost.'

‘If you go on thinking about it, you'll end up an old woman,' Lila says disapprovingly.

Hana strokes her hair. The precipitous voices behind her fade away. Turning around, she sees the two Asian girls have left. She turns back to Lila and hugs her, holding her tight. The two girls are replaced by a slim black woman with dreadlocks. Her tight dress is bright orange with pale-green embroidery round her ample cleavage. She looks beautiful, a goddess. Hana, wrapped in Lila's embrace, observes her. When they let go they both feel better. The woman in the orange dress allows her goddess aura to melt away as she pulls a CD player with earphones like Jonida's out of her bag. She fixes these in her ears and starts moving to the
beat.

‘What about another coffee?' Hana suggests. ‘Then you can take me to that bookstore, Barnes and Noble. A guy on the plane told me about it. O'Connor, the journalist. Remember? I have to buy a dictionary.'

‘I'll take you to the bookstore if we at least buy you some underwear first.'

‘That's blackmail.'

‘That's exactly what it
is.'

Hana laughs, but Lila is serious.

‘You don't have to try the underwear on. I'll just get some socks, underpants and something to go under your jacket
–
here they call them “tank tops.”
Ok?'

Hana shrugs. Lila gets up and sets off on a mission. She comes back with two bags of stuff.

‘Now you won't have to worry about anything for a while,' Lila says as she settles back into her chair with an expression of victory on her face that Hana doesn't understand. It must be a woman thing, she thinks.

‘Can we go to the bookstore
now?'

‘Tell me,' Lila insists in a tone that leaves no room for maneuver, ‘what about bras? Have you ever used
one?'

‘No.'

‘Do you have any idea of your size?'

‘No.'

‘But your breasts are small, right?'

‘So it seems.'

‘Does every little thing have to be such a problem? Soon Jonida'll be back from school. We've been here all morning and look what we've got to show for it
–
a few pairs of panties and not much else.' Lila opens the bags as if to prove her point.

‘My small breasts have helped me not to stoop.'

‘I get
it.'

‘No, you don't get a thing.'

‘You may be right.'

‘I love you, Lila.'

‘Well, you tell me when you're ready then. I thought what you looked like on the outside would help you a little bit on the inside, but maybe I'm wrong.'

‘You're wrong.'

‘I thought that if you saw yourself from the outside
…'

‘I love you, Lila.'

‘Ok, ok, I love you
too.'

‘I haven't said those words to any living soul since Uncle Gjergj died. It's hard not to be able to tell anyone you love them for so long. As for everything else, let's take it easy,' Hana begs. ‘There's no hurry.'

‘The thing is, you look like a guy trying to act effeminate,' Lila says, as if this were the last card in her hand. ‘Your voice is odd, your face is rough. No one will give you a job if you look weird. People don't want problems around here; all they want is employees who are as normal as possible. You have to understand.'

‘I'll tell them I'm a woman with a difference.'

‘It's not so easy.'

‘I can't go so fast, trust
me.'

‘Why not? You've had a whole year to think about
it.'

‘If I hurry, I feel terrible.'

She doesn't know a thing about the road they're on, but she stares at the road signs anyway. Lila turns the car radio on. Jazz. Hana looks out of the window. She then tries to memorize the junctions as they pass them on the 355. ‘Is this normal life?' she wonders. She's been wondering for years what it would be like. The music is beautiful. She knows nothing about music but she knows she likes
this.

Soon she'll be driving too; she just has to be patient a while and she'll have her own rusty old car. She has the money. She's saved up everything she earned taking wood down from the mountain to the town. She can't wait for the day she has her own car. She wants to tell Lila but she doesn't know how. Because I'm an outsider, Hana thinks. Just because I'm a cousin it doesn't mean she knows me. It just means I'm a cousin.

‘Remember, Barnes and Noble is at the junction of Rockville Pike and Hubbard … Look at this, will you? I can't believe I have to take a hillbilly to a bookstore when she's only been in town for three days.'

Lila parks the car. On the left there's a café, on the right a homeware store. Hana is trying to memorize everything.

‘Listen, Hana. Do you mind if I don't go in there with you? I don't know what to do in a bookstore.'

Hana says that's
fine.

They split up and Hana goes in to explore. She looks around. Nobody seems to be paying any attention to her. She tries to relax but it's no good. To the right there are the counters where people are in line to pay. In front of her there's a huge table with new books on offer. Right behind her, the escalators.

She is frozen cold. It could be the air conditioning; she's not used to it. There are lots of people sitting in armchairs and reading near the store window. She hides among the shelves. Some readers are sitting on the floor and Hana decides to copy them. She dives into a narrow corridor between two bookshelves. The carpet is brown; her shoes are ridiculous. There are dictionaries all around her now. You're ridiculous, she tells herself. You're scared, you're still scared, but no one's looking at you. To her left there's a young woman, a student maybe, balancing a pile of books in her arms. She's wearing a pair of really nice glasses. She's dressed a bit like Jonida, only more sophisticated.

‘Do you need any help?' she asks, after a moment.

‘I need an English dictionary.'

‘You've just arrived, right?'

‘How do you know?'

The girl smiles. Her hair is thick and black. She's holding a pen, her nails are long and manicured, varnished silver.

‘Five years ago I was going through the same thing. I was terrified, and I could hardly speak a word of English. The first thing I bought was a dictionary … They're right behind you,' she says. ‘You're leaning on them.'

Hana turns around and sees them. She strokes them for what feels like a long
time.

‘Have you found anything?' Lila asks, tapping her on the shoulder.

‘I'll get this. There's forty percent off. What do you think?'

‘I don't know a thing about it, sweetie. Ask me about fabric, washing powder, drugs, how to make a bit of extra money on the side to get to the end of the month, anything, but leave books out of it. You don't think you're going to get a job here in America using books, do
you?'

‘I'll be a construction worker, don't worry.'

‘They don't take women in the construction business.'

Lila checks her watch. They step onto the escalator. Hana steadies herself.

‘I could be a taxi driver,' she says, gathering courage. ‘There are women taxi drivers, right?'

Lila is tense. She looks at Hana, trying not to show it, and then reaches out to her, resting her arm on her shoulder. There's not much left of the pretty girl she once was. Back in the mountains there had been plenty of young men secretly in love with Lila. She is different now. She's got a frenetic look in her eyes. She's a bit homesick, which she tries to hide. And she's got enough love for her daughter to nourish the whole world.

On their way home, Hana is filled with a sudden euphoria. This is the third time she's taken this road
–
the 355, or Rockville Pike
–
and she feels as though she's known it for a long time. The rest won't be that difficult. All she has to do is talk to Jonida, explain things. All she has to do is turn into a woman, for real. All she has to do is learn the language. All she has to do is get a job and a room of her own. All she has to do is be normal. All she has to do is forget.

Forget.

Solitude; the death of glory in the mountains; her poems that would never become books; her last memory of her parents fixed forever on a winter's
day.