Unmarriageable(15)

‘She has, but I think hiding one’s age is stupid, and the only way to defeat ageism is to not comply with it. How old are you?’

‘Twenty-eight,’ Sherry said. ‘Forever twenty-eight.’

‘And your real age?’ Alys asked wryly. ‘I won’t tell anyone.’

‘I don’t know you to trust you. And you’d better not tell a soul you saw me smoking.’

Alys signalled for Sherry to hand over the cigarette pack. A smile spread over Sherry’s face as Alys lit one and took a drag.

‘There,’ Alys said. ‘Now you saw me smoking too.’

‘Yeh hui na baat! That’s more like it!’

‘Can you finish it?’ Alys handed it back to Sherry. ‘I’m not really a smoker. Not fond of staining my teeth. Also, cancer.’

‘I’ll risk that for now,’ Sherry said as she put out Alys’s barely touched cigarette and returned it to the pack. ‘Do you want chewing gum?’

Alys took some cinnamon gum to freshen her breath. ‘I had a couple of friends in Jeddah who smoked – secretly, of course, like you – and I’d join occasionally.’

‘Will you join me occasionally? I come here every evening after the Maghrib prayers. My mother thinks I’m feeding birds.’

‘You’re twenty-eight or something like that. You have a job. Your own income and therefore independence. Surely you can smoke if you want.’

‘Good girls don’t smoke.’ Sherry eyed Alys curiously. ‘Anyway, these mothers only stop dictating your life once you get married.’

‘True,’ Alys said. ‘And then your husband dictates it.’

‘I’d love to get married!’

‘You would?’

‘I’m tired of my parents worrying about me,’ Sherry said, ‘not to mention that everywhere I go, the first question I’m asked is: “When are you getting married?” Everyone promises to pray for me. So far no one’s prayers have come true, so I’m wondering if they really are praying.’

Sherry smiled. Alys smiled.

‘Anyway,’ Sherry said, ‘I don’t want to die without ever having had a husband. I want that phase of my life to begin, but it might never happen. You see, proper proposals for me have dried up.’ She squatted behind a wide headstone. Alys sat crossed-legged beside her.

‘I was engaged twice before,’ Sherry said, relighting the cigarette Alys had barely puffed. ‘First to a cousin. I liked him. He liked me. Then he went to Germany on an engineering scholarship and married a German lady for citizenship after convincing his parents that she was a good career move. They have five children now. Boys. They visit off and on. I avoid them completely.’

‘You’re better off without such a person,’ Alys said, and feeling the intensity of Sherry’s disclosure, asked for a cigarette.

‘I managed to get engaged a second time, this time to a non-relative, at my insistence.’ Sherry handed Alys a cigarette and struck a match. ‘He wanted to marry immediately, but my mother was undergoing knee surgery and we had to wait. Shortly after our engagement, he passed away. Turned out he’d had kidney problems, which his family had kept from us. His parents were very aged and they wanted a widowed daughter-in-law who could earn as well as look after them. I tell you, God saved me from that terrible fate. But as far as everyone was concerned, I’d driven one man into the arms of a foreigner and another into the mouth of death, so obviously I was manhoos, an ill omen. Then we found out I couldn’t have children. Useless Uterus, that’s me.’

‘Don’t say that,’ Alys said, flicking ash onto the path.

‘Everyone else does. Basically, until I started teaching, I was nanny to my sister and two brothers. They’re much, much younger than me. After having me – a girl, unfortunately – my mother suffered from years of miscarriages. If my paternal grandmother had had her way, my father would have remarried for a son, but he refused to, and thankfully, through the miracle of praying and manaats, my mother was able to produce live births again and, finally, my precious brothers.’ Sherry took a long drag and looked out into the distance. ‘Anyway, I still pray that one day my shehzada, my Prince Charming, will come. I still get the odd proposal, but they’re from either men who come with a dowry list as long as my arm, which my family is in no position to fulfil, or widowers with children looking for a nurse-plus-nanny in the guise of a wife, or divorced men known for domestic abuse or something similar. Listen, tell me, Ms Burger, what is the English word for a man who is divorced? I know a woman is a “divorcée”, because that’s what everyone is calling an aunt of mine who left her cheater husband.’

Alys frowned. ‘Actually, there’s no specific label for a man. In English we apparently live in a world where we only keep track of whether or not a woman is a pigeon.’

‘Pigeon?’

‘Virgin.’ Alys glanced at Sherry to see how she’d taken the use of the supposedly bawdy word. Sherry was chuckling. ‘Pigeon is my and my elder sister’s code word for virgin.’

‘I love it!’ Sherry said. ‘Pigeon. Let us pray that one day my pigeonly feathers flutter and I fly the coop.’

Sherry and Alys gave each other shy high fives.

‘By the way,’ Sherry said, ‘my real age is thirty-one. I’m thirty-one years old.’