I, The Divine

~ ~ ~

On a rusty swing set in the garden of my father’s ancestral mountain home we sat, my stepmother, Saniya, my sister Amal, and I, between them. The red cushions were tattered, the swing’s canopy chafed thin, no longer an adequate protection against the sun. The metal springs clanked whenever the swing moved, which was not often. It was a lazy afternoon.

“You should get another swing set,” I suggested. “I’m surprised Father has kept this.”

Saniya sighed. “I don’t know,” she said. “No one but us uses it. I don’t think your father has been out here in over ten years.” She looked straight ahead, at the runways of Beirut’s airport, apparently thinking of something. “It holds many memories. I don’t want to get rid of it.” She paused, smiled. “We made love on it once.”

Amal laughed. I could not help but smile. “You should have told us before we sat on it,” I joked.

“Janet used to love this swing,” Amal said.

I quickly glanced at Saniya to note her reaction. Nothing. She was still smiling genuinely. After thirty-five years of marriage, she was no longer bothered by the mention of my father’s first wife.

“She’s the one who bought it,” Saniya said. “She chose this bright red color.” She looked at me, smiling wickedly. “It matches the color of your hair.”

“It does not. My hair isn’t that bright.”

“Almost!”

“She used to sit where I’m sitting,” Amal said. “This was her corner. Funny what we remember.”

I did not remember my mother from her days in Lebanon. I was too young when she left. When I moved to New York in 1980, I was able to get to know her, but my Janet was nothing like the Janet the rest of my family knew. My Janet was bitter, a defeated woman.

“Sarah’s right,” Amal said, glancing at a group of sparrows flocking to the giant holm oak on her left. White butterflies hovered ahead of us, some floating, some flitting about nervously. “You should get another swing set or at least reupholster this. The color is all wrong. Nostalgia shouldn’t interfere with taste.”

“I don’t want to get rid of it,” Saniya replied. “It’s a testimonial, a reminder of how things used to be, or how I imagined them to be.”

Amal’s eyebrows were raised, but she did not say anything. It took me a minute to decipher what Saniya said. I could not keep quiet though. “Are you saying you no longer make love?” I asked.

“We haven’t made love for a long time,” she said. “Not since the hysterectomy. It was rare before, but stopped completely after.”

I felt Amal shift next to me. I knew what she was thinking. She and I had had that discussion before, but I was unsure whether she would bring the subject up. Her innate reticence would prevent her from doing so, yet her deep feelings about it made her antsy. She gave me a knowing look, then turned and stared ahead at a tranquil view of Beirut.

“You shouldn’t have let him do a hysterectomy,” she said. Deep feelings won. I smiled to myself, proud of her.

Him was my father, an ob-gyn.

“It was necessary,” Saniya said. We both waited, thinking she would elaborate.

“I don’t think so,” Amal went on. “Mild spotting is not a good enough reason for a hysterectomy.”

“There was a change in my pap smear.”

“So what?” Amal asked. “Did he try to figure out what was going on? Did he ask for a second opinion. Hell no. Let’s just cut. If it needed to be done, you should have had someone else do it. Dr. Baddour would have been good.”

“Your father is a good doctor.”

“A good doctor does not perform a hysterectomy on his wife.”

“He did one on his mother.”

“I rest my case.”

“You’re putting too much into this,” Saniya said. She took her cup of Turkish coffee from the rusty stand attached to the swing. She sipped slowly. “I’m not sure I would’ve wanted anyone else to do it. He delivered all of you. It’s not a big thing.”

The birds in the tree were getting louder. Amal looked up. “I think this family is one big mess,” she said.

“It’s my family,” Saniya replied.