I, The Divine

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I had a fairy-tale childhood complete with the evil stepmother. She arrived at our house a young girl. Only fifteen years separated us (twelve between her and Amal, the eldest). She decided early on she did not like me and set a course of discipline that would last until my teenage years. She was strict with my two sisters as well, but she was a Nazi with me.

I did not do well in a disciplined environment, not in my stepmother’s house nor later with the nuns at school. I had an independent streak not easily vanquished, though my stepmother tried. My father and uncles used to teach us girls all kinds of pornographic swear words and laugh hysterically when we repeated them. When my stepmother arrived, she found them offensive and demanded a stop to all foul language. My father’s compromise was to have us use swear words only when my stepmother was not around. My sisters never slipped. I did. I liked the shocked look on faces when I came out with a delicious curse. When she was not around, I received a hilarious response. When she was there, I got hot peppers. But still I slipped.

She was always upset that I never did what she asked. I was a precocious child, and all I ever wanted was for people to explain why they wanted me to do something. She never would. She always demanded and I wondered why. For every why, I received a smack. I never stopped asking.

Since I was the youngest until my half-sisters were born, I was the house slave. My stepmother was constantly demanding things. “Get me a bottle of water, Sarah.” “My slippers from under the bed.” “Get me the blue jar of face cream, Sarah. The one on the nightstand. Make sure it’s the blue one and not the green one, Sarah. Not the green one.” I brought the green one back and got smacked.

Every night, I walked on her back because I was the perfect weight. She had walked on her mother’s back when she was my age, so I had to do it. She moaned with each step I took, and I imagined breaking vertebrae, my small feet making tiny indentations on her back. Skin turning pink.

I got revenge. Taking her shoes was my favorite. Once I figured which pair was her preferred, I would throw one of them down the garbage chute and listen as it clanked down the six floors and landed in the garbage containers with a tiny thud. No one ever looked in there. I always threw out one of the shoes, not the pair. That way she believed she had lost a shoe as opposed to someone having stolen them. I also liked to empty half of her perfume bottle down the toilet. When Violet, our nanny from the Seychelles, passed by her, my stepmother would smell the air. She was never able to pin anything on Violet, of course, and I don’t think she believed Violet was capable of doing the things I was doing. Nonetheless, she sent Violet packing within a couple of years of her taking over our house. When she did that, I declared war.

I put Bic pens in her coat pockets to bleed. I placed a live mouse in her apron. I dethreaded the hems of her skirts. But my favorite act of mischief, for which unfortunately I was caught, involved the sachets. My stepmother made sachets by cutting old mosquito nettings into small strips, stuffing them with lavender, and tying them up in a bag. These she would place between the freshly laundered sheets in the linen closets; the sheets, when taken out and placed on the beds, carried the aroma of lavender. My father loved that. One night, I went into the linen closet, took out the bags, and placed them in the cats’ litter box. The next night, I put them back between the sheets in the closet. My stepmother was furious. My father was the one who beat me for that, with the belt of course, in the bathroom.

I was a natural tomboy, and, knowing it annoyed my stepmother, I refused to wear dresses. I was frequently filthy, and I was better at games than any of the boys in the neighborhood. I did not wear makeup at all until I was fifteen, when I met my best friend, Dina. My stepmother taught my sisters, Amal and Lamia, household duties, such as cooking and sewing. I could not stand it. When she tried teaching me to embroider, I pricked my fingers until they bled. She never tried again.

She turned my father against me. I was his favorite daughter, his Cordelia. He always considered my uniqueness enchanting. After years of her nagging, he began to see me as a lost cause, an embarrassment to the family. The final disappointment for him was my skill at soccer. I had played the game as a child, on the streets with the boys. My father never considered this the problem my stepmother did.

However, during the years after the 1970 World Cup Finals, my stepmother was able to convince my father I was wicked. I watched the championship game with my family and saw the Brazilians tear the Italians apart. I did not know who the players were and actually thought Instant Replay was the best player because his name kept appearing at the bottom of the screen every time something really great happened. All I really knew was the Brazilians made coffee and Italians pasta. But then I saw Pele pass the ball to Jairzhinho for one of the goals and experienced a soccer epiphany. From that moment on, I knew how the game was supposed to be played, and that knowledge marked the beginning of my spiraling descent into disgrace.

I was a scrawny child, neither fast nor strong. But I developed impeccable control with a soccer ball and was blessed with something intangible, soccer vision. I could see plays developing long before they happened. I always knew where to be, where to send the ball. Even in the small, disorganized street games, without a pair of tennis shoes to call my own, it was apparent to any bystander that I was special. And that I was a girl.

One day, my stepmother looked out from the balcony, saw me down on the street playing, and had a nervous breakdown. She refused to speak to anyone, took tranquilizers, and locked herself in her room. My father slept on the couch. The next day, when she allowed my father into the room, they had a long conversation. All three of us, her stepdaughters, not her daughters, ended up in a half-boarding school, Carmel St. Joseph. The school was only four streets away from our house, but we slept there five nights a week. We left for school on Monday mornings and came back on Saturday afternoons. We had to wear uniforms. The nuns had been warned about me and behaved accordingly. I was treated as a troublemaker and I did not disappoint. I was not allowed to play soccer or any other sport in school. I had to watch while the other girls played volleyball or basketball, considered acceptable sports for girls, but not for me.

Luckily, my stepmother’s meddling in my life ceased, or more accurately decreased, with the birth of Ramzi, my father’s first son and the reason for his marriage to my stepmother. I was eleven. Both she and my father stopped caring about the girls and showered all their attention on the newborn son, the boy who was the sole reason for my father’s, and all his forefathers’, existence. Apocryphal stories abound about that “blessed” event. It is said that my mother, Janet, whom my father had divorced and sent back to New York because she could not deliver him a boy to carry on his name, wailed for one whole month beginning the instant the infant Ramzi himself wailed for the first time. It is said my father cried. All I know is that I was relieved.