Alabaster by Chris Aslan

Author:Chris Aslan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lion Hudson
Published: 2016-08-14T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

“Tell her to come out here and speak to my face,” Ishmael snarls outside our compound door.

“Please, Ishmael, her decision has been made. I’ll ask my aunt to speak to your mother tomorrow,” Marta calls back.

“She’s not leaving; she carries my child.” He has an edge to his voice and I wonder if he’ll try climbing over the wall.

“No, she doesn’t, Ishmael. She lost it.”

We hear him swearing and then he kicks the door hard.

“I never pleased you,” I call out softly, not wanting to antagonize him further. “Now you can have Imma.”

He swears at me. “You’ll pay for this,” he adds, and we hear him leave.

Marta gives me a look.

“I know,” I say. “It’s going to be a challenge.”

“This is just the start. You might be shunned by the whole village.”

Marta lets out a long breath and then looks up at the night sky. “Come on,” she says.

It’s a warm evening and we drag a seating mat up the ladder to the flat roof and lie on our backs watching the stars.

“You know you’re never going to get back any of your dowry,” she says after a while.

“Well, they actually paid for most of it. Anyway, I still have this.” I wince as I remove the gold ring in my nose – the symbol of a married woman. “I’ll sell it tomorrow. I won’t be needing it any more.” I stretch back and look at the stars, and for a moment I feel queasy and upside down, as if I’ll fall upwards and into the never-ending basin above me. “And they can keep their ‘new’ tunics,” I say, and sense Marta smiling in the dark. “This has been such a costly mistake,” I sigh. “And I know it’s cost you, too.”

“Shh,” says Marta.

“If I’d known El would just abandon you like that –”

“Shh,” she says again. I’m quiet and we watch the stars. Every now and then one of them falls in a glittering trail.

“You know, this morning it would never have occurred to me to leave him. It was when I saw him with the stone in his hand and the way he looked at Rohel. That was when, in my heart, I knew what to do. I couldn’t stay and let him hurt me again.”

We’re silent for a while.

“Marta, I can’t help thinking about the other man, whoever he was. Right now he’s eating his supper or he’s talking to his wife or to his mother. They’re probably discussing the stoning. Tomorrow he’ll wake up with the rest of his life ahead of him.”

“Who are you talking about?”

“Whoever was in Rohel’s bed this morning. She didn’t name him. He probably made sure he was in the front row of the stone-throwers to avoid suspicion. Now he’s having his supper and Rohel’s body lies in a lepers’ grave.”

“It’s terrible, but she knew the law as well as we do,” Marta says gently.

“Yes, but the law is meant for justice. How was this justice?”

Marta says nothing. After a

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