Elvira Dones - Sworn Virgin

‘You were not a happy man, Hana. That’s all.’

‘That’s not true.’

‘Ok, then, you tell me why you came.’

Hana looks out at the people carrying shopping bags of every shape and size, kids holding hands in a circle, two oversized women with their belly buttons showing. She can’t believe it.

‘You were not a happy man and you know it, just like you know this is coffee we’re drinking. It’s Italian, and delicious. And anyway, let’s stop talking in this tragic way. I want to have fun today and be lighthearted. I want to enjoy you as you are now, in your last few hours as a man.’

Hana drinks her coffee in silence. The glass dome of the lobby lets in an uncertain sunlight that’s trying to get past the clouds. Americans use weird words. A shopping center is a mall . In Albanian, mall doesn’t squeeze money out of you, you carry mall around with you, you rock it gently in your arms. Mall is homesickness that consumes you, like saudades .

‘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.