by Janine Elias Joukema

Amira was hauled to the centre of the airless attic.

“Look who I found spying through the keyhole, bent over like an old man,” said Sadie, Amira’s newly married cousin.

The women faced Amira—stood unabashed in their half-nakedness—their bums and utooshies armoured in belly-button-high white cotton underwear, their white-coned breasts aimed at her.

Looking past their gazes, Amira twirled her hair and counted bra straps: eight pairs. Each pair pinned with dangling turquoise beads and medallions of St. Michael or St. Christopher, the Virgin Mary or Jesus Christ himself. She had none of those, not yet, and she didn’t want them. Not ever.

“Habibi, how come you are here?’ said Amira’s mother. “I told you to stay downstairs, to watch your brothers.”

Amira ran and buried her face into the roll of her mother’s stretch-marked belly. “They’re on the porch with Baba.” Her three younger brothers were busy being copycats, pretending to drink beer, pretending to swear and slam playing cards on the table like all the men.

“Okay, okay,” said Amira’s mother, stroking her cheek. “Go sit.”

As Amira scanned the menagerie of olive-skinned arms and legs and tummies from the yellow vinyl chair she’d emptied of precisely folded clothes, she clamped her lips tight against a simmering smile, trying to avoid any detection of her triumph. But her legs gave her away, pumping as though she were on a swing, reaching for the sky. Amira had known all along, if caught, her mother would let her stay. Her mother often whispered how they needed to stick together in this house full of boys.

“Yalla, my sister,” demanded Amira’s Aunt Mona. “If the halawa gets too cold, it’s no good.”

Amira watched her mother pull wads of the sticky, golden mixture up and out of the deep stainless-steel pot, molding each handful into a small globe before passing one to each woman, palm to palm.

She was proud of her mother, known for making the best halawa among the women. Always the right amount of sugar and water and lemon juice. Always boiled at the right temperature. Always the right colour, golden brown, like honey under sunshine.

When the women began sugaring their arms and underarms, shins and thighs, Amira studied her own body. She pulled, then smoothed the barely-there hair on her arms. She cranked her face into her armpits in search of sprouts. There were none. On her legs the hair was darker, more noticeable. She wished it was blonde, that she was blonde like Farrah Fawcett, the most beautiful of all on Charlie’s Angels.

Amira didn’t have hair on her utooshie yet. She’d checked for it after her bath last night. She was glad about that now, her shoulders shivering as she watched eyelids tighten and skin redden as the women tore at the wiry tufts that barged out from the edges of their underwear.

Amira’s Aunt Mona looked up from between her legs and over at Sadie. “You are married now. Good for you. Mabrouke!”

“Thank you, Auntie. Everything was beautiful.”

“So, tell us . . .” a smirk slinked into place on the face of Amira’s aunt, “the wedding night . . . how was his khiyaara, was it beautiful too?”

“Mona!” said Amira’s mother, shaking her head as the other women hooted.

“Well, we have to know what kind of cucumber he has, long like English cucumber or fat and strong like a field cucumber. I pray it’s not one for pickling.”

Bodies—wrinkled, taut, bloated, and bony—jiggled in laughter.

“I’ll tell you if you tell me about Charbel’s khiyaara.” Sadie shot back, cheeks blushing.

“Yeee, look at this one. Brave. Your husband must have a good one then, field cucumber, like the ones we grow back home. Good seeds, good babies.”

Amira thought it funny the way they gossiped, complained and nipped at each other, but she didn’t like her aunt poking fun at her cousin. Sadie was the prettiest bride Amira had ever seen, even if she was the only bride she’d seen so far in real life. And besides, what do cucumbers have to do with making babies? Amira already knew babies didn’t come from kissing. They came from hugging. Late at night. In bed. Under blankets. Naked.

“Amira,” said Sadie, ignoring the women as she pushed and pulled the halawa up her leg, “one day you’ll be like us, do this too—the sugaring.”

“No,” said Amira, pumping her legs again. “I don’t think so.”

In one swift second, the room dropped into silence, the women spinning their heads in unison to look at Amira.

“What do you mean, you don’t think so?” said Sadie. “We all do this.”

“I’m going to shave my legs.” Amira lifted her chin and straightened her back in proud declaration of her decision.

She would use a pink lady razor, like the ones the blonde ladies used in the commercials. Like the one her best friend Nancy had stolen from her mother’s dresser, wrapped in a piece of blue-lined paper from her math notebook, and brought to school in her lunch bag.

For three days, Nancy and Amira huddled in the corner of the schoolyard during lunch recess, never letting anyone join their club. On Monday and Tuesday, they practiced on the saved half of their sandwich—Nancy’s ham and cheese on Wonder Bread, Amira’s mortadella and mustard rolled up in a pita. On Wednesday,

Nancy said she was tired of shaving sandwiches. She pushed her knee socks down to her ankle bone and, with the now dull razor, shaved a line of feathery blonde strands from her ankle up to the base of her kneecap, without a nick. When Nancy went to pass the razor, Amira stepped back. She said she couldn’t, that her mother would notice because they were going shoe shopping right after school. The next day, Amira had lost her place in their club to red-headed Renée.

“So, you want to be like the Englese?” said Mona, knitting her thick, black brows together. “You think they’re better than us?”

Yes, Amira thought, sometimes the Englese were better. But she wouldn’t answer her aunt’s question, not out loud. She didn’t have to if she didn’t want to.

As Amira pretended a preoccupation with an imaginary spot on her shorts, the chatter and business of sugaring picked up again among the women. Except for her aunt.

“So, you want to be like a man then? Shave?” Amira’s aunt clucked her tongue. “Your hair will grow back thicker, tougher. Your husband doesn’t want your legs to feel like a man’s face, like his own face in the morning. You need to make your husband happy, no matter what.”

“I don’t want a husband.” Amira spat the words so sharp and so honest that the chatter froze in midair. Pairs of brown eyes turned on her—some darted shock, others flashed disbelief, her aunt’s were thuggish against her boldness.

“Yeee, you don’t want a husband?” Amira’s aunt kneaded the halawa hard into her armpit. “Every good girl wants a husband, and one from the old country is the best. Look at your mother. She’s happy.”

“At first, I don’t love your father, I don’t know him,” said Amira’s mother, a wisp of hair escaping from behind her ear and kissing the edge of her smile. “But I listened to my parents. I marry him. Then in six months I love him. Then, in another six months I have you.”

“See? Nice legs, good husband, four healthy kids. Good for you, my sister. Mabrouke.”

“I love my dad,” said Amira. “He’s funny, and he doesn’t yell at us all the time. But I don’t want a husband . . .” Especially like yours, Amira almost went on to say to her aunt. “I’ll be my own boss.”

“This one is trouble, my sister. She will need a strong man from the old country, one who’ll give her a cuff every once in a while.”

The women tittered, some nodding in agreement, others shrugging their shoulders. Amira’s cousin Sadie kept her head down, her eyes fastened to a freshly sugared knee.

“You are too stupid to know what’s good for you, Amira,” said her aunt as she pressed the halawa over her bruised arm.

Amira’s body scorched with anger. She wasn’t stupid. She was smart and strong, knew her own mind, and said what she thought—sometimes, most times, maybe not always at the right times. Her mother had warned her more than once that their life wasn’t like the soap operas they watched together. Those people had sharp tongues, and sharp tongues cut from the inside out.

“Leave her,” said Amira’s mother. “She’s still young, only eleven last month. She doesn’t know anything yet.”

But Amira did know things. She knew she wanted to run out of the room, to hide. She also knew if she did, they’d all laugh at her, maybe even her mother. Amira wasn’t going to let them, especially her aunt, shame her away. She shimmied herself to the edge of the chair and, sitting straighter than she ever had before, crossed her arms and her legs and waited.

After what felt like an entire school year to Amira, the chatter in the room calmed, then caved. One by one, the women dropped their muddied and exhausted globes of halawa back into the pot.

When their hairless bodies were dressed and ready, Amira’s mother, pot in hand, led the parade of women down the stairs to the pack of husbands waiting on the front porch.

This time, Amira did not follow them.