Danger

by Tishma Rhine Joarder

“We don’t usually show this to anyone,” Mrs Hossein whispered, “I hope you do not tell anyone.”

She guided us to a shabby room at the far end of the somewhat pitiful living quarters. We had to tread carefully, so as not to perturb the fragile foundation upon which the house stood. I always had a hunch that they were not so well-off, but I never knew they were this deprived.

The innumerable holes in the walls housing peeled off paint, and cracked windows greeted you to their shambolic abode. The only furniture present were a small wooden table and three little stalls across two worn out mattresses in what one could only perceive as a living room.

She unlocked the mucky, stained door to the room which, taking into account her ghastly, chalk-white face, could only mean harboured a menacing threat to mankind.

There it stood. Well, sat not stood. In their eyes, it was a hulking, hairy abhorrent abomination apprehended by shackles and confined in a prison cell for the betterment of everyone else.

Nonetheless, that is not what I saw.

There she was, a graceful little girl who bewitched me with her ravishing beauty. The bulging layers of lipids and cellulite that emerged from her muscles were much like the ornate sculptures in lavish baroque composed by Vivaldi and Handel. The faint traces of folded muscles pulling on her chin caught my attention. Perhaps her prolonged misery sculpted a permanent imprint on her face. It really is astounding how the same spectacle can be interpret in innumerable, divergent ways.

I never saw this person! Perhaps, once, I may have seen her help Auntie carry her torn satchel once when she returned from what seemed to me, a tedious day at work, but she had her face covered with an orna and Auntie rushed back home as soon as she saw I was at the porch, so it really is hard to confirm.

The Hosseins and we have been neighbours for as long as I can remember, but they were always a bit of a mystery. You would never see them having guests over, or go out much either. In the three months we have known them, not once have we ever visited their house! I almost questioned if they were Bengali at all. Still, my mother never liked at them. It seemed like she knew something about them that I did not.

Regardless, I really wanted to be the girl’s friend. She seemed absolutely delightful and since we lived next door, we could meet up anytime and bake macaroons together!

“Hi, I am Natasha. What is your name?” I asked her.

“Maria,” she mumbled.

“Why do you not leave the house? I have never seen you outside” I inquired.

“My mom forbade me from it,” she replied.

We were interrupted by Mrs Hossein, her mother, standing at the corner of the corridor who asked me to wait outside. I noticed her fingers curling in and out, and could only comprehend it to be extreme nervousness. But why? Was Maria a bad student?

“When I found out you needed some help for household chores, I figured this was our best shot at getting something out of that thing,” the woman whispered as she slammed the door shut hastily.

The fractured walls assisted my eavesdropping monumentally. Mama instructed me it’s a wrong thing to do, but I was too curious to find out! I am sure she would make an exception for just this once.

Instantaneously, my mother’s eyes widened. The bridge of her nose rose like a phoenix from the ashes, but the dawning was fuelled by with rage. Her cheeks turned red, fuming with fury; and met Auntie’s with an astonishing whammy. She was taken aback.

“What do you mean, help?” my raged mother revolted.

“I don’t work this hard every day to come home to this grotesque atrocity,” Auntie retorted, “She can finally be of some use other than disappointing me with her presence and shaming me in society in every day.”

“That ‘grotesque atrocity’ is your little daughter,” my mother screamed aloud.

“Exactly, if she were a guy, it could be different but she is fat and dark-skinned. Both the devils together is.. dangerous,” Maria’s mother proclaimed.