Dimples
Photo by: Ctd 2005, Some rights reserved.
Just a moment ago, the sweet girl with dimples had been shivering, overcome by the night. Now, she was smiling so that her dimples became more pronounced while she packed her clothes.
A moment ago, she had been a newlywed, trembling, pale and dying. Now, she was a happy young divorcee.
The man had just divorced her. The third pronouncement of divorce was delivered in all seriousness. Their first night together was also their last. Sitting on a mattress covered with a yellow sheet patterned with floating jasmine, Dimples was gathering the few things she owned. Her long hair flowing freely down her back and falling across the pillow, the sweating and half-clothed woman had to leave immediately. She was no longer mistress of the house.
She heard the man’s feet shuffling behind the door, impatiently. She remembered how, just a short while ago, he had stripped her clothes off before he undressed himself. Dimples froze while the man burned with passion. He entered Dimples savagely and then calmed down momentarily. It was brief, but long enough for Dimples to ask herself, Why? Too easy, Master? The man’s response was a frenzied lovemaking that made the bed creak like a coconut tree shaken by a storm. Then it was time for them to roll over, bathed in sweat and out of breath.
The man still burned, not with desire but with fury. He threw the sheet over the Dimples’ body, got off the bed and put on his underwear. Without even the slightest glance at her, he cursed before severing the ties between them and left the wedding bed, slamming the door: “Whore!”
A woman and two snot-nosed children observed them with a penetrating look as the village head united Dimples and the man in matrimony. Dimples did not have the strength to face their envious, hateful stare amid the merry noise of the wedding party, like she was dying over and over again.
She was dazed when guests lined up to congratulate them, placing white envelops with red and blue borders into a box. Every time she accepted an extended hand, a coldness made her light-headed, occasionally making her black out, and every kiss on her cheek from a woman guest made her tremble, thrown under their penetrating stare.
It was especially so when the woman with the two snotty children approached her. They shook hands, kissed and hugged her. Dimples was amazed at how they could be so dry-eyed when hers wouldn’t stop leaking. The woman wiped away the rivulets on her cheeks with her shawl, ruining her make-up. This only made Dimples weepier. Her nose started to run, and she wiped her face with the sleeve of her kebaya.
A photographer arrived, carrying his camera. They stood in a row. The man was holding her hand; Dimples felt like wetting herself. The woman smiled while the photographer gave directions, one-two-three, as did the two children. Flash! The smile would be eternal, but Dimples knew it was a lie. As false as their gaze of intimacy, which actually held cruelty.
She could still see their stares, laden with an unbearable, raging flame, when the man ushered her into their wedding room. If she turned around, the heat of their stares could still burn a hole in her chest. Before she disappeared behind the door, she promised the woman and the two snot-nosed children, “I will return him to you immediately.” But only in her heart.
One wretched night, her father went to a spring as dawn approached. The spring bubbled at the foot of a hill, in a fortress of thickets and dense fog. A stream flowed from it along a small moat that encircled a settlement, splitting up into branches here and there, providing a source of life for the plots in the rice field. The water was swift, with rocking crests the color of moss, eroding colorful stones, carrying rhythm and traveling with fish fry, eels and tadpoles. Family heads visited the spring by turns each day toward daybreak, or mud would plug up the stream, and when that happened, the rice would not ripen when it should. But that night was really accursed, as a damn snake had bitten his big toe.
The man had yet to reach the spring. He was writhing in pain on a narrow trail with one hot and stinging leg. His big toe shone red, bathed in moonlight and lit up by the torch that had been thrown at the grassy field. The heat spread slowly, as though it was slicing off his foot inch by inch. He would not know how long it would take before his toe was gone, leaving behind a blue decay. After that his leg would disappear, followed by his body and, finally, his soul.
He called to mind his wife and only daughter. He did not intend to die yet. He burned the toe, then tore his sleeve into strips and tied a tourniquet on his calf. The torturous heat did not disappear, although it subsided for a moment. He pitted his luck against death. Clutching the torch, he stood up unsteadily. His body was soaked through. He thought he would die as he stood.
Crying and enduring the torture, the man bore through the field toward the house of the shaman. The torch in front of the shaman’s house seemed to be at the other end of the world, its flame flickering, teasing. Only the shaman had a stone that was a talisman against snakebite, and only the shaman could drive death from his toe. No matter that his stomach would turn at the shaman’s bad breath and wild eyes.
By the time he reached the porch of the shaman’s house, he was almost at death’s door. He collapsed on the steps and, groaning loudly, he pounded on the door. His knocking had grown weak and his hand hung limp when the shaman opened the door, still clouded with sleep. Then the woman stood behind the shaman. The two snot-nosed kids also rose and stood beside them.
“A snake is destroying my body,” the dying man said, pointing to his toe.
“That appears to be the case,” the shaman said. The woman and the two children vanished into the house, while the shaman got a torch and examined the man’s toe. It was blue and torn. The woman reappeared with a small bundle of unbleached cloth before being swallowed up by the darkness behind the shaman, who took out his magic stone. The dying man waited anxiously for the shaman to yank death from his toe, but instead, the shaman asked, “How will you pay me?”
Whimpering, the dying man answered, “Take my pregnant goat.”
The shaman shook his head. “I want to knock up Dimples, your daughter.”
Dimples was 14, a real beauty. The shaman had long desired her, not caring that he had wives everywhere. Her father was powerless, knowing well that the shaman’s every desire would be fulfilled, as no gun could harm him and he was full of spells and sorcery. He could only buy some time and hope that the shaman might die or forget about Dimples, so tried to put him off.
“She is still underage.”
But he had to give up this child with dimples on her ripe cheeks to the shaman or else the poison would tear his soul from his body. The man wept, torn between the pain of death and mourning his daughter’s fate.
“Take the girl,” he said, giving in.
The shaman smiled, emitting a putrid odor. But instead of treating the man, he stood up, turned and went back inside the house. The dying man groaned in a strangled breath, alternately calling out the shaman’s name and then repenting. The shaman reemerged shortly, carrying something.
“Say it again before this,” said the shaman, holding out a holy book.
The man knew the shaman had never read the book, that he had touched the book only a few times. But the dying man revered the book, had never carried it carelessly, had placed it upon his head and kissed the cover, had turned its pages slowly and read from it in a state of ablution. He looked at the shaman, gasping for breath.
“Upon this holy book,” he said hoarsely, “I give you Dimples, my daughter, as your wife.
Again, the terrible odor. The shaman raised the wounded half of the leg, causing the man to groan even more. He untied the tourniquet, which left a pallor of death, then retied it at a higher point. He rubbed the magic stone on the snakebite, the dying man’s howls the dogs in the village to go barking. The stone was again rubbed against the wound, following by the shaman’s reading of his magic charm. The dying man was writhing. When the dawn was still very dark, he screamed and screamed until his voice was no longer heard and he went into unconsciousness.
When he came to, the man found himself in his own bedroom. Sinfully, he called his daughter and said, daughter, you will be the wife of that bad-smelling shaman.”
It was still fresh in her mind, how the man took her to his house and introduced her to the woman and the two snot-nosed kids. She was reluctant to do so, but the man had dragged her one wonderful afternoon, along the village road and under the gaze of shepherd boys and plowmen. She had never been to that house before, but she had known she would end up in that black magic den ever since the man suddenly embraced her at the water pump after a bath.
She was even convinced that the tragedy of the poisonous snake was no more than a simple trick the man had played. Perhaps it was a ghost snake that was in league with him to subjugate those who visited the spring, and the magic stone was just another spell. But, like her father, she honored oaths made upon the holy book, so she submitted to being shown her future home.
The woman and the two snotty kids were waiting on the veranda, standing upright like stakes. She was ill at ease under their stares full of accusation.
Trying to maintain her self-control, Dimples smiled sweetly, red spots blooming on her cheeks, her dimples becoming more alluring. They knew the smile was false, she thought.
The man gave her name, an introduction that was simply nonsense, as everyone in the area knew her. Even if the woman and the two snot-nosed didn’t know her, she didn’t think they would want to hear it, let alone remember it.
She kneeled before the woman, took the woman’s hand and kissed it, pressing it deeply against her lips. The hand was as cold as death. She approached the first-born child, stroked his hair and kissed him on both cheeks. He was silent, motionless. The little one shrunk from her when she touched him, held him and, with a little force, kissed him on both cheeks.
All of it felt like a cheap drama. Her fear changed and became a withering sadness. She was unable to look at those accusatory faces.
Their faces haunted her through panic-filled nights.
Those insomniac nights by the window, she wished she could steal the wings of an owl and fly away to the moon. Nights when her father did not allow Dimples out of the house, because she would soon be a bride.
One night from behind her window, she saw four young men in the security post at the end of the road. They sat around a small kerosene lantern, playing a dominoes card-game. White steam floated over their heads and was blown by the night toward Dimples’ face.
A thought crossed her mind. Now she knew how to free herself from that foul-smelling man of spells.
Dimples snuck out and stood by the security post. The four young men stopped playing cards and drinking rice wine, staring at her curiously. It was early dawn still and bitingly cold; everyone was snuggled inside their blankets, except for them.
“Come here,” Dimples said as she went around to the back of the post.
The four young men looked at one another, mumbling uncertainly, until one of them came down and slipped away in the direction the girl had disappeared, followed by his three friends. There, they saw her in the glow from the lantern, already naked.
“All of you,” she said awkwardly, “let’s make love.”
The invitation was like an incomprehensible incantation. They trembled.
The boldest of them was the first to understand, his body heating up, his hand stretching out to the girl to grope her full breasts before recklessly taking off his clothes. Equally bare-skinned, he led her into the undergrowth of a palm, pushed her down and took her virginity.
The other three got their turns not long afterwards, so that Dimples walked home bow-legged.
“It’s better to be a whore,” she said two nights later, not long after the man gave her the third and binding divorce.
She left the room with her bundle of clothing. She did not take leave of the man, who was pacing to keep his anger under control. Nor did she take leave of the triumphant woman and the two snot-nosed kids. She walked limply through the village, with pain between her thighs. She had no place to go, as all doors were closed to her and none would receive her again. Not even her own father.
Where she went, Heaven knows. This was better than stealing that putrid man from anyone, although it would not erase the sorrow that had taken hold of her.
But if you ever see a black shadow dancing atop a hill on certain nights, that is Dimples. One night sometime later, she married the crescent moon.
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