Family Jewels

Saira Khan

At nineteen, I inherited my grandma’s gold earrings with pearl petal tips, a Schlumberger design from Tiffany’s, cluster tops, each inlaid with an emerald and a screw- back that takes a century to put on. I have smoked them with white sage three times, after each rape. When I wear them, I become irresistible to men, so that any of my objections or punches on their lapels have the reverse effect: they want me more, as if I’m protesting too much. Or its opposites day. 

The first time I put them on, Granny had just passed and I didn’t see her take her last breath though mother described it to me. It was monsoon, humid as a nun’s cunt, and Granny had been lying in bed for three days, the doctors having shaken their heads, sent her home. It was too late, the sugar had eaten both her kidneys, most of her liver and half her legs. We all knew that in our family, eating sugar was slow and certain suicide: all those ladoos and jalebis, fermented flour and sugar, deep fried, dripping with oil and sugar. 

I’d stayed home in Markham, to take care of my sister, while mum flew to Pakistan and sat at her dying mother’s bed, listening to her last words about matchmaking the cousins. Daniyel was to marry Farah and Adam was to marry Havah and the only person without a good match was me. “None of the boys are tall enough for Betti!” Granny cried. She tucked the earrings into my mother’s hand secretly. She didn’t want them in the general pile of assets. After years of manipulating and pitting them against each other, she was sure her children would fight over her will. She made my mother promise not to tell anyone. 

I looked so beautiful in the earrings, they were small but powerful. “I’m honored to be given Granny’s Tiffany’s piece,” I said, but mum rolled her eyes. 

“They’re not Tiffany, Betti. They’re local, a pair based on the same design originally commissioned by the Shah Jahan in his treasure at the Taj Mahal. Tiffany’s knocked them off.” She eyed them on my lobes greedily. “Where are you going again?” 

“Oh just out with some girlfriends,” I lied. 

I was going on a date that night with the butcher, Sammy, from whom I bought halaal meat every Friday. He lived in a basement apartment with two other men who had also just arrived in Markham recently from Pakistan. FOBs people called them. Their names were Yousef and Nik. Nik was beautiful and I tried to pretend that I wasn’t on a date with Sammy. In a closet on a small stove, Sammy prepared the choicest bits of goat into a thick heavenly stew that the four of us ate with naan, dipping with our fingers as was mandated in the Hadith. Yousef said in a booming voice, “The Prophet has said: ‘When you eat do not wipe your hands ‘til you have licked them or had them licked by someone else.’” He reached over, grabbed my hand and proceeded to lick my fingers. 

Sam rose abruptly and slapped the side of his head. “Behave!” 

Yousef laughed. “Sorry,” he said, between chuckles shared with Nik. 

The earrings gleamed in my ear and a sparkle caught Sam’s eyes – I could see the light reflecting in his dark eyes. He rose suddenly and asked me to follow, he wanted to show me something. He led me to his bedroom, where the floor was covered in three bare mattresses, brown scratchy blankets strewn about. From the kitchen Yousef called out: “The jalebis and chai are ready!”

“No!” I said, when Sam, kissing and stroking me, tried to unzip my pants. 

Kissing my ears, he whispered, “I just want to show you the stars.” I let him kiss me but when he hooked my leg with his and tripped me into falling back on the mattress, I beat his chest, repeating Nos in between kisses. 

“Don’t worry,” he grunted as he put his thing inside me, which took my breath away, and I was silent. 

After, we ate jalebis and drank tea with Yousef and Nik. Nik would not meet my eyes. Yousef said he wanted to show me something, too. I faked a headache and left hurriedly. 

At home, I saged my whole body including the earrings and my sister said: “Ew, it smells like ass and smoke.” 

“Shut up!” I screamed. I put the earrings in the very back of the jewelry box and lay down. Above my headboard through the window, the constellations were giving a faint outline of Granny’s face. At my side lay an old print ad that Granny had saved, as proof, as confession: 

Tiffany Emerald Flower Earrings by Schlumberger, modeled on the original design from the Moghul empire, a piece rumored to make the wearer irresistible to lovers. 

The following Friday, not wanting to make my mother suspicious, I went to the butchers stoically. Sammy smiled at me across the meat case. “The usual?” I nodded. His muscles rippled as he wielded a knife in a blood-stained apron. He whistled as he worked, a tune about romance I faintly recalled Granny liking. “I’m making something special for dinner tonight,” he said. “Paya.” Trotters. My favorite. Something Mother never made; said it was too high in cholesterol. I found myself back in the basement apartment, belly full of trotters, on the bare mattress on the floor except this time it had a bedsheet on it and next to it, a tea light. 

Sammy smelled like raw meat. I let him put his thing inside and I let him rock me and I did see stars. 

We became regulars for a few months and I would come early in the morning, before Uni, to merge. To wake him by lowering myself onto him under a scratchy brown blanket. One morning the butcher announced he was leaving town. He was going to cross the US Canada border, to try his luck in New York City. I’d never seen him like that, talking in sentimental tones. Would I run away from home and marry him? “It would be easier, for immigration status,” he explained. I squeezed my eyes and forced some tears out. We made love for the very last time. 

The truth was that I was kind of excited for him to leave because I found his roommate Nik so much more attractive. It was just me and Nik left in the basement apartment. Yousef had gone to Quebec to visit a cousin. Nik’s face was as round as the moon. His nose was sharper than the butcher’s and he had a funny accent, half desi and half street. He was a student, like me ,but he went to Humber, the vocational school. Sometimes I barely understood what he was saying. We made such a beautiful couple, both tall and bright with dark curly lashes. With the butcher gone, there wasn’t any food. We ate at Taco Bell together. 

I cried because I missed the butcher. Nik put his arm around my shoulder. I leaned on him. “Don’t you miss him?” 

“Yes.” 

We cured our sadness the only way we knew how: by plugging into our bodies’ souls. I traced the hairline down his chest. His penis was small, smaller than the butcher’s. No! I cried, knocking over cinnamon twists on the stained beige carpet. 

Nik and I became a couple, like an old married couple. The one petty disappointment: his eel wasn’t as big nor did it move electric, like the butcher’s. When Nik was sick one day, I brought him Campbell’s and said I had to go study. I put on the emerald earrings and went dancing with my girlfriends, was immediately picked up by a man who wanted to grind on the dance floor. I was shaking my head side to side while he ground his crotch into mine. Strobe lights bounced against the facets of the emeralds. Suddenly, Nik was standing there, sick, sickened. 

He would not  forgive me. By the  following week, another woman had already replaced me in the basement apartment. She was studying organic chemistry on the kitchen table. Yousef sat next to her, grinning at me when I gave him the question face. 

“You’ve met Maj?” he said. 

“You’re back,” I said, wearing the earrings. Pretending to flirt with Yousef, I waited until the other girl left. She wasn’t as pretty as me or as thin. I took Nik to the bedroom and told him I wanted to get back together. He said no but raped me anyway. Or I raped him. That night it was questionable. 

In the morning, Yousef, thin and dark in the corner, said:  “I know your types. Total sluts.” He didn’t know shit. Nik had to go out for milk because Maj was coming over. 

Yousef told me to lie down in his bed. I was stunned. “I thought you were the religious type,” I said. 

“I am,” he said, covering my body in a white sheet with a hole in it. He unzipped his pants and lay down next to me. I was wearing the emerald earrings. It was inevitable. 

“Wait one sec,” I said, putting my hand on his hairy chest as he hovered above me. He lay back, watching me unscrew the earrings out of my ears. The long thick posts took a very long time to unscrew, the pleasure building with each turn between my fingers. They released my earlobe with a soft sigh, a tender relaxation. Yousef’s phone buzzed. It was his grandmother. I watched his erection slacken and curl.