Sullha
The laundry smelled of bleach, hot fabric, and the particular scent of industrial detergent that was used for washing linens and uniforms. About fifty women were working at the machines and the pressing tables and the folding stations, their hair pulled back into kerchiefs and their faces shining with sweat.
It took her some time to locate her mother among the women who all looked the same.
She was at the pressing machine.
The years had not been kind to Leehy, and she hadn't been kind to herself either. She just didn't care.
Somehow though, she looked different in here. Not as dead inside as she usually appeared when Sullha saw her at meals or just passing by.
She was working a sheet through the rollers, and she looked peaceful. Her shoulders were loose. Her hands moved without hesitation. She was in that moment more present in her own body than Sullha had seen her in years.
It lasted until she looked up.
"Sullha? What are you doing here?"
The peaceful expression closed and was replaced by the cautious blankness that her mother usually wore. The transformation was like a slap to the face.
"I brought lemonade," Sullha said, lifting the pitcher. "I thought you might want a cool drink while working in this heat."
Her mother looked around at the woman working the press next to her.
She was older than her mother by perhaps ten years and built like a tugboat. "Take a break, Leehy. Go drink lemonade with your daughter."
"I can't, Miral. It's not time for my break yet."
"Who's to know? We have you covered."
Her mother still looked unsure.
Sullha set the pitcher and the four glasses on the folding table and poured lemonade into two of them.
"I couldn't bring lemonade for everyone, but I brought two extra glasses."
"We will share," Miral said.
"Thank you."
As Sullha picked up the two filled glasses and gestured toward the door with her chin, her mother reluctantly followed her out into the morning air.
The shaded bench next to the wall of the building was a perfect spot for the laundry personnel to take breaks on. Sullha sat down at one end, and her mother sat at the other, looking like she would rather be anywhere else.
They drank for a moment without speaking. The lemonade was cold and slightly too sweet, but her mother seemed to like it.
"You looked different in there," Sullha said.
"What do you mean?"
Sullha shrugged. "You looked peaceful. I didn't know that you liked working in the laundry so much."
Her mother turned the glass in her hands. The condensation had wet her fingers, and she rubbed her thumb along the rim.
"The work is hard, and the heat is oppressive, but it's safe, and I'm among friends."
There was no good response to that, and the silence was at least honest, which was more than most of her conversations with her mother managed.
"Miral seems nice," she said.
"She is."
"I've never met her before."
"You haven't been to the laundry before."
"No."
"The laundry is its own little enclosure. It's a different world here. As long as the work is done, no one bothers us."
"It sounds nice."
"You take what you can get."
Sullha looked down at her own glass. The lemonade had a film of pulp at the bottom, and she swirled it absently before taking another sip.
"It's strange how the familiar feels safe even when it is not, and the unfamiliar feels dangerous even when it's the safer thing."
Her mother looked puzzled. "What is unfamiliar?"
"The world outside the enclosure, outside the island."
Her mother looked lost for words, which wasn't surprising. She usually didn't have much to say.
The wind moved through the laurels that grew along the wall, and in the distance a child shouted.
"There is no outside world for us, Sullha. We are here, and we are not leaving."
"What if you could?"
"We cannot."
"If you could, though, would you want to leave and see what's out there?"
Instead of answering, her mother looked at the yellow liquid while moving her thumb along the rim of the glass. She lifted her head, and her gaze drifted to the line where the courtyard met the perimeter wall.
"I would want to," her mother said.
The words were quiet enough that Sullha had to lean toward her to be sure she had heard them correctly.
"You would?"
"Don't look so surprised." She sighed. "Of course, I would like to see what's out there, but I know it will never happen and I don't indulge in fantasies. It just hurts too much."
Sullha hadn't expected this. She'd expected the dull deflection that her mother used as a shield, the small flat dismissals that had been her response to Sullha's every attempt at connection.
"What if I told you that there's a way?" Sullha said quietly.
Her mother looked at her. Really looked at her.
It wasn't the vacant stare she was used to.
She saw something behind her mother's eyes that she'd never seen there before.
It wasn't hope exactly. It was more like the rekindling of a fire that had been almost all out, and then someone had stirred it with a stick and a small red glow appeared in the ash.
"How?" her mother asked.
"I am not sure yet. But if a door opened, would you walk through it?"
"There are no open doors."
"If there was?"
Her mother kept looking into her eyes, her mouth pressed into a thin line, as if expecting to find a better answer in there. Failing to find it, she looked down at her glass, then up at the sky, then back at Sullha, and the small glow in her eyes was still there, banked but not extinguished.
"I would rather die trying than die not trying.
" Her gaze lingered on Sullha's face for a moment longer, and then she looked away.
"But that's just talk, Sullha. No woman has ever walked out of this enclosure alive.
They take the dead ones somewhere else to bury them, and I am not even sure they bother to bury them properly.
Sometimes I think they just throw the bodies into the ocean. "
Sullha shuddered. It hadn't occurred to her before that the dead women didn't receive proper burial, that even in death they were disrespected and mistreated. She would have to ask Yaaf about that.
"There might be a way, Mother, and I'm not just saying that to hear myself talk."
Her mother looked at her again, the glow in her eyes brightening, and Sullha could see the slow recalculating that was happening behind them.
"You are nineteen," her mother said. "What do you know about doors that suddenly open?"
"A lot."
"That's not an answer."
"That's all I can say for now. But I need to know if when that door opens you would walk through it by my side."
Her mother was quiet for a long time.
She drank the rest of her lemonade in one slow swallow and set the empty glass on the bench between them, and then she looked at her callused, reddened hands as if they might provide the answer she was struggling with.
"Yes," she said finally. "I would walk through this imaginary door by your side. I don't believe any are going to open, but you asked, and my answer is yes."
Sullha let out a breath. "That's good. I'm glad."
Her mother shook her head. "It's foolish talk, and I fell for it, letting myself feel hope for the first time in years. Now I am going to have to put it back where it belongs, which is in the toilet, so I can finish my shift."
Sullha set her own empty glass on the bench.
She didn't know how to end the conversation.
She didn't know whether to tell her mother more, whether to promise something, or whether to leave things as they were.
She'd stirred the fire in her mother's heart, and she'd stirred something in her own, and the prudent thing was to leave the fire to burn quietly until she had more kindling for it.
"I have to go." She stood. "I have things I need to do before Tomek's class ends and I need to collect him."
"What things?"
"I'm going to see Rohilah."
"Rohilah." Her mother frowned. "Why?"
"I am asking around for women who can read. I want to see about getting more teachers for the children. We don't have enough, and those we have are exhausted."
Her mother studied her face for a long moment, and Sullha could see her piecing together the visit and the talk about doors that might open, and she knew that the fire was going to keep burning in her mother's gut.
"Is any of this for real?" her mother asked quietly.
Sullha looked around. The courtyard was empty, but the laundry door was open.
"Maybe," she said.
Her mother's eyes closed briefly, and she let out a breath. "I need to get back to work."
Sullha followed her mother back into the laundry to retrieve the pitcher and the other two glasses. Miral looked up when they came in.
"She does not visit you much," Miral said after Leehy returned to her press.
Sullha was not sure whether the comment was meant kindly or as a small rebuke, and she decided that she didn't care which one it was.
"She could have visited me whenever she wanted," Sullha said. "She knows where to find me."
Sullha did not regret saying it. She regretted that it was true.
She picked up the pitcher and the other two glasses, nodded once to Miral, and walked out of the laundry.
Sullha let her feet carry her without paying too much attention to where they were going. Her chest was tight, and her hands were cold on the pitcher, and the small fire she had stirred in her mother felt like a monumental achievement.
She could be saved, and that changed the count.
Sullha had been telling herself that she should prioritize the ones who were still young enough to start over, the ones who had the resilience to survive in the outside world.
But she was about to vet the mothers of Yaaf's friends, and if they were good to go, so was her mother.
Leehy was forty-two, and she hadn't loved her well, but she'd passed the test.
She was good to go, and the accounting had just changed.