Maacah told me today I made a better door than a window. As usual, she was wrong. I have become a window. My old person of being a woman -a wife, a mother, a sister, a daughter- has been locked closed by one man. That door can never be used again, and so what's left sits in a narrow screened window ledge and watches other unlocked lives.
He was my life once.
I always fought with my father, defending the mother I felt never had a voice. When he came it was another cause of battle, multiple battles, always made up after a few days with tears and penitence and raw throbbing souls, but the cause never ceased.
He was good, great; energetic where my father was fearful, courageous where my father was slow. Zeal and passion, hope and purpose. I thought he could give it to me instead of an empty existence of waiting. I let myself fall harder than I had any right to let a man drop me, every part of my life thrown away for inclusion in his.
When he left it was to a heroic sense at first, waiting for his return as his saviour and so last, I hoped, equal. Gossip filtered through spies and servants of sons born to him and an awful realisation took root in my pushed aside insecurities and cast aside identity.
Paltiel was my decision. He wasn't great but he was good, and I didn't want great any more. I filled myself with small pieces of life and let myself carry small joys. When he held me in his arms I rested, quieted.
Now the scanty wind carries past me the dust of the life down there. A child shrieks in the stillness of the afternoon heat and I splay my hands on my infinitely flat belly and let the tears slide from closed eyes.
When I open them again it is to a heavy donkey cart thudding down the street. Tear marks spot the dark cloth at my breast. As I raise my eyes, across the street I glimpse a shape in the dim gap of the window, just below my eye level. It is a smiling face that leans closer towards me, waving, before I can look away quickly enough.
A door slams somewhere across the street, perhaps behind my neighbour's wall, and it is like something in my spirit stops straining against the too-tight chain and glides closed at last. Letting my hands dig into the grit of the sandstone on each side, I dart my eyes over again. She is still there, and this time I stand. I smooth a hand up to my chest and, quivering, turn it to the side.
The tiny motion is like opening hope again.
Perhaps opening a locked, stuffy window when the door is sealed.
I wave again.
