Her bible sang volumes of frilly white dresses and coy flitting eyelashes. She looks down now, as she clutches her bag of potatoes close to her chest, smells of the earth and plastic mingle in her overworked limbic system, making her feel afraid and uncertain in the grocery store's all too familiar surroundings. Fear was in her quran too, of uncooked rice and fish that didn't have the tangy spice of his mother's deft fingers. Of what she had to be now, here, at home, in bed, talk to me about your fantasies he whispered over and over and over in that first week when he could do no wrong, he paid for that with two month's salary for the lush honeymoon in an island off the Malaysian coast. Her taurah told her to keep him happy, her body belonged to him and no other now. How thrilled she was when she packed her first bag, only with her things, things meant to please him, thousands of rands of her inheritance easily glutted on seaming her up, on the thinnest eyeliners and lipsticks meant to bring the blush of an English rose to her complexion. No, it was fear that thudded in her heart, like the back of a fist on her perfectly aligned jaw, violence was so satisfying in and of itself, but the fear would not rest. If he can pulverize and affectionately move his tongue over the very same skin, this paradox was then not contradictory at all. If he could buy her a new wedding ring, intricately designed to the tiniest inflection, could he also not leave this marriage for something simpler, less demanding, less mundane. She could kill herself, or the far more attractive option, die, trying to keep him happy. This was the only way to attain Heaven.
