[P] there is no sugar in the promised land

[Hagar]

HAGAR IESHAN

i must learn to be content
with being happier than I deserve

I

don’t understand her. I can't imagine what possesses a person to do what she does, and as often. I am tired just considering it.

I can tell Ruth is worrying, as much as Ruth can. There is a sort of thoughtful droop to her face that I recognize as one of her few actual expressions. It would look like nothing if I made that face: sharp eyes unfocused, a mouth that just barely draws down in the corners, ears that tilt back like she’s thinking. The only reason it looks like anything at all on the face of my sister is because we are so used to seeing her look like a doll, beautiful in her own way but rendered in hard porcelain. Sometimes the light moves around her face and the shadows make it look different but the face itself never changes at all.

I ask what she’s doing, sweetly as I can, as we breeze past servants slicing oranges into halves, musicians carrying their instruments in black leather cases through the halls toward the individual stages set up, flush against the walls. She answers with a shrug: on lunch, technically, but I’m supposed to take the rest of the day off for the party.

I’m ashamed to admit that I almost laugh at her, trying to imagine a conversation in which either Ruth walks up to her supervisors (men, I imagine, in long, dark coats, pushing carts full of herbs and salves– and always very serious, of course. This is the lynch pin of the aesthetic.) and mumbling something or other about the party.

Minimizing it, I’m sure. Whatever gives them room to say no.

Funnier still is the idea that they sent her home without her even asking. “Then take the day off, Ruth. It won’t kill you to have fun, I promise.” I smile again, wider now, but it feels hollow and hurts my cheeks.

“Do you even want to go to the party?” I ask, perhaps more solemnly than I meant to, and certainly more solemnly than I thought I was capable. I blink at her, and turn back to the booth.

It is just ugly bones, at the moment, clean but not freshly cut wood, bleached just a little with age. When I look at it I imagine something spectacular in its place: a fortune teller’s tent, maybe, with layers of fabric to keep out the cold, dry night air and gold cords hanging from every possible impractical place. In reality it is quite boxy, or at least more than I want. The angles are off but not too off, just enough that I see it.

I am almost sure it, like Ruth’s face, would go unnoticed by most until it is seen next to its perfect angles. I pull a bolt of fabric out of her grasp, unwinding it as I hold it up and tack it in place to see.

Ruth asks if I’d like help. I take a few steps back to stand next to her, looking again at the booth. “What? No, that’s alright. What do you think of it?” I don’t like to think I sound as unsure as I do. I like to think that I ask her with the same sort of poise and elegance that I employ as I dig through a wicker basket for scissors.

I open them twice in my hand, listening as they shing closed, and start cutting scalloped edges into each length of chiffon. “I could use the company, though. Tell me how your day was.”

@Ruth