Page 22 of The Flowers of Bay C
Jodie snickers and tilts her head over at him, catching my eye.
He’s poking out through his pyjama bottoms, wizened and shrivelled.
Sister Joy sighs.
Violet says, ‘Put yourself away, man.’
???
After lunch I am drifting off into woozy sleep. Barbara is snoring in the corner. Jodie is not tired, though, it seems, and plonks herself down by Amina’s bed, much to Violet’s glaring annoyance. ‘So, what country you from?’ she says without guile, and I cringe a little bit.
Amina seems okay with it, but I wonder if deep down she’s just resigned to it. ‘I’m now from here, from this town, but I was living in Pakistan until I was eighteen years old.’
Jodie settles in, waiting for more, and I watch, curiosity cutting through a daze of weariness.
‘It was so beautiful, my country, it was always so filled with colour and big wide skies. Here the skies are too often grey.’
Violet tightens her lips.
‘Why’d you come to England?’ Jodie says.
Amina is quiet for a moment, smoothing down her blanket.
‘I was brought here to marry my husband, Bilal.’
Jodie is all outrage. ‘What, you don’t mean like one of them arranged marriages, do you? Like I mean like when you don’t even know him and you have to get married to him, ’cause your parents force you?’
Amina just nods.
Jodie is raging with wounded self-righteousness. ‘Well, why don’t you leave him now? Now, like, you’re older and all that, and you know you don’t have to be tied to some dude as his slave no more?’
Amina just smiles, and Jodie gets more riled.
‘I mean, it’s not as if you’d be penniless now, you’d get help from the state, right? Like most of us do. You could go live on your own and be happy. You could get rid of that headdress and all that.’
A shadow of a frown crosses Amina’s brow. ‘We made a life together, Bilal and me.’
Jodie is incensed. ‘But—’
Amina holds her palm up. ‘No. You don’t know everything, you know. It does not have to be like you think. And I like my hijab. I choose it myself.’
I sit up slightly, studying Amina’s face: earnest and, somehow, contented.
Violet mutters something to herself. I think it’s something about headscarves and the Conservative Party going all soft, but I can’t be sure.
Jodie rolls her eyes as she clambers to her feet. ‘Well, you stay in your controlling marriage then. Whatever.’
For someone usually so laid back and tolerant, she seems incredibly flustered. Is it that her worldview is being challenged, or is it that she thinks Amina really is an oppressed woman? Becauseshe doesn’t look like one to me. But what do I know? I didn’t tell anyone about Marcus.
Jodie shakes her head as she makes her way to the bay entrance. She casts a glance back over her shoulder, at no one in particular. ‘Women shouldn’t have to be with men who control them.’
Has she looked at Kane lately?
Amina says, ‘Bilal has never controlled me in my life.’
???
I must have dozed off, because when I’m next aware Jodie is back on her bed, flipping through a magazine, and Jake is here, on his phone. Violet is shouting about something, her tones caustic and whinging through the general clutter of noise on the ward. ‘Those nurses just sit and twiddle their thumbs all day. It’s not like they have anything better to do.’
