The Turkish Bath
1083 Words
(Unknown POV)
I was sitting in front of the door, while my good-for-nothing husband went to buy more plaster to cover up the yet again broken window. It was freezing inside after the wind blew the plaster we put up to block the cold because my husband refused to replace the windows. Every winter I had to deal with the same thing. God, how I despised being stuck with this man. Yet I was too young and too scared to refuse getting married with him...
I heard people shouting from the other end of the street along with the faint sound of a jolly melody coming closer. Then, I saw two gypsy girls dancing and making music as they begged for money. The older and the more beautiful one was playing the accordion, spinning around herself with her bare foot while the younger one was holding onto her skirt while dancing along the melody. Hell, I used to dance and sing just like these gypsy girls. Then one day, my mother tugged me to the make-shift bathroom with a large bowl and a stove to heat the water, brushed my hair as if she wanted to rip out every single strand, dressed me up like a grown woman with some hand-me-down gown and shoes, put make-up on my face that made me feel like a clown. When I finally stepped out of the bathroom, I found people I have never seen before, sitting in the only room our house had. The room was a living/dining room by day and a bedroom by night.
The women who seemed to be the oldest opened her mother with amazement and said "Is she pure?" referring to me in women's clothing and an abnormal amount of make-up. I looked at my mother, not understanding what the old woman meant by that. But instead of saying anything, my mother looked away with anger when the room was filled with a deafening laughter coming from the others in the room. A woman who seemed to be younger than the other pulled her scarf over her head and said "Well, we have a lot to do before that" and tugged the me from my arm and took me out. I was so in shock and so scared that I did not even had a chance to grab my poncho on the way out.
Apparently, where I was being taken is a Turkish bath in the neighborhood. I had been to the bath with my mother but I was so small that I can barely remember. What I saw inside made me even more scared. There were women inside, half were n***d and half wrapped around a loincloth over their n***d bodies. The loincloth had become see-through from the hot steam and water, that I could see the large breasts and assess peaking through. I was so in awe from the scene before my eyes, I did not notice that the woman who took me here was also stripping down, without even hesitating. "Don't slack around, take your clothes off" she yelled as she grabbed a loincloth waving it in front of my face. I had never been n***d around anyone but my mother when she washed my back and hair in the bathroom after I had my period, even then she made me turn my back to her. Apparently it was not appropriate, even for your own mother to see you naked... Or maybe she did not want to see the disgrace I was, a flat chest with a barely-there breasts and a body of a boy. When I first had my period a year ago, I thought I was going to turn into a curvy woman like my mother but alas! The only sign I became a woman was the hair growing in weird parts of my body which my mother insisted to get rid them with wax but it hurt so much that I screamed in pain at the top of my lungs.
Seeing those curvy women in thin loincloth and shaking their hips with the music coming from the tambourine several women were playing, proud of being a woman, I felt ashamed of my little boy body. As I was getting undressed, facing the cabinets at the side of the large marble room, I was snapped out of my thoughts with a slap on my a*s and another deafening laugh. "Girl, you have no a*s! How in hell you gonna pleasure your husband?" Husband? What husband? I was 14...
The confused look on my face revealed that I had no idea why I was here or who were those strangers. "Really, we have a lot to go over with you, don't we?" she said. With that, she grabbed my wrist and dragged me to one of the marble sinks and had me sit down. Before I could say anything, she started to pour hot water over my shoulder. "Let's get you all cleaned up good" she said. The steam coming from the hot water pouring over the sink, the sound of the tambourine, the laughter and singing from the large women around me and the thought of being handed to a man I never once met made me dizzy.
From that day on, I could never sing or dance like I used to. I was being handed to strangers to get married. I had to act like a grown woman and pleasure that man I called my husband. I was only 14 when they took away my dream to reach the stars.
It was freezing cold and a sudden shimmer brought me back from my thoughts. As the looks of it, men started to leave their houses to go to work so I had to go inside and prepare the breakfast. One part of me was enjoying cooking because I wanted my handsome son to be full before he left the house but I had no intentions to feed my good-for-nothing husband who had retired recently and has done nothing but to be a pain in my a*s.
I stood up to face my husband who never even once smiled at me going out the door. I did not question where he was going. He would never leave without breakfast but I did not care. He could go to hell and starve there if he wanted to. I just turned my head away and got inside so I could pour some hot tea for my son.
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- Writer
