The Miracle Worker

Photograph of child's feet by Rob Priddy

When Mrs. Mansour first came to the house, I thought she was alone. Naturally I could see only her face; the rest of her had been draped in the traditional black. But there was something modern about her right away, even ignoring the fact that she had arrived without a husband. She wore sunglasses—Chanel, I learned, as she approached—and deep red lipstick.

"Mrs. Sally Riva?" she said, removing the sunglasses.

I nodded. Only my birth certificate had ever called me Salvación. I reached out to shake her henna-tipped hand, but Mrs. Mansour leaned in further, to kiss me on both cheeks. She smelled pleasantly of tangerine and something stronger, perhaps a spice. Once the outer gate had shut, she parted her jilbab to reveal a gold-embroidered bodice and a little daughter. "Here is Aroush," said Mrs. Mansour. The child had been anchored on Mrs. Mansour's hip and concealed by her garments all along. Mrs. Mansour shifted Aroush's face to give me a frontal view.

I was stunned. Back home in the Philippines I had been trained to work with all manner of "special" children. But I had never seen any child quite like the five-year-old Aroush. Her head swelled out dramatically at the forehead and crown, like a lightbulb. Faint brown smudges the size of thumbprints dotted her face. Along the left side of her neck grew a pebbly mass of tumors.

"Aroush, this lady is a teacher. Hello, Teacher." Mrs. Mansour held Aroush's hennaed hand and made it wave. Through the rust-colored designs on her skin I could see more of the pebbly tumors.

I led them into the house. A year had passed since my husband, Ed, and I had moved from the Philippines to Bahrain, and still I thought of these three stories as "the" house—not "our" house, certainly not "my." Expatriate families like ours were well provided for: a car, a travel allowance, the promise of schooling if we were ever to have a child. Strangest of these provisions, to me, was the house. Too large for two people, it was outfitted with luxuries I would never have chosen myself: gold leather upholstery, curtains embroidered with camels and date trees, shelves and tables with brass frames and glass surfaces. Plush red carpeting covered every inch of floor except in the bathrooms and the kitchen. We wanted for nothing, and none of it was ours.

Mrs. Mansour stopped at a full-length mirror in the foyer. "Look here, little woman," she said to Aroush. She lifted the girl's chin and draped the edge of her jilbab around the grotesque little face so that two veiled heads were facing the mirror. "Who is that?" said Mrs. Mansour. Aroush grunted. I could see this was an established call-and-response between them, one of the few rituals where a child such as Aroush could be depended on to react.

In the living room Mrs. Mansour spoke of the cool weather that day, which to me was not cool but merely less hot than usual, and of how much she adored people from my country, most of her household help being Filipino as well. Clearly we would circle for hours around the real purpose of her visit unless I addressed it myself.

"Mrs. Mansour," I said, "let me begin by telling you that I unfortunately don't speak any Arabic."

"Of course," said Mrs. Mansour. My friend Minnie had already informed her. But the language barrier, it turned out, did not disqualify me. Mrs.

Mansour preferred it this way—for, quite unbelievably, she wanted Aroush to grow up bilingual. Bilingue was how she put it: Mrs. Mansour herself had learned French as a schoolgirl in Beirut. She supported Aroush's head against her chest as she spoke. With a clutched handkerchief, she caught a dribble of saliva from Aroush's mouth before it could land on their clothing.

I asked what else she expected out of Aroush...