The Awakening
A phone conversation that no woman should ever have to have, but I had to have it. No choice, no knowledge of the truth until a few months ago.
I wondered how she might feel when he, her cousin, her brother in spirit, touched her in a way no brother ever should, on their wedding night. His hands would soon cross several boundaries from familial to marital, from safe to terrifying. Would she feel violated? Shamed? Confused? Would she cry out in fear, or freeze in silence?
She wouldn’t have the words for it, they were not in her vocabulary. Not in her world. But I knew that that’s exactly what it would feel like to her, a violation. As it was also to me. Like something happening to her, not with her. Like an innocent child, but an adult, and still unprepared for this, incapable of understanding what it was, she was truly innocent. It would hurt her physically, emotionally and spiritually. I know this.
I’m empathetic to a fault, I feel other people’s feelings like they are my own. I can feel her. She is twenty-nine years old. But she doesn’t know what will happen the first night she sleeps beside her husband. I thought everyone got the birds and the bees talk before marriage at least, but now I am having a very difficult time learning that this is not so. How many innocent young women in the world do not know that their dreams of marriage begin with a very scary nightmare? They want to protect a daughter by keeping her innocent, then they let this happen. I truly cannot understand this. I’ll feel her thoughts, fear, and confusion. I’ll feel her pain in my own body. My empathy took over my own heartbreak. I guess it also took my reasoning today, I was like a stone, I was going through the motions and avoiding my emotions, but my heart went out to her for the loss of her innocence, the shock, and the trauma she will feel, and doesn’t know is coming. I stepped outside of myself to be human. I felt like I had to warn her, to protect her. To go beyond myself for her.
I didn’t want her to feel used or insignificant. I know she will feel shamed. I wanted her to be protected and I wanted her to feel prepared. I wanted her to know that what was coming her way was normal. That it’s part of marriage, and it doesn’t have to feel cruel. Honestly, I feel sick knowing that in her culture, girls are kept ignorant. Their mothers don’t speak, and daughters are left to discover sex through all that pain and silence. How could any mother allow that? I remembered her sister, asking me privately a few years ago what it was like to sleep beside a husband. She also wanted to know how babies came to be. She was 27, she’d heard something from a friend. She was curious and more outgoing than her older sister, who is shy and spends most of her time alone and isolated. shy, innocent.
In her culture they knew when someone was pregnant. But no one asked how. If they did, the answer was simple: “It’s a gift from God.” And they don’t dare to question. There would not be answers. Not there.
Today I had to leave my own pain behind. I approached her gently. I spoke to her about sex in marriage, and I talked about the man who would be with her. A man that I loved, my own husband, who would soon know her completely as his wife.
I asked if she was nervous about the night. She hesitated, “I spoke to your sister about sex, she was anxious about what would happen on her wedding night. She looked at me and asked, “What is sex? What do you mean? No one has told me about this.” Then I took a deep breath, and I told her everything.
I explained everything of what would happen when they were alone in bed. I told her that what he would do is normal in marriage and that it’s also how women become pregnant. I also told her that it’s also done for enjoyment between husbands and wives even when not expecting to become pregnant. I told her she might see blood the first time, and that there might be some pain, but it would pass. I told her she would be okay. She listened to every word in silence. I was grateful that I wasn’t standing beside her to see her face. But thousands of miles across an ocean. I don’t know what I would’ve done if I’d seen her responses. She started to cry. “I didn’t know that people did this thing,” she said. Her voice shook, then she said in disgust, “I cannot do this thing.” She sobbed louder, I felt so sad for her. “This is way too embarrassing for me to do. I can’t.”
I told her, “I wish your mother or your sister had told you this, hasn’t anybody talked about the wedding night?” Then she told me her cousin told her to sleep on a towel the first night, but she didn’t know why, and she didn’t ask. I wasn’t surprised, knowing that she has no curiosity about anything. That was all she was told. I shook my head. Was that all? I thought, They call their friends “sisters.” But no one ever speaks, prepares, or protects them with knowledge. She wouldn’t have known what to ask anyway. If she lived here she’d know that it would feel like the crime we all hate. I couldn’t let that happen. Her knowing was more important than the pain of knowing what I had learned several week ago, in that moment, on that call.
I will never regret what I told her. I pictured her in my mind, feeling alone and scared, unable to explain to him how she felt. I think this was probably the best thing I’ve ever done for another woman in my life. In my position, that might seem crazy.
It’s unimaginable to tell your bigamist husband’s wife about her first experience with sex, in the coming hours, but I did it selflessly because she needed to know, and because no one else would tell her, and I told her if she wanted to talk more about this, she could ask me, and I would listen. I felt I had to be the mother that her mother couldn’t be. I cared more about her as a woman than I did about myself and the pain of what my husband had done to me in marrying her 6 years ago in secret contract.
I didn’t care how he felt. Or about his nerves. When I spoke to him, I only thought of her, a girl I had known for 12 years. “Be easy with her,” I told him. She’s more innocent than you ever thought she was.” “She thinks of you as her brother. If I hadn’t spoken to her, it would have been too traumatic for her. At least now she can expect it, instead of feeling like you’re raping her. She’s too innocent to understand the word.” I started to cry, and hung up on him. I have no idea how I did what I had just done. Am I crazy to feel this way about her feelings when my own are being shattered ?
He told me I was brave. Wonderful. That he was lucky to have me. He said, “I’ll be back with you soon and you’ll see there’s nothing between us that’s different.”I knew that wasn’t true. And it hurt.
I spoke to her again the morning of the big day, she was still struggling with the “news” I had given her. I told her I hope she gets through the day okay. Try to enjoy it, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing. If she wasn’t who she was to me before all this, I could never have spoken to her like that.” “I saw this as outside of myself. I wanted to help her and to protect her from trauma, so she is prepared for what he will do to her.”
It made me sad, angry, and numb. I was drained and empty. To think of all those young brides—so unaware, and so completely unprepared. So afraid. That’s how they learn what marriage is from day one. I thought of all the very young girls who were sold off as brides for money and survival. I had to separate my pain from hers because no woman should feel the pain of an unwanted physical violation……Not ever.