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Early on a Wednesday morning, before the uniformed children have begun trudging to school, Delia taps on the door and comes in without waiting for an answer.  Her hair, black and long and thick, is gathered hastily in a claw clip, and she wears a turquoise velour housedress, too loose for her small frame.  This is the Delia I know, the lively neighbor girl, just 19, who talks in cartoon voices to amuse her friends.  The girl who dances along to belly-dancing videos when no one is watching, who laughs easily and cries theatrically when she watches Bollywood melodramas.   Delia seems perpetually seventeen: too childlike to be officially grown-up, but lacking the sweet demureness and self-conscious awkwardness of a sixteen-year-old.

 

Today is Delia’s wedding day.  We are going to the bridal salon to dress her.

 

Delia’s aunt, who comes with us, is a small, feisty woman with girlish features and a quick, slightly bawdy wit.  When I first met her, I did not understand her humor, and Delia had to poke me in the ribs and whisper: “She is joking; don’t worry.” When we look through the albums of before and after pictures, of homely pimpled teenagers transformed into pale demure princesses, Delia’s aunt tells me we will make Delia “artificial.”  I think she is exaggerating.

 

But Delia’s aunt is serious this time, and by the time we leave for the wedding Delia is creamed and powdered until her skin is white like her dress, her lips unnaturally red, her eyes penciled, like Cleopatra’s, with silver and black.  Her hair curls stiffly like so much black plaster; her bangs are caked with scented hairspray; and, strangest of all, she cannot smile for fear of disturbing her makeup and scandalizing the in-laws, who expect a somber, emotionless bride.  I should have said goodbye to her earlier.  This is not the neighbor who runs over in a housedress to say hello in the evening.

 

I am a bridesmaid: in my brown jacket and fake silk skirt, with my four-inch heels, my job is to ensure Delia’s dress is appropriately positioned (I hold the hoops through her skirt to keep it out of the puddles), to enable her to subtly contact any relatives she needs to talk to, and to remind her not to smile.  It is a stressful job, for the in-laws are always watching, and any wrong move could generate gossip that will give Delia trouble in her new home with the man she is barely acquainted with.  All is false, all is contrived, all must be cosmetically perfect, and I cannot talk to Delia.  Why did I not say goodbye before?  There will be nothing real today.

 

The wedding party is to be at a restaurant, for a home wedding is shabby for a city girl.  Before we go, though, there are the formalities: a drive around town; prim, unsmiling posed photos at a studio; champagne and cake at home; and a disorderly religious ceremony behind a canopy in the living room.  There is no expressed emotion, only tapping heels and clinking glasses and gaudy velour dresses. 

 

I do not blame Delia and her family, for goodbyes are always like this: distant, rushed, consumed with trifling details.  Perhaps it is easier this way, to discuss cars and dresses and lipstick, to avoid the reality of a departure and the pain of a farewell.  I have experienced enough distracted goodbyes, enough preoccupied inquiries about baggage limits and flight itineraries, to know that all this farewell will hurt enough later.  Better to keep things silent and let the grief wait until all is over.

 

Before we leave for the restaurant, there is one last ceremony.  Delia, now married, walks out with her husband under the canopy.  There, by the gray gate, stand her father and her grandfather.  Eyes modestly lowered, Delia bows awkwardly and kisses her wizened grandfather’s feet.  She stands up, straightens her dress, receives the blessing of her grandfather and of the non she is given to hold under her arms. 

 

Delia’s father is now standing in front of her.  Delia bends down to kiss his black dusty shoes through her veil, and as she comes up to embrace him, she makes a noise, as if she cannot help laughing, despite the in-laws that crowd around.  It takes me a moment to realize that Delia is weeping, the veil behind her shaking as her sobs fill the courtyard.  I look, and around me Delia’s cousins and aunts are weeping too.  Large asymmetrical spots of red lipstick, loosened by salt tears, sully Delia’s veil, which we were so careful to keep white and unspoiled.

 

All is over in a matter of seconds, and we are again preoccupied with the puddles and the dress and the white Mercedes that stands in the driveway.  There are many more hours of a wedding to attend to.  But in the evening, when I get home with sore feet and an aching head, it is those improper sobs and the irregular red lipstick-spots that remain in my mind. 

 

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