Chapter 6: Table Seven

The bruise on my hip came up on Sunday morning as four dark fingers.

I sat down in the church pew carefully and did not look at my husband.

He sat beside me in the gray suit that did not fit him, and he did not look at me either.

After the liturgy the whole parish went across the yard to the hall for lunch, as it has every Sunday for a hundred years.

I walked in on his arm.

The noise in the room dropped by half and then came back, lower.

Chairs were already turned.

At the long tables, women I had hemmed wedding dresses for, women whose daughters I had stood beside in the fitting room, looked past me at the wall.

I knew the names of three of their daughters' bridesmaids.

I knew whose husband had gained twenty pounds and had a waistband let out in secret.

None of them looked me in the face.

"The seamstress," a woman said behind her hand, as I passed.

"In Seta's dress," another said. "At least have the decency to take it in."

Table seven stood at the head of the hall, under the painting of Saint Sarkis on his white horse.

It was the Kasparian table, and the Growers' Table sat at it once a month.

Shushan was already there, cutting bread.

She slid the plate of lavash toward the woman on my left, an old woman in a black scarf who had known my mother.

The old woman looked at the bread.

Then she looked at me, and moved her hand back into her lap.

"I'll pass bread to a Kasparian," she said to the table. "This one I'll see when she has lasted a year."

Nobody answered her.

I put my napkin in my lap and found that my hands were steady.

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