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in the waiting area jerked toward the sound of the clerk’s voice, which cut through the thick silence like a knife. She peered over her bifocals at us.
    “Can you please come up to the desk, sir? I believe you made a mistake on your paperwork.”
    Ismail looked confused.
    “You needed to provide your mother’s
maiden
name here, sir—and instead you’ve provided her married name. Can you come and correct this?” She held the sheet out to him like a teacher returning an assignment to be corrected.
    “It’s not a mistake,” Ismail called out across the room, without rising from his chair.
    The clerk shook her head vigorously. “Are you sure, sir? How could her
maiden
name be the same as her married one?” The young couple and I swiveled our heads back and forth between them like we were watching a tennis match.
    “Because they were cousins,” Ismail replied in a too-loud voice, shrugging his shoulders as if it were the most logical explanation in the world. The young woman beside us pursed her lips and sucked in air as if through a straw. She raised an eyebrow at her boyfriend, who jerked to attention and tipped the brim of his hat back on his head to get a better look at us.
    A tense silence filled the room. All eyes were on us. We were like guests on a daytime talk show whose terrible family secret had just been revealed, and now the audience was awaiting the delicious climax of our despair.
    I whipped my head around at him.
    “Your mom and your dad were
relate
d
?” I sputtered. “Why didn’t you ever tell me that?”
    He winced at my accusatory tone. “I’m sorry,” he turned to me, defensive and apologetic, raising his palms in supplication. “It never came up before.”
    That was true. So many nights we had stayed up late, plumbing the depths of one another’s histories as if mining for gold, greedy for the riches we found there, each tiny, glimmering nugget of connection convincing us we were striking it rich. I had wanted to know everything about him—his dreams, heartaches, his secret longings and nearly forgotten memories—and I had asked him every question I could think of, but not once had I thought to inquire about inbreeding. In the harsh light of this courthouse, with my pregnant belly squeezing against my bladder, poking against my ribs, and compressing my lungs—this suddenly seemed like a colossal oversight.
    “It was normal there . . .
Everyone
in our town was related . . . They were part of the same tribe—the Suayah tribe,” he fumbled, trying to sound reassuring, reaching out to run his hand down my back. The couple beside us were now leaning slightly forward in their seats. My borrowed maternity shirt rode up, revealing the blue-white translucent globe of my belly, which looked as if it would burst under any more pressure. The minutes stretched out, taut as that skin.
    When the clerk called our name again, we went to the window and signed our names on our marriage certificates. “Congratulations,” she said with a tight, glazed smile, slipping the completed paperwork across the counter like a barista might slip us a vanilla latte to go. Then she handed me a small plastic bag, which I took without questioning, and we fled out the door.
    Ismail and I did not speak on the ride home. I stared out the window at the walls of scrub pines that hemmed in this narrow road. Ismail always listened to public radio in his car, and while I usually objected to its litany of bad news, its droning analysis of the same intractable problems, this time I was grateful for the chatter. This marriage was not headline news; there were far bigger catastrophes in the world than my morning at the courthouse.
    Now I was a wife. I had never liked that word—its harsh, whining sound, its implied servitude. Similarly, I had a visceral reaction to the word
nurse,
though I had loved everything about being a candystriper in high school: wearing the pin-striped uniform with the ruffles like vestigial wings at