When We Were Sisters: a Novel, page 4
The bell rings before I can find Al’ Kausar and I have to go back into class. In art we’re making hand turkeys for some American holiday. I’m the best drawer in class. The only time the other kids like me is when they ask me to draw for them. I do and pretend we are friends. When I hand them their drawings, they go back to ignoring me.
* * *
—
Hey Kausar. You like my turkey?
In front of me, Ben’s turkey is misshapen. Ben’s always the biggest on the field, the first one to tackle another boy to the dirt. When he walks he puffs out his chest and they follow him. He’s drawn his fingers too fat. His friends are making fun of him but he laughs. This must be a thing friends do.
It’s ugly.
I want to be his friend. But the air is wrong. It’s silent, everyone looks at me, faces blank. Surprised. I’ve never had so many people look at me before. I know I’ve done something wrong. Ben’s eyebrows knot, like right before he’s about to tackle. And then his friends explode, laughing.
Oh shit, you’re gonna let that freak say that to you?
Who knew she had a mouth?
She called your shit ug-layyy!
I’m in trouble, I know it. I brace my body.
Your mom’s ugly.
The boys howl as the words leave Ben’s mouth. I watch him lean back against the table, his fists gently pulsing, the vein in his wrist juts out. He smirks as the classroom fills with the ocean of their laughter.
My mom’s dead.
* * *
—
It’s so quiet no one hears me except for Ben. I stare him straight in the eyes. His eyebrows unknot as the boys pound their fists against the desk as their bellies split open with sound, as their whole bodies shake. At the corner of my eyelids, a dock of pearls begins to form. At the corner of my eyelids, a dock of pearls spills over.
Or, the Qur’an says heaven is under a mother’s feet. My mother is make-believe. My mother could be the baseball diamond I can see from the classroom window. Another class of kids out there now. The cloud of dust rises as the kids run. My mother could be the grass, what little of it hasn’t been trampled. My mother could be a droplet of water from the leaky faucet. My mother could be this hand turkey. My mother could be Ben’s fist, gently pulsing. My mother could be the vein in his wrist. My mother could be the pearl on my face.
When I leave to use the bathroom, Ben finds me in the hallway. In school, the hallways aren’t rife with birds. I see him coming and try to duck into an empty classroom, but he catches my wrist before I can escape. I see it again: his body against mine, my body cracking into dirt, his fist pulsing and pulsing.
Hit me.
His hand around my wrist is gentle, but firm. I look up at him, confused, but see his eyebrows are unknotted.
I hurt you. Hit me.
Everyone is in their classrooms. The hallway is empty, a ghost town. Ben is in front of me, his hand on my wrist, his eyes pleading. I can feel him on my skin. I’ve never punched anyone in my life. But I ball up my fist. I drive it into his chest.
Again. I made you cry. So make me cry.
My fist cracks into Ben’s chest again. And again. My eyes are on his eyes. His eyes on mine. I’m surprised by how good it feels, my fingers banging into his body, my arm swinging wilder and wilder with each punch.
Again.
* * *
—
He doesn’t say it, but I know with each crack of my fist into his chest that he’s sorry. With each crack of my fist into his chest, he teaches me how to be a man.
We weren’t adopted. And when we asked to be, when we asked to officially belong, Uncle ██████ said no, that we would mess up his taxes, that we brought in money to help take care of us, that we had to stay orphans to keep things that way.
In the mornings we stop by Uncle ██████’s apartment so that he can collect our schedules. Noreen helps me write mine out. Noreen is so smart. She gets A’s in all her classes. A collector of good grades. A collector of awards. She’s in the special classes for gifted kids. She’s so well behaved at school. No one knows our days are organized down to the minute. We don’t live with him but my whole day is in his hands.
In the morning, when I submit my schedule, I walk through his living room, stacked with boxes on boxes I can’t see over. A small trench he’s made, a labyrinth of paper and files that can only fit one person at a time. Different paths to different rooms in the apartment. Each path a vein that pulses. Each path leads back to the center, a heart carved in the empty space between all the boxes. From the heart, I peek out into the other rooms. So many rooms filled with so many papers.
Noreen and Aisha stand off to the side when their schedules are approved. I hand over my paper. A cockroach in the corner of the room ambles lazily across the baseboard. As Uncle ██████’s eyes move over the paper, my breath catches in my throat. (Please, Allah, don’t make me be in trouble.) He slashes the paper. He slashes again.
Across from him dangles a blown-up photo of his sons. They stand in the woods in button-down shirts. A camping trip, maybe; a father and his sons bonding. We’ve never been camping. If they were around, I’d ask them what it was like. But they’re not in the room. His sons don’t want us around. He told us that. And so we stay, partitioned from them. And them, partitioned from us. Two sides of a border. Family, but not.
Here, he dismisses, handing me back my paper. We turn to leave. I look back.
There are newspapers laid out in front of him, he’s circled the stock numbers, betting. He watches the numbers with the eyes of an ullu, moving money. The TV glow yellowing his eyelids, making him sick.
I need to make more, he says to himself, he says to the TV, he says as he imagines his wife’s outstretched arms, his sons in a brand-new car when they’re old enough to drive, laughing with their friends: Oh, this old thing? Baba got it for me.
I sit on the staircase next to a pile of bird shit holding my paper, crossed out and rewritten with red ink. The poop almost looks like a garbled yolk: the white outside and dollop of black and green in the center. My sisters are upstairs, already doing their chores. A black rabbit with a white star on its forehead presses its nose to the cage, pink nose sniffing, its whiskers dangle out from the bars. A cage down, the hamster runs its wheel, schedule-less. A bluebird lands on the banister and chirps loudly at me. I get up, already tired. I walk to the corner of the hallway and I pick up the broom whose bristles are damp with bird poop.
In the mail, the credit statements start to come, bank accounts opened in our name. We’re rich! I tell Aisha, pointing at the letters. We have a bank account! Our father’s money. So many zeros. When we knock on Uncle ██████’s door holding the papers, he snatches them, yells at us for checking the mail. There is no bank account, he says, shutting the door in our faces. There is no money. Aisha checks the mail every day, looking for more letters. They stop coming. The letters must be behind the door of his locked apartment, somewhere in the piles and piles of boxes, the rooms of papers that hold all his secrets. The letters must be on the desk, next to the mattress on the floor. The glow from the TV lands on us, the eyes of an owl.
Ullu ki putti, Aisha whispers and we laugh. Only later I realize we’ve called our dead mom an idiot.
I didn’t mean it I didn’t mean it, I swear to the mirror in the bathroom, unsure of who can hear me.
There are checks for us that are coming. He’s taking them. I know he is, Aisha confesses to Meemoo as he stirs onions in ghee. The lines in his forehead crease.
It just matters that we’re together. You’re happy, right? he asks, tugging her braid.
* * *
—
Our dad had money. Where is it? Aisha asks. Meemoo sighs and stirs the onions.
Allah will always give you what you need, he deflects, adding in the chicken.
When we need new clothes Aunty takes me to the fabric store. I touch spools and spools of fabric, the expensive ones with gold stitching, the paisley prints. My Aunt picks a soft yellow fabric with small blue flowers. By the time we get on the bus to come home, the sun is beginning to set. The moon shows up to the party, half full, half gone.
What do you want? she asks softly, her finger twists around my pigtail.
A T-shirt, I say, thinking of the clothes that girls at school wear, the shirts that say GAP loudly, the money to buy them.
Back home, we dodge the birds and their shit in the hallway and I make her tea, balance the cup as best as I can so I don’t spill it. Her sewing machine whirs and she hands me the leftover scraps. I snip and cut and glue an outfit for my Barbie: a short skirt and tube top.
She’s wearing that? Aunty says, checking my work as she finishes her last stitch on the shirt, examining it to see if there are any loose threads.
Barbie’s not Muslim, I say, holding her up to the light, watching her long plastic legs dangle out of her skirt.
In the park, I run after Meemoo, the man who I’m not allowed to call Uncle because the Uncle who brought us to the zoo would be mad. A man I am not allowed to call Father, because my father is gone and I’m still waiting for him to come back. Instead, me and my sisters make up a word to call him, a language of our own. Meemoo, we say, running after him as he passes the ball between his feet. Close to the word for Uncle in Urdu, but not enough that we would be yelled at for saying it. Nearby, our Aunty sits on a blanket, watching us run, watching us collide. The sun is in love with Meemoo, bouncing its rays off his skin, already brown, but browning more. Meemoo, who used to be a journalist in Lahore. Meemoo, who bursts into a song, lilting Subhan Allah, Subhan Allah! when the peach is right, when the juice drips down the length of his finger on the first bite. Meemoo, who now works at the department store a few blocks away, where they pay him in cash and less than the other employees. Meemoo, who saved slowly to buy a car that we can all pile in and drive through the suburbs, watching the leaves change colors. Meemoo, whose parents died before he came to this country. Meemoo, who tells us, If you don’t drink chai with milk and sugar, you don’t know how to live life well. Meemoo, who is an orphan like us. Meemoo, who is ours. Meemoo, who we belong to. Meemoo, ahead of us, running free with the ball, untouchable. Not even when Aisha tries to grab hold of his leg, or when Noreen tries her hardest to run ahead of him, trying to block him. The three of us remain behind until he scores a goal, until the imaginary crowd roars and he drops to his knees in victory and we run, collapsing into each other, into him.
On Valentine’s Day we make cards for our parents at school. I ask for three cards. I spread pink and white glitter across them, blowing and blowing, hoping that it stays put. There’s a new girl in class, Victoria, who moved from Europe. She has big brown eyes and long black hair swept neatly into a ponytail. She sits next to me and the teacher tells her to make a name tag so everyone can learn her name. Instead of reaching for the markers between us, she takes a clear plastic pouch from her backpack. It’s filled with nail polishes. She gently swirls the nail polish brushes, curving out the letters of her name. She paints a mountain in the background, each grass blade its own stroke. My heart hammers. My bubble letter notebook, which made every kid think of me as an artist, is suddenly worthless. Inside my body, a thousand pins descend. Around us, the other kids look over in wonder.
Who taught you how to do that? I whisper.
My mom, she says, looking up, smiling at me. She’s a painter.
She has a mother. And nail polish. When I move, I feel the pins scraping against the inside of my skin.
I could paint your nails, she says, her eyes focused on her name tag.
* * *
—
The pins ease around my heart. I want the gold color, the one she’s using to make the sun in the corner of her name tag. But it’s too bright for me. I’m not a princess. Maybe something plainer. I point to a clear one. She smiles, putting it in her pocket.
At recess we sit on the blacktop, my hand in her hand, her eyes so close to my nail, examining it from every angle. She brushes the clear paint tenderly. As she paints, she sisters me.
Where are you from? she asks.
Pakistan, I say, though I’m not, but I know it’s the answer everyone looks for.
We look alike, a little. Me, darker than her. Our eyes take up the majority of our faces. Her nose is straighter.
I’m from Sofia, she says and it sounds so pretty.
Sofia: a woman covered in snow, wrapped loosely in a shawl.
I wanna go there, I say.
One day I’ll take you.
And suddenly: A future together, waiting for us. A future that eases all the pins from my heart, that turns them into ghosts.
After school I tuck the cards between my notebook pages, trying to not ruin them in my backpack. There are no cards for my parents. There are no graves we can visit. No place to put cards. No way they could write back. On my way home I stop in front of Uncle ██████’s apartment. The blue door. The labyrinth of paper inside. I slide out the card and hover my hand in front of his door. My stomach clenches. I put it in front of the door, and scurry down the street, to Aunty and Meemoo, their cards in my hand.
Uncle ██████ takes me with him as he runs errands to the Home Depot and to the bank. He doesn’t say anything about the Valentine’s Day card, but he smiles at me and I think that means he liked it. I’m a good errand companion: quiet, in my own world, staring out the window. On the way home, he stops at the corner store to buy a lottery ticket.
I stand in the candy aisle, trying to be unassuming but standing close enough to the candy that he’ll buy me some chocolate when he finally comes looking for me. The bell of the door chimes and I hear Urdu, two women about my Uncle’s age come in, chattering away. They’re pristine: crisp shalwar kameezes, duputtas draped stylishly over their shoulders rather than over their heads. When they see him they say their Salaams, before asking about his sons and wife.
Uncle ██████ is careful when he talks, confidently places every detail of his sons’ accomplishments forward. It sounds so beautiful, the life he tells, the one where he lives in the suburbs with them instead of in the apartment down the street from us. Antsy, I shuffle out into the aisle, their eyes landing on me.
Oh, is she one of the—
We don’t need to say it in front of her, Uncle ██████ says, his eyes sharp, protective, a shield that washes over me.
* * *
—
She’s like my daughter, he says, puffing his chest out. And I feel it, like his daughter, how his chest boasts me into love. The only way he knows how. Me, his daughter, in a separate apartment from him, just like his sons, in a separate house. He claims me. I’m his. And I want to be.
Mashallah, brother, you do so much. Their awe soaking the aisle.
The man who killed your father died,
Aunty says to me in Urdu one day when she’s oiling my hair, her fingers gathering my curls and slicking them wet. Died. A word I’ve heard all my life, a word I don’t understand. She says it and my body is completely cool, like nothing has changed. The words feel far away, words I don’t understand, words I can’t touch.
He was sick, I think, she adds softly, pausing for a moment. For the first time I think of the man outside of what the adults say, what I know he did. Sick. Like when I get sick. Him, coughing. Plain daal and roti. Someone rubbing his back. My brain feels far away. A small fog around me. From behind, I can feel her watching me. Not looking at my hair like she was before she spoke, but watching me.
Oh, I say, because I know she wants me to say something. Around us, the air waits. She puts more oil in her hands and rubs my scalp, before her fingers go limp.
In life, it’s good to forgive. And then to forget. Her words are slow, the Urdu lilting, her hand on my shoulder cautious. I don’t say anything. Let each strand of silence move through the air, its own curl wanting to be oiled.
The three of us pass the birds that fly above us in the hallway, thickening our ceiling with color. They chirp and we scurry across the steps to avoid their shit. We’ve prepared our speech, all practiced in the mirror about who should say what. Aunty and Meemoo already asked and he said no. Threatened to report them to the green card office if they kept bothering him. Aunty and Meemoo on a tightrope to citizenship. Me, Aisha, and Noreen are citizens. Therefore, a kind of safe. We make the trek down the street to his apartment cave, the locked door. We knock and there’s no answer. Not wanting to go back empty-handed, we decide to do what we know we are not allowed: to go to the suburbs, where his sons and wife live, to ask for what is needed. For what was promised.
Noreen knows the way. He showed her once, in case of emergencies. The bus ride at the end of the PATH and the long walk down the streets with no sidewalks, only grass. When we get there, my legs are tired, Noreen practically drags me behind her.
You’re so annoying, she hisses and I know that’s my name now.
When we get there and stand in front, I’m amazed. We’ve crossed the border. The house is a whole house. A neat yard in front, the green moving past to the back where I assume there’s more green. The smell of fresh cut grass hangs in the air. A fully leafed tree shades a bench in the yard, surrounded by pink flowers. It’s quiet. Not like the shared duplex when we lived in Philly where we could hear the neighborhood kids yelling from the park, and not like the apartment we stay in now with the trees stuck in their designated spots in the sidewalk. This: a whole house, a whole front yard, a whole backyard. Fully grown trees. Their branches dance in the wind. The birds, free, chirp loudly, circling up high. The house belongs in a magazine about houses, its deep brown wood with every shingle in place. A small cluster of flowers by the mailbox, their smell wafts out towards us, watered and alive.
