Spilled Ink, page 13
I could use a shower too. I feel the night on my skin, buried under my nails. I can smell the hospital on my clothes and in my hair. But there is no way I can get myself to peel this cover off so I stay where I am and bury my nose in my bedsheet. I am asleep before my father is out of the bathroom.
Hours later, I’m awakened by the bright light of day. My mouth feels sticky and my clothes stale. I’ve gotten some rest but don’t feel very rested. Images flash in my head, recalling me to this moment. Gauze wrapped around Yusuf’s head. Mom leaning into Dad’s shoulder. The broken metal railing. Dad walking across a deserted parking lot.
My eyelids open. I hear footsteps in the living room.
My stomach drops at the thought that I might not be safe. What if someone went after Yusuf and is now coming after me, too?
I look at my window and for a fleeting second wonder how likely I am to break a leg if I jump from the second story of a house.
I hear drawers open and close. A phone rings and I recognize my mother’s ringtone. I exhale.
“Khairyat ast?” she asks in Dari. There’s her eternal optimism asking if everything is all right when I can hear in the tone of her voice that she’s almost certain something’s wrong.
“Okay, I’ll bring it. No, I haven’t called your sister. What can they do from there? We have enough to deal with. If you want to call them, you can. I can’t talk to them now. I just can’t.”
We flew to Indiana to be present for Rahim’s funeral. When we boarded the flight, I already felt like my insides were in a knot. I loosened my seat belt and fidgeted a lot but couldn’t seem to get comfortable. About forty minutes into the flight, things got worse. The pilot announced there was going to be some turbulence ahead and turned on the seat belt light. I was not prepared for the rattling that followed. I kept expecting the oxygen masks to drop or alarms to go off. Seeing me lock my elbow with my mom’s, Dad had leaned over to tell me that there was nothing to worry about. He didn’t look totally convinced himself and hadn’t even known where to plug in the headphones, so it was hard to think his opinion was backed up by any kind of aviation knowledge. I kept my eyes on the flight attendants, looking for any hint that they were bracing for impact or making farewell phone calls to loved ones at home. I sat, white-knuckled and ready to throw up, watching those unperturbed faces until we hit smoother skies.
My parents have not pushed for reunions lately. Our gatherings were loud, messy, and fun before Rahim died. Even talking on the phone with my aunts feels forced now, with vague promises to make time for a visit in the summer or the fall, when things at work slow down, when school lets out, when basketball season ends.
Or when we don’t remind each other of freshly turned dirt wreathed with white roses.
I wish I had more pictures of Rahim, but he wasn’t the type, so I’m stuck with remembering how he looked when I saw him last. I kept expecting him to open his eyes, to give a sly smile and tear off the white cloth he was cocooned in. But he didn’t move. He was terrifyingly motionless. I was shaking at the burial. I hadn’t eaten anything and thought I might pass out when they lowered his casket into the hollowed plot of earth that Rahim’s father had purchased for himself. It looked like a mistake. There were low, broken moans and sniffles around me as Rahim’s father cast the first shovelful of dirt over the casket. My dad and Yusuf did the same, as did the other men in the family and a couple of Rahim’s classmates.
The funeral was the quietest family gathering I’ve ever been to. A cloak of silence descended upon us and got heavier the closer we got to Rahim’s home. Every whisper felt like a violation.
Uncle Zahir was the one who found him in his room and has hardly been able to speak since. I don’t blame him. The details were whispered to me by another cousin. When my parents did speak, it was mostly to pray for Rahim’s parents. Most of their sentences went unfinished, as did our plates of food. Yusuf and I spent the next two days having aunts melt into tears at the sight of us, while we mumbled rehearsed condolences and stared at our feet.
Ama Leeda, my dad’s sister, had been a withering mess the entire time. Uncle Zahir had been statue-like. He kept his head bowed and seemed to be in quiet prayer at all times. On a few occasions I saw him lift his head with great effort, as if he were losing a fight against gravity.
Weeks after we’d flown back home to Virginia, the silence lingered. When it finally lifted, it had left its mark on our home, like a handprint on wet cement. Mom insisted that we keep our bedroom doors open. Yusuf and I still keep closing them when we go to bed, but plenty of mornings, I wake up to find the door open again. When Mom asks us how we’re doing, she stares at us like she’s trying to see through our answers into the hidden spaces of our minds. My dad, who would rather get a root canal than go to the mall, made a habit of coming home with stuff we don’t necessarily need or want, like plain white socks. A dozen doughnuts. Pokémon cards, which we stopped collecting years ago.
I wished they would just come out and say what they were really worried about, but I wasn’t brave enough to put it into words. Some thoughts feel too dark for daylight. I once said Rahim’s name and my mom looked like I was summoning a djinn. And I was pretty sure that if I tried to talk to Dad, he would come home with roller skates or pistachio frozen yogurt.
A week after the funeral, I found Yusuf lying on his bed with his hands folded behind his head, his eyes on the blank ceiling.
You thinking about him? I’d asked from the doorway.
Yusuf nodded but didn’t look in my direction.
Me too, I’d said. When Yusuf remained silent, I inched further. I just . . . I just wonder how . . . I mean, why . . .
We didn’t really know him, Yal. We can’t make guesses now.
Do you ever wonder what would have happened if you would have called him that morning? I asked.
If ever means all the time, then yes, Yusuf replied, his voice so full of regret, a mirror of my own feelings, that I wished I’d never asked.
I didn’t mean you should have. I was talking about me . . . but he wasn’t even on Pic-Up. I don’t think he wanted to be around family.
I didn’t know that, of course. But Yusuf shouldn’t have been carrying around a brick of guilt for failing to save Rahim when I hadn’t done anything either. What if I had called him that morning? Or a month before?
I didn’t bring up Rahim to Yusuf again because I didn’t want to see the angst on my brother’s face. I wondered what had hurt Rahim more—that we didn’t hold on to him tighter when he was alive or that we seemed even more eager to let his name evaporate after he was gone.
18
I crawl out of bed. I don’t feel rested, but I’m also not a zombie anymore. I lumber down the hallway and into my parents’ bedroom. My mother tosses a phone charger into the gaping mouth of a tote bag on her bed, followed by a rattling bottle of ibuprofen.
“How’s Yusuf?” I ask.
My mother must not have heard me coming. She turns and blinks a couple of times, startled from her thoughts. She wraps her arms around me and kisses my forehead. Her hair is pulled back in a knot, damp and smelling of shampoo.
“Same,” she says, and exhales through pursed lips. “I’m going back now. I just came to change my clothes.”
“I’ll go with you,” I blurt. She starts to protest, then stops herself. “I just need to shower. I’ll be fast.”
“Okay. And bring a book. Or some homework,” she says, looking conflicted. “It is good to stay busy.”
I shower quickly and throw a few things into a backpack. I meet her in the car and spot her tea thermos in a bag on the floor of the back seat. She hasn’t really slept in over twenty-four hours and it doesn’t look like she’s planning on crawling into bed anytime soon.
We walk through the hospital to our posts in room five of the ICU, at Yusuf’s bedside. My phone lights up and I realize I had mistakenly put it on mute when I connected it to the charger at home. There are dozens of messages from my friends. I scroll through messages from Mona, who was surely the first person Asma talked to.
OMG, I heard about Yusuf. How is he? Where are you?
Hey, everything okay?
Text me when you can. I’m so sorry.
And I’m texting you too much. I’m sorry if this is interrupting something. I’m going to stop but just call me or text or whatever when you can.
I can picture her chewing her lip. Probably praying for Yusuf. I feel bad that I haven’t replied yet.
Just got back to the hospital. I don’t know much yet.
Her reply comes almost immediately, as if she had it ready to send the moment I answered.
Asma and I are coming. Leaving here now.
My eyes burn. As much as I don’t want to be alone, I’m also already feeling overwhelmed and I don’t know if I have the energy to answer their questions or to take my attention away from Yusuf.
Don’t. Not yet. I’ll let you know.
I tack a heart on to the end of my message so she knows I appreciate her willingness to walk out of class and be here with me.
Yusuf looks just like he did when I left, except the shadows under his eyes appear to be a shade darker. A doctor is leaning over him, listening to his chest. She glances at us when we enter and offers a fleeting smile. My father is standing on the opposite side of the bed, holding Yusuf’s hand.
“It’s going to take some time for the swelling of his brain to subside. But for now, his lungs sound clear, his heart rate is normal, his kidneys . . .” She continues to list Yusuf’s many perfectly functioning organs while we stare at my bruised and broken brother. “Like I said, it’s far too early to know what this means. We’re doing all we can, but I also need to be realistic with you. His condition is very precarious right now.”
My mother turns to me automatically, as she always does when she meets a word she doesn’t know.
Precarious.
She looks away, having gotten the meaning from the expression on my face.
Precarious. Pretty scary.
Seeing my brother lying on his back with his eyes closed, my mind flashes to Rahim in his casket. I push the thought away angrily. My brother is not dead. He is alive.
“Can he hear us?” I ask. The doctor turns to me, a bit blindsided by my question. My parents wait for her to reply. I point to the monitor, to the undulating lines and the sawtooth line and the one that doesn’t seem to alarm anyone even though it runs flat across the screen. I can read them just about as well as I can read palms. “Does anything here tell us if he can hear when we talk about him?”
The doctor’s face softens. She speaks slowly, like she’s choosing her words carefully.
“We can capture his breathing, heart rate, blood pressure, his oxygen level, and more, but there are some things we don’t know. What I’ve seen happen in these rooms tells me that it would be helpful if you pulled up a chair and talked to your brother. Let him hear your voice and know you’re near. Not everything vital is measured by these monitors.”
My father, his hair mussed and his face shadowed with stubble, nods emphatically. He immediately slides a chair over to Yusuf’s side as if he’s been given a directive. He looks at me and points to the open seat.
My parents are waiting on me expectantly. The doctor goes back to examining Yusuf, lifting his right eyelid and swinging a penlight over his pupil. I take two slow steps across the room and slide into the chair. My brother smells like a Band-Aid, adhesive and dried blood and hurt. His hand rests at his side, a small sticker with a red light taped over the tip of his pointer finger, which makes me think of the finger protectors he used to use when he was first learning to play guitar.
When we were ten, I declared that I wanted to learn to play piano, and Mom chose to take advantage of the sibling discount and enroll Yusuf as well. Six months into lessons, I was still struggling with “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” My fingers turned into Popsicle sticks when I sat on the bench. At the first recital, I saw children half my age doing twice what I could do and decided I shouldn’t waste any more of my parents’ money. But the lessons brought Yusuf to the behind the scenes of songs, and he fell hard and fast. He quickly became fluent in the language of music, the notes and the rhythms. After a year of piano, Yusuf wanted to try the guitar. When he picked it up, it was like a reunion, not an introduction. He didn’t practice because he had to. He did it because it came as naturally to him as getting out of bed in the morning. It became the thing that made him Yusuf. Mom and Dad thought his passion was great until the day he said he wanted to be a musician. They looked like they were struggling to understand the words coming out of his mouth.
Freshman year, Chris, Liam, and Yusuf started to play music together on a regular basis. They began to cover songs from bands they liked. About a year later, they named their band The Hipper Campus. When I asked him what The Hipper Campus meant, Yusuf said band names were meant to be intriguing to followers and an inside secret for the members of the band.
I stare at Yusuf’s ear. I talk to my brother every single day of my life and somehow can’t find any words right now.
“Hey, Yusuf,” I say softly. “I just . . . please . . .”
My head drops. What am I supposed to say to him? It can’t possibly be me Yusuf needs right now. Yusuf needs our parents to comfort him the way they did when he was little and fell off his bike or burned his finger on the stove or got upset because I took a stuffed animal from him. I stand up and grab my backpack.
“Dad, you should talk to him first. I’m going to be in the lobby for a bit. I don’t . . . I don’t want to be in the way,” I say. My father gives me a hug and a twenty-dollar bill in case I get hungry.
I leave the precarious lines on the monitors, the dinging of the machines, and the slow drip of fluids behind me. My eyes well with tears, blurring the hallways. I keep my gaze lowered so the nurses don’t notice. In the elevator, I jab at the button for the first floor seven times, and just when the doors are about to shut, a hand slides between them. A foot follows, then a clipboard.
“Ah, sorry to hold you up,” says a woman in shapeless black pants and a button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled to her elbows. She smiles at me before checking the phone clipped to her belt.
Precarious. Pretty scary.
I stare at the floor and clear my throat in this impossibly quiet elevator. There’s nothing more awkward than crying in front of a stranger in the confines of an elevator. Mercifully, we are transported to the first floor without any other stops. I spill out of the doors before they fully open and step into the lobby, where tiny red lights strung on a Christmas tree cast a red glow on the gift boxes arranged on the floor. There are tables set up near the tree with vendors selling last-minute holiday gifts. People are wandering through the rows of tables, which is surely better than staring at the television screen.
I head over to the café, which is just a corner kiosk. The salads look a little wilted and the only sandwiches left are tuna or ham and cheese. My parents should eat something. I order two cups of green tea and three blueberry muffins from the woman wearing a denim apron. She slides her hands into gloves and reaches into the pastry case to bag the blueberry muffins.
“Give me a few minutes for the tea, hon,” she says as I swipe my mom’s credit card. “Someone unplugged me so I’ve got a pot of cold water right now.”
“Sure, okay,” I say, and touch my back pocket, only to realize I’ve left my phone upstairs. I take a few steps away from the kiosk, which brings me closer to the tables.
A woman in a knit cap smiles at me. I smile back reflexively. There are green and red mittens on her table, the kind that are connected by a length of yarn so a child doesn’t go home from school with only one. “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” plays in the background.
“Didn’t they try to ban this song?” a man asks, chuckling.
“They’d ban white bread if they could,” a woman replies. “Taking things too far, if you ask me.”
“Ain’t that the truth. Glad my grandson graduated two years ago. Trying to teach all kinds of nonsense in schools these days and then wondering why kids are acting up instead of growing up.”
“All I’m gonna say on that is merry Christmas, merry Christmas, merry Christmas,” the woman says, enunciating each cheer.
“They’re coming for you,” he chuckles, and through their loaded holiday banter I’m reminded of how funny Larson thought he was, talking about cornflakes.
My cheeks burn. I turn to get a good look at them.
The woman has light brown hair and is wearing a sweater embroidered with flowers. The man is the same height as my father but heavier around the middle. He has spots of gray in his beard and is squinting like he should be wearing glasses.
“I don’t have a problem saying merry Christmas,” I say. “Do you have a problem saying happy Eid?”
The man turns around. He’s still smiling. He hasn’t really seen me yet but when he does, his jaw slides forward and he squints even harder. The woman behind him puts a hand on her hip.
“Happy what?” he asks.
“No one’s coming for you,” I tell him.
“Listen, sweetheart, I don’t know—”
“Don’t call me sweetheart,” I say. “You don’t know me. You don’t know my brother or my family. You don’t know anything.”
My heart is thumping in my ears. I turn my back on them and start to walk away, half expecting to be grabbed from behind. I return to the kiosk, where there’s a paper bag on the counter. The cashier points at it and gives me a wave. I take the bag while she wipes the counter. My hand is shaking hard enough to register on the Richter scale. I use both hands to hold the bag and walk back to the elevator, looking toward the tables out of the corner of my eye to see if anyone is pointing at me or staring. I don’t see anything.
