by Laila Lalami
After our friend Brahim was arrested, I told Driss we should move to California, but he disagreed with me. He was still in thrall to his Marxist ideas, and couldn’t see how foolish he was, placing his future in the hands of others. I am not proud of what I did next, though I had no other choice, how else was I going to convince him that he was putting his family at grave risk and that we needed to leave right away? When he came home from work the next day, I met him at the door. “The moqaddam was here,” I said, wiping my hands on my apron.
“What did he want?”
“He said there had been a car break-in down the street, so we should be careful where we park the Renault at night, but after I thanked him and was about to close the door, he started asking me questions about you. How you were doing these days, whether you took your exams, what your plans were.”
“Exams were canceled, he must know that,” Driss said with a frown. He pulled a cigarette from his packet of Casa Sport and peered at me anxiously. “You think he wants to report me?”
“Why else would he come here, asking all these questions?”
Driss walked past me to the balcony, where he sat smoking and thinking until the muezzin called the evening prayer, the streetlights turned on, and the neighbors began telling their children that it was time to come home.
All I ever wanted was to keep my family together. And we were, for several years after we came to this country, because Driss and I spent eighteen hours a day together, working at the donut shop, and as a result we grew very close, there were many moments when we could read each other’s mind or finish each other’s sentences. At night, we would tell Salma stories until she went to sleep, then we’d practice phrases from our English book, call my brother on the phone, compose letters to my sisters, gossip about our customers. But when I got pregnant with Nora, I was diagnosed with preeclampsia, probably caused by my blood pressure, which unfortunately is very high, Driss used to say it’s because I eat too much salt, but of course it’s also genetic, my mother suffered from it, too. The doctor ordered bed rest for the remainder of my pregnancy, imagine, no housework, no walking, not even to take Salma to school, no exercise of any kind.
I can still recall how long and lonely those six months were, being confined to my room all day, almost like being in a prison cell, especially because I am an active person, I enjoy doing things, not lying in bed, knitting or sleeping. I couldn’t even watch my afternoon talk shows because I had flashing lights in my vision, and the television made them worse. Every night, I waited for my husband to come home. “Talk to me, Driss,” I would say. “How was your day?”
But all he wanted to do after a long day at work, followed by cooking and cleaning at home, was to have some rest himself. Night after night, he would sit in his armchair, close his eyes, and say, “I’m too tired to talk.”
After I gave birth, I expected things would go back to the way they were before, but Nora cried all the time, and it wasn’t for the usual reasons, she didn’t have colic, she wasn’t hungry, her diaper wasn’t dirty. She could be in her crib, sleeping or playing, and suddenly she would start wailing, I could never figure out what was wrong with her. Eventually, I gave up working at the shop. I’m not saying I regret staying at home, how could I, my daughters are the light of my life, it’s just that I thought after all these sacrifices, at least my family would be close, but it surprised me to discover that my daughters lived in their own worlds.
Maybe it was their age difference. By the time Nora was old enough to play with dolls and toy trucks, Salma had already moved on to Clue and Monopoly. Or maybe it was their personalities. Nora loved to listen to music alone in her room, but Salma was always with her friends from the volleyball team. They didn’t even look like sisters, because Salma has light skin, like her father, and Nora is dark like me. As the years passed, I spent most of my time alone, while my husband was at work, one daughter at practice, the other with her music. We were like a thrift-store tea set, there was always one piece missing.
After Driss died, Nora came back home, which was a comfort to me, because I couldn’t stand being alone in the house, and I let her take care of all the small things, like mailing out payments to the mortuary, going to the dry cleaners to pick up a suit her father had dropped off a week before the accident, driving his car home from the street where he had parked it. In between all these errands, she would go into the master bedroom, run her fingers on the bristles of her father’s hairbrush, open the closet and smell the sleeves of his jackets, or take one off its hanger and wrap herself in it. That was how I found her the day before the school play, sitting on the bed, wearing her father’s suit jacket, staring at her feet. “Nora,” I said, but she didn’t hear me, I had to touch her shoulder before she noticed me standing there beside her.
She looked lost, and in a way, she was lost. She always had her head in the clouds, that one, and I think this was why her father left her a bit of money, to help her make a fresh start, maybe choose a better career this time, though of course the money only upset her sister, and caused them to have this terrible argument in the school cafeteria. I could hardly pay attention to the play that night, my heart was aching from hearing my daughters fight, like strangers rather than sisters, and I slowly let myself sink into the fog again, that hazy place where Driss and I were still young, still together, still a family.
Efraín
Elena was going to play one of the good fairies, and she was excited because she had to wear a blond wig. I could see it in the way she was looking at herself in the dresser mirror, tilting her head a little, smiling at her own reflection. Only eight years old, and already mimicking the women she saw on television. As soon as Marisela finished pinning the wig on her, she teetered forward on the chair, trying to reach the plastic clip-on earrings that sat on top of the dresser, between the bottle of cologne and my pain-relief ointment. “Why are you wearing a wig?” I asked from the bed. Elena’s hair was black and glossy, and it was also long enough that it fell halfway down her back. It was perfect for the part, I thought. “Can’t the good fairy have black hair?”
“Fairies have blond hair, Papá,” Elena said.
“Is that true?” I asked Marisela. I had seen Sleeping Beauty once, on television, but I couldn’t remember much about the story other than the princess falls asleep for one hundred years. I had been getting so little rest lately, I almost wished I could sleep that long myself.
“Fairies are supposed to have hats,” Marisela said, “but the teacher ran out of them, so she gave us the wig instead.” She smoothed a sheer pink cape over Elena’s shoulders and turned to me. “Are you ready?”
“Yes.” I took Daniel’s hand and followed Marisela and Elena out of the apartment. The walk to school takes about fifteen minutes, and when the desert wind blows, those fifteen minutes can be unpleasant, but that afternoon there was only a soft, cooling breeze. I could feel the day’s tedium and irritation lifting from me, replaced by the simple pleasure of being with my wife and children. Elena had only one line, which she’d practiced so often that all of us knew it by heart—“Little princess, I give you the gift of grace”—but it was punctuated by a wave of the magic wand. That was her favorite part, waving her magic wand.
The performance was taking place in the school’s cafeteria. As soon as we took our seats, I leafed through the program booklet, looking for the good fairy with the blond wig. There were two dozen names on the cast list, but I found her easily enough: Elena Aceves Mendez. I felt a small thrill, because I had never seen my surname printed on anything other than my ID papers. I remember pointing it out to Marisela.
“We should save the program,” she said with a smile.
Daniel pulled my sleeve and asked when the show was starting; that boy has always had trouble sitting still. While Marisela tried to distract him with a game of cat’s cradle, I went back to the program. That was when I noticed the name I had been trying
so desperately to erase from my mind. It appeared twice on the cast list, as if to double my shame. Aida Guerraoui Darwish. Zaid Guerraoui Darwish. I closed the program booklet, but nothing seemed right after that. The performance started late, two women in the front row argued loudly with each other, and when the moment came for my daughter to lift her magic wand and bestow her gift on the princess, she sneezed and dropped her wand. The evening I had looked forward to all week, thinking it might bring me joy, or at least some distraction, turned into a kind of purgatory. I had to sit in that darkened cafeteria, burdened by the feeling that the Guerraoui family was also sitting somewhere nearby, waiting for their children to appear. Night watchmen, both.
I told myself that it was just a coincidence—this town is small and there are only two grade schools, so the old man’s grandchildren were bound to attend one or the other—but that didn’t help. I felt I had been robbed of what little peace I had, and strangely this made me think of Alonso. He was the son of my mother’s sister, born only a day before me, so that we grew up more like brothers than cousins. We even looked like brothers: we had the same cloudy eyes, the same widow’s peak, the same small nose lost in a wide face. One night, when we were thirteen, Alonso and I left school at the usual time, but instead of going home with me, he went to help a friend of ours move house. It took longer than he expected, and later Alonso found himself waiting for the last bus in an unfamiliar neighborhood. Two street urchins, little more than children, came out of the shadows and asked for his money. When Alonso laughed and said no, they pulled out a switchblade and slashed the left side of his face. He ended up losing his left ear. After that, he was different. All his goodwill disappeared, he became full of self-pity. You couldn’t talk about anything, a girl you wished to court, a job you wanted to have, a trip you dreamed of making someday, without Alonso rattling off a sad list of everything that could go wrong. And whenever we were alone together, he always stared at my left ear, as if he envied me for it.
That was the feeling I had now. I envied all the people around me in the cafeteria, everyone who hadn’t seen the accident on the 62. More than anything, I wanted their ignorance, their innocence, their peace of mind, because I knew I had lost those things for good. After the performance, when it was time for us to go, I left the program booklet behind on the chair. It cost me a great deal to do that, but I did it. I couldn’t take the chance that Marisela would see the old man’s name in it and tell me yet again that I needed to do the right thing. What I couldn’t get her to understand was that I was already doing the right thing. For us.
Jeremy
I pulled into the parking lot of the detention center in West Valley and sat in my Jeep, with the keys still in the ignition. At the café across the street, lightbulbs glowed, trapped inside the barred windows. Two people came out and chatted on the sidewalk for a few minutes before heading off in different directions. There was time yet to turn back. Go home. Let Fierro sit in jail and learn a lesson. No one would blame me for that. But in an unsettling way, I knew I was only stalling; I knew I would turn off the engine and go inside and fill out the forms.
An hour later, Fierro came out of central holding. There were shadows under his eyes and his skin was pale, but his eyes were as piercing as ever. Because of a backlog of cases, he hadn’t been brought before a judge until the day before, when bail was set, so he’d spent four nights at West Valley. At the counter, he signed his name on a form and was handed a Ziploc bag that contained his keys and wallet. If he was surprised to see me waiting, he gave no indication. Without pausing to shake hands, he walked past me through the double doors and stood outside for a minute, trying to find his bearings. It was late in the afternoon. A pair of birds chased each other from perch to perch on the eucalyptus trees. The smell of coffee and meat drifted from the restaurant across the street. “Let’s get outta here,” he said. Only when we got inside the Jeep did he seem to relax. “Thanks for posting my bail.”
On the radio the traffic report had started, but I turned the volume all the way down so he could hear me. “You’re welcome. But here comes the fine print.”
“What’s that?”
“You’re going to therapy.”
Fierro was buckling his seat belt, but he stopped midair. “Fuck, no.”
“No?”
“I’m not dealing with the VA again.” He clicked his seat belt into place. “They made me wait five months for my new hearing aid, and I still can’t get it to work right.”
“This isn’t through the VA. It’s through the community center. A support group for people with anger-management issues. I heard about it from Stratton. One of his buddies runs it.”
“You want me to go to therapy with a fucking amateur?”
“He’s not an amateur, you dumb fuck. He has a master’s degree, he knows what he’s doing, and he’s supposed to be really good. Hell, I’ll even go with you, all right?”
“I’m not going to sit around with a bunch of people moaning and bitching about their feelings. Can we just get out of this place already?”
I started the car and eased out of the parking lot onto the street. At the first light, I pulled out a Marlboro from my pack. It was my third cigarette of the day. Or maybe my fourth. Anyway, I was making progress. It couldn’t be harder to quit than liquor and I’d never looked back once I’d set my mind to it. I took a deep drag, savoring my cigarette all the more because I wouldn’t have another one again that day. Fierro lowered the passenger-side window to let out the smoke. “That stuff’ll kill ya,” he said.
“All men must die.”
“All men must serve,” he said with a grin. After a moment, he turned to me again. “But, seriously, how can you put those toxins in your body? I don’t get it.”
“Clean-living tips from Dr. Fierro. What else you got for me?”
“Just that.” He sniffed. “And stay away from crazy bitches.”
We were about to get on the 10. I waited until I’d merged onto the freeway before I spoke again. “She’s probably going to file a restraining order against you.”
“Who, Mary? I wasn’t planning on seeing her.”
“I hope you mean that, man. You need to leave her alone. For good this time.”
“I already signed the divorce papers.”
“Is that true?”
“Why would I lie? I did it right after I smashed that damn car.”
“All right. Good. First session is next Thursday, by the way.”
“You serious about this support group bullshit?”
“ ’Course I’m serious. You need help.”
“Dude, when you start to nag, you sound just like Mary. You know that?”
“Yeah, well. Maybe you should’ve listened to her.”
For the rest of the drive home Fierro remained quiet. Even when we drove past the windmills, he didn’t make his usual joke. Q: How do windmills feel about renewable energy? A: They’re big fans! When we got to his apartment building, he flipped down the passenger-side mirror and ran his hands through his greasy hair, smoothing it down. At Camp Taqaddum, he used to stand in front of the small mirror in the showers and wrap a bandanna around his head, pulling it all the way to his eyebrows. It was the only way to keep the sweat from running down his face in a continuous stream when we were out on patrol. We went on dozens of them together, lost a buddy in them, but it wasn’t a patrol that got us. It was an escort run, just a week before the end of our last tour, when we were told to take an Iraqi minister by the name of Dr. Jaber to a meeting on the west side of Ramadi. He was in charge of restoring parts of the electricity grid that had been destroyed during the invasion, but in the eight months he had been meeting with American contractors they had yet to agree on a plan. It was a Monday morning in May, I remember, the temperature already reaching the high nineties, though no one in our unit minded it. We were eager to get through our final few shifts and much
of our conversation while we waited for the minister was about what we’d do once we were back stateside. Go to bars. Meet girls. Swim in a pool. Forget all that, Hec said. I want to move someplace where it rains and where I never have to see anyone.
After the meeting, we drove Dr. Jaber back on Route Michigan. The road ahead was white with sunlight. Sitting at the turret, I squinted against the glare, even through my Ray-Bans. From somewhere down the street came the creaking of a bread cart and the laughter of children. And then, just like that, I was flying ten feet into the air, my rifle spinning out of my arms, a piece of shrapnel lodged in my back. Everything went black. The next thing I remember was the taste of gravel dust in my mouth and Fierro screaming at the top of his lungs: I got you, Gorecki, I got you. He hoisted me over his back and carried me out of the ditch where I’d landed. Only later, when I woke up at the clinic, did I learn that he had a blown eardrum.
He flipped the passenger-side mirror closed. “Wanna get a drink?”
“Not tonight.”
“What? I smell that bad?”
“A shower wouldn’t kill you. But no, I’m just tired.”
“All right. Thanks again, dude.”
I pulled out of the lot and headed home. A heaviness had settled on me, the kind that I knew would keep me up all night. Maybe I should go on a hike, I thought. Tire myself out. Clear my mind. I drove past my street corner and continued down the highway toward the national park. I was waiting at a red light when I saw Nora walk into McLean’s.