Shine, Coconut Moon

by Neesha Meminger

  I feel wind and fire. I run down the hill and into a thicket of bushes. I dive in, away from any light, and crouch in the darkness. I wait. My breathing is too loud. I’m shivering so hard my teeth hammer together inside my mouth. I watch and I wait like a cornered mouse, but no one follows me.

  I don’t know how long I sit there, squatting in the bushes in the dark, but my fingers go numb and my ears feel like they’ll fall off. I blow on my hands and pull out my cell phone. Molly? No, she won’t hear her phone.

  I force my stiff fingers to dial Mom. It rings through to voice mail. I shove my hands under my armpits to keep them warm. I try Mom again, and again get the voice mail. A sob escapes from deep down.

  Where the hell are you, Mom?

  I dial Uncle Sandeep. Halfway through the first ring, he picks up. “Samar?”

  My teeth chatter and I’m shivering so hard, I’m almost convulsing. “U-u-uncle San-san-deep…”

  “Samar! What’s wrong?” His voice rings with alarm. “Where are you?”

  “S-s-school…dance…Roose-v-velt Ave…”

  “Don’t move. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

  I pull my collar up around my neck and shove my hands into my pockets. My fingers wrap around my phone, holding it tight.

  I wait. Each minute feels like an eternity. Several cars drive past, and I peer out of my hiding spot to see if any slow down. Finally I see a set of headlights driving slower than the other cars that have gone by. As the car draws nearer, I see the sea-green of his Buick Regal, and the forest green of his turban inside. I stagger out.

  “Samar!” He stops the car, jumps out, and runs to help me in. I’m so frozen, I can barely move. I sit down, shrinking into a fetal position.

  He blasts the heat, then pulls me close. “Samar, tell me what happened!” His words are punctuated with panic. He rocks me until my fingers begin to move again. Bit by bit, I thaw and uncurl.

  “Shall we go to the police? Did someone hurt you?” He slams a fist onto the steering wheel.

  I shake my head and look out the window. In the reflection, I see a puffy face with scratches, a crusty nose, and smudges of dirt. “Those guys who threw stuff at your car…,” I begin. “They were in the parking lot, and—and I needed to get something from the car, and…” I stop to reach up and wipe a tear away.

  I hear a sharp intake of breath next to me. Uncle Sandeep cups my face, staring at the scratches and dirt on my cheeks. “Those boys!” Then, through clenched teeth, “Enough. Something must be done!”

  Before I can say anything more, Uncle Sandeep is out of the car and racing toward the school.

  “Wait!” I shout, but he doesn’t hear me.

  I cut the engine, stuff the keys into my pocket, and scramble out. Uncle Sandeep is out of my line of vision, but I scuttle through the bushes, around the fence, and back up the hill. As I near the parking lot, I hear loud voices around the corner. Two of them are clearly Chuck Banfield and Rick Taylor.

  Rivers of cold dread pump through my veins as I will my legs to move faster. The voices get louder.

  Just before I turn the corner into the parking lot, I hear the squeal of tires and a sickening thud. I freeze for a moment as every system in my body shuts down. Then, just as quickly, adrenaline shoots through my limbs, and I sprint around the corner.

  I see a red Ford Mustang careening out of the parking lot.

  Everything else moves in slow, liquid motion. I see it all happening from above, like I’m floating up in the night sky. The doors of the school are flung open and several people run out. A chaperone shouts for someone to call 911.

  I see myself moving dazedly toward a crumpled heap of clothes on the ground as a crowd begins to gather. I see my hand reaching out to straighten a forest green turban as it waves in the wind, like a flag.

  Chapter 19

  I’m in the ambulance, holding tight to Uncle Sandeep’s hand. Somewhere in the distance, I hear the words of the EMS workers, falling like a mist around me: Pedestrian vs. car…patient found unresponsive…multiple lower extremity deformities…open fracture leg…ETA ten minutes…

  I see Molly’s parents’ car behind us all the way, running red lights and everything as she sticks like glue to the rear end of the ambulance. When we arrive at the emergency room, I feel as if I’m stuck in space and time, but space and time move at a whirlwind speed, whipping around me. Voices echo and reverberate throughout my body. A thick fog has moved in, and I feel like I’m floating in it, not connected to anything.

  Molly helps me field as many questions as possible until Mom comes rushing in. I’m so relieved to see her, my legs literally give way. Mom puts one arm around my shoulders, and I lean against her as she takes over.

  Does the patient have insurance? What provider? Is he allergic to any medications? Does he have a history of…?

  Molly steers me away from Mom and the hospital staff to the seating area and sits down next to me. The seating area is about half full. All the people in there look the way I feel, with their faces drawn and tight, eyes bloodshot, tissues wadded up tightly in fists. Some pace with their arms folded across their chests; others sit with their faces in their hands. A few dart in and out of the room, their clothes smelling like the kids from the smoking section at school.

  Molly and I sit silently, gripping each other’s hands, and watch Mom call Nanaji and Naniji a couple of times to get all the information needed to fill out forms.

  There’s a TV monitor in the corner of the room with a newsperson updating us on Michael Jordan’s divorce, and informing us that Alicia Keys, U2, and India. Arie lead the nominations for the Grammy awards.

  Mom reassures Nanaji and Naniji that she will call them as soon as we have more information.

  A few moments later a nurse informs Mom that Uncle Sandeep is being taken down the hall for a CT scan of his chest, abdomen, and pelvis. Mom reaches out to hold on to the wall for a moment, as if for support, before returning to the paperwork.

  Once all the forms are filled out, she hurries over to us. “Girls! Sammy, are you all right? What happened?”

  Having Mom next to me cuts through some of the fog. “I…some guys—Chuck and Rick and Simon—started messing with me in the parking lot…”

  Her eyes widen. “Those same boys from…”

  I nod. “Second grade.”

  Her face splotches with color and the muscle at her jaw jumps. She reaches out to stroke my cheek.

  “I tried calling you and there was no answer.”

  She closes her eyes and drops her head back. “I turned off the ringer so that I could be alone with my thoughts for a while. I checked for messages as soon as I could. Why didn’t you leave a message?”

  “I needed someone right then! I didn’t want to leave a message.” The last part of my sentence is half sob. I draw in a shaky breath and continue. “I called Uncle Sandeep and—and he came, and when I told him what happened, he got mad and ran out to—to…I don’t know what, but when I ran back up to the parking lot, I heard their car squeal out and…”

  Molly strokes my back as the tears drop onto my shirt. I chew on a fingernail to stop the trembling of my chin and lips.

  Mom folds me in her arms, and I let her smell wash over me. The tears turn into a stream as my ribs expand and contract with giant sobs.

  “Oh, baby…my darling…,” she croons. Then, in a hard, icy voice, “Something has to be done about those boys.”

  Molly’s still rubbing my back, but I can hear her sniffles next to me. I stay in the cocoon of Mom’s arms until the squeak of doctor shoes on linoleum gets closer.

  “Mrs. Ahluwahlia?”

  Mom keeps one arm around me as she turns to the doctor. “Ms. Ahluwahlia. I’m Sandeep’s sister.”

  The doctor, Dr. Schiff, nods and sits down across from us. “Your brother is in the pre-op holding area. We’ll need your consent for surgery. He has bilateral leg fractures, including a femoral fracture as well as open left tibia and fibula fractures
. Any objections to a blood transfusion, should it become necessary?”

  I slip back into the fog. I feel as if I’m not touching anything, like there’s a layer of air keeping me from making actual contact with anything solid around me. My eyes are drawn back to the newscaster. “Earlier this month, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, believed to be a Libyan paramilitary trainer for Al-Qaeda, was captured and interrogated by American and Egyptian forces. The information he provided under intense questioning was cited by the Bush Administration as possible evidence of a connection between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda…”

  Mom’s name is called, and the nurse at the window tells us we are allowed a quick visit with Uncle Sandeep while he’s in the pre-op holding area.

  When we get there, he’s awake and conscious, but not very verbal. There’s some bruising on his face and blood caked on his clothes. My lungs are not working properly. I can’t seem to get enough air as I float around in the fog. I want one of my uncle’s bear hugs. I want him to say something that makes no sense to me so that I can laugh with him. I want him to talk about “the peace.” But no matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to swim through all the fog. I see his lips moving, but I can’t hear him. Someone’s arm—Molly’s?—is holding me up. I notice that Mom’s fingers are paler than ever and tremble as she strokes her brother’s hand.

  Soon we’re sent back to the waiting room as Uncle Sandeep is wheeled to the operating room for surgery. Mom calls Nanaji and Naniji, and Molly calls her parents.

  “Hi, Ma.” I can hear the rise and fall of Naniji’s voice through Mom’s cell phone. “He’s going into the OR right now…. I don’t know, Ma. He looks—he seemed…” and then a sob. Mom’s fingers stroke her forehead, covering her eyes, but I see the tears dangling from her chin and her shoulders shivering.

  I reach out for her hand.

  The news guy is saying, “Daniel Pearl, the South Asia bureau chief of the Wall Street Journal, was kidnapped by terrorists in Karachi, Pakistan, and is believed to still be alive….”

  Mom grips my hand tight and takes a deep breath in. “He’s going to be fine, Ma,” she says into her cell phone. “He’s being well cared for…. No, I’m all right. Sammy is here and so is Molly…. a good friend of ours…yes, I will…yes, Ma…and…thanks…okay, bye.”

  Molly hangs up seconds after Mom. “My mom told me to tell you she and Dad are praying for Uncle Sandeep.”

  “Tell them thank you,” Mom says with a small smile. She puts her cell phone in her bag.

  “Thank God he’s still…,” Molly breathes.

  I close my eyes to shut out the newscaster’s voice and hold tight to Mom’s hand.

  Molly’s eyes fill as she turns to face Mom. “I thought…I thought the worst when I came out and saw him lying there on the ground with Sammy screaming over him.”

  “Me too,” I whisper.

  Mom shakes her head and rests her chin in her other hand. I feel her energy slip away, like it does when she gets lost in moments from the past.

  The three of us sit quietly like that for what feels like forever: Mom on my left with her chin perched on one hand, me in the middle, and Molly to my right; all of us gripping one another’s hands.

  Every now and then, one of us gets up to use the bathroom or to stretch our legs, but none of us wander too far. Mom talks to Nanaji and Naniji twice more before Dr. Schiff arrives.

  She sits down in a seat across from Mom. “The surgery is finished, and it went well.”

  You can almost hear our collective exhale.

  The doctor continues. “We washed out the open fractures and stabilized them with external fixators and…intramedullary nails…left femur nailed…”

  Molly steps away to answer her phone.

  “We’re keeping him in the recovery room for a bit; you can see him when he’s set up in the hospital room, okay?”

  Mom throws her arms around a startled Dr. Schiff. “Thank you.”

  The doctor smiles. “Not at all. A nurse will come to take you to his room once he’s all set up.”

  As the doctor leaves, Mom dials Nanaji and Naniji’s number. She walks away to update them.

  “Wow,” Molly breathes. Her eyes are like blue swimming pools.

  The fog begins to lift. I repeat the doctor’s words, “The surgery went well.” They feel good, those words.

  “Why don’t we go to the cafeteria for a bite to eat?” Mom says, coming back from her call. “Molly, thank you for being here and staying. You should probably go on home and get some rest.”

  Molly looks at me. “You okay, Wally?”

  I squeeze her hand. “Better now. Thanks, Moll…really.”

  “My mom said she’s bringing over some food tomorrow afternoon for you guys,” says Molly, hugging Mom.

  Mom nods. “Tell her thank you, again…for everything.”

  “Call me tomorrow,” Molly says, hugging me good-bye.

  Mom and I walk to the cafeteria and get some hot chocolate from one of those machines. We sit down at a table that looks out onto a dark and deserted street corner.

  She wraps her hands around the Styrofoam cup. “Your naniji and nanaji were just about hysterical.”

  The hot chocolate is too hot to drink, so I stir it endlessly with a red plastic straw.

  “Still,” she continues, “as hysterical as your naniji was, she was something solid for me to cling to. When I’m around her, I become six years old again, in all the bad ways and the good.”

  “I know,” I say, finally taking a tiny sip. “Me too…with you.”

  Mom’s eyes go soft as she gazes at me. “You are the love of my life, Sammy.”

  And in that moment, I know it’s the truth. I know, in a way I’ve never known before, how much my mother loves me and has always loved me. And that everything she has done, no matter how much it pissed me off, was because of that truth.

  She stares out the window and begins to recount old memories, like pulling out dusty clothes from an old trunk: me and her at the MacFaddens’ family get-togethers early on, when we were just getting to know their family; Molly sleeping over for the first time and the two of us jumping on my bed until the frame broke; the trip Mom and I took to the Bahamas when I was seven, and I got stung by a jellyfish. I join in, getting carried along by her lulling current, adding my own version of certain memories and filling in details from my side.

  We carefully stay away from anything that might take us into Chuck Banfield, Rick Taylor, and Simon Monroe territory. We’re still raw but coming back slowly, pulling each other out; one sip of hot chocolate plus one memory at a time. I realize this is what we’ve always done, me and Mom, just the two of us. And it’ll always be there, this special gift that we’ve created between ourselves, glowing like a moon and giving us warmth when we need it.

  After a while, Mom looks at her watch. “Let’s go see if they’ve taken Sandeep up to a room yet.”

  We get up and walk back to the waiting room. The fog is almost all gone. A lightness fills me.

  A nurse tells us Uncle Sandeep is in a room and directs us to the floor and wing. The walk to see him is a silent one. The whiteness of the rooms we pass on the way there is jarring.

  As if reading my mind, Mom murmurs, “We need to get some flowers. Why didn’t we think of that?”

  We stop just outside the door to Uncle Sandeep’s room. There is an empty bed closest to us, and Uncle Sandeep is behind a half-drawn curtain on the bed next to the window. We can’t see his face from where we’re standing.

  Seeing him lying in the parking lot scared the hell out of me. I seriously thought he was dead. I couldn’t breathe for a long moment, then when I did, all I could do was scream.

  Mom lingers a moment just inside the doorway before striding in. “What—flying off the roof with an umbrella wasn’t enough for you, Sandeep?”

  I walk in more cautiously. When his face comes into view, I see that he’s grimacing as Mom leans over to kiss his forehead.

  “Looks worse th
an it is,” he says. His words slur into one another, like he’s speaking through a mouthful of cotton, and he takes occasional pauses for air. “But look on the bright side. I’m drugged up, legally, and am the sole focus of two of my favorite women in the world.”

  Relief floods through me. He’s still alive! He’s trying to crack jokes! I grab onto the side of the bed to keep from throwing my arms around him. Tears slide out of the corners of my eyes and down my face.

  Mom’s eyes glisten too. “To quote Papa: You are a damn fool, Sandeep.”

  His turban is sitting on the table next to the bed, still wrapped up, looking like an upside-down forest green boat with a trail of fabric swirling out behind it. I notice that the few grays straggling through his topknot match the ones in his mustache and beard. He looks different without his turban—older, smaller. It’s like his crown. It expands him and makes him as big as he is on the inside.

  Uncle Sandeep’s grin fades as he turns to me. “Samar, are you okay? Those boys, they didn’t…?”

  I dab my face with a sleeve and lean across Mom to kiss him on the forehead like she did. It’s hard to talk through all the stuff in my chest. I struggle to form words. “I’m okay, Uncle Sandeep. They gave me a scare, but I got away before anything happened. That’s what I was trying to tell you when you took off.”

  Mom heaves an exaggerated sigh. “That’s exactly what he did when he jumped off the roof—charged ahead without getting all the information.”

  “I wanted only to have a few words with those boys. Those types of boys only bother people who are at a disadvantage; those who cannot defend themselves, or are not as strong as they are.” He stops for a moment to catch his breath, his face full of determination to go on. “When forced to face someone their own size, they turn into frightened little children.”

  “I agree,” Mom says, “but those boys were drunk. They were in an altered state of mind, Sandeep.”

  “Precisely. Which is why…they could have really harmed Samar.”

  “Or you,” Mom says quietly.