Sparks Like Stars

by Nadia Hashimi

  “Has anyone hurt you there?” he asked.

  “You, no!” I shouted, hot and angry that he would dare to look down there. I could not bear it. “You, no!”

  You know, he had heard. You know.

  He looked at Ann, who pressed her lips together in the first display of real sympathy I’d seen from her. They looked unsurprised, as if they’d been hoping for a different answer.

  I was told to dress, but then made to urinate into a cup. They tied a rubber band around my arm and drew blood. The doctor handed me a lollipop and patted my shoulder. I jerked away from him, and he and Ann exchanged another resigned look.

  “At least she’s safe now,” the doctor said once I was dressed. She thanked the doctor and led me back into the twist of hallways.

  “Tilly. Where Tilly is?” I said when I realized we were exiting the hospital.

  “Not here,” Ann said, and my amorphous feelings about her gelled into something very close to hate.

  She drove for twenty minutes. I saw buildings higher than I’d ever seen before and others that looked like they could be blown over by a strong wind. We passed a leafy park and bountiful store windows. I tried to read the road signs, but there were so many and my eyes were blurred with tears. I saw women pushing strollers and middle-aged men jogging down sidewalks.

  Ann turned onto a street with two-story homes sitting shoulder to shoulder. Their front doors and windows were in full view, with no privacy wall to guard them from passersby. I remember my parents telling me that in some ways, parts of America were like Kabul. But nothing I’d seen thus far looked like home. Ann parked in front of a dark red building with a rusted tricycle in the small front yard.

  The front door opened, and a neatly dressed man with red hair stepped onto the front porch. He came down the steps and stood on the walkway with his hands on his hips, a touch of triumph to his posture. A moment later, a woman in a long flowing dress emerged and stood next to him. She put her hand over her eyes to block the sun’s glare. Her golden hair hung loose around her shoulders. I saw their lips move, though they did not turn to face each other.

  “Aryana,” Ann said, as if she were handing me a most precious gift, “this family has agreed to take you in . . . for now.”

  I saw a curtain flutter in a first-floor window. I couldn’t tell what had made it flutter, nor could I see anything in the other windows. I did not understand why I’d been brought to this home. I looked up and down the street, looking for options or a way to get to Tilly. The curtain fluttered again. Still, I saw no one.

  Even without the tall clay walls of Kabul, these American houses could still hold secrets.

  Chapter 29

  The woman’s name was Janet. Her husband’s name was Everett. Ann introduced us as we sat in their kitchen. Janet stood with her back to us, opening a cabinet door. A pop, a hiss, and three cups of orange soda appeared on the wooden table. She’d placed the cups in the center, just beyond everyone’s reach. Small bubbles climbed the insides of the glasses and a saccharine smell filled the room.

  “Where are the others?” Ann asked.

  “All the neighborhood kids love to play together, especially when the weather’s so nice,” Janet replied, her voice melodic.

  Ann laughed lightly.

  “It is beautiful outside, isn’t it? I need a day off so I can enjoy it. This week has been rough.”

  While Everett nodded in agreement, Ann slid a paperclipped stack of papers across the table toward him.

  “I do want to thank you both for rising to the occasion and helping us with another child,” she said.

  “We’re always happy to do what we can in a pinch,” Everett said. “God’s blessed us with a roof over our heads, a full table, and His guidance—all of it meant to be shared.”

  Everett pointed at a cross-stitched sign hanging on the kitchen wall, just beneath a clock with hands that did not seem to move. Each word was stitched in a different color so that, from afar, the rectangular frame looked like it contained a rainbow. But the letters were uneven and boxy and would have earned poor marks from my sewing teacher.

  Whoever receives One such child in My Name receives Me, and whoever receives Me, receives not Me but Him who sent Me.

  “Isn’t that beautiful?” Ann said admiringly. She looked at Janet with an expectant smile on her face. “Is that your handiwork?”

  “It is,” Janet admitted. “I find it relaxing to work with my hands.”

  Everett leaned back in his chair, beaming at his wife.

  “Really lovely,” Ann said. “Well, let’s just get back to Aryana here. As I mentioned on the phone, this situation came up urgently and suddenly. She’s just arrived from Pakistan. She speaks English, but I can’t tell how much. Doesn’t eat a heck of a lot and has just that bag you see at her feet. She was medically cleared, though it does seem she has a history of sexual abuse.”

  I wanted to object but didn’t know where to begin. Everything was wrong.

  Everett clapped his hands so loudly that I jumped.

  “We’re going to take excellent care of her,” he said, looking at me with great confidence. “We’ll get her speaking English and maybe even learn a little Pakistani from her.”

  And then I was alone with Janet and Everett. When Ann left, Janet opened an empty bottle and drained all four cups of orange soda into it before placing it in the fridge. At the sound of footsteps overhead, Janet took a broom from a corner closet and rapped the hard end of it against the ceiling. The footsteps stopped.

  Janet instructed me to leave my shoes in a closet by the front door. She and Everett led me upstairs, shaking their heads at the way I used the railing to steady myself. I clutched my bag tightly, though they didn’t seem the least bit interested in it.

  There were four doors upstairs, one bathroom and three bedrooms. Janet and Everett had the room at the end of the hallway. Janet pulled a key out of her dress pocket and unlocked the second bedroom, on the front side of the house. Inside was a room with two twin beds. The walls were painted a pale green that reminded me of Tilly’s eyes. The beds were neatly made, with thin quilts tucked in on all four sides. On the wall hung a framed painting of a single stemmed flower with layers of long, yellow petals and a dark eye at its center. The room was clean and bright.

  “You’ll stay in this bedroom,” Janet announced. “No marks on the walls, please, and keep it tidy. Do you understand ‘tidy’?”

  Janet pretended to throw handfuls of something all over the room, her face in a pout. Then she turned to me and wagged her finger in my face.

  “Clean. No mess,” she repeated and pointed at a closet. “Put your bag in there.”

  I did not move. Janet frowned and tried to take the bag from me, but I pulled back, clutching it on my lap.

  Janet withdrew. She pulled her shoulders back and cleared her throat.

  “Everett,” she called out, though her eyes stayed on me. Everett appeared in the doorway, a look of concern on his face.

  “Is everything all right?” he asked.

  “She may be deaf or dumb. She won’t even put her bag in the closet.”

  Everett shook his head.

  “Maybe she just needs to adjust,” he said gently. He put an arm around his wife and corralled her out of the room. “Let’s give her time alone to meditate on her new surroundings.”

  I was relieved to see them pull the door closed as they left, though my stomach knotted to hear the scrape and click of a key inserted into a lock. When their footsteps faded, I crossed the room and pressed my ear to the wood. Hearing nothing, I tried to turn the knob. I was locked in. I looked out the window. I was on the second floor with a view of the front yard and the curb that had tripped me on my way out of Ann’s car.

  I went back to the bed and sat down, wondering if I would ever be let out of this room.

  The room did not have a clock, but after a while I gauged by the sun’s shift in the sky that two or three hours had passed. I was thirsty and a bit hung
ry too, but I could have slept that off. It was my full bladder that demanded attention. I started to knock on the door, gently at first and then a bit louder when no one responded.

  “Hello,” I called. “Please, I need something.”

  I crossed my legs and tightened every muscle of my body. The way Janet had warned me about keeping the room clean, I was terrified of what she might do if I soiled the room with urine. I knocked louder and yelled with urgency.

  “Please! Hello? I need bathroom.”

  Janet unlocked the door and pointed toward the bathroom just down the hall. I raced into it and closed the door behind me, fumbling with the lock but giving up because I was hit by a sharp cramp in my lower belly.

  I was sitting on the toilet when Janet opened the door and peered in. I closed my legs and pulled the edge of my shirt toward my knees. My body clamped down. Despite my urgency, I could not go with her staring at me.

  “I just want to remind you to be neat in here too. Not a drop on the floor and wipe down the sink when you’re done. No wasting toilet paper or dropping anything unusual into the commode,” Janet said. When she stopped speaking, her eyes drifted down toward the pants collected around my ankles and my bare legs. She moved in closer and stared at my scalp. She parted my hair with one hooked finger. “No lice. That’s good. You do need a good shampooing, though.”

  She retreated and started to close the door behind her.

  “There is no lock on the bathroom, by the way,” she said, flashing me a smile that was short one tooth. She looked so perfectly assembled otherwise. “For your own safety, of course.”

  Was I wrong to wish for privacy in this moment? Why had Antonia and Tilly seemed so different from this woman?

  I finished hurriedly and, while washing up, drank water from my cupped hands. I made sure the sink was dry before I stepped out. The bedroom door was open. I slipped back in and saw that my bag was still on the floor where I’d left it but unzipped and empty of all my clothes. The bag held only a hairbrush and my notebook, into which I’d tucked my copy of Eastern Bound.

  I raced down the stairs, feeling robbed. The kitchen was empty, but a small screen door was half open. I walked toward it slowly and saw Janet standing in the backyard, bent over a bucket wide enough for a child’s bath. She was holding a broomstick upside down, the handle submerged in the water.

  I stepped outside barefoot and walked toward her.

  “Your belongings needed a good washing. I’m only doing it today because you’re new,” she said. “And it needs to be done right at least once.”

  With blades of grass between my toes, I stood beside Janet. Round and round, she pumped the broomstick up and down, as if trying to keep my shirts and pants from escaping. The water smelled of something so harsh that it stung my eyes and nostrils worse than raw onions. I could not bring myself to look away and stood there as she drowned my clothes, watching my shirt bleed red pigment into the milky water.

  Chapter 30

  I walked back to the house, my eyes burning with tears. I was lucky Janet hadn’t taken the clothes off my back or she might have found the ring in my pocket. I needed to find a new place to hide it for now. From the corner of my eye, I thought I saw Everett walk past the opening between the kitchen and the living room. I stayed back to avoid him and moved toward the stairs when I didn’t hear footsteps.

  Just as I opened the door to the bedroom, I heard a click behind me. I whirled around to see a boy and a girl watching me from the half-open door across the hall. The girl looked to be a couple of years older than me and had sharply cut bangs. The boy was younger, perhaps in his first or second year of school. These were the children Janet had said were playing in the neighborhood. It must have been their footsteps I’d heard when Ann had left.

  “What’s your name?” the boy whispered. He had freckles across his cheeks and nose and hair the color of a setting sun. When I didn’t answer, he repeated his question. He looked harmless, and I was desperate to feel a little less alone.

  “Sita—” I paused, then righted myself. “Aryana.”

  “Aryana,” he said. “That’s a funny name. My name is Gabriel. This is Shawna.”

  As if he were crossing a busy road, Gabriel looked both ways before stepping into the hallway.

  “I’ll be your friend,” Gabriel said. “But only if you’re nice. Are you nice?”

  It felt like a thousand years since I’d spoken to another child. I nodded, hoping that Gabriel would keep talking. Shawna lingered in the doorway, pinching her bottom lip between two fingers.

  “Don’t get in trouble,” Gabriel wasted no time in warning me. “They don’t like noise or a mess. I heard her tell you that already. Everett doesn’t like it if you talk about baseball or fish. He likes you if you pray to God a lot. Can you do that?”

  I nodded.

  “That’s good. Is this your first foster home?”

  I didn’t know what a foster home was, but this was my first of anything in America so I nodded again.

  “Can’t you talk?” he said, his head cocked.

  “Yes, I can speak English,” I said, but careful as I was with my pronunciation, Gabriel’s face twisted in confusion.

  “You talk strange.”

  I looked at a spot on the floor. He was half my age so his criticism embarrassed me into silence. Lucky for me, he seemed content to do most of the talking—or, more accurately, whispering. We could hear the applause, soft laughter, and dings of a television program playing in the living room and Janet’s humming in the kitchen. By the clink of pots and pans, I guessed she was cooking. The aromas were light, smelling more like a garden than any food I recognized.

  Shawna walked across the hall and, with feline ease, slipped past me, entered the bedroom, and slid onto a folding chair in the corner of the room. She wore her hair in two braids that just reached her shoulders and had on a lilac-colored dress with a hem of ivory lace.

  “I sleep here,” she said. Her eyes flittered from the shaggy carpet to the quilts on the beds. Her eyes were round as coins, her cheekbones high and regal.

  I spoke quietly. “This is bed for you?”

  “You can have it if you want,” she offered meekly. “Or you can take the other one. I’m glad I’ll have a roommate. I’m not mad at all.”

  I didn’t want either bed.

  Shawna checked the ends of a braid, fanning the strands of hair as she watched me. Gabriel had entered by then and looked up at me with such unabashed curiosity that a red heat crept up my neck.

  “How old are you?” Shawna asked.

  “Twelve year old,” I replied, translating the age my sister would have been into English. Answering simple questions took extra time and effort, making me feel like I was moving through water.

  “Oh, me too,” she said. “But I’ll be thirteen in two months.”

  We hadn’t heard Janet tread up the stairs. She stood in the doorway, drying her hands on a towel and smiling brightly.

  “Rayna,” she said, which I realized was her attempt at pronouncing my name, “you need a bath. Shawna, get her a towel and teach her how to properly wash up, please. She can’t join us for dinner like that.”

  Janet was wrong about my name but right that I needed a bath. Still, I was terrified of getting undressed in this new house with strangers, even behind closed doors. I looked at Shawna, but she had pulled a towel out of a dresser drawer and was walking out of the room. Janet motioned for me to follow her.

  Gabriel retreated to the room across the hallway, slipping past Janet without looking up at her. I took in every glance, every interaction. No one shouted or lashed out or threatened me. I could survive this, I thought, and soon Tilly would come for me. I wanted nothing more than to run into her arms.

  Shawna turned the faucet on and let a stream of water bubble over her fingers and into the tub.

  “Only as deep as your hand,” she said, measuring her own hand against the edge of the tub to demonstrate the amount of water allowed. The
n she pointed at the bar of soap on a ceramic dish on the corner of the tub. She had her hand on the door to step out when I stopped her.

  “Please, how can I lock door?” I asked in a hushed voice. Shawna shook her head apologetically.

  “Don’t worry, he’s not going to come in here,” she said as she walked away, leaving me to wonder if she was talking about Gabriel or Everett.

  I stripped down to my underwear in the corner of the bathroom just behind the door. If anyone were to barge in, they would not have seen me. I turned my pants pocket inside out and gnawed with my teeth to free the ring I’d sewn there. The medicine cabinet door opened with a creak. It was empty and not a good place to hide anything. The sink stood on a pedestal with a soap dispenser on one side of the faucets and a glass jar of big cotton puffs on the other. I tucked the ring amid the balls and checked to be sure it wasn’t visible.

  I pressed my ear to the door. Hearing no steps in the hallway, I darted into the bathtub and pulled the white shower curtain closed. I slipped into the cool water and began to rub soap on my arms and legs. I was washing my shoulders when the bathroom door opened.

  “Let’s get you cleaned up,” Janet said cheerfully.

  I wrapped my arms around my knees. Janet pulled the shower curtain back and saw that I’d not removed my underwear.

  “Well, modesty is a good thing but not practical in a bathtub.” The draft coming in through the open bathroom door sent a shiver down my body and the water seemed to be getting colder by the minute.

  “Yarenna,” Janet said, then tried again. “Mm . . . Aryayna? Such a tongue twister! How about we call you Anna? That’s a lot easier.”

  My skin prickled.

  “Now, a warm bath and a good scrubbing will make you a whole new person.”