The Vow

by Jessica Martinez

  My alarm clock says 2:36. I grab my phone from the nightstand and dial Mo.

  The first call goes to voice mail, so I call again. Second call, voice mail. This is ridiculous. He’s a light sleeper. Third call, he picks up on the fourth ring.

  “Are you kidding me?” He’s groggy and angry, but whispering, which is good since his parents’ room is right above his.

  “Mo, I have an idea.”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “Mo, seriously, wake up. I have an idea.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Still groggy, but angrier now.

  “Wake up. I have to ask you something, and if you ask me if I’m kidding you one more time I’m going to assume you’re still asleep and start singing that Shania Twain song.”

  “I’m awake.”

  “Good.”

  “Your question,” he mumbles.

  I take a shaky breath, suddenly nervous. But this is our salvation. I knew the minute it reached into my dream and grabbed me that it was meant to be. This is not the time for nerves.

  “Mo, will you marry me?”

  Heartbeats. His. Mine. Nothing but blood pulsing between us as I wait for him to speak.

  Say something. This silence feels dangerous, like we’re lying in a bed of broken glass, afraid to move or even breathe. Mo is never speechless.

  “What are you talking about?” he asks finally.

  “I’m talking about you staying here.”

  “But like getting married married?”

  “They can’t deport you if you’re my husband,” I say.

  “Are you crazy?”

  My mind is spinning too quickly to cringe at the word. “Mo, think about it. You could stay.”

  He lets another long pause go by, and I can feel the weight of the idea pushing down on me. No, on both of us now. “It can’t be that easy,” he says.

  “I think it is. I mean, I don’t really know, but it’s something people do, right? I haven’t researched it or anything, but . . . I mean, Mo . . .” A nervous laugh comes out. It doesn’t even sound like me. “You could stay.”

  “I could stay,” he repeats robotically.

  I want to melt his shock, snap him out of his daze so he can hear what I’m saying. “You could stay.”

  “Are you kidding me?” he whispers, then laughs too.

  I’m laughing for real now, with relief and joy and terror all rolling through me. But I’m scared to stop laughing because I feel a little like I might cry.

  “Wait,” he says. “No.”

  I stop, winded.

  “I can’t get married. I’m not eighteen.”

  “Yeah, you can. You just have to have your parents’ permission.”

  “Both of them?” In his voice I can hear he doubts me, doubts that I know anything.

  “Uh…I’m not sure. You don’t think they’d do it? I mean, obviously, I’m not the Muslim daughter-in-law of their dreams, but your dad is obsessed with the your Harvard prospects, and your mom—”

  “It’s not that simple,” he says, cutting me off.

  “I don’t think it’s simple, but they love you, and maybe your mom can convince your dad.”

  He exhales loudly. “What about your parents?”

  “What about them? I’m eighteen.”

  “Eighteen with all the freedom of an eight-year-old.”

  “I have freedom,” I say defensively. “I just choose not to freak them out with it.”

  “You’re afraid to stop for a Big Gulp on the way home from work because they might have panic attacks and call the police. They’d lose their minds if we got married.”

  Mo is never this critical of them, or at least not out loud. Hearing the truth is surprisingly defeating.

  “I wouldn’t tell them,” I say softly.

  “Are you kidding?”

  “No.” My throat tightens. A lie that big would be the worst kind of betrayal. “We wouldn’t tell anybody.”

  “So not married married, then?”

  “Well, like legally married. Are you asking if I’m going to have sex with you?”

  He snorts. “Hilarious.”

  “Because the answer is no.”

  “There was no invitation. But seriously, the irony—can you imagine if people did find out? Years of insisting we’re just friends, and then we secretly elope? The humiliation would kill me.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  “You know what I mean,” he says.

  “Yeah.” My calves ache from standing all day, so I pull my toes toward me and feel the dull pain along the backs of my legs.

  “So if we get married right away,” he says. “I guess that would make me a permanent resident.”

  “Not a citizen?”

  “I don’t think so. I think you have to be a permanent resident for a certain amount of time first.”

  “Like a learner’s permit.”

  “Sure, whatever. And then we get divorced.”

  “Yeah.” I pull my knees up to my chin and rub my calves. I’ll be a teenage divorcée. “So what do you think?”

  He lets another thick pause follow.

  “My family,” he says. “I don’t know if they’ll be okay with leaving me. If I want them to.”

  I stop massaging the muscles and pinch the skin on the backs of my legs just hard enough that it hurts. His family. Sometimes I forget Mo isn’t all mine. He loves them—of course he loves them—but he has to see this chance for what it is, the only way. His family will float back into life in Jordan like they never left. Sarina is so pliable, and Mrs. Hussein can be just as depressed there as here.

  But not Mo. He thinks too much. He’s too outspoken, too conscious of not fitting in.

  “I’d be alone,” Mo says.

  “You’d have me.”

  The words tumble out, falling somewhere between us. I wish I hadn’t said them. He knows he’d have me. He meant having me isn’t enough.

  “What are you thinking?” I ask.

  “That I hate that question.”

  “Just tell me.”

  “My brain is seizing up,” he says. “System overload. Let’s just . . . Let’s just . . . I don’t know. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  “Okay.” This is all wrong. He’s supposed to be ecstatic. He’s supposed to see that this is our miracle.

  “Good night,” he says.

  “G’night.”

  I’m about to hang up when I hear “Wait, Annie, are you still there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Thank you.”

  I open my mouth to speak, but stop. My stock responses—It’s nothing or No problem—don’t fit. It’s not nothing. And it’s problem after problem after problem. I blink. Now that my eyes have adjusted, it looks like the mural is moving. All around me the blue strips are undulating like real currents. I’m at the center of a whirlpool.

  “Annie? You still there?”

  “Yeah,” I say, squeezing my eyes shut. “You’re welcome.”

  Chapter 12

  Mo

  I’m not welcome here.

  The cashier doesn’t say it, but her eyes follow me around the store like target-tracking laser beams. She’s dumpy and old and has a mustache, but that doesn’t make her any less scary. She’s a killer android, and I’m her prey. I can feel her stare narrow as I pick up a Snickers, intensify as I grab a box of Junior Mints for Annie. If I pick up one more thing, she’s going to burn a hole in my hand.

  She sniffs.

  I glance over. I think she’s actually waiting for me to slip the candy into my pocket, so I give her a polite smile. It doesn’t do much. She follows me to the back of the store to watch me pull two Cokes from the beverage case, even though I’m trying to make it easier on her by holding the candy out for her to see the entire time.

  This doesn’t happen in E-town because everyone knows me, and it doesn’t happen in Louisville because there are plenty of Arabs walking around, daring to buy candy in broad daylight. But here in Shepherdsville, I
’m halfway between civilization and home. No-man’s-land. It would be better if I looked vaguely Hispanic, but I don’t. Not at all.

  She looks at my folded ten-dollar bill like it might be laced with anthrax or at the very least give her herpes, but she eventually takes it and pushes my change across the counter.

  “Thank you, ma’am,” I say, and leave without giving her another look.

  “That was fast,” Annie says as I climb in the driver side window and toss the Junior Mints in her lap. She’s got the same zombie glare she’s had all morning, eyes glazed, mouth set in a thin line, and she’s even paler than usual if that’s possible.

  She doesn’t want to get married anymore. Neither of us has said a word about last night yet, but I can tell.

  “Not fast enough,” I say. “The cashier would’ve pulled a gun on me if she wasn’t worried I’d detonate my suicide bomb.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “She’s probably calling Homeland Security right now, telling them she just had some kid in her 7-Eleven who looked like he was thinking about waging jihad in her store.”

  I put the truck into reverse and back out. Annie’s still letting me drive, which is more evidence that she’s changed her mind. She’s saying it’s because she’d rather navigate than take directions from me because I get “loud and spazzy” when I’m holding the map, but I know it’s just because she feels guilty. She’s thought the whole crazy scheme through, and she’s realized what I knew the moment it came out of her mouth last night: She can’t do that to her parents.

  But of course not being able to keep me here is already eating away at her because she’s Annie, and she feels guilty about the homeless and about owning real leather boots and about unpaid library fines and I swear some days about being alive. I’m not sure how letting me drive her truck is making her feel any less guilty about coming to the realization that she can’t marry me, but whatever.

  She’s going to bring it up. I don’t want her to. We both feel it wedged between us, this huge balloon of awkward—and I know her, the way she has to talk through everything—and I can tell she wants to pop it. Me, I’d rather bite my tongue off. I’m not ready for that conversation yet. She’ll probably cry again, and who knows, she might cry all the way to wherever it is we’re going. I should’ve stayed home.

  Actually no. Anything beats spending the day watching my mom and Sarina bubble-wrap vases and candlesticks, taking breaks to weep uncontrollably and drink tea.

  So instead I’m running errands for a man who hates me, waiting for Annie to drop an anvil on my head. As Annie explained it, her dad wanted her to pick up a desk or an armoire from a furniture dealership on Sunday, but she has some work thing on Sunday, so he said to come today, and she said a bunch of other stuff I can’t remember because it was too boring and I tuned her out.

  “That woman was such a cow,” I say, and sink my teeth into the Snickers.

  “You know, other people get treated like that too. Teenagers, I mean. It’s not just because you’re . . . you know.”

  “No offense, but how would you know what it’s like to be you know?”

  She rolls her eyes. “I’m with you all the time.”

  “Exactly—you’re with me. That changes everything. You have no idea how I get treated when I’m alone.”

  “And you have no idea how everyone else gets treated when you’re not there,” she says. “You’re only ever you. I’m just saying maybe the whole world doesn’t hate you because you’re an Arab.”

  “Seriously? Do you want to go back and ask her how she feels about Muslims in the American heartland?”

  Annie puts a Junior Mint in her mouth and sucks on it. Arguing about my paranoia is a favorite pastime for both of us, but she’s backing down. More evidence of feeling guilty.

  I push the gas pedal all the way down so I can merge onto the highway.

  “How fast are you going?” she asks.

  “For crying out loud!”

  “Fine,” she says. “Go as fast as you want. I don’t even care.”

  “Thank you,” I say, and point to the massive billboard floating above the trees on the left side of the freeway. JESUS LOVES YOU.

  “What about it?” she asks.

  I point to the next one, an ad for Richie’s Discount Firearms Warehouse. “Am I the only one who is disturbed by the juxtaposition?”

  “No, I’m there with you.”

  “Good.”

  It begins to drizzle. We roll up the windows, and instantly the cab is muggier than death and smells like swamp. Or maybe it’s muggier than a swamp and smells like death. Why won’t her parents just recharge the AC?

  “So are we going to talk about what we’re not talking about, or what?” she asks.

  “Which exit do I take?”

  “I don’t know. You’ve got a long time.”

  “I know,” I say, “I just want to know now so it doesn’t sneak up on me.”

  She sighs and pulls out the directions her dad printed. “You don’t trust me.”

  “Not really.”

  “Exit 27B. So, can we talk about it now?”

  “About what?”

  “What do you think?”

  I pause, unsure how long to keep being an idiot. “I don’t know—the global warming hoax?”

  “Yeah, the global warming hoax,” she says.

  “So you admit it’s a hoax! It’s always felt like propaganda masquerading as science to me.”

  “Getting married.”

  I stare at the horizon. It’s murky, the rain up ahead starting to blur the line between road and sky. “I’m not seeing the connection to global warming.”

  “I don’t understand why you aren’t, like . . . I don’t know, freaking-out happy about this idea. It’s the only possible way for you to stay here.”

  I give her a quick glance. She doesn’t look like she’s screwing with me. “You haven’t changed your mind?”

  “No.”

  Sweet relief. Elation seeps through me—elation and maybe a little bit of terror, but whatever, she hasn’t changed her mind. She must be insane, but she hasn’t changed her mind, and I’m suddenly fighting the bizarre impulse to pull over and either shake the crazy out of her or hug her. I press the gas pedal down a little farther instead.

  “Why aren’t you saying anything?” she demands. “It’s your parents. You don’t think they’ll agree to it.”

  “That’s not it. And I only need one parent’s permission.”

  “You sure?”

  I shrug.

  I spent the second half of last night—the half after Annie’s call destroyed any chance of sleep, possibly forever—reading everything I could find on immigration. My brain still aches from slogging through all the unintelligible legalese, and I’m not even sure of what I learned. I’m no lawyer, but I’m not an idiot either, and half of what I read contradicted the other half.

  But info on marrying a minor in the state of Kentucky was much clearer. One parent. I only needed the consent of one parent.

  Annie’s still staring at me. Apparently my shrug wasn’t convincing enough. “I’m sure.”

  “Your mom?” she asks.

  “Yeah. I should be able to guilt her into it.”

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  I shake my head. “You. Obviously, you.”

  Rain pinging on the roof fills the silence between us. I glance at Annie. She looks like she’s been kicked in the stomach, so I shift my eyes back to the road.

  “Me?” she says. “What don’t you get about this? I’m not asking you to be in love with me, jerk!”

  “I never said you were. I’m saying you’re the one who’s not going to marry me. You’ll back out because it’s ridiculous and probably illegal and in the end, you don’t actually have to do it. Right now you’re freaked about losing me, but you’ll get used to it. Once I go, you’ll see. Life will go on.” I swallow hard, embarrassed that I’m so worked up, that she may have heard the emotio
n in my voice.

  “Wrong. I’m doing it. We’re doing it.”

  “Annie, we both know you can’t disobey your parents.”

  “I won’t be disobeying them—they won’t find out!”

  I blink. I think she knows those two statements don’t actually relate to each other, so I’ll skip the morality lecture. “But you’re a terrible liar.”

  “Only to you.”

  I glance away from the road to her face again. She’s got that look—the I don’t care if it’s bad for me, I’m drinking the poison look. “Listen,” I say. “I know you think you can go through with it right now, but once it really sets in, you’ll freak out and change your mind, and that’ll kill me. That’ll kill us. I just can’t get excited about lifesaving measures that aren’t going to happen. Not now.”

  “I’m not fragile,” Annie says, her voice hard, “and I’m not crazy. My parents won’t find out, but even if they do it won’t matter, because I’m eighteen and I’m tired of . . .” She can’t finish it. Guilt has her by the throat, but I know. She’s tired of scaring them, of living under the heap of all their fears. They can’t even see that she’s suffocating.

  “Don’t you even want to stay?” she asks.

  I grip the rubber on the wheel even tighter. I want it so bad, every inch of my body hurts. “Of course.”

  “Then don’t just take it lying down. This isn’t fair. You belong here. You shouldn’t have to leave your home.”

  I stare out the window straight ahead until my eyes burn from not blinking. “Since when do you buy into fair?”

  “I don’t. I don’t even know why I said that. Forget fair and just let me help you. I’m not going to back out. I promise.”

  I don’t look at her. Hope is a bad, bad, bad idea. Hope is a flame and I’m a synthetic wig—a cheap Halloween Elvis wig just waiting to catch, burn, and melt into a deadly fireball. If I believe her and she changes her mind, it’ll be a million times worse than if she’d never suggested it. Then I’ll hate her for it, and I’ll hate myself for believing her. “If you’re not sure, now is the time to say. It’s okay. I’ll be okay. Don’t talk yourself into it.”