The Vow

by Jessica Martinez

  Reed pulls into the Kroger parking lot, and I feel his fingers tighten slightly. “I don’t see your car.”

  I point to Mo’s. “I . . . gave the Explorer back.”

  He doesn’t say anything, just shakes his head and pulls up next to the Camry.

  It’s time to go. I can do this, piece by piece. I start by letting go of his hand. “Thank you for the coffee. And for listening and not hating me. And for not telling anyone—”

  But he’s too close. His finger draws a line beneath my chin, turning my head to him, and stopping the words in my throat. “Nobody is going to find out if I give you one kiss.”

  My heart is beating so loud I can’t hear my thoughts. He’s right. But I can’t lean in to him because there’s something worse than someone finding out. There’s ripping open my heart at all its ragged edges, only to be scraped out all over again.

  “Just one,” he says.

  I don’t say yes, but I can’t say no. He kisses me so soft and slow I forget everything. There’s a black night, a dark car, and the perfect rhythm of us.

  Just one. But just one kiss can last and last and push and pull, so that even after he takes his mouth away from mine it’s still happening.

  He brushes my lower lip with his thumb, then kisses where he touched it. “I can’t call you, can I?” he says.

  I bite my lip and shake my head. He kisses my lip where I bit it.

  “So will you come find me, then?”

  I’m not sure if he’s asking or telling, but I nod. I want this. I’ll come.

  Chapter 26

  Mo

  I’ll go,” I say.

  Sarina’s sigh is ridiculous—long and loud and practically musical. I picture her lying on a couch, hugging a throw pillow, her usual phone-talking position. At least it used to be. “Thank you,” she says.

  “Don’t thank me until I actually do it. There’s always a chance I’ll forget. So I just swing by the dance studio and ask for the spring recital picture?”

  “Yeah. Miss Deena will know which one. She showed it to me, but she wanted to get all the girls to sign it, except people were already on vacation, and then we left so quickly.”

  “Why don’t you just have her email it to you?”

  “Because I want the one with the real signatures on it, and I think she framed it for me. Haven’t you been listening?”

  “Yeah. Fine. I’ll do it tomorrow,” I say, poking around in Annie’s laundry basket. I can’t clean the kitchen without a rag, and I can’t get a rag without digging through Annie’s freshly washed whites, and I can’t dig through whites without inadvertently touching panties, and I can’t touch panties because the minute I do, Annie’s going to come walking through the door and yell, Why are you touching my panties, pervert?

  “I didn’t realize how few pictures I have of me dancing,” Sarina says.

  I push the basket away. I’ll use paper towels instead. “So have someone take some.”

  “There’s not exactly a ballet studio on every corner,” she says, her voice dull and gray. Not unlike the canned mushroom soup I just tried to eat, actually. But Sarina’s bad moods always come out with a disturbing lack of volume. “Or anyone to take them,” she adds. “And I don’t even know which box all my dance stuff ended up in.”

  “You should do what Annie and I are doing tonight.”

  “Please don’t say putting on leotards and jumping around.”

  “Do-it-yourself bridal portraits. We need them for our interview.”

  “That actually sounds like fun,” she muses between bites of something crunchy.

  “If by fun you mean torture, then yes. But you could probably steal Dad’s camera and figure out how to use the timer. You know, if you really wanted ballet shots.”

  “That is such a lame idea.”

  “Fine, don’t,” I say. “How is Dad, by the way?”

  “Fine.”

  “Of course. Actually”—I pause, knowing I’m about to sound pitiful—“just tell me, is he, like, ever worried about me?”

  There’s silence on the other end. Maybe she’s chewing. I wait.

  “About you?” she asks, a strangely cynical hint to her voice. “Living the American dream, with your own apartment and car and friends and future? Gee, I don’t know. The last time Dad and I girl-talked he said he worried about you all the time. And then we braided each other’s hair and had a pillow fight.”

  Sarina and sarcasm. Sarcasm and Sarina. The entire world is rippling under the weight of that inconsistency. I’m not sure whether to backpedal or play along. My other option would be hiding, as Armageddon is undoubtedly upon us.

  “I can’t believe you just asked me that,” she continues. “What’s the matter with you?”

  Lots of things are the matter with me, but I’d rather talk about what the matter with her is. She hasn’t tried to pick a fight with me since middle school. “I’m an insensitive jerk?” I suggest.

  “Well, as long as you realize it,” she mumbles.

  This is going so much worse than I thought it would. “Tell me about school.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “That bad?”

  “No. I just don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Dad said you’re taking Arabic classes at night. Is it coming back?”

  “WHAT PART OF I DON’T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND?”

  “I didn’t know Arabic classes were off-limits too! I’m just trying to find something good to talk to you about!”

  “And there’s your problem,” she says. “I don’t have anything good to talk about. If you need to talk about good things, you should talk to Mom. She’s great at lying to herself and others. You know what? I’ll go get her for you.”

  “Sarina,” I say, but she’s gone. I stare at the laundry basket for at least ten seconds before I recognize what I’m looking at. Yeah, that’s a bra. With straps and hooks and lace around the edges of cups the shape of half-moons—

  “Mo!”

  I shove the basket away with my foot. “Mom.”

  “Darling! How are you? I’ve missed you so much this week. What with Sarina starting back up at school, and your uncle Ahmed’s family swarming this place, it’s been . . .”

  She prattles on, and I check out, because Mom is still Mom, even if she’s on the happy side of her swing. But Sarina is not still Sarina. Not at all. The probability of her having been abducted by aliens is unlikely, which means either something specific happened to upset her, or the thousands of sucky little things that she’s been ignoring have suddenly sunk her.

  It wasn’t even anything she said as much as it was her voice being so small and bitter. Until she went ballistic, that is, and then it was loud and bitter.

  “Mom.” I interrupt her midsentence, no clue what she’s even talking about. “What’s the matter with Sarina?”

  She pauses. “Nothing.”

  “Doesn’t sound like it. Is she right there or something?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then go somewhere else so you can talk to me.”

  “Uh, okay.” And then, “Sure, I’ll go look for it for you.”

  “Nice one,” I say.

  On the other end voices approach and recede, doors open and close, then Mom’s hushed voice. “There’s nothing wrong with Sarina. She’s just had a tough week and doesn’t need to hear me talking on the phone about it. But she’s doing her best to fit in, and when people get to know her and realize how sweet she is, she’ll have plenty of fr—”

  “So she’s not fitting in.”

  “She’s not going to fit in.” The drop in her voice is the first sign she isn’t totally delusional. “I think the fact that she’s spent so long in America probably fascinates most kids here, but fascination isn’t always good. I don’t have to tell you that not everyone loves America.”

  I blink and remember the looks on my cousins’ faces when they decided my red-white-and-blue basketball shoes and storie
s about swimming with girls made me the worst kind of traitor. “How do you know all this? She didn’t tell me anything.” I don’t add that Sarina never tells my mom anything.

  “There was a little altercation this week. She’s fine, but it upset her.”

  “Altercation.” Satan’s Cat appears out of the kitchen and sidles up to the laundry basket, rubs his cheek on the bra cup.

  “She’s fine,” Mom reassures me.

  “You said that already. Why do I need to know she’s fine?”

  “Well, apparently somebody threw a rock at her outside of the school two days ago. Or a couple of rocks. I don’t know. But she’s fine.”

  “Stop saying she’s fine! Rocks? Are we talking pebbles or bricks? Was she hurt?”

  “There was a gash on her cheek that required stitches, but the doctor said it’s superficial and should heal nicely. She really is going to be fi—”

  “She’s not fine!” I shout. “You’re not fine when people are throwing rocks at you!”

  Satan’s Cat hisses, and before I can think it through, I pick up the remote and hurl it. It misses her and she hisses again, louder this time, with her entire body arched and poised for battle.

  For reasons I don’t understand, I hiss back.

  “Mo?”

  I hold my ground. Satan’s Cat gives a feral yelp, then scampers into the kitchen.

  I’m too angry to speak. This must be where “seeing red” comes from, being so angry that red bleeds over all the other colors in your brain, turning the whole world into a monochromatic bloodbath.

  “Mo?”

  “I can’t believe you let that happen,” I say. “I can’t believe you’re pretending that’s not a big deal.”

  Her response is the slightest sniffle, the first raindrop before a torrential storm.

  I should apologize. Except I don’t want to. I want somebody to be protecting my sister, and I want to hate myself a little less right now.

  So I let my mom cry.

  When she says she should go, I don’t stop her. I want her to go. I also want her to get a grip and start acting like Sarina’s mother, but I don’t say it. Good-bye. Click.

  After, the silence scrapes away at me like cat claws. Annie should’ve been home hours ago, but I can’t call her because we still haven’t gotten around to buying her a new cell phone. Instead I wander from room to room, think about cleaning the kitchen like I promised, think about watching something mind-numbing like golf, think about sacrificing Satan’s Cat to the gods, all just so I don’t have to think about the gash on my sister’s face and people who actually hate her enough to do that to her. They don’t even know her.

  I can’t believe she didn’t tell me. Except I can believe it, and the more my mind churns through it, the more I know she never would’ve told me, just like she will never tell me if it happens again. She probably wouldn’t have told anyone if her bleeding face hadn’t done it for her.

  What are people saying to her? There’s no way it started with rocks. I know the rules of bullying and escalation, and it starts with words. But, of course, she won’t be talking to me about any of that either, now that we are on entirely different orbits. Skype visits. Phone calls. Emails. It’s all some big effort to pretend that that part of our lives isn’t over, the part where we are siblings under the same roof. Over. I can almost convince myself I’m being dramatic to feel this gutted, but then I remember: She has a gash in her face that’s big enough to need sewing the skin back together, and nobody to tell.

  I end up in the bedroom, Annie’s room, curled up on the bed like a baby. It’s not like I’m going to stay here. The guilt is just exhausting, and I’m dying to hide under real sheets and pretend I have a room. A bed. For a few minutes, I can pretend myself back to before the world decided to chew me up and spit me out.

  But then I close my eyes, pull the blanket over my head, and inhale. It’s a mistake. The sheets smell like girl. Warm and earthy and vaguely floral, like Annie.

  I’m crying. I hate crying, but I’m doing it, not just because I can’t protect Sarina or even know her anymore, but because I chose it. All of it. I chose to let Annie screw over her whole life. Being with her all the time—I’d never have guessed how hard that would be. The longer we live together the more I feel this pull toward her, this ache and certainty that only she can fill the gaping hole left by everyone who’s abandoned me. I want to breathe in her hair. Touch her.

  I need to get out of this bed. The land of guilt, that’s where I’m heading. It’s infidelity in reverse—thinking about loving her in ways that we don’t love each other in this marriage. It’s not part of our agreement. It’s betrayal.

  Chapter 27

  Annie

  It isn’t betrayal. Or if it is, I don’t know who I’m even betraying anymore. I just know that when I finally get home and find Mo in my bed, crying like I have never seen him cry before, I don’t think about it. I climb in, wrap my arms around his torso, and press my cheek into his back.

  We’re ten again. He’s broken.

  I don’t think about the fact that I just had my hands on Reed’s chest, held my body against a different kind of desperation. I shhh Mo until he stops shaking and finally sleeps. And I fall asleep too.

  * * *

  Waking up in the same bed, fully clothed and sour-mouthed, is different. No, not different. Awkward. More for him than me, I think, based on the way he rolls away from me and stares at the wall while I stretch and stare at the ceiling. Maybe it’s the memory of spooning and sobbing more than the actual cosleeping that makes eye contact so impossible. So I do the only thing I can think of doing to make it less weird. As quietly as I can, I roll onto my side, reach over my head and brace myself with both hands on the headboard, place both feet flat on his lower back, and I shove him out of bed.

  The thump of his body on the hardwood is a little louder than I expected, but he’s laughing. Thank goodness. He already got beat up once in this apartment.

  “You are so going to regret that,” he says, hobbling around the bed and out of the room. “I think I twisted my ankle, so I probably won’t be able to do my half of the job chart.”

  “Nice try.” I’m still considering what form of revenge I should be bracing myself for when he returns with strawberry Pop-Tarts and chocolate milk for both of us. “Did you spit in this?” I ask, lifting the glass to inspect it.

  “I’m way more subtle than that. I’ll wait until you’ve forgotten it’s coming.”

  “Great.” I take a sip and a bite before I ask him, “You want to talk to me about anything?”

  “Not really.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Are you asking why I had some kind of mental/emotional breakdown in your bed last night?”

  “Maybe that. If you want.”

  He leans back into the stack of pillows. “I don’t know. I mean I know, but I don’t know why I lost it like that. I talked to Sarina and she wasn’t herself, and it sort of annoyed me.”

  “What do you mean, not herself ?”

  He breaks the Pop-Tart in half and stares at the jam filling. “Not happy. Not stupidly optimistic, which is unfair to say or even think, since if I was her I wouldn’t be any kind of optimistic.”

  “Did she say why?”

  “No. But then I talked to my mom and found out Sarina got hit by a rock outside of her school a couple of days ago.”

  “What?”

  “On her cheek, I guess. She had to get stitches, so it must have been a good-sized cut.” He pieces the two Pop-Tart halves back together, examining the fault line he created. “A good-sized rock.”

  I put my Pop-Tart on the bedside table. It tastes like sweet, chalky cardboard. “Is she being bullied, or was it just some random thing?”

  “How can a flying rock be some random thing? Rocks don’t just fall from the sky—not even in the Middle East. Or are you asking if in Jordan people throw rocks all the time because they’re all just a bunch of violent barbarians and Sa
rina got caught in the crossfire?”

  “Don’t be mad at me, Mo. I’m just trying to understand.”

  “Sorry.” Mo separates the Pop-Tart halves again, dips one in the chocolate milk, and takes a bite. Since we’re having a serious conversation, I don’t tell him how disgusting that is.

  “Your mom must be freaking out.”

  Mo snorts. “If only. She was all denial and excuses. She made it sound like it would work itself out. Something about the way she said it, though, it’s like she thinks Sarina just needs to work at fitting in and everything will be fine.”

  “So you don’t think she’ll adjust?” I ask. “Like you did here? I mean you said before that she is wearing a hijab and going to mosque and stuff.”

  Mo doesn’t move or say anything for a while, and I know I’ve said the wrong thing. And stuff. Why did I say that and make it sound like a grocery list? And why am I always on the verge of insulting his nationality or his religion or his cultural whatever when I’m only trying to be nice? He’s too sensitive or I’m too clumsy. It has to be one or the other. Or maybe it’s just impossible to talk about—so neither of our faults.

  “I don’t know. She’s too American and not American enough. I mean, according to my dad, lots of Jordanians like Americans, but I can see how Sarina would seem like a poseur. A Jordanian who thinks she’s American. It was different for me moving here. I was supposed to be different from everyone else. She’s not. Plus I had you.”

  I picture Sarina, with her dreamy look and soft voice, so much like Mo but with all the hard edges smudged.

  “Wouldn’t have happened if I was there,” he says, so quietly I can barely hear him.

  “Don’t think like that,” I say.

  “Why not? It’s the truth.”

  “You have no way of knowing that. Besides, it’ll drive you nuts.”

  He raises an eyebrow. “Nuts as in curl into fetal position in someone else’s bed and sob like a baby?”

  “Exactly. Nuts as in dunk your Pop-Tart in chocolate milk. That’s disgusting, by the way.”

  “I knew you were thinking that. That’s why I kept doing it. Do you want to watch SpongeBob?”