The Nakeds

by Lisa Glatt

  Full of love, huh? she’d say.

  Not that kind of love, Nina. Not anymore. You know what I mean. Loving Jesus ensures that I’ll have a happy afterlife.

  I want to be happy now.

  Now? What’s now?

  And she’d be stunned and baffled by the way one man had completely changed into another man. And by then, Hannah would be standing behind her, ready to go.

  People change, it was true. They’d convinced Hannah to join them at the nudist camp. And, sure, it wasn’t a perfect day for her, maybe something she’d never do again. She stayed in her clothes and said she’d felt like a leper. On the way home she claimed that she’d rather visit her crazy stepmother in the hospital than suffer through another afternoon avoiding the stoner twins, and Nina had reminded her that she had also played cards with Azeem and seemed to relax, and in the late afternoon, the two of them had sat under a tree together and watched Azeem lose three games of tennis in a row.

  The wine was tasty and going down easily, and even though Nina preferred antianxiety pills to liquor—medicine prescribed by a doctor, always prescribed—she could understand why people drank so much of it. She’d been taking her tablets, as she called them, on and off, mostly on, since Hannah’s accident. Now, though, she was off, out of pills and feeling everything: irritation that Azeem had quit his job to study full-time, anxiety about her daughter’s leg, anger that he’d described her dream about the hamburger meat to Hannah, and anger at herself for not doing enough to stop him.

  She sipped the wine and listened while Azeem made excuses, his brow furrowed in mock concentration. “It’s because English is my second language. That’s why I’m losing,” he said.

  Hannah laughed. “It’s not Scrabble. It’s not about words. It’s cards,” she reminded him.

  He mumbled something in Arabic, but smiled at her.

  Hannah looked at him mischievously. “Get ready,” she said.

  “No. Oh no. Please, no,” Azeem whined.

  “Yes,” Hannah said, dropping down a jack, queen, and king of clubs.

  Nina felt a little jolt of parental pride.

  “Gin,” Hannah said gleefully. “You’re no match for me. I need some competition.” She looked around the nearly empty bar as if she might find some there. A man and a woman, oblivious to the three of them, sat on a couple of stools, sipping drinks, talking to each other in low voices that barely carried across the room. Every now and then the woman let out a loud and startling laugh.

  “One more game,” Azeem said.

  “You’re no better at gin than you are at tennis.”

  “One more, please, please.”

  Hannah shook her head, playing hard to get. Nina watched her daughter use her fingers to fish around in her glass for a maraschino cherry. Earlier Hannah’s face had lit up when she saw the bowl of those bright red cherries at the bar, and the bartender, a cheerful, smiling man with pink cheeks, noticed her crutches and dropped a couple in her soda. Now Hannah popped one in her mouth, held the stem between her lips and twirled it with a sensuousness that surprised Nina. Nina took a big drink of her wine and wondered if Hannah was still a virgin.

  8

  HANNAH HAD seen Azeem’s pictures where his brother’s face was as huge as a stop sign, all folds and skin, so she was surprised that Mustafa was no longer heavy. She had fantasized about the two of them becoming as close as siblings. She’d hoped that Mustafa would be the older brother she never had. She hoped that his illness would inspire a kinship and give them something in common. More than once she’d imagined him stepping off the plane, very round, yes, but with a sincere smile and a hug just for her. He’d wrap her in his big, soft arms and they’d be fast friends. She’d told herself that he’d want a younger American sister. She’d hoped that his weight, which probably made him feel self-conscious and embarrassed, and his limited use of English, and the three years between them, were only minor obstacles.

  She could tell from Azeem’s eyes that even he didn’t recognize the young man walking toward them. He looked nothing like the pictures. He’d lost half of himself. Still, he looked older than his seventeen years, with a high forehead and stubble all over his face, in slacks that were bunched up at the waist and a sweater many sizes too big that hung from his shoulders.

  Despite Hannah’s hopes, she felt her smile fade and her muscles tighten. She didn’t like that he’d lost all that weight and kept it a secret. People should know whom to expect. She didn’t like his plaid shirt or old-man slacks or the way he just stood there letting her stepfather gush and cry and kiss him. He wasn’t kissing back and there was something standoffish about the rigid way he held himself. Hannah suddenly felt very shy and, worse, left out. With each kiss and Arabic word, she felt Azeem leaving them and going home.

  Azeem’s eyes spilled over and he was kissing Mustafa on the face, each cheek, the top of his head, where Hannah had just spied a bald spot the size of a half dollar. What seventeen-year-old boy has a high forehead and a bald spot? she wondered. This new teenage brother looked twenty-five.

  “These are your friends, yes?” Mustafa said in what appeared to be his best English.

  “What did he say?” Hannah said.

  “Shh,” Azeem said. “Say it again, Mustafa.”

  “These are your friends, yes?” he repeated, each word very slowly, and looked right at her.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “We’re very good friends,” Nina said, looking at Azeem.

  Her stepfather held his brother by his shoulders and spoke quickly in Arabic, kissing his face, pulling him to his chest for a hug, and then pushing Mustafa away to look at his face again. Azeem was crying, but Mustafa’s face revealed little about his feelings. This went on for several minutes, with Nina and Hannah standing and watching. It was uncomfortable for them. They didn’t know what to do with themselves. Hannah felt gawky and graceless, like any face she made was the wrong face, like she didn’t know what to do with her arms. Her cast felt even heavier than it was and her toes seemed to be going numb.

  It was obvious that Azeem and Mustafa wanted to be alone.

  “Well …” her mom said, but no one seemed to hear her or respond.

  • • •

  It was a long, awkward wait at the luggage carousel, the brothers talking excitedly while Hannah and her mom stood to the side, talking to each other with only their eyes. At one point, her mom looked at the brothers and tried to interject, which only made it even more uncomfortable, both of them looking at her like she was a fly or a gnat.

  Most people were carefully watching the metal chute spitting out the suitcases, and Nina and Hannah were watching it too even though they had no idea which bag belonged to Mustafa.

  “Oh dear,” her mom whispered. “This is going to be a long visit.” Maybe Azeem overheard the comment or maybe he felt bad, suddenly realizing that he wasn’t including them, because he turned to them and tried to translate the last fifteen minutes of their conversation into a few words. “Mustafa’s telling me about school and about how he lost so much weight,” he said.

  “You look great,” Nina said.

  “Talk slowly,” Azeem instructed. “He knows a lot of English, but you can’t talk quickly.”

  “You … look … great,” Nina repeated.

  “Shows something about his character—what my brother’s made of.” Azeem said. “Shows what he’s capable of doing when he sets his mind to something positive.”

  Nina looked at Azeem. What was he talking about? He didn’t even sound like himself.

  “Not that people have to be thin,” he added.

  Nina and Hannah were nodding in unison, feeling foolish, when Mustafa’s huge suitcase went moving right past the four of them. Mustafa pointed at it and muttered something under his breath without moving to follow his bag.

  “Oh, let me,” Azeem said, bolting after it, leaving the three of them alone to nod and smile some more.

  Everyone except Mustafa carried something. A
zeem dragged the big suitcase and Nina slung the stuffed overnight bag over her shoulder. She was struggling, leaning to one side as they walked through the airport. Azeem had strapped Mustafa’s camera around Hannah’s neck and arm.

  “Don’t do that,” Nina said.

  “I’m fine,” Hannah said, offering her neck.

  “She likes to help out,” Azeem said.

  Nina looked at Mustafa, thinking he would offer to take the camera, but he didn’t say a word. “Hmm,” she said. “You sure you’re OK, Hannah?”

  Hannah nodded and Nina let it go.

  It wasn’t the camera’s weight that bothered Hannah, but the intense smell of Mustafa’s overly sweet cologne on the strap. She’d told her mom she was OK, but truthfully she was relieved when they arrived at the car and handed the camera back to him.

  Hastily, Azeem moved things around in the trunk: a notebook, a bottle of water, and the picnic basket they used at The Elysium. Azeem handed Nina a plastic bag that she held open while he dropped trash inside of it. He was shaking his head, seemingly embarrassed by the way they lived.

  Nina’s wine buzz had morphed into a headache, and she was in no mood for Azeem’s impatience. She gave him a look that told him as much.

  “You should probably let him ride in front,” Azeem said, softening.

  “What? Oh,” Nina said.

  “He just arrived. It was a long flight.”

  “Fine,” she said begrudgingly. It was her car. She didn’t belong in the backseat of her own damn car.

  Hannah and Mustafa stood behind them. She was thinking that his head was kind of square and his chin jutted out too much and his wool sweater was even more old-man-like than his slacks, little balls dangling from the fabric like earrings, and he needed a shave. She was thinking that he didn’t like the way she looked either, that she was as much of a disappointment to him as he was to her. She was thinking that getting through the next six weeks was going to be an uncomfortable hell, when Mustafa leaned in and uttered his first full English sentence just to her. “Where can I buy hashish?” he said.

  She looked at him, surprised.

  And he pressed his thumb and finger together and lifted them to his mouth, pretending to take a hit of a joint.

  “I know what you’re asking for,” she whispered.

  Again with the thumb and finger together, again with the inhaling, exhaling.

  “I know,” she said.

  “Yes?”

  “I don’t know who sells it,” she said, which wasn’t really true, but she didn’t want to get in trouble with him, not this soon, and what was he thinking, asking her something like that before he even knew her?

  Nina turned around. “What are you two kids talking about?”

  Hannah didn’t know how much of the conversation her mom had heard and didn’t know what to say.

  “Hannah will show me around,” Mustafa said.

  “Of course she will,” Azeem said. “Everyone get in the car. Let’s get this young man home and fed.”

  9

  THE BROTHERS spoke to each other in Arabic for the first few days, even in front of Nina and Hannah, which made them uneasy, especially when one brother said something apparently very funny and they both started laughing.

  “Mustafa’s English will only improve if he speaks it while he’s here,” Nina said.

  “I suppose so,” Azeem said.

  “And it would improve more quickly if he spoke it to you too,” she said.

  “Give him a week or so.”

  The four of them were sitting in the den. Mustafa was sitting where Azeem usually parked himself, in the big chair. He rested his arms on the overstuffed armrests and stared at the TV.

  Hannah had a book in her lap but looked up, nodding enthusiastically at her mom’s suggestion. “Yes, yes—even to you, Azeem,” Hannah said.

  “It would be great if we could all communicate,” Nina said. “We would be like a family.”

  Hannah thought she saw Azeem bristle at the word family. Of course, he hadn’t told Mustafa exactly what was up between the three of them, who they were to each other.

  The nightly news was on with the volume down low, and Mustafa seemed most interested in the screen during commercials, especially when a young woman was putting on lipstick or dancing around in a short skirt.

  “You’re right—both of you,” Azeem decided, suggesting that Mustafa use the English he was taught in school. “You’ll be fluent when you go home,” he said.

  “Flu?” Mustafa said.

  “Fluent,” Azeem corrected him, sounding like Nina. “Don’t worry about it, Mustafa. Talk to us in English from now on.”

  Mustafa looked confused.

  “Let’s start tomorrow. First thing in the morning, you’ll talk to me in English.”

  “To you?” he said, pointing at Azeem.

  Azeem nodded. “It’ll be good for you. You’ll know English very well when you return home.”

  Mustafa shrugged and turned back to the screen, where a bubblegum commercial had begun. The four of them stared dumbly at the TV set. A cheerful song played and a beautiful blonde woman with a huge pink bubble growing from her mouth raised her eyebrows suggestively.

  “Good country,” Mustafa concluded.

  • • •

  Later, when they went to pick up a pizza, Mustafa told Azeem that he’d lost the weight by eating only a quarter of what he desired. When he wanted two bowls of couscous, he allowed himself a small cup. When he wanted ten falafels, he allowed himself two and a half. When he wanted four skewers of lamb, he ate one. He gave up dates, feta, and flatbread, his favorite. He was always wanting more and never satiated and went to sleep thinking about food and dreamt about food and woke up thinking about it too.

  Azeem was sympathetic. “I understand wanting more,” he said. “It’s something that gives you pleasure, so you do too much of it. It makes a kind of sense. I always thought your weight had something to do with the medicine, though,” Azeem said. “No?”

  Mustafa shook his head.

  “What do you think of Nina and Hannah?” Azeem asked him.

  “Very nice,” Mustafa said.

  “You’re not talking to them much. I know it’s a new place. And it’s much harder using the language in conversation than it is at school. I remember when I first arrived. I barely said anything to anyone. I had only Arab friends.”

  “What’s that?” Mustafa asked.

  “I only had Arab friends,” he repeated.

  “No, I mean, what’s that?” He pointed at a Jack in the Box on the corner.

  “A fast-food restaurant.”

  “A what?”

  “They give you food. Fast.”

  Mustafa laughed.

  Someone cut them off, swerving into their lane, and Azeem called the other driver an asshole.

  They were quiet for a block until Mustafa asked, “Who is the woman to you?”

  “Nina’s my girlfriend,” Azeem said.

  “How long?”

  “A few years.”

  “That’s a long time.”

  Azeem shrugged. “It’s the way things are done here.” He cleared his throat. “Tell me more about your weight loss,” he said.

  Mustafa admitted that he used a smaller plate and forced himself to eat slowly. He said it wasn’t easy, that there was always a gnawing emptiness in his stomach. He felt it, even now, telling the story, anticipating the two puny pieces of pizza he’d eat while the rest of them ate until they were satisfied.

  “Mom didn’t tell me that you’d lost weight.”

  Mustafa said that he made his parents promise not to tell Azeem because he wanted to walk off the plane and surprise him. “You were surprised, right?” he said.

  “I was surprised. And I’ve got a surprise for you too.” Azeem pulled into a parking spot near the entrance to the pizza place and turned off the car.

  Mustafa could smell the garlic and cheese wafting in from the open window. He was unlocking th
e car, ready to step out, when Azeem stopped him.

  “Wait a minute. Let’s talk here first. There’s something I want to tell you about, a place we go on weekends,” he began.

  10

  AZEEM BLAMED his brother’s reticence on the language barrier, but Hannah felt that was an excuse. She thought he’d be friendlier and would make more of an effort. She thought he’d ask her other questions before asking where he could score drugs.

  Now that he’d been with them over a week, though, she was getting used to his presence. Sometimes he did more than grunt hello at her. One morning they actually sat together at breakfast and tried to converse. Or she tried to converse and he offered her short answers in between bites of oatmeal.

  She tried telling herself that his request for drugs was a way of establishing trust, a test, and perhaps she’d failed, let him down—maybe when she abruptly said she couldn’t help him, he felt insulted.

  All he wanted to do, though, was talk to his brother and on the phone to his family and friends, and when Azeem and Nina were out of the house, he wanted to go in the backyard and be alone.

  He asked her again and again for pot, calling it Mary Jane and bud and happy seed and marijuana, pronouncing the latter surprisingly well, which made her think he’d practiced the word at home. She imagined him preparing for his trip to America, standing in front of the bathroom mirror and saying marijuana out loud.

  One early evening when Azeem and her mom were in the kitchen preparing dinner, she sat with Mustafa at the table and tried to make conversation. “This table is for picnics,” he began. “It’s a picnic table, right?”

  “It is,” she said. “They think it’s contemporary.”

  He looked at her.

  “Modern,” she said. “New.”

  He nodded, understanding. “My brother has changed.”

  “I guess so.” She smiled.

  “His studies, the place they go on the weekends. How do you say? Unusual,” he said, finding the word.

  She laughed.

  He leaned in. “I like to buy marijuana,” he whispered.

  “I know,” she said. And just then her mom appeared with a steaming roast, Azeem behind her carrying a basket of bread. “Dinner is served,” Azeem said happily.