But do not get the wrong idea, K. C. Khalid already has a wife!
Adeeba says my jokes are heavy as a rug left in the rain, and I must explain. Here in the camp, engineers ride bikes, for they cover many kilometers back and forth between the latrines and pumps and tap stands. Some of the khawaja brought fancy bikes with many chains but cursed them because they do not work in the sand. So they copy the Sudanese and buy a Phoenix, black and plain with tires as wide as my arm. This has driven the price even higher. Khalid calls his Phoenix his wife because it took all his money to pay her dowry!
Hassan begs to ride on the handlebars. The children run from their shelters to chase them.
Adeeba tells me I talk of everyone but myself. Is this letter not long enough? I talk too much already. With the herd I spent many days without words. A doer is never a great talker.
Adeeba says, You are not like Halima, a leather bag with a little water that shakes frequently!
I tell her shush.
Words have a greater power than guns, Adeeba says, when people are not afraid to speak the truth.
I did not think I was afraid, K. C., but perhaps I am.
How is Mrs. Clay? Has she delivered her girl? Adeeba is very pleased to learn the word for the picture of the baby inside. Saida Julie told her it means the writing of sound. I do not understand how what we can hear becomes what we can see, and yet that is the way of writing, too.
I have a baby in my belly, K. C., but I do not want a picture.
I am not afraid of birth, for I have seen it many times. Adeeba will be my midwife. She tells me she cannot do this, but I remind her that an honorable person’s promise is a debt. She will not be alone, for all power and strength belong to God.
I will be the midwife too, for nothing scratches your skin like your own fingernail. I have learned from my animals. When the pains come, animals do not lie down but walk.
What scares me is what comes afterward. My grandmother always said, It is not difficult to give birth to a baby, but it is difficult to raise him. Teaching the young is like sculpting soft stone. In Umm Jamila we had many to show a child the right path. When a wife gave birth to a girl, her aunts and all the women trilled like frogs. If it was a boy, the men cried, God is the greatest. My mother said when Muhammad was born my father slaughtered four sheep, and family and neighbors ate until they could not move for the weight of their bellies.
But what becomes of babies who have no one to greet them? What becomes of their mothers? All my life I heard women tell their sons to marry untouched girls. Old shoes with holes are better than a woman who has a son. Avoid a mother of a child even if it is dead.
Men do not like to marry a widow. We do not even have a word for girls like me.
Now Adeeba is fussing. What do you mean men do not like to marry? There are men in this camp who would marry a stump if it could cook. Then she says, That might be the problem in your case.
Is your friend Emily so rude?
And no one to greet the baby? Adeeba says. Am I a no one? And your mother and Hassan and Zeinab? And Saida Julie?
Adeeba is trilling, not a frog but a sick hyena maybe. All around us are laughing at the sound.
But I tell you, K. C., my confidante, it is now I miss my brother Muhammad. I would not fear for my child with such a khal to watch his back.
Do not regret what is gone, Adeeba says. She is like an echo with these sayings.
It is true God never made a mouth and left it.
Your sister, Nawra
K.C.
AUGUST 2008
Parker’s looking at the book and making up test questions about the Paleolithic era, which seems more pointless than American Idol. I don’t even bother asking Chloe to tape it for me anymore.
“My brain’s got nonstick coating,” I tell him.
Parker closes the book over his finger and looks at me with his big brown Labrador eyes. “How do you study?” he asks.
“Usually I don’t.” I smile the idiot smile.
“Come on,” he says. “You read the textbook and then . . .”
“I don’t read much of it,” I say. Like, almost none. “I look at the pictures.” I should tell Nawra here’s why people lie: The truth sounds so feeble.
“Then how do you learn?” Parker asks. Not in a mean way, though. He just sounds curious.
“Usually I don’t,” I say. Only I can’t smile because at this moment I feel really sad. Emily’s coming back tomorrow, and I wonder if she’s outgrown me after spending the summer with eighth-grade geniuses. What if I’m not her type anymore?
She sent me one lousy postcard. While she’s been negotiating trade agreements and defending human rights, I’ve been raising Mr. Hathaway’s blood pressure. “Miss Cannelli, it appears you have strewn your commas like rose petals.” Emily’s going to have better stuff to do next year than pick up after my commas and hold my hand through the Dust Bowl.
But Parker’s on Mom’s payroll, so he has to humor me.
Parker was as obsessed as Wally with Thomas the Tank Engine. “Ask me anything about talking steam engines,” I say.
He gives me a quiz.
“Why did Sir Topham Hatt come to Sodor?”
“To build the railway.”
“Ten points. What else?” Parker asks.
“He built a bridge from the island to the mainland.”
“Twenty. And now for our bonus question: What was Topham Hatt’s nickname?”
“The Fat Controller?”
“Ding, ding, ding. Winner!” Parker says.
Silly as it sounds, “winner” makes me feel good.
Then Parker returns to the characteristics of Paleolithic culture. He starts drilling, but there’s no oil in this shale. Parker launches into the speech about why the Stone Age is important to my future.
“You know lots of stuff,” he says. “That means you’re learning.”
“Let’s go outside,” I say.
“K. C., I know the code. ‘Let’s go outside’ means ‘Let’s goof off.’ ”
“You asked me how I learn,” I say. “I learn by going outside. You want to teach me about the sun, let it shine on my face. Let’s go be hunter-gatherers.”
Parker is highly dubious. In the backyard I cast him as the hunter and me as the gatherer, but I let him tell me what I’m gathering and how these wild grains (Mom’s weeds) are so abundant here in the Fertile Crescent. Then Parker, who’s having a hard time spearing wild beasts—no dinner tonight—says, “Hey, honey, how ’bout we plant some of those seeds you collected?” It turns out they sprout right up, fertilize themselves, and then feed us and a sheep, so it doesn’t matter anymore that Parker’s a lousy hunter. He starts to stick around to guard all the wheat and barley and lentils we harvest, and I start having more kids (we skip over this part), especially since I don’t have to carry each one miles on my back all day. So we settle down with other families and have so much food that some of the kids don’t have to farm anymore. They can grow up to invent the alphabet and be priests and traders and kings.
Although I started this, Parker really gets into it. He pretends to carve a plow out of a stick, and then he turns into an awful tyrant of a king, wringing taxes out of us poor farmers so he can build a snazzy capital city. As usual it’s a stinking hot Richmond day, so humid you could grow mushrooms in Todd’s sneakers, and when Mom comes home, she finds us out back all sweaty and laughing beside piles of weeds and stones. She looks at us like, Huh?
“Those are our taxes,” I explain.
“Excuse me, Mrs. Cannelli, we were just reenacting the development of agriculture,” Parker declares.
“How . . . creative,” Mom says. She catches my eye and wags her finger at me.
“Can you stay for dinner, Parker?” she asks.
I hold my breath. He says yes.
Nawra
AUGUST 2008
“Are you awake?” I whisper.
“How could I not be, with rain dripping on my head?” Adeeb
a says.
“My mother sleeps,” I whisper.
I do not like to sleep because of my dreams. Last night I held a baby as big as a calf. I was scared to look at its face. When I did, I saw its father.
In the dark I often listen to my mother. She drags her breath through her nose as she drags her leg on the ground during the day. Many cry out in their sleep, but my mother keeps her silence. Perhaps in her dreams she returns to Umm Jamila. Perhaps she is running her hand over a mat that Saha has woven or searching in the pot for the piece of meat worthy of Muhammad. As I listen to her snore, I thank God for his mercy.
“She sleeps even when her eyes are open,” Adeeba says. “My students sleep with their eyes open too. Maybe there is a sleeping sickness in this camp.”
“Do you miss your mother?” I ask.
“My father,” Adeeba says. “I miss him every day.”
The dark shifts as she sits up.
“When I feel pain, I think of Richmond USA,” I say.
“You have pains?”
“They come and go.”
“Are they coming now?”
“Not now,” I say. I roll to my side and push up with my arm so we are sitting together in the dark.
“K. C.’s ice cream with lima beans on top. That is what I would like right now,” Adeeba says.
“Tell me about ice cream,” I say.
“It is cold,” Adeeba says. “Like the mountains on K. C.’s paper. And smooth.”
“Like a rock.”
“Softer,” she says. “Like a baby’s thigh. And sweet, so sweet.”
“Tell me about lima beans,” I say.
“I think they are like fava, only green, not brown,” Adeeba says.
I sniff.
“Are you crying?” Adeeba asks.
“I am smelling the medamas,” I say. “Onions, tomato, cumin.”
I stir in the dark.
“What are you doing?” Adeeba says.
“The pot is so big I need two hands to stir.”
“You are crazy,” she says.
“Here, you take a turn,” I say. In the dark I reach for her hand. “Stir,” I tell her. “If the lima beans stick to the bottom, they will burn.”
“There is water falling in the pot,” Adeeba says.
“It is good for the sauce,” I say. “Here is my bowl.”
I hold out my palm. She swats until our hands collide in the dark.
“More,” I say.
“Leave some for me,” Adeeba says.
A pain strikes my belly like a switch. So many days I have these pains, but still the child does not come. He does not wish to see this world.
“What is the matter?” Adeeba asks.
Sometimes I dream of a son who is wise and strong, one who removes the dust, as my brother did. Then I remember that the son of a rat is a digger. I am the thirsty person who sees a mirage as water.
“Mmm,” I say. I chew as a horse does, loud and content.
“Now that we speak of cooking, I will gather the wood tomorrow,” Adeeba says.
“You must teach.”
“I will tell Si-Ahmad I cannot take the morning class,” she says. “You must not leave the camp.”
“You must tell Si-Ahmad that you wish to teach letters, not health.”
“He is a good man, but he is a man. He does not take directions from a girl,” she says.
“Then you must bring Hassan and Zeinab with you and have them write their sentences.”
“And you,” Adeeba says. “You are my star pupil.”
Sometimes I look at the words on the ground and think, Is it my stick that made these? My script is not as beautiful as Abdullah’s, but I have now written more words than my father ever did.
Adeeba would teach us only sentences with feet if I did not insist on some sentences with wings. God is with those who persevere, I wrote tonight, although the rain muddied “God” before I finished “persevere.”
“So that is why you taught me,” I say. “To boss me around. He who taught me one letter, I became his slave.”
“You would not make a good slave,” she says.
• • •
I remember that terrible place of tents and fires and piles of stolen carpets and pots. None is born a slave, but any can be made one.
• • •
“I am asking you as my friend and not my slave,” Adeeba says. “Let me collect the wood this time. Now is the time for giving birth. The head cannot carry two pots.”
“The wood I put on my head,” I say. “The baby is in my belly.”
“I tell you that it is an ox, not a cow, but you say milk it,” Adeeba says.
“I see you have taken my advice about the sayings, Professor.”
“How else am I going to get a camel like you to the water pool?” Adeeba says.
“Listen to the one whose advice makes you cry, not to the one whose advice makes you laugh,” I say.
“But we are laughing!” she says.
For just a moment, life is ice cream.
K.C.
AUGUST 2008
“You’re not concentrating,” Parker says.
I start telling him about the time we almost got a puppy.
“What’s wrong with Purrfect?” Mom had asked.
“He’s a cat,” Dad said. “I want a pet that jumps up and down when I walk in the door.”
Mom said a sheepdog was impractical.
Dad said he’d wanted one all his life.
“Since your mother died,” Mom said.
That’s another story for Parker, how my grandmother was driving too fast on a wet night and crashed. Dad never talked about it, but Mom told us, and it was there in the way she said, “Buckle up!” Dad’s always moving, always talking, but every once in a while, when he slows down, this sadness rises, like oil in a salad dressing when you stop shaking the bottle.
Parker’s not just a good tutor; he’s a really good listener. He nods and looks at me so patiently, like his eyes are his ears, following the story closely. I know he’s thinking we should be going over the review questions—he circled number seven in pencil when I detoured the study session—but since then he hasn’t looked down at the book once.
Dad swore he’d take care of the puppy—walk it, feed it, drive it to the vet.
“Why don’t you start with your own children?” Mom said. She was mad because Dad vaporized a lot, especially at our bedtime, so she was always the one waving toothbrushes, reading stories, and looking for where Todd had hidden his Nintendo to play after she turned out the light.
Dad started a chant—“PUP-PY, PUP-PY”—and Todd and I joined in.
“That’s what I’ll be cleaning up—pup pee,” Mom said. So Dad had us whisper “meanie” every time we passed Mom. Every time. On the stairs, in the kitchen, at dinner. “Here’s the ketchup, meanie.” Even though I sort of knew the four fingers were pointing back in our direction, Todd and Dad and I really got into it. Mom shrugged it off for about a week, and then on Saturday she said, “Stop. Please. Enough of this ‘meanie.’ ”
“We’ll stop when we get a puppy, meanie,” Dad said.
“Poodles don’t shed,” she said.
“Poodles?” said Dad, as if she’d suggested a python. “Sheepdog.”
“Let’s go see who’s at the animal shelter,” Mom said.
Todd and I looked at Dad. We’d won! She was giving in.
“Meanie,” Dad said.
Telling the story to Parker, I remember how hard it is to call someone “meanie” when they call you “cupcake.”
Dad said it louder. “Meanie!”
I looked at Todd, who seemed sort of confused. Then we both said, “Meanie!”
Mom stood up, folded her napkin, and carried her dinner plate to the sink. “I don’t have to put up with this,” she said. “You can practice your caregiving skills,” she said to Dad. To us, she said, “I love you, and I’ll be back.” She picked up her purse and her car keys and walked out the do
or.
“Good for her,” Parker says. I like him for saying that. “Were you scared?”
Stunned mostly. Dad pushed his plate to the center of the table and said, “Let’s get a puppy.”
That night we drove to five pet stores, but none of them had sheepdogs. At one place we tried to talk Dad into a Lab, black as an Oreo and soft as if you’d dunked him in milk. But Dad wanted nothing but a sheepdog.
When we got back, Mom wasn’t home, and I started to cry. Dad had bought us giant milkshakes, but my nose was so stuffed up I could hardly taste mine. Then he let us skip teeth brushing, but my teeth felt furry all night. Nothing felt right—no stories, no rubbing noses, and he got our pajama tops and bottoms mixed up and even forgot Todd’s sleep pants, which are like a diaper, so Todd wet his bed.
I did too, but I don’t confide that to Parker. I tell him that Todd had to wear sleep pants until he was eleven, but I swear him to secrecy so Todd doesn’t kill me.
Mom noticed as soon as she walked in the door, Sunday afternoon.
“You bought a sheepdog,” she said, sniffing.
“Couldn’t find one,” Dad said. Then he told her the whole story, and we all started laughing, especially when she tickled Todd and me and said, “Puppies! Who needs puppies? We’ve already got two.” She changed the sheets, and everything smelled right again. Not for long, though. That was the summer before third grade.
“My parents are so boring,” Parker says. “Though once my mom got so mad at my dad that she smashed her coffee mug on the floor.”
“I thought you were going to say she threw her coffee in his face.”
“He wasn’t even in the house,” Parker says.
When my parents were divorcing, what Mom wanted most was us, but Dad threatened to bring up the weekend she abandoned us to show she was an unfit parent, so she gave him the good car and the joint savings and some other stuff. I wasn’t supposed to hear, but I did—well, overhear.
“So he’s the meanie,” Parker says.
The Milk of Birds Page 11