The Beauty of the Moment

by Tanaz Bhathena

  “Amma, I want to go home,” I tell her now. “To Jeddah.”

  She doesn’t try hiding her wince. Her mouth firms into a straight line. “This is home now, Suzy.”

  “But Amma—”

  “The transit system is terrible here. A twenty-minute wait between buses during the weekends. You know this. Do you think I would have bothered you otherwise to get a license?”

  I do know this. Yet as tiresome as it is at times, I don’t really mind taking transit the way my mother does. I find that traveling by bus is the best way to watch people, to observe the slant of a cheekbone, the curve of a chin, the width of a nose. Some days, when I return home, I fill my sketchbook with these observations, play around with facial features until I understand how to distort them enough to produce another drawing, or sometimes even add one to my class portfolio for Ms. Nguyen.

  “And now your father is getting on my case about getting a job.” Amma spits out the last two words. “As if it’s the easiest thing in the world.”

  I hesitate, not wanting to ask her how her interview went today—for an admin position at a middle school a few blocks from our condo. But she tells me anyway.

  “Even today, they asked me the same thing. ‘What were you doing for the last sixteen years, Mrs. Thomas?’” Her voice mocks both the interviewer’s voice and the Canadian accent. “I was raising a family, you fool. That’s what I was doing.”

  I begin tuning her out. Amma’s rages are the kind that can go on for several hours, her rants long and repetitive, often leaving me with a pounding headache at the end. Instead I stare at the picture on my desk, a framed photo of my parents, taken by a friend the day they arrived in Jeddah, a year before I was born. My father wore a gray safari suit, while my mother was cloaked in black, her white cotton scarf knotted neatly under her chin, a flap of pale yellow sari peeking from between the folds of her polyester abaya, near the hem. They are not smiling, but there is something in their expressions—an innocence, maybe—that brings out the magic in that picture.

  It’s my favorite picture of them, not so much Amma’s. “I look like such a schoolgirl in that one,” she told me once. “Well, I suppose I was one at the time. I didn’t even think of how limited my options would be once I got to Jeddah. Even back then a BSc meant nothing unless you wanted a teaching position.”

  Here her bachelor’s degree means even less, especially since it’s from the University of Kerala.

  “Maybe if you took those night classes on Elm Drive,” I begin now, trying to interrupt her rant, “or went back to university, then—”

  “Night classes?” she retorts. “University? If I go to university, then who will take care of you?”

  “I can take care of myself.” I feel myself bristling. “I’m seventeen years old, Amma! If you want to get a job in a lab over here, you’ll have to upgrade your degree and get some Canadian qualifications. Even Edmund Uncle and Bridgita Aunty did so. There’s no point in complaining about it all the time!”

  When Amma’s mouth trembles, I know I’ve said the wrong thing even while being completely right.

  “So. I complain all the time, do I?” she says.

  “Amma, you know I didn’t mean—”

  Amma walks out of the room and leaves me hanging—a tactic she often uses while playing the victim, her antics often driving Appa into a frenzy. Unlike me, however, Appa never seems to see through Amma’s melodrama and it makes me wonder if love truly does turn a person blind.

  I stay strong for the evening, not talking to my mother or apologizing when she looks expectantly at me once we finish dinner and the dishes.

  “Good night,” I say, and head for my room. I will not give in, I tell myself firmly. I was not wrong in telling her to go back to school. It was only the truth.

  * * *

  It’s not until the next morning that exhaustion begins to seep in, a guilt as old as time weighing on me with a phrase that has been drilled into my head since I was a girl and that is embedded in my conscience: How could you speak to your mother that way?

  After physics ends, I rest my forehead against the cool metal surface of my locker. Amma makes me so mad at times. But I know she is scared as well. If I am out of my element, Amma most certainly is—a woman who left behind an active life in India in exchange for the monotony of household chores in Saudi Arabia for sixteen years, only to be thrust into an active life once more in a new country where her qualifications aren’t valued.

  In Jeddah, my father played the role of a buffer, the water to my mother’s fire, a tree that bent to her wind instead of resisting its pressure. Now, though, after nearly three months of being left alone with Amma, I wonder about Appa’s insistence on us staying here while he went back to Jeddah—if there is some validity to my mother’s paranoia about him trying to abandon us.

  To top it off, Alisha and I are still not speaking. My anger over her responses yesterday feels ridiculous now and I said as much in the text I sent her early this morning. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have blown up at you like that yesterday. I check my phone for the hundredth time. The message, read almost a minute after it was sent, still doesn’t have a response.

  My hand seeks out and holds on to the slender gold lock hanging from my locker—one Appa pressed into my hand the day before we left Jeddah. The back of my throat pricks. When I turn around, I am surprised to find a pair of eyes on me. Malcolm Vakil.

  Heat instantly flushes my cheeks, much to my annoyance.

  “Are you okay?” he asks, and for a moment I remember the boy I saw from my apartment window: the boy underneath Malcolm’s usual swagger.

  “Yes. I’m fine. Tired,” I admit before realizing how true it is.

  I think back to what lies ahead—another class, another bus ride, another day spent in silence with an angry mother waiting by the computer for a father who does not call.

  Rebel, a voice that sounds suspiciously like Alisha’s says in my head. Have a little fun.

  “Do you want to skip the next period?” I ask.

  “What?” Malcolm looks at me closely, a tiny furrow between his eyebrows.

  The surprise on his face gives me confidence and I go on. “Skip next period. We used to call it ‘bunking class’ in Jeddah. Not that I ever did it.” Even Alisha bunked for a whole day once in Class X, slipping off with Mishal Al-Abdulaziz and several other classmates to visit a private beach, where they had a fantastic time. I’d shrugged it off back then, but now I can’t help but wonder if I missed out. If, by saying no, I simply lost an opportunity to experience something I might have otherwise enjoyed.

  “Oh yeah, bunking. That’s what the Brits call it. Or brown people colonized by Brits.” His forehead is smooth again; cocky Malcolm is back.

  “Look who’s talking!” I scoff. “At least India doesn’t still have the Queen of England on its currency. Besides, you’re brown, too, you know.”

  He grins at me. “Yeah, but I was born here. It’s not quite the same.”

  It’s the truth. It does not matter that Malcolm and I share skin tones. Everything about him screams Canadian, from the way he speaks to the way he dresses to the self-assurance with which he walks. Malcolm belongs here as much as I don’t and probably never will.

  “Hey!” He snaps his fingers in front of my face. “Where’d you go?”

  I force a smile. “Nowhere.”

  “You were somewhere, all right.” He taps the side of his head. “My sister used to call it Fuzzyland when she was younger. It’s when you’re neither here nor there.”

  “Limbo,” I say. Neither Saudi, nor Indian, nor Canadian.

  “Limbo,” he agrees.

  I study his face—the faint traces of a mustache over his top lip, the scar on his chin, the oddly soft wisps of eyebrows on his wide, smooth forehead, his far-too-pretty eyes. There’s something about Malcolm that makes me want to trust him, a foolish instinct I catch before it takes root. I cross my arms in front of me.

  The furrow reappears
between his brows for a second before clearing again. “So are we skipping or what?” His voice is light, almost flippant.

  My fingers twitch for a few seconds before I open my locker and dump my binder inside. All I’m carrying now is my backpack, which feels oddly light, and my wallet with twenty dollars and a transit pass.

  Malcolm leads the way, taking me to a side door I never saw before. He pushes it open. “After you.”

  When I brush past him, I catch a whiff of rain-soaked earth, with a trace of the minty gum he always chews between classes. I breathe it in, deep, before I realize what I’m doing and then step out into the afternoon light.

  Malcolm

  We take the bus to Square One Shopping Centre, which is about ten minutes away from school and has a decent food court, including a chain Arabic restaurant that sells shawarma.

  “This other place I was telling you about is better,” I say, grabbing hold of the yellow railing, swaying in place as the bus begins to move. Susan stands about a foot away, next to a lady with a stroller near the window. “It’s a Lebanese joint on Dixie and Crestlawn. But it takes too long to get there by bus and I don’t have a car.”

  “You don’t drive?” She looks surprised.

  I snort. “Of course I drive. I mean I have a license and everything. But I don’t have a car of my own.” Susan doesn’t need to know that the old man has banned me from borrowing his car ever since the Incident two years ago, or that I would consider hara-kiri before asking Freny for hers.

  “Oh,” Susan says, and I swear I see her shoulders droop slightly.

  I grin. “Don’t tell me that you don’t drive.”

  Susan’s cheeks instantly flush with color. “I take the transit.”

  “Oh, okay. Cool.”

  “I don’t know why everyone in this place needs to drive. If more people took the transit, there’d be less traffic and it would be good for the environment.”

  She looks out the window, jaw clenched, her eyes narrowed into a squint against the sunlight. I watch the shadows play over her face, which has grown so still it might have been carved out of stone. The lady with the stroller reaches out to pull on the string, requesting a stop. Once she steps off the bus, I move in to occupy the space she vacated, leaning against the window, blocking part of Susan’s view. Her eyes meet mine and then flick downward, focusing on my chin—probably on the scar left by an old basketball injury.

  “Ahmed was terrified when he first got behind the wheel, you know,” I tell her.

  She looks back into my eyes. “I don’t believe you.”

  “Oh yeah. Never seen someone that yellow-knuckled. He was crapping his pants by the time the instructor told him to turn on the ignition.”

  A surprisingly deep chuckle emerges from her throat. “Liar.”

  Maybe I am. Maybe Ahmed never was afraid of driving. But a little white lie never hurt anyone. At least it made her smile. Behind Susan, a man gets up from his seat, forcing her to move closer to me. If it was Afrin or another girlfriend, I would put my arm around her shoulders. But Susan and I are not dating. I press a hand flat against the window, my arm stuck at an awkward angle from standing this close and trying not to touch her by accident and freak her out. It’s surprising how, after days of antagonizing her, I am suddenly considering her feelings. Maybe it was that drawing of the dead girl. Maybe it’s because she isn’t perfect and has her own failures like the rest of us. Or maybe it’s as simple as the part of me attracted to Susan Thomas temporarily overcoming the part that wants to keep her away.

  The bus driver takes matters out of my hands, braking so hard at the next stop that Susan falls into me, her smooth cheek against my rough one, her hands grabbing my jacket, flattening there, exactly two layers above where my heart beats. I breathe in, picking out scents that are both familiar and not—jasmine and paint and spices from a kitchen.

  Small, fragrant, warm. Three more things that I now register about a girl who I sometimes pretend is a figment of my imagination before someone coughs in the back and Susan and I split apart, embarrassed. It is how we stand for the rest of the ride, quiet, four inches apart, looking anywhere and everywhere except at each other, until a robotic voice announces our arrival at the mall.

  * * *

  Late-September afternoons carry a lingering warmth in the air, as if a final bit of summer has reached out and is still holding on with a fading green grip. Even Susan, who’s wearing a thick gray peacoat, takes it off, her face suffusing with such pleasure you’d think she’d never bared her arms to the sun before. I think of the few pictures I’ve seen of women from Saudi Arabia—always veiled, always garbed in flowing black—and figure that she probably hasn’t as much, or that it’s still enough of a novelty that it feels good against her skin.

  Inside the mall, fall launches a full-frontal assault: from the overpriced pumpkin spice drinks and java roasting at a nearby coffee shop to actual pumpkins and fake maple leaves embellishing nearly every store display. It’s only the air-conditioning, still on full blast, that gives any indication of the weather outside.

  A boy of about six races ahead of us, LED lights flashing in the heels of his sneakers, and grabs hold of his father’s hand.

  He may look like you, Daulat, but mark my words, he will be like me, my father used to tell my mother when I was five. A-plus at school, A-plus at sports. Back then he was still Dad, a mythical being I both loved and somewhat feared, and I did everything possible to prove him right. After Mom got diagnosed, everything began slipping—my parents’ marriage, my grades. How could you be so stupid? my father demanded when I failed a second, then a third math test in ninth grade. You’ll never graduate high school this way, let alone get into a university. But the doctors were going to amputate my mother’s leg to get rid of the cancer that year, so I stopped listening to my father. A year later, when the cancer returned, I no longer cared about the old man or his rants.

  There are times, though, when I’m still a victim of memory, of habit. It’s surely the only reason why, two years later, something inside me automatically clenches when the boy with lighted sneakers grins at his dad at the mall, when the father raises a hand to ruffle his curly black hair.

  I avert my gaze, scanning for distractions and find one in Susan, who’s staring at the display of a newly opened arts and crafts store. The mannequin in the window wears a bright yellow smock and a painter’s hat.

  “Someone should tell them that painters wear white, not yellow,” I say.

  “Chartreuse,” she replies, still staring at the mannequin.

  “What?”

  “The color. It’s chartreuse, not yellow.”

  “They named a color after alcohol?”

  Her head snaps in my direction, a frown—always a frown where I’m concerned—on her face. “They did not.”

  “Well, chartreuse is alcohol. French stuff.” I’ve seen bottles of it in the past, behind lock and key in the liquor cabinet at Justin’s house. “Also, it’s green, not yellow.”

  Susan rolls her eyes, as if she doesn’t quite believe me, but says nothing in response. Instead, she looks at the mannequin again with an expression that can be only described as longing.

  “Want to go inside?” I ask.

  She starts and waves a hand in the air. “No, no. Besides, I don’t have money to waste on a hobby.”

  “Did your parents tell you that?” The words slip out before I can bite my tongue.

  A pause, followed by a glare that could spear through steel. “What does that mean?”

  “Well, when a teenage girl talks like she’s forty-five, a parent is usually involved. Or some form of boring grown-up.” Since my foot is already in my mouth, I might as well step all the way in.

  Her scowl grows deeper at that and she quickens her pace, trying to leave me behind. Too bad my legs are longer. I match her, stride for stride, and continue talking. “So you’re not a teenager, right? You’re really a middle-aged woman who has infiltrated our school in disguis
e.”

  “Do I look like Drew Barrymore to you? Also, she wasn’t middle-aged in Never Been Kissed; she was in her twenties!”

  Maybe it’s the unexpectedly witty comeback when I expected silence from her. Or maybe it’s the way Susan says it—like she could strangle me for comparing her to a movie star. I snort.

  Susan’s mouth twitches and seconds later shifts into a smile—a full one that lights up her whole face. And then she’s laughing and I’m laughing and we’re both laughing like our lives depend on it, uncaring about the stares we attract from passersby.

  Susan

  I take the stairs two at a time to catch up with Malcolm, who walks a lot faster than I expect him to.

  Do I look like Drew Barrymore to you? I don’t even know where the response came from, how it sounded funny instead of rude, the way I intended it to be. It almost felt as if there was another girl waiting inside me for exactly this moment—confident and friendly and fun.

  By the time we order shawarma at the shop in the food court—him beef, me chicken—and find a table to eat at, Malcolm is talking to me about his favorite movies. It’s easier to watch him while we’re eating, to cast casual glances his way when he’s sitting right in front of me, licking a drop of grease off his thumb.

  While he makes fun of the strange-looking metal-cut chandelier hanging from a high dome inside the mall, I take the opportunity to study him. How his eyes take on a slightly faraway look when he’s telling a funny story; how he wrinkles his nose when he laughs. His hair is long on top and shorn skin-close on the sides. I wonder what it looks like when not spiked with gel. If it’s all waves and curls or straight and floppy. Today a faint stubble covers his chin. My cheek tingles with the memory of it brushing against my skin. The only other time I’ve felt a boy’s cheek against mine was during a Christmas in India, several years ago, when the son of a family friend gave me a light hug and wished me a Merry Christmas. An old crush whose name I don’t remember in this moment.