“I have to go, Appa. Will talk at home.”
My fingers slide across the screen, pause at the Ms in my phone directory.
I passed my test. Thank you for your help. My thumb hovers over the Send key.
“Next!” the woman behind the licensing desk calls out.
“That’s us,” Joseph tells me. There’s a look in his eyes that could possibly be approval. I glance one last time at the screen and then follow him, leaving the message unsent. While Joseph drives me home from the test center that afternoon, I press the backspace key, watching each letter slowly disappear.
* * *
On Monday, I do something I’ve never done before: I skip English by myself.
I managed to make it through most of the day without seeing Malcolm or any of his friends—even locking myself in a bathroom stall during lunch. But in English there’s no way I can guarantee not seeing them.
I avoid the field and trek around the building to where Arthur Eldridge runs a small preschool and day care center, my teeth chattering in my mouth from the cold. I slip inside one of the double doors and slide down the wall and onto the floor, sighing in the relative warmth of the hallway.
Here, no one pays me any attention. Parents slip through the doors without bothering to glance around, their feet drawn to the room down the hall. They emerge moments later with a toddler bundled up in a colorful coat and hat. The sight makes my heart ache a little for reasons I don’t understand.
I switch my attention to my phone instead, but even Facebook doesn’t distract me today, images and status updates blurring past. A photo finally comes into focus: four girls in abayas at a restaurant, their heads uncovered, giant smiles on their faces. Alisha is one of them, her arm around Emerald Verghese. Strange, I think. How a sight that would have surely bothered me a few weeks ago barely even registers now.
“Nice picture,” a voice says. “Those your friends?”
I click the Hold button, turning the phone screen black. I look up at Heather Dupuis. “What are you doing here?”
“I work here.” Heather grins. “Well, technically, not work-work, but it’s my day and Preeti’s to volunteer at the center for parenting class.” I hear a throat clearing to my left and find the other girl leaning against the wall, an amused look on her face.
I raise my eyebrows. Parenting, seriously? What will this school come up with next?
“Don’t you have class though?” Heather’s voice reminds me so much of my mother that I feel myself bristling.
“Mr. Zuric’s out sick,” I declare. “I figured I didn’t have to sit through a class with a sub in there.”
“Come on, Susan.” Heather’s voice grows softer. “I saw Mr. Zuric in the line for French fries in the cafeteria today. Besides, we know what happened with Malcolm.”
Of course they do. Everyone who is anyone knows about the big kiss and the way I ran after witnessing it.
“I don’t want to talk about that.”
“Wanna hit stuff instead?” Preeti speaks up.
I blink. “What?”
She smiles at me. “Come hang out with us after school.”
I open my mouth to refuse—there’s no way Amma will agree—when Preeti says: “We’ll talk to your parents.”
“Fine, whatever.”
I don’t expect either of them to show up, but after art, they’re right there, waiting for me outside the classroom doors.
“Are you taking the bus today or waiting for a ride?” Heather asks.
“The bus,” I say. Even though I now have a license and can legally drive by myself, we still have only one car and Appa needed it today to run errands.
Amma no longer bothers asking him what those errands are. Neither do I. The rest of the weekend after that celebratory Saturday went by in relative peace, with both my parents being somewhat civil to each other instead of spending hours at a time in frosty silence. It’s almost as if a truce has been reached and a little part of me can’t help but hope this will be the beginning to them mending their relationship.
“Great! Then I’ll drive you,” Heather says, her tone allowing no room for negotiation.
True to their word, Heather and Preeti talk to my parents, charming both Amma and Appa so well, you’d think they did this for a living.
“So,” I say when we step back out of my building’s lobby and into the cold. “What do we plan to do?”
“I told you,” Preeti says. “We’re going to hit a few things.”
A few minutes ago, Preeti and Heather told my parents that we were part of a physics study group for an upcoming test.
I can’t help it. I laugh.
It’s only when I catch my breath again and find them staring at me that I realize they are dead serious.
* * *
The heavy bag in Preeti’s garage is four feet high and weighs around forty pounds. It hangs from a hook on the ceiling like a giant sausage encased in black leather. As I move closer, I’m surprised to see an oddly familiar face painted on it.
“Is that Simon Cowell?” I ask, surprised.
“Yeah. My dad was pretty pissed with the way he treated that Indian kid on American Idol. I mean, it happened years ago, but Dad has an elephant memory about such things. Remember Sanjaya Malakar, Heather?” Preeti pulls out a pair of boxing gloves and turns to face me. “Heather had a huge crush on him.”
“I did not!” Heather’s face turns tomato red.
“He was on another show later,” I tell them, remembering suddenly. “On this celebrity version of Survivor with these different rules.”
Preeti’s jaw drops. “Shut. Up.”
“I’m serious.” I laugh. “It was fun watching him. Though he didn’t last long.”
“What show?” Preeti asks.
“I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here!” Heather says.
Preeti and I turn to face Heather whose hands are over her mouth.
“I did have a crush on him,” she admits. “Sue me.”
It’s strange being around two girls after months of brooding in my room or spending time only with Malcolm. It’s only now, surrounded by giggles, that I realize how much I’ve missed female companionship. And how silly I was to isolate myself.
“Hold out your hands,” Preeti tells me in a commanding voice. She removes a roll of pink cotton wraps from a box—“for protection,” she explains—and begins winding them around my wrists, palms, and knuckles. Once my hands have been partially mummified, she helps me slide on a pair of bright red boxing gloves, Velcro-ing them tightly in place. I’m surprised by how heavy my hands feel, like small weights have been strapped to my knuckles and wrists.
“These weigh ten ounces.” Preeti lightly taps the leather of one of the gloves. “They’re pretty old—from the time I kickboxed in middle school. But your hands are small, so these should fit better. Sparring gloves are sixteen ounces and will be too much for you as a beginner. How do these feel?”
“Okay, I guess.” I stare at the blobs that are now my hands for a long moment, wondering what on earth I’ve gotten myself into.
“Good,” Preeti says. “Now, go on. Punch.”
“It’s better if you picture him while doing it,” Heather adds.
No question who she’s referring to.
I visualize Malcolm’s spiky hair, the smile he gave me on my first day at Arthur Eldridge. I remember his hands cupping snowflakes and I feel my elbows drop to my waist, when another memory invades: Malcolm’s hair stuck in wet waves to his forehead. Malcolm’s hands lightly resting on Afrin’s waist, his mouth pressed to hers.
Air rushes out of my lungs, and I swing, wild and wayward, my punch barely moving the heavy bag, let alone making a dent in Simon Cowell’s nose. I feel Preeti’s hand on my wrist which now smarts under the glove.
“Aim straight,” Preeti says. “Like this, look. That way you won’t hurt your wrist.”
She shows me how to move, instructs me to keep my feet light and agile, as I throw punches,
one after another. It takes about five minutes for Simon Cowell to be supplanted with images from my own mind—pictures that have me moving faster, punching harder.
I punch the space between Malcolm and Afrin’s mouths. Over and over, until they break apart, clutching their jaws with their hands.
I punch the boy, VJ, who slid a hand up my thigh when I was intoxicated, picture him spitting out a tooth I broke in the process.
I punch the uncle from Kochi who asked me to come speak to him on the phone and demonstrate my Canadian accent.
My mouth opens, anger rumbling from my throat in a single sound.
I punch the line my parents have drawn in the sand, the line that split the marriage they always promised would last.
I punch. I punch. IpunchIpunchIpunch.
“Susan. Hey, Susan.” Preeti’s strong hands curve over my arms before wrapping around my diaphragm, holding me back from the last throw. “It’s okay,” she whispers in my ear. “It’s okay.”
Water burns my eyes, trickles down my chin. Preeti pulls me back to the couch in the corner. There Heather’s arms wrap around me like Amma’s would have when I was small.
Alisha is thousands of miles away in Jeddah. The boy I love may still be head over heels for another girl. My parents’ marriage may not last the winter. But here, amid the smell of sweat, old clothes, gas, and mildew, I suddenly feel that I am not alone.
* * *
My knuckles have bruises on them when I remove the gloves and the wrap. “Oh, no! I should’ve taped you first!” Preeti frets.
“It’s okay.” At least now I look a little more like what I feel on the inside. “I’d better get home. Lots to study.”
“Are you sure?” Heather’s blue eyes are wide, worried.
“Yup. These are battle scars.”
“That’s my girl.” Preeti pats my back.
Heather and I wave goodbye and walk to her car. Unlike rain, which falls to the ground in heavy pellets, snow floats in the air like overlarge tufts of dust, feathering the front of Heather’s car in white. We keep our own conversation light, discussing what might show up on the next physics test as Heather pulls out a brush to wipe the snow off her windshield.
“I wish I had your memory,” Heather says, not even bothering to hide the envy in her voice. “It would save so much time!”
“That doesn’t help me with lab work, though.” Heather has a natural affinity for the subject that I don’t, an instinct that has helped her ace every lab the teacher has assigned us so far.
“You love physics,” I tell her now. I don’t.
Heather peers at me from over the top of her glasses. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“About what?”
“Oh, anything. Life. Parents. Boys. Girls.” Heather winks at me and I laugh.
And maybe it’s that laugh that eases things between us, that lets me tell her about how much trouble I’ve been having in physics this year. About my parents, who can barely talk let alone decide what their future and mine is going to be. Malcolm is the only topic I leave untouched, but Heather doesn’t press me about that. She listens without judgment, without interrupting me to give input the way Alisha would. As much as I love Alisha, my best friend isn’t much of a listener, often cutting me short when she grows impatient with what I have to say.
“I get it,” Heather says, after I grow silent. “Parents can be hard to talk to. Some even more than others. My parents got divorced when I was nine. I had the toughest time. Threw so many tantrums that at one point I was sure they’d send me away to a boarding school. But they didn’t.
“My parents love me, Susan, and yours love you as well. I’m not telling you what to do—God knows, I hate when people do that to me—but at some point you’ll have to make a decision about your life. About what’s important to you. It may be your parents’ wishes. It may be a different career. Whatever it is, it’ll be the right decision because you made it.”
I mull over her words for a moment. “I never thought of it that way.”
Heather shrugs, turning on the car’s ignition. “No one gets to pick what is right or wrong for anyone else. It’s always going to be your decision, Susan. Nothing that’s truly meant for you can be taken away.”
“That sounds way too philosophical for someone who wants to be a scientist.”
Heather grins. “Who said scientists can’t be philosophers?”
It’s only when I finish laughing that I wonder about those words. When I get back home, I open the curtains of my bedroom window and stare up into the sky. Here, in the city, the stars are mostly blotted out. Except for one. The North Star, with a thin sliver of moon right beside it. If I squint hard enough, I can picture Jeddah’s Floating Mosque underneath: a shadowy blue jewel against the night sky.
I riffle through my bag and pull out my sketchbook. The corner is somewhat bent, probably from getting awkwardly caught under one of my other heavier textbooks. I straighten it as best as I can before turning to a blank page, where I draw the faint outline of a dome.
* * *
Here’s the thing about bad grades: You can run from them, but you can’t hide them from your parents. Or at least not if your parents are like mine.
The next afternoon, I find Amma and Appa sitting on the couch. Together, I note, for the first time since their talk about separating. They are also glaring at me, which, in my experience, foreshadows an ambush.
“What is it?” I ask. “What did I do?”
“What didn’t you do is what I’d like to know,” Amma begins, and then clamps her mouth shut when Appa places a hand on her shoulder.
He’s touching her. And she’s letting him. This must be serious.
“Susan, your mother found a recent physics lab of yours,” he tells me in the Doctor Voice. “The one in which you—”
“You know about the C-plus.” I should have ripped the paper to shreds instead of stuffing it in my bedroom drawer.
My father frowns. “Don’t act flippant with me, young lady. Your mother was so shocked that she called the school and asked to speak to your teacher, Mr. Franklin. He said you had a good sense of the theory and the problem sets, but your lab work is weak—has been weak since the beginning of the semester. Why didn’t you tell us you were having problems?”
Because I’m not supposed to have problems with academics. Because I thought I could figure things out without involving either one of you. Because I was afraid of seeing these exact expressions on your faces.
I don’t put my jumbled thoughts into words. I’m not a smooth talker on my best days, and today my insides feel like a giant knotted mess.
“At this rate, you’ll probably only qualify for advanced admission into general science at university.” Appa’s tone makes the BSc program sound mediocre. “Medicine or engineering are out of the question.”
“Now that would put your plans in a fix, wouldn’t it?” The words spill from my mouth, taste like coffee grounds.
“Susan!”
“All your plans—your grand plans”—I sprinkle imaginary stardust in the air—“to make me a doctor or engineer or everything I don’t and never have wanted to be, are going down the toilet, right, Amma, Appa? Just like your marriage.”
“How dare you—” Amma begins.
“How dare I what—exist? Isn’t that what you told Ammachi in your letter, Amma? The one where you said you didn’t want to get pregnant in the first place?”
My mother’s mouth falls open. For the first time, nothing emerges from it.
“And you.” I turn to my father who looks like he has never seen me before. “You never wanted us either, did you? We interfered with your plans to get with your nurse, so you sent us both away.”
“Suzy, it wasn’t like that. Please listen—”
But I don’t want to listen to my parents anymore. I leave them both making excuses to the air and lock myself in my bedroom.
* * *
“Susan! Hey, Susan!”
“Mahtab?” I’m surprised to see Malcolm’s sister waiting for me outside art. “Don’t you have class?”
“I do, but this is more important.” She hesitates. “Did, um, you and Malcolm talk?”
I feel my stomach tighten. Four days have passed since I told Malcolm I didn’t want to see him anymore. A weekend, a Monday and a Tuesday. Four. Whole. Days. It shouldn’t feel like time is moving at snail speed, but it does. Especially during English—which I can no longer afford to skip—where he completely ignores me and Afrin, in spite of the latter’s hardest attempts at getting his attention.
“We’re, um, not talking anymore. But I think you already know that.”
Mahtab sighs, a sheepish look on her face. “Yeah. But I guess I wanted you to know that he’s not with Afrin or with anyone else. And that he misses you. Badly.”
I feel something pinch my insides. No. No. I can’t go there. Not now. I’m about to make an excuse and head in, when Mahtab pulls a flyer from her bag and hands it to me.
“What I really wanted to talk to you about was this.”
TO SYRIA, WITH LOVE, the flyer says. A concert for humanitarian aid.
“What about it?” I ask, my mouth dry.
“My art director is moving to another city. And I found out you draw really well. Like pro-level.”
I swallow hard, not asking where she got that bit of info. I study the flyer again. It pretty much gives the same information Mahtab told me right now. I am about to say no—I’m already in deep trouble with my parents for ruining their dreams and they probably won’t want to see me pursuing art in any way—when I begin to see places where the flyer could be improved. Like the drawing of the little Syrian girl in the corner—her hijab isn’t quite right. There are maple leaves drawn all over the place, but they look haphazard and are only stenciled in.
“That’s me,” Mahtab says, when she sees me tracing one. “I’m not much of an artist. That little girl was the last thing I got our last artist to draw and I know she isn’t perfect—”
The Beauty of the Moment Page 23