“See what I do for you, Nur,” her mother had said from very red lips. “It’s because I love you so much.” She kissed the child. Nur beamed. She had a real mommy who loved her so much, whose kiss left a red mark on her cheek. Proof.
“We need to do something about your name, though. Nuria is the closest, but that’s Catalan, which isn’t much better than Arab. Let’s call you Nubia,” she said. Nur only shook her head, unsure how it was possible to change someone’s name. “But that will be our secret. Don’t tell the lady from DSS, okay?”
“I won’t, Mommy.” It was nice to say that word. Mommy. “I’m a good secret keeper.”
That night, Nur added that trait to her list: Keeper of Seekrets. And when her mommy agreed to read her a bedtime story, she did not mention the secret book with the blue ribbon that she and her jiddo had written. She knew, in the way that small children just know things, that her mommy would not like Jiddo and Me.
It took several months for Nur’s mother to move to North Carolina and there were no visits to Texas, just occasional calls to Nur in which her mother gave updates on the lawsuit she had filed to gain control of a trust fund from a large insurance policy. There wasn’t enough money, her mother said, to have Nur travel to Texas, even for visits, “until we get the trust.”
Nur started school living with her foster family, and it would be many years before she would begin to roam her memories and taste the empty adequacy of foster care: the three sufficient daily meals, white walls and clean floors, chores and strictly enforced regimens, and a room she shared with three other foster girls, much older than she, who spoke with such profanity that Nur tried to stay away from them. Twice she woke up to find writing all over her body. The girls told her she should learn to take a joke and not be a tattletale. They reminded her that she claimed to be a Keeper of Seekrets. So, she stopped sleeping well, lying in fear of what the night might bring. And she was overjoyed when Nzinga came with news that her mother had finally moved to North Carolina, and that Nur would be living with her as soon as DSS could inspect the new home.
The new house had two bedrooms. One was for Nur alone and the other for her mother and Sam, the boyfriend. They all shared one bathroom and spent most of their time in the big room just off the kitchen, where they put a new extra-big television set with wood paneling. “I always wanted a big-ass TV,” her mother said.
When the next monthly check came from the trust, Sam insisted that they use part of it to buy new linens for Nur’s room, instead of the oversized white sheet and tattered blanket that her mother had placed on her bed. The mother hesitated. “We still need things for the house.”
“We’re getting bedding for her,” Sam insisted, winking at Nur, who stood smiling, imagining how she would decorate her room to match the new comforter, wondering if she might get sheets with pictures of Wonder Woman, or maybe Cinderella.
“Playing daddy to my daughter is so sexy, baby,” her mother said, grabbing between his legs.
Nur squeezed her eyes shut. When she opened them, Sam was smiling at her. Then he and her mother went into their room and closed the door. They made terrible sounds that Nur drowned out with the big-ass TV.
Still, it was better to have a real mommy and her own room, and Nur worked hard to be worthy. She helped clean and learned to make coffee, which was then added to her chores. By the time her mother shuffled out of bed, Nur would already be dressed for school and fresh coffee would be waiting for the adults. Her diligence at home was matched only by her good grades at school. Only in first grade, she was reading and writing at a third-grade level. She had found a way to shine, a space where she could feel love and admiration, if she worked for it. And so she worked and studied as much as she could.
But her happiness didn’t feel happy. Suffused in this new life was a longing for something not there. An old man whose walk was a song. Bedtime stories of another world. A duck park and a castle playground. A kind of love that does not require completed chores or exemplary grades. That yearning embedded in her body, and when it stirred, it felt like a bellyache that started in her tummy and went all the way behind her eyes.
TWENTY-THREE
Mama was fourteen years older than Nur. She had already met my father when Teta announced that little Nur was coming to Gaza with my great-khalo Mamdouh. But that didn’t stop her from being excited by the prospect of having a little sister around. Teta Nazmiyeh kept calling and calling her brother. She had lived through all manner of disappointment and heartache, but those days of waiting by the phone and dialing endlessly were especially hard on her heart. The nagging panic that she had lost her brother was matched only by the worry that Nur was alone in Amreeka. She prayed constantly, and secretly tried again to summon Sulayman, but answers were not forthcoming, not from the telephone, God, angels, or djinn.
No one told the news to Nur directly. She plucked bits from conversations and from the new ways that bodies moved around her: her mother’s wide-open face, excited phone calls, the hands and attention on her mother’s belly. Not only was Nur going to have a new sibling, Sam was going to be her stepdaddy. The wedding date would be set soon.
To celebrate, Sam gave her mommy a fancy catalogue to order whatever she wanted. Nur waited patiently for her turn while her mother went through it. When Nur tried to help, her mother shooed her away.
At last, the catalogue, marked throughout with circles and notes, its pages folded at the edges, was on the coffee table. Nur opened it to the section with models who looked her age. There was much to choose from. Dresses, shoes, socks, skirts, shirts, shorts, sandals, bows, dolls, toys. But she knew to be reasonable. “Not Greedy” was already on her list of good traits. Her mother had gone out and Nur spent her time home alone ruminating over what to pick. Before falling asleep with the catalogue in her arms, she had chosen four items: a blue and white striped dress with a red sash that tied into a big bow in the back, red patent leather shoes with one strap across the top, white stockings, and a stuffed brown dog she already named Malcolm, to be a friend to Mahfouz, her bear. It occurred to her to call them “M&M,” and she imagined taking them to school for show and tell.
The doorbell rang repeatedly and loud banging woke Nur on the sofa, the television on and catalogue still in her hands. Her mother was home.
“You shouldn’t be up this late,” her mother said when she came through the door.
“Mommy, I circled the things I want in the catalogue,” Nur began.
“Okay, go to bed, Nubia.”
“I only circled four things. I wasn’t greedy, at all,” she added. “Want to see what I picked?”
“Show me in the morning.”
The day finally arrived when the catalogue order was delivered. There were three boxes, two large and one smaller one. Nur’s mommy opened one at a time, insisting only grown-ups could open packages. Nur waited as her mother pulled out one item at a time. She unfolded each article of clothing, inspected each pair of shoes and each tube of lipstick. Nur fidgeted, craned her neck to peek inside the open box, each time hoping an item would be for her.
“Yes, it’s beautiful,” she said when her mother asked if Nur liked the matching baby hat, gloves, and booties. The same scene repeated as the boxes were slowly emptied. Nur did not despair, not even when she realized all the items had been taken out. She began looking through the new clothes; perhaps she had accidentally missed her new dress.
“Where are the things I circled, Mommy?”
“Oh, sweetie. I forgot to tell you!” her mother said. “When I called to place the order they said they were out of the items you picked.”
The hard thing that lived in Nur’s belly stirred. It moved upward and started clumping in her throat, pushing behind her eyes. The last time Nur had cried, her mother had told her to stop being a crybaby. She had written “Not A Crybaby” on her list. Now, as her mother left the room and Nur stood alone with three empty boxes and the new things strewn about, the memory of that undesirable trait helped
to stop the tears. She wanted to ask if the catalogue people would send her things when they got more in, but she knew not to and went to her room instead. There, a silence crept along her edges, wrapping around her small body. The familiar bellyache ran amok inside her. Only when the pain became intense did Nur give herself permission to cry. Because you’re not a crybaby if something is really wrong. She cried, and cried harder and louder when no one came to check on her. She could hear Sam had returned home. She kept crying out, even though the pain had dissolved, until eventually, her mother came in.
“Mommy, my stomach and my head hurt really bad,” she said, relieved to stop crying.
“Nubia, how much attention do you need? You do this kind of stuff every time I make plans. Please try to go to sleep,” her mother said, closing the door behind her.
Late into the night, Nur awoke to find Sam sitting on her bed.
“Hi there,” he said. “How is your tummy feeling?”
“Better,” she said, rubbing sleep from her eyes.
“Let’s see here.” Sam lifted her gown. “Poor belly.” He rubbed her skin. “It’s a very pretty belly.” He leaned to kiss it, on her belly button, then above it. Then, around it. “And you have the most beautiful and unusual eyes I’ve ever seen.”
He put her gown back, covering her. “Do you think your mommy is mean sometimes?”
Nur shook her head no.
“Come on, tell the truth.” He tickled her slightly, making Nur laugh. “Oh, so you’re ticklish, too? I’ll have to tickle you silly soon.”
Nur decided that she loved Sam.
“So, tell me,” he asked again.
“Yeah, sometimes Mommy is mean,” she admitted.
“Don’t worry. I’m going to take good care of you,” he said. He tucked her back in, kissed her forehead, then her cheek, and left.
Indeed, Sam began to intervene on Nur’s behalf. He took her to buy new clothes to replace what never came from the catalogue. When Sam’s niece, who was Nur’s age, wanted to be the flower girl at the wedding, Sam insisted that honor was for Nur alone. At a dinner gathering with family, Nur climbed into Sam’s lap, taking possession of him, and stuck her tongue out at the niece. Sam squeezed her waist, affirming their secret alliance. He stopped going shopping in the evenings with her mother, staying home instead to babysit. On the first such evening, as they played checkers and Nur tried to cheat, Sam began tickling her. When she could catch her breath between fits of laughter, she begged him to stop. But as soon as he did, she taunted him to provoke more tickling.
“I know a special tickle spot you’ve never even thought of,” he said. “It’s a little spot that you tickle and then you feel it all over your body.”
“No, you don’t! Where?”
“It’s a secret. Do you know how to keep a secret? Or are you the kind of little girl that tattles?”
“No way. I never tattle. I’m the best secret keeper.” She remembered her list. Keeper of Seekrets.
TWENTY-FOUR
Teta Nazmiyeh woke up one morning in the smog of the previous night, the specters of a terrible dream still clinging to her. In the caverns of sleep, she had walked back to Beit Daras, this time in search of Nur. She found Mariam as before, maneuvered the walls to hide them completely as she could only do in a dream, and said, “This time, we will outsmart them.” Then Mariam pointed to an open field hemmed with smoke rising from burning life. A small child stood in the center. “It’s Nur,” Mariam said. A woman appeared next to her, seated with a phone receiver at her ear, and a man came to undress Nur, fondling her indecently. In the dream Nazmiyeh instinctively leapt across the distance from wall to field, to save Nur. But the soldiers hidden in memory entered, reenacting an old trauma. She sat up in bed when the gun rang out and Mariam fell. My jiddo Atiyeh held her in their bed. “I couldn’t outsmart them. Mariam is dead again and Nur is alone and frightened,” she sobbed, pursued by the dream.
Nur’s Third-grade report card arrived studded with gold stars. Sam read it aloud. “It says, ‘Nur is a remarkably bright little girl. I am impressed by her reading and writing skills, which exceed her grade level. I would like to propose that she move into the fourth-grade reading class.”
Pride danced on Nur’s face, but then something else immobilized it when her mother reacted. “That’s nice. I was a good student in school, too. So you must get that from me. You don’t need that fancy school anyway. I went to public school and so can you. Won’t that be nice? You can be just like me.”
The thing that lived in Nur’s belly moved.
“Now that the tuition from the trust is coming to me, we can put that money to better use, for things we really need,” her mother added.
Tears rose up and Nur went to her room so no one would call her a crybaby. She remained in her room for hours, listening to the house beyond her door. Her mother’s chatter on the phone. The big-ass television. Sam. The two of them doing what they did in their bedroom. She put her hands over her ears. She thought about the fourth-grade reading class. Of an old man’s voice in her head, Words are so important, Nur. She looked around her room, attentive to irregularities in the paint, slight layers of dust settling on the surfaces of furniture, wrinkles in the curtain, smudges on the door, and details in the fabric of her dress. And a while later, she heard her mother leave.
Then, there was quiet. The quiet of a spooned-out hole in the heart. She pulled out her secret book, untied the blue ribbon, and stared at her list. Stared hard. A void meandered and grew in her belly until two large, bold words rose up, and she added them to her list. There, just under “Never Tattle” and “Never Squeal,” Nur wrote “Dirty” and “Bad.”
She put her book away, walked out of her room, and went into her mother’s bedroom, where she knew Sam was waiting for her.
TWENTY-FIVE
History took us away from our rightful destiny. But with Nur, life hurled her so far that nothing around her resembled anything Palestinian, not even the dislocated lives of exiles. So it was ironic that her life reflected the most basic truth of what it means to be Palestinian, dispossessed, disinherited, and exiled. That to be alone in the world without a family or a clan or land or country means that one must live at the mercy of others. There are those who might take pity and those who will exploit and harm. One lives by the whims of the host, rarely treated with the dignity of a person, nearly always put in place.
As the frequency of Nur’s mysterious illness increased, so did her mother’s anger. The school nurse called her once to pick up Nur early because she had a high fever. Her mother arrived shortly afterward, expressing shared concern with the nurse. But as they got to the car, her mother grabbed and squeezed her arm with an unnatural ire.
“There’s nothing you won’t do for attention! Is there?” Her mother burrowed those words with her nails into Nur’s flesh.
“I’m sorry,” Nur shrank.
“Shut up and get in.”
Nur climbed quietly into the car, dragging the heavy furnace of her body. She knew better than to cry, but she couldn’t stop the tears. Her eyes felt heavy and her heart cowered somewhere in a depletion spreading through her.
“I said shush. You’re not fooling me with your tears. On top of everything, now you wanna act like the victim?” Her voice rose and words sprayed a now familiar random rage. “THIS IS MY FUCKING WEDDING. I WILL NOT ALLOW YOU TO MAKE IT ALL ABOUT YOU!”
Nur turned her head to look out the window, sucked in one long breath, and there were no more tears. Just like that. At the age of eight. Nur’s tears dried up and they would not form again until she was an adult standing on Gaza’s shore, the Mediterranean caressing her feet, a folded and refolded letter in her hand.
Later that evening, Nur’s mother came into her room, gently asking if she wanted to eat dinner, but she didn’t wait for an answer. “I know I was hard on you today, but it’s only because I love you. I’m trying to make you a better person. See all the nice things I bought so I can give you a goo
d life? Nobody ever did anything like that for me. I just need you to think about how I feel sometimes. I’m trying to make a good life for all of us, but that means you have to help. Your grandparents and the rest of the family are coming in for the wedding and I’m going to need you to behave and obey, okay? Do you think you can be a good daughter and show everybody what a happy family we are?”
Nur nodded yes.
“Good girl.”
The “big day” fell on June 1, the day before Nur’s ninth birthday. “I did that on purpose so I could give you the best present ever! The gift of a father and soon twin baby brothers,” her mother said.
Various family members arrived from Texas, and Nur’s grandparents, her abuelo and abuela, flew in from Florida. “Look at you! You’re so pretty!” her abuela exclaimed and continued speaking in Spanish. They seemed happy to see Nur again, and they didn’t call her Nubia. Her tía Martina and tío Umberto even remembered her birthday and brought a wrapped gift with a note that said To our niece, Nur. Love, Tía and Tío.
“To be honest, Santiago is the one who reminded us!” Nur overheard Tía Martina tell her mother. Nur perked up at the mention of Tío Santiago. Although she had only met him once before, Tío Santiago had instantly become her favorite relative. He had visited for only a few days, spending most of that time with Nur. He had given her guitar lessons and had taken her to the park. Nur had latched on to the attention with all the force she had, and when Tío Santiago had left, she had fallen ill with the familiar bellyache.
Now, a commotion at the front door pulled Nur to the living room. She saw the guitar case first. It was worn, held together with duct tape and bright stickers. Santiago ignored everyone and came to Nur, lifting her off her feet. “Nur! Look how much you have grown! I’m so happy to see you, my awesome rock-star neice!” Although Nur could no longer see feelings in color, she knew this was a vibrant blue moment. Almost like being lifted off the ground by her jiddo. Almost love. Her face, her eyes, heart, skin, hands, and toes smiled.
The Blue Between Sky and Water Page 8