Nine, Ten

by Nora Raleigh Baskin

  * * *

  Those were all images Sergio now needed to erase. He felt a chill ripple down his spine, as if trying to shake itself loose from the past, even though the day was starting to get warm and sticky, like it was going to rain any minute, though so far it hadn’t.

  Sergio kept his hoodie on.

  He had spent the better part of the morning wandering Brooklyn, far enough out of Red Hook not to be spotted by anyone he knew. He knew of kids who had been seen and dragged back to school. They dumped you right into detention anyway.

  What was the point of that?

  The fresh air was working. It was picking up the memories and sending them off into the blue sky. However, Sergio’s sudden decision to fly down the subway stairs was less made than forced on him. He was certain that was the principal walking down Atlantic Avenue, and even though it didn’t make sense, because she would be in school right now, lecturing some kid on his choice of clothing and explaining what self-respect meant, Sergio still panicked. He turned completely around and headed down into the tunnel. He swiped his MetroCard, but the turnstile didn’t budge. Sergio could hear the train getting closer, hissing into the station. He swiped again. It didn’t have any rides left. The underground train slowed and the doors were about to open. Above was the principal (maybe) and Paul (somewhere) and all the times Sergio had waited for his father to be his father.

  Down here was emptiness.

  * * *

  Paul had stood there half in the doorway, searching around in his pocket for a while. Later, when he thought about it, Sergio wondered if Paul had actually been trying to come up with some kind of lie about how he had lost it. Or better yet: It was right here in my pocket; someone must have stolen it. On the subway. Because now that I think about it, I remember I felt someone bump into me.

  Or had he really been looking for something?

  Something that might be considered valuable in a third-world country by a kid who had grown up in a dump—like a nickel, a piece of gum still wrapped, a book of matches. And if he had found something like that, would he really have tried to pass it off as a gift?

  It wouldn’t be the first time.

  * * *

  Underground, Sergio could hear the train coming to a stop. His card didn’t work, but he needed to catch that train. He needed to get across to the platform, but he didn’t have any money, and if he thought about it one second longer, he’d chicken out.

  Sergio looked cautiously to his left and then his right.

  Oh, c’mon. Do it! Kids jumped the turnstiles all the time. No biggie. No one ever got caught, or rarely.

  There wasn’t a ticket booth at this station, so there was no MTA worker who might care too much about his job. No one. Just passengers. No one in blue, no cops that he could see. No one would even care.

  Just do it.

  Sergio had a choice—over or under? Sergio put a hand on either side of the turnstile, pressed down, tucked his knees to his chest, and in one smooth motion lifted himself to the other side.

  Done. The train came to a full stop and the doors flew open, but just as Sergio was about to step inside, a strong hand on his shoulder pulled him back.

  “There’s a hundred-dollar fine for fare evading. You have any ID?”

  Everyone else got on. The doors shut right in front of him, and Sergio was alone on the platform with what, he then realized, must be a plainclothes officer. This day had gone from bad to worse.

  * * *

  That morning, when Sergio’s father had pulled his hand out of his pocket, it was empty. He couldn’t even come up with something to masquerade as a gift.

  “I’m sorry, Serge.”

  “That’s about right,” Sergio’s grandma said. “That’s just about what I’d expect you to give your own son. Nothing.”

  Sergio didn’t say anything.

  Sergio was tired from yesterday, too tired to care. The flight from Chicago had felt long; the wait in the airport for the bus, the ride in the bus to Port Authority (was there any uglier place in the world?), and then the subway ride home had left him exhausted. Then Paul showed up at six thirty in the morning.

  Bearing—what?

  No gifts.

  And still the oddest, tiniest rise of anger surfaced when his grandmother talked to his father like that. It wasn’t anger at his grandma, who was all he had in the world, but at the world itself. The whole world and everyone in it.

  “Great, so now that we’ve got that out of the way, you can leave.” Sergio’s grandmother puffed out her chest.

  Paul looked defeated, like he really wished he had something to give his son. His shoulders sagged even more than they normally did.

  “I heard about your trip, but I didn’t know you were coming back so soon,” Paul tried.

  “Well, now you do,” Sergio’s grandmother said. She hadn’t shut the door. Sergio could see out into the tiled hall. Mrs. Peterson was stumbling by, pushing her folded grocery cart in front of her. If she wanted, she could see right into their apartment, into their lives.

  Sergio looked away. He wished Paul would leave already. The world did not need to be looking in. But that’s the way it always was. Sergio on the inside looking out. Or was he always on the outside looking in? What difference did it make?

  “So, Sergio won this big award? I’m really proud of him, you know. Just because I don’t live here doesn’t mean I’m not proud of him.”

  Something was wrong, Sergio could feel it. This was taking too long. Paul was standing too still. Paul never stood still. He shook and tapped and paced, and his hands flew all over the place. His eyes shifted. His weight shifted.

  No, it can’t be.

  He wouldn’t ask that, would he?

  Paul could just stop right now and leave. It was bad enough he was here pretending to care, pretending to be interested in Sergio’s life. Just stop and walk away. But he didn’t stop.

  “So, they paid for him to fly all the way to Chicago. Did they pay for his hotel? I hope it didn’t cost you anything, Maureen.”

  Why? Why does he have to do this?

  Sergio felt his heart constrict with a terrible rage, a blackness that clogged his ears, like being underwater. He didn’t notice how tightly he was clenching his teeth until they began to hurt. His jaw ached.

  He shouldn’t feel responsible for the ugly, stupid thing Paul was going to say. He didn’t need to worry about Nana and how upset she was going to be. For sure, his grandmother was a hundred times stronger than he was. Sergio didn’t need to feel the pain when his own father asked if he had won any money.

  But he would feel all those things.

  He did.

  “Did they award him any money for all the trouble? For all that work you had to go through, getting there and all? I bet they wouldn’t have had such a fancy award ceremony if the winners didn’t show up.”

  Sergio’s grandmother was speechless. Her mouth was moving, but no sound came out.

  Her eyes were speaking.

  Get out. Get out of my house now before I disembowel you with my teeth and spit you out into the street for the rats to feast on.

  Get out of my house.

  But Paul couldn’t see, couldn’t hear it. Sergio noticed his father’s eyelids drooping, and he watched his hand wander back, feeling for the doorframe.

  “You know, if Sergio won anything, it’s partially mine,” Paul continued. His expression darkened. “By law it would belong to me.”

  Had his father really just said that?

  Owed to him by law?

  Did Paul really believe that he could possibly be entitled to money that didn’t exist, from a math contest he’d only just found out about? Sergio thought for a second that Nana was going to clobber Paul with the coffee mug she was holding. Instead she just threw him out, and Sergio headed off. To school.

  But then, not exactly.

  And now, ironically, here was the law, with its hand on Sergio’s shoulder.

  September 10, 2001
>
  10:07 a.m. EDT

  Columbus, Ohio

  “Naheed, what are you doing? We’re going to be late for science.” Eliza had walked past and been heading down the hallway when she stopped and looked back.

  Naheed was fiddling with her locker. The combination had to be dialed and clicked in perfectly, or it didn’t open and you had to start all over. This was probably why most kids just carried their books around with them all day. There wasn’t enough time between periods anyway, even when your locker was cooperating.

  “I need my science book.” Naheed didn’t take her eyes off her lock, starting over. Twenty-five. Fifteen. Thirty-two. That was the number, wasn’t it?

  “You go ahead. Don’t worry about me,” Naheed told Eliza.

  In fact, please go ahead.

  For some reason, even though Naheed and Eliza had never been friends before, Eliza had attached herself to Naheed this year, sort of like a new puppy. And sort of in a reciprocal way—even though it was annoying—Naheed didn’t mind, because sixth grade was so much more confusing than fifth had been, and as strange as she was, Eliza seemed to know what to do and where to go in this unfamiliar maze of hallways and classrooms.

  At the same time, Naheed really didn’t want to stand out any more than she already did because she was Muslim and because she wore a head scarf.

  And right now Eliza wasn’t helping that cause.

  “No, really,” Naheed said, focusing harder on her locker. “Just go. You’ll be late.”

  Eliza took the heavy steps back toward Naheed. “No, no. I’ll wait. You probably need me to show you the way.”

  That was nice of Eliza, even if Naheed wished she wouldn’t stand so close. Everyone knew Eliza was a little weird. She wasn’t too clear on personal space. But the funny thing was, up until this year no one had really cared, or if they did, it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Then middle school started last week and everything felt different, as if you suddenly realized you had been coming to school in your pajamas and you had to figure out a way to hide this fact before anyone else noticed.

  It seemed Eliza wasn’t going anywhere until Naheed finally got her locker to pop open and yanked out her science book.

  “Okay, let’s go.”

  Naheed hurried down the hall with Eliza, and just before Mrs. Salinger could close her classroom door, they managed to slip inside and drop into their seats.

  “Nice you could join us, girls.” Mrs. Salinger walked over to her place behind her desk. “As I was saying: We are going to use the scientific method to test these hypotheses. After every experiment, you will be required to write up your results.” Mrs. Salinger stood up, a stack of papers in her arms. “Here is the format you will be expected to follow.”

  Eliza’s hand shot up. “Can we work in pairs?”

  That was her question, every time.

  “Yes,” Mrs. Salinger answered.

  If gambling were allowed in her religion, which it was not, Naheed would have bet what was coming next, because lately it seemed that the universe was conspiring against her. In fact, just that morning Naheed had gone to pour her favorite cereal, only to find out her sister had eaten the last of it. But in the short run, what she ate for breakfast wasn’t going to be the deciding factor. No, surviving middle school seemed to be predicated solely on who your friends were. And weren’t.

  Sure enough, Mrs. Salinger went on, “And I have already chosen the pairs, so don’t bother begging. In fact, don’t ask. The pairs are listed at the top of this sheet.”

  “But, Mrs. Salinger—” Eliza kept going.

  Didn’t she know resistance was futile?

  Mrs. Salinger just ignored her.

  “Take one and pass it back,” she said. She counted out, exactly, the number needed for each row of seats.

  It wasn’t that Eliza was so awful or anything. She just talked a lot, even and especially when she had nothing interesting or important to say. And she said things that were really odd. Things most people only thought but knew better than to say out loud.

  Now this year there was a whole batch of new kids from different elementary schools combined, and Naheed swore she could feel everyone jockeying for position, like horses on a racetrack. The truth was, Eliza didn’t have any real friends, and being associated with her wasn’t going to put Naheed anywhere near the head of the pack.

  But the harder Naheed prayed to Allah that her name would be coupled with someone, anyone, else, the more sure she was that Eliza’s name and hers would be on the list side by side.

  Because it was a selfish prayer, and selfish prayers don’t get answered.

  A second later it was confirmed when Naheed was handed the work sheet: “Pair Seven: Naheed Mohamadi/Eliza Grayson.”

  Mrs. Salinger said, “You will need to come up with an experiment as a pair, run your experiment as a pair, and write up your results—”

  “Do we have to be in pairs?” one boy shouted out from the back of the room.

  Mrs. Salinger ignored him. “Come up with your experiment as a pair,” she repeated as if she hadn’t heard him at all. She wrote the first hypothesis out on the board: “Sensitivity is heightened on your dominant side.”

  There was a short discussion as to what “dominant side” meant.

  No, not who was bossier. Not who weighed more.

  No, it was meant to determine if you were right brained or left brained, usually connoted by handedness.

  All that the pairs were expected to do today was to come up with their experiments. Tuesday they would have to get them approved. They had the rest of the week to implement their experiments, and by Friday their final reports were due. Chairs and desks were shifted around so the pairs could work together. Finally, everyone was settled and ready to begin.

  Sort of.

  “What is your dominant side, Naheed? What kind of name is Naheed, anyway? I’ve never known anyone else with that name.”

  It was starting right away, like it always did with Eliza. You would think that she was really lonely and had been storing up all these questions so she could make friends, only she’d ask the exact thing that made people not want to be friends with her. She wasn’t anything like Nouri, but nonetheless she made Naheed think about her sister.

  Maybe people felt that way about Nouri, too.

  Whenever someone asked Nouri something about being Islamic, she sprang into action like she was a Sunday-school teacher. It wasn’t that Naheed was ashamed of her religion or her family, but she didn’t need to wear her beliefs on her sleeve—or her head—any more than she already did.

  “It’s a perfectly normal name,” Naheed answered. She could practically hear her sister’s voice in her head.

  Naheed is a Persian name. It means “honorable and blameless.” Our family is not Arabic, but we are Muslim. We follow the practice of Islam. A lot of people think those two words mean the same thing, but they don’t.

  Always teaching.

  We are Muslim and we follow Islam. It’s like saying you are Christian and you practice Christianity. Does that make sense?

  Enough already.

  Naheed knew that she, too, had probably sounded exactly that way when she was nine and had first started wearing the hijab.

  It shows that we are modest. That we are not looking for attention. It shows our devotion and loyalty to Islam. It’s a command from Allah.

  It was just that lately Naheed felt that wearing her hijab was more like showing she was different from everyone else. She certainly didn’t need to explain it everywhere she went.

  “I didn’t say it wasn’t normal,” Eliza went on. “I just said I never heard it before and I wondered what the etymology of your name is.”

  “The what?”

  “The origin of my name is Hebrew. It comes from Elizabeth, which means ‘pledged to God.’ Do you believe in God?”

  “I think we better stick to the experiment,” Naheed said. She opened her notebook. “Any thoughts? I think maybe try pricking pe
ople’s finger with a pin. Or pinching them really hard and seeing which hand hurts more.”

  “That’s not very scientific,” Eliza answered.

  “Well, do you have any better ideas?”

  Sometimes Eliza did funny things with her face, tensing her mouth, blinking her eyes a lot. Naheed hadn’t really ever noticed that before, but then again, she had never really spent this much time with Eliza, or been this close. They had never had a class together.

  Eliza looked down at her hands. “I’m left handed,” she said. “Well, really I can use both hands, but I write with my left hand. I throw with my left hand, but I wink with my left eye, and if you are left-hand dominant, you are supposed to wink with your right.”

  At the set of desks next to them, Tommy and Sebastian were wadding up pieces of paper and throwing them into a wastepaper basket, using the left hand, then the right.

  Mrs. Salinger was pacing the room, but she stopped at their desk and asked the boys, “And exactly how does that indicate sensitivity?”

  Tommy had some explanation about shooting hoops, but Mrs. Salinger wasn’t buying it, even though it sounded pretty reasonable to Naheed.

  “Try again, boys,” Mrs. Salinger said. She tapped her watch. “You have exactly eight minutes left.”

  Naheed looked up at the clock over the doorway, the second hand snapping in rhythm. Now they had seven minutes and fifty-two seconds.

  “Cold water,” Naheed said suddenly.

  “Yeah, and we can time which hand you can keep in the cold water longer,” Eliza said. “What do we need?”

  “A timer.”

  “And ice cubes. And a big bowl.”

  Six minutes. Both girls were writing on their work sheets.

  Eliza looked up. She was done. She smiled at Naheed. “Why do you wear that head covering?”

  Naheed tried to ignore her. It had worked for Mrs. Salinger with that boy in the back of the room. She pretended to be still working on her work sheet.

  “Huh? Why do you?” Eliza continued, a little louder, as if the reason Naheed hadn’t answered had to do with a hearing problem. “Is it the same as how my nana keeps her head covered with a wig or a big scarf? She’s Orthodox. Is it like that?”