Watched

by Marina Budhos

  “Naeem,” she says softly. I feel awful. She’s really upset—no act here. A strand of hair trails down her cheek. “Baby, you don’t get it. You can’t joke your way out of this mess. You should have seen her after class when you were confused about the tests. And why didn’t you hand in your final essay?”

  “I forgot.” My hands are twisting between my knees.

  All spring I’ve lied and dodged and run. After the meeting, I told my parents I was on top of my work. I didn’t go to the math lab—I ducked past, embarrassed. I told myself I’d make it up the next quiz. Or we’d switch topics and I’d do better in that one. I made sure not to show my parents how they could log on to a computer and see all my grades. It would never occur to them. That’s the crazy thing. I’m good with details. I remember everything when it comes to lying.

  Senior year was starting to feel like an escalator: I could barely stand on the first lapping steps and they were gliding all the way up, up, to next year. The acceptances were pouring in for everyone else. Even Jamal, who used to goof around on the corner with me, cut classes, got into City College for engineering. Priya, a girl I used to crib off in math class, has a free ride to Hunter College. All I got was a provisional acceptance to community college if I keep up my average at a 2.5.

  “You’re too old for this nonsense, Naeem.” Mrs. D sighs. “Really.” She runs her fingers through her hair. “Maybe I am too.”

  “Mrs. D, seriously. I can do it. Just give me a chance.”

  An abrupt shake of her head. “Graduation is in six weeks. You know the drill. Grades have to be in two weeks before. We’re less than a month away from that. Even if you were to do everything right—” She touches my wrist. “You understand what I’m saying? You can’t graduate.”

  We sit there a few minutes, not saying anything. My whole body has gone numb. I’m angry. Then furious at myself.

  “Listen up, hijo. Unfortunately, with the budget cuts, the make-up classes aren’t running until the fall. There is a summer program, it’s very good. Even better. You’ll bang it out. Get this done with.” She slides over the printout of my transcript, and a flyer: High School Offerings at LaGuardia College. All Subjects. I don’t move. “There’s a fee. But you only have to pay four hundred.”

  “So I can’t walk?”

  I can see her eyes open a bit in surprise; then they grow sad. She shakes her head. “I’m sorry, hijo. That’s not possible.”

  Her eyes well up, green polished in wet. I can’t stop wiping my own with my sleeve.

  Mrs. D silently pushes a tissue box in my direction. I don’t take it. She blows her nose. The bell rings, but still I stay stuck to the chair. A thumping river of noise rushes past, students hurrying to their next class. Everyone on their way somewhere. Except me.

  “What is it, hijo?”

  “My parents—” I don’t finish.

  Mrs. D bites her chapped lips. “I’m so sorry, Naeem. Really. You have to tell them.”

  “But—”

  “Do it tonight,” she insists. “The school will notify them by letter. You don’t want them finding out that way.”

  I can see Abba: The proud lift of his chin. How he worked so hard to master his own English. And here I couldn’t finish a lousy essay! My backpack feels as if it weighs a million pounds. As I head heavily for the door, I hear her call, “You’ll be okay, Naeem. It’s just a setback. I have faith in you.”

  Then I see she’s holding something out. It’s the flyer for the summer school programs.

  —

  I float through the halls as if I’ve been socked in the stomach. I can’t go to class. Not now. The bell lets out a bleating wail. The last of the kids filter into classrooms. Doors slam. A sheepish skinny kid flies out of the boys’ bathroom, hiking up his jeans. Probably a freshman, sneakers banging, eager, on the metal stairs. That used to be me—scared, hopeful.

  For a couple of minutes I think about flagging down a friend. Jamal? No. It’s been months since we’ve hung. A couple of the girls from Grease? No way. Not going to let them know what a loser I am.

  I duck into a stairwell and push out through the side entrance, run down a side street, where the security guard won’t catch sight of me. Outside the wind blows, stinging fresh.

  Ibrahim? I keep seeing him turning in front of that mirror in the suit, a wash of light picking up silver threads in the fabric. The way he tugged down the sleeves, lifted his chin, pleased. I’ve seen that shine in his eyes before: a filament of excitement, a dare. Usually it ignited in me too. This was our secret code. Like the time we hung out in Washington Square and told two undergraduate girls we were talent scouts, looking for extras. I loved that. The unpredictability of him. Never knowing.

  But that night at the mall, something was off. His skin sallow. Sweat coated his brow. And his eyes too shiny. The last I saw of Ibrahim, threading his way to the makeup counters, vanishing. What the—?

  I text Amma, tell her I’m studying in the library. I just want to disappear into the jumble of Queens neighborhoods. I get on a bus, all the streets I know skimming past: Forest Park, where I watch kids shoot hoops and sometimes join in, though I’m no good. Now the yellow buses are lumbering down streets, disgorging kids at stops where their parents or grandparents wait. I’m watching my earlier life, a slow-motion loop, a disaster. I feel old, weary. All the excuses, the small lies. What did they get me?

  Early evening is crumbling from the sky by the time I make it back to my neighborhood. I pause at the old playground. The last of the kids are straggling home, dragging plastic buckets and balls and scooters. Lights prick on in the surrounding apartment buildings. A few boys linger in the baseball area, their bats cracking balls into the dusk. But soon they are gone. I imagine all the families setting out dinner plates inside apartments, kids bent over homework. My heart hurts; I wish I could follow them, press the magic button. The one that lets me whisk back to that earlier time.

  I sit on a swing, its seat hugging my thighs. A dull ache spreads through my bones. The air folds cool and dark around me. It’s as if I can see him—Before-Naeem, with his funny ears that stick out from his head—arcing high, high, over this playground.

  —

  There’s a shout, then a figure moving blurrily toward me. I squint in the fading air. Ibrahim?

  “Naeem?”

  But no, it’s Taylor. The hair on his arms glows silver. And I can’t help it: seeing him, my chest gives a tiny skip, both happy and nervous.

  “Hey, why the sorry look? You’re not glad to see me?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “I’m used to it.”

  Then I see that tank of a guy, Sanchez, leaning against the fence, thick-shouldered, hard. My mood drops. Taylor signals with his fingers for him to stay back. Smiling, he comes toward me, sits on the other swing and moves gently, chains creaking.

  I scowl. “Why are you following me?”

  He shrugs. “Just checking things out in the neighborhood. Thought I’d see how you’re doing.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m fine. Just fine.” I spit these last words out.

  “You don’t look fine.”

  I don’t say anything.

  “Bad day?”

  I try to stay quiet. If I just wait—for the dark to close in around us, for him to get bored with me and realize I have nothing to offer, for Sanchez to lose his temper—they’ll leave me alone. Tell his buddies at the station house I’m a waste of time. But strangely enough, I like having Taylor here. He reminds me of a couple of the counselors I knew from YMCA camp a few summers ago. Missionary kids, fresh from Colorado, Utah. Even though we’d make fun of them all the time—especially the girls, with their moony expressions, their fresh-shaven, athletic legs, their braids with silly ribbons—they had a way about them. As if the world were a lot cleaner, brighter. As if there were nothing ahead to worry about.

  “School? Parents?” He grins. “Girl?”

  I sigh. “School.” A stone pushes up sharp in my
throat. “I may not graduate.”

  He lets out a whistle. “That’s tough.”

  “I knew it was happening. Just didn’t—”

  “It catches up with you, what you haven’t taken care of. Can’t fake what you never did.”

  We sit in silence for a while, swings creaking. He can’t see, in the dim and lowering light, that my eyes are wet. Back and forth we shift in the worn seats; my mood calms. I realize what I miss: Ibrahim. I’m sore and mad at him, but lonely too. I have no one to tell all this stuff to. In the old days I’d text him and tell him about the business with Mrs. D. Flaky as he is, he’d drive up and we’d go for a spin. I liked that I didn’t see him that often. I’d unload what was fastened inside my chest. He was outside of things. That’s what made it easier.

  “Come on.” Taylor is standing now and I can see he’s wearing Converse, which shine like oblong boats against the dark asphalt. He points to the basketball hoop. “Wanna shoot?”

  “I don’t play. Not like you.”

  “That’s okay.”

  Before I can object, he’s hustled back to his car, which is parked by the curb. Sanchez hasn’t moved this whole time. Taylor has brought a basketball, nestled against his hip. The streetlamps are turned on, casting a gray-hued circle under the hoop, enough to see.

  We play one-on-one. It doesn’t take a genius to realize this guy is good. His defense is strong and thick, like he’s five guys at once. He elbows, he thrusts his arms in my face, lunges and steals. “Play to the left, play to the left!” he keeps yelling.

  I give it a try, but I’m wildly off, my shot rattling the backboard.

  “Take your time, Naeem,” he instructs. “Bend your knees. Your wrist. Follow through.”

  We start up again and he loosens our range—we’re not just playing right under the hoop for layups, but wider, working on three-pointers. Now I see his real talent. He is definitely point guard, feeding, guiding me, setting me up for a better spot. My shot sucks anyway, wilting off the side of the hoop.

  He spins to a stop. He’s panting hard, wipes his sweat-greasy face with his T-shirt collar. “You’re not keeping your eye on it,” he says.

  “Sorry,” I mumble.

  “Don’t be sorry. Just do it.”

  I reach for the ball, but he cradles it away from me. “You going to tell your parents? About not graduating?”

  I shrug.

  “You are, right?” The ball’s still held just up over his right shoulder. I could smack it out of his hands if I wanted to. But his eyes glitter, furious.

  “Yes,” I breathe.

  He shoves the ball so hard, the air is scooped from my ribs. Then we’re back in—he tries to block, but this time I weave to the left. Let my wrist go, just so. Follow through. The ball spins once, luminous as a planet. The rim wobbles. And it drops right in.

  By the time I get home, sweaty and tired, Abba and Amma are still at the store, doing inventory. It’s my job to take care of Zahir when they’re too busy—warming the fish fry and rice in the microwave, watching over his multiplication tables, making him take a bath.

  Zahir’s a good kid. Even though he’s nine, he still sleeps with mounds of stuffed animals and plays with Lego on the floor for hours. Every day I see him march off to school with his Spider-Man backpack, a regular little soldier—straight, careful, chin tipped at what’s ahead. Sometimes the others make fun of him—he’s little for his age, with a funny, awkward air. He’s good at math—taught himself how to add and subtract double-digit numbers in his head. He could go somewhere, unlike me. He doesn’t care what other kids think about him. He only cares what I think.

  “Do you like this Lego bridge I made, Naeem?” he’ll ask, his voice catching with excitement.

  “What about my report on Sandy Koufax? Did you read it, Naeem? Did you?”

  I don’t know why he wants so much from me. Maybe because Abba is too old for both of us, too distracted with the store and its worries. Maybe because, to him, I was a miracle: an older brother who just showed up one day, poof, stepping out of an airplane.

  Zahir is obsessed with Spider-Man, even though he’s getting a little old for that stuff—the thick red and blue cups, the huge stickers on our bedroom wall, Spider-Man ready to pounce, the ribbed pajamas with plastic eyes that haze in and out. He’s the kind of kid who reads things over and over again, has perfect recall. He can tell me about cartilage in sharks; he corrected the science museum docents on the name of a man-eating plant in the Amazon.

  He likes to come up to me at night, soft and tangy shampoo-smelling, and bring me his prized book—a hardcover Spider-Man, the old-fashioned one that tells the original story of Peter Parker. Even though he can read it himself, he makes me do it. He draws up his knees, laces his fingers around his ankles, shuts his eyes, and listens. It’s as if we can both see them: superheroes, with their bright pop colors, their avenging missions.

  “Naeem,” he will say wonderingly. “You know Peter Parker lived in Forest Hills, Queens. Right near us.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  His smile is dreamy. “If I went to Forest Hills High School, I’d see him. I’d know who Peter Parker is.”

  “Yes, you would.”

  “Maybe I’d be in that science lab. The one with the radioactive spider. That made him powerful.”

  “Do you really think that’s real?” I ask. His eyes are open, trusting.

  “There are special cells,” he explains. “They absorbed the radioactivity. They go through his bloodstream, even his heart, especially the aorta. That’s why it’s so effective.” Zahir used to pore over an old illustrated book on the body I bought for a dollar on the street. Now I can see, he’s wobbling between believing in Spider-Man’s special powers and his own crazy, factual head.

  —

  After Zahir goes to bed, I sit at the kitchen table, my stomach twisted raw, waiting for my parents to come home. I’m back to feeling bruised, shaky, as if someone has knocked me hard in the ribs. Taylor is right. Tell them.

  The key scrapes in the lock and my parents shuffle in, looking worn, preoccupied. Amma sets down the crinkly glazed plastic bag she uses for groceries she gets half price, when the shops close. Before I can say a word, Abba drops down in the La-Z-Boy. He doesn’t even bother to go in the bedroom and change into his favorite lungi, as he always does, the fabric washed so many times I can see its pale white threads.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask.

  He shakes his head. “Not enough for new supplies. Maybe we go one, two months.”

  I can hear my stepmother at the sink, the hiss and spray of water on a pot. “I tell your father, we have to sell different things. New things. Maybe for kitchen. The shop up the block, he has only junk.”

  He’s shaking his head. “It’s too late. We can’t buy more stock. We need more money.”

  He looks at me expectantly. I know what he means. We’ve talked about me getting another job, not at the store, to help out, especially in the summer. Duane Reade, KFC. Anything.

  My stomach cinches tighter, remembering Mrs. D, getting caught at the mall. My time with Taylor. I take a breath. Start with Mrs. D. That’s easiest.

  “Abba—” I begin.

  He glances up.

  “About school. You remember when we had that meeting with the counselor?”

  “Yes, she’s a very nice lady.”

  As usual, Abba speaks to me in Bangla, slightly formal, and I answer in English, or a mix.

  “So about those classes—”

  He beams. “You told me your English teacher liked your essay.”

  “She did. But I forgot to hand in the final one.” I pause. “There’s other stuff too.”

  He shakes his head. “Ami bujhte parchi na. I don’t understand. What are you saying?”

  It takes me a while to push the words out. My life these days is so many complicated excuses, all dense together, I have to pull out the one string I can be honest about. “Here’s the thing, Abba.” I say qui
etly, “It looks like I’m not going to graduate—”

  I don’t even finish. I don’t have to. His face goes ashen. Then he makes that spit-sound of disgust at the back of his throat. “Throw it away!” he cries. “You throw everything away!”

  “Yes, Abba—”

  “I should have known! It is always this way with you! Everything I give you, you throw away! Treat it like it’s nothing!”

  I feel awful. My whole body throbs. “No, Abba. It’s not like that. I can take summer classes. There are second chances—”

  “Second chance? What kind of second chance do you have? I have? I came here with nothing and I work all the time. I hurt my back and still I must work. No such thing! Your mother, she had no second chance!”

  Without a word, he rises, shunts his feet into his slippers. They slap at the backs of his heels as he stalks off, into the bedroom. The door slams shut. He might as well have squashed me right there, the same way he briskly breaks down cartons in his shop. In the silence, I can hear him loud and clear: That’s all you can be. All you are, lousy firstborn. She kono kajre noye. Good for nothing.

  Amma, who was listening in, starts to cry, saying it is her fault, she hasn’t done a good job as my stepmother. “School is mother’s job,” she keeps whispering. Soon she has gone into the bedroom too.

  It’s then I see Zahir hovering in the doorway, staring at me, wide-eyed. My head surges with heat. I pick up his plastic Spider-Man cup from the coffee table. “You’re too old for this!” I yell, hurling it across the room. It bounces on the TV, rolls to the rug. His thin shoulders shake.

  “Sorry!” I blurt out.

  It’s too late. Zahir just gives me those trustful sad eyes.

  That feels the worst. Zahir’s watching hurts the most.

  The next Tuesday, why am I not surprised to find Taylor with his car idling two blocks away from school? As if we’re best friends. Why can’t I stop my chest from rattling like it’s a paper cup, a tiny stone dancing inside? He brightens me up somehow. And why can’t I stop myself from feeling that I want to see him? A rush of questions: Is he married? How old are his kids? Does he play ball with them?