“I … what?” Jada demands. “What, Ibrahim?”
“You wanted for nothing.”
“And then we went out to make a life for ourselves. You and me. And so what if I involved some struggle? I wanted babies. I wanted your babies, Ibrahim!”
“And where would that have left you if you’d had them, huh? If you had not one kid, but two, or even three. When I went away, what would you have done?”
“I would have done with I’m doing now with a grown-ass man in the house.” Even as she is speaking, and before her sentence is done, she knows she shouldn’t but says it anyway. “You’re at least the equivalent in expense of two more kids. So, I would have done what I have to do now. I would have handled it.”
In the moment’s silence, Jada thinks she can feel it. Thinks she can hear it even, like glass breaking against concrete. The shattering of what remains of Ibrahim’s ego, the slender shards of his manhood.
She blinks rapidly to stave off the hot tears she feels behind her eyes. She wishes for a moment that he was the kind of man to hit her.
“Ibrahim …” she begins.
“Go back to the house,” he says. His voice is quiet. “I think I’ll walk on alone.”
~~~
He returns just as they have all almost decided to eat without him. Just as Kal is debating whether to go out in the car and see whether they can find him.
Ibrahim walks in and his eyes are vacant, his smile at Kal and Asha barely a smile at all, but a farcical imitation of one. Lips mechanically turning up at the corners.
“Lost all track of time,” he says, his voice as false as the smile. “What’s for vittles?”
Just from the sound of it, Kal and even Asha seem to know all is not well. First, Jada had come back alone and uncommunicative, and now, almost two hours later, Ibrahim has surfaced but is not himself.
Kal is looking at them both, his eyes flitting from one to the other. Jada knows he is sensitive to any sign of discord between them. When he was a boy, he hardly saw it, so he doesn’t quite know how to handle it when it appears. His parents in disagreement was enough, then, to upend his universe. It still has a similar effect now, because he becomes very busy, almost maniacally trying to make sure everyone is comfortable, fussing with the serving platters, the spoons, the drinks.
You got enough, Pops?
More of this, Ma?
His disquiet makes Asha jumpy as well, and they all limp through the meal with almost no conversation.
Ibrahim eats the chicken and string beans without commenting on it. He is offered and refuses seconds, and when he is done, begs off to take a shower.
“I can get you something to wear,” Kal says, pushing back from the table and following him out of the room.
Jada looks up and Asha gives her a thin smile.
“So quiet,” she says. “I swear I sometimes forget what it’s like to eat a meal without Anwar competing for my attention.”
Jada takes a sip of her water, tries for only a few seconds to mimic normalcy before she finds she cannot.
“Excuse me,” she says, shoving her chair back. “I have to …”
She doesn’t bother to finish the sentence. She just leaves the room.
23
Now
“Ibrahim.”
She speaks his name in the dark. They are lying together on the bed in the guest room, and she can feel that he is still awake.
“Ibrahim, I’m sorry.”
He says nothing.
Rolling toward him to breach the physical distance, Jada collides with his arm and when her eyes adjust, she sees that he is on his back, perhaps staring up at the ceiling. She presses her lips to his bicep, slides a hand down, reaching for him.
A hand clamps over her wrist, stilling her and she begins to cry. Quietly. Not at the rejection, but at the frustration of knowing that her husband is floundering, and she doesn’t know how to fix it. Even when he confessed to her that he was struggling, she made things so much worse by reviving an old argument, now a meaningless one. She isn’t even sure now what she was thinking.
“You’re mourning.”
Her tears cease at the sound of his voice. Hoarse. Full of pain.
“What?” she croaks.
“You’re mourning what we didn’t have. And what we lost,” Ibrahim says, his voice almost breaking on the last word.
Sensing that this is her time to be quiet, her time to listen, Jada gives no response.
“You think I don’t mourn too?” he continues. “I mourn the babies we didn’t have. And the years … all those years. I mourn the life I couldn’t give you then. Not just the life I’m not able to give you now. This isn’t just some … macho thing, Jada. I mourn, too.
“And every day I look at you, that’s all I see. Is my failure to give you those things, and those babies. And everything else you wanted. And deserved.”
“But I never …” This she cannot let go unanswered. “I loved the life you gave me. I love the life we’ve …”
“No, you didn’t. No, you don’t. And what you said tonight only confirms it. But you’re a beautiful woman, Jada. Still a young woman. You could …”
Before he can finish, she slaps him. She slaps him hard. As hard as she wished, earlier he would have slapped her. Her palm stings at the contact, and the sound is loud in the quiet house.
Ibrahim doesn’t even flinch, even when she gasps in shock and realization of what she has done.
“Don’t you ever …” Her voice is an angry whisper. “You are my husband!”
And then she is crying again, this time burying her face in her hands and trying to muffle the sound. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she hopes that Kal and Asha are not lying awake, eyes wide open, listening to the telltale noises of a marriage in trouble.
She rolls even closer, and then atop him. She touches his face and feels the heat on his cheek where she hit him. She kisses him there. He doesn’t respond, and she feels her tears about to begin anew when Ibrahim flips her over onto her back.
With rough hands, he fumbles to undress her. She helps him, peeling away the top Asha loaned her, maneuvering her hips so he can work off her underwear. She doesn’t care that she isn’t ready for him. When he is undressed and between her legs, she is frantic to pull him closer.
She doesn’t know any other way to be with Ibrahim. Even in the middle of this conflict, she finds it hard to imagine she would survive it if they were ever again to be apart.
~~~
It doesn’t surprise her to wake up alone. Kal will have gone to run, and maybe Ibrahim has gone with him.
She aches from the bruising sex the night before. Jada looks down and there are thumbprints visible on her thighs. Even with her dark skin she can see them, a patchwork of anger and desperation, and need.
When she sits up in bed, she is surprised to find that someone has laid out towels and what looks like a change of clothes for her. She didn’t hear anyone enter the bedroom as she slept, but maybe that makes sense since she didn’t hear Ibrahim leave either.
After washing up, she goes out to the living room and then to the kitchen where she finds Kal and Asha. Kal is shirtless and holding Anwar in his lap, feeding him what looks like oatmeal.
Anwar grimaces at each bite, but then reaches for the spoon as if hoping that the next one will produce a different, or more pleasant taste than the one before.
At Kal’s feet, which are bare, are his trainers and socks. His damp shirt is draped over the back of his chair. He has already been running.
Jada looks around the kitchen, almost forgetting to say good morning. When she does, neither Kal nor Asha fully meet her gaze, so she knows that they know something is wrong.
“We made a full breakfast,” Asha says, getting up. “Do you want eggs, or …?”
“Don’t trouble yourself with serving me,” Jada says smiling, or at least attempting to. “I’ll pull myself something together.”
She makes a show of getting a plate,
going over to the stove, taking some of the scrambled eggs with cheese and spinach. And then she makes toast and pours herself a mug of coffee. Kal and Asha, who always have something to say to each other are still silent when she takes a place at the table with them.
“He’s wearing more of that than he’s eating, Kal,” Asha says after a few silent, awkward minutes. She reaches for Anwar. “Let me change him and top him off with some milk.”
“Top him off?” Kal grins at her and Asha smiles back and shakes her head.
“You know what I mean.”
Jada pretends not to watch them, but she can’t help it. It makes her heart sing to see Kal like this, so happy in his marriage, so in love with his wife and son. But it also opens a yearning in her soul for what she and Ibrahim once had and can’t seem to retrieve.
He was rough with her last night. And not in the way she sometimes wants him to be rough. But it was as though he was saying, ‘If this is all I can give you, this is all you will get. This. And this. And this.’
Each thrust was like a knife to her heart because she knew that his heart wasn’t there with them but locked away safe somewhere.
And worse than that, she now feels that it was her doing. With her cruel words to him out on the street, his locked-away heart is her fault.
“I don’t know where he is,” Kal says almost immediately they are alone. “I haven’t seen him.”
Jada’s hand pauses mid-air. Even though he is not here now, she assumed he had gone running with Kaleem.
“Do you know where he might be?” Kal is first to speak once again.
“No, Kaleem, I don’t.”
“What’d you do?”
Jada drops her fork and trains a hard gaze on her son. “What makes you so certain that I was the one who did something?”
Kaleem stands, or tries to, but she holds his wrist and pulls him down, so he is seated again.
“God,” she says, trying to keep her voice down so Asha won’t overhear. “You are truly your father’s son.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you only ever belonged to him. Even when he was away, you were his alone. You kept yourself far away from me, you …”
She stops abruptly. If she has learned anything from last night, it is that it isn’t always best to give license to her unbridled emotions and put them into words.
Kal reaches out and puts a hand over hers. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say that. I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t. I just … I see him trying so hard to be a man, and …”
“And that’s not something I can help him with, Kaleem! How to build himself up to be a man again? I can’t help him with that any more than I could have helped you become a man while he was gone.”
“Don’t say that.” Kal shakes his head. “You did. You did.”
Jada raises her head and sees that Kal’s eyes are filled with tears. Seeing him like this guts her. He is still her baby. Hers, and Ibrahim’s little boy. No matter how much of a man he has become, he is their little boy.
“Like I said …” His voice is thick. “I don’t know what’s going on. But one thing I do know? Now that I’m married, I know things can get … complicated. And no one understands those complications better than the two people in it. But I can be here for you. And for him. If y’all need me to be.”
Jada can’t help herself. She smiles. Then she drags her hand from beneath her son’s and puts it at the side of his face.
“Now that you’re married five minutes, you know all the secrets to marriage, huh?”
“Nah. But I know it can be tough. And I know you’re tougher. Both of you.” He shrugs.
“You …” she begins. “You are his son, y’know. You are all the best parts of him.”
At that, Kal dips his head, embarrassed at the praise, and humbled by it. Even at this age, and even after all their time estranged, Kaleem is thoroughly in his father’s thrall.
Jada loves and envies this about their relationship.
It is impenetrable, unbreakable, no matter what Kal once told himself. And Ibrahim doesn’t give himself enough credit for that either, for the solidity of what he built with their son.
“But what’s going on, Ma?” Kaleem asks. “What’s …”
“I don’t know,” she admits. “I don’t know.”
24
Then
“I put you on the books,” Samuel explained.
“What? You serious?” Ibrahim grimaced, looking down once again at the check in his hand. “Why you do that for?”
“That ain’t a bad thing, young man. It means you’re legit. A genuine, tax-paying citizen.” Samuel pronounced the word gen-YOO-wine, stretching out the syllable in the middle.
Exhaling, Ibrahim folded the check and put it in his back pocket. He had been counting on leaving work with a couple hundred dollars cash in his pocket and instead all he had was a piece of paper with a figure on it significantly lower than he was accustomed to getting.
After Uncle Sam—the real one, not his employer—took his cut, Ibrahim was left with just over a hundred-and-fifty. The timing couldn’t be worse. He had plans for his money. He was setting something aside each week to buy a whip of his own so he wouldn’t have to keep mooching off Nasim all the time. And every weekend, he tried to take Jada someplace decent. All those movies, takeout, trips to the wharf and to get ice cream added up.
“For a spell, I don’t put people on the books ‘cause they don’t stick,” Samuel explained. “They come out the gate strong and then these early morning and late nights wear on ‘em. I gotta make sure a person’ll be ‘round for a while ‘fore I bother adding them to my ledger. And you, young man? You stuck. Congratulations.”
Samuel slapped him on the shoulder and pulled up at the curb in front of the building—one of the larger ones—that was today’s evening shift.
He waited for Ibrahim to get out and open the back of the van. The only other person who was getting out was Klara who was working the site with him. If he had been paying attention, Ibrahim would have realized sooner that Klara, the older Polish woman, was the only other person on the crew who got a thin envelope on payday, which meant she was the only other person who paid by check.
The Mexican Girls, most of whose names Ibrahim didn’t bother registering anymore, were a rotating cast of characters. Some of them, like Xiomara and Luisa worked a solid three weeks before disappearing for a while. And then they would come back for another three, and then disappear once again. Though they had been working with Samuel for as long as Ibrahim had, they still only got paid in cash. Maybe they were smarter than he was and had been doing their disappearing acts on purpose, just to avoid the tax man.
As he helped Klara out of the van, his pager vibrated at his waist. He didn’t get it right away. He had to hold Klara’s hand and support her weight to help her out, because she had a bad hip which made her walk with a rocking gait that looked painful just to watch. Riding in the back, where the only places to sit were hard surfaces couldn’t be comfortable for someone of her age. Ibrahim made a mental note to leave the seat free for her to ride up front from now on.
She would probably refuse, but he would offer.
He didn’t need to look down at his pager to know who it was. Jada paged him when he worked evenings, before she went to bed, because she knew the wait wouldn’t be too long before she got a call. He always called her right back because he wanted to get right to work the moment they arrived at a site, and not stop until he was done; and he also didn’t want her parents’ phone ringing too late at night and waking them up.
Ibrahim wouldn’t say that the Mr. Green had warmed to him exactly, but he could tell that he was developing a healthy respect for his consistency. When he picked Jada up, he always came up the walk, rang the bell and went in for a few minutes of pleasantries. He made sure he sat on the sofa and didn’t display any of the impatience he might feel. And he always brought her home at least two hours before curfew.
Sometimes, he brought Mrs. Green a small gift, like pastry from the Spanish bakery near his house, and if it was a Sunday afternoon, he picked up a copy of the Tribune for Mr. Green. When he did, he made sure he skimmed the headlines before going in, just so he had something intelligent to say about the world in his conversation with the older man.
Recently, though, he found that he wanted to read the paper first before giving it away. Turned out the world was an interesting place, well beyond the ten square blocks and the city where he had spent all his life.
Now, once he and Klara were inside the building, Ibrahim paused at the bank of payphones and fished out the change he kept on him for exactly this purpose.
“I start at the top, Ibrahim,” Klara called to him. He liked the way she rolled her ‘R’ when she said his name.
He nodded and waved her on, tipping his chin at the night security guard manning the front desk. Building security knew him and all the women on Samuel’s crew on sight, and never bothered asking for their credentials anymore.
The phone rang only twice before Jada answered.
“Hey,” he said. “Everything okay?”
“Yup. I’m good.”
She was always good. But he liked that even if she had no news, she didn’t like going an entire day without at least once hearing his voice. And that if he told her he had to work on a weekend and couldn’t see her, her disappointment was obvious.
“Just got to work,” he said. “What were you up to today?”
“Same ol’, same ol’. School, practice, library. But, here’s the thing …” She paused.
“Uh oh. Nothing good starts with ‘here’s the thing’.”
Jada laughed. “It’s good. Promise.”
“Okay, what’s up?”
“A party,” Jada said. “My friend Chloe’s party. For her birthday.”
“Yeah?”
“I want you to take me,” Jada said rushing the words. “It’s this weekend, and I know you might be working and I didn’t give you a whole lot of notice, but I had no idea it was going to be a bring-your-boyfriend kind of thing and now it’s just days away and everyone else is bringing a …”
Courtship: A 'Snowflake' Novel Page 19