Courtship: A 'Snowflake' Novel

by Nia Forrester

  “I wouldn’t have had sex with her,” Ibrahim said.

  “Why not?”

  He shrugged. “I knew she was different. Even before jail.”

  “Okay. And what did you do about it?”

  He chased her off. Because he knew he would be no good for her. He chased her off and worried later, that he was the one who wouldn’t be able to stay away. But he would have. It would have been hard, but he would have.

  “Okay, fine. Maybe you’re right. I wouldn’t have gotten to know her if I didn’t go to jail.”

  Raj looked satisfied. “See? ‘And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.’ Romans 8:28 in your Christian Bible.”

  While Ibrahim liked the verse, he wasn’t sure he could claim to love God. He hadn’t thought about Him much until his mother died, and since Bree’s death, his relationship with God had gotten downright complicated.

  Her memorial, which he went to a week earlier had been hard. There was no coffin because there was no money for burial. Just an urn and a single blown up photograph that was many years old. The service had been as sad and as under-attended as Bree’s life had been.

  “In my Christian Bible?” Ibrahim laughed, trying to shove thoughts of Bree aside. “What’d I tell you about that?”

  “You may not identify as Christian but at least we agree, don’t we, that all paths lead to God in the end?”

  “Or to the other place.”

  “I don’t believe in the other place.”

  “You don’t believe in Hell?”

  “Not as an afterlife, no.” Raj shook his head. “It’s here. Right now.”

  Ibrahim was inclined to agree with him.

  In a flash, he remembered Breonna’s face. Her face when he found her, and her face as he knew her, before she’d been beaten to death. She hadn’t had much happiness in this life. For her to go to the next one and be punished eternally for something like … premarital sex? That seemed arbitrary, and cruel. Not like any God Ibrahim wanted to believe in.

  “You can’t take one without the other, though,” Ibrahim said. “Not in my Christian Bible as you call it. If you believe in Heaven, you accept the existence of Hell.”

  “And that’s one reason why I’m not a Christian. But the fundamental premise is the same in most belief systems. There is always The One who is Most Holy.”

  “I like that,” Ibrahim said, nodding. “I can get with that: The One who is Most Holy.”

  “It’s true, though. The single common denominator in all belief systems is the Most Holy, who is merciful and gives countless chances for redemption” Raj said, chewing on yet another piece of naan. “Before I go to Cambridge, I’ll give you a book. I’ll need to leave many behind or give them away. I may as well give some of them to you. This one you’ll like. It’s called ‘The World’s Religions’.”

  “I’ll read it,” Ibrahim promised, his interest piqued once again.

  The Redeemer, after all, had sent him Jada.

  ~~~

  The sun wasn’t yet up when Ibrahim pushed open the gate and stood still for a moment, mentally mapping out his route. He was tired, but he still had to run. His body had come to need and expect it. And his mind did as well.

  Every morning that he ran, he found he could come back home, take a long hot shower and get another few hours of a deeper more restful sleep than he may have gotten the night before.

  When he ran, he thought about Bree, and tried to forgive himself for not being as good to her as he could have been.

  And he thought about the new ideas he was cramming into his brain from all the books Raj was leaving behind. Ibrahim had driven over to his apartment one weekend to get them and been shocked to realize how many there were.

  Dang, he said when Raj showed him the seven boxes he had set aside. You want me to take all this?

  Why not? There’s a very fine education in those boxes.

  Is this every book you bought for every single class you took at Stanford?

  Yes, Raj said with a straight face. Then he thought for a moment. Actually, no. The science and technology books I sold, but these are all the books from my Arts & Humanities classes. They’re the ones I think you’ll find most interesting.

  The subjects were wide-ranging—literature, sociology, psychology, and of course, theology, Raj’s favorite subject next to coding. To have that many books, and to have someone see him as a person who would want them and find them “interesting” was more than novel, it was an epiphany.

  To realize now at this late stage that he had a love of learning was both a blessing and a curse. Ibrahim thought seriously about college, but then ... he thought about Jada. Of course, while he ran, he thought about Jada and what was building between them. He wanted to marry her. He was sure of it now.

  And it felt crazy, just like she said it was. And they were too young, just like her father said. But it also felt right, for reasons he was still not able to explain even to himself.

  He visited her house at least twice a week now, and at least half the time it was to see her father as much as it was to see her.

  My wife and I, Mr. Green said to him, both care about how you treat Jada. And from what I can see, you treat her very well. Very respectfully. But where we differ is, while my wife then thinks about how you make Jada feel, I care about how she will live. And on what.

  I don’t have all those answers yet, sir, Ibrahim told him honestly. But I can promise you that so long as she’s with me, Jada will never go without. No matter what I have to do to make sure of that. I wouldn’t take her out of this comfortable life you made for her, and into one that’s constant struggle. You have my word.

  But his word counted for nothing until Mr. Green got to know him better, so his mission was to demonstrate it through consistency. And what better way to do that than to just keep showing up?

  And in the meantime, he had to plan. He couldn’t work for Samuel cleaning buildings forever. Not when there was so much more out there. He’d always known that, but now he also knew it was attainable.

  On mile three, he got a cramp in his side, and stopped to wait it out, bent at the waist, his hands pressed one atop the other into his side. When he lifted his head, he saw that a car had slowed next to him.

  “Need a ride home?” Dee asked, sticking her head out the window.

  “Got a couple more miles to do.”

  “Don’t look to me like you gon’ make it,” she said, curling her upper lip.

  Conceding defeat, Ibrahim opened the door on the passenger side and got in.

  “Since when you been into jogging?” she asked, looking him over.

  “Running? Few weeks now.” He was perspiring heavily, so Ibrahim reached over and turned on the AC, directing one of the vents directly at him.

  “You look good.” Dee’s eyes traveled his length. “Like a professional sprinter. You should get Manny to run with you. He’s starting to get a gut from all that damn drinkin’.”

  At the mention of his brother, Ibrahim tried to remember whether he was alone. Even though he was presently on good terms with Dee, there was no telling from night to night whether he would have other female company.

  “Thanks,” he said, shifting in the seat, feeling the discomfort of the beads of perspiration running down his back, and the equally uncomfortable weight of Dee’s stare.

  “So … you and my cousin, huh?”

  Ibrahim stilled.

  “Yeah,” he said finally, deciding that it was better not to say too much.

  “She’s real serious about you, Prophet.” Dee’s tone held a note of warning. “Real serious.”

  “And I’m real serious about her.”

  “She’s not like me.”

  “And I’m not like Manny.”

  At that, Dee laughed, but she sounded a little hurt, too.

  Ibrahim said nothing.

  “You want to hear something crazy?” Dee asked. �
��After what happened to your friend, Breonna? I caught myself thinkin’ ‘Immanuel would never do no shit like that to me.’ Like that’s a recommendation or something.”

  She laughed harshly and shook her head.

  “I bet me and him must look real stupid to you, huh?” she said. “All that back and forth bullshit.”

  He didn’t think the back and forth with Manny and Dee was stupid. He thought it was sad. They had been at it so long, it was no longer possible to figure out who was the victim and who was the perpetrator. But what he did know, was that Manny could go on like this forever, and Dee was beginning to look weary of the fight.

  “I would be with your brother, Prophet. Like for real be with him. Like get married or whatever? I swear I would. But he ain’t …” She broke off and shook her head. “How y’all turned out so different I’ll never know.”

  “My brother loves you Dee. In every way he knows how.”

  “He does, huh?” She sounded only partly convinced. “And what about you? You love my cousin?”

  “Yeah,” he said, speaking aloud to Dee words he only then realized he had yet to say to Jada. “I do. I love her.”

  41

  Then

  “You asked this girl to marry you?” His father sounded incredulous. “This girl none of us has even met.”

  “I’ve met her,” Manny said, chewing on his toothpick. “She’s a good girl.”

  “Shut up, Immanuel,” their father said. “I’m talkin’ to your brother. What is it, Prophet? She pregnant? Because …”

  “She’s not pregnant.”

  “Then I don’t get it.”

  “She’s going to be my wife,” he said shrugging.

  “Why would you want to do that?” His father was still in his BART uniform, having just come in from work and sat down to dinner with them when Ibrahim broke the news. The dinner Ibrahim had cooked, because he was basically the only one who bothered, and it made sense to cook for everyone if he was going to do it at all.

  “The usual reasons.”

  He wasn’t about to profess his love in front of his brothers and father. Not because he wanted to deny it, but because it might cheapen it. Or they might.

  “What’re those?” his father scoffed. “What … reasons are those?”

  “You tell me why I shouldn’t,” Ibrahim said. “Because you got some other big plans for my life? Something you think I need to be working toward? You tell me, Pops. What’re your plans for me?”

  “It ain’t about what plans I have for you. You old enough to plan for yourself. But this …”

  “Is part of my plan. Jada is part of my plan. The plan doesn’t work without her.”

  “What is it? The bullshit job I know you got with Nasim … the one you think I ain’t know about? That your plan? Custodial work and four babies in five years? Tell me, Ibrahim. What is your plan?”

  “Not this,” he said, looking around him. “Not this.”

  “So you gon’ fuck your whole life up …”

  “Pops.” Isaac spoke for the first time. “It’s his choice. He’s grown. We need to let him make it.”

  “The fuck we do! Who is this girl, anyway?”

  “Dee’s cousin,” Manny chimed in.

  Their father laughed explosively. “Oh, so that oughta turn out real good. Dee’s cousin!” He shook his head. “You a fool. But I guess your brother’s right. You a grown fool. So, you do what you gotta do, I guess.”

  Then he shoved back from the table and walked out of the kitchen.

  Isaac tipped his chin at him, and Ibrahim gave him a brief smile.

  “Thanks for …”

  “He’s right though, man. You can’t take care of a family cleaning bathrooms. You feel like you need to get married, that’s one thing. But you need to get back in on this game and make some money.”

  Manny was nodding his agreement, and Ibrahim felt suddenly like he was looking at his brothers, their kitchen, this house, and even his old self, the person he used to be, from the end of a long telescope. His body was there, but his mind and his focus had already drifted far, far, away.

  ~~~

  Jada found him sitting on a wall just outside the auditorium, one knee drawn up to his chest, gazing upward toward the sky. As she drew closer, she didn’t speak at first, but just watched him. He probably didn’t hear her approach over the rhythmic pounding of the music, audible even outside.

  Sometimes, when she caught sight of Ibrahim when he didn’t know anyone was looking, he seemed infinitely unknowable and alone. Not lonely though, because he never seemed to truly crave the company of other people. There was no ‘crew,’ nor an omnipresent best friend and not even a roster of names he mentioned repeatedly, unless they were the names of his brothers.

  Ibrahim was as self-contained and self-sufficient a person as she had ever met. Of all his traits, this was the one that scared her. Jada didn’t think there was anything strange about it, she just wondered whether someone who seemed to need no one would ever need her.

  And she wanted him to, because she was already beginning to need him.

  “I feel like you’re not having a good time.”

  Ibrahim turned at the sound of her voice.

  He smiled as he looked her over, taking in the view of her coming toward him, the length of her yellow chiffon prom dress swirling around her. The pale color was one he had personally picked, when, a few weeks ago, she presented him with pieces of fabric in different colors and asked which he liked best.

  He said he chose it because the yellow reminded him of that hot day, long ago now, when they had both tagged along with Dee and Manny to watch flashy cars perform stunts. She had preferred a green fabric herself but went along with his choice because she liked the idea that he chose it based on a memory of her.

  “Just getting a little air. It’s kinda close in there.”

  They were two hours into her senior prom and Jada had been winding around the room squealing and dancing with her girlfriends when she noticed he was gone. Ibrahim had danced some of the slow dances with her but spent most of the night sitting at one of the tables, watching her and smiling whenever she glanced over at him which was often. But if he didn’t see her looking, he didn’t smile. He looked sad.

  When she looked up and discovered him gone, Jada immediately went searching. He had been quiet for the past several weeks, speaking even less than he normally did, which had never been that much to begin with. It might have worried her, made her question his feelings or something, except that he was as attentive as he had always been, and even a little overprotective.

  Each night when he called, he had taken to asking her if everything was okay. Not, ‘are you good?’ which was how he usually greeted her, or even, ‘how are you?’ but ‘is everything okay?’

  It sounded like he had concerns for her safety, which was crazy, but she couldn’t shake the feeling.

  At a block party they had gone to the week before with Manny and Dee, he kept an arm around her waist almost the entire time, which she loved of course, but which was unlike of him. That time, she had been the one to ask him if everything was okay and he responded with a tense, tight smile.

  Yeah, he said. Of course.

  But she could tell he didn’t want to be there, or more to the point, didn’t want her to be there. He had only agreed to go in the first place because it was Dee’s idea of taking her out to celebrate her graduation.

  Later in the night when the party was breaking up and dozens of people were milling around outside getting into rides and such, someone’s motorcycle backfired. Ibrahim had grabbed her hard, almost wrenching her arm as he pulled her against his chest, both arms around her from behind, hunched over her in a reverse bearhug.

  Jada felt his heart skipping against her back just before he realized what it was and let her go.

  Ibrahim, she’d said, looking up at him. You okay?

  Even she could tell from the sound that it obviously wasn’t what he feared it might have
been.

  Yeah, he said. Yeah.

  Then she knew for certain something was off, but he didn’t tell her, and she had no time to ask because right after that he said it was time to go.

  Now, he held her hand and pulled her closer, so she was leaning back against the wall and between his now-spread legs, his arms draped over her shoulders.

  “What’re you out here thinking about?” she asked holding him by both wrists.

  “I was thinking about how tomorrow isn’t promised,” he said.

  Jada turned to look at him.

  “That’s a depressing thought to be having at a party. Why were you thinking that?”

  Something entered his eyes then flitted away just as quickly. Something that he was choosing not to share. Someone he knew, probably?

  Jada was fully aware now of what his brothers were mixed up in. And Ibrahim had implied that even his father might not have completely clean hands. So, when she heard about all the shootings happening around the city, she often wondered whether anyone he knew even in passing might be among the dead. But it seemed too grotesque to ask such a thing, and she wasn’t sure he would acknowledge it if he did know someone who had died. That part of his life and past, he was always very close-lipped about.

  “I was thinking about how Klara can’t work anymore, and …”

  “That’s the old lady we went to visit that time, right?”

  “Yeah. She’s been laid off, and now she can get unemployment, and maybe even SSI, but when I went to see her the other day, I could tell she was still scared. About not working, and what that’ll feel like. She said ‘now, I guess I just wait to die.’”

  Jada listened.

  “And it made me wonder, when had she even lived, y’know? She took care of her husband and kid, her husband died and then she had this crappy job. But even so, losing the crappy job makes her feel like her life is over. I mean, what kind of way to live is that?”