The Moment Before

by Jason Makansi

  “Of course I mean the play,” her mother hissed.

  “Mom, it was all made up. Fiction. As in not real.” She lowered her voice an octave so she wouldn’t draw attention.

  “Don’t bullshit me. That was me up there, wasn’t it? In the dark, ignoring the others, ignoring you and your … your father.”

  Cheryl sensed her mother’s grip loosening and jerked her arm away. “It’s abstraction, Mother. You read into it what you want.”

  “Abstraction my ass, Cheryl Halia Haddad. You think the audience is stupid?” She thumbed her finger toward the rest of the auditorium. “You think your uncles and your grandmother are stupid? You think I’m stupid?”

  “Those people could have been anyone. Not once was it implied they were a family. For all anyone knows, they could have been a husband with his lover, and a wife who didn’t have a clue. Or anyone else for that matter.”

  “But they weren’t,” her mother spat. Paula again gripped her daughter’s arm. “You wrote it, and everyone here knows it. They know your father abandoned us, and now they think I am nothing but a … bitch.”

  “That’s not true, Mother.” Could it be true? Cheryl suddenly wondered. Would that be what people would think? That the older woman was a bitch? Was that the play she had written?

  Her mother jerked up out of her seat as Cheryl’s grandmother approached, drinks in hand. “Let’s go,” she snapped, snatching a drink and spilling some on a chair. Then she turned around to Cheryl. “And, young lady, you’ll be apologizing to your grandmothers, too. And another thing, you’re grounded. Indefinitely. And you can bet your sweet ass I will speak to that Mr. Dalton of yours. Did he approve this?”

  “Mr. Dalton understood the play could have been about anyone.”

  “Sure he did. What about the principal? I’ll speak to him, too, and the school board if I have to.” Her mother turned and headed toward the door. “How could they allow something like this without parental approval? This will not go uncontested, young lady!”

  Cheryl stood up and crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m not going anywhere, Mother.” She no longer cared if others heard her. “Besides, there’s one more play, and I’m required to stay,” she lied. “Everyone who participated is required to stay.”

  Her mother stopped and turned around. “Do I have to drag you out of here?”

  Cheryl stood her ground. “Yes. Do it. Go ahead.” Cheryl waved her arm at the crowd, some who had stopped and stared at the confrontation. “In front of all these people, why don’t you, and go ahead, pull your gun while you’re at it!”

  The dark gleam in her mother’s eyes shone like the glint off a knife’s blade. “If you’re lying about having to stay, I’ll find out.” With that, her mother wheeled around and grabbed Cheryl’s grandmother by the arm and stalked out.

  Cheryl plopped back down into her chair, intending to watch the last play. But when the lights dimmed, she stood, pushed past others who’d taken her family’s seats. Right then, she didn’t care that she was being rude. Once out of the auditorium, she rushed down the hall to the lavatory. Thankfully, it would be empty now. When she walked into the stall, she slammed the door and locked it. Then she sat on the toilet and cried.

  Interlude

  Ya abi,

  I think Mother has gone off the deep end. A play I wrote about not knowing what happened to you got picked to be performed at school, and she went crazy when she saw it. I’m grounded and she says everyone thinks she’s a terrible person. I can’t do anything right.

  And it’s been a while since I’ve written, but something else happened, too. I’m not supposed to breathe a word about it to anybody, which means to you, too. Otherwise, I would have written this earlier. (She would burn my entire journal if she knew I wrote to you!) Mother bought me a gun. A real gun! I’m not even eighteen and I. Own. A. Gun. And I know how to use it safely.

  She still says you abandoned us. But I know you wouldn’t do that. I keep asking her what happened between you two. My friends, knowing you, can’t fathom the idea you disappeared. One girl did say, though, that one day when a friend of hers was little, a neighbor’s husband just up and left the wife, stole off with his secretary, and called his wife from California six months later. I guess everyone has a story, but no one has the truth.

  Papa, once I graduate, I’m getting out of this town, and getting far away from Mother. I will miss Grandma and the uncles, but I won’t miss her. It’s like I can’t do anything right. She gets more and more withdrawn. Maybe that’s what happens when you’re a cop.

  She’s the worst judge of character, too. She thinks my friend Maya is the best thing that happened to me. Remember Maya? Mother thinks she’s got good character because she plays sports so well. She should see what she does on the weekends, especially with her brother Craig. I’m a saint compared to her.

  Guess what? We took a class field trip to Chicago to see the Chicago Symphony Orchestra perform a special concert for school kids. All the boys got into trouble because they were shooting spitballs from the balcony. It was really cool to be on that street with the wall of tall buildings along the lake. The orchestra played some pieces called the Slavonic Dances, but I can’t remember the composer. Then they played the introduction music to that space movie, 2001, but even before the conductor told us, I knew it was from that long piece that you love. The one you used to play in your taxi. The one I couldn’t ever pronounce. When I got home, I told mother about how the orchestra played a piece you and I used to listen to in the taxi. Get this: She wondered why the school was wasting our time on field trips like that.

  Mother says it’s a good thing you’re not around now that I’ve started dating. She says you came from a part of the world where teenagers don’t date. They’re told whom to marry—even if they don’t want to, or even if they aren’t ready. Sometimes they even marry cousins! I’d run away if I had to marry one of my cousins. It doesn’t matter, though, because mom doesn’t approve of any of these boys, either. Anyway, I’m not interested in dating them. They act so stupid in front of girls. Maya’s brother Craig isn’t too bad, but he’s a few years older than me.

  Papa, are you alive? Are you with your family in your homeland? The times I can feel you, feel your presence most, is when I listen to our music or gaze into the sky. The other day, I listened to one of your old tapes, the Marche Slave by Tchaikovsky (the names of these composers are so hard to spell!). It was so sad. You seemed to be speaking to me through the notes. I always feel so much better after I write to you.

  —Yom tani fil jannah bin tak

  10

  Graduation Day, 1982

  High school graduation couldn’t come soon enough. On the day of the ceremony, Maya stopped by Cheryl’s house with a present. Cheryl was just glad her mother wasn’t home as she was always gushing over how great Maya was.

  “What’s this?” Cheryl asked, taking the small package and turning it over in her hands.

  “Open it. I think you’ll like it.”

  Cheryl opened the box and found a framed piece of paper with a single line of calligraphy on it.

  She looked up at Maya.

  “I don’t speak or read Arabic, you know.”

  “I know.” Maya shrugged. “I found a place that would translate the phrase for me.” She laughed. “Of course, I don’t know if it’s right or not.”

  “What does it say?”

  It’s supposed to say ‘Another Day in Paradise’. Like what your father always said.”

  “Yom tani fil jannah bin tak. That’s how he said it sounded in Arabic.” Cheryl gave her a quick hug. “This is great, and it looks antique.”

  “I read you could make paper look old by rubbing coffee into it.”

  “That is so cool! I didn’t know you were into this kind of thing.”

  “There’s a lot everyone doesn’t know about me, other than I’m star of the girls basketball team. Seems that’s all most people want to know.”

  Cheryl look
ed up at her friend. “I really appreciate the gift, Maya, but I didn’t get anything for you.”

  “That’s okay. I just wanted to thank you, for covering the girls’ basketball games for the school paper. It meant a lot to me.”

  Cheryl gave Maya another hug, and this time Maya held on as if she didn’t want it to end, and when she finally did pull away, she hurriedly kissed her near enough to her lips to give Cheryl pause. Maya had never done that before. Not even her cousins did that.

  “Don’t forget about the party,” Maya said awkwardly.

  “Can’t come soon enough,” Cheryl laughed, relieved the weird moment was over. She’d been looking forward to this day, and now that it was here, she couldn’t wait for it to be over. Finally, she was leaving high school behind. And her mother. She’d put all her mom’s insane tantrums and weird behavior about little shit, like the play and the Syria article, behind her. Cheryl would chart her own course from now on. Didn’t matter that Cheryl’s plans for life after high school didn’t extend past the graduation party.

  Craig and his friends, a bunch of twenty-year-old Joliet alums, had arranged a party at an old farmhouse. They figured it’d be an easy way to get a bunch of younger girls drunk and fuck them, Maya had told her. “You know, Craig thinks you’re exotic looking.” Maya swiveled her hips like a belly dancer to prove her point.

  “Whatever that means,” Cheryl said with a laugh.

  “Hell, I don’t know. Ask him. Probably wants you to chant some snake charming shit or something.”

  “I don’t think they have snake charmers in Syria, but I could make something up.”

  “I’m sure as shit he’d have no idea. Anyway, be careful. Don’t get too fucked up with him around. He’s my brother and all, but …”

  “I can take care of myself.”

  Cheryl’s mother warned her, too. If she embarrassed her by being dragged home in a Joliet police car, she’d be grounded the entire summer. “Now look, I know it’s a big day, but use your head. Cops will be everywhere, in your face, up your ass. Don’t even think about driving if you’ve had more than two beers. Call one of your uncles if you or your friends can’t drive. Or better yet, just spend the night at Maya’s.”

  Although Cheryl and Maya had played together when they lived in the same neighborhood, after Maya’s family moved, they drifted apart. It was the high school paper, basketball, and pot that brought them back together during their junior year.

  With Mr. Dalton’s encouragement, Cheryl had begun writing for the school paper. Her mother had given her the usual congratulations when Cheryl came home with the news, but warned that writing about school or local politics was a sure-fire way of getting into or causing trouble. But when Cheryl mentioned that she might cover some school sporting events, Paula was ecstatic.

  “Now there’s a career,” she beamed. “My baby, a sportswriter!” Her mother read everything in the papers about the Chicago Bears, the Bulls, the White Sox, and the Black Hawks. “This will be really valuable experience.”

  “Maya was happy, too. She hopes I’ll get the girls’ basketball team better coverage.”

  “Maya’s a great kid. You should invite her over more often.” I get better grades than Maya, Cheryl thought. And she smokes the same pot I smoke. “You just like her because she plays a sport and is a star athlete.”

  “Playing a sport—or covering sports—is safer than writing about where your father came from. Talk about a losing proposition.”

  “Mother, I wrote one fucking story.”

  “Don’t use that language in this house!”

  “What, you’re the only one who can use that language in this house?”

  “Don’t start with me, Cheryl.”

  “It was one story—”

  “What, you forgot about your ‘dramatic production’ already?”

  Their conversation ended like it always did: Cheryl stomping off. Her mother yelling at her to “Come back here!”

  When she had written her first article for the school newspaper, a creative piece about a boy in Syria who hears classical music for the first time, her mother had pitched a fit. Since her father had told her classical music wasn’t well known in his homeland when he’d grown up, and because her father listened to it, she decided to use that idea as a metaphor for people to be open minded about people in another part of the world. She entitled the piece, “Another Day in Paradise.”

  After that edition made the rounds, Maya approached Cheryl in front of her locker.

  “I read your article. It was really cool.”

  “Glad someone liked it.”

  “Why? Who didn’t like it?”

  “My mom. She really gave it to me. Chewed me a new one.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Cheryl mocked her mother. “Some things you don’t write about, Cheryl, or even talk about in public. One is Jews and the other is Israel.”

  Maya’s brow furrowed. “That’s crazy. You didn’t—”

  “Yeah, makes no sense to me, either. I told her I didn’t write about Jews and Israel. I wrote about a boy in Syria, is all. ‘Same difference,’ she told me. ‘Find something else to write about.’ You’d think she’d be happy. Especially after she accused me of drifting and lacking ambition or direction. And now, when I do something constructive, she has a shit fit and threatens to pull me off the paper. I guess I should have listened, though, because some kid came up to me yesterday and said Syria was the sworn enemy of Israel and America and so if I’m Syrian, I must hate America.”

  “Who cares what some Kike thinks?”

  Cheryl shrugged and said nothing. She hated it when her mother started in on Jews or Blacks or Puerto Rican’s or whoever else she didn’t like that day. As if being Polish was the only thing in the world worth being. And she didn’t want to hear it from Maya, either.

  “Well, you’re a good writer,” Maya said.

  “I love to write. Dalton thinks I’m pretty good at it.”

  “Ugh, that guy’s a pervert. Everyone knows—”

  “He’s OK,” Cheryl interrupted. What’s the deal with everyone about Mr. Dalton, she wondered. Cheryl touched the photo of her dad hanging on the backside of the locker door.

  Maya pointed at the picture. “You know, I remember when your dad used to say, ‘Another day in paradise’ when you all had your backyard picnics in the old neighborhood. I think those were some of the happiest days of my life.”

  Cheryl closed her locker and smiled. She loved that Maya remembered her dad. Whenever anyone else learned the photo was of her father and that he’d disappeared, they would change the subject, usually after an uncomfortable silence. Or they’d just walk away.

  “Everything seemed so much simpler then. Your dad was so generous and fun. My parents were still together—”

  Cheryl remembered that once, after Maya’s parents divorced, they had a long, stoned conversation along the banks of the Des Plaines river about death, divorce, and disappearance. Divorce was bad, Maya said. But they both agreed disappearance was the worst. The not knowing. That was worse than any reality.

  Cheryl arrived at the farm after the obligatory family graduation celebration with her mom, grandma, the uncles and their wives. The keg was set up and quickly became the party’s ground zero. A bunch of guys were already having bottle rocket wars out in the field, scaring the crap out of the cows. Cheryl knew plenty of people there, even if none of them were who she’d call friends, and she was fine standing around alone or making small talk. She poured herself a beer and fended off several boys trying to hit on her. Seemed like even twenty year olds said stupid things when they wanted to get into a girl’s pants.

  Craig was one of them. He was already slurring his words and stumbling when Cheryl arrived, and he seemed to barely recognize Maya when she showed up half an hour later. He kept pawing at Cheryl and pulling her toward the house. Craig amused Cheryl, but she tired of all his talk about his drugs until he couldn’t talk at all because he’d t
aken too many of them. She would make her own decisions about who she wanted to be with—or if she wanted to be with anyone at all. This was one night she wasn’t going to worry about anyone’s expectations but her own. From now on, she would do as she pleased.

  11

  Summer, 1982

  At the end of June, Paula Kabalevsky laid down the law. Cheryl could find a job on her own, apply for a secretarial position on the Chicago police force and ride to work with her, or she could go to community college. But she could no longer spend her days watching Van Halen jump around on the television screen in striped spandex, or Billy Idol sneer at the world while embraced by a girl in a white wedding dress.

  She’d taken to hanging out on her own, reading, writing in her journal, trying her hand at another play. The fact was Cheryl didn’t know what she wanted to do, but she knew she didn’t want to work for the police. Maybe she’d take some community college classes in the fall, maybe study writing, but more than anything, she was simply rudderless.

  So it was on a rudderless afternoon, after refusing all invitations to hang out with friends on the Fourth of July, that Cheryl decided to take a walk. With no particular destination in mind, she headed toward the high school, went under the railroad trestle, past the Amtrak and the commuter station, and just kept going. As she walked absentmindedly through broken glass and beer cans and coke bottles, invisible eddies of wind whipped up fast food wrappers, sending them dancing around her. She flicked her lit cigarette butt at one of the papers, half hoping to set one on fire as she made her way towards the center of Joliet.

  Passing the diner where high schoolers congregated after hours for sodas, ice cream, hamburgers, and French fries, and to exchange nickel bags of pot, grams of cocaine, and to settle scores lingering from the school hallways, she noticed a ‘Help Wanted’ sign with NOW! scratched beneath the printed lettering, hanging in the window. Why not? she said to herself.