The Night Counter

by Alia Yunis

  “But Miriam’s life turned out so lovely,” Scheherazade said a little too effusively.

  “Miriam was the first sign that our marriage was to be dark,” Fatima remembered. “Ibrahim blamed himself for her being a girl, for her foot, for not being as pretty as Marwan’s Laila. I used to tell Miriam not to feel bad about how Ibrahim always looked away from her because he didn’t want her to see his pity, especially after we took her to surgeons who only did more damage and she had to be content with their ‘We’re sorry’ I told her we were just lucky she wasn’t born with polio or something like smallpox because the doctors would have probably killed her. And Hala told her it wasn’t her fault, and she was going to become a doctor and fix the mess the other doctors made.”

  “Sometimes just the implication that there is fault to be had makes one feel fault,” said Scheherazade, who was beginning to sympathize with Miriam despite herself.

  “Yallah, she survived.” Fatima sighed.

  “Survived what?” Scheherazade said.

  “Life, which is all I hoped for all my kids after—” Fatima stopped herself.

  “After what?” Scheherazade prodded. But Fatima only looked straight ahead.

  “Ah, so now you have learned my trick of stopping at the most tantalizing part,” Scheherazade said. “Come now, do not save all the good stories for the last night. After what?”

  Scheherazade dipped her hands into the scented bathwater and massaged Fatima’s temples and neck to relax her into continuing.

  “When I was a mother with Lena, people used to say I was too old to know what was going on with her,” Fatima said. “When I was with Laila and Miriam and Hala, everyone said I was too young to know what I was doing. I was not the right mother at any age for any of my children.”

  Fatima dunked her head under the water and cupped her shriveled breasts.

  “Maybe if Miriam had drunk from me.” Fatima sighed. “She and Hala are the only ones I did not breast-feed because of the war—I had to work. All the factories were in need of women. But Ibrahim didn’t want me doing disrespectful work for a woman. So I started at the White Castle. I was one of the first women ever to work there. I’d make hamburgers, two up and six across.”

  “Was White Castle nicer than New Castle?” Scheherazade asked.

  “There was a man in New Castle willing to marry Miriam, and I think she was grateful for that,” Fatima said.

  “Gratitude is a huge part of love,” Scheherazade agreed.

  “I was half Miriam’s age when I married the first time, so she was probably doubly grateful,” Fatima said. “She wasn’t like Lena with a big job to give her status. Just a secretary at Ford. I’m sure people thought she would be able to marry an older man, like I had the first time. But I told Ibrahim whatever man he could get for her, please don’t let him be too old. So she married someone ten years younger.”

  “Smallah, smallah.” Scheherazade winked.

  “Ibrahim told Joseph Yusef that after he finished with Vietnam he would get him a good job at Ford,” Fatima continued, ignoring Scheherazade’s wink. “But he didn’t live, and Detroit was all strikes and layoffs in any case. Still, I told her to come home. Amir and Rock were close in age. But she said Joseph Yusef was too important to her to leave the town where he had planned on growing old.”

  Scheherazade crushed the lavender leaves in her hands to release their oil and then massaged the oil into Fatima’s scalp, in between the stubs of purple hair.

  “That son of Miriam’s is azeem, an amazing house fixer,” Scheherazade noted. “Perhaps you should give Miriam the house. Her son is a hundred percent of Deir Zeitoon, the only grandchild you have like that.”

  “A Jewish man really actually does like Miriam, Soraya told me, and inshallah Miriam will marry him,” Fatima replied.

  “Inshallah?” Scheherazade said, massaging Fatima’s neck.

  “She has spent almost her whole life without a man. Alone is not good,” Fatima said. “But she can’t go to Lebanon with a Jew for a husband.”

  “Y’khsara, too bad,” said Scheherazade, crushing the rose petals to release the last of their aroma. “When my husband was in charge, from even long before the caliphs ruled with faith in God and man, Jews lived among us as wazirs, merchants, and bankers, and oh, the poets among them that flourished in Andalusia.”

  “That was before the European ones took Palestine,” Fatima reminded her. “But it was through a Jew that I met Amir’s Tiffany. The wrath of Israel is not all that we have received from them. Certainly they did not bring me the worst wrath I have known.”

  Before Scheherazade could ask what wrath she was speaking of Fatima closed her eyes and dunked her head under the water, which caused half of it to splash onto the marble floor.

  Fatima came out of the water long enough to say, “Don’t let my cane get wet. I’m leaving that to Miriam.” She plunged back under the water.

  AMIR WAS REHEARSING with his thowb, beard, and script when he heard Fatima splashing in the bathtub, apparently having a water fight with herself. At least she was awake. Her long sleep had bothered him. She had even refused to wake up when he had shouted that the Lions were on TV Maybe he had said the wrong animal. Maybe he should have said the Tigers. She also had missed a whole cycle of pills.

  He stepped out to the front lawn to water it and saw Soap Boy’s newest SUV On the upside, he had heard at his own audition today that the soap might be killing off his ex next week. He was a lousy lover, even as an actor.

  Before he could give his former lover’s wheels the finger, his cell phone rang.

  “Yeah, Tiff, tomorrow’s the big day-o,” Amir shouted into the cell phone over the sound of the hose. “If things go well, I might need you to come over and make my grandmother take her pills and get her all calmed down. She digs you, dude. You’re the best beard ever.”

  Amir put the cell phone away and heard more splashing from inside the house. He began watering the fig tree to drown out the sound of Fatima drowning in insanity. Why were his lavender bushes so picked over? Where had all the rose petals gone?

  He looked up at the bathroom window, where Fatima’s solo water fight had only gotten louder. Jesus Christ.

  “Excuse me,” said a little female voice behind him. Startled, Amir turned around and sprayed a very tan, skinny string of a girl. She jumped back as he turned off the water.

  “Kid, I’m sorry,” Amir said. “You caught me off guard.”

  The tiny thread of a person started shivering. Amir released the shawl around his neck and wrapped it around her tightly.

  “Really sorry, kid,” he said. “I almost washed away all that bronzer.”

  He thought it was funny, but she only sneezed. “That’s just my color. It doesn’t wash off,” she said with an accent Amir couldn’t quite place.

  “That’s cool,” Amir said. “Let me get you some dry clothes. You shouldn’t talk to strangers, but I’m safe.”

  “That’s a pretty dress you’re wearing,” the girl said through chattering teeth. “But I’ll be fine with these clothes. I’m very near where I have to be, I’m sure. Maybe a tenth of a mile away at the most. In fact, I thought this was the house.”

  The girl reminded him of someone. “Who are you looking for?” he asked. “I know the neighborhood pretty well.”

  “Fatima Abdullah,” the girl chattered. “She should be pretty old. Let me just look at the address again.”

  She sneezed and dug into her tiny purse, which Amir noticed had a Hello Kitty sticker. Then he placed the accent: Minnesota. The Hello Kitty envelope from Many Happy Police.

  “Dude, you’re the girl that sent the letter yesterday,” Amir said. “Sorry, we haven’t had a chance to read it yet.”

  “Oh,” she said as she looked up at the splashing water. “Well, I suppose she doesn’t need to read it anymore since I’m here and stuff.”

  Amir offered her his hand. “I’m Amir, her grandson.”

  “I’m Decimal, her great
-granddaughter,” she explained.

  “From who?”

  “I’m Brenda’s,” Decimal said.

  It took Amir a couple of seconds to place his cousin Brenda on the family tree. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “My mom says she is quite the … I’m just glad she and Aunt Hala sent you to visit. I was beginning to think nobody was going to respond to my e-mail.”

  “Nobody sent me,” she said. “This is a 100 percent surprise.”

  “She could use a pick-me-up,” Amir said. “Come on in. I’ve got a Mickey Mouse sweatshirt to keep you warm. I got it when I played Pluto at Disneyland. Don’t say that’s not real acting—it was one tough gig. How about some of Fatima’s kibbe?”

  “Kibbles?” Decimal grimaced. “Isn’t that dog food? I’m allergic to dogs, so I don’t think I’d do any better with their food. No offense, you know.”

  Jesus Christ, the girl didn’t even know what kibbe was or, more important, that Fatima had been the best kibbe maker in greater Detroit. Amir opened the front door for Decimal, and the girl clutched her Hello Kitty bag a little more tightly as they went inside.

  IN THE NEW SUV, Sherri Hazad turned to her partner.

  “Maybe the girl’s an accomplice,” she said. “Did you see how he waited for her? He kept watering the fig tree just to give himself an excuse to stay out.”

  “Could have been a signal to the girl as to where to stop.” Sherri Hazad’s partner nodded.

  “Or he might have been using that loud-ass water hose to make sure no one heard his phone conversation. I caught the words ‘the big day tomorrow,’ and that syncs up with what the grandmother was saying.”

  “It’s a world we don’t really know,” Sherri Hazad’s partner admitted. “Anything’s possible. Good work your first year out.”

  “Now what?” she asked.

  “You tell me,” he said. “I want to see how you handle this. And get that phone tap fixed so they can actually talk to each other.”

  FATIMA STOPPED DUCKING in and out of the water when Scheherazade finally held her still enough to hear Amir’s knock on the bathroom door.

  “Sounds like she’s got company,” she heard a muffled female voice say from the other side of the door. “I could come back later.”

  “No, you’re the company,” Amir said to the other voice. “You’ll make her day.”

  “Okay,” said the female voice.

  “Amir, is that Tiffany?” Fatima shouted. She whispered to Scheherazade, “Go get my hearing aid and faraway glasses.”

  “There isn’t enough time,” Scheherazade said.

  “I said go,” Fatima shouted, and shooed her toward the bathroom window.

  “We’ve got company, Tayta,” Amir shouted. “You might not want her to go.”

  “Company?” Fatima yelled. They never had company unless it was someone Fatima had invited to dinner to marry Amir.

  “She’s family,” Amir replied.

  Fatima heard a girlish giggle and sat up as straight as her body and the bathtub let her. Of course, if Tiffany agreed to marry Amir, she wouldn’t be company. She’d be family. Who knew Tiffany could giggle? Charming giggle, at that.

  “I read in National Geographic that everyone’s like family in Lebanon,” the girl outside said. “That’s cool.” Yes, it was. It meant she understood Deir Zeitoon. She would teach him to love the house and Deir Zeitoon.

  Fatima inhaled the scents from the water. She would call Ibrahim tonight and finalize it. It would be the last time she spoke with him before what could at this point only be a quick death, a death she was, al-hamdulilah, fully prepared for. She hoped he had paid the phone bill so they wouldn’t get cut off again.

  “What does ‘Tayta’ mean?” the female voice asked.

  “Grandma in Arabic,” Amir answered.

  “You can call me Tayta, too,” Fatima shouted out to them.

  “Well, of course she can,” Amir shouted back at her. “Now come out.”

  Fatima put both arms on the tub rails to hoist herself up. It did not work, nor did it on the second and third tries. “Yukhrub beit el-shetan,” Fatima swore. “Curses on the devil’s house.”

  She splashed back into the tub.

  “Tayta, what’s going on?” Amir called out.

  “I can’t get out of the tub,” Fatima shouted back.

  “Oh,” Amir said. “Well … do you want me to come get you out?”

  Fatima would rather have eaten Millie’s cabbage rolls 101 times over than have her grandson see her naked. But she had no choice. “Okay, but you alone,” she said. “She is family, but still …”

  “What?” Amir said as he tentatively opened the door.

  He averted his eyes as he came toward the tub and stretched out his arms to her. She took his hands and then averted her eyes, mainly because she couldn’t stand to see him see her naked, especially in that ridiculous beard.

  “Yallah,” Amir encouraged her. “One, two, three.”

  Amir pulled her up by the arms, the beard tickling the back of her neck. But she slipped out of his grasp and splashed away.

  “Jesus Christ, I don’t know what happened,” Amir said. He looked away so that she could reposition herself without him seeing anything.

  “In all those physics classes you must have studied more than the stars,” Fatima said, trying to sit up straighter. “You made a bathtub that has too much gravity to escape.”

  “It’s not your weight,” Amir said, eyes still averted. “You’re slippery. How much bath oil is in there?”

  “It’s all from the garden,” Fatima replied, knowing that the floral scents were far better than the smell of aging flesh that her friends and husband in Detroit emitted and that she could only assume she also had developed.

  If Amir couldn’t get her out of this bath tonight, this would be where her flesh would die. And it would be in Amir’s arms, as she had wished for the last three years. But if she was going to freeze to death, wouldn’t that already have happened in Detroit, where freezing was a more natural cause of death than it was in Los Angeles?

  “Try again, habibi,” Fatima commanded. “Pretend, like you do for your hobby, that you are big and strong.”

  Amir’s eyes opened to a narrow squint, just enough to see through his lashes. He took his place in back of her. “Give me your hands again.”

  “Get that thing away from me,” Fatima said, and flicked the beard away.

  “Thanks for reminding me,” he said. “I need it to stay fresh.” He took off the beard and stuck it outside the door. “Kid, hang on to this for me.”

  “Okay,” the girl said from outside. “Is there anything I can do?”

  Fatima vigorously shook her head.

  “No, thanks, honey,” Amir said, and closed the door. “This water better not make the dye in my thowb run. Yallah. Wahad, tinan, talata.”

  Fatima was excited enough to hear him counting in Arabic that she made her best effort to defy gravity, but she found herself letting go again.

  “Okay, Tayta, I’m going to have to look at you so I can get this right,” Amir said.

  Fatima closed her eyes as he opened his beyond a squint.

  “Are you sure you don’t need some help?” the girl called out.

  “You can’t do it alone. She’s practically family,” Fatima said, giving in. “Let her in. I don’t want you looking at me any longer than necessary.”

  Amir opened the door. Fatima, even without her faraway glasses, could see that this person was much too small to be Tiffany. Amir’s beard, which dangled from her hand, was almost half her length.

  Fatima instinctively covered her drooping breasts. The girl sneezed and pulled a Kleenex out of her purse. Fatima thought she could make out a cat on the purse.

  The girl sneezed again. “I’m sorry,” she said, and blew her nose. “I think I’m allergic to all those plants floating in your bathtub.” It was such a little girl’s voice. The awful letter’s cat stationery came back to Fatima. No, please. No.
r />   Fatima slipped out of Amir’s grip and into unconsciousness.

  “Tayta, Tayta,” Amir said. “Stay with me.” Amir bent down to get Fatima out, and Decimal came to his side to help.

  Amir patted her hand to revive her and waved some of the lavender leaves in front of her nose. Fatima opened her eyes. “I still have one day, and I need it,” she said. “So make the girl go away.”

  “One day? She’s your great-granddaughter,” Amir said. “Her name is—”

  Fatima held up her hand.

  “She’s not ga—” Amir said.

  “Just as worse,” Fatima interrupted. “Make her go away.”

  Amir looked at Decimal. “Go eat some kibbe or something until I come down. Take the beard with you.”

  The girl bowed her head. “I’m sorry if I’ve inconvenienced you, Mrs. Abdullah, ma’am,” she said, and closed the door behind herself.

  Fatima crossed her arms in front of her breasts in defiance as well as modesty. She waited in silence, shivering in the water until he took her hands again. “I had no idea you could be so cold, Tayta,” Amir said.

  “The water is freezing,” she replied, pretending not to understand him.

  Amir heaved with all his strength, once again expecting her to slip away. But this time Fatima rose out of the water like magic. Then he found his hand landing on a pile of his best Ralph Lauren Collection. Amir wrapped Fatima in a big blue towel and ran his hands up and down her to warm her.

  “I didn’t even know I’d brought the good towels up here,” he said. “I thought I’d put them in your room.”

  “Where’s my robe?” Fatima asked.

  Amir saw the tattered pink threads hooked onto Fatima’s cane, which stood in the opposite corner from the bathtub. “It’s over there with your cane,” he said, looking at the distance between the cane and the bathtub. “Tayta, how did you get in the bathtub?”

  Fatima merely gave him her arm so that he could guide her back to the room.