That Thing We Call a Heart

by Sheba Karim

  We moved on in history class, but my story refused to die. Up until then, the topics of the day had been who did what during Natasha’s game and whose boobs were in a photo uploaded to #10minutesinheaven. It was my last day of class at Lincoln Prep, but instead of feeling suddenly nostalgic for a high school I’d complained about since I’d enrolled, I spent it hoping Ryan wouldn’t tell people about our crappy kiss. Thankfully, the topic of Ryan and me didn’t start trending. Unfortunately, my Partition story did.

  Right before lunch, a freshman I’d never seen before stopped me and said, “Hey, man, sorry about your uncle getting gassed.”

  “No one got gassed during Partition,” I told him. “You’re thinking of a different genocide.”

  When Sarah Martin asked me outside the cafeteria if it was true my grandmother gave birth to my father in a train full of dead people, I decided to skip lunch. Our newly remodeled library had a nook on the second floor, a quiet corner all the way at the end of the stacks that was flooded with sunlight in mid-afternoon. Farah and I used to hang out there sometimes, leaning against the floor-to-ceiling windows and talking and reading and illegally snacking, basking in the warmth of the sun and each other’s company.

  I hadn’t been here in a while, and when I arrived I found Farah already there, drawing in her notebook. Her drawings were amazing, though she was never happy with them. She’d recently become more experimental with her headscarf; today she’d wrapped it like a turban, except the turban was lopsided. I wondered if I should tell her, or if she intended it that way. With Farah you never knew.

  “Jelly Belly?” she asked, gesturing at the bag of jelly beans tucked between her thighs. Candy was Farah’s comfort food, which meant her parents were probably at it again. They fought a lot, usually about money.

  “No, thanks.”

  If we were still close, I would have asked her if her parents had fought, would have told her about Chotay Dada’s visit and the guy from Victoria’s Secret, described his green/bronze/brown eyes and his scar. Given our current circumstances, I figured I should probably leave her alone, except I still missed her like crazy, and it had already been such a long day. So I sat down next to her, picked up the bag, and searched for my favorite flavors, banana and very cherry.

  “So, our last day of class ever,” I said.

  She ignored my attempt at conversation and kept drawing intently. A train, a face in each window, some bleeding, some screaming, some wild.

  “You heard my story!” I exclaimed.

  “I think even Principal Stone has heard it by now. How come you never told me this tragic tale?” she said, adding a sinister curl to one passenger’s mustache.

  “You never asked.”

  She tapped her teeth with the edge of her pen. “It’s not true, is it?”

  I shook my head.

  “That’s a pretty fucked-up thing to lie about.”

  “I know, but Mr. Blake asked for Partition stories, and he’s been so supportive. I probably got into Penn because of the rec he wrote me. I didn’t want to disappoint him.”

  “Yeah,” Farah conceded. She closed her notebook. Its entire cover was filled with drawings—a dragon playing guitar, scrolling vines and arabesques. “I heard you had to spend ten minutes with Ryan.”

  “Yeah.”

  Farah pulled up her sleeve, started outlining her veins in purple ink. “So what did you do?”

  “We talked.”

  “About what?”

  I knew if I told her the “hair makes a woman” comment, she’d go berserk, so I opted for a lesser evil. “He told me he dated a Sri Lankan girl whose hair smelled like coconuts.”

  “You’re kidding.” She tucked a stray strand back underneath her headscarf and looked at me with her intense, kohl-rimmed eyes, done up like Amy Winehouse’s. Farah made her own kohl, with castor oil and ghee.

  “Did he try to hook up with you?” she asked.

  Lying to my history class—not so difficult. Lying to Farah—really f’ing hard.

  “No,” I said.

  “Really, because I heard you gave him a blow job.”

  “What?” I shrieked, horrified. “Sick! Who told you that?”

  “I made it up.”

  “Why? To test me?”

  She shrugged.

  “What, you don’t trust me?” I replied, indignant.

  “Relax, I believe you. What else did you talk about? I don’t suppose you told him he’s an unkind, overprivileged bully and bigot?”

  “I didn’t tell him off,” I admitted. “But having to spend ten minutes with him left a bad taste in my mouth.”

  Literally.

  Farah furrowed her brow, incredulous. “Did you think it wouldn’t? You know what a jerk he is. Or do you?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Then why did you laugh that day?”

  “Why did you have to sit on that stupid couch?” I countered.

  “Maybe I was tired of having to sit in the back of the bus,” she said.

  “So now you’re the Muslim Rosa Parks? Why does everything have to be political with you? Just because you wear hijab doesn’t mean you have to stop being fun.”

  She sighed. “I don’t want to talk about this right now.”

  Farah could be so self-righteous sometimes, thinking she was better than everyone else. “I’m late for something,” I told her.

  “I guess you better go then,” she said, her voice stiff.

  I gritted my teeth and went hunting for someplace I could be alone.

  Four

  THE MAIN DRAG OF my hometown of Clover Creek was called High Street, several blocks of cute boutiques and restaurants, an Irish pub, a fancy barber, an organic ice cream parlor. This quaint commercial district bordered Clover Creek’s town park, which featured more than fifty acres of grassy fields, leafy woods, babbling brooks, tennis courts, playgrounds, an arched stone bridge, a band shell, and a rose garden. It was the kind of town where crime consisted of bored teenagers knocking down mailboxes, and the residents were generally overeducated and socially conscious, the kind of people who put wheatgrass in their smoothies, campaigned vigorously to keep Walmart out, drove hybrid SUVs, made their kids play soccer and learn Chinese.

  The Clover Creek farmers’ market took place Wednesdays and Sundays in the park’s eastern parking lot, rows of tables displaying the rich and varied hues of earth’s bounty: crisp green heads of lettuce and bloodred beets, jars of golden honey and pink strawberry preserves, goat’s milk soaps and homemade hummus. My mother had sent me here to buy blackberries for my father. He’d never eaten one before he came to America but it was love at first bite. Personally, I found both the strawberry and blueberry to be superior, but there was no accounting for taste. I stopped to sample chia seed pita chips and all four flavors of hummus, and listened to the proprietor Sophie, who, guessing her audience, told me how the hummus had been made from sustainable, fair trade olive oil from small villages in Palestine. I bought the lemony garlic, seven dollars for a small tub, figuring when my mother complained I’d tell her I’d done it to help the Muslims.

  I was on my way to Crowler’s Berry Stand, picking at a chia seed stuck between my teeth, when I saw the guy from Victoria’s Secret. He was at the berry stand, holding a straw bag, its handle decorated with ribbons and seashell strings. A moment later, an elderly woman wearing a hip outfit of black capri leather pants and an embroidered white kaftan-style shirt appeared next to him. One of the fruit stand employees, a bearded man in faded denim overalls, left his post to greet them.

  Our encounter at Victoria’s Secret had been up close, so now I took in the entirety of him: high-top green Converse, jeans rolled up past his ankles, a red plaid shirt with sleeves pushed up to his elbows, thick, tousled light brown surfer hair that swept across his forehead. I was too far away to see his eyes.

  I wanted very much to see his eyes.

  And it happened, like a scene in a rom-com. He turned his head and noticed me standing for
ty feet away. He immediately waved, and then said something to his elderly companion, who looked at me, too.

  I had three choices: run away like a coward, stay still like a fool, or walk toward them like a normal person. My heart pounding, I took one step and then another, painfully conscious of how they were both watching me, wishing I’d put serum in my hair and concealer on my face.

  The guy from Victoria’s Secret bounded forward, closing the distance between us in a moment’s leap.

  “It’s you,” he declared. He seemed so happy to see me that I immediately smiled back, keeping my lips closed, in case there were still seeds in my teeth.

  In the sun, his eyes were flecked with gold.

  “I’m Jamie,” he said.

  “Shabnam.”

  As we shook hands, I could feel his scar beneath my fingers, smooth, slightly raised.

  “What brings you here?” he asked. “I don’t suppose it was me.”

  Did that count as flirting?

  I swallowed, reminded myself to think before speaking. “I came to buy some blackberries for my dad. He loves blackberries.”

  “Blackberries? Let’s see what Farmer C has got.”

  I followed him to the blackberry section. After surveying the fruit, he selected a pint from the center.

  “Come,” he said. “There’s someone I want you to meet.”

  We walked over to the elderly woman, who had resumed her conversation with the man in overalls.

  “Aunt Marianne,” Jamie said.

  She held her hand up, signaling for him to wait. She was wearing a badass turquoise and silver ring that spanned two fingers. After saying something I couldn’t hear that made the farmer burst out laughing, she gave him a clap on the shoulder and turned around.

  There was no confusion about the color of Aunt Marianne’s eyes—an intense, cerulean blue. She had soft cheeks and wrinkles that extended, whisker-like, from the corners of her lips and eyes. Her hair was a shock of white, coiled at the top of her head in a bun held together by a red ballpoint pen.

  “Aunt Marianne, this is the interesting scar girl,” Jamie said. “Her name is Shabnam. We randomly ran into each other. What a coincidence, huh?”

  Interesting scar girl. He’d obviously told her about our awkward encounter.

  “Ah. Coincidence, indeed.” Aunt Marianne’s voice was husky, and strong. She stuck her hands in her back pockets. “Nice to meet you,” she said, though her tone indicated otherwise.

  “Hello,” I replied.

  “Shabnam’s here to buy blackberries for her father,” Jamie informed her.

  “Don’t bother,” Aunt Marianne said.

  “Sorry?” I said, trying not to be intimidated by her brusqueness. Maybe she was only nice to farmers.

  She took the pint of blackberries from Jamie and held them to my face. “Look. Smell.”

  I looked, and I smelled. “I can’t really smell much.”

  “Because it’s too early,” she explained. “They’re not dark enough, and they don’t have the soul of summer yet. You know, blackberry, blackberry, blackberry.”

  I had no idea what she was talking about. “It’s okay, my dad won’t be able to tell,” I said.

  Aunt Marianne made a hmmfff noise, which I assumed was in judgment of my father.

  “Aunt Marianne’s a fruit Nazi,” Jamie said.

  “I’m discriminating,” she corrected him.

  Jamie laughed and kissed her on the cheek, which caused her lips to turn up, a little.

  “Jamie,” she said, “we gotta move.”

  “One sec,” he said. “It’s not every day I get to buy blackberries for a beautiful girl.”

  I swear I almost looked around to see who he was talking about.

  But it was me he was calling beautiful.

  “Hey,” Jamie said to her, “didn’t your pie girl just cancel on you? Shabnam, do you happen to be looking for a summer job?”

  I’d graduated last week and the rest of the summer remained uncertain. I’d been considering getting a job at the mall, but I did not want to work for this woman, who was currently frowning at me.

  “Aunt Marianne owns Andromeda’s Pie Shack, the pie stand in the park?” Jamie continued.

  “I know it.” I’d never had pie from there, but I’d heard people rave about it.

  “As pie girl,” Jaime continued, “all you have to do is open up the shack Monday through Friday at four p.m., and you’re done when the pies sell out for the day. But you have to get there at three thirty; that’s when I deliver the pies. And the shack’s only open for a month, so it’s not a huge time commitment.”

  If Jamie delivered the pies that meant if I took this job I’d see him almost every day. For a whole month.

  “She’d be perfect, don’t you think?” Jamie remarked to his aunt. “Please?”

  Aunt Marianne’s frown deepened, her nostrils flaring as she exhaled sharply, so I was surprised when I heard her say, “You haven’t told her how much it pays.”

  “Twenty-five dollars a day, even if the pies sell out in half an hour, which they sometimes do,” Jamie said. “That cool?”

  “Yeah . . . if that’s cool with everyone else,” I said.

  “All right!” Jamie exclaimed, giving me a high five, which of course I almost missed. “Why don’t you meet me at the shack at three thirty p.m., the first Monday in July. You know where it is?”

  “Yes,” I said. “First Monday in July. I’ll be there.”

  I said goodbye to them, Jamie’s excited grin a marked contrast to Aunt Marianne’s grim expression.

  When I reached home, I realized I had no blackberries, because Jamie hadn’t bought them, and neither had I. But what did it matter, when in the very near future I would have a summer job, and Jamie all to myself, almost every day.

  Five

  ANDROMEDA’S PIE SHACK WAS tucked away in a corner of the park, along a paved pathway that bisected a field of dandelion and clover. It was a small wooden shack with a tin roof and a large checkout window. A portrait of Andromeda took up one whole side. She had a long face, small lips, dark eyes, and tumbling curls. Her face was fading, but someone had recently reinvigorated her hair with gold shimmery spray paint.

  “Won’t you be hot in there?” my mother asked dubiously.

  I would be, but not in the way she imagined.

  We were on a rare family outing. My mother wanted to see my future place of work, and had forced my father to come along. Rivulets of sweat ran down his head, weaving through his ring of hair. It amazed me that despite his eating habits and lack of exercise, he was mostly skinny—with thin limbs, narrow shoulders, and a concave chest—except for his gut, which was so large you wondered how his toothpick legs could support it.

  “We are within walking distance to donuts,” my father said.

  “When I tell you to go for a walk, you refuse, but you’ll walk for donuts?” my mother said.

  “I’d prefer to drive but we left our car at home,” my father answered. “Anyway, I am going.”

  “Dad, if we let you go alone you’ll probably get lost walking home,” I said.

  “Nonsense,” he said.

  “What nonsense?” my mother exclaimed. “You get lost in your own house.”

  “I could have a donut,” I said.

  My mother made a noise of protest, but it was mostly for show, because she loved the donuts, too.

  The town of Clover Creek may have had a cutesy High Street and a lovely park, but the donut shop was its crowning glory. Ye Olde Donut Shoppe used to have blah donuts and bland coffee, and an extremely grouchy and increasingly senile old man behind the register, who’d give you the wrong change and then yell at you for saying he did. Still, it was a town institution, so everyone felt a loss when it suddenly closed the summer before my junior year. For months it lay dark and abandoned, until one night someone even stole the white Ye Olde Donut Shoppe letters, a crime that made the front page of the Clover Creek Crier.

  Then
one day, construction began. When it reopened, it retained its cute Tudor exterior, like a cottage in a Disney Shakespeare village, but instead of bad lighting and a dirt-colored linoleum floor the interior was sleek and modern with a Moroccan flair. The floor was now a warm wood, and next to the glass display case was a long, gray slab counter with red bar stools. The opposite side was lined with wooden tables and red-cushioned benches. Every other window was covered with embroidered red carpet, and over each table hung a ceiling lantern of carved brass and multicolored glass. In the back was a cherry-red CD jukebox, and between the jukebox and the arched hallway that led to the bathroom was a floor-to-ceiling custom-built bookshelf, with a step stool and a sign that said “Ye Olde Book Exchange.” If you looked hard enough, you might uncover a treasure. I’d once found a leather-bound The Complete Works of Jane Austen, and Farah had discovered one of her favorite books, The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera.

  And my God, the donuts. The dough light and airy, gently dusted with sugar, and filled with delicious things like chocolate cream, fresh fruit preserves, custard, and my favorite, Nutella. Rapture at first bite.

  I immediately brought Farah, and it became our hangout. We had our own favorite table, two down from the old Bosnian men who came almost every day to drink coffee and play cards. We soon became friends with the owner, Dino. He was like the uncle you always wished you had, handsome and dignified, even in his tracksuit, with a twinkle in his eyes and a kind word for everyone. He let me put eight Radiohead CDs in the jukebox. I played Radiohead whenever I was there, to the point where Dino once requested the unplugged version of “Creep.”

  “Hello!” Dino exclaimed when I walked in with my parents. “Mr. Qureshi and the Qureshi sisters!”

  “Oh,” my mother demurred.

  “Which one is the younger sister?” I challenged him.

  “Shabnam,” my mother reprimanded, blushing.

  “Where is lemon custard?” my father demanded.