That Thing We Call a Heart

by Sheba Karim

  “Sleep is his, pride is his, the nights are his / On whose shoulder your curls lay tangled,” he recited.

  I shook my head. “I’m not sure I understand.”

  “In this verse, the narrator longs for his beloved but his rival is with her. While the narrator suffers, there is his rival, in high spirits, sleeping proudly next to the beloved, whose curls lay tangled across his shoulder. It is grammatically vague as to whether the beloved is a man or woman.”

  I hadn’t expected my first verse from a ghazal to be sexy.

  My mother’s shadow fell between us. “What are you two doing?” she asked.

  “Dad was telling me about ghazals,” I said.

  “Ghazals?” my mother repeated. “He can talk about ghazals after he mows the lawn.”

  “Later,” I said to my father, and followed my mother inside.

  She was reorganizing the drawers in the bottom of the large chestnut bookcase in the den. My mother was a full-time social worker for a domestic violence advocacy nonprofit, helping women obtain benefits and other services, but she also spent her weekends working: cooking, wiping, folding, sweeping, washing. She did things fathers normally do, like climb ladders to sweep away cobwebs near the roof of the house. She wasn’t able to relax if she hadn’t completed her mental to-do list for the day. But, even when on her knees scrubbing, my mother exuded an ethereal beauty, with her enormous, fawn-like eyes, creamy skin, and elegant neck, a Pakistani Audrey Hepburn. She worked the hardest of the three of us but still looked like she could feel a pea twenty mattresses below.

  “You want some help?” I asked.

  “You can sit and talk to me while I work,” she suggested.

  That’s not what I meant, but I complied, opening a green binder of recipes my mother had torn from magazines. Fennel and honey rack of lamb, pomegranate chicken stew. I didn’t think she’d actually made any of these dishes, probably because my father preferred Pakistani food.

  “So, what is making you so happy these days?” she asked.

  “Why does there have to be a reason?” I demanded.

  “I don’t know . . . it seems a sudden change, that’s all.”

  “I’m happy because I’m done with high school, I like my job, I got into an Ivy League school. Life is good.”

  “And Farah?”

  “What about her?” I said testily.

  “She’s your best friend, but she hasn’t been over here in months. Her parents came to your graduation party but she didn’t. Is everything okay between you?”

  “It’s fine. We’ve both been busy.” I realized how ridiculous this sounded, considering I worked only a few hours a day.

  “It has nothing to do with her wearing hijab?”

  “No.” Why did my mother never stop asking questions? At least if she’d had more kids, she would have had to divide her attention among us. “I gotta go do something.”

  I could tell my mother was upset, but not enough to almost cry. As I stood up, I rolled my eyes at the bookshelf. My mother used this bookshelf for decorative purposes; the only book on it was a copy of the Quran. The other shelves were filled with tchotchkes. My mother liked those ridiculous ceramic and porcelain figurines, the kind you get at Hallmark. She had dozens of them: owls and snowmen and sleds and ponies and kittens and a little cottage not unlike Ye Olde Donut Shoppe and even a giraffe on roller skates. When Farah first came to my house and saw them, she let out a yelp of glee. “I always wondered who bought this crap!” she said, and proceeded to make fun of them until she noticed I’d stopped laughing, at which point she slapped my shoulder lightly, said, “I only joke because I think they’re so awesome,” and moved on to another topic.

  The highest shelf was reserved for my mother’s Precious Moments angels, with their pale white skin, blonde or light brown hair, black teardrop eyes, and feathered wings. One was lying on a fluffy cloud, one was sitting on a silver bench and holding, I kid you not, a rose. They all had the same dopey look.

  There were four in total.

  Four angels. Four miscarriages.

  There was no way. My mother couldn’t be that cheesy.

  Except she totally could. I wanted to barf, but it also made me sad, because my mother once imagined having four kids with a normal man and instead she ended up with my father and me. I frowned at the four lily-white, chaste, dumb-looking angels. I’d never be the daughter/confidante my mother hoped for, but I could be a little nicer.

  “Let’s go see a movie next week,” I said, bending down and kissing her smooth cheek.

  She cupped my neck with her hand, pressing her warm face against mine. “My sweet girl,” she said.

  If she only knew.

  Eleven

  JAMIE LOOKED SO CUTE in a baseball cap. He was wearing it backward, its band fixed with duct tape, his hair fanning out on either side. “How do you do, Morning Dew?” he asked.

  This was his new greeting for me, just as the right side of Mrs. Joan Milton’s bench had become his, the left mine. Only a week together and we already had traditions.

  As he began to peel his orange, I said, “How do you know if an orange has the soul of summer?”

  “Oranges are winter fruits. Season’s over by May. But you will be happy to know the season of your favorite fruit is hitting its peak. They definitely have the soul of summer now. Blackberry pie is imminent.”

  “Great!” I said. I didn’t bother telling him that I was no lover of blackberries, and anyway they now held more meaning to me than any other fruit, in both my real and poetic life.

  “I learned a verse from a ghazal,” I announced.

  Jamie grinned. “I’m all ears, MD.”

  “Sleep is his, pride is his, the nights are his / On whose shoulder your curls lay tangled,” I recited.

  He was quiet, thinking it over, as he skillfully peeled the last of the orange. “What—” he began, but turned his head as if he’d heard something. A moment later, a young Asian kid on a skateboard started to coast down the hill.

  Jamie jumped up. “Hey, man! Can I get a ride?”

  The kid continued down the hill, coming to a slow stop in front of us. He balled his fists against his hips, one shoe scraping the ground, his peevish face sizing up Jamie. “You know how to ride?”

  “Only done it a few times,” Jamie said, “but loved every minute. What’s your name?”

  “Elliot.”

  “Nice to meet you, Elliot, I’m Jamie. I dig your board.” As Jamie extended his hand with his trademark friendly grin, Elliot’s annoyed scowl was replaced by a hesitant smile.

  “How do I know you won’t ride away with it?”

  “I’ll leave her as collateral,” Jamie said, patting my shoulder.

  Elliot looked at me doubtfully, and I bristled. He thinks I’m the prettiest pie wallah in a hundred thousand miles, I wanted to tell him.

  “All right,” Elliot said. “Just for a little bit, though, cuz I gotta get home.”

  “Five minutes,” Jamie vowed. Elliot took Jamie’s place on the bench and we watched as Jamie ran up the hill with the skateboard tucked under his arm like a surfer.

  “Orange?” I offered.

  Elliot made a face. “No thanks. Is he your boyfriend?”

  “No.”

  “Do you like him?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Why don’t you tell him?”

  I wiped the dribble of juice from my chin. “I’m scared,” I confessed.

  “Don’t be a wuss diaper,” Elliot said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “That’s what my dad says about me being scared of the dark.”

  “Oh.”

  Jamie crested the hill with a loud whoop, bent low on the board. He raced past us, disappearing again.

  “Wow,” Elliot said. “Is he always that fast?”

  “Yeah. But he’s also a good listener,” I said.

  “How do you know if someone’s a good listener?”

  “Well, if they ask you questions. If t
hey remember what you say.”

  “What if what you’re saying is really boring? Does he listen then?”

  I was spared further interrogation by the sight of Jamie speeding past us again. He flipped the board in midair and reversed course, taking his back foot off and losing his balance as he tried to slow down. When the board finally came to a stop, he jumped off and bowed.

  I clapped, and Elliot said, with a mix of awe and confusion, “You can do an awesome 180 ollie but you suck at stopping.”

  “What can I say, Elliot? I’m a sucker for the rush,” Jamie said. “Hey, Morning Dew, do you want to try?”

  “Me? No way. I like to keep both my feet on the ground,” I insisted.

  “I could teach how you to stop some time,” Elliott offered.

  “That’d be great!” Jamie exclaimed as he handed the board back. “Let’s definitely definitely do that.”

  As Elliot skated off, he looked back at Jamie twice, petulant kid turned earnest admirer. Jamie was too wired to notice or sit back down. He jumped onto the bench with one foot, switched legs, jumped off.

  “How are you going to definitely definitely do it?” I asked.

  “What?”

  “How are you going to meet up with Elliot if he doesn’t have your info?”

  “With the kid?” He shrugged. “If we’re supposed to hang out again, we will. I don’t understand why people have to schedule everything. Why not see where life takes you?”

  “Don’t you ever plan?”

  “Occasionally. For camping.” He meant it as a joke, but I guessed it wasn’t far from the truth. “You gotta do a little planning. If you want to leave the country, you have to buy a ticket. But when I leave the country, I won’t have a guidebook, or a checklist, or Google where to go next.”

  “But what if you get lost?”

  Good God. I sounded like my mother.

  “That’s the whole point, Morning Dew.”

  The adrenaline rush subsided enough for him to sit down again. “Those guys you see in Clover Creek, the suits walking to the train station in the morning, going to New York, working all day, walking back at night, getting up and doing it again, I could never do it, be some modern-day slave, shackled to an office all day, staring at a computer.”

  “Totally,” I said, though I’d never thought about it much. Other than the fact that my major would be something in the humanities, English, maybe, I had no plan for my life, though when I imagined myself ten years from now it wasn’t in a suit. “Speaking of shackles, what’s the time?”

  It was almost four by the time the pies were laid out in rows behind the glass: cherry, blueberry, the wildly popular chocolate pecan. Outside the half-closed shutter, the park resounded with the joyful titter of birds and the gleeful shrieks of children. Inside, only Jamie and me, standing close together in a narrow band of sunlight.

  He peeled a curl from my sweaty forehead. “What was the verse? On his shoulder her curls lay tangled?”

  As he inched closer, closer, I realized a kiss was imminent. I’d been dreaming about this moment, and now that it was here, I was—

  “Morning Dew,” Jamie said. “You’re shaking.”

  Mortified, I hugged myself, trying to quiet my arms.

  “Are you—”

  Now it was the shutter that trembled, an insistent fist banging against metal. “Hello?” a voice called out. “Are you guys opening up? It’s after four.”

  Jerk.

  “Better not keep him waiting,” Jamie said.

  I’d sold the last pie when the clouds started rolling in, dark, menacing. The humidity rose, my hair with it. There was a rumble of thunder. Parents and nannies packed up their kids and started running. The clouds split open and the rain poured forth, clattering against the tin roof. The few people remaining dashed toward their cars or houses, shielding themselves with newspapers and purses. A gust of wind blew rain into the shack.

  I hoped I hadn’t freaked Jamie out. This was all so foreign to me. My best friend didn’t date, my mother didn’t approve of it. My only guy friends were Ian and Danny, two gay guys too scared to admit they liked each other. Right now my main discussion point on love was the doomed story of the nightingale and the rose.

  It was raining too heavily to walk home. I had two options—sulk over being a hopeless wimp, or dance.

  I put on Radiohead. When “Planet Telex” came on and Thom Yorke sang “Everyone is, everything is broken,” I belted out the words, dancing like Farah sometimes did, head banging till it hurt.

  From the corner of my eye, I thought I saw Jamie. I stopped, gasping for breath. As the spinning world fell back into place, Jamie was part of it, framed by the doorway, a gray wall of rain behind him.

  First he’d witnessed my trembling nightingale act, and now my manic, furious dancing. The only way to make his impression of me any worse was to belch and fart simultaneously, something I’d witnessed my father do once.

  “Please, don’t stop dancing,” he said.

  I coiled my torrent of curly hair into a bun. “I must have looked ridiculous.”

  “You looked beautiful.” He came closer, trailing water through the shack, and asked, “Will you dance with me?”

  It was easy to do anything when it was preceded by beautiful.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “You like Radiohead?”

  “Love them.”

  “Then I’ll pick a Radiohead song in your honor,” he said, but first he took off his Converse and rolled up his jeans even higher.

  “What are you doing?”

  “We have to go outside. The shack’s too small for a proper dance.”

  “But it’s raining outside.”

  He grinned. “Exactly.”

  He set the speakers close to the door, turned the volume up all the way, and with a gasp I realized he’d chosen “Let Down,” my absolute favorite Radiohead song. A sign from fate, if there ever was one.

  He offered me his hand, and I accepted, and we stepped into the rain to the song’s opening strains, electric with promise.

  The rain had thinned to a steady drizzle. I was too shy to move at first, and it was more of a swaying song than a dancing one, but Jamie twirled me around a few times as I laughed, then I did the same to him. I wanted to follow his lead and let myself go, but I was too aware of him, of us, of the mud squishing between my toes, of my T-shirt clinging to my chest. During the musical interlude, he placed his hands on my waist, and I rested mine on his shoulders, and we weren’t moving much anymore, simply looking at each other.

  It was the prom dance I never got to have.

  Jamie brought his lips to my ear. “The hundred thousand waits that / are in your gaze and mine,” he whispered.

  The interlude slowed, and just when it seemed the song might fade out, the tempo picked up, the music started to crescendo, and Thom Yorke ratcheted it up. As he sang an impassioned “and one day I am gonna grow wings, a chemical reaction,” Jamie bent down and kissed me at last.

  I was flying when I got home. I couldn’t stay still, I paced, played “Let Down” on repeat, whirled in circles, lay on my bed kicking my legs and releasing cries of happiness into my pillow.

  In my clandestine celebrations, there was one key element missing. For nearly three years, I’d shared my thoughts, my wishes, my family, with Farah. Being in love was a private matter between two people, but until someone close to you bore witness to it, it didn’t seem as real. I wanted to celebrate it with her, I wanted her to see how happy I was, happier than I’d ever believed possible.

  Until I told her, it wouldn’t feel complete.

  II.

  The Night of Union

  Twelve

  THOUGH CLOVER CREEK HAD a perfectly decent high school, my mother insisted that for my sophomore year I switch to Lincoln Prep, a prestigious private school in a town known for its Wall Street money and Republican voter base. Most students at Lincoln Prep were good looking and good athletes, got good grades, went on t
o join the popular fraternities and sororities on campus. I didn’t fit into the Lincoln Prep mold, and I didn’t have athletic ability or musical or acting talent or gaming skills, or anything else that could be used as social lubricant to gain acceptance by my peers.

  After reviewing the extracurricular options, I attended a meeting of the LGBT/Straight Alliance, which consisted of five students sitting in a circle. I chose a seat next to Ian. He didn’t look like a typical Lincoln Prep student. He was a little darker than me, and had high cheekbones and deep brown eyes that narrowed slightly, wore a cool ring on every finger. I immediately wanted to be his friend.

  “Do I have something on my face?” he asked, and I realized I’d been staring.

  In my nervousness, I said, “Are you half and half?”

  Thankfully, Ian gave me a chance before writing me off as a racist idiot.

  “Are you referring to my ethnicity, or how I take my coffee?” he replied.

  “I’m so sorry,” I told him. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “It’s okay,” he said. “You’re not the first to be curious, though no one’s asked quite like you. My father’s black, and my mother’s Thai. How do you identify?”

  “My parents are from Pakistan.”

  “Cool. But I meant your gender and sexual identity.”

  “Oh. Uh, I’m a female. And straight,” I said, apologetically.

  “Why did you decide to join this group?”

  “Because I don’t have much talent, and most of the kids in this school seem like they’re from some no-acne, fat-free planet, and I needed to join an extracurricular, and I figured this would be the least judgmental,” I admitted. “Sorry—I guess that’s not a good enough reason. Maybe I should go.”

  He grinned. “Nah. It’s a good enough reason for me, and I’m the president.”

  Ian became my first friend at Lincoln Prep. That happened to be the meeting in which the LGBT/Straight Alliance voted to abolish the Straight, but they let me stay.

  Once, after a meeting, this girl Agatha asked me, “Isn’t it boring, to be so normative?”