When my drowsiness gets so bad that I can’t ignore it anymore, I go to bed. When my head hits the pillow, I realize that I never searched for the knight and maiden picture for Peter’s art project. I want to go to Google Images to see if I can find a really nice picture. Dad had ambushed me with his (now mine) obsession with perfect teeth, and I totally forgot about the future love of my life. I haven’t asked Lisa yet, but I bet she already dug out her mom’s art book and will have the picture ready for Peter the next time we see him. I feel the burn of jealousy in my heart right before I enter a dream state.
I wake up at five to eat breakfast. My parents are rubbing their eyes and I’m yawning. I remember how normal Saturdays transpired. I’d wake up late and have brunch, but now I have to wake up early to fill myself up. Mom makes hardboiled eggs, toast, and sliced tomatoes. I liberally sprinkle the eggs with salt and pepper. I eat slowly, nervous about my upcoming driving lesson. Then I pace around the house, exploring the sunken living room, cozy family room, and airy dining room. I inspect ballerina figurines and snow globes as if I’ve never seen them before. Not knowing what to do with myself, I revisit old territory … my own home.
My feet lead me to the master bedroom. Mom washes up for prayer, dons her praying clothes (headscarf, gown, and socks, the most clothes I’ve ever seen her wear), and prays Fajr, the early morning prayer. She stands on her praying mat, which is laid down in a corner of her bedroom. She bends down, places her forehead on the floor, and murmurs all the prayers in Arabic. I don’t know what she’s saying. I learned the prayers by rote when I was a kid, and then forgot them. Mom prays a few times a week (not the five times a day required) and I usually don’t see her in the act, so it feels like a treat to watch her pray this morning.
“I prayed for your safety at the end of it,” Mom says, kissing me on the forehead after she’s done.
I look at her face, which seems so old-world when it’s surrounded by a cotton puff of fabric. She then unwinds the scarf from her head and her dark hair tumbles down. Now I recognize her.
“I think I’ll be okay,” I say.
“Not with that man.”
“Why don’t you two ever get along?”
“You have to ask that?” she says, rolling her eyes.
I shouldn’t have asked, because I know the way things are between Mom and Grandpa. Feeling too old for cartoons, I watch The Brady Bunch on TV Land. There’s something comforting about really old TV shows—the innocence, the simplicity. Mom sits watching with me, wearing a leotard, and then she goes to the family room to do her stretching.
I hear a crash outside and slowly get up. Grandpa crashed into our mailbox. It’s bent but not totally out of the ground. This is the fifth time he’s hit our mailbox. Dad never gets mad at him, but Mom’s frustrated at having such an inept father-in-law. “Can you park his car for him?” Mom has asked Dad many times over. But Dad thinks Grandpa needs to feel independent and confident about doing things on his own.
“Azizi,” Grandpa says, kissing me on both cheeks.
Grandma comes in with her billows of Shalimar perfume and a floral headscarf. She sits on the sofa, immobile as she watches the morning news. This is her cue for sending us off, just me and Grandpa. Holy crap.
“I’ve never caused an accident,” Grandpa says in his raspy voice. “You’re in good hands. I’m not like the infidels around me … people in Miami don’t know how to drive.”
Yeah, he’s never caused an accident. He only knocks things down and doesn’t know how to park. It’s true that Miami drivers are very random, making inappropriate U-turns and doing other crazy things, but I’d rather be with any other Miami driver than him. I’m willing to have a taxi driver teach me how to drive, even though around where I live, the taxi drivers aren’t too far off from Grandpa’s level of poor visual acuity and atrocious reflexes.
I tremble as I walk outside and get into his gigantic car. The inside smells of a pine air-freshener hanging off the rearview mirror, and Grandpa’s aftershave. A necklace with a charm that has Allah’s name in stylized Arabic swings from the rearview mirror also. May Allah protect me in this endeavor, I silently pray. Mom looks through the living room window. She looks pained that I’m going to this lesson with a maniacal driver. Why oh why couldn’t Dad have finished his lessons with me? Now I’m stuck with someone who’s not only lethal, but who talks and talks and has a mind stuck in the 1950s.
Grandpa glides down the driveway, and someone has to brake sharply behind us since he pulled out too fast. I close my eyes and open them to see that we’re heading off to a major street that isn’t so busy since it’s early in the morning. I see dark skid marks on the road. That sight makes me more nervous, because it looks like a car made several crazy swerves before stopping, possibly from a car accident or wet road conditions. I hope to never cause skid marks like that.
A girl is walking on the sidewalk wearing a cute little pink dress. “She’s dressed like a prostitute,” Grandpa says.
I feel insulted. I have the exact same dress. I wore it to school several times since last year, but never around Grandpa. It hits mid-thigh. For shame. I don’t have a pimp and I’m not an entrepreneur, so there goes his prostitute theory.
“I’m so glad you don’t dress like that. You’re so clean.”
My nerves are effervescing. I don’t know if I should laugh or yell at him to be quiet. We have a polite conversation during the rest of our journey, even though I poke and prod him a little bit.
“So, Grandpa, these American prostitutes seem to upset you,” I say.
“They don’t know how to dress,” he says. “Then they go out and people can’t help but look.” His face is so sour that he could compete with a bag of lemons.
“This is a free country. I know you don’t like it, but they can dress like prostitutes if they want to. So how come you and Grandma came here?”
“Because it’s a free country. I loved Syria, but you know it has problems.”
Yeah, like war and bombs. I don’t really worry about that stuff—not once have I ever thought that a grenade would land in my backyard. Mom talks about what her parents escaped in Iran—they didn’t stick around for the Iranian Revolution and the Iran-Iraq War—and Dad shakes his head anytime the news comes on about bombings in the Middle East. We’re all lucky to be in America, land of the free. And not only can women dress the way they want, but Grandpa has the freedom to call these women every name in the book. Of course he has only one word for them: prostitutes.
“You say that there are no other Muslims at your school,” Grandpa says.
“There’s some new girl, Shakira, who I told you about,” I say halfheartedly.
“Ew! So she is Muslim. Maybe I met her parents at the mosque.”
“She just moved from Orlando.”
“Are you friends with her?” he asks.
“No, she’s not friend material,” I say.
“You should be friends with her.”
“I’m not going to be her friend just because she’s Muslim, Grandpa. There are other reasons to be somebody’s friend, you know.”
“All right, all right.”
Grandpa takes me to a shopping plaza that’s empty since all the stores open up at nine on Saturday. We have an hour to kill until any of these restaurants, dry cleaners, and office supply stores unlock their doors.
“You’re going to do exactly what I tell you to,” Grandpa says.
I swallow a lump in my throat. “Okay,” I agree.
“Get out and switch places with me.”
We do just that. I’m in the driver’s seat and place both hands on the steering wheel, which feels foreign in my hands. I might as well have a snake in my grasp. It has been months since Dad took me for a driving lesson. The lack of practice and experience makes me nervous behind the wheel.
“Lo
ok at the gears,” Grandpa says. “R is for reverse, D is for drive, P is for park … ”
Now he’s talking to me like I’m an idiot. I already know this stuff.
“Press on the brake pedal now,” he orders.
The car is in park, so I do what he says.
“Press on it hard!”
“I am.”
“Now gently press on the gas.”
The engine revs up.
I change the gear to Drive. I’m driving. I look at the speedometer and see that I’m going ten miles an hour.
“Stop!” Grandpa says.
I press on the gas by accident and shoot forward a few feet, but then I find the brake pedal to the left.
“Turn the corner!”
The parking lot of the shopping plaza is turning into an L, so I have to turn right. I slow down and do as he says. It feels so cool to be back behind the wheel. Grandpa might be a horrible driver, but he’s a pretty good teacher. Sure he’s impatient and yells a lot, but I can tolerate that.
A light bulb forms on top of my head. I never took pictures of myself behind the wheel during Dad’s lessons. Why not take one now?
“Grandpa, can you take a picture of me with my cell phone so that I can show all my friends?” I ask.
“What do you mean?” he asks. “People can take pictures with their phones?”
I demonstrate by taking a picture of the store in front of us. He frowns as he wraps his mind around what I’m showing him. “You just watch the screen and press the button in the middle,” I instruct.
“Fine,” he grunts. I give him my pink BlackBerry Pearl and he gets out of the car, steps a few feet away, and holds up my phone. The window is down and I smile a large, braces-free smile. I might as well smile as much as possible before I have a mouth full of metal, ceramic, or plastic.
He snaps my picture. My hand caresses the steering wheel as if I own the car and I’m mistress of the roads. And then something happens. The car starts rolling forward.
“Grandpa!” I scream.
“Use the brakes!” he says, running after me in slow motion.
My foot finds the gas instead and I keep going forward. I want to cry. There’s another L in front of me and I make another right turn, and then I calm down enough to find the brake pedal. I slam on it, not with a light foot this time.
“Park the car!” Grandpa yells.
With jellylike fingers I park the car. I get out and we switch places. He seems less angry now that he’s in the driver’s seat. I look at the picture he took. I look so cute. My face is slimmed down, my smile is bright, and my hair is pretty since it’s not a humid day. Maybe I should show the picture to Peter. Will he even care or will he proclaim how cute I am? My heart hammers manically thinking about him. My stomach growls, trying to compete with my daydreams of Peter. Peter. Hunger. Peter. Hunger. Peter wins, because instead of daydreaming about lavish meals and heaping platefuls of food, I think about the bow of his lips, the golden strands in his hair where the sun has bleached it, the smooth lines of his neck, and his green eyes that have a touch of brown on the outer rims.
I’ll definitely show the picture to everyone at school, since not everyone my age knows how to drive yet. Maybe Dad will give me my own car, and then I’ll get to park it in the student parking lot. I want a Mercedes. The least I can get is a cute little VW Beetle.
When I get back home, Grandma and my parents are watching Dr. 90210. Some lady just had a fresh boob job and all her girly bits are blurred out. I think Dad would jump at the opportunity of having his own cosmetic dentistry show. I can just imagine it—with his thick, dark hair swept to the side, maybe highlights (like the ones Dr. Rey has), and a new suit everyday. Then the cameras would come into our house. Mom is the pretty, thin wife. I’m the winsome only child.
“He filled out those pancakes,” Grandma comments. It always seems weird when she talks about modern things, because with her head covered she looks like an immigrant fresh off of an airplane. But Grandma curses—dropping F bombs occasionally—and even nudges me when cute guys pass by us, provided that Grandpa isn’t around with his constant disapproval of Amriki behavior. Go Grandma.
“Good job,” Mom says.
“He’s an excellent doctor,” Dad says.
“Why are you watching this show?” Grandpa asks, frowning. “What is this? That woman looks naked.”
“Her wickedness is covered,” Grandma says.
“Change the channel. Almira can’t see such things.”
I cross my arms, angry that Grandpa thinks I’m some little kid who can’t watch Dr. 90210. It isn’t pornographic at all. All the nasty body parts that Grandpa wants to shield me from are pixilated into blurriness. He’s such a censor nazi. When I was a kid, if Grandpa stayed over at our house, he’d never let me watch horror movies. He wouldn’t let me see The Sixth Sense or Poltergeist. He says infidels will corrupt my mind. He’s never let me have any fun.
“Almira will drive just as good as I do!” Grandpa thunders during the commercials.
Oh God, I don’t want to drive the way he does at all, but I smile anyway. I show my parents the picture of me behind the wheel and Dad grabs my phone to email the picture to himself, so that he can print it out for memories. I feel so proud of myself, so grown up.
Lisa calls and she wants to go to the mall. I say sure. I’m all hyped up after my successful driving lesson.
Maria is a junior, with her own car, so she drives us. She has a convertible, and we feel very sophisticated with the top down and the wind blowing through our hair. Maria doesn’t have much movement in her own hair, since it’s in a ponytail slicked back tightly with gel.
The only unpleasant thing that happens during the drive is when some gross truck drivers honk their horns and holler at us. We can’t hear what they’re saying, but I know it isn’t anything good. Maria extends her middle finger at them. Lisa and I look at each other and then do the same.
The rest of the time we’re checking out guys. Miami has great-looking guys. I haven’t traveled too extensively, but I feel that I might be in the best-looking city in the world, which means that I have to work hard to match the status quo. I pat my stomach. Yes, it’s still decreasing.
“He looks like a senior I know,” Maria says when a guy with very broad, muscular shoulders drives by us.
“That guy looks like Orlando Bloom!” Lisa yells in my ear.
We turn to look. Maria gets distracted and comes too close to the car in front of her. “Watch out!” I yell.
We get to the mall all in one piece. First we go into a beauty supply store and Lisa buys something called Fierce Pout that promises bee-stung lips. “I’m going to look like Angelina Jolie with this,” she says.
Maria and I roll our eyes. I purchase clear lip-gloss and Maria buys several lip liners and eyeliners. Sometimes Maria puts on a thick swipe of eyeliner as if she’s Amy Winehouse. Lisa loves makeup and wears it occasionally, while I only wear it sometimes. At least none of us looks scary, like the woman who keeps pressing us about a free makeover. She looks gruesome with frosted blonde hair, bubble gum pink lipstick, and purple eye shadow.
“I’ll make you look beautiful,” she says. “You won’t regret it.”
The three of us giggle and go next door to buy clothes. I pick out some shirts that better suit my slimmer physique. I wonder what will happen after Ramadan ends. Will I gain the five pounds that I’ve managed to lose? I’m thinking about exercising with Mom so that the weight won’t come back on. It seems like a horrible prospect, waking up early or staying up late to exercise, spending time with my hot mom who will make me do all sorts of impossible contortions to match her awesome body.
Lisa picks out a blue satin dress from a rack. “Do you think Peter will like me in this?” she asks.
I can feel the skin droop
off of my face as I frown. I force myself to smile weakly, so that I won’t give away my true feelings. “I don’t think so,” I say. “The fabric is too shiny.”
“Yeah, you’re right.”
I pick an irresistible lavender dress for Parent Night and try it on. “You’re smokin’,” Maria says.
“Thanks,” I say.
“That dress is great for your coloring,” Lisa says.
There’s a mirror attached to the outside of the dressing area. My flip-flops are off and I’m walking around barefoot, twirling around. I look slender in the dress. Even my legs aren’t as canklelike as usual. I like what Ramadan is doing to my body. What a shallow sentiment, since it’s such a holy month, but I’m fifteen years old and I forgive myself for thinking this.
As I’m admiring myself, someone floats into my vision. Sultry eyes and lots of thick hair swim behind my reflection in the mirror.
“Shakira,” Lisa whispers to us.
We all turn around. It’s her. She’s wearing a pink sweater, short skirt, and matching pink ballet flats. Her pink Chanel handbag swings off her arm. We look at our own handbags, which are Coach, Nine West, and Gap. But why am I feeling inferior over a handbag? Handbags come in and out of style. Still, we dislike her for her beauty, her Chanel bag … and for her sharp tongue, which scorched me the other day.
“Hi Shakira,” Maria mutters.
“Hi,” Shakira says breezily. “Are you all shopping for Parent Night?”
“Yes, and for other things as well,” Lisa says.
“Are you going to wear that dress for Parent Night?” Shakira asks me.
“Yes,” I say.
“It doesn’t suit you at all,” she says.
“Why not?”
“The hem hits the top of your calves and the waistline is at your hips. It’s for someone much taller.”
She’s right. I hate it that she’s right.
“So, we’ll find one in a different size,” Lisa says.
Bestest. Ramadan. Ever. Page 5