by Lucy Ferriss
“Miss Hayes,” she said when she’d made out the moving form in the snowbank by the hedge. “Coach Hayes, are you injured?” She knelt. Her clothes, she realized, were torn, her scarf gone. “Can you move? Can you speak?”
The coach’s face was black with ash, bleeding from the right cheekbone. She waved an arm at Afia. “I can’t hear you,” she said. She put a hand to her ear and drew it away. No blood there. “I can’t hear anything!”
Of course. That happened in the bazaar too, people deaf from the explosion. Strength surged through Afia’s limbs. They had to go, now. Shahid had lied. She loved him. She had submitted to him. She wanted to scream not in pain but in grief. If Shahid could harm her, she was lost, lost. And he was a Pashtun, he would not stop. She placed her arms under the coach’s shoulders, pulled her up, dragged her to the car, pushed her into the passenger seat, slammed the door.
Move. Fast. Don’t stop. Shahid could be coming, Shahid was surely coming, following them from the coach’s house, Shahid—oh, Shahid!—would kill them both. You should scare a little easier, he’d said. Her brother, her betrayer. The car’s motor still purred. Afia had been behind the wheel of a car once before, with Gus, in an empty Smith parking lot. Now she found the R on the steering column and pressed the accelerator. The car leaped backward, down the drive, into the street, and hit the curb on the other side before Afia found the brake, thank Allah the brake, and then the D and the accelerator again, and they jerked down the street.
Coach Hayes sat crumpled, her hands against her ears as if the sounds were too loud. Trying to control the steering wheel and the accelerator and the brake, the car bucking and heaving from Campus Avenue to Main Street to Pittsfield Road, Afia glanced fretfully to her right. Finally, at the corner of the state highway, Coach Hayes lifted her head. By then the windshield wipers were whipping back and forth: Afia had set them off and didn’t know how to stop them. A fire truck passed, its lights cartwheeling. “Can you hear?” Afia asked. “Did you hear the siren?”
“I’m not sure what you said,” Coach Hayes answered. “Your voice is a buzz. My ears keep ringing. Afia, a bomb went off in that house.”
“Yes, I know.”
Coach Hayes took her left hand away from where it had been rubbing her ear and placed it on the steering wheel. “Turn the car around, Afia. We’ve got to go to the police.”
“No.” What was she supposed to tell her? Shahid is killing me. Shahid has to kill me. Coach Hayes couldn’t hear those words. Afia couldn’t say them.
“Okay,” said the coach. “I’m getting some sound.”
Thank Allah. Both of them alive, neither deaf or shattered. Only Gus’s house gone, his animals dead, and Shahid—Shahid could be anywhere, he could be behind them, they had to keep moving. Afia pressed the accelerator again and turned onto Route 7.
“The police,” Coach Hayes said again, her hand still on the wheel. “The other way, Afia.”
Afia shook her head. Keeping her eyes on the dark road, she reached her right hand to the back of the coach’s head. A large bump there, and sticky; her hand came away smeared with blood. “You have hematoma,” she said. “Maybe concussion. It will heal.”
Coach Hayes let go the steering wheel and snatched Afia’s wrist. “Stop the goddamn car,” she said in a low tone. “Pull off on a side road if you want. This is my car. If someone got the plate, they’re going to look for me. Stop the fucking car.”
It was too much, too much. Afia’s leg started to shake. Ahead, a side road. She turned the wheel and the car skidded to the right. Brake, she thought, brake, and found it, and with a jolt the car drove into slush and rocked back. She pushed the lever into P. Filling her ears was the sound of the heater, the slup of the windshield wipers, the soft splat of wet snow falling from branches overhead, and their breaths—the breathing of two women, alive, a soft panting.
Reaching across her, Coach Hayes turned the windshield wipers off, then the headlights. The world went black. Afia gripped the steering wheel tight, to stop her hands from trembling. So. Whatever he had said about a plane ticket, Shahid had lied: He had meant to kill her. To kill her. Her breath sucked in at the thought of it. He would have driven her to get her things at Gus’s; would have gunned the car in reverse just as she triggered the bomb. Only because Coach Hayes was driving had he insisted, you are taking her straight to Northampton, because he didn’t want to kill his coach. He would succeed, eventually, just as the proverb said: Revenge took a hundred years, because I was impatient.
But Shahid had once brought her to America, had saved her that way. Maybe he would murder her. But to her last breath she would put herself between him and these Amreekans who could never understand.
“There’s a ringing in my ears,” the coach said, “but it’s dying down.” She lifted a lever, and the backrest reclined; she leaned her head back. In the darkness, Afia could not tell if her eyes were open or shut. “Try talking,” the coach said. “Try telling me what’s really going on.”
“I’m sorry,” Afia said. “Can you hear me?” She felt the coach nod; nothing else moved. “If you are promising, no police,” she continued, “you can leave me here. You don’t need for to be involved.”
“Shahid is my responsibility,” Coach Hayes said in a flat voice. “I am involved.” She reared up from the reclined seat and reached into the back of the car. She thrust a plastic bottle into Afia’s lap. “I’m thirsty,” she said.
Her own mouth, Afia realized, tasted of ash. Her throat felt burned. She uncapped the bottle, and for a moment both women drank. The water felt silky.
“And I can’t leave you off here,” the coach said. “It’s the middle of nowhere in February.” Her mobile rang with the sound of a black woman singing—shouting—about respect. When she pulled it out and flipped it open, the phone lit her face, gray with ash. She put it to her ear. “Shahid,” she said.
Afia gripped her arm. She shook her head, No, no.
Coach Hayes pulled away. “We’ll need you for the match,” she said into the phone. And then, “You’re letting me know now. That’s the point. Honesty, right?” After another pause, “The question isn’t whether you make Wednesday’s practice, Shahid. The question is whether you communicate . . . Okay, good . . . One more appointment with Dr. Springer . . . I don’t need to know what you talked about. But I wish—” She broke off. Having adjusted to the scant light, Afia could see Coach Hayes’s eyes as the coach regarded her. Bright in her ashy face, their expression was confused. “We need to trust each other, Shahid. Loyalty, remember?”
She replaced the phone. In a swift move, she turned off the ignition and pulled out the keys. She popped the seat back up and shifted sideways. “I’m stronger than you,” she said calmly to Afia, “so if I want us to go back to Devon and the police, that’s where we’ll go. If you want something else, you’d better talk to me. Now.”
How, Afia wondered, did you begin to fathom this woman? From the start—when Shahid confided in her that not just the coach, but the director of all athletics at Enright, was female—she’d thought Coach Hayes a freak. What sort of woman threw her body around like that? What sort chopped off her hair, shouted at men, let them smell her sweat? Even Coach Hayes’s stride, when Afia first saw her on a visit to Enright, looked wrong. The coach moved from the hip and kept her shoulders back, but loosely, not like a warrior. She had a narrow waist, breasts she did nothing to camouflage. She was married, she was a woman, not a perverse attempt at a man, yet this life of the body was what she had chosen. Afia had challenged all her teachers in Nasirabad. She had set her sights on being a doctor, no matter how many men teased or harassed her. Ignoring her mother’s cautions, she let everyone know she was smarter than her brothers. And still, Coach Hayes made no sense to her. But they were in Coach Hayes’s car, and Coach Hayes had just saved her life.
What were the laws in America? They executed people; that much she knew from Khalid. If strange
rs made trouble, they deported them. And they—not Coach Hayes, maybe, but the police, the judges—hated Muslims. “Someone,” she said softly, “is trying to kill me.”
“Who? Shahid?”
“No!” she said—too fast, too loud. “Someone else,” she added quickly. “My family. I don’t know.”
“How do you know they weren’t after Gus?”
“Maybe they were. It is the same thing.”
“Because you’re sleeping together.”
Afia hid her face. No one else had said those words, not even Gus. And they weren’t doing that, not the way Americans meant.
“Afia, don’t beat around the bush. A bomb just went off.”
“Maybe someone is hurting just Gus. But I do not think.” She shut her eyes. Gus, she tried to think. Brilliant and gentle and warm Gus, who loved her and would protect her, only now he was in the hospital and somehow she had put him there, and now all his pets were dead and she had killed them.
“Was that an accident Gus had?”
Run from the truth, Afia told herself. Run. “Yes,” she said. “An accident. He meant for to check those brakes. But he was busy with start of term. He should not have been coming to me,” she said. This much was true. “I have been telling him I am engaged, he must stay away. But it was this Valentine’s Day custom, he was wanting to bring flowers, chocolates. Chocolates,” she repeated, and it sounded like the saddest word in the world.
“I see,” said the coach, in a voice that said she was seeing what Afia did not want her to see. “But someone might be wanting to hurt Gus now. And you. And if you just take off—”
“If I am at Gus’s garage, they will think it was Shahid who sets a bomb. They will think, he is killing me for honor.”
“And if you take off, what will they think? Afia, get your head straight. You had the key to the garage. If you run away, the police will suspect you.”
That hit her head like a hammer blow. Afia drank more water while she thought it over. The water was icy and sweet. If they suspected her, she could be jailed for a time, maybe even deported. Of course, Gus would try to prove her innocence. And Coach Hayes would march up to the judge and tell him what really happened, how Afia couldn’t possibly set a bomb and then walk into it. But still. If she let them catch her on the run; if she confessed. She would turn attention away from Shahid for a few days at least. And in those few days, before they could arrest him, Shahid might leave the country. Because this was not a place where a brother could claim pashtunwali as a defense for attempted murder. This was America.
She still felt Shahid’s arms against her back, his breath on her shoulder. It was all she needed: to know he loved her. He could not hate her, no matter how tora she became, no matter how stained. He was simply obeying Baba. He was doing what brothers must do. Only she could save him from his awful duty.
“I will leave myself here,” she said. And with that she opened the car door and stepped out into six inches of frigid slush.
• • •
Hours later, Afia sat before a woodstove in a remote cabin, waiting for sleep to give her respite. In Coach Hayes, she thought, she had met her match. The coach had physical strength on her side, Afia strength of will. They shared a deep sense of loyalty, by which Afia would not betray her brother and Coach Hayes would not abandon her. Once Coach Hayes had wrestled her back into the car, they had agreed to one night’s truce. Coach Hayes would not report the incident; Afia would not claim to have set the bomb that had almost killed them both. Coach Hayes would find out if Shahid had a solid alibi. Then Afia could come forward with the truth of what had happened at Gus’s garage and not fear implicating her brother.
“We can go to Shahid right now,” Coach Hayes had said as she maneuvered the car back onto the road. “I just spoke with him. He didn’t even know we were going by Gus’s place. He thought we were on the road to Northampton.”
“Shahid cannot know where I am,” Afia had said, her voice firm. She had taken off her shoes and socks; the car’s heater blasted at her toes.
“Afia, he’ll be concerned. You said he had nothing to do with—with this awful thing.”
“Please, Coach Hayes. Just for one night. Do not tell anyone on the team.”
“Not even Gus?”
“Gus . . . he will be so sad. His pets.”
“Maybe the cats survived. And they were animals, Afia. Gus will worry about you.”
She could only shake her head. Shame was a tide, drowning her.
The coach pressed on. “Why not tell Shahid? You think he might . . . might . . . inform someone else? Someone who is trying to hurt you?”
“I do not know,” Afia said, shutting her eyes, “what Shahid will do.”
It was the easiest answer, and the truest. After a long pause, Coach Hayes had said, “Okay then. I know where we’ll go.”
Soon after, Afia had fallen asleep. She had not slept, really, in three nights, not since she’d heard about Gus’s accident. Vaguely it occurred to her that Gus might think she, too, had died in the blast. From that thought she drifted into uneasy dreams in which she was dead, only no one seemed to know it. She was tugging at Shahid’s sleeve, then Moray’s, then Gus’s. Baba was in the room, and her uncles, her sisters, all her family. She tried to get them to see how she was dead, her body already rotting. Only one person—Khalid, with his own dead eyes—saw her for the corpse she had become.
She woke with a start. She was in Coach Hayes’s car, alone. She sat up. Her hip hurt, and her elbow, where she’d landed hard after fleeing the garage. Outside, the rain had stopped. In front was a convenience shop, lit with cold fluorescence. Swallowing hard—so dead, she had felt, and at the moment she dreamt of Khalid’s seeing her, truly dead—she fished her mobile from her pocketbook. Three calls, all from Shahid. Had she slept through the rings, or had they driven through a dead zone? She peered through the window at the two other cars lined up by the shop. Both had New York plates. Then Coach Hayes emerged, a large grocery bag cradled in one arm and her mobile held to her ear with the other. As she opened the driver’s door, the interior light came on. The right side of her face was streaked with red, abraded from her fall against the icy snowbank. She handed Afia the grocery bag.
“Just held up here a little,” she said into the phone. “Yeah, I think we’re making some headway. I’ll grab a bite before I drive home. Kiss Chloe. Thanks, sweetheart.”
Then she was gone, back to the shop. She returned with two huge plastic jugs of water, which she placed among the athletic gear in the backseat.
“Not a happy dream life you’ve got there,” she said as she slid into the car.
“I’m sorry,” Afia said. “Did my phone ring?”
Coach Hayes frowned. She had wiped the black soot from her face. But the abrasion on her cheek was deep and needed cleaning; the one on the back of her head as well. “Once, maybe twice,” she said. “I didn’t think you’d want—”
“No. I would not be taking a call. Where are we?”
Coach Hayes started up the car. “Hadley, New York,” she said. “I picked up some stuff to eat. I figure you haven’t had dinner.” She turned onto a country road and put on her high beams. “We’ve got a camp nearby.”
“A camp? For refugees?”
“A weekend house. It’s in my husband’s family. No one’s here in winter. I thought, rather than check in at a motel . . .”
She let the sentence hang. Afia understood: To check in at a motel would be to give a name, a credit card, information that could be traced. The coach was honoring her promise not to let the police know, even by mistake. She was practicing nanawate, safe harbor. “Your face is injured,” Afia said.
“I picked up some peroxide. We both need disinfecting.”
“I’m sorry. You—you should not anything have to do with me.”
“I didn’t come looking for
this. That’s for sure.” Then, as if realizing she sounded harsh, the coach reached over and squeezed Afia’s clammy hand. “Shit happens,” she said, the American words of comfort. “We’ll figure it out.”
Banks of snow rose on either side of the road, but the pavement itself was damp with melt. Holding the groceries, Afia realized she was hungry. She had fetched food from the hospital cafeteria for Gus, but she could not bear to eat more than a few bites herself. He had been so angry, this morning. He never should’ve trusted his mom’s Nissan, he said, she didn’t know anything about mechanics, he should’ve got Charlie at the Gulf station to do a once-over, and now he was out for the season, did Afia get that? And he had all these fucking vet school applications to finish, and you couldn’t fall behind in Organic Chem, and what exactly was Shahid’s problem anyway, he sure didn’t need his teammate acting like a jealous husband especially when Coach would kiss Shahid’s butt, and was Afia sure she wasn’t overfeeding the fish? Because if he lost that African cichlid he was going to be majorly pissed. And why was Afia looking at him like that, what the hell was wrong with her? First she broke up with him, now she was back. Why couldn’t she look him in the eye?
Because I think my brother tried to kill you, she’d wanted to say, but she’d only sat there, her gaze focused somewhere midway between his chin and the thin hospital blanket. When Gus was dozing, she’d sat by the hospital bed holding his fingers lightly, watching his eyes flutter with dreams.
When Coach Hayes finally bumped onto a short driveway and cut the engine, Afia stepped out into a cold that bit her nostrils. Above, the sky had cleared. For the first time since coming to America, Afia looked up at stars like the stars she used to see on the high plains around Nasirabad—streaming, running together in a thin, cosmic milk.
The coach had left the headlights on. They lit a rambling wooden cabin with a screened porch. Snow rose over the steps. From the back of the car, she pulled out a shovel and proceeded to clear a narrow path, working as fast as a man. “Bring the groceries,” she called back to Afia, who quickly obeyed. On the porch, Coach Hayes stomped her feet, protected only by track shoes. She reached up to a beam that supported the porch ceiling. By the side of a door locked with a hasp, she flipped a switch, and yellow light shone over the floorboards, a set of dusty wicker furniture, and a welcome mat that read Hi. I’m Mat. “Good thing,” Coach Hayes said as she worked a tiny key into the padlock on the door, “the key’s still in the same place.”