A Sister to Honor

by Lucy Ferriss

  She pushed the door open. Even in the sharp cold, the smell of dead mice overran Afia’s senses. Coach Hayes disappeared into the dark space. Afia heard a click, then “Damn” from the coach. A moment later, a floor lamp flickered and came on, its light white and cold compared with the light on the porch. Coach Hayes surveyed the room, then Afia. “Just put those down in there,” she said, indicating the groceries.

  Afia crossed to a small kitchen in the back, where she heard something scurrying in the cupboards as she set the bag down in the dim light seeping from the main room. Suddenly she wanted to go back—back anywhere, almost, to Northampton or Devon or even Nasirabad, somewhere familiar and clean where she could sort herself out. But that was crazy thinking. She could not go anywhere.

  “We’ll have to gather wood,” the coach called from the main room. She was rooting around somewhere. In another moment a light went on from the lamp that must have burned out its bulb. “I’ll get the dead mice. I’ve got gloves. You can shake out the mattress, check the bathroom. No, skip that. We don’t have water.”

  “No water? But—” Afia stepped to the doorway just as Coach Hayes was heading outside. The coach turned.

  “It’s not winterized,” she said. “You have to drain the place down, or the pipes’ll freeze. That’s why I brought those jugs. And there’s the river, for washing.”

  Then she was gone. Dazed, Afia looked around the cabin. On the walls were a dozen framed photographs, black-and-whites of an elderly couple and a crowd of children in cotton shirts and plaid shorts; color pictures of the coach and her husband, looking much younger and golden-skinned; other young couples, children, in swimsuits and summer dresses. The main room had a cathedral ceiling with skylights covered in snow; high above the main window hung a crossed pair of wooden racquets. Hesitantly she opened a closet door. Inside stood a broom and dustpan, behind which bed linens were neatly stacked. She pulled out the broom and stepped through another doorway, into a bedroom. There was one bed, double size, on a fine oak frame with a carved headboard. Immediately Afia thought of her bed in Nasirabad. Homesickness washed over her. Baba must have ordered her destroyed, and still she missed him and Moray with an ache deep in her gut. Had Moray wanted her killed, also? What shame she had brought, what disgrace. A family does what it must, and it is the brother who must do it. No nanawate for tora. Afia was tor, she was black, she was rotten.

  She swept the floor. Clouds of cold dust billowed before the straw broom. Mouse droppings peppered the kitchen counter. When she pulled the thin mattress from the bed and tried to shake it, she discovered a hole near the bottom, where mice had dug in and stolen stuffing for their nests. Moving quickly as much to keep warm as to get the job done, she continued through the living room and into the sparse kitchen, the pile of refuse before her growing—dead insects and bees, bird feathers, three shriveled mouse carcasses, sawdust that had drifted from the ceiling where insects had bored. She found the kitchen light, an overhead fluorescent that flickered and snapped. A back door was bolted from the inside. She wrenched it open and swept the pile onto the snow-laden stoop. Across a stretch of yard, by the woods, she made out the figure of Coach Hayes, lugging a log carrier. Through the branches of the trees, in the distance, a ribbon of silver: the river. The coach bent to grab a stick of downed wood, then knocked it against a tree trunk to shake off the snow. In the starlight she looked small, too tiny to fight off whatever might come at her in the snow.

  By the time Coach Hayes had brought firewood indoors, Afia had dared to open the cupboards. Under the unusable sink she found two live mice, casually nibbling a bar of soap. Immediately she thought of the mouse she’d dropped into Pearl’s cage, only yesterday. Pearl, lost now in the snow. The mice scuttled away from the soap. One disappeared behind the cupboard; the other she managed to bludgeon with the broom and sweep into the pan.

  “Now let’s hope we don’t have birds nesting in the stovepipe,” the coach said as she crouched before the woodstove jutting out from a stone fireplace.

  “There’s newspaper,” said Afia, practically the only words she had uttered since entering.

  “Thank God for that.”

  As the coach crumpled sheets and shoved them into the stove, Afia noticed the shelves full of board games, books, a box of toys. This was a place for summer vacations, for children to be carefree. “Should I prepare food?” she asked.

  Coach Hayes nodded. “Hamburgers was the best I could do at the store. There’s propane in the tank, I checked. Should be an iron skillet under the stove. You’ll need to light the pilot. You know how?”

  Afia nodded. “At home, we have propane.” She had been crouching next to the coach, watching her break twigs and tuck them in with the yellowed paper. “Miss Hayes,” she began.

  “Just call me Coach. Everyone else does.”

  “Coach, I want to thank you.”

  Coach shook her head. “I’ve been telling myself the whole way that I’m crazy. Bringing you here.”

  “If you understood us—my brother and me—you would not think yourself crazy.”

  “Well, explain this to me, then.” She glanced up, her face pummeled and ashy. “Just this much. You are engaged.”

  “Yes.”

  “But not to someone you care about.”

  “I do not know him, really.”

  “So this is, what, a forced marriage?”

  Afia smiled nervously. “Not forced, no. People here, they use that word, forced. It is more an arrangement. A promise the family makes.”

  “But you have no say in it.”

  “I do have say. I say yes, or I say no.”

  “Then why, for all the tea in China,” Coach said, lighting the paper, “did you say yes?”

  Afia tried explaining about the photograph on the Smith site, about Khalid’s showing it to Baba. She imagined, again, her little sisters having stones, or feces, thrown at them as they tried to walk to school. Her mother meeting a sudden silence when she went to the market. “I—I tried,” she said. “To do as I must. And then Gus, he is hurt—”

  “Right. And now someone’s trying to hurt you.”

  “Shahid says there is another photo. Two more photos.”

  “Online? But, Afia, if you’re still posting—”

  “Not me. I think—” Afia caught her breath. She was crouching, watching the match flame lick at the corners of newspaper. She remembered the photo now, the one that had appeared on Taylor’s Facebook timeline last week. Some guy from Dartmouth had put it there, Taylor had said. But that couldn’t be right. There were a dozen people apple-picking that day, including a couple of Chase’s friends. But when Afia was on Gus’s shoulders, he’d called to Patty to take a picture, and Patty had grabbed Afia’s mobile and snapped it. Afia had never sent the photo anywhere. The only way it could have gotten to Taylor’s page was if someone had taken her phone and uploaded the photo before she erased it. That same person had risked even greater shame with a third photo. That same person had armed the device that went off in Gus’s garage. Only one person could have done all those things: Shahid. But why? How could he want so badly to expose her ruin, that he would ruin their whole family? It made no sense.

  “Afia?”

  “It is . . . it is enemies in Pakistan, I think.”

  “Which is where Shahid means to send you, tomorrow.”

  Afia felt herself snagged in her half truths. If she had lost Shahid, she had lost everything. I am the walking dead, she wanted to say to Coach Hayes. Let me go to the police and tell them it was me who lit a fuse at Gus’s garage.

  “Okay, then.” The wood in the stove had caught fire. Coach closed the door and stood. She was taller than Baba, Afia thought, maybe taller even than Shahid. “Can you make burgers?”

  Afia remembered eating with Gus at Local Burger. She’d wolfed the hot sandwich, along with a steaming pile of French fries. Though
she had thought she would be sick after, she had kept it all down. But she had never cooked a burger. Now the slimy worms of fat-marbled meat repulsed her. She tried to form them into patties without touching them, using the rusted spoons and spatula she found in a drawer next to the stove. She found matches, got the pilot to sputter to life, and lit two burners. The blue flames, dry and gassy, began to lessen the cold. She found a skillet and swabbed it out with a rag dabbed wet with bottled water, and when it was hot she lifted her ill-formed cakes of meat and dropped them to hiss and spit on the hot iron. She fished heavy stoneware plates from the bottom of the stack in the cupboard, figuring them to be cleaner. In the shopping bag she found a bottle of red wine with a screw top. She filled a tumbler for the coach. Then, pressing her lips together, she filled one for herself.

  Her patties fell apart as soon as she tried to nudge them from the skillet. Still, seated at the rickety round table with two lit candle stubs, Coach pronounced them delicious. She also popped open the bag of chips, sour cream and onion, that she’d bought in Hadley. “There’s instant coffee for breakfast,” Coach said, “and, God help me, Pop-Tarts.”

  Afia didn’t know what a Pop-Tart was, but she nodded. The wine tasted like rotten fruit laced with formaldehyde; she swallowed it and clenched her teeth. Gingerly she ate a chip, the sides of her tongue tasting the artificial flavors. “In living room,” she said. “Your husband’s family?”

  Coach took a bite of her hamburger. “Two sisters. We take turns using the camp. Though no one’s been up here recently. They’re both married to guys in the city, busy down there.”

  Afia nodded. “Is the same with us.”

  “What, your family has a summer place no one uses anymore?”

  “No. I mean, when a girl marries. We call it a gham. A sorrow,” she explained when Coach looked puzzled. “Because your family, they lose you forever. You belong now with your husband. His family.”

  Coach glanced out at the living room, where the glass frames of the pictures reflected the flames dancing in the woodstove. “I’m from the Midwest,” she said. “My mother died when I was twelve.”

  “Oh. I am sorry.”

  “Thank you. But I mean I don’t have much sense of my own family. And we don’t see much of Ethan’s. Maybe we should, but it doesn’t work out much. Anyway, I don’t feel as though I belong to them. I guess Ethan and I just belong to each other.”

  Coach gave a short laugh, as if she knew how silly and forlorn that sounded. The fire in the woodstove had infused the air with warmth. “We should tend to your wounds,” Afia said when they had eaten.

  “They’re hardly wounds.”

  “They are very much wounds. Where is brightest light?”

  They tried the bathroom, but the bulb had blown out. Bringing a candle, Afia managed to find two wrapped sterile pads and a roll of tape in the medicine chest. She positioned Coach Hayes on the edge of the bed, under the floor lamp. She took what seemed like a clean cloth from the closet, doused it with peroxide, and gently dabbed and stroked the woman’s face and the back of her head until the smoke stain and newly formed scabs sloughed off. The head would heal on its own, but the cheek now showed two inches of raw skin that gently oozed blood. Coach Hayes held still, wincing only as the peroxide came near her eye. For all her height and toughness, Afia realized as she set about fitting gauze and tape to the cheek, the coach was a lovely woman, with sculpted cheekbones and the sort of firm, wide jaw Pashtun men admired.

  “Tomorrow you should change the dressing,” Afia said when she’d finished.

  “Thank you.”

  They stood. “I made up the bed,” Afia said, glancing at it. “About other rooms, I don’t know—”

  “Oh, I’m not staying,” said Coach. She looked at herself in the cloudy oval mirror that hung on the wall. “I need to be home with my family. I’ll say I dropped you in Northampton. What happened to you after, I have no idea. I can’t believe I’ll lie to them,” she said as she moved out into the sitting room. “I never lie.”

  “I never have sleep alone, in a house before.” Following her, Afia said this almost to herself. She could not bother Coach Hayes further. If Coach was lying, it was Afia’s fault. Everything was her fault. But she trembled. She stood in the doorway to the bedroom. “I will not sleep,” she said.

  Coach turned. The light of the woodstove flickered. “You were alone at Gus’s place.”

  “There were the animals.” Saying this, the awfulness of it came thundering through her. Pearl, her body white as an intestine. Voltaire, the iguana, with his throat that fluttered like a leaf in the breeze. Percy, the rat who shared the cage with Voltaire, whom Gus liked to tease her with, by wearing Percy on his head like a beady-eyed cap. And the fish, their radiant colors and translucent bellies, the tiny organs tucked inside, and their eyes round, all-seeing. They were Gus’s family, and they were gone, blasted away, like the bodies in the Peshawar bazaar. The morning of one attack, Tayyab had come back early from shopping, his clothes in smoky tatters, his cheeks hollow with fear. A hand, he’d said, there was a hand, and then a head, the head was rolling.

  “Look, I’ll call after practice tomorrow,” Coach said. “That should give you some time to think over your situation. I doubt there’s cell service here, but there’s a landline.” She nodded toward the wall by the unplugged refrigerator, where an ancient black phone hung with its tangled cord. “The number’s unlisted, so no one else will be trying it. You can go to the river for water or melt some snow, to wash your face. Jugs are for drinking. If you pee in the toilet, don’t flush it. Don’t go far, because I’ll be calling you.” As she crouched before the woodstove, her voice gentled. “You should plan on speaking to the police tomorrow. They can protect you, Afia.”

  “But you will not say anything to Shahid. Will you?”

  Coach poked the embers and shoved in two more thick, damp branches. “You ever been on a team, Afia?”

  “No. But I know there is no I in team.”

  “A team”—Coach smiled as she shut the door—“is about honor. Honor as loyalty, as respect, as honesty. I have always respected your brother. I am trying to be loyal to him, honest with him. And you. But you both make it very, very difficult.”

  “Coach, I—”

  “It’s all right. I made a choice. But I had to say that. Your people are not the only ones concerned with honor. Now try to sleep. When the fire dies down in the stove, shove some more wood in it.”

  “Thank you,” Afia said.

  But Coach had stepped away, was gathering her things, was out the door and starting the car. Afia watched the red taillights disappear down the road. Then she switched off the electric light.

  Now she watched flames dance behind the glass door of the woodstove. They were a miniature version, she thought, of the flames that had raged through Gus’s house. One set of flames warmed, the other destroyed. Someone would have woken Gus, at the hospital, to tell him of the catastrophe at his garage. He might have rung her. No such call had come, but she was in a dead zone; Coach had said so.

  Tomorrow, if she kept her promise to Coach Hayes, she would have to call the police. But call them to say what? That she had not set the bomb, that she had no idea how to make a bomb? That she had run because of fear? Fear of what? The police would guess, soon enough. They would arrest Shahid, who had no idea how to make a bomb either—but this one hadn’t worked properly, it had not killed her. They would find evidence and try Shahid, sentence him. They might execute him here, or they might deport him to Pakistan, where Khalid would take him up on his pledge and kill him.

  No, she couldn’t go to the Devon police. Coach would, eventually, but not until Afia had figured out where to flee, how to disappear. How to find some money, maybe, and cut or dye her hair. Hitchhike onto the highways of America. Send a message to Gus that she would always love him and she was sorry, sorry, so very sorry. And th
en—she thought as the fire settled and winter’s chill retook the room—let Shahid track her down.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Lissy had always been competitive. It was one of the first things Ethan noticed about her, on their third or fourth date after they’d met on the PATH train, he headed to Northern State Prison, she headed to her assistant A.D. job at Rutgers. She had just finished telling him about the injury that had ended her squash career at the Cleveland Classic. She was one competitive lady, Ethan had remarked with a lopsided grin.

  Well, she competed, didn’t she? To compete without being competitive—that would be like painting without being artistic.

  Like talking without speaking, he’d said. Like hearing without listening. And then he’d launched into Simon & Garfunkel. He had a good tenor, even though he was just being silly. She’d thrown a napkin at him.

  Still, outside sports, competitive was a dirty word. Like ambitious. If she’d grown up with a mother, maybe she would have softened her edge, learned to deny herself the thrill of clutching the trophy high over her head. If she had grown up in the world her American players inhabited, full of country clubs and etiquette, maybe she’d have sated her hunger to train harder, practice longer, nail the shots her opponents missed. Maybe, if she’d been introduced early on to pure beauty, or pure affection, she wouldn’t have relished the purity of competition—same rules for all, same starting spot, same ineluctable goal—as much as she did. But she had grown up on the scrappy north side of St. Louis, with five brothers and a dad working nights, and one of her last memories of her mother was the glow on her face, her bald head obscured by a blue scarf, as Lissy tore past the hundred-yard finish line ten paces ahead of the closest boy.