I feel pretty sick to my stomach—almost like I don’t know who I am anymore. It’s the first time I have felt real fear—the kind that plants a flag in your brain and decides it’s going to stay.
The birthday cupcake sits between us, the candle melted down to a waxy puddle. It looks sickening to me now, so unappealing that I wonder if I’m going to empty the contents of my stomach right here in the kitchen.
“It wasn’t a car accident,” I say to confirm that the story I’ve always believed about my father’s death is not true.
She shakes her head. She brushes her hair from her face and steadies her voice to tell me the rest.
“Family back home called me. I was broken. I want to go there that day but they told me no. They said it wasn’t safe for me to come back. The family was getting phone calls, terrible phone calls. Terrible words painted on our door. So I stayed. The police did not find the people who did this. I don’t know if they really tried.”
Tears stream down my face. I know all this happened to my mom a long time ago, but it feels like it’s all happening to me, for the first time, right now.
“It seemed crazy that I have to still read my books like nothing happened,” she says, folding and unfolding a sheet of paper towel. I can see how her dreams of becoming a doctor fell apart.
My mother stuck with her classes, trying not to break down in biology and doing her best to keep the numbers straight in calculus. My father used to send her some money for clothes, food, and books. She worked part time in a laboratory on campus to support herself too, but she had a hard time doing that when she lost him.
“I wondered if all the crying I did hurt you. I wonder if that’s why you are born too soon.”
I know the rest of the story. I came early, days before the start of the new year. Instead of being born after nine months, I was born after six. Sidewalks were glazed with ice. People’s words hung like thought clouds in the cold air. My mother spent two months at my side in the hospital, watching me grow in a warmed incubator instead of in her belly.
You must give him a name, they told her. She told them the name she and my father had chosen for me.
Sardar Shah.
The nurses tried to say the name. It sounded awful to my mother and she wondered if that was how all Americans would say it.
“There was one nurse. She was good to me,” my mother had explained. “She helped me learn to wrap you and feed you. She brought me hot pads for my back.”
My mother asked the nurse for a very American-sounding name.
“Kevin. Brandon. Dexter,” the nurse suggested.
My mother didn’t know any of these names. When she tried to repeat them, she saw the nurse wince. She knew she was not pronouncing them well.
“What about Jason?” the nurse asked. “That’s my son’s name.”
My mother looked at the calendar. She saw the months she carried me. July—August—September—October—November—December.
“Yes,” she said, training her tongue to mimic the nurse. “He is Jason.”
“What about a middle name?”
She looked back at the calendar. December.
Jason D. Riazi. She repeated the foreign name to herself, holding her American baby in her arms. She hoped that this name she could hardly pronounce would protect me, make me untouchable.
“I fall behind in school,” my mom explains, continuing the story. “They sent me letters. I tried to explain I need time. You were so small and still in the hospital. Then I got one letter that says I cannot be in this country. The letter tells me I have to leave, but how can I go? My baby is in the hospital and your father’s grave is not yet covered in grass. And the people who called our families, they were still calling. They are angry because your father’s face was on the front of the newspaper and many people loved him. The bad people, they promise that the country will never be safe for his family.”
So she stayed in America.
But with my father dead, what were the chances that they would give his family a visa? Who could she ask without risking being sent back to Afghanistan?
At any point, she could be found. At any point, she could be arrested. She had an expired passport and an expired student visa. That meant that if the authorities found her, they would send her back to Afghanistan. Knowing what happened to my father and the terrible words the people said, she had to make an impossible choice.
She sold all her textbooks and put away her notebooks. She buried her hopes of becoming a doctor and decided to pray for smaller miracles. She went from store to store in town, looking for a job, a new apartment away from the college and ways to disappear.
She didn’t get a driver’s license. She didn’t apply for good jobs. She didn’t ask for help from the government even when she worried about how to feed us both. She did what she could to disappear into America and prayed this country would hide us from the evil that had taken my father.
“You need to understand,” my mother tells me. Her words are slow and quiet but real. “If they find me, they will tell me to go. But you stay. And if this happens, every breath I take will be to move the mountain between us.”
Three
On this November Friday, when there is no school, I refuse to think about what I’ve learned about my mother and father. I’m determined to enjoy this day off. In the month since my mother’s birthday, knowing what my mother has been hiding has left me with a strange feeling. I’m a little ashamed of what she’s done and I’m ashamed that I’m ashamed. If my mother’s not American, how can I be? But if I’ve never been to Afghanistan, how can I be Afghan?
That’s why I’m really happy for an extra day away from my classmates who have no idea what my mom and I really are—or aren’t. There’s no school today because it’s a professional day for teachers.
“Professional day? How professional is it to skip work?” Mr. Fazio told my mother grumpily last week when she asked if I could stay with her in the laundromat. “But that’s fine with me. Jason D can hang out here.”
My mother brought Mr. Fazio some home-baked bread the next day as a thank-you. She didn’t need to. Mr. Fazio always lets my mother bring me to the shop. She’s been working for him for five years, and he always jokes that she somehow makes people want to wash even their clean clothes.
This morning, I want to sleep in but I can’t. I squeeze my eyes tight and even try burying my head under my pillow. The smell of cardamom lingers in the apartment, and I know my mother’s already up. I hear the distant sound of music, old Afghan songs. I can picture her sitting at our breakfast table, her hands wrapped around a steaming mug of green tea and her dark hair pulled into a ponytail with a few stray curls framing her face. This is the only time of day when she’s not moving at full speed. By the time she drains that cup, she’ll be charged, ready for a busy day at the laundromat, and I won’t see her sit down again until it’s time to review my homework. Surely if I think about algebra equations or start counting laundry machines, I’ll fall right back asleep.
After five more minutes, I throw the blanket off me in defeat.
I stumble into the kitchen, my eyes half shut in protest.
“Hungry?”
“Not really.”
“I could make you something.”
“Like what?”
My mother raises an eyebrow.
“A ceramic bowl filled with water of two colors. What am I?”
I may be half asleep but I can still solve her riddles.
“An egg. Too easy.”
“Too easy?” she says. “Okay. A golden nail stuck in the ground.”
“A carrot.”
She furrows her brows, pretending to be annoyed that I’ve figured it out.
“Forty rooms with forty shelves and forty bulbs.”
“Pomegranate.”
“He is in the house while his beard is outside.”
“An ear of corn.”
“A purple robe and a green crown.”
I guess m
y mom’s forgotten that she’s asked me this one at least ten times before.
“An eggplant.”
“Fine, Shah-jan. You know everything. Eat something, and when you get ready, come to the shop.”
“Maybe I could stay here instead.”
“No.”
“Kings are allowed to stay home alone in their castles, Mom.” I throw her own words back at her.
“Already we talked about it.”
“Mom, please. Just once can’t I—”
She lifts a finger. My mother is a strange kind of superhero. Her power? Ending all debate with one finger.
My mom speaks English perfectly well except for a few things. One is that the words are sometimes ordered wrong, kind of like the sentence went into the dryer and got all jumbled. The other thing is that she pronounces words strangely. Volleyball is “wolleyball.” Sponge is “eh-sponge.” And she mixes up he and she a lot because in her language there is no he or she. I didn’t notice it when I was younger, but then I did. I saw that the librarian asked her to repeat her question. I saw that the customer service person on the phone did the same. Was the receptionist at my doctor’s office annoyed because of mom’s accent or some other reason? And once I noticed that my mom talked differently from others, I couldn’t un-notice it. It made me wonder if there were other things she was doing differently or . . . well . . . wrong. I wondered if there were things I was doing or saying wrong because I learned them from her.
“But you heard Auntie Seema last night. She says it’s no big deal to trust me alone for a few hours and the laundromat is only a fifteen-minute walk from here,” I mutter, reluctant to give up completely.
Since it’s just my mom and me, Auntie Seema, my mom’s best friend, is the one person we turn to when we disagree. Sometimes she thinks I should give my mom a break. That’s when my mom smiles and looks at Auntie Seema like she’s brilliant. But lots of times Auntie Seema agrees with me. When she does, my mom points out that Auntie Seema is a fifty-something-year-old woman who wears ripped jeans and paisley bandannas tied around her head. And when she decided to move into New York City, my mom decided Auntie Seema was just a little bit out of her mind.
“Auntie Seema is not your mother. He can’t make decisions for you.”
There she goes again.
“She can’t make decisions for me.”
“Exactly.”
“No, you said he.”
It feels even more important to correct her English now, as if her English mistakes could prove she’s wrong about other, bigger things.
“Fine, she. But you know what I mean, Jason. Don’t make a big deal from the small things.”
Auntie Seema gets that the small things are a big deal, but I don’t say that out loud.
Auntie Seema was born in India, but she’s been American since she was two years old. She and my mom have been friends since before I was born. They met in New Jersey, close to where my mom was going to school. Auntie Seema lived nearby then and taught art at a studio. They were both walking to a bus stop when my mom tripped and stumbled into the street just as a bus was approaching. My mom was pregnant with me at the time. Auntie Seema yanked her back to the sidewalk just in time. Mom says Auntie Seema saved both our lives.
Since India and Afghanistan are next to each other, it was almost like they found long-lost friends in each other. My mother told Auntie Seema that she didn’t know any Afghans in America, and that she wanted me to be American. She didn’t want me to know the terrible things she’d run away from. Auntie Seema took my mother back to her apartment that day because she looked so scared. She gave my mother a cup of warm chai. She played music my mother had listened to when she was younger and told her everything would be okay, even if America was not made of gold as people back home thought.
Auntie Seema always says smart things. She’s one of the only people my mom trusts, even though they’re almost nothing alike.
“Why don’t you talk to an immigration lawyer?” my mother said Auntie Seema asked her more than once. “Apply to stay in the country.”
“And if they say no? Then they will tell me to leave. It is dangerous for us back home. I can take the chance for me, but how can I make my child take a chance?”
Auntie Seema learned that she can disagree with my mother but it’s nearly impossible to change her mind, especially when it comes to me.
“You and the baby won’t be alone,” Auntie Seema decided. My mother said she saw kindness in Auntie Seema’s light-brown eyes and long, artistic fingers. She finished the warm chai.
She looked at the paintings in Auntie Seema’s apartment, canvases of all sizes leaning against the walls. There was one of a woman, her arms raised over her head, reaching for the sky.
“It was the most beautiful painting,” my mother told me. “Do you know why people look to the sky when they pray, Shah-jan? Do you know why we hang flags so far above our heads? Because we want to touch that sky, the sky that turns from blue to purple to pink and orange. You can find all colors in the sky. The sun, the moon, the stars, and the clouds—it has room for them all. That’s why I love this country, my king. It is like the sky at our feet.”
My mother stopped crying when she saw Auntie Seema’s painting. It reminded her that there might be a place for her somewhere. It reminded her that she had lots to do to get ready for me, and there was no room for tears.
My mother turns off the music playing from her cell phone, unfazed by my argument that the laundromat is a short walk from our apartment.
“Auntie Seema is talking so much about the planet sometimes she is forgetting the people are different from trees.” I groan softly, knowing what she’s going to say. “You can leave a tree alone. You cannot leave a kid alone.”
Yes, Auntie Seema is a tree-hugging artist. She recycles everything, including canvases, sometimes painting over one piece to create a new one. She’s a free spirit and the complete opposite of my mom. That’s what makes Auntie Seema the most unlikely third person in our lives. While we take turns being disappointed in Auntie Seema’s opinions, we both love Auntie Seema to pieces.
My mom goes out the door and I hear her lock it from the outside. I throw some clothes on and brush my teeth. I check myself out in the mirror and yelp when I see one shock of hair sticking straight up. I wet it and do my best to flatten it with the palm of my hand, but it’s no use. I can only hope that someday this hairy antenna will prove useful and I’ll be the receiver of messages from Mars.
With half a bowl of cereal in my stomach, I leave the apartment. As promised, I lock the door behind me and walk toward the laundromat. It’s been warmer than expected this year. It feels more like September than November, and by the time I get to Bloom Street, I’m thirsty. The vending machine in the laundromat hasn’t worked for months, so I walk across the street to the gas station—the one that leaves its giant inflated Santa Claus up year-round—to get a bottle of juice.
I can see my mother from across the street. She is in the laundromat speaking to a customer from behind the counter. Sometimes I sit behind the counter while she cleans the filters of the dryers or sweeps the chipped floor tiles. A stray lint ball can easily pass for a mouse (I’ve seen three customers shriek and toss their laundry in the air after making this mistake). The air is humid. The sweet scent of fabric softener mixes with the nostril-searing smell of bleach. In the winter, the warmth of the machines makes it one of the best places to be. In the summer, it feels like the entire laundromat is the inside of a dryer, and it’s painful.
The soda machine keeps spitting out my crumpled dollar, disgusted. It finally goes through, but only after I press it against the corner of the machine to flatten it. I should go ask my mom to trade me quarters for my bill. Since she works in a laundromat with coin-operated machines, she’s always giving customers quarters for their dollars. For my mom’s birthday last year, I filled a pencil case with quarters and wrapped it in newspaper. I stuck a red ribbon on top and made a card out of folded
construction paper.
Happy birthday to a woman who always makes cents.
She laughed when she shook the package and heard the clinking of coins. Comedian, she declared and gave me a playful swat on my shoulder. Even later in the night, I caught her smiling to herself, proud that I had made a clever joke and proud that she understood it.
The two men she’s looking at right now are not customers. I can tell because they have no laundry with them. They are wearing identical navy-blue windbreakers and stand with their feet apart. When one turns, I catch a glimpse of a shiny badge hanging around his neck. They are asking questions, looking carefully around the laundromat. The two other women inside stop folding clothes and move closer together. They’re watching this happen just as I am. I can see it all, since the sun is hidden behind a cloud and there’s no glare. I can see my mother’s face, the way she looks from one man to the other. I can see her leaning backward as if she’s trying to retreat.
This is bad.
My breathing is quick and shallow, and my palms are sticky with nerves. This is really bad, my body’s saying.
Run to her, I tell my legs, but they do not listen. Call her name, I tell my mouth, but it, too, disobeys.
I don’t know exactly what’s happening. While my brain’s trying to figure it out, my body’s reacting like it already knows.
I’m going to regret this moment, I know. I’m going to hate myself for what I’m doing now. Why didn’t I tell my mother to call in sick today? Why couldn’t I have been sick and needed her to stay home with me? Why didn’t I wake up a little earlier and go to the laundromat with her?
I can tell by the way her shoulders are hunched that she’s anxious.
I remember the conversation we had on my mom’s birthday, just one month ago, and I feel sick to my stomach. It’s happening. I wish she hadn’t talked about it—maybe speaking it made it true.
I think about doing something heroic. I think about walking across the street, swinging the door open, and sneaking my mom out the laundromat’s back door before these guys can even figure out what’s happening. I want to swoop in and tell them that they have no right to do this.
The Sky at Our Feet Page 2