Out of Nowhere

by Maria Padian

  “No! He asked me if I would like to sit here.”

  “And why would he do that?” Myla asked.

  “He is very nice,” Samira insisted. “He knows … I feel more comfortable here.”

  “Did he ask you to sit back here, or tell you?” Myla persisted.

  “Ask! He asked,” Samira said.

  I reached across the table. I covered Myla’s hands with mine.

  “Hey, College,” I said. “It’s all good. Let’s just eat.”

  She looked puzzled but let it drop. She also let my hands stay put, at least until the sambusas arrived. Which turned out to be the most delicious things I’d ever eaten. By the time the goat curry came, Samira had totally loosened up, declaring the dish only passable and claiming that her mother’s was far superior.

  “You must both come to our home and I will make it for you,” she said, smiling. “Then you will see I am right.” Samira likes to be right.

  When dinner was over, we loaded up Samira with three Styrofoam containers of leftovers to bring to her brothers and walked her back to her apartment. After she disappeared up the winding stairs, Myla and I wandered back in the direction of The Center, where she’d parked her minivan. As we walked, I draped one arm over her shoulders again. She didn’t object. Didn’t seem to notice, either.

  The minivan was her parents’ and it had about 180,000 miles on it. They’d told her that if she could get it from Minnesota to Maine, she could keep it at college, and somehow she’d managed to coax it all the way to Enniston without breaking down. She mostly used it to tote kids from The Center around town. Sometimes even their parents. Doc appointments. Meetings at the school. Away games. That minivan was like the Little Engine That Could, chugging all the way to 200,000.

  “So what do you think was up with that back-table treatment?” she asked me as we walked.

  I shrugged.

  “No clue. Maybe he wanted to keep us white people out of sight? Could’ve been bad for business, putting us near the front window.”

  Myla laughed shortly.

  “That’s a thought. Or maybe he just wanted to keep us females out of sight.”

  “Yeah. Can’t say I blame him,” I replied. I glanced down.

  My attempt at humor was totally lost on her. She looked annoyed.

  “I’m kidding, College. You know? Joke?”

  She sighed.

  “I know. Sorry. I don’t mean to be a grouch. It’s just … sometimes I don’t get her! Samira. Like, it’s so obvious she’s been shoved in the back, in this dingy corner behind the cash register, for God’s sake, and she acts like the guy’s being nice to her! It kills me, you know?”

  The roller coaster wasn’t just creaking down at this point. It was in full-scale free fall. Like, the part of the ride when everyone screams.

  I stopped walking. Removed the arm. We’d reached her van. Time to figure out where the evening was headed.

  “Can we not talk about Samira right now? I’m sort of feeling like the mayor. A little maxed out on Somalis.”

  To say she didn’t get my second attempt at humor would be an understatement.

  “That is so not funny, Tom, that I don’t even know where to begin. Except maybe to just say good night and thanks for dinner.” She fumbled in her shoulder bag, pulled out her keys, and pressed the automatic unlock button. She strode around to the driver’s side and got in. Before she could pull out or relock, I jumped into the passenger seat.

  “Get out. Call a cab, Bouchard,” she said. She sounded almost tearful, she was that angry.

  “You need to calm down, and we need to talk,” I said softly.

  “You need to stop being an asshole!” she said furiously. “Every time I start to think that maybe, possibly, you’re cool, you go and ruin it. Some things are not funny, Tom! Some things are very, very serious. And what’s going on in this city right now, and that stupid letter the mayor wrote? Not funny.”

  I was getting tired of this person calling me an asshole.

  “You know what, College?” I fired back. “I don’t need some pointy-headed intellectual from away telling me about my city. You think I don’t get how serious this is? Trust me: I get it. Every time I walk into my school and see black kids wandering lost through the halls because the whole idea of changing classes—hell, the whole idea of classes—is foreign to them, I see a serious problem. I see Saeed doesn’t have a doctor to sign his sports permission forms, and his mother can’t speak English and she doesn’t have a job. Kids spray-paint ‘Go back to Africa!’ in the bathroom. And every day, every single day, more Somalis show up. And if people around here get a little tired of it once in a while, I think it’s fuckin’ okay to say we’re a little tired! And it’s okay to make a joke! Jesus. You and my aunt Maddie. No sense of humor.”

  We both sat there silently, breathing hard. I had surprised myself. I hadn’t expected that sort of shit to come out of me. I hadn’t realized it was all in there.

  Myla broke the stalemate.

  “You hate me, don’t you?” she said. “Pointy-headed intellectual? Great.”

  “Actually, I have a mad crush on you. But don’t let that go to your pointy little head.”

  “Ahh!” She slammed her fists on the steering wheel, then buried her face in her hands. “You are so aggravating!”

  “Yeah. Back at you, College.”

  “Stop calling me College! Stop commenting about my height! Do you think I like looking like a twelve-year-old?”

  “A very hot twelve-year-old. Maybe I should call you Lolita. Whaddaya think of that, College?”

  That’s when she punched me in the arm. Hard.

  “Ouch! Knock it off, Myla!”

  “Yes, thank you! That’s my name. Myla.”

  Silence returned to the minivan. The thought crossed my mind that this “date” was almost as fun as watching Survivor with Cherisse and Aunt Maddie.

  “I don’t hate you,” I said finally.

  “You have contempt for me,” she said sullenly. “You think I’m naive.”

  “I think you’re smart and cute and you have a good heart,” I told her. “I think you do the right thing and I admire it. I also think this situation in Enniston is very complicated and you need to give the people around here the benefit of the doubt. Even the mayor. I’ll admit, she’s not the sharpest tool in the shed. But she cares about her city.”

  I had been addressing most of this to the windshield in front of me. But then I heard this little choky sound and I turned to her. Two straight lines of tears streamed down her cheeks. This was so unexpected I didn’t know what to do. It crossed my mind that maybe Myla was also tired. That maybe she was maxed out, too, but didn’t think she was allowed to admit it.

  “Oh God, don’t cry. Please. That shit breaks me.”

  That’s when the floodgates opened for real, and I was holding this sobbing girl in the front seat of a minivan. She buried her face in my chest and just let it all out while I stroked her hair. Shampoo. Fresh laundry detergent. All the little Myla scents floated up to me. So when she finally lifted her face to mine, there was really no question what would happen next: my lips found hers.

  She kissed back.

  We pretty much lost track of time after that, but after a while we broke for conversation.

  “Can I ask you something?” she said.

  “Sure.”

  “Are you still dating that girl … what’s her name?”

  “Cherisse. And no. Not in a relationship. Unless nasty texting counts as a relationship. I still get a lot of that from her.”

  Myla rolled her eyes.

  “And … are you still grounded?” she asked.

  “I have no clue. No one’s ever said my groundation would ever end. Although they knew I was seeing you after homework help tonight. Why?”

  Myla smiled, a little hesitantly.

  “You feel like hanging out? Back at my room?”

  I struggled to keep a neutral, nonchalant expression on my face
. As if hot college girls invited me to hang out in their dorm rooms on a regular basis.

  “I don’t know. What did you have in mind?” I asked.

  “I could show you my flamingos,” she said.

  Flamingos. In Maine. Intriguing.

  “How can I refuse an invitation like that? Drive on, Lolita.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Not long after that, the skinheads got involved.

  Okay, maybe it’s not fair to call them skinheads. They were a … religious organization. The United Church of the World. They believed in white people. That was pretty much it. Which you had to admire for its simplicity.

  Unfortunately for them, most of their members were in jail. And their founder had offed himself a while back. And their members who weren’t locked up had shaved their heads, covered themselves with tattoos, and made some harsh videos about blacks and Jews and all the “mud” races, which pissed a lot of people off, so their recruitment numbers were down.

  Which may explain why they jumped on our little family fight in Enniston. They needed some free publicity.

  The mayor’s letter had led to a follow-up letter by a group of Somali elders, which led to another group forming (Aunt Maddie and Co.) and leading these little marches and stuff, which made the news, and next thing we knew the United Church of the World decided the whites in Enniston needed their help. They planned to rally here, which everyone assumed was code for starting a race war, and people began really freaking out (think: Aunt Maddie) because, thanks to our beloved mayor and her stupid letter, the skinheads were coming to town.

  This was what Myla had meant by “very, very serious.”

  Of course, Tom Bouchard had other things on his mind. In particular, soccer and Ramadan.

  Here’s the thing I learned about Ramadan: it moves. Not like Christmas.

  Christmas comes at the same time every year. I’m sure no one has any idea what day Jesus Christ was actually born (something he shares with my refugee friends), but the day we celebrate his birthday? December 25? Set in stone. Retailers the world over count down to that day, and even if some archaeologist unearthed a papyrus birth certificate in the sands of Bethlehem proving that Our Lord was actually born on the Fourth of July, I doubt anybody’d shift the date.

  Ramadan, however, is a whole different deal. It’s based on the Islamic calendar, which is about eleven days shorter than the Gregorian calendar, which, BTW, is our calendar, which means that every year Ramadan begins eleven days earlier than the year before.

  I got that off Wikipedia. After Mike told me our next game against Maquoit was during the fast of Ramadan. I looked it up. Just to make sure.

  So … yeah. My senior year. The year Saeed and Ismail and Ibrahim and Double M were transforming our front line and Chamberlain started stacking up X’s in the win column, Ramadan began on October 1.

  We were scheduled to play Maquoit on October 8.

  I got how an invasion of white supremacist skinheads was probably a bigger deal and should have taken up more space in my mental hard drive. But for me, Ramadan and calendars and the chances that I could convince the guys to break the fast, at least for the day we played Maquoit, had become my new obsession.

  Mike said no way.

  “Tom, these are serious Muslims.” We were in the car, driving. We had had the early practice that day, and afterward Mike asked if I could take him to Harmon, the neighboring town. He wanted to catch the end of Ellen’s cross-country race, which was being held there.

  We’d been hanging out more, me and Mike. Partly because we had soccer, partly because I had AP calculus with Ellen Fitzgerald and Mike was in love. Neither of them had ever dated anyone before (which, when you’re a senior, makes it even more awkward, because everyone expects you to have had some knowledge of the opposite sex), and somehow I had ended up as their personal romantic go-between. Not literally passing messages back and forth. But Mike would grill me for info about her, and wait for me after calc in order to pretend to walk with me to our next class (he’d actually be looking for an opening to speak with her). Ellen had suddenly become fascinated with every detail surrounding Chamberlain soccer and would slyly ask me questions about Mike’s stats and whether he had scored.

  I was tempted to tell her he’d probably score if she came to more of our games, but that was the type of double-entendre asshole comment Myla would have hated, so I kept it to myself. Anyway, between Mike and Myla and four AP classes and a hundred hours of community service, I hadn’t seen much of Donnie. I mean, this usually happened during soccer season, but this year it really felt like he’d dropped off my radar. Sometimes there would be days I wouldn’t even bump into him at lunch, and I wondered if he was skipping school.

  Here’s the thing about cross-country: there’s really nothing to see until the end. Everyone runs off into the woods, you wait for them at the finish line, and about twenty minutes later they all start running out. Mike kept glancing at his watch as I broke the speed limit through school zones.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll get you there,” I told him. “And when are Muslims unserious, by the way?”

  He laughed.

  “When they’re cafeteria Catholics,” he said. “Picking and choosing what you want to do instead of letting the pope decide it all for you.”

  “Watch it; I resemble that remark.”

  “Then you know what I mean. You miss mass once in a while, or eat that chocolate you were going to give up for Lent, and it’s like, hey, whatever. Not like I’m going to hell for a Hershey’s bar. But Double M and the guys? They are serious. I was sitting next to them on the bench yesterday, and they were arguing over whether they can brush their teeth during Ramadan. And I’m like, ‘What, is toothpaste food?’ and they said, ‘No, it’s because you can’t drink during the day, and what if you swallow some water?’ And I was, like, ‘Dude. Allah will understand if a drop slips down your throat.’ And they all gave me this look, like, Allah will most certainly not understand. I mean, a drop, Tom. That’s what they’re worried about.”

  “You know your problem, Mike? You’re a freakin’ infidel. How would you know what Allah thinks?”

  “Exactly. What do I know? So don’t you get into micro-managing Ramadan for them, Tom. They won’t appreciate it.”

  He had a point. I sure don’t want anyone who’s not Catholic telling me how to practice my religion. But just like the dates for Ramadan move, the ways you do Ramadan aren’t set in stone. At least, according to Myla.

  We had been talking about it the night before, on the phone.

  She thought Mike was full of shit.

  “Give me a break,” she said when I told her about the toothpaste. “I know plenty of Muslim kids who brush their teeth during Ramadan without worrying about swallowing a little water.”

  She also has this friend, Jackie, who lives in her dorm. She’s a black woman from Pittsburgh, born and raised in this country, and she’s Muslim. She wears makeup and jewelry and you can see her hair. She doesn’t cover up with long skirts and a hijab; she dates and goes to parties and plays sports. But alcohol doesn’t touch her lips. She doesn’t get on the floor and face Mecca, but she does make a point to pray quietly five times a day. And during Ramadan, she doesn’t eat or drink during daylight hours.

  Unless she has a soccer game. See, she plays midfield for Mumford.

  “Jackie says a lot of this stuff that some Muslims say is part of the religion is actually just cultural and not in the Koran,” Myla said. “Like, when she’s introduced to a man, she’ll shake his hand. Not like a lot of our Somali girls, who won’t touch a man who is not an immediate relative, and if they have to shake a man’s hand—like, say, the principal handing them their diploma at graduation—they’ll cover their hand with the hijab so they don’t touch skin.”

  “Seriously? Samira wouldn’t shake my hand?”

  “We should ask her. I’m curious. Samira’s … unpredictable.” Myla’s voice trailed off. “I think there’s a lot she�
��s still trying to sort out.”

  “So where are you now?” I asked.

  “Lying on my bed,” she replied. “Supposedly reading for my anthro class tomorrow. But then this guy called …”

  “Hey, we’re talking about Muslim cultural and religious practices. Sounds like anthropology to me.”

  She laughed.

  “Do you have your flamingos on?”

  “Of course,” she said. “I wish you were here to appreciate them with me.”

  “Somehow I don’t think any anthro would be happening if we were appreciating the flamingos together right now,” I said. “That’s very true, Cap.”

  The flamingos are these small pink party lights, shaped like the long-legged birds, that Myla has strung along the walls of her dorm room. The overhead light in her room is this bright fluorescent thing, which she hates, so she bought herself a floor lamp that uses an energy-saving bulb, and these strings of flamingos.

  The flamingos create some pretty intense atmosphere. I gave them two enthusiastic thumbs up the other night.

  “But listen,” she said, pulling me away from some pleasant, flamingo-lit memories. “What you’ve got to realize is that while American Muslims like Jackie might feel comfortable breaking the fast for a college soccer game, guys like Saeed might not. Somali people are pretty conservative, and refugees a lot of times get even stricter about religion when they leave home. They’ve already lost so much, you know? Religion is one of the few things they’ve got left.”

  I sighed.

  “So basically you’re telling me there’s no chance I’m gonna convince these guys that the team needs them to be in top form when we play Maquoit and please won’t they eat and drink something before the game?”

  “I’m saying you can try, but don’t get your hopes up.”

  As Mike and I pulled into the parking lot of the middle school, we heard a gun going off in the direction of the fields, followed by cheers. He glanced at his watch.

  “I can’t remember if the girls run first or second. If we hurry, maybe I can catch her on the second turn.”

  A cross-country race is like organized chaos. First you’ve got these runners all packed together along the start line. A gun fires, they take off, and it’s like a cartoon mob of flying feet and pumping arms and you’re just sure someone is going to trip and get trampled. But no one does, and within ten seconds or so they fall into an order of sorts, with a third going out strong, a third pacing themselves in the middle, and a third settling into a jog because they’re clearly not concerned about their times and just hope to finish the race.