Footsteps

by Umm Zakiyyah

  Initially, her mother used the strap, but by fifteen years old, Angela had mastered the most visceral art of rebellion. She would stand stark still with her palms flat on the table as her mother struck her, over and over again, and Angela would barely flinch, though she pressed her eyes closed with each strike. Rhonda would grow exhausted from the striking, this Angela could tell by the sound of her mother’s asthmatic breaths, and Angela would stand and turn around to look her mother directly in the eye before asking coolly, though her red eyes betrayed her, “Are you finished?” She would not cry. She refused to cry. That much she could withhold from her mother. Sometimes a smack across the face would follow the inquiry, but Angela would meet her mother’s eyes, slowly and deliberately, unmoved by the stinging pulsating on her cheek, and wait for permission to leave.

  “Sounds like my family,” Tamika said.

  “Black people were always up in the church.”

  “I never thought about it like that.”

  “Just give it to Jesus,” Khadijah said, quoting the oft-repeated advice the church would give.

  “I know,” Tamika laughed as she remembered. “I believed it though. I didn’t know anything else was out there.”

  “Naw,” Khadijah said, shaking her head, “I ain’t never understand how some white guy nailed to a damn cross gonna help me. Up there lookin’ like my long-haired English teacher.”

  “You serious?” A trace of amusement was on Tamika’s face.

  “Girl, yeah. I ain’t get that. Why all of us up in there praying to some White man.”

  “I mean, about your English teacher?”

  “He ain’t look like nobody to you?”

  Tamika lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “I never thought about it. But I’m sure I knew he looked like White people.”

  “Yeah, ‘cause he sure as hell wasn’t Black. At least not in my church.”

  “You know, I never understood that.”

  “What?”

  “The Black Jesus thing. I always felt like it was silly, you know.” She chuckled. “Why they gonna put up a picture of themselves and worship it. I didn’t get it.”

  “But you ain’t never ask the same about the White one, huh?”

  “Yeah, I know, it’s crazy.”

  “That’s a trip. That’s why I ain’t understand why my mom and dad all on me about church. I felt sorry for ‘em, to tell you the truth.”

  “I can’t imagine. I thought church was the answer for everybody.”

  Khadijah laughed. “You and my mom would’ve liked each other.”

  “But I knew something wasn’t right. With all the Trinity stuff.”

  “Naw, I ain’t never believe that. Even when I went to church. I would think, this is so stupid. God ain’t no man.”

  “SubhaanAllaah.”

  “And it said he wasn’t in the Bible anyway.”

  “You knew that?” Tamika had seen the passage from Numbers for the first time, or at least it had registered for the first time, when she read the “Why You Should Be a Muslim” pamphlet Dee and Aminah had given her. She was so taken aback that she went and read it for herself to make sure it was really in the Bible.

  “I read the Bible cover-to-cover when I was in fifth grade.”

  Tamika’s eyebrows rose. “You for real?”

  “Yeah, girl. I never was one to just take what people said, even with my parents, astaghfirullaah. So after that, I was in church like, okay, ya’ll trippin’.”

  “So you knew the Bible wasn’t completely true?”

  “I wouldn’t say that. But I knew what they was saying on Sunday wasn’t what I read.”

  “I never thought to compare.”

  “I wasn’t even comparing. I just wanted to know God for myself instead of people telling me about Him.”

  “So when you were reading, you didn’t look for contradictions?”

  Khadijah laughed. “Girl, I was eleven years old. I ain’t know nothin’ about all that.”

  “But did you find any?”

  “Lookin’ back, yeah, I guess I did. But I was just confused and thought I wasn’t supposed to understand.”

  “Like what?”

  “Mostly the New Testament when I read the stuff about the Trinity. It just didn’t seem like it should’ve been in there.”

  “When I read the parts of the Bible Aminah was telling me about, that’s when I knew something didn’t add up.”

  “But I still believed it was God’s Word. It just wasn’t nothing like they say in church.”

  “MashaAllaah. That’s something how you were able to see that as a child. Some adults don’t even see that, even if they read the Bible.”

  “I don’t know. I think if you read it, you ain’t got no choice but to see something. But they just think the preacher know better, I guess. But anyway, what Christian you know really reads the Bible like that?”

  “That’s true.”

  “But Allah’s merciful, for real. ‘Cause when I read the Qur’an, that’s when I knew I was right all this time.”

  “So reading the Bible helped you convert?”

  Khadijah considered it then lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “Yeah, in a way. But I converted a good ten years after that.”

  “So you were twenty-one when you became Muslim?”

  “Twenty.”

  “How old are you now?”

  “I turned twenty-six in February.”

  “You were living with your parents?”

  “When I became Muslim?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yeah, I was.”

  “You didn’t go to school?”

  “Girl, after high school, I ain’t wanna hear nothin’ about school from nobody.”

  “Why?” Tamika asked, smiling in her curiosity.

  “I was just pushin’ through to get it over with. I hated it.”

  “Me too. But college more than high school.” Tamika paused.

  “What made you go to nursing school?”

  Khadijah shrugged. “Umm Barakah was tellin’ me I should do something, even if it was only a two-year thing.”

  “Why nursing though?”

  “’Cause it was the only thing where I could make decent money without going to some stupid four-year school.”

  “I wish I had thought of that. But I don’t think I would’ve done nursing.”

  “Why not?”

  “I hate seeing blood and stuff.”

  Khadijah laughed. “Girl, blood is the least of it.”

  “I can’t imagine.”

  “But it’s cool. I don’t like dealing with the doctors though. They remind me of high school.”

  Tamika started to laugh. “High school?”

  “Yeah, how they all into themselves. It’s jacked up.”

  They were silent momentarily.

  “You hated high school a lot then, huh?” Tamika asked.

  “To say the least.”

  “But why? I didn’t like it either, but it seems like it really got to you.”

  “Yeah,” Khadijah said slowly, considering it, “but it was the world mostly, I think. But back then, school was the world.” She laughed. “More than I knew.”

  “Did you go to public school?”

  “I started off in private, but by middle school I was in public school.”

  “Was it mostly Black?”

  She shook her head. “A mix. We lived around a lot of different people.”

  Tamika nodded. “Is that where you first heard about Islam?”

  “I heard about it before that. But the Nation mostly.” She smiled. “I liked me some bean pie, I ain’t even gonna lie.”

  They laughed.

  “But what made you finally do it?” Tamika asked.

  “Convert?”

  “Yeah.”

  Khadijah was silent. She didn’t know how to answer, at least not with words. But she knew. Death was something you couldn’t forget. That, she was sure, was something Tamika could understand. But she was still st
ruggling to comprehend it all herself.

  “My best friend died next to me,” she said finally. She saw Tamika’s expression change, and she knew the subject was closed. They were joined by a bond that neither of them could have known or planned. And Khadijah saw in Tamika’s eyes, even in her averting them, that Tamika sensed that too.

  Aminah hung up the phone in her room with a mixture of flattery and confusion. She couldn’t talk to her parents right then, even though her mother was waiting in her room for Aminah to finish her first conversation with Zaid. Her father had decided that morning that it wasn’t necessary, or preferred, for him or Sarah to be in the room with Aminah when she and Zaid spoke. Despite her initial discomfort, at that moment, Aminah couldn’t help feeling grateful for her father’s decision. She had no idea how the conversation would have gone had she been forced to endure her mother’s intense stares or her father’s mask of disinterest, although he would not have been home from work when Zaid called from work himself.

  It felt weird having her mother come to her room to tell her that the phone was for her. Even as Aminah knew, somehow, that this call would be. Zaid greeted her after she said hello, and she couldn’t get over how his voice sounded much deeper than she remembered it during his visit. That her mother was still in the room, albeit walking out the door after handing her the cordless, added to the awkwardness of those first few seconds on the phone. Aminah had felt suddenly alone at the sound of her door closing, and she wanted to run to sit next to her mother despite what her father had suggested. But knowing that her mother was right down the hall relaxed Aminah somewhat and made her mindful that she could not, would not, get comfortable on the phone. She was not there to talk, she remembered, but to listen. And that thought alone calmed her. The pressure would not be on her. If she could only get past the question.

  “What did you need to ask me?” Zaid had said in reference to her last e-mail. Aminah’s heart had begun to race at the sound of his voice and what he was asking. She had initially stuttered in reply, but she reminded herself that she had to keep her cool, her composure. She was confident, assertive. She didn’t want to give him the wrong impression. And she didn’t want him to think she would accept anything other than the truth.

  Somehow the question left her tongue, and it was Zaid’s turn to gather his words. But when he spoke, he sounded so much more at ease than Aminah, so self-assured, that she envied him for a split second. Why couldn’t she relax too?

  It took a few seconds for her to realize that he was answering her question. He was talking about her. About her, and it made her uncomfortable. This wasn’t right. She didn’t like it. But her mother had told her to listen. Just listen. And that’s what Aminah would do.

  She listened as he talked about the first time he saw her, how he had immediately asked Zahra who she was. Aminah listened as he said he was so taken by her beauty that it barely mattered the details his cousin spoke. He wanted to marry her, and he would, if Allah willed, even if his family hated him for the rest of his life. He mentioned how he was impressed by her Islamic dress, which made him all the more determined to ask about her and her family. When he learned she was a sister to Sulayman, the one whose walimah his aunt and uncle were helping with, he knew his chances were good.

  Aminah still held the cordless, but her hand was now in her lap. Her eyes were on the numbered buttons, her mind far beyond. She was flattered. How couldn’t she be? Who could resist the pleasure of hearing adoration, which stoked the natural vanity in the human being? But she couldn’t help feeling a bit confused. What was it that her mother wanted her to listen for? What was she supposed to hear? Perhaps she was to seek out something that bothered her. If so, there was nothing.

  Except one thing.

  Aminah had listened to him go on about her beauty, and she was undoubtedly pleased. It was candy to her ears. Never before had she heard such praise without feeling either guilt or disgust. But this was different from unsolicited comments from the mouths of male students in high school and college. She had asked him what he felt. That she had never done before. Which was probably why she enjoyed it more than she expected, and why she had allowed this enjoyment to preoccupy her, distract her from the one thing. When she was able to see through the cloud of flattery, she saw it as if before her, and her flattery changed to confusion, then curiosity, then shame.

  “Zaid, I’m Black,” she said in response, realizing for the first time he might not know, given his comments on her white skin and “blue” eyes that were, in reality, closer to green.

  He had laughed. Laughed. She could hardly believe her ears. As if she didn’t know what she was. “You’re not black.”

  “Yes, I am. I thought you knew that.”

  “I know what I see.”

  “What you see isn’t always true.”

  “How can your skin lie?” She heard the amusement still traceable in his voice, and she was offended.

  “It’s not about my skin. It’s who I am, Zaid.”

  “You’ll never be black to me.”

  Aminah stood, the weight of the phone in her hand as she walked to the door. She hesitated before turning the handle and pulling it open. She stepped into the familiar hallway and felt like a stranger right then. What would she say to her mother? Or would she say nothing at all?

  She carried the cordless back downstairs and returned it to its base on the kitchen counter near the patio. She slipped her hands into the pockets of her baggy jeans and gazed out the glass to the neatly mown yard. Her eyes fell upon the shed where her father kept the lawnmower, shovels, and rakes, along with a host of things he seemed unwilling, or unable, to throw away.

  What would her father think of Zaid’s comment about her race? Would he be alarmed, offended too? Would her mother think she was overreacting, or, worse, see it as a sign she shouldn’t marry Zaid? Zaid couldn’t be blamed, really, because, in the literal sense, he was right. She was white.

  But, still, she wasn’t White. And in that lay a world of difference that perhaps only she could understand. Not even Sulayman was the source of as much race confusion to others as she, and she had often wished, as she sometimes did still, that she was brown. Why white skin if she couldn’t be White?

  It was Allah who had given her white skin, but it wasn’t He who withheld her from being White. What was her “Black” label anyway, but a proverbial branding on the hides of human stock? Before humans were herded like cattle, made slaves of men, there was no “race”. In reality, there was no race still.

  But reality was subjective, and of different types. Biological reality was less significant than social in this respect. What did it matter that there was no true definition of race, a term indistinguishable from color in the practical sense. Then why the differentiation between the two? Did she believe in the one-drop rule? One drop of “sable” blood made her sable too?

  And what was a drop? Who could measure it? Who would? Maybe Zaid was from the more civilized of people, who saw what he saw without perverting it to fit societal mores. Then what was it to him if she were in fact Black? If she could never be Black to him, could she ever be her to him?

  Was Zaid like her mother’s relative, who had seen a blessing in Sarah’s child not looking like…America’s tainted stock? Should Aminah somehow rejoice in being spared more than a drop of her father’s Black blood? Aminah abhorred the very thought. She was just as much a child of her father as she was of her mother.

  But even she didn’t believe that. She and her father shared something her mother never could. They had both been branded as society’s reprehensible breed. Who would choose that if given the opportunity? But that was it. There was no choice. And no opportunity. You were what they said. And they said what you were.

  Why did it bother her that Zaid found the Black label amusing? Even more, why was it important that she never be Black to him? Or maybe it wasn’t a matter of importance, but course. Her skin was white, so why deny that obvious fact?

  Was t
his what she was listening for? Something to rekindle that self-torment that her white skin and Black race had not allowed her to live down? She wished she hadn’t heard that one thing. She didn’t want to hide in her pale skin. Yet, she didn’t know what she wanted. And that hurt most.

  “I thought I heard you come downstairs.” Aminah heard her mother enter the kitchen just then, and she turned to her. “I didn’t know you were finished.”

  “I just hung up,” Aminah said casually. Her eyes met her mother’s, and the plain fact that she had taken for granted since childhood was painfully pervasive in that moment. Her mother was indeed White. Blond hair, white skin. She was America’s personification of beauty. For no other reason than she had been born.

  Was it coincidence or corruption that made a Pakistani like Zaid desire that very thing?

  “When you were marrying Dad,” Aminah said, surprised by the candor of her words, “was it a big deal that you were White?”

  Aminah saw her mother’s expression change from casual curiosity to concern. “What did the brother say to you?”

  “I was just wondering.”

  “Aminah.” Her mother’s tone carried a sternness that Aminah sensed despite Sarah’s effort to soften her voice. It was her mother’s way of demanding an answer, Aminah knew. Her mother would not accept evasiveness on something like this. They rarely discussed race, she and her mother. But the subject was not off limits. Though no one could escape the pain it inevitably brought.

  “Was it?”

  Aminah saw her mother bite her lower lip at Aminah’s insistence on an answer. Sarah was getting frustrated, this Aminah could tell. But right then, it was Aminah who needed an answer more than her mother. What did it matter the particulars of the conversation? If it were upon her to divulge that, then why hadn’t her mother simply sat next to her in the room?

  Aminah watched as her mother gave in, at first with her eyes, then with a sigh, followed by her sliding into the chair that faced the patio. Because it was the respectful thing to do, Aminah too sat, her back to the glass so she could face her mother as they talked.