by Nafisa Haji
Without thinking, I did what she said.
“Yes, you see? The yogurt dampens all the heat, but adds to the flavor instead of drowning it out. Water would only intensify the spice—making your mouth fight a battle against itself. You cannot fight the spices—if you want to eat spicy food—you have to let yourself feel the pain and then your mouth will adjust. Eventually, you will be able to taste the other flavors, too. And peace will reign!”
One day, when she had me sit in the living room while she brought out the chai, to get away from the fumes of food simmering on the stove, she said, I found a book half-hidden behind one of the pillows on the couch. It was Little Women.
“Ah—you’ve found Sabah’s book! She was looking for it all day yesterday.” Deena set the cups of tea down on the coffee table and took the book from me. “For a whole year I have tried to get that daughter of mine to start reading this book with me—it was my favorite when I was a girl. But no—every day there is an excuse. ‘My favorite TV show is on, Mom; I have too much homework, Mom; I’ll start it tomorrow, Mom.’ And now that we have begun, she can’t wait for bedtime so that we can read together! She was convinced that her brother had hidden it from her . . .” Deena’s voice trailed off. “Ah, well. You have found it for her. She will be very grateful. She was so mad at my son.”
“I’ve seen the movie on TV.”
“But you haven’t read the book? Oh, Angela! That is not the same thing. You must read it to know what it is about! Such a beautiful story—oh, how I cried when Beth died. You remember? Which movie did you see? The one with Katharine Hepburn or Elizabeth Taylor?”
“I—I don’t know.”
“Was it in black-and-white?”
“No. Color. But it was old.”
“The Elizabeth Taylor version, then. Ah, well, it’s not your fault. Your whole generation—I feel sorry for you. Television has robbed you all of your imagination. When I was young, we read and played. We invented our own toys and plays—just like Jo in Little Women.”
I laughed. “But Deena—you’re not that old! You had television when you were a kid!”
“Not in Pakistan, Angela. Not until after I was married. And I consider myself lucky.” Deena gave me a quick sideways glance before picking up her teacup. “You— forgive me for asking, Angela, but you have finished school?”
I turned red. “No. I quit. I was no good at it anyway.”
“I see.” Deena’s lips twitched, like she wanted to say more but didn’t.
On another day, she said, “You must be getting bored. With nothing to do all day until Connie and Todd come home.”
I shrugged.
The next day, when I went over, she had her purse in her hand and was ready to go out when she answered the door. “Come, Angela. I am going to the library. You’ll come with me?”
“Uh— sure. Why not?”
She made me get a library card, watched me fill out the form, and made me check out a copy of Little Women. As we left, she pointed out a hiring sign on display at the checkout desk. “What a wonderful job this would be for a young person! To work in a library.”
I finished reading Little Women in two days. She took me to the library again the next week. I wanted to check out more books. While I was there, I filled out a job application. A week later, I got the job. The library was walking distance, and I worked only a couple of days a week, in the afternoons usually, stacking books back on the shelves. Sometimes, I dropped my dad off at work so I could keep his car to drive. I proudly showed him my driver’s license without being asked, to prove I could drive, and hoped he’d see that my birthday was coming up. But I don’t think he noticed. I started driving the kids to their after-school stuff sometimes. Michelle was really friendly. But Cory was a tough nut to crack. Not that I tried very hard.
One day, when I’d worked at the library in the morning, I walked home just at the time that the school bus was dropping Cory off from high school. Deena’s son—I recognized him from the picture in her family room—got off the bus, too. A bunch of boys were yelling at him out of the windows of the bus. “Sad-Dick! Hey Sad-Dick, the I-raynian! Watch out, Sad-Dick! We’re gonna kick your ass!” One of the boys spit at him, but missed. Cory was walking home real fast, trying to keep his distance. When I got home, I did something I had already tried to do a couple of times. I started a conversation with Cory. “Hey—that boy—the one the others were yelling at, he’s Deena’s son, isn’t he?”
Cory looked around like he was making sure I wasn’t talking to anyone else and then barely looked at me as he nodded.
“Why were they picking on him?”
Cory shrugged and shuffled into his room.
That night, I saw Deena’s son out in front of her house, sitting at the curb and lighting up a cigarette. I hadn’t smoked since I left home. Suddenly, I was dying for a puff. I went out and asked him for a cigarette. He squinted up at me for a long second before fishing the pack out of his shirt pocket and offering me one.
After he lit me up, I asked him, “Does your mom know you smoke?”
“She knows.”
“She doesn’t mind?”
He shrugged.
I stared at him through the wisps of smoke that rose up from the tips of our cigarettes. He had the longest, thickest eyelashes I’d ever seen. There was a bit of a five o’clock shadow on his jaw, which made him look older than fifteen. I didn’t think I’d started the conversation off right, so I decided to try again from scratch.
I stuck my hand out at him, real formal. “My name’s Angela Rogers.”
He stared at my hand for a second before taking it to shake. “I’m Sadiq. Sadiq Ali Mubarak.”
“Sah-dik? O-oh.” That explained the “Sad-Dick” from the other kids. “I saw the boys on the bus giving you a hard time.”
He scowled and took a suck on his cigarette. “They’re assholes.”
He had even more of an accent than Deena. “What about your dad? Doesn’t he mind you smoking?”
“My dad is dead.”
“Oh. So— Deena’s husband is your stepfather?”
His scowl went fierce. I understood. Until that second, I hadn’t thought of Connie that way, either. She was my stepmother. It was hard to think of the word without adding “wicked.” I figured Deena’s son must feel the same way about her husband.
I went out there and smoked with him a few times after that. I did most of the talking—about what, I don’t know. He’d listen and nod. I felt kind of guilty about the smoking. He was younger than me. And Deena was so nice to me. I felt like I should try to be a good influence on her son. Try to be his friend. I don’t think he had any. But he didn’t seem to care whether he did or not.
One thing I do remember talking to him about was religion. I asked him tons of questions.
“Do you guys believe in Jesus?”
“Yes. But not the same way that Christians do.”
“What do you mean?”
“We believe he was a prophet. Not the son of God.”
“A prophet?”
“Yes. Like others before him. Moses. Abraham. Noah.”
“So, you don’t accept him as the Messiah?”
“Oh, yes. We do.”
“As your Lord and Savior?”
He frowned. “I don’t know what that means.”
“It means that he died on the cross. For our sins. To save us.”
He looked at me like he still had no idea what I was talking about. Then he said, “Why do you eat his flesh and drink his blood?”
“Huh?”
“The bread and the wine. The priests say it’s his body and his blood.”
“Oh. Catholics do that. And some others, I think. Not regular Christians.” I shrugged and changed the subject, one I wasn’t comfortable with either, having been more than a little confused about religion myself over the past few years. I thought I’d been born again twice, once when I was six and then again when I was ten. But each time, whatever it was that mad
e me stand up in church for the altar call and say the words of the Sinner’s Prayer along with others who stood when Grandpa Pelton invited them to, faded pretty fast. I’d begun to suspect that what other people described feeling when they testified to their experiences—a feeling of surrender, of lightness—had nothing to do with anything I had felt. The way they talked, I could tell—it seemed like they were caught up in the moment, like I was, but their moment seemed to last, while mine just fizzled.
About a month after I first got to L.A., on my eighteenth birthday, I woke up early, with knots in my stomach. Kind of expectant. Even though I had no reason to be. Just as I’d figured, even if I’d secretly hoped for something different, no one said anything about my birthday. I wasn’t scheduled to work. And I didn’t go to Deena’s either, spending the day moping instead. Jake came over around noon and started hammering away at stuff in the kitchen. I hid out in the den with a book from the library.
Afternoon came. And evening. Nothing special happened.
Mom called after dinner. I spoke to her in the den so no one could hear. She wished me a happy birthday and sounded sad. “I got home yesterday, Angie. I was disappointed that you weren’t here.”
Grandpa Pelton came on the phone, too—the first time I talked to him since the day I’d run away. “Your mother is miserable, Angela,” he said. “I hope you know that.”
That bummed me out even more. After we hung up, I asked my dad if I could borrow the car.
“You got plans?”
“Yeah. With a friend from work.”
“Knock yourself out.”
“Have a good time,” Connie said, waving cheerfully as ever.
Sadiq was at the curb. I pulled up to him and told him to get in the car. He looked kind of surprised, but did what I said.
I drove us around for a while. All over. I had a vague sense of direction to go on—Connie and my father had taken me on a kind of drive-by tour: Beverly Hills, Hollywood, a couple of beaches. That’s where we ended up—at the beach. We got out and walked for a while, lighting up cigarettes. We both stopped and stared at the ocean for a bit.
“It’s my birthday today,” I said, to the ocean, like I was making some kind of announcement.
Sadiq turned and stared at me for a minute. “Happy birthday, Angela,” he said, as he leaned in to kiss me. One kiss led to another and another. It was strange. I’d had boyfriends, Denny being the last of them. So this wasn’t my first kiss. But it kind of felt like it was—better, though. That first one had been with the pimply, brace-mouthed boy who lived next door in Garden Hill. With Denny, it had been all about doing what it took to make him happy. What Sadiq and I did was nothing like the first wipe-my-mouth-off experience and definitely more mutual than with Denny. Eventually, breathing hard, I put my hand on his chest and pushed him away.
“I— I can’t think, Sadiq. This isn’t right.”
His eyes flashed at me by the light of the lamppost in the parking lot behind us. He looked as dazed as I felt. He put one of his hands in my hair, pulling me back toward him and whispered into my ear, kissing it between each feathery word, “Do you believe it’s a sin?”
“Huh?” I couldn’t think. “Mmm. No. Yes. I— don’t— know.” My mind wasn’t doing a very good job at finding enough words to fill a sentence.
He kissed me again, on the lips, making my mouth too busy to help my mind anyway, and I kissed him back with everything I had.
Then, after a moment of both of us breathing raggedly, he said, “In my religion, it is a sin. But we also have something called mut’a.”
“What’s that?” I didn’t really care.
He stopped talking to kiss my neck, making it even harder for me to focus on what he was saying. “Temporary marriage.”
“Temporary?” I was distracted by his hand, which held mine. He raised it to his face, and bent to put his lips on the inner part of my wrist, moving them up, slowly, into the palm of my hand. My fingers curled around his mouth, his face, moving to the back of his head and into his hair, guiding him back upward.
“A marriage with a beginning and an end.” He took both of my hands in his, his words muffled in the hollow at the base of my neck.
I might have said something like “Mm-hmm.”
“The point is . . . it’s not a sin. It’s a commitment. For a set period of time.”
“A commitment? Not a sin? So— how do you— what do you have to do?”
He pulled away and locked his eyes in mine. “We make an intention. I say: Angela Rogers, you are my wife for tonight. And you say: Sadiq Mubarak, you’re my husband for tonight.”
“Sadiq Mubarak: you’re my husband? For tonight?”
“Just for tonight.”
“What’s the point of that?”
“It means . . . I am responsible. If anything happens.”
We ended up in the backseat of my dad’s car. It was the first time for him, I think, so mechanics were what he focused on more than technique. But that was a good thing. He kept stopping to check in with me. To make sure I was—well—enjoying myself. That was something Denny had never bothered with. When we were done, we held each other close. Temporary husband and wife.
After a while, I put my hand on his cheek and asked, “How old were you when your father died?”
“I don’t know. A baby.”
“How did he die?” I tried to imagine Deena young and widowed with a baby version of Sadiq in her arms.
Sadiq laughed. “Depends on who you ask. There are some who say that it’s all my mother’s fault.”
I sat up. “Fault? What do you mean? Like, she killed him?! You don’t believe that!” I know I didn’t, whether he did or not.
He laughed again. “No. Not murder. Some think that my mother drove him to it.”
“What— what do you mean?”
He wasn’t laughing now, just shaking his head. His scowl was back. “I don’t know what I mean. I don’t know what anything means.” After a minute, the scowl faded.
I wanted to ask him more, but he started kissing me again—lighting everything back up between us all over again. This time, it was all about technique.
I didn’t feel like going to Deena’s house the next day. But she came over around ten o’clock in the morning. She had a wrapped present in her hand—for me.
“You didn’t come yesterday. I wanted to give you this. And wish you a happy birthday.” She was smiling.
“How— how did you know it was my birthday?”
“I saw it when you were filling out your job application. At the library. You are eighteen now. A young woman—all grown up! You can vote. You are the mistress of your own future. Isn’t that so?”
“You remembered?”
“Of course, I remembered!”
“No one here knew it was my birthday.”
Deena put her hand on my shoulder. “Silly girl. You should have told them.” She pointed to the present she’d put in my hands. “Go on. Open it.”
I ripped open the wrapping and looked at what she’d given me. A book. Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan.
“It’s what Marmee gives to Meg and Jo. Beth and Amy. In Little Women,” Deena explained.
I nodded. “I remember. Thank you, Deena. I— thank you for everything.”
By the time I knew I was pregnant, I’d read Pilgrim’s Progress three times—the first part anyway, about Christian’s journey. It wasn’t an easy read, and the part about his wife, Christiana, wasn’t as good.
That book changed everything for me. I understood, for the first time in my life, what faith was all about. I thanked Deena over and over again and told her she should read the book, too.
“We have our own stories, Angela. About faith. They all mean the same thing, you know.”
I thought about what she said. But I didn’t agree. I couldn’t because I knew better. Jesus said, I am the way and the truth and the life. No man cometh unto the Father but by me. I knew that now. Like Christian, I’d had to le
ave home and go on a journey, get sidetracked and make mistakes to figure it out. I still had a long way to go on the journey, I knew, but at least now I understood what it was.
It took forever for my father to come home on the day I decided to tell him that I was pregnant. I thought I’d be nervous and afraid. But I wasn’t—not compared to how I would have felt if I’d been home and it was Mom or Grandpa Pelton I had to break the news to, which I guessed I’d have to, some time or another. This was easy, compared to how that was going to be.
When I told Dad, he was quiet for a long time. Then, without asking me anything, about who the father was or anything, he came and put his arm around me. I started to cry.
“Shh. It’s all right, Angie. It’s gonna be okay. I promise.”
He was hugging me and stroking my hair, a little more clumsily than I had imagined he’d do when I first decided to run away from home. He held me for a long time, until I cried all the water out of me. He got me a glass of some more and held me again. I drank the water almost as thirstily as I soaked in the embrace.
Then he said, “It’s okay, Angie. You’ve got your whole life ahead of you. We’ll figure out what to do. You rest, okay,” he said, laying me down on the couch, pulling a blanket up to tuck in around me.
I nodded, feeling vulnerable and taken care of, like the little girl he’d never known, asking, “Are you mad?”
“Oh, Angie, no. This was just a mistake. I love you and I’m here.” I closed my eyes, happy and relieved.
A few minutes later, I heard him talking on the phone. To Connie. He was filling her in. I was furious. He came back into the room when he was done talking to her. Taking my hand in his, he said, all soft-eyed and sympathetic, “Connie will take care of everything, honey.”
“Connie?”
Not seeing the resentment in my eyes, he nodded. “She’s making an appointment for you. Right away.”
“An appointment?”
“For an abortion.” Dad squeezed my hand. “I’ll be with you the whole time.”
My hand in his went limp. “An abortion?”