The Eleventh Trade

by Alyssa Hollingsworth

  Somalia. That’s where his accent is from. Miss Juniper gives Coach a sad smile. I murmur thanks again, and slip out the door.

  I have plenty of leads on trades. Coach might think talking is good, and Mrs. Michele might think memories shouldn’t be locked away. But I can handle this on my own.

  Talking is the last thing I want to do.

  * * *

  TRADE LOG

  Days: 20

  Have: $145

  Need: $555

  PLANNED TRADES:

  Combat boots for art supplies (Julie)

  COMPLETED TRADES:

  1. Manchester United key chain -> iPod

  2. Coins -> Game Informer magazines

  3. iPod -> Figurines

  4. Figurines -> $145

  5. Magazines -> Combat boots

  * * *

  16

  On Saturday morning, Baba and I wait outside the apartment for our ride. I have put all of my earnings in a plastic bag, which I’m keeping in my pocket. Hopefully there will be something at the sale I can buy—something that will lead to more trades.

  “So, Dan is the one who normally plays defense on your team.” Baba adjusts his white taqiyah on his head. He doesn’t mention the principal’s office. “Layla is the girl who does offense. Mrs. Michele is her mother.”

  “Right.” Baba has been practicing their names and his English since we woke before dawn. I think he wants to be sure not to embarrass me.

  Baba nods. “I think I can remember these.”

  A blue minivan rounds the corner, Mrs. Michele at the wheel. I wave.

  As soon as the car rolls to a stop, Layla bounds out of the passenger seat, calling, “Your grandpa can sit with my mom in the front!”

  She throws open the sliding door and dives into the back before I can stop her. Baba looks a bit uncomfortable, glancing uncertainly at the empty passenger seat beside Mrs. Michele. In Kandahar, he would never sit in the front with a woman unless she was his wife or daughter.

  “It’s normal for men and women here,” I remind him in Pashto. “It’s a different world, remember?”

  He gives me a sly glance.

  Mrs. Michele rolls down her window. “Come on in! We’re not too scary.”

  Baba walks around to the front passenger side. Behind him there are two seats in the middle, with a toddler in his car seat leaving only one empty. Layla motions me to the back, where she’s sitting beside Dan.

  “Hi,” I say, taking the spot on the other side of Layla. Raising my voice a little, I add, “Baba, this is Dan and Layla. Dan, Layla, this is my grandfather, Habibullah Safi.”

  “Hi!” Layla waves.

  “Good to meet you, sir,” Dan says, suddenly formal. “I mean—officially.”

  “And you, Dan.” Baba turns in his seat and nods to him. “Hello, Layla.”

  Mrs. Michele points to the toddler. “Mr. Safi, Sami, this is my youngest—Jared. Micah and Alex are Layla’s other brothers.”

  “But Alex wanted to sleep in.” Layla shakes her head, disgusted. “And Dad and Micah are visiting colleges.”

  “Hello, Jared,” Baba says, giving a little wave. Jared grins at him. Mrs. Michele starts off as soon as we’re buckled.

  “So, how’re you doing?” asks Dan.

  “Good,” I answer, then hesitate. “Your parents didn’t want to go to the sale?”

  “Yeah, the Parent”—he says it like a title or a name—“had to work. But she didn’t care if I came, so here I am.”

  “Oh.” It clicks suddenly, and I feel stupid for not realizing sooner. The parent. That nickname wasn’t just Dan being odd. It was because he only has one—his mother. What happened to his father? And why did Dan have his boots?

  I’m not sure how to ask, and it probably isn’t my place anyway. Dan doesn’t seem fazed by my question. He’s looking out the window, pointing out landmarks to me and Layla, so I let the subject drop.

  Classical music drifts over the radio, and the car smells faintly of hot plastic and crackers. The drive across the city passes with murmurs from the front of Baba’s conversation with Mrs. Michele and Dan launching into funny stories. Layla perches on the edge of the seat, straining against her seat belt, watching the road for any sign of something called “punch buggies.” I look out my window as the cramped apartment complexes change to concrete highway. When we cross the Charles River, I turn my gaze to the floor. The distance between Baba and me seems to stretch. I wish I were next to him. Without his arm around my shoulder, the concrete bridge quivers beneath the wheels, the height grows until the air gets thin, the seconds slow to minutes and minutes to hours—I clench my hands in my lap and don’t breathe until we reach the far side.

  We pull off at Winthrop and wind down quiet backstreets, past houses that might as well be mansions.

  “That’s mine!” Layla exclaims suddenly, pointing at a green one. “Mom! Mom! I claim that one!”

  I glance at her, surprised. If she lives somewhere like this, why does she come all the way to the rec center?

  But then her mother points to a blue one and says, “Well, that one’s mine.”

  “Oooh, I like the porch.” Layla nods her approval. She pokes me. “Which do you want?”

  “Um.” They’re all so big and grand and different from anything I’ve known. Suddenly I’m thinking of the single-story house in Kandahar, with its white walls and pink bougainvillea and my mor jani’s voice drifting from inside.

  I want that home with an ache that steals my breath and burns my eyes.

  Trying to hide it from Layla, I point blindly. “That one.”

  “Good choice! Sweet garden out front.”

  “I’ll take the red one,” Dan volunteers.

  Mrs. Michele turns the corner onto another, smaller street packed with cars.

  “And here we are,” she says cheerfully, unbuckling her seat belt.

  Dan and Layla clamber out, and I follow more slowly. They’re eager to gawk at the house, but I go around to help Baba rise from his seat. He accepts my arm with a grimace. In Pashto, he says, “These old bones don’t want to cooperate today, it seems.”

  “Just move slowly.” I adjust my grip so I can hold him better. “Be careful.”

  Baba gains his feet and ruffles my hair. “I am fine.”

  Dan comes bounding back to us. “Well, are we going to raid this mansion or not?”

  “Those were exactly my thoughts, Dan,” Mrs. Michele chimes in. She picks up Jared, pushes the car door shut, and lifts him onto her shoulders. “Here we go!”

  Mrs. Michele leads us around the crowd of parked cars to a house near the end of the street. It’s three stories high, painted white with a green roof. Mr. Byrne is visiting on the front porch and greets Mrs. Michele as we approach.

  While the adults talk, Jared reaches for Baba. Baba leans forward to tease Jared with his finger. He used to do that with the refugee children along the route—he could always get the most irritable child to laugh. Soon Jared’s grinning.

  Layla elbows me. “Come on. Let’s go!”

  “Do you mind if we explore on our own?” I ask Baba in quick Pashto.

  “No,” he answers. His eyes have brightened, and Jared catches his finger while he is distracted. “Go on. Be careful.”

  Layla slips inside, Dan and me on her heels. Immediately, one thing becomes clear: The old owner really, really loved ducks.

  There are duck paintings, duck statues, duck toys. Wooden ducks, clay ducks, glass ducks. The hallway has already been pretty picked over, but the living room is covered in them.

  “Wow,” Dan whispers. “It’s like a duck graveyard or something.”

  “Duck mania,” Layla adds. She points to some of the painted wooden ducks. “You’d be surprised, though—plenty of collectors love this sort of stuff. Duck decoys are especially popular.”

  “Duck decoys?” I ask.

  “Hunters use them, I think. Mostly people like to display the antique ones.” She moves around the old cou
ch and table. “How much do you have to spend, Sami?”

  “I brought a hundred and forty-five dollars.” I hope I won’t have to use it all today, but I can if we find something really, really good.

  “Cool. Let’s hunt treasure!”

  “There are twenty ducks in this room,” Dan says, “in case anyone was curious.”

  We comb through the living room and head into the kitchen. I can’t help feeling a bit like a looter, rifling through the belongings of whoever used to live here. A strange, sad smell lingers around everything—a blend of newspaper and dust. But I also can’t help being fascinated. It’s a life I’ll probably never have, one filled with huge hallways and too much stuff. And ducks. One hundred and twelve by the third room, according to Dan’s count.

  The house is built right on the beach, which Dan and Layla love—they keep stopping by the windows to gawk at the distant city skyline. I stay in the center of the room, but I can’t help catching glimpses of the water. Though it’s a cloudy day, some boats bob out there, and they make my fingers shake. I focus harder on examining the things I might buy.

  There are age-darkened paintings, piles of tangled jewelry, and ancient books with leather covers so soft they feel like skin. The crowded assortment makes me think of the market in Kandahar. Sometimes my mor would take me to the women’s bazaar on the days my plar or Baba could not make it to the one for men. She tried to go as seldom as possible, because of the attacks. They happened often, and at random, wherever people were gathered. Going to school put me at risk. Going to the bazaar just asked for trouble.

  But she took me sometimes. She would lift her chadari off the hook by the door. It was always pale blue, the most common color since the Taliban came (before I was born). She never followed the trendy dyes the fashionable women wore—pink, green, or gold. All those hues stood out in the sea of blue. My mor wanted to be unseen, unidentifiable.

  She would grin at me before she fastened the chadari to the top of her head, letting the flowy fabric cover her body and adjusting the rectangular mesh so it rested over her eyes.

  “Now I am invisible,” she would say.

  “Yes,” I would answer, putting on my shoes.

  She would place her hands on her hips, making the chadari spread like a parachute. “Will you find me? Take a look at my shalwar kameez and sandals. What am I wearing?”

  I would study her, though I never remembered what she wore the second we were separated. Details about clothes always slid right out of my head.

  But I didn’t need her shoes or trousers to recognize her. I knew her in the way she walked, the way her hands would flit free of the chadari as she moved, like she wanted to relish the air. I knew her in a crowd; in night or day, I knew her. She was my mor jani. Of course I knew her.

  Would I still know her now?

  “Sami?” Layla waves her hand in front of my face, and the image of my mor fades back to the place I cannot reach. “You ready to go to the next room?”

  I swallow and nod, following. Dan has already disappeared inside.

  “Two hundred and fifty-four, two hundred and fifty-five…,” he mutters, still counting ducks.

  This is one of the last rooms. It must have been an office, because there’s a massive old desk. On the desk is a laptop. I walk over, curious. So far it’s the only thing that looks kind of new in the entire house.

  “What do you guys think of this?” I ask, drawing their attention from the bookshelves and ducks.

  “Oh!” Layla exclaims, hurrying over.

  “Hold on—let me see.” Dan leaves his duck count to push the laptop’s on button. “You can’t just buy any old computer. It could be crawling with viruses or cat pictures. Or the RAM could be trashed. Let me do a quick check.”

  “Okay,” Layla says, “but if there are cat pictures, leave them. Someone might trade extra for that.”

  Dan grunts and clicks through the opening screen.

  “How much is it?” Layla leans around him to look. “Sami, can you find the price?”

  I think I saw a tag on the top before Dan opened it, so I wedge myself between the desk edge and the wall to get a better angle. “There’s a sticker here. It’s one hundred dollars.”

  “That’s great!” Layla says. “I bet you could resell it for double!”

  My stomach squirms, though, somewhere between excitement and dread. One hundred dollars will be almost all I have. Worth it, maybe—but still a risk.

  “First you should let me run some more tests,” Dan says, not lifting his gaze from the screen. “They’ve wiped the hard drive, so no cat pictures or anything else, which is good.”

  “Well, the cat pictures would have been nice,” Layla chips in.

  I squeeze out from behind the desk, but as I do, my arm knocks the plug. It falls free of the laptop, and the computer immediately shuts off.

  “What happened?” Dan asks, startled.

  Frowning, I put the plug in again. The computer starts when Dan presses the power button. “The battery must be broken,” I say, discouraged.

  Dan fishes out his phone. “You could buy a new one.” To Layla, he says, “I’ll check eBay, you get Amazon.”

  “Aye, aye!” Layla grabs her phone, too, and starts typing.

  I wait, chewing my lip and wishing I had data on my phone. When they ask for the laptop model, I read off the name. I wait some more.

  “Here’s one for fifty dollars on Amazon,” Layla says doubtfully.

  “Hold up. I’ve got one for twenty on eBay. Free shipping.” Dan clicks through the product description while Layla and I crowd closer. “It has good reviews. This could be perfect.” He glances at me. “I can get it with my mom’s account, if you want to just pay me back in cash.”

  That won’t leave me with much left over. But I could afford it. And isn’t this why I came—to buy something?

  “Yeah, o-okay.” I watch Dan check out on eBay, my nerves settling in my gut.

  Finished, Dan slips his phone into his pocket. “Maybe I should take it home with me today? The battery will ship to my house. And I still want to do some scans and double-check the hardware, you know.”

  “Yeah, that works.”

  Layla grins. “Let’s go find the cashier. Then you can buy it!”

  “Lead the way.” I lift the laptop. Though it’s bulkier than those I’ve seen being used in coffee shops, it’s not that heavy. We find the cashier. Balancing the laptop in one hand, I fish out my plastic bag of money and pay him on the spot.

  “Love your wallet,” Dan says, trying to keep a straight face.

  “Super fashionable,” Layla adds.

  “Well, it works.” I pass Dan twenty dollars and smile as I pocket the bag again, twenty-five dollars still left. I have something new to trade, and I managed to keep a little bit of my earlier earnings. With my one hand still free, I type a quick note into my trade log. This will work. It’s an investment.

  We’re just about to start searching for Layla’s mother when Mrs. Michele comes hurrying into the main hall from the backyard.

  “Hi, Mom!” Layla chirps. She and Dan are still smiling.

  But my heart freezes. The expression on Mrs. Michele’s face is worried, serious. I’ve seen the look before. The noise of the room dims, my blood beats against my ears, and the laptop presses into my chest as my arms tighten around it.

  “Sami,” she says. “Your grandfather—you should come.”

  * * *

  TRADE LOG

  Days: 17

  Have: $25

  Need: $675

  THINGS TO TRADE:

  Laptop (waiting on battery)

  PLANNED TRADES:

  Combat boots for art supplies (Julie)

  COMPLETED TRADES:

  1. Manchester United key chain -> iPod

  2. Coins -> Game Informer magazines

  3. iPod -> Figurines

  4. Figurines -> $145

  5. Magazines -> Combat boots

  * * *

  1
7

  “Everything’s okay,” Mrs. Michele keeps saying to me, a hand on my shoulder as she walks us into the backyard. “He just got dizzy. The fall doesn’t seem to have hurt him.”

  Baba is sitting in the grass with Jared in his lap. Mrs. Michele goes to kneel in front of him, talking, but I can’t make out her words anymore. Baba’s face is pale, and his hands shake when he pats Jared’s head.

  Old, goes through my mind. Not the honored, dignified, elderly sort—but old in the Western way. Fragile. Small.

  He didn’t look like this before we lost the rebab. Before I allowed our past memories and future hopes to be snatched away. I should have held on to them more tightly. Because of my carelessness, Baba is in pain and vulnerable. I put the crack in his spirit, and the gap is spreading from his heart to his health.

  I did this.

  He sees me. “Ah, Sami jan, it seems I cannot keep up with the kids,” he says in Pashto, patting Jared’s head again.

  I have to wet my lips with my dry tongue before I can speak. In English, I ask, “What happened?”

  Baba shrugs. “I had a moment of weakness, but it has passed. I am fine.”

  “I think he’s dehydrated,” Mrs. Michele puts in. “But he won’t drink. I thought maybe you could help me convince him.”

  “It’s Ramadan.” I don’t look away from him, not even when I’m answering her. “We’re not supposed to eat or drink during the daytime.”

  “Exactly.” Baba’s beard brushes Jared’s head, and Jared makes a swipe at it.

  “But if you’re ill—” I try to add.

  “I am not ill.”

  “The ill are exempt.”

  “I am not ill.” Baba shakes his head but closes his eyes, as if that alone has made him dizzy again. “I just needed a rest.”

  But it’s not just this, I want to shout at him. This is not dizziness from playing with a child. It is the rebab being gone; it is our music being gone; it is you being at a job you hate, after three years of clawing for safety. I do not know how to heal him. I don’t think a doctor would, either. How can you keep someone safe when their heart is breaking? When you broke it?