Becoming Jinn

by Lori Goldstein

Luck? Tomorrow? She must think that’s when my job starts, but my first day behind the snack bar at the beach isn’t for a couple more days.

  Though most kids in school have had jobs for years, my mother wouldn’t let me work until this summer. Apparently sixteen is quite the loaded age, bringing with it enough maturity to dole out hot dogs and wishes.

  I fall into the couch and hug a sequined throw pillow to my chest. “I didn’t know Laila wanted a summer job.” Between the residual alcohol and the residual Yasmin, it’s a good thing I don’t have to start work yet. I turn to my mother. “How long do Jinn hangovers last, exactly?”

  The double entendre doesn’t register until the words have left my lips.

  My mother gives an empathetic smile. “How about I make you feel better?”

  She lays one palm on my forehead and the other on my stomach. With her eyes closed, she whispers an incantation I recognize as a healing one. The instant she removes her hands, my lingering headache and nausea are gone.

  “Better?” she asks.

  I nod, tentatively, wary of what made her change her mind about healing me.

  She gathers her hair into a bun, using a long strand to keep it in place. I’ve tried, but can’t do it with my own. Guess I’m sticking with the elastic and the ponytail.

  “Good. Because today…” She takes both of my hands and swings my arms. “Today, we get to practice. Your first wish-granting ritual is tomorrow! Fun, right?”

  Wrong.

  My mother continues, “Your powers are so advanced that the Afrit think you’re ready for your first candidate.”

  Damn, has this stupid bangle actually ratted me out? Or was it my mother?

  “This is a good thing. Your talent is being recognized. You’re being rewarded.”

  “Whoopee.” My queasiness makes a comeback. Rewarded for all my misbehavior. Is that really the lesson I should be learning?

  I open my clenched palm. The silver glistening in my hand isn’t a ribbon. It’s a piece of Christmas tree tinsel. Surely it’s the piece of Christmas tree tinsel. The one Laila fashioned our pretend bangles out of when we were ten.

  Maybe it’s too late. Maybe being rewarded for my misbehavior is a lesson I’ve already learned.

  10

  My mother has chosen for me. This is the first thing I’m annoyed about. She has chosen Mrs. Pucher. This is the second thing I’m annoyed about.

  What does Mrs. Pucher need? She’s probably just going to wish for another yappy Pomeranian. If I didn’t live next door to the mutt, I’d never believe something so little could be so loud.

  At least she didn’t choose the crazy old lady on the other side of us. And I mean literally crazy. As sorry as I feel for Mrs. Seyfreth, the way she silently paces her backyard decked out in high heels, a full-length lace dress, and a camel-colored fur coat creeps me out. I’m certain my powers aren’t advanced enough to rewire whatever’s wrong with her brain.

  I don’t want to waste a choice on either one of our next-door neighbors because I only get three. All any Jinn gets is three. While we have few restrictions on using our powers for our own personal magic, we are forbidden from granting wishes for humans unless they are officially assigned to us by the Afrit. The only exception are those humans chosen to serve as guinea pigs. Like in a teaching hospital, newbie Jinn learn by doing. In an effort to make it easier for us to get the hang of this wish-granting thing, we are permitted to choose our first three candidates.

  Or in my case, my mother is permitted to choose.

  Whoever my great-great grandmother times a hundred was had it way easier. Unlike when humans believed in spirits, magic, and the unknown, today, changing someone’s life overnight risks exposure. We need to research and learn all we can about our candidates in order to grant their wishes in a way that won’t attract attention, that won’t reveal our magic. My unlucky generation of Jinn is granting wishes in an age when every human with a cell phone, which is essentially every human, holds the ability to out us in the palm of their hand.

  This, my mother claims, is why she chose Mrs. Pucher. Since I’ve lived next door to her my entire life, I should know her well. She even babysat for me a few times when I was little. My mother rationalizes that this connection means I’ll be more relaxed, more at ease, and more able to focus solely on my magic.

  “That may have been true,” I said yesterday when we were role-playing as seventy-five-year-old Mrs. Pucher, the easy wishee, and newly sixteen-year-old Azra, the frustrated genie, “if I wasn’t still ticked off that her new dog was yapping away, ruining my birthday plans to go back to sleep.”

  My mother hesitated. “New dog? I’m pretty sure she only has Pom-Pom. Are you positive you heard something? You didn’t actually see anything, did you?”

  “No, but I heard barking. And it didn’t sound like Pom-Pom.”

  “Well, that’s good,” my mother said with relief.

  I wrinkled my nose at her.

  “I mean,” she said, “good that if there’s another dog, it’s probably not right next door.”

  If that new dog doesn’t belong to Mrs. Pucher, then picking her was a mistake. She doesn’t love anything more than her Pom-Pom. My bet’s on her using the one wish she gets to clone him.

  After practicing late into the night, my mother let me sleep in this morning. I’m supposed to be using my remaining time to read through the cantamen and further prepare myself for granting my first wish.

  For centuries, the cantamen’s main goal has been to guide and inspire new Jinn as they hone their magic. Part rulebook, part spell book, part history book, part memoir, part diary, the pages and pages of entries are a hodgepodge of information. Each family maintains its own cantamen, building on and adding to it as rules are enacted, as practices change, as new members are born, as someone invents a self-proclaimed unparalleled recipe for fudge they feel the need to share.

  Passed down from generation to generation, each Jinn in my family has recorded the wishes they’ve been asked and how they went about granting them. In detail—minute detail.

  Reading that entire tome before I grant Mrs. Pucher’s wish is a feat I cannot accomplish. What I can accomplish is altering my concession-stand uniform.

  When I was hired last week, the manager gave me two beige polo shirts with the beach conservation’s logo stitched on the left pocket. Like all my tops, the tees now skim my belly button. I concentrate the same way I did when my mother was teaching me to light my first fire. The beige fabric extends. I slip it over my head to test it. The hem has moved the perfect amount. And it’s even all the way around. Who needs to study the cantamen?

  The only requirement for the bottom half of my uniform is the color. I can wear pants, shorts, even a skirt, so long as they’re khaki or white. I pull on the white jeans I bought for my first day. They are now cropped pants. About to lengthen them, I channel my inner Hana and fashion them into shorts.

  So what if I’m a bit chilly on the cooler days? Even I can admit my long legs look killer in these. Maybe even murderous enough that a cute lifeguard will notice.

  Right, Azra. “A” cute lifeguard? Not “the” cute lifeguard? The one doing timed sprints up and down the beach while you were lying to Ranger Teddy about your knowledge of deep fryers?

  I spin around in front of the mirror, more excited for drizzling cheese sauce on nachos than any normal teenager would be.

  “Azra, it’s time,” my mother calls from downstairs.

  My excitement fizzles out. Moving as slowly as I can, I change out of my uniform. I’m hit by the tiniest pang of regret at not flipping through the cantamen. Who knows? Maybe I could have found a loophole.

  * * *

  Mrs. Pucher disappears into her kitchen to make a third pot of tea. My mother stares at me from the flowered armchair next to the grandfather clock—the clock that has ticked for a full hour. I haven’t been able to muster the courage to begin the wish-granting ritual.

  Though my mother walked me through thi
s at least ten times yesterday and once more before leaving the house, my palms are sweating so much I’m afraid I might short out the bangle.

  “Can’t I just do the stupid dog?” I whisper to my mother.

  She picks a wad of white fur off her denim skirt. “You can do this, Azra.” Checking to make sure Mrs. Pucher’s back is turned, she dumps the contents of her teacup in the fern. “No pressure, really, but do you think you might do it soon? I can’t stomach much more of this stuff.”

  I could say it serves her right for choosing Mrs. Pucher, but I know how hard it is to swallow the old lady’s bitter, barely sweetened Earl Grey. I bowed out after half a cup, claiming too much caffeine might give me a migraine.

  Mrs. Pucher returns to her seat on her yellow tufted couch. “Thank you, dear, for the tomatoes,” she says to my mother, who brought a basket of our homegrown tomatoes as an excuse for our uncharacteristic stopping by. “I’ve always been jealous of your green thumb. I mean, my tomato plants barely have flowers, and yet you’ve managed to coax yours into giving you plump, red fruit!”

  My mother squirms, clearly not having considered that it’s only June, far from the height of tomato season in New England.

  “Yes,” my mother says, “well, it’s a special variety. Maybe I can plant it for you next year.”

  Mrs. Pucher clasps her hands in her lap. “Oh, that would be lovely. Maybe the young man from across the street can help. He was here just yesterday mowing the lawn. Wouldn’t take a penny, if you can believe that in this day and age. He was kind enough to take a gander at the sorry state of my vegetable garden. Even offered to bring me some fertilizer. Such a sweet boy…”

  Enough.

  I need to tune everything out: Mrs. Pucher’s questions about tilling the soil, Pom-Pom’s low growl, the clatter of doubts ricocheting in my head. I need to concentrate because I’m supposed to be able to read Mrs. Pucher’s mind.

  If only I could read my mother’s mind, maybe I’d get a clue as to how I’m supposed to read Mrs. Pucher’s mind. But we can’t read fellow Jinn’s minds. Even reading human minds only kicks in during wish-granting rituals.

  Which is why, when we arrived at Mrs. Pucher’s under my breath I muttered the first of the incantations I spent yesterday memorizing. And ever since I’ve been waiting to find myself plopped inside her head.

  On and on, Mrs. Pucher’s peppering my mother with questions about bottom rot and calcium, and even though my pupils are drilling a hole into her white-haired head, I’m getting zip. Supposedly the longer I do this and the more I practice, the earlier in the ritual I’ll be able to read my wishee’s mind. But that doesn’t help me today.

  Today, I’ll have to rely solely on the circulus incantation, which, bizarre as it sounds even to me, will allow me to connect with Mrs. Pucher’s psyche. It is there that I’ll find her truest wish. Being able to read her mind first is like seeing the trailer to a movie. It preps me for what she might want, what and who in her life might be an obstacle to this, and what elements I need to be conscious of when crafting the wish.

  The psyche is all heart. All emotion. Without the mind-reading, without the head and the logistics, I’m working with a genie handicap.

  My mother’s I-just-ate-a-lemon face as she sips a cup from the new pot of tea means it’s go time. I give up on mind-reading and nod to my mother, who moves to the edge of her peony-covered chair. I’m looking Mrs. Pucher in the eye, starting to utter the words that will set things in motion when my mother interrupts me.

  “Azra! Your … your cloak!”

  Mrs. Pucher cocks her head. “Cloak? Why it must be seventy-five degrees today.” She turns to me. “Dear, are you ill? Is it that migraine? Heavens, if it was my tea, I’ll never forgive myself.”

  I assure Mrs. Pucher it wasn’t her tea, smoothly transitioning into a lie about getting over an early summer cold.

  My cloak. Pretty clever of my mother, really, but I can’t believe she had to remind me. I almost forgot the cloaking enchantment. The incantation that blocks this memory from forming. I was about to grant Mrs. Pucher a wish without ensuring she wouldn’t remember the event. That’s basic stuff. I know better, and even if I didn’t, my mother’s lessons should have made sure I did.

  Angry at myself, I whip through the rest of the required incantations and have Mrs. Pucher where I need her to be within seconds. I ball my hands into such tight fists that I’m cutting off the circulation to my fingers.

  One moment I’m planning how I’ll get around conjuring her another puppy since we can’t actually conjure living creatures, and the next I’m wondering if I’ll die before my sister forgives me.

  What? I don’t have a sister.

  Phyllis, what I wouldn’t give for us to bury the hatchet.

  I don’t know a Phyllis. I have never used the word “hatchet.”

  I am in Mrs. Pucher’s head. I am reading her mind. I am doing this.

  I spy my mother out of the corner of my eye. The worry lines creasing her face cause me to turn away from her. I can’t lose my focus. Especially as I’m flooded with such intense emotions that tears spill down my cheeks. My stomach hurts, my hands shake. I push through and go deeper.

  The intimate details of Mrs. Pucher’s life fly at me. Mrs. Pucher—Eva. Her sister, Phyllis. Phyllis’s husband, Frank. Eva and Frank. Kissing. More than kissing. Phyllis walking in. The anger, the fight, the tears, the relationship, broken. Sisters no more.

  The wrongness of invading Mrs. Pucher’s privacy makes me want to stop, but I can’t. Because underneath the aching sadness lies her wish: to reconcile with her sister before it’s too late.

  Was there any amount of research that would have led me here? To this?

  My mother thought this would be easy for me because I’ve known Mrs. Pucher my entire life. This proves how much I don’t know Mrs. Pucher. How little I’ve tried to know her. She used to change my diapers, but this is the first time my mother or I have sat down with her for tea. That’s why we had no idea she had such an aversion to sugar. This is the problem with being Jinn. We can’t open ourselves up to the humans we should know best.

  I’m determined to grant her this wish, but I don’t know how. We are all in limbo for several more ticks of the grandfather clock when I finally have an idea.

  “Mrs. Pucher, call your sister,” I instruct. “Call Phyllis.”

  My mother widens her eyes, but I raise a finger to indicate I’m in control. Mrs. Pucher is already at the phone, dialing.

  When Phyllis answers, I know she’s about to hang up. I know because I can read Phyllis’s thoughts too. I burrow into her mind via the receiver both Mrs. Pucher and I are listening through. Underneath the painful betrayal is Phyllis’s yearning to reconcile with her sister—with Mrs. Pucher.

  In Phyllis’s mind, I find the words Mrs. Pucher must say in order to earn her sister’s forgiveness. I prompt Mrs. Pucher to recite them, but I don’t have to make her believe them. She already does. And once I get her going, she adds more of her own.

  “It was just the one time, Phyllis. I promise you that. I loved him. I did. But I loved you more. I still do. Oh, how I’ve regretted that moment. Every day of my life, I’ve regretted that moment of weakness that made me lose you. Made me lose us. I’ll never forgive myself, Phyllis. But I pray that you can.”

  Once the two women are laughing instead of crying, I relax the cloaking enchantment, easing Mrs. Pucher back into a place where she can remember this part. She’ll want to remember this part.

  Weakened and a bit dizzy, I allow my mother to guide me to the couch. We listen as Mrs. Pucher talks with a voice full of lightness and joy.

  My mother stares at me, tense lines still drawn on her face.

  “What?” I ask, gulping down air. “I know I almost messed up with the cloaking enchantment, but the rest of it was good, wasn’t it?”

  My mother rests her hand on my trembling knee. “Tell me exactly what happened.”

  When I explain about heari
ng Phyllis’s thoughts, my mother’s hand shoots up to cover her mouth.

  I groan. “Was that not allowed?” If I’m going to have to actually read that entire cantamen, it’s going to be a really long summer.

  “No, no, it’s fine. It’s just—”

  “Just what?”

  My mother looks at Mrs. Pucher and then back at me. “It’s just … unusual to be able to read the mind of someone whose physical presence you’re not in.”

  Whew. I didn’t violate some cardinal Jinn rule. “But Phyllis was on the phone. Same thing, right?”

  Though her expression is strange, my mother nods slowly. “It must be. Because the ability to read human minds outside the wish-granting ritual is rare. If it even exists at all. Most think it’s extinct, simply gone from our species.”

  Seriously, sometimes it feels like I’ll never be able to please her. How can I be expected to compete with her reputation as the model Jinn?

  “But I was in the middle of the ritual. I was granting a wish.”

  She shakes the worry lines from her face. “You were, weren’t you?” She claps her hands together. “You did, didn’t you? Granted a wish. My little baby Jinn.”

  “Mom.” I’m desperate for sugar. “Can we go home now? There’s still chocolate cake, isn’t there?”

  My mother pecks the top of my head. While she makes our good-byes to an elated if somewhat disoriented Mrs. Pucher, I go outside for some fresh air, feeling my legs wobble underneath me as I fight back the torrent of emotions still swirling my insides.

  I circle to the back of the house and find Mrs. Pucher’s vegetable garden. Sorry doesn’t describe it. I steady myself against the weathered trellis a potato vine is unsuccessfully trying to climb. Full of weeds, squirrel-dug holes, and spindly tomato plants, it looks far beyond anything fertilizer can help. I move closer and concentrate on the dandelion field strangling the rosemary and chives. In an instant, my powers clear it.

  My energy slowly returns as I use my magic to fix up the garden, even turning most of the tiny yellow flowers on the tomato plants into green orbs of fruit. It’s more fun than I would have thought. Besides, Mrs. Pucher used to babysit for me. She wiped my bottom—without the help of magic. Even granting her greatest wish isn’t enough to make up for having to do that.