Afterward they drank strawberry-flavored wine coolers that Tim’s older brother had bought for him. By the third one she guzzled, she felt a nice buzz, numbing her for a short while, allowing her to forget where she was. She pressed her forehead against the cool glass of the passenger-side window, ignoring Tim’s hand on her thigh, drowning out his promise to keep it a secret.
At first she’d felt a power over these boys.
Like junior year with Jonathan Duke. He’d sat behind her in U.S. history and tapped her shoulder with his pencil. Your hair’s so dark. Like a bat. She’d meet him in the library, in the microfiche section that no one ever used. He kissed her with chapped lips and touched her with rough fingers.
A few months ago she’d started working at Dairy Queen, and her first manager, a twenty-three-year-old college dropout, rubbed her shoulders as she wiped off each tub of ice cream in the freezer display case at the end of her shift. Would your father shoot you if he saw me doing this?
They think she’s exotic—not beautiful. Her nose seemed to double in size by the time she reached puberty; her skin was dark like a peanut husk. To the white boys, she’s something to conquer and explore, not keep. And she doesn’t hold on to them, either. Before they’re finished with her, she’s already moved on to the next one.
Mama drives in stony silence past blocks of bungalows, spring flowers blooming in rectangular planter boxes. Yellow and purple tulips pose in the afternoon sun, elegant, indifferent. Afaf fights back her angry tears, bites down hard on her bottom lip. She pulls a book from her backpack. Lately she’s been obsessed with George Eliot, her favorite so far is Silas Marner. The story captivates her: a golden-haired child wanders into an outcast’s life. What if her parents had abandoned Afaf, left her on someone’s doorstep? Would life have been better? She wonders if one alteration in a person’s life can undo everything that’s happened, like pouring red dye into a bucket of clear water. What if she’d never been born? Would Nada have disappeared? Might Baba have still been unfaithful? Or maybe you’d have to go further back, when Baba first saw Mama in her green mokhmal dress, strumming his oud to the symphonic clapping of the other guests. And instead of saying yes, Mama turns down his proposal and never sets foot in this country with a young daughter, thwarting loneliness and loss. And Mama wouldn’t be Mama, but Muntaha Saleem, the oldest daughter who’d never wanted to get married. Only no one outwits naseeb, as Khalti Nesreen used to say to explain so many tragic stories. It’s already been written, habibti.
They enter the apartment through the back door. Baba’s snoring on the sofa bed. For the last two years, he’s been working the night shift at the factory. The mattress creaks as he turns over. There’s a batch of pressed grape leaves on the table. Mama was in the middle of rolling waraq dawali when she’d gotten the call from Coach Phillips. She goes to the refrigerator for a bowl of the rice and meat stuffing she’d prepared before fetching Afaf. She’s still wearing her coat.
The phone rings. It’s Khalti Nesreen, wondering where her mother’s been for the last hour, why no one answered the phone. Baba hadn’t stirred once since her absence.
Mama commences her railing. “Ya rubbi, Nesreen! She hit someone! Is this how normal girls behave?”
Afaf escapes into her room, slamming the door behind her. Her clothes blanket the floor and she kicks through them, plops facedown onto her bed. Mama’s voice seeps through the door in rising snippets. She tries to read her book again, but she can’t concentrate.
Mama’s words echo in her ears: Is this how normal girls behave? Afaf, too, wonders how normal girls behave. Are they like Kelly and Angela? Beautiful white girls beyond reproach? Or more like Nada, who pretended to be the perfect daughter until she disappeared one day? Did she let the boys feel her up, too?
Afaf tosses the book aside. In the corner of her room the old record player sits on a tarnished console, a crate of albums beside it. She pulls out ABBA and slides it onto the spinner. It still works, but the arm jumps sometimes in the middle of a song. She doesn’t mind—every scratch and cut of static strangely consoles her in a way her Walkman eludes her. She turns up the volume and lies down on her side, hands tucked under her cheek. Her thoughts begin to scatter and drift under fluttering eyelids. Mama’s voice on the phone fades and her body gradually loosens—she’s so tired. Before the end of “Dancing Queen,” she’s fast asleep.
Her dreams of Nada come in wriggly, uncanny visions, so real Afaf’s convinced they actually happened when she wakes up. Sometimes Nada walks into the Dairy Queen, orders the most elaborate item on the menu, then leaves before paying, and Afaf gets in trouble from her manager. In other dreams, she shows up at Majeed’s baseball games, sitting alone in a row on the opposite bleachers. Afaf’s never close enough to Nada to touch or smell her. In today’s daydream, Afaf’s walking behind Nada at Hoover High School, wearing her favorite Cheap Trick T-shirt—the one for the 1980 All Shook Up Tour. Nada’s wearing the same clothes she had on the day she disappeared: a pair of flare jeans, a pale yellow T-shirt. The hallway is strangely noiseless, though students pass them, their mouths opening and closing in silent speech. They arrive at the cafeteria, and Nada opens a brown paper bag. A pungent tomato-and-vinegar aroma wafts from it—Mama’s waraq dawali. Coach Phillips comes over to their table and asks Nada for her school ID and Afaf tells him she’s only visiting—she won’t be staying long. He grabs Nada by the arm and tells her she doesn’t belong. Then Mama barges into the cafeteria wearing her winter coat. She’s holding a plate of stuffed grape leaves, stacked like cabin logs. She calls Afaf’s name.
“Afaf, yalla!”
She jolts awake, disoriented. Her arm is slimy with drool. She looks around her bedroom.
“Throw out the garbage!” Mama calls from the kitchen.
It’s still light outside. Afaf peels herself off the floor and stumbles to the washroom. Strands of her hair stick together from the Jell-O. She shakes out her ponytail and wipes down the crown of her head with a wet towel. She splashes cold water on her face. It feels good.
Majeed’s not home yet from baseball practice. Baba’s awake, watching TV. When he hears the running faucet, he calls Afaf’s name.
He’s sitting with a tray table, sipping from the same coffee mug with a world map sprawled across its circumference, the one he always drinks from. There’s a plate of yesterday’s leftover okra stew he’s barely touched.
“I hear you have trouble at school today.” His English remains somewhat stilted, though he’s picked up more expressions over the years.
He’ll tell her and Majeed, “Another day, another dollar,” if they’ve successfully completed their chores, how something “cost an arm and a leg” when an appliance breaks in the apartment. His favorite is, “I’ll take a rain check,” to disengage from an escalating argument with Mama when he knows they are listening.
Afaf is silent, her eyes darting everywhere but on his face. She settles on his oud, propped up in the corner of the room where he always leaves it. Baba still plays all of the old tunes, but the melodies sound strained and joyless.
When she finally looks at her father, she regrets it. His face is bloated from exhaustion, his eyes watery and yellow.
“You are a good girl, Afaf. Okay?” A good girl. What Baba told the officers who’d shown up the first night Nada disappeared. How little they’d known about her sister then. How Nada had secretly hated them.
Afaf nods, chews the inside of her cheek.
He looks like he wants to say more, words forming on his lips.
“Do you miss playing with the band?” she suddenly asks him.
“I miss the boys,” Baba says, a smile creeping across his face. The Baladna band broke up shortly after Mama’s breakdown. At first he’d started skipping rehearsals and Afaf overheard his excuses to Ziyad and Amjad about needing to stay home, to keep an eye on Muntaha. Had Baba been afraid of something even worse happening to Mama? Was he worried Afaf and Majeed would find themselves alone with her when
it happened? She knows how much it hurt Baba, losing the band.
Afaf glances at his oud, nods, and turns to go.
“Wait, Afaf.” Baba stands up and pulls her in for a hug. She can’t remember the last time she’s been in her father’s arms and she feels herself unfold in his embrace, his body absorbing her weight. She wants to hear him say, Everything will be okay, habibti.
Before her tears come, she slips away. In the kitchen, Mama rolls the last grape leaf. She jerks her head at the back door. A black Hefty bag sits there in a lopsided heap.
“I’m going to the library. To return a book,” Afaf tells her, zipping up her jacket. She really just plans to ride her bike around the neighborhood, but she needs an excuse to escape the apartment for a few hours.
Mama eyes her suspiciously, though she won’t stop Afaf. Her parents have never grounded her or Majeed, a practice they hadn’t adopted from amarkani parents. You got yelled at and spanked, then it was over. The last time Mama laid her hands on her, Afaf was eleven years old, and she and Majeed had been running through the apartment and her brother knocked over the small aquarium her father had started. Afaf and Majeed had gone with him to the pet store, begging for a puppy or kitten, as a clerk explained the freshwater options for a beginner tank. They came home with a betta fish, a few fan-tailed guppies, and fiery red barbs. After a week, the betta floated belly-up and she and Majeed lost interest in the tank. Baba assembled the aquarium on a console table in the front room, removing souvenirs Khalti Nesreen brought back from the old country—a replica of the old city of Jerusalem and a handmade trinkets box with an inlay of smooth ivory.
Baba had been so proud of the aquarium, cleaning the filter and shaking food flakes through an opening in the lid. Every month, he introduced a new fish, calling Afaf and Majeed over to watch as Baba held the bag with the new fish inside the tank, acclimating it to the temperature before releasing it to its new home.
You see how happy they are? Everyone has room to swim, everyone is safe.
One afternoon, she and Majeed had rounded the coffee table and her brother tripped, hands in front of him, falling against the aquarium, and it shattered on the floor. They hid under Afaf’s bed until their mother pulled them out and whacked their behinds. She dared them to move a muscle before Baba came home to his aquarium, now in shards in a garbage bag along with java ferns and hair grass and dead fish.
Lah, lah, lah, was all her father said to Afaf and Majeed that day. They sat on her bed, kicking their feet against the frame, nervous, fearful. He sank down on Nada’s bed, dropped his hands in his lap. What a pity, all those fish. What a pity. Months later, Majeed found the blue castle ornament that had rolled under the sofa bed and kept it on his dresser for a long time after.
Baba’s words were enough to make her feel horrible for weeks. She tried to recall exactly each fish, to honor its brief life. And they’d disappointed Baba; that was worse than any smack from Mama.
Afaf is too old to spank now. She snatches the garbage bag and slips out the door.
5
THE BACK tire of her ten-speed bike needs air, but it should carry her ten blocks to California Avenue. She wishes she had a car like Sameera and the other arabiyyat at Hoover; she’s had her driver’s permit since last summer. She rides past bungalows and two-story houses, For Rent signs in the windows. Nearly every block has an Arab or Mexican family. The O’Malleys across the street are now the Hernandez family, the Richardses have become the Saladins. A spattering of Polish families remain, keeping to themselves as they trim their bushes. They never wave hello.
Five blocks away from the apartment her rear tire deflates.
“Shit,” Afaf mutters. She walks her bike across the street to a gas station.
She squats down next to the free air pump, ignoring catcalls from a passing car. The nozzle hisses; she can’t seem to properly latch it.
“Can I help you with that?”
She looks up. Rami Asfoor peers down at her, a smile on his lips. He’s a senior, the leader of a pack of arrabi boys who play intramural basketball after school but never join Hoover’s team.
“I got it,” Afaf tells him, her back stiffening. He’s never spoken to her before at school.
“Here.” He stoops down and takes the air hose from her hand. “When you pinch it that way, you’re losing air.” He inserts the nozzle on the valve stem and the wheel suddenly inflates. “You see?”
“Thanks.” Afaf stands up and kicks back the stand with her heel.
Rami clamps a hand around the top of her bike tire and jostles it up and down, checking the tire pressure. Satisfied, he lets go. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”
Afaf clutches the handlebars, circles her bike around him. “About what?” Like the arabiyyat, Rami and his friends ignore her at school. She’s seen Sameera laughing with him in the cafeteria while Afaf sits at a table with other loners.
“I know your brother Maj.” He smiles, his brown eyes dull like pudding, but his tone is friendly. “C’mon. We’ll go for a drive. Don’t worry. I’m cool.”
It’s been a long time since someone hasn’t accused of her something or called her terrible names. She softens. “What about my bike?”
“Leave it here. You can pick it up later.” He climbs back into his car, dips his head through the passenger-side window. “Yalla! Hop in.”
Afaf locks up her bike against the chain-link fence that runs the perimeter of the gas station. The sun has begun to drop in the sky; she doesn’t think she’ll make it home before the streetlights turn on, but she doesn’t care. She’s been suspended for three days—how much more trouble can she get into?
A combination of aftershave and stale cigarette smoke hangs inside Rami’s car. A tiny replica of the Quran dangles from the rearview mirror. She saw the same one in Amjad’s car, the one Baba bought from his friend. Mama had immediately taken it down. And though neither of her parents were religious, it had felt like the loss of a talisman—something that might keep them all safe. Afaf sometimes wonders, if they prayed—the way amarkan went to church every Sunday—whether things would have turned out differently. If they believed even a little bit, maybe they could get through the worst that could ever happen to a family. Maybe God listened. Hadn’t Khalti Nesreen’s prayers been answered after all those miscarriages? It had taken years, but her cousin Amal finally arrived.
Rami’s wearing an expensive watch that jiggles on his wrist, ill-fitting and clunky. Afaf predicts that, like so many of the other arrabi boys, he’ll take over his father’s liquor store or gas station one day. She’s seen Rami around school, playfully swiping the back of a friend’s head before running down the hallway. The Arabs eat lunch at segregated tables: boys at one, girls at another. She doesn’t recall Majeed hanging around them. He mostly sticks to his teammates, coming home right after practice. Afaf wonders what Rami wants from her, what he’s heard.
They drive to Marquette Park on Kedzie Avenue. Afaf remembers her history teacher, Mr. Slade, telling her class about the infamous protest twenty years ago in the park where demonstrators marched, holding signs demanding Keep White Neighborhoods White. Martin Luther King, Jr., was hit with a rock that forced him to one knee on the ground. Some of the people Afaf sees through the windows of parked cars lining the lagoon are brown and black, but most are still white.
Rami pulls to the curb on an empty stretch. His eyes flick a few times to his mirror, as though he’s making sure the coast is clear. Afaf’s stomach tightens and she starts to regret getting into his car. He turns off the radio and drums the steering wheel with his thumbs.
“So you know my brother Majeed?” Afaf says, cutting the awkward silence.
“Yeah, I know Maj. All the guys do. It’s a shame he’s got a sister who’s such a sharmoota.”
Before she can flinch at his insult, Rami slaps her. His hand mostly catches her ear and part of her cheek. She instinctively drops her head, shields her face with her arms.
He pulls her hair, for
cing her to look up. “Quit slutting around and respect yourself! Respect your people! Ifhimti?” He lets go. “Now get the fuck out of my car.”
Afaf fumbles with door handle, then spills onto the curb. Rami spits out his window before his tires peel away.
She pulls herself up and looks around, dazed.
“You okay?” someone shouts from a nearby car that’s pulled up beside her.
“I’m fine,” she yells back, not looking at them, her legs shaking so bad she shoves her hands in her pockets just to keep her body steady. The car drives away.
She remembers her bike.
“Shit!” she curses out loud. She sniffles back tears and turns toward the gas station, nearly six blocks away. The sun has set and an evening wind howls in her ears as she walks as fast as she can without running. She tells herself to stay calm, to keep walking.
She touches her face. Rami’s slap still stuns her, but what he called her stings even more:
Sharmoota.
What Mama had called that other woman years ago. The faceless, nameless person with whom Baba had spent hours away from her and Majeed, for whom he’d betrayed her mother.
The affair still continued for a few years though other things had stopped after Nada disappeared, like a train coming to a sudden halt, its brakes screeching in fury. The Baladna band, Mama’s rare laughter. The loss still lingers like an arthritic ache, flaring when it rains, forgotten in the sunshine.
The chain-link fence is bare. Her bike is gone. She runs inside the gas station. There’s a line at the cash register. A tall man in a navy-blue jumpsuit and work boots is buying lottery tickets. Behind him an old woman with curlers and a hairnet holds a gallon of milk with both hands.
“Someone stole my bike!” Afaf blurts out.
The cashier continues punching numbers. “What are you talking about?” His face is pocked with acne. He’s wearing an Iron Maiden T-shirt.
The Beauty of Your Face Page 8