“All of it.”
He spun her. He nodded at the empty house. He put her down and lifted up Huda and said, “Did you hear that, Huda Jaan? This house is yours.”
And Hadia just stood there, stunned, holding on to that little plum and looking up at Rafiq with big eyes and her mouth a little open. Huda looked like she did not understand but Rafiq looked happy and Hadia seemed happy so she smiled too, then put her thumb back in her mouth.
Now Rafiq has taken his seat beside the two of them at the table and is scanning the newspaper as he eats. The girls are not allowed to speak when he is reading the paper, they know this. They listen to him without even being told. They give each other looks and Layla wonders what they communicate to each other. Why is he not talking to her, if this is his last morning with them, with her? She is too nauseous to eat with them, so she stands at the counter and looks for reasons to stay in the room. Clears the surfaces, wipes them down with a sponge, looks up from time to time at the morning sunlight on the page of Rafiq’s newspaper, and the light in his dark hair, the light catching the curve of the silver spoon he holds away from him.
Then he pulls back his sleeve to look at his watch, and it is his father’s watch. He had worn it on their wedding day. And on the day they had flown together to America. Her heart pinches to think she has glimpsed what he did not verbalize: that this is not nothing to him either, that perhaps he is nervous for the new position or wants to take a piece of his father with him. Rafiq rises from the table with his empty bowl in hand, gathers the girls’ bowls too, tells them to grab their backpacks, it is time to go.
Will he pause to embrace her, will he look back from the doorway, lift his hat or nod his head before leaving? Layla hugs the girls before she remembers the Quran, how Rafiq should walk beneath it if he is going on a journey, and she tells him this and he appears agitated, there is not much time, so Layla rushes up the stairs to the empty room next to their daughters’, which they have been using as a prayer room: two prayer rugs, each with one corner folded over, and a tiny bookshelf with all their religious texts—and she grabs the Quran she likes with the blue cover and golden pages. Downstairs, Rafiq is waiting in the doorway, the girls presumably buckled into the car, and she holds the Quran up with one arm and instructs him to walk back and forth beneath it five times, as her mother taught her, as her mother had done for her on every first day of school, and on the day after her wedding, when she was taking off to fly to America, and by the fourth time Rafiq walks beneath, her stretched arm begins to ache, and by the fifth he pauses, looks up at her, and she holds the Quran up to his face and leafs through all the pages at once, its breeze causing the hair falling onto his forehead to tremble, and he leans in and kisses the cover with closed eyes.
There is a pause. Layla does not know what to say or ask for.
“Make sure all the windows are closed when you leave to pick up the girls, and check at night too. And the doors.”
“I know.”
“Even the garage door.”
“Yes.”
“Khudahafiz,” he says, which is good-bye, but literally it means in God’s protection I leave you. In His care I trust. And it is that meaning she intends when she responds in kind.
“You will be fine,” he says.
She nods. How she appreciates that he knew what she needed, and acknowledged it. He kisses her, ever so softly, on her forehead, and steps away. Layla lifts a hand in good-bye. The door closes, the house empty, the sound, after a few seconds of the car turning on, of the tires pulling away on the cement.
* * *
AT NIGHT, THE girls brush their teeth together in front of the bathroom mirror, balancing on their individual stools. Huda is always in a rush to spit out the toothpaste, but waits for Hadia to be done before she lowers her own brush, and Hadia nods her head slowly as she counts to a hundred in her head. Layla hates how night looks outside windows without curtains. She is exposed. She avoids going near them. She turns the lights off downstairs and finds she is a bit out of breath by the time she reaches upstairs. Hadia and Huda are getting into their pajamas. They are what fills her life, they really are, she thinks. What would life be like with another child? When Rafiq called earlier, she did not tell him that she threw up twice after he drove away. Or that she lay in bed for an hour absolutely miserable before the queasiness passed. She doesn’t know if it could be true—that after a year of trying she might have another child soon. But instead of the immediate excitement she had felt with her girls, the news, the possible news, made her feel even lonelier as she went about her day, picked up her daughters from school, cooked dinner, no hope of seeing Rafiq for three days, and what if she was carrying a child again, and he was so often away?
Hadia and Huda crawl into their beds and she notices for the first time that the tree outside their bedroom scrapes against the window when it is windy. She begins to read to them, but stops, tries to keep her voice even when she asks, “Do you girls want to do something fun tonight?”
“Yes, yes!” Huda says, so excited without even knowing what.
“Do you want to camp in my room?”
“Yes!” Huda stands up in her bed and jumps up and then onto the floor.
Layla follows as the two of them race into her room. They climb onto her bed. Instinctively, they know to scoot to the side that is Rafiq’s; their small heads share his pillow. They look at Layla, as if waiting for instructions, waiting to see if there is a next part to this spontaneous plan. But there isn’t. Layla says good night to the two of them, then moves her prayer rug into her own room, and she prays in the corner while the girls try to sleep. They shift around. She did lock the front door, and checked twice, she does not need to go down again. She will ask Rafiq to install curtains when he returns. She is a little thirsty but she can cup her hands and drink from the sink. She catches her reflection in the bathroom mirror. Her face is older now but still young. She is twenty-six. Young enough to carry another child, without complication, if she is lucky, if God wills it. Old enough to be able to do this: spend this night beside her girls who are warm and full of life. It is to be expected that the first night apart from Rafiq would be a bit difficult, that she would feel uneasy when she looked out the glass to the dark night sky and saw only her reflection, expected that she would be startled, while reading the girls to sleep, by the sound of a passing car, its lights curving up and across their walls. She climbs into bed quietly, thinking her daughters are asleep. Hadia opens her eyes.
“Awake?” Layla whispers.
Hadia nods. She looks up at the ceiling. Her nose looks so blue and small in the dark. Her tiny hands beneath her cheek, her palms together, like a photograph of a child resting.
“Mommy,” she says, pausing to sigh, “I really love school.” She says it all in English and like she is confessing, like she is attempting to make conversation, or is surprised it is this way for her when she did not expect it to be.
“Mommy?” Layla says. She is startled to be called that.
“Mummy,” Hadia corrects herself, embarrassed.
“I’m glad to hear that,” Layla says. They always speak in Urdu. She might have to make a point to enforce it as a rule now. Should she call Rafiq tomorrow, tell him this? That their daughter was speaking like an adult too.