“It was a good idea, Amar,” Layla assures him, using the kind of voice she always strives for when speaking with her children. He responds with a brighter smile, pleased with himself, looks to his sisters to see if they have noticed the praise.
They eat lunch cross-legged on the sheet, cradling the plate Layla has prepared for each of them. Layla made cashew curry chicken sandwiches, rich from the taste of peppers, crunchy from the lettuce. Hadia compliments them, and for once Huda does not complain about the taste of the chicken, masked as it is in sauce and spice. When they are finished they share tangerines and stories from Hadia’s and Huda’s classrooms that Amar listens to so seriously, popping the tangerine slices into his mouth and chewing slowly. He always watches them intently when they speak of school. He is only four and Layla thought to skip preschool and wait until kindergarten, not wanting an empty home just yet. He is fascinated by that unknown world. When they drop Huda and Hadia off, she looks back at him in the rearview mirror, how he stretches his neck to watch wide-eyed and openmouthed as his sisters join the crowd, their lunch boxes swinging at their sides.
After they eat, Huda asks again about the swings and Rafiq lets her climb onto his back for a piggyback ride. Hadia follows them.
“Do you want to go?” Layla nudges Amar. They watch as the three of them make their way, Huda laughing when Rafiq mimics a trotting horse. Amar shakes his head, presses his tongue against the inside of his chubby cheek.
Layla stands and brushes the crumbs off of her yellow shalwar kameez and scans the meadow—the playground, the sparse picnic tables, some occupied with families not unlike her own, young children and young parents.
“Come with me,” she says, bending down a bit so he can reach her hand. He holds on and she pulls him up, he is still light enough for her to do so with ease. The sound of water guides them.
Before they have disappeared into the trees that will block Rafiq and the girls from her sight, she turns back to see they have reached the swings. Rafiq touches the back of one and sends her forth just as the other lands against his palm. From where she stands he appears exactly like the kind of man she would want for the father of her children, a man who knows how to lift them onto the rubber seats of the swing, knows with what gentle force to push them, knows how something as small as saying yes to a picnic would please them so uncomplicatedly. Amar lets go of her hand and walks ahead. It takes so little, just the slightest touch of his hand against their backs, and their bodies soar, their laughter reaches her, and she is shocked by a plunge inside her. Her affection for Rafiq surges and she wonders if she has ever loved him the way she loves him now.
“Mumma,” Amar calls with urgency, “let’s go.”
He waits for her a few feet ahead, holding out his hand.
“Speak in Urdu, Ami,” she reminds him. Ever since Hadia first learned English in school it has been difficult to make any of them speak in Urdu. They speak in English and so quickly that they sound like little trains zooming by. They act as though it were the superior language, the more stylish one. She has to make it a game at dinner to encourage them. It confuses her. Urdu is the language she and Rafiq speak with one another and all they ever spoke with the children, but one goes to school and the others pick it up like wildfire, as if they’ve forgotten their own tongue entirely. It worries her: if they so easily lose their own language, what else will be lost?
The wind lifts her yellow orni up like a kite and it covers her face. Amar begins to laugh and laugh. Rafiq has heard him and he turns around. Layla restrains the orni and waves, points to where they are walking and Rafiq nods. She catches up to Amar and grabs hold of his hand, so small in hers. He won’t let her hold his hand for much longer. As they walk downhill the grass becomes a tangled mess then just dirt, Amar pulls her along, and Layla realizes she wants another child. Rafiq would not want another—he was an only child and had been against even having a third. Just one more, she had said after Huda, and after a few years Amar had been born. After the scare that was Amar’s birth and the stressful first weeks of his life, it would be even harder to broach the topic of a fourth. Amar leads her down the slope and they try to steady their footing. Another child. A boy, for Amar to have a brother. A baby that would extend that feeling of a small hand in hers for a little longer.
When they first glimpse the water, Amar rushes forward and asks to be allowed in. Layla hesitates. Recently, she heard of a child, a little girl, no older than seven, playing in a river when her parents turned their backs for just a moment. The current rising and quickening without warning, the girl swept away, struggling to lift her head above the water. Layla shivers, reaches out to touch the soft hair of her son, moves it from his eyes.
“Can I, Mumma?” He uses that irresistible and manipulative voice that he, like all children, perfected so early on. She does not remember being a child capable of such powers.
The water before them is not cause for alarm. The river seems shallow, more like a creek; it moves quickly but with an unthreatening swiftness. The deepest end is likely no deeper than her knees, and she sees the soft surface of rocks, their edges worn away from time and the rush of the current. Amar can stand on them and move from one to the other without cutting his feet. She kneels and removes his shoes, and he begins to tap her shoulders excitedly, as she rolls his jeans up to his knees, tight enough that they won’t fall, and she steps back and watches him turn to the creek, take it all in. How it must appear vaster to him than it does to her. He extends just one shaky leg forward, dips a toe in and pulls it back out again, testing the temperature, then he steps forward without looking back. She finds it strange that she feels a tinge of hurt that he does not turn back. The water ripples at his presence and quickly re-forms around him.
The tip of each wave looks painted gold, dashes here and there where the sunlight shimmers. She watches her son bend down to feel the water flow between his fingers and it seems impossible to her that something would break this precious space, or how she feels here, how the wind and the birds and the gurgle of water sound like music. It feels impossible that there could be days when it was not like this for them, her children’s fingers sticky with tangerine juice, her husband so calm, his face so relaxed, that when he lies on their picnic sheet she wonders if he has fallen asleep. Amar cups the water in his hands and throws it up and laughs and it feels as if nothing could interrupt the bliss of the moment, bliss as bright as the sun that glimmers on the water, as light as her daughters’ girlish laughter, as light.
“Mumma,” Amar calls out to her, standing in the center of the creek, cupping the water in his hands and releasing it. “Come!”
Layla shakes her head but he begins to gesture with his hands to call her, little drops flying from his fingers. Her son is persistent and demanding, he knows what he wants and is devastated if he does not attain it. It alarms her: how little it takes to darken his mood.
“I can’t,” she replies, cupping her palms around her mouth so her voice can reach him.
“Mumma, please! Feel how cold.”
“My clothes will get too wet, Ami.”
“Roll them like me. Please, Mumma.”