“You said yes?”
The wind rises. It moves through the branches of the bougainvillea and all the leaves quiver like clapping hands, their rustle a round of applause. It is one of Layla’s favorite sounds in the whole world.
“Not yet.”
“But you will?”
The orni wrapped around her finger will not twist any tighter. She does not know what she will say. She has never had to make a decision so big before, so life-changing.
“Because there is no reason to say no?” Sara’s voice sounds like she is a child again.
“Mumma thinks he is a good fit.”
Mumma had been eager to share the proposal with her when it came. She told Layla he was from a good family, that his parents had been respectable people before their passing, and he was one of the lucky ones who had gone to America. But to move so far from her family? I want you to have a good life, her mother had said to her, an enriched one, a pious destiny. Layla felt a strong intuition that if she listened to her mother, if she trusted her, if she aimed to please her, it would be all right. The little fears she felt now would be resolved somehow. After all, her parents would not find someone for her who would be unkind, or someone who was lacking in values. God would be pleased with her if she pleased her parents, and she would be rewarded.
“You could be like those women in the movies, the ones who say, ‘But, Babu-ji, I can’t marry him! I love someone else! The one who is forbidden.’?”
“Don’t be silly.”
“What about Raj?” Sara whispers, still smiling.
Layla tells her to shush. The joke is not funny anymore. But something about the mention of his name excites her, and as soon as it does she feels a soft sadness. Raj sells ice cream outside of her school. He always nods when she walks by. Layla has not noticed him doing this with anyone else. She orders a scoop every few days—even when she does not want one. And once in a while, he will shake his head when she offers up her coins, and she will walk home with her gift. They have begun to joke about him. Raj and her future with him, the flavors of ice cream they would serve at their wedding, the successful business he will start all over Hyderabad.
“What’s his name?” Sara asks after a long time.
Layla opens her mouth to answer but realizes she has forgotten it.
* * *
THAT NIGHT LAYLA repeats his name in her mind: Rafiq. Will she go with him to America? What will the roads look like there, and the people in their houses? She cannot sleep. She tries to recall his visit, how he wore a light brown button-up shirt that did not suit his complexion. All evening she studied her own hands in her lap, the one knuckle redder than the rest, the unevenness of her fingernails. Mumma had advised her before he came: do not dare look up unless directly spoken to. But even then, Mumma said, do not look at him. She had stolen one glance just long enough to note the color of his shirt.
She calls Sara’s name in the dark and Sara mumbles a reply, rubs her eyelids, stretches a bit, and when she speaks again her voice is thick from sleep.
“Do you remember anything about him?” Layla asks.
“About who?”
“You know who,” she says, suddenly aware that she is too shy to speak his name.
“He was wearing an ugly shirt,” Sara says.
Layla laughs. Sara begins listing what she remembers: he smiled at Baba’s jokes but did not laugh, he did not eat the sweets Ma had made but did finish almost all of the almonds in the bowl of mixed nuts, he coughed into a folded cloth, he never started a conversation, just added to them, and he looked at Layla from time to time.
“Do you like him?” Sara asks.
Layla shrugs and in the dark Sara does not see it.
“This is how it is for everyone in the beginning,” Sara says.
Layla nods and still Sara does not see it.
Sara continues, “Maybe he will know to close the curtains as soon as it is nighttime. And to wake as soon as the first alarm rings. Or he’ll be able to tell when you want to be alone and when you act like you want to be alone but you actually want him to speak to you.”
“You mean like you.”
Layla asks if there was anything else she noticed.
“How you knew the whole time which voice was his.”
* * *
HADIA IS CONCENTRATING on curling the tail of the y when the phone in her classroom rings. She wants to make sure her handwriting is neat, just in case Baba is in a good mood that night and asks to see her schoolwork, so she steadies her hand and bites down on her bottom lip before remembering it is bruised. It pulses. Sometimes, Baba would tap at her papers and say to Amar, look, this is how you write properly. And Hadia’s happiness would turn into guilt when she saw the pained look on Amar’s face: having wanted Baba to notice, and wanting him to praise her still. Her teacher, Mrs. Burson, drops the chalk into the silver tray, steps to answer the classroom phone, and Hadia presses her nails into the skin beneath her wrist as she thinks, Please God, not again.
Mrs. Burson hooks the phone back on the wall and turns to look directly at Hadia. She nods at her. Hadia knows what this means. Her classmates begin to whisper. They shift in their seats. She hates when anything draws extra attention to her. She already looks so different from them, being the only girl in the entire elementary school who wears hijab. Even when her teacher calls on her for an answer, she blushes. She puts away her notebook, scoots her chair into her desk, and avoids looking at all of them except her best friend, Danielle, who waves as she walks out the door.
It is likely that nothing is wrong. She takes her time walking down the empty corridor, annoyed at Amar for embarrassing her again, for pulling her from her lesson. Her footsteps echo and she tries to quiet them by walking on tiptoe. Sentences from classrooms drift from open doors. Grades older than fifth grade, where they are talking about spelling, math, stars, and stories. She pauses at every open door just to see what those lessons are like. But what if, this time, it is not nothing? She thinks of grazed knees and broken bones. She thinks of hearing Amar cry out after he has hurt himself, how she recognizes his cry even if she hears it when they are at mosque and separated by a divider. How she rushes down the stairs or through the hallways until she is at his side, how she has to go, even if her parents are around. She quickens her pace. By the time she reaches the corner she is running, and the reflection of the lightbulbs on the floor blur beneath her.
The school nurse looks up from her paperwork at Hadia, who arrives breathless, and she welcomes her in with a wave that tells her all is well. Bad news is always delivered in a hurry.
“He’s in the sick room,” she says, and gestures down the hall, though Hadia knows where it is.
“He’s been calling for you,” the nurse says.
Hadia knows this too. Amar is lying on the tan bed wearing red corduroy pants and a white T-shirt, the outfit of his that always reminds her of a little bear, and as he shifts the paper cover crunches beneath him. The room is cool and gray. He looks fine, suffering only from boredom, blowing the hair in his face so it lifts up and falls on his forehead again, but he stands when she enters and waves at her as if he’s been waiting for her to join him at a tea party.
“What happened?” she asks. She tries to catch her breath.
“Nothing,” he whispers in Urdu. He looks like a boy keeping a secret, excited to let her in on it.
“Then why are you here? Why did you call me?” she replies in Urdu as well, not wanting the nurse to overhear and confirm her suspicion that nothing is wrong. Her tone is harsh, like her mother’s.
“I didn’t want to be in class,” he says, and she glares at him. “And I didn’t want to be alone.”
She had been taking notes for Social Studies when the call came. They were learning about the American Revolution. She had not finished copying the board, and now it would be erased. She turns to go back.