Layla wore loose-fitted shalwar kameez around the house so the girls would not notice, and it became a pleasant secret between us as we waited for the right moment to tell them. Only you had become more tender toward her. You stopped fussing with her at dinnertime, you would climb into her lap and rest your head against her.
“He knows,” Layla whispered one night, when you insisted on falling asleep in our bed. She moved your hair around your forehead the way she loved to.
“How can he?” I had said, though I believed her and was unnerved by my belief, this strange feeling I had sometimes that you had access to a kind of perception or intuition that we did not.
“I hope it’s a boy,” Layla confessed later when we were in the waiting room just before one of her appointments. For our first three children we had decided to let the gender be a surprise. But for our fourth we were eager to find out.
“That is also my hope,” I replied.
I wanted to have a second chance at being a father to a son. It was a terrible thought; I knew it as I allowed it to enter my mind and dwell there. I grabbed a magazine from the table and flipped through the glossy pages.
“Wouldn’t it be wonderful for Amar to have a brother?” she said.
When I did not reply, she continued, “He would make a great older brother. It would be good for him. Hadia and Huda have each other. He is always so lonely, na? Now he will have someone to grow up playing with as well.”
I told her I was going to the restroom. Instead, I walked back and forth across the bridge of the hospital that connected two wings, constructed like a tunnel of glass over the parking lot. I wondered how your mother could think the way she did, how everything in her naturally considered you. Wanting to bear a child for your sake. Even in this, having you in mind. She sat there in the waiting room and wished for a boy to give you a brother. I paced the tunnel, knowing I had wished for a boy to give me a son.
And it was going to be a boy. The doctor confirmed our hopes. Your mother took hold of my hand and leaned into me as we walked out. That day, beneath the pale blue sky, I let myself hold tightly on to her hand and marveled at how delicate and small it felt in mine. Eid was approaching and we decided we would tell you all then. We would give you the gift of art sets and new outfits and then make it an exciting reveal.
Knowing I had a son coming made it easier to deal with my disappointments about us. Layla was never one to discipline you, so anytime you misbehaved it fell on me to drag you by the arm to your room for your time-out. I told myself I was going to have another chance. I even hoped that another son would ease the pressure between us. I began to imagine him. He would not be prone to outbursts. He would not be angry with me when I was angry with him. He would look up to me and respect me. He would be eager to learn. He would stand next to me in prayer, even if he was too young to understand, he would sense the respect required. He would be mine, as you were your mother’s.
It was a Wednesday. Hadia and Huda were at school, your mother was at home with you. Movement toward the awareness of a loss is a strange thing. I do not understand how time seems to slow just before and days after it has become a reality. How fragments imprint themselves into memory, sharp and vivid. It was as though the phone rang on my desk and I knew it was going to be Layla as I reached for it, and before she had even begun speaking I knew why she had called, and as she spoke something solid lodged in the center of my throat that did not dissolve until hours afterward.
“Something’s happened,” she said in Urdu, “I need you.”
She sounded disoriented.
“Don’t be afraid,” I said, “I am coming.”
I hung up the office phone. I thanked God I was in town. Stand up, I told myself. Grab keys, coat, container of leftover lunch. Tell my boss. Call someone to pick up the girls from school. But instead I leaned back into the soft cushion of the office chair and folded my hands in my lap. It was one thirty in the afternoon. On my desk was an old desktop computer that hummed. A clear, square container held paper clips. A tape dispenser. A small calendar I had forgotten to change to the correct month. On the gray walls that formed my cubicle, I had tacked a letter from Hadia, a poem from Huda composed of the first letters of my name (Right, Awesome, Father, Interesting, Quiet), and a watercolor you painted that your mother, and not you, had given me. It was of a red boat on a blue river. I was impressed by how you knew to use different shades of blue to indicate waves, evoke movement. And there was a photograph of the three of you. You a baby in Huda’s arms, Hadia with her hand resting formally on Huda’s shoulder. This is it, I thought. Then, focusing on the small face that was yours, half-obscured by the blanket you were wrapped in, you are it. There would be no second son.
I did not know what to say or do to comfort your mother. I waited for her to address me or ask something of me. Ask me for water, I thought. Ask me to bring you takeout from the restaurant we like. But she said nothing. I drove you three to the Ali family’s house where you would stay until I brought you back on the weekend, when I would be home to help Layla. I could not take my hands off the steering wheel, not even for a second, and my thoughts tugged me to terrible places as I drove. Now that we had suffered one loss, I wondered when the next would come for us.
“Are you all comfortable?” I asked Hadia, when I visited the three of you as soon as I was off of work.
“They’re very nice to us,” Hadia said. Then, looking down at her shirt and playing with the edge of her sleeve, “Is it because they know what’s wrong?”
“Nothing is wrong.”
She looked at me. She was too smart for me. I was, as my coworkers liked to say, in over my head. I touched her forehead and told her to go play.
“But remember—” I pointed a finger at her.
She looked back at the Ali sons playing in the garden, all three of them children, the eldest no more than seven.
“Just acquaintances.” She giggled.
Back then she had a funny way of pronouncing it, the syllables jamming together at the end. “Good girl,” I said, and I smiled at her.
Sister Seema told me that you either clung to Hadia or, if she was busy, chose to stay inside with her and Amira. I walked into the living room and there you were, seated on top of a sofa facing a window. You turned to acknowledge my presence before looking back outside. The look in your eyes frightened me. You were so little, but I wondered if you blamed me for your mother’s absence.
“Where’s Mumma?” you asked.
I sat down on the couch. I waited for you to turn to me.
“She’s not here,” I said.
“Can you take me to where Mumma is?”
I wanted to give you everything you wanted.
“Tomorrow,” I said softly.
You nodded. You had nothing else to ask me. Once again I felt like I did not know how to interact with you. I wonder now what we could have been had I had the courage to lift you into my arms as I wanted to then, tell you that tomorrow you would see your mother but that today I was here for you, that you had lost a brother and I a son, but I had you, and you would never lose me. But instead I stood up from the couch, I thanked Sister Seema for her kindness and drove the dark roads back to our house, where your mother had still not turned on the lights. I parked in the driveway and sat there until the car cooled, until I composed myself, before stepping inside and being brave enough for your mother, and here we are.
* * *