In the garden, the oldest boy asked Hadia where her parents were, digging in the dirt with the edge of a long stick, and she said she didn’t know. Inshallah, God willing, they’ll be back and all will be well, he said, and Hadia thought that it was weird that a boy her age was talking to her like the grown-ups and she told him so. He shrugged and said he was just trying to be nice. He had green eyes and in the sun she saw specks of gold and orange in them. That was before Hadia started to wear a scarf, and she played soccer with the boys in the backyard, their lawn that was as wide as a park. He was rough with his brothers but slowed as he approached her and passed her the ball gently. That night Baba came back and told her to get her things and Hadia knew that Mumma was home. She was surprised to find that she didn’t want their visit to be over. Amar held her hand while they walked to the car and she turned around to wave at the boy whose name she had forgotten and he stood on his doorstep, waving back.
At home Mumma was sitting on the couch and Hadia stopped walking when she saw her, because Mumma looked so much smaller. She looked back at Baba to see if he thought she looked strange too, but Baba looked as he had for the past few days, like only his body was with them. She felt obligated to hug her mother. Once Amar climbed into her lap he did not leave it, and he refused to look at Hadia. She watched the two of them, the way Amar followed Mumma, the way Mumma did not put him down but carried him from room to room even though he had become too old for that. Hadia ran upstairs and wished her mother had not come back, then felt so awful for thinking it that she began to cry, and she said to God, I am sorry, please forgive me. In the weeks that followed, Amar hesitated before responding to her, as though her presence now reminded him of Mumma’s absence. When Amar began first grade, and the school days grew longer, Amar would call Mumma to pick him up right after lunch, and he would go home early. But that made Baba too angry; he hit Amar once with the shoulder of a hanger and told him that he had to stop being a baby, that he had to stay in school for the full day like everyone else, and after that Amar had only called for Hadia.
In the nurse’s room she takes a seat next to him. The tissue paper crumples beneath her weight. He thanks her, speaking in English again.
“Your lip looks funny,” he says, twisting his mouth to one side.
She presses her tongue against the bruise.
“Is it from last night?” he asks.
Hadia does not say yes. Recently, Amar has begun sensing when Baba gets even a little irritated with her, or with Huda, and he acts out in a way that guarantees Baba will only get angry at him. If Huda complains about the dinner and Baba gives her a look, Amar will chime in, say he does not just dislike the dinner, he hates it, until Baba is only looking at Amar, willing only Amar to test his patience.
“It’s just a small bruise,” she says. The clock ticks. The nurse types in the other room, hitting the keys quickly and loudly.
“Once there was a boy who cried wolf,” she tells him again. “The whole village rushed to his side. His sister too, who was afraid for him. But when they reached the clearing and there was no wolf, only a boy with a mischievous look on his face, people thought to themselves, Now we can’t trust this boy’s word. Next time when he calls wolf, wolf, wolf, we will look away. We will busy ourselves.”
Amar blows at the hair on his forehead like he’s not even listening to her.
“And eventually,” she adds, trying to make her voice very serious, “even his sister convinces herself that she should not listen to the boy, that there is no wolf, and she should just keep taking notes in class instead.”
“I don’t believe it,” he says.
“You don’t have to believe it, it’s the lesson part that’s true.”
“What is the lesson?” he asks.
“They stop going to help him. He gets eaten by the wolf because the whole time he said it was there when it wasn’t, so they didn’t believe him when the wolf actually did come.”
Before she leaves, she will tell him that he has to stay in class, no matter how hard it is, and that he can’t disturb her classes anymore.
“But you would not do that. You would still come,” he says at last.
She gives up. She wonders how long she will have to stay until Amar is calm, until he is ready to go back to class. She rubs the marks her nails made on her arm with her thumb.
“Why do you always do that?” he asks her.
She pulls down the sleeve of her sweater until it covers the marks. She feels as though he has uncovered one of her secrets. She watches the hand on the clock move.
“Hadia?”
“Hm?”
“Don’t tell Baba, please?”
“I won’t.”
They sit. There is nothing left to speak about. Even though he was lying about his tummy hurting, he holds two arms folded over it anyway. He really does look like a little teddy bear. His feet don’t touch the floor and he swings them back and forth. He leans his head against her arm and she looks at the poster in the nurse’s room, of the body and the food it needs to eat to be healthy, and she studies it, thinking that if she memorizes at least one fact, her time will not be wasted.
* * *
EVERY WEEKEND THERE are countless functions and family-friend parties, and Amar hates almost everything about them. The ceaseless small talk. The constant gaze of his father following him, making sure he is treating elders with respect, that he is not fighting with or being vaguely rude to the other boys his age. Or disappearing with the few he is friends with and offending the host, sometimes to smoke a cigarette a few streets away, sitting on the curb and complaining with them about everyone else, mints at the ready in their pockets. Other times just to drive to the nearest 7-Eleven and get a soda, despite the endless supply of soda at the party, just for the thrill of that ride, for that momentary escape, for the pleasure derived from the click of the ring pull on the can that is his, purchased by him in secret. He detests, most of all, the importance placed on maintaining a sense of decorum that feels stifling, false. Always the same menus, the same combination of dishes. Even the segregation annoys him—males confined to one side of the house, females to another, sometimes divided by a wall or a cloth pinned between walls.
But still, he would go. Because Abbas would be there, as well as Amira’s other brothers, and maybe one of them would bring her up in conversation. He would catch snippets, little clues that he could piece together. From them he learned how she loved peanut M&M’s, because Abbas would purchase a packet for her every time he went to the 7-Eleven; and how she wanted to go to college on the East Coast in a few years, had already begun improving her grades and researching schools despite the resistance of her parents; how she hated the sports her brothers watched; how she did not shy from fighting with her middle brothers and that she demanded her parents treat her the same as them. And of course, he could not resist the pull of the possibility that she would be there, that he might catch the sound of laughter that was hers, note the shoe in the pile of shoes that was hers. If the timing was right, if all aligned, if he stood near the divider just as someone was passing with a tray of food or jug of water and they lifted the curtain, and if she happened to be standing behind it, maybe he would catch a quick glimpse of her, her delicate features, her slender body, always clothed in bright colors.