Mr. Ram. I forgot him.
“Mom, I came up to get something.” I run to the door, glancing at the clock. How did an hour and a half pass?
“He said he left instructions for Mr. Ram’s medicine and food!”
“I’m going down now!”
I fumble with the key as I lock the door. I hit the bulkhead that sticks out right by our door.
“I have to go—the phone won’t work in the elevator.” I end the call. There’s no way I’m waiting for an elevator, but I don’t want Mom’s input right now.
I run down the stairs, wondering if Mr. Ram is all right. He can’t move without help. He’ll be trapped in the overstuffed chair.
I hate Lauren.
My laptop. It was open to Lauren’s profile and my unhijabbed picture. Muhammad would see it for sure.
I hesitate mid-step. Should I go back and close my laptop?
I take a breath and continue down the stairs, a prayer on my lips. After all, Allah knows about Facebook problems too.
? ? ?
He’s awake. But he doesn’t smile at me when I enter.
I follow Deval’s instructions silently.
After I feed him, I put the seerah book in his lap once more. He doesn’t open it. He just falls asleep again.
Sitting beside him, I don’t move a muscle except to turn my English notes.
The plants don’t offer shady stillness anymore. Instead, they make ominous shadows on the wall as the afternoon sun moves, bringing Deval home soon.
? ? ?
As soon as Deval enters, I try to slide past him in the doorway to the living room, but he stops me. “Janna, you could have just said no. They could have found another parent for the field trip.”
His face, normally relaxed and jovial, is held taut by raised eyebrows. With his receding hairline, he looks eerie, like he’s presiding over my sentencing.
I flinch in the witness stand. “I wanted to do it.”
“Then where were you?”
“I went upstairs to get something.”
“He’s very frail.”
“I needed something for school.” I can’t look at him anymore.
“Just let us know if you don’t want to do this any longer. We’ll find someone else.”
“I want Janna.” The blanket around Mr. Ram has fallen and reveals an unbuttoned pajama top. He is so skinny. And shaky.
Deval goes to the bathroom, from where Ravi is calling.
Mr. Ram points a trembling finger at the bookcases. “Janna, go to the shelf. That one. And get that folder for me.”
I take a bulging manila folder to Mr. Ram.
“Can you take this to your teacher?” he asks, not taking the folder, but waving slowly at it. “It is my thesis. On Shakespeare.”
“Okay.” I hold the folder against my chest, imagining Ms. Keaton’s reaction.
“I think she’ll like it.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Ram. For leaving you like that.”
“You were gone for thirty poems.”
“I’m sorry.”
“My son. Tell him that. Not to me, Miss Janna.” He smiles. “I even recited Mr. Silverstein’s poem. That one that is our favorite. That is when you came.”
I lean down to hug him. Deval enters, and I whisper sorry as I leave.
? ? ?
I take the laptop into Mom’s room and check in. No new tagged pictures of hijabless me, but the comments have grown exponentially. Nothing from my mosque friends though. Dad’s message is apt today: While sharing may seem limitless, it ends where privacy begins. Privacy keeps the sacred safe.
I’m about to click off when Fizz pops up on instant messaging with a ?. Then: OMG Janna, is that you??!! I don’t reply, and a new message window appears: Why is there a haram picture of you online?
Haram means “forbidden” in Arabic. Somebody must have captured a screenshot of my picture before I untagged myself.
I change my status to offline.
Something pops up in my friends’ activity bar just then: Fizz likes Farooq’s status: “So sad Muslim girls are letting go of their modesty these days. A sign of the End Times.”
A faint bicycle horn sounds. It’s from Muhammad’s phone out in the hallway. I turn my laptop to shield my face that’s exploding in unnamed emotions, each one rearing itself and layering on top of the others before I can express it. Something like rage, something like disbelief, something like shame, and something so intensely sad that the only way to release it would be to wail.
In the end, I sob quietly, not even letting a whimper out. Fizz likes what he has to say about me.
Her ideas of good and evil are split so clearly into one side or the other. In her mind, because of the posted pictures, I’ve taken a step to the other side. The evil one.
And for her, the monster is firmly on the good side.
I swallow and stop my tears. Fizz likes what he has to say about me?
She doesn’t know about him. Because of his cloak of piety, he is untouchable.
Rage at the unfairness rears its head again. It ripples away from my previous thoughts: No, he’s not. If you don’t let him be, he isn’t untouchable.
I start typing under his status you are a despicable . . . and then stop.
I don’t want to be seen, or known, or discussed. I don’t want to be part of holding him accountable. It means me, exposed again.
I erase my part by erasing my words, deleting backward, despicable a are you. I wish I could keep deleting into my life, deleting the Sunday the Monster came down into the basement.
This time I don’t try to stop the tears.
The bicycle horn sounds again. In Mom’s bedroom, right outside my privacy screens.
I gulp. “Go away.”
“Quiz Bowl practice. At Sarah’s house!”
“That’s later.” I hover my cursor over the unfriend button on Fizz’s profile. I don’t click it, even though the wetness blurring my sight is telling me to.
“That’s now,” Muhammad says. “I’m leaving. The chauffeur will meet you outside the lobby, your royal highness.”
I close the laptop and look in the small ornate mirror that hangs by a ribbon on my bedpost. The area around my eyes looks inflamed, a typical outcome of crying when you have sensitive skin. People might comment, especially Saint Sarah, who makes it her business to pounce on evidences of grief, bereavement, any occurrence that mars the tra-la-la-la gaiety of everyday life. I wish I could stay home. But I’m pretty sure Saint Sarah would bring the whole team over here to visit me/practice if I called in sick.
I go over to Mom’s side of the room and open the junk drawer in her dresser. She has an old pair of sunglasses that would appear fashionable yet do a good job disguising my condition. They’re a prescription pair, but there isn’t much to see at Quiz Bowl practice anyway.
The Meet Your Match flyer is gone.
I wear my hijab the fluffy way, so that certain essential folds fall forward, into my face. All in all, on inspection in the hall mirror, I look like a hijabi version of a paparazzi-avoiding actress. I’m trying to see what would happen if I totally shielded my face, bringing my hijab folds completely in, when I hear keys being fitted into the door.
Mom.