? ? ?
After hearing them leave, and giving myself an extra half hour in case they needed to come back to get something, I emerge from my self-banishment in the basement to find an empty breakfast room full of breakfast. It’s crazy stocked with everything from waffles to mini Spanish omelets to samosas and halal sausages, kept hot in those silver warmers. I pile a plate and sit down to eat at the empty table.
A burst of laughter enters from somewhere to the right and above. It’s Muhammad’s snorts and someone else’s hoots mixed with Dad’s big belly laugh. I get up, balancing my plate carefully as I negotiate the winding staircase. I follow the noise to Dad’s study/entertainment room.
“There she is,” Dad says, opening his arms wide.
I set my plate on a sideboard and go over to hug him. Nuah and Muhammad are sprawled across the two huge leather megasofas, laughing again at something on the screen behind me. To his credit, Nuah gets up and kicks Muhammad’s legs off to join him, which gives me a spot on the now vacant sofa. I turn to get my plate and take it over.
It’s me. They’re laughing at me, BD. Before divorce, when I was young and naive.
An eight-year-old me is blown up on the home theater screen, holding up my nose piglike at the camera while pointing at thirteen-year-old Muhammad eating a huge bag of chips. The camera then follows me upstairs, in our old house, to show the viewers my neat room in contrast to Muhammad’s mess. I’m doing a little jig in my room when Muhammad sticks his head in and says, “But what about this?” He bounds in and opens my closet. Things spill onto the floor—clothes, stuffed animals, school artwork, junk. Kid-me growls, picks up a pink stuffed octopus, and attacks Muhammad with it. “Don’t. Touch. My. Closet!” Muhammad stands still in a yoga tree pose while getting whacked. “I am peace. Peace is me,” he chants over and over as I pick up more weapons to deal with him.
I search Dad with a questioning look. Why is he showing this stuff? To Nuah? Who’s enjoying it way too much?
“Remember?” Dad says. “How we used to film the Janna Yusuf Show every Sunday? This episode we called ‘Clean vs. Muhammad.’ Sometimes I still put it on and watch it. The boys love it. If they weren’t at swimming, they’d be in here laughing with us, even little Luke.”
I’m not laughing, Dad, I want to say. Then a thought crosses my mind.
“Did you show this to anyone else?” I ask.
“Some of your other friends saw some before they left. Your friend Farooq practically camped in here last night, watching DVD after DVD with me,” Dad says proudly. “You’re a hoot to watch, sweetie.”
I pick up my plate and walk out, mumbling something about getting more food.
I go back down to the basement.
? ? ?
I wait for Sarah on the porch steps, the lone rebel way, with a packed backpack at my side and an iPhone plugged into my brain, pumping in the right playlist for this moment in time. Angry, sad, punch-him-where-it-hurts-most-but-don’t-’cause-you-don’t-want-to-touch-him, only-crush-his-dirty-little-heart playlist.
The woman across the street waves at me while directing some guy gardening for her, but I ignore the random act. She probably sees a kindly babushka doll when she looks at me, sitting in my hijab. Well, that’s okay, because I see overfried hair and strange taste in fashion.
See, that’s the thing. I don’t get why it’s easy to up-yours someone I don’t even know, maybe someone who’s even nice. But Farooq? He freezes my anger. My justified anger.
Ya Allah, help me. I’m descending. I can’t speak the truth like I’m supposed to. Help me.
A second backpack joins mine on the steps, and I know who it belongs to without looking up. Only one person would carry around a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle backpack proudly. The kind that looks like a turtle shell.
Well, besides my brother.
“Oh man, your dad loaded our plates again so much that I can’t move,” Nuah says. He doubles over in feigned pain before stretching his bent arms back, as though getting ready for some basketball shots.
I notice he happily waves preemptively at the woman “gardening,” and she flails her arms back at the happiness of it all. Well, yeah, he doesn’t have some person in his life trapping his ability to simply be.
“Did you guys feast like this growing up?” Nuah asks.
I tilt my head at him so he can notice my do-not-disturb earbuds. Then I scroll up the volume.
“Is that ‘Walking Contradiction’ by Green Day I hear?” he asks, louder, so loud the woman across the street waves again.
“What?” I say, flinging the buds out of my ears. “I thought you guys were having so much fun watching the Janna Yusuf Show. Wait, no, it must be time to do some weird yoga on the front lawn while waving at Ms. I’m-rich-now-so-I-will-order-around-this-Hispanic-guy-doing-my-grass-while-waving-at-the-nice-loaded-brown-people-across-the-street-and-guess-what-I-still-do-my-own-hair-from-a-box-ain’t-I-economical?”
Nuah does this look I’ve never seen on anyone, so I hold up my phone and snap a picture of it.
“Wait a minute,” he says. “I know what’s happening with you.”
“Yeah? What’s happening with me?” I ask, using an editing app to clone, enlarge, flip, skew, and totally mutate his picture until he looks like some bizarre freakoid. Now I know why Flannery used the line She looked at nice young men as if she could smell their stupidity.
“You’re mad ’cause we lost,” Nuah says, leaning back on the sole tree in Dad’s front yard, a birch, not even trying to peer over at my ongoing voodoo job on his photo. “The Quiz Bowl. It stings. You’re upset. Hence the Green Day.”
I snort really rudely and throw my phone on the steps.
What is wrong with this guy? Go away, go away, go away, I think over and over again. Then I say it.
“Go away,” I say, looking up at his face looking down at me, with that same expression he had on before. It’s the expression you make when you’re shocked at something but pretending you’ve got a handle on it. “Away, far away. It’s like you guys can’t hear people who say things. I don’t want you around, okay? Good-bye, loser.”
“Okay,” he says.
He picks up his backpack and leaves. Back into the house, turtle shell clinging to taut shoulders.
That was so bad, it feels good.
? ? ?
Sarah drops us at the mosque back in Eastspring, where Muhammad’s car is parked. While Muhammad hangs around, leaning into Sarah’s driver’s-side window, I bolt to his car to get away from their waltzing talk—him, pumped up about their impending marriage, thrusting discussion topics at her; her, nimbly sidestepping every major commitment.
My phone vibrates as I slump into the seat.
Nuah. Who was in the car the whole way back from Chicago and didn’t say a word to me the entire time.
I know why you’re mad.