I don’t know the front desk guy’s name, but I call him Shazam! in my head. Shazam!’s been teaching Mr. Ram this handshake for almost two months now, ever since he started working here, but Mr. Ram still can’t get it.
I dubbed him Shazam! because he saunters over periodically to the foyer where Seniors Games Club takes place to shake hands again, deliver one-liners, and just like that—SHAZAM!—light up their faces before he walks back to his post.
Right now Mr. Ram’s face is glowing with the happiness of the handshake. His mouth is open wide in a grin and he’s shaking slightly, but no sound comes out: his Belly-Laugh smile, the gauge of his greatest point of happiness. I wheel him to his friends who are waiting, with chessboards spread, eager to see him.
I seat myself at a corner table and set up my laptop, away from the action.
“So, you related to Mr. Ram?” Shazam! is at the vending machine.
“No. He’s my neighbor.”
“I just thought, because, you know, you bring him here every week.” He pushes buttons with one hand and pulls on his hair, a short Afro, with the other. “That’s nice of you.”
“No, I actually get paid to do it.”
“So it’s not nice of you?” He takes his Gatorade. Now he’s facing me with a wide smile. A necklace of wooden beads hangs on his neck, the pendant disappearing into his white T-shirt.
“Yeah, it is. Because I still like doing it.” I doodle clouds on my agenda. “Is that nice enough?”
“Sure.” He takes a drink and salutes me with the bottle. “See ya—gotta get back to the desk. Might be some late gamers checking in.”
I open my e-mail and read today’s message from Dad: Let go of that which clouds your success scenario. Dispense with the unnecessary.
That’s Dad for you. Every weekday he sends a message out to his mailing list. He thinks because he expanded his business, Lite Indian Desserts (LID), Inc., from a basement operation to national prominence he has the right to give everyone sound bites on success. He thinks he’s the Deepak Chopra of capitalism.
There’s an e-mail from Fizz: Don’t forget my birthday, tomorrow after school, my house! Xoxo, Fizz
I peddle in e-mails because Mom thinks fifteen is too young for my own phone. She’s the only mother who thinks so, according to Fizz.
I get to work editing Amu’s postings on his website. Amu, “uncle” in Arabic, is Mom’s brother and the imam, or prayer leader, of the mosque here in town. While he is smart and all that, his English has not kept up with the times, so he pays me to make it more accessible.
Every Thursday evening, Amu posts answers to questions he gets from the Muslim community on the website Memos from the Mosque. Some of them are downright unbelievable.
Today I’m looking at Dear Imam, is it permissible to eat llamas? And Dear Imam, are we allowed to pray in a barn if there are pigs nearby?
Apparently there are a lot of confused Muslim farmers out there.
Those I zap into the trash bin of oblivion. I filter two good ones and e-mail those to Amu. He’ll work on them for a week and send them back to me by next Thursday.
I look over the answers he’s written to last week’s questions.
Dear Imam, are we allowed to keep hamsters if it’s in a big LARGE cage?
Answer: Thank you for your question. I believe if we should examine your question together we shall find our answer. You herewith mention a cage, but you do not refer to it as merely just that, a cage. No, you specify that it will be a big cage. And you do not even stop there. Quite emphatically, you add on the word LARGE in capital letters. I ask you why are you compelled to do this? Why do you feel it is necessary to be so exceedingly exact (if a bit banal) in your description of the roomy attributes of this said cage? Could it be that your conscience is ethical and you recognize what a merciless action it would be to cage a free creature of ALLAH? This is what He says on the subject in the Qur’an: “There is not a creature on the earth nor anything that flies on wings without its being organized into communities, just like you.” Alas, the cage, no matter how spacious of an abode, would not constitute a community and would be utterly merciless. And Allah knows best.
I trim the grandiloquent excesses on this and the other answer before e-mailing them to Amu.
He e-mails me back immediately. Thank you, Janna. May Allah reward you abundantly. And do not forget to take pictures of the Mosque Open House on Sunday morning. Plenty of non-Muslims will be there so prepare for great inter-faith shots! We will use them for our website posting next week. God be with you.
Amu the optimist. The same three non-Muslims show up to our open house every year. They get serenaded as though they’re royalty because we get to post “Mosque Opens Door to Greater Community, and THEY CAME!”
But I don’t want to think about Sunday. The monster will be there, pious and smiling, pretending nothing happened.
Freakily, I know I’ll have to do the same: pretend.
If I don’t, he’ll flood my brain.
But I don’t want him to access any part of me ever again. Not even a flicker of my thoughts.
MISFIT
Mom is home when I get back. She and Muhammad are sitting in the living room with a box of doughnuts on the side table. Odd, as we never get doughnuts, and Mom is never home before six. She has the afternoon shift at the library, sometimes even the evening one.
I say salaams and open the box. Two cherry-filled smothered in powdered sugar, my favorite. Very odd.
“You’re home early.” I take my first cloudy bite.
“I didn’t go to work.” She glances at Muhammad. “Muhammad and I were out shopping.”
“Mom, let’s get it over with.” Muhammad leans forward. He’s on the couch that he sleeps on. A huddle of blankets, towels, and Columbia U. sweatshirts cave in as he moves.
“Janna, sit,” Mom says.
“I have studying to do.” I’m suspicious now. Mom’s not looking at me. She’s shooting glances from the window to the doughnut box to the long-standing game of Risk between her and Muhammad on the coffee table.
“Mom, are you getting married?” I say, smiling. I’ve been privately practicing for the day she tells me. My part in it would be to look ecstatic. I like thinking up inevitable, awful truths and rehearsing my reactions so that I’m not caught off guard.
“No!” she says. “No, not that.”
Muhammad laughs. “It’s even better. Your bro is moving back home.”
He holds up a hand for a high five.
“Why, did Columbia kick you out?”
“Muhammad will be working for a year.” Mom leans forward, her eyes fixed on me. “To save money to continue college.”
Okay. Why are they both staring so hard?
“He’ll need your room.”
“Ha. Funny.” There are only two bedrooms in our apartment. Muhammad was busy away at school when Mom and I moved in, so neither of them belong to him. I shove the rest of the doughnut in my mouth to contain my emotions, jam squishing out the sides.
“He’s changed majors, and it’ll take more time to finish school now. We need you to be open to this.”
I swallow.
“Please, Janna.”
“No.”