I make it to the condo lobby before collapsing into a faux-leather couch. With my English notes perched on the armrest, I pick up where I left off: the depravity of Caliban.
I don’t realize I’ve fallen asleep until lights flashing across the lobby wake me. An ambulance is parked out front. It’s not a common occurrence, but I don’t give it much thought until I see Mr. Ram’s daughter-in-law coming out of the doors to the stairwell. She waits, looking toward the elevators, her hands clenched.
I go over to stand beside her. “Is everything okay?”
She looks at me briefly and shakes her head before watching the elevators again.
“Mr. Ram?” I ask. She nods and then clutches my arm suddenly.
The elevator doors open, and ambulance attendants come out wheeling Mr. Ram, laid out, with an oxygen mask on his face. My stomach flops.
Mr. Ram goes by soundlessly, his son and daughter-in-law, now sobbing quietly, following. I go to the lobby doors, wanting to climb into the ambulance with them.
But the ambulance drives away.
Something breaks in me, and I start to heave, tears running down my face.
Mr. Ram can’t go.
? ? ?
I lie sprawled on my bed. Muhammad backed away when I let myself in earlier and he got a glimpse of my face, so I have a bit of respite. Plus, I wedged Mom’s dresser against the door for double protection.
Lying motionless, I stare at the water stain on the ceiling for so long that it takes on more and more details that make it look like Farooq.
I shake my head and fish my phone out of my backpack. Scrolling down, I find his number in my messages folder.
I wonder briefly if he’s at school, but still, I let it ring. I’ll have to be brave enough to leave a message if no one answers.
“Assalamu alaikum?” Nuah asks. “Janna?”
I nod, afraid to speak.
“What’s up?” he says, the surrounding noise of many voices fading. “I can hear you better now. I’m not in the hall anymore.”
“Mr. Ram, he’s not well. They took him away in an ambulance.”
“Oh. Do you know which hospital?”
“No,” I say.
“Let me call and check. Call you right back?”
“Okay.”
I hang up and fish under my bed for a piece of blue poster board. I move the dresser back to its place, go into Muhammad’s room, and put the blue board against the window. When Tats first moved into Fairchild Towers, we used to communicate through window colors. Blue meant “All is lost; come over now.” Even though I can’t talk to Tats, I want her to see this. I want her to know something—I mean a lot of things—is not right.
I go back to my room without shutting the door. I need to be ready to go when Nuah calls. The hospital wouldn’t be too far so I can bike it. I look around the room for something to take with me. Mom’s Rumi poems. Maybe I can read him some.
My seerah book lying on the dresser catches my eye. He’ll probably like that, but I haven’t added anything new to it since I was twelve.
I hop on my bed and cross my legs, cradling the book in my lap. I reach for my gel pens in a basket on the window ledge and spread them out. I choose a dusty brown and draw a valley by a high hill. I want to write about the Prophet’s farewell sermon. Hurt no one so that no one may hurt you.
I’m not aware of how much time has gone by until Muhammad knocks on the door that’s ajar.
“Janna?” He peers in. “Nuah is here.”
I look up, and the opening in the door widens, Nuah’s face appearing behind Muhammad’s shoulder.
I get off the bed and walk with them to the living room, holding the seerah book.
“I can go right now,” I say. “To the hospital. Which one is it?”
“Janna, he passed away,” Nuah says. “I spoke to his family.”
I nod.
“Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi rajioon,” Muhammad says. “To God we belong and to him we return.”
I repeat the words Muslims say when someone dies and then walk back to my room. The mess on my bed leads me to Mom’s bed, where I promptly fall asleep.
I wake up to Tats scraping and flicking her dried nail polish, sitting beside me on Mom’s bed.
“I heard about your friend,” she says, pausing her handiwork to look at me.
I flip over and let my left arm hang off the side of the bed.
“Sorry to hear,” she says. “Do you want me to bring you something to eat? There’s a guy eating chow mein with your brother in the kitchen.”
Nuah’s still here?
“I’m okay,” I say. “I didn’t get much sleep last night.”
“I’ll get you something.”
The bed creaks as she hops off.
I get up and catch my reflection in the mirror. My hijab’s askew with tufts of hair escaping around both ears. I unwind the hijab and fling it across to my bed and then lie back down, spread-eagle.
I’m kind of fed up and exhausted with the last few days: with Farooq, with my friends, with Mr. Ram gone without any prior warning.
I mean, he gave me that file, that ancient file, a few days ago and told me to be sure to tell my English teacher about it. And I nodded, pretending I would, but really thinking as if! I can remember almost nothing of what he said to me before this exchange.
But he said so much, so how could that be?
What’s in my head now is his face, especially his tightly-held-lips face, when he’d listen or watch me but not say anything. That face of his would freak me out because he had this way of knowing I didn’t mean everything I said I’d do when he’d ask me to read something or write about something or do something or talk to someone about something. I’d drop my eyes when he got that face. Without looking up, I knew his eyes would have grown more knowing as I sputtered along filling the spaces with empty pronouncements. I didn’t care about things as much as he did, and he knew it.
I close my eyes because they begin stinging. I realize this awful thing: Mr. Ram was the adult I had the most consistent communication with for the last few years, mainly because even though I kept talking crap and he knew it, he let me be. He just listened.
And when he spoke, he always gave me something good. I know this for sure, because I always left him feeling good.
Tats comes in holding two plates. She sets them on Mom’s dresser and, after a quick glance at my face, perches on the bed gingerly.
She begins scraping her nails again.
I sit up and wipe my face with my sleeves.
“Let’s get out of here to eat,” I say, wrapping my scarf on really horribly. “Mom hates food in her bedroom.”
I refrain from looking at my blotchy self in the mirror.
Tats grabs the plates and walks ahead. She stops in the middle of the hallway and whispers, “By the way, is that guy in the kitchen Farooq?”
I shake my head and make a face as we enter the kitchen. Nuah looks up from the breakfast table and immediately stands, chopsticks in the air.
I don’t know why, but I reach for my scarf, almost instinctively, to fix it up.
Nuah indicates his chair, and I go toward it as Tats takes Muhammad’s empty seat and sets down our plates. We eat quietly, but something’s growing loud in me. It’s reaching into every part of me, and I let it be.
I let the ocean of anger be.