They eventually moved into a house with a small lawn and narrow hallways, a staircase with slanted ceilings Souad was constantly bumping into. They argued about bills, vacations, which extracurriculars to enroll the children in. Whether to salt the driveway before or after it snowed. They fought about Elie’s novel, the same goddamn novel Souad had heard about as a teenager in that Kuwaiti café. It was like an unwanted houseguest that haunted her marriage. It was never-ending. Elie would speak at times of being nearly finished, then something would shift, and he’d call the whole thing rubbish and spend weeks morosely staring out of the study window. Twice, he set hundreds of pages on fire in their bathtub, and she yelled at him for days.
The years went on. Their marriage died a thousand deaths before Elie finally caught on and left.
The Spinneys market is one of those all-purpose centers, a huge building filled with furniture shops and book kiosks and even a grocery store. The four of them walk through the entrance, a sign in French advertising laundry detergent.
A Sri Lankan man stands beside rows of shopping carts and unlatches one for her as she approaches. Behind him, other Sri Lankan men carry grocery bags, wearing ridiculous uniforms in primary colors, like children’s clothing. Everywhere in the city, there are reminders of servitude, the maids trailing families, the men working at gas stations and construction sites.
Even Budur has a maid, Tika, that she hires for the summers, but Souad finds the idea unappealing. She is awkward with Tika, awkward with the maids at her mother’s house in Amman—her mother, after Priya, being exceedingly picky—always fumbling and uncomfortable, prefacing any request with If you have time, maybe, at some point, could you possibly . . .
She pushes the cart to a map of the market adjacent to a candy kiosk with colorful sweets in jars.
“I want one!” Linah reaches toward a bouquet of lollipops in a vase.
“Careful.”
“I want a purple one.”
Souad sighs. “Linah, it’s eleven in the morning.”
“Please?”
The girl’s smile is disarming. Souad shakes her head. “Really, Miss Linah? Sugar and chemicals?”
“Mmm.” Linah grins. “I love chemicals. Delicious!”
“Yum,” Zain chimes in.
Souad smiles down at the small, upturned faces. She cannot imagine sorrow in their lives, cannot bear to think of the ways they will love and hurt and fret. Motherhood doesn’t suit me, she once confessed to Budur, drunk. I don’t have the stomach for not knowing what comes next.
“Okay,” she says, and they let out cries of excitement. “Okay, okay, okay.”
“You’re supposed to set limits,” Manar grumbles.
Souad counts, silently, to three. “I’m a terrible disciplinarian,” she sings out.
Linah and Zain pick out lollipops and bounce ahead, chattering. Past the bookstore, there is a small wine shop, the bottles dark and glossy on the shelves. She averts her eyes.
She can sense her children watching her carefully at times, even as she’s doing the most ordinary things: folding dishcloths, pouring tea, yawning. She knows they are scared—though Manar’s fear has metamorphosed neatly into anger—that she will lapse, go back to the days of sobbing, drinking the way she did for months after Elie left, staying up past midnight and calling Elie. How could you do this? I gave you everything, she would scream over and over into the phone and, when he stopped picking up, into his voice mail, sometimes even getting into bed with Zain and asking him to stroke her hair.
That self is still so recent, so alarming, that it makes her shiver with shame.
“I know you’re mad at me,” she’d said to Zain and Manar the morning after telling them, yes, yes, they would be leaving Karam and Budur and Linah, would be leaving Boston for good. “I know you’re mad. You should be mad. I haven’t been doing this very well. And I know you’re scared of moving, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry to do this. But I promise—”
Here she paused, tears prickling her eyelids. She looked at her children, Manar silent and reproaching, Zain with trust in his eyes, and she began to weep. Zain rose, embraced her, but Manar watched scornfully as Souad shrank into her son’s arms.
Moments later, she composed herself enough to speak again, but when she did, her mind blanked and she just said, lamely, “I promise to do better.”
They walk upstairs to the indoor play area with toys and cushions and a makeshift library. In America, a place like this would never work, leaving your children on their own while you shopped. Kidnappers, perverts, murderers—every street pulsed with threat. Her time in Boston had felt like one long held breath.
“Okay, guys,” she says to Zain and Linah. “I need to buy a few things. Can you sit here and not break anything?” She pauses. “No wrestling.” They nod, lollipops in their mouths. She turns to Manar. “You want to come with me? Help me pick some things out?”
“No. I want to look at bed sheets. I don’t like the flowery ones.”
Souad feels her temper rise, takes a breath. “Okay. Let’s just meet back here—guys, I said no wrestling—in an hour? Good?” A shrug. Souad tries for a joke. “Do you want a lollipop, Manar, to cheer you up?”
Not even the trace of a smile.
Souad watches Manar leave. Her daughter has become unrecognizable to her. She used to hear people talk about their teenagers and think, Nonsense. How could your own child become a stranger to you, this creature you had fed and soothed and sung to?
But, now, here it is. Her daughter, unknown to her. The body she had nourished inside her, held for hours at a time. She knew every scar, every miraculous bone, had spent whole nights watching her chest rise and fall with her breath. And now Manar plodded that body around like luggage, her thoughts a mystery.
Part of it, Souad thinks, might be the weight. Her daughter had been a fat, dimpling baby, then a pudgy child. It is shameful to admit, but Souad worried about it, praying her daughter would slim as she got older. It was impossible not to look at her daughter with sharp eyes, out of necessity, out of love, the way one surveys a landscape for wires, traps, a hidden net in the trees.
And now, at thirteen, Manar’s body is plump, hips flaring, her breasts large and hanging. She has the physique of an older woman, with fleshy arms and thighs, though a startlingly slender neck and attractive face—Elie’s wide, sardonic mouth, Souad’s nose and almond-shaped eyes.
The girl has noticed. Over the past year, she has bought a closetful of black—jeans, tank tops, shirts, even socks. Souad knows that Manar must have overheard someone saying carelessly, Black makes you look thinner, and taken it devastatingly to heart.
“It’s the age,” Budur says often. “We were all like that.”
Souad never tells Budur her fear, that she had lost Manar in some irrevocable way after Elie left, when Manar would come home to find Souad two vodkas in and no meal prepared, when Souad would ask Manar to make her brother a sandwich—or to brush his teeth, help with his homework—while she went upstairs to lie down and cry. How could she not hate me, she wants to ask Budur but is too afraid.