“Wow.” It’s the Monday after my visit to Ammi, a week since the ICE officers took her away. Fatima and I are in a park across the street from school, soaking in the sunshine. Fatima sits back on the bench, chugs her Sprite.
A rough day in classes—I couldn’t focus most of the time and I hadn’t done any of my assignments, not after seeing my mom in detention. It’s like all my energy shrank and went small, the way my mother looked. In English, Ms. Ricardo said to me, “What’s going on, Rania? Serious case of senioritis?” I slammed out of the classroom. If it were Mr. D from last year, he’d pull out of me what was going on. I’m not one of those kids who goes to office hours and sobs about her problems to a teacher. No way.
Fatima shakes her head. “You have an uncle? Living here?”
“Apparently.”
“That is wack.”
“No kidding.”
“Are you going to try and find him?”
“I guess.” I add, “But why should I bother? Dude didn’t even call us when he moved here.”
“Do you know that?”
“What do you mean?” I look at her, incredulous. “He’s, like, from my mom’s family. They suck. They never helped us. They just let my mom go.”
“Maybe he did try to contact your mom.” She tilts the can again, takes a long gulp. “After all, she lied to you about the asylum stuff.”
I start. “She didn’t lie.”
Fatima turns to me. Her eyes are hazel, flecked with green, turning up in the corners, which makes it seem as if she’s always musing, knowing better than others. “Rania, just be open. You never know.”
“I do know!”
She sighs. “My mom says that when we come here, there’s always so much we leave behind.”
“What’s that mean?”
“There’s some weird shit between my mom and her sister. Her older one. Mom never calls her. But she never tells me what happened. Says it goes way back, from when they were girls. Some kind of jealousy stuff. Her sister got to go to college.”
I thrust up from the bench and we start heading to the subway. I don’t want to hear this. My head is rattling: about Kamal and his bed-wetting and what to make for supper, and why Mona hasn’t called me back. The card from that Gonzalez guy. My school assignments. Even though there are only a couple of weeks to go, it burns to mess up my record.
Fatima turns and asks softly, “What about graduation?”
I stop, rocking back on my heels. It’s the beginning of June. Graduation is in two weeks. I picture the package with my purple robe and cap and tassel tossed into our bedroom closet. Fatima and I have already picked out our sandals—she’s gone for red, and I’m wearing gold. I even get to stride up a second time for an English award. I kept imagining Ammi in the audience, her head tilted up, that pleased-but-I-knew-it expression on her face. Everything we’ve done—that tunnel of fright and the hectic years in a small apartment; Ammi’s anxious breaths in my hair, egging me on, sleeping on my bed, and reading my books; and then her figuring out how to be an Uber driver; the accordion file with our application growing fatter; her real estate books, and so much talk about the future, like that crazy lapping road I’d felt the other day—all of it led to this pinpoint moment, walking across the stage. If I graduated, I’d told myself, that was one more notch into the future. One more assurance that we were going forward, not back. Me breaking loose, finally, no more Ammi breathing her dreams into me.
“Yeah,” I say. “What about it?”
“You can still go, right?”
“Of course! Why wouldn’t I?” But my voice sounds too bright as I swipe my MetroCard and push through the turnstile.
I’m digging for my key when my phone dings and shows an unfamiliar number: Jersey City. Then I remember: Mona.
But Mrs. Flannery is suddenly right next to me, glaring through her eyeglasses, which gives her an owlish look. “Where is your mother?” I can hear that old-fashioned principal voice, suspicious. Her quilted robe is snapped to her neck, but it’s off by one, giving her a cockeyed look. Everything about her—the yellowed edge of her collar, the scent of stale rose and talc—makes me sad and furious. It’s as if she’s what’s standing between me and my normal life. Whatever that is.
“I’m sorry, I have to get this—”
“Where is she?” she repeats, and takes a step closer. Her eyes are a cloudy gray green, weak. She makes me feel pinned with fright.
I swallow. “She’s working.”
“I see what’s going on! Your mother isn’t there! I saw, in the night.”
The phone bleats. “Please, Mrs. Flannery. I have to get this.”
“Criminal!”
“Please,” I beg.
“She’s a criminal. You all are!” She shuffles off.
The phone has quieted in my pocket. Mrs. Flannery has slammed her door, clinking the chain on the other side. I’m so relieved Kamal is on a playdate with Amir. Once inside the apartment, I can’t stop trembling. Ammi always told me, She’s a lonely person. Her daughter never visits her. She’s letting it out on us.
I press Mona’s number. “Hullo!” she greets me cheerily.
“It’s Rania.”
“Oh yes! So sorry about taking so long. I work a long shift and I always forget to charge my phone. What can I do for you, Rania?”
I’m taken aback. I’d worked up this conversation so many times in my head I thought for sure she knew who I was and what had happened to Ammi, and would offer me a solution. I thought she’d sound familiar, like family, folding me in.
“I…My mother told me to call you. I’m looking for my uncle. Salim?”
There’s a long pause. Too long, drawing between us. My ribs tighten.
“Rania, the thing is this—”
“Do you know where he is?” I interrupt.
Again another pause.
“Please,” I beg. “My mother—”
“Where is your mother?” she asks sharply.
It’s my turn to pause. I haven’t said it out loud to anyone except for Fatima. If I don’t say it, maybe it isn’t true. “She’s—they’ve taken her into detention. Immigration.”
“Oh dear.” I can hear the sorrow in her voice. “Poor Sadia.”
No! I want to shout. Ammi is never Poor Sadia. Never. She would hate such words used about her. It takes all my effort not to hang up. Tears fleck thickly on my lashes and I blink them away.
“You are alone?”
“My brother is with me.”
“You have a brother?” She sounds surprised.
“Yes. Kamal.” I add, “He was born here. He’s eight.”
“I see.” She seems to be weighing something. In the background I can hear plates clattering. This is my life, I want to say, and you’re putting dishes away?
“It’s messed up,” I say. “This whole country is messed up right now.”
She laughs. “I see you have Sadia’s spunk.”
“Ammi always said I more take after Abu. He was tall.”
“Is that right?” There’s a funny tone in her voice.
The way she comments—skeptical, questioning—makes me tense. We don’t talk about Abu too much, not with anyone outside me and Kamal. And after our first year or two, Ammi began to avoid anyone from back home. I remember there were phone calls in the middle of the night, and someone who knew Abu would come visit, a fellow journalist, to see how we were doing. They were always kind and funny, asking about school and friends, staring at the framed photo of Abu Ammi keeps on a shelf, and offering to help. She politely served them snacks and chai but she never called them. Maria Auntie, your friends, she often told me, they’re your new family.
“So,” I say. “My uncle. Salim?”
“Right.” She clears her throat. “He came here…I think it was two, three years back. At least that’s what I’d heard. He had a job, for a bank. He was married, you know—”
“No, I don’t know.”
“They both came, with the children, who were quite young, I think.”
“But what about my mother? Why didn’t he call her? Call us?”
“From what I understand, he tried. But she…” She hesitates. “She wouldn’t speak to him.”
I drop down on the sofa, stunned. That makes no sense. How many times did I hear Ammi cry behind a closed door, about how hard-hearted her family was? How they had cut her out? I’d feel a swoop in my own chest, as if I was falling with her, into a lonely hole. No light, only those mean relatives who hurt me too.
“Look, I think Salim had his own troubles. He was married, but the girl, she wasn’t doing too well with the immigration. They made the best of it, I suppose. If your mother was going to do her thing—”
“What thing?” I ask, suddenly hostile. I sense gossip wreathed around Ammi. That’s what she always said—growing up, she couldn’t bear the chatter and nasty rumors.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. Your mother, I met her only a few times. I knew Salim better. He was a few years older than me. But I remember hearing…she was such a free spirit.”
“That doesn’t sound like a compliment.”
“Ah, sharp, like Sadia,” she remarks.
I wince.
“I remember your grandparents,” she continues. “They were so sweet. We used to play in their big garden. My brother, one day, he was climbing up the tree that is next to their house, and your grandfather, he was so stern! We all were afraid of him. He was retired but we could see he was still a general. So my brother climbed up and crawled onto the limb that went right next to your grandfather’s window. We were sure he would yell at him. But then suddenly the shutter flapped open and there he was! Not stern at all, but laughing and he told my brother to keep climbing and he could come in through the window.”
She stops when she can hear me crying. Not big-deal crying, just sniffles and hot tears sliding down my cheeks. I never do that in front of strangers.
“I am so sorry, Rania. That was wrong of me. These family feuds. They are hard on everyone.”
Who are all these people? I think. A whole world that knew my grandparents, that made judgments about us? Why didn’t I know Mona, just across the river, in New Jersey? And I have cousins, here?
“Do you know where my uncle is now?”
“I heard he was in Connecticut somewhere. But I don’t have an address.”
I slump back on the cushions. Why did I even call her just to hear stories that make me feel bad about all I don’t have? And yet, sitting on the sofa where Ammi usually pulls out her bed, sun streaming on the floor, I feel a nub of warmth in Mona, of connection.
Her voice brightens. “There is one possibility. Hema Auntie. She knows everybody. And I think Salim may have stayed with her in the beginning. Hold on, I’ll call her on the landline right away.”
I can hear her set the phone down, then she’s making pleasantries, and lowers her voice. I pluck out a word or two: “Sadia,” “better you see her,” and “no, no expectations.” When she comes back to me, she tells me to write down an address in Wayne, New Jersey. “Tomorrow,” she says. “Eleven o’clock.”
I want to say, “I have school,” but she adds firmly, “Hema Auntie will be waiting for you.”
After the call, I make my plan: I’ll drop Kamal at school, then drive to New Jersey. It means cutting classes but what else can I do? Kamal can go home with his friend Derek if I’m late. I go downstairs, move Ammi’s car, since there’s alternate parking tomorrow, then heat up Maria Auntie’s soup, sit with Kamal while he does his homework, oversee his bath, and put him to bed. Fatima texts me several times but I shut off the phone, finish my missed assignments, and hand them in electronically. Sorry, Ms. Ricardo, I write. I can’t be in school tomorrow. Doctor’s appointment. Then I shut the light off.
How easy it is to lie.
The next morning, after I’ve dropped off Kamal, I sit in the car and stare at the scrap of paper with Hema Auntie’s address. Great. I have to go see some auntie who is going to give me the once-over. Who lives at least an hour and a half away. I slam into reverse, swerve away from the curb. A car horn blares. Suddenly I’m scared. It seems like ages ago that Fatima and I were wearing our FREEDOM T-shirts and waltzing up the stairs to school, arms linked.
I’m furious at those people in quilted vests.
At my mother, for all her secrets.
At everyone, for stealing my last days of high school.
I clutch the wheel and steer through traffic to the entrance of the Belt Parkway. The Verrazano bridge looms, spires glinting. I swallow, tightening my grip. I’ve never driven across a bridge or so far.
I hunch forward to merge carefully, making my way across Staten Island, then exiting onto I-95 through New Jersey. This is more highway driving than I’ve ever done. The route climbs up and up curving roads until I park in front of a big white brick house. There’s a hissing sound of a sprinkler, somewhere behind the big hedges. At the door I catch myself in the narrow glass—wrinkled shirt, lace-up boots, hair a mess. I feel like a bike messenger, grimy, carrying the stink of New York City streets.
When I press the bell, the ringtone sounds inside a huge space. The door opens and I’m greeted by an older woman—hawk-nosed, a streak of white in her hair, which swings at her chin. She’s wearing a blue kurta over white slacks, gold slip-on sandals. “You must be Rania!” I feel her eyes raking me up and down. “Come in, come in!” she urges.
I follow her, clicking down the polished hall floor, past the ornate furniture, just beyond huge windows that look out onto the shimmering blue of a swimming pool. In the large kitchen, a woman at the sink—the maid—is waved away. A tray of tea and sandwiches has been set out for me.
“Please, please, eat.” She laughs. “We still have so much food left over from the iftar. I have chicken cutlet? Biryani?”
My stomach scrapes hollow. In the rush to get Kamal to school I never ate breakfast. But something about Hema Auntie makes me uneasy. As if I’m a beggar, grubby with need. I grab one half sandwich and cram it down, quick.
“This is perfect, thanks,” I say.
“So tell me,” she says, pouring the tea. “You are how old?”
“Seventeen,” I reply. “I’m just about to graduate.”
“Ah.” She smiles. “My son is at UPenn. Premed. You are going where?”
I get it—time to trot out credentials. “Hunter,” I tell her. When it doesn’t register, I say, “The honors college. I got a scholarship.”
She nods absently. Clearly she’s not impressed. All those fancy schools—UPenn, Brown, Vassar—were out of the question for me. I was going to apply, and then I deleted them from my list. It would be too hard for Ammi to keep up our household without me and we could never afford those tuitions. This is what I want: to stay with Fatima. To walk the blocks I know, past men scraping spiny fruit by the curb; to stop off for noodles at Lucky Eight and sit in Sunset Park; I want to talk and dream and complain. Why can’t I do what other kids do?
She peppers me with more annoying questions, but I’m still starving, so I mumble answers as I take another half sandwich. Her look is sharp, assessing. When I fumble my way to Ammi’s situation—delicately mentioning we’re having issues with immigration—her nod grows more vigorous. “Oh yes. We’d heard Sadia had some trouble. Things did not go as planned.”
“What do you mean?” The sandwich turns dry in my mouth.
“The hearing? Is that what they call it?” Her look now is haughty.
“I guess.”
“It must have been such a disappointment. I don’t know much about these matters. We came a while ago. My husband’s position…I’m sure you’ve heard. He’s head of pulmonary medicine at Hackensack.”
I swallow hard. I didn’t even know Hema Auntie existed before yesterday. But there’s something about her that reminds me of Ammi—an air of we are important.
“Salim Uncle?” I prompt.
She gets up, rummaging in a desk drawer, and lifts out a small bundle bound with a rubber band. “I don’t have a phone number, but I do have this mail for him. It just came a few weeks ago, even though he hasn’t been here for quite a while. I’ve been meaning to send it off.” She plucks off a sticky note. “That’s his address.”
I look down at an address in Stamford. My heart starts to quicken. “He’s still there?”
“I believe so. He had a position with RBS. Last I heard there were some problems…” Sitting down again, she scrapes her chair closer. Her eyes are a gray green. Her hands are on mine, ringed fingers glinting. “If you like, I could contact your family. I’m sure they’d be happy to be of help—”
“No!” Then, remembering my manners, I say, “Thank you so much, Auntie. You’ve been very kind. I should get back to my brother.” I stand, point to the bundle. “Can I take this?”
Her smile drops. “Yes, of course.” Her voice is cold.
I hurry down the steps, my bag banging at my hip, relieved to get out of there. I can’t explain it: something felt wrong, like a trap. Those gray-green eyes, judging. The way my throat closed shut.
My uncle, I think, dropping the packet of mail on the passenger seat. I would find my uncle. And make everything right.