“It was weird,” I tell Fatima two hours later. On my way back from New Jersey, I stopped at her house in Bay Ridge, and we’re sitting on her stoop. Occasionally one of her little brothers’ heads pop into the front bay window—they’re bouncing on the sofa. “I felt Mona and Hema Auntie gave me this whole chase. Just to, like, check me out.” I shudder. “Ugh. I hated them.”
“Families are weird. Mine is completely nuts.”
“These people aren’t even family.”
“You know what I mean.”
“But all this time, they knew about me. About my mom. Her hearing, what happened. How come I didn’t know they even exist?”
“I guess your mom doesn’t like them.”
Fatima’s trying to help, but inside the Elawady house, with its big, ornate furniture, she’s snug inside her family. Even with all the chaos—her noisy brothers, her father yelling in Arabic at someone from his business, relatives dropping by, poor Mrs. Elawady trying to serve the meal—I feel a burn of resentment.
“I could ask my mom if she’d sign the paper about guardianship. It’s not a big deal, right?”
“Maybe. But let me find out more first.” Since Ammi has put in my mind this idea of an uncle, I keep seeing a door opening and a soft-faced uncle welcoming us. And cousins, for me and Kamal. Was such a normal scene possible? Back in Pakistan we mostly saw my parents’ friends—from university or Abu’s newspaper colleagues. They are our family, Ammi would insist. They would sit around our living room, talking all at once, going out onto the balcony to smoke. In the morning I’d find full ashtrays on the floor, or maybe a friend of Abu’s sleeping the night off on the sofa.
“It’s so confusing. Ammi made it seem like everything was under control. Why would she lie?”
“She wasn’t lying.”
“What do you call it?”
“I don’t know. Maybe she had her reasons—”
There’s a rattling noise on the window. We both turn to see her brothers, waving wildly, making faces. Fatima sighs. “They never leave me alone.”
“They’re cute.”
Smiling, she nudges her shoulder into mine. “I’ll tell you who’s cute.” Then she talks about how Jamal—the boy on the basketball court—wants her to come to a graduation party at his house—half the senior class is going. She’s got an elaborate story worked up to tell her parents: about how it’s a makeup session for graduation, for all the girls, and we’re going to do each other’s hair, and she wants me to back her up.
“Fa-Fa,” I warn, “if your dad finds out, you are really screwed. He’ll put you on the next flight to Cairo and you’ll have a husband ASAP.”
“But—”
“You remember what happened last time?”
Fatima is always getting in trouble. Once we snuck out to a party where she drank beer and danced and danced, swinging her wild hair. I dragged her back to her neighborhood, the two of us walking round the block until she could stand properly. Mr. Elawady was furious at me.
“Go!” he shouted.
“But it’s late!” Fatima cried. “She needs a ride!”
I called Ammi, who picked me up after an Uber shift. “Men are like that,” she said when I told her what happened. She didn’t yell at me at all for being at a party with drinking. “Fatima’s rebelling because he cracks down on her so much.” She set her hand on mine. “You are a good friend to her.”
Now Fatima rests her head on my shoulder. I breathe in her minty-coconut shampoo smell. “You’re right, Rania. What would I do without you?”
What would I do without you too? I think. But I can’t stop the spinning motion inside me. What if everything tilts so fast, we’ll be pulled apart?
A black car pulls up to the curb and her father gets out, slamming the door. I tense. He’s a thick-limbed man, with rumpled hair like Fatima, and an angry air. Fatima says it’s just because he’s got too many responsibilities with the business and all his relatives wanting something from him. “Fatima! Why aren’t you inside, helping your mother?”
She sets her mouth into a hard line. “Just a little lie about the party,” she whispers, her fingers brushing mine.
Lies, I think. Big, little lies. What are the ones that matter?
Later, back at the apartment, I’m doing my homework when the bedroom door creaks open and Kamal sidles up to me, climbs onto my lap, and sets his head on my shoulder. He rarely does that. “When is Ammi coming home, Aapi?” he asks. Only sometimes does he call me big sister.
“Soon,” I say.
“Soon when?”
I don’t answer, but hold him tighter until he softens with sleep and slips away, back to bed. I am left with an ache in my bones, as if I have the flu. I’m wide-awake. I pace the apartment. Ammi rarely allowed us to touch on the past. I’d ask all kinds of questions—remember that girl I used to walk to school with and who was allergic to avocadoes? Or the ice cream place across the road that had the best pistachio flavor? Sometimes she’d get a little sentimental and we’d curl up on the sofa, watch silly Bollywood movies or sing ghazals.
Rahiye ab aisī jagah chal kar jahāñ koī na ho
ham-suķhan koī na ho aur ham-zabāñ koī na ho
be-dar-o-dīvār sā ik ghar banāyā chāhiye
Let’s live in that place where there’s no one, let’s go
Where no one knows our tongue, there’s no one to speak to.
We’d build a house without doors and walls…
She’d slip her arm around me, squeeze tight. “See, Rania? That’s what we are. A house without doors and walls. We have ourselves. And that’s enough.” She’d slap her knees. “Come! No more dwelling in the past. We are here now. Remember that.”
I open the closet and dig out the manila envelope I found a few days before. More photographs scatter out. There’s one of my mother, not as I ever saw her. Her hair is feathered into waves, her thick blue eyeshadow matches her shalwar kameez, and a gauzy scarf floats across her neck. Her shoulders are hunched, her chest caved in. There are other people in a room, holding drinks and plates of food. It seems like a happy occasion, but she’s staring right at the camera, unsmiling.
“Rania?” Lidia looks startled.
It’s early the next day, and I’m sitting on a cold floor, leaning against the wall outside Lidia’s office, nursing a cup of coffee when she arrives. “I need to talk to you,” I say.
“Come on in.” Balancing files and an overstuffed bag, she pulls out a clump of keys and lets me in. Once inside, she snaps on the lights, leads me down the hall to her room. “What can I do for you?”
Why do people keep asking that? As if it isn’t obvious. Get my mother out of detention. Stop this crazy tornado of events. “Tell me about the hearing. Why didn’t it go well?”
Lidia pulls off her jacket and motions to sit. Outside, I can hear the phone starting its frantic bleating. Her assistant pops her head in the door. “You’ve got the eight o’clock?”
“Just tell the others they’ll have to wait.”
Her assistant is puzzled—I’m sure there’s a long line of phone appointments and people waiting. I’d called yesterday to try to squeeze myself in, but was told Lidia was booked and in court all afternoon. I decided that the only way would be to have Maria Auntie drop off Kamal at school while I headed to Lidia’s downtown. Another day missed at school, but it’s the last week.
“Look, Rania. You’re really smart. I bet you’ve been taught all about how we’re a nation of immigrants. Maybe you did some class trip to the Statue of Liberty. But immigration law is not the same as the rest of our legal system. You think there is some kind of fairness. But it can boil down to one judge. One guy who may be cranky or inclined to say no to ninety percent of his cases.”
“And in my mother’s case?”
She sighs. “I told her. That it’s not always the story of what happened to you. It’s the story the judge wants to hear. The problem with your case always was that it was your father who was explicitly in danger.”
“That’s not true! My dad disappeared! I remember, we had to flee, really fast—”
“Yes, the situation was terrible. You should see all the country information we put into the case file. How Pakistan at the time was one of the worst places for journalists. The stats are awful. But your mother was not the one targeted. We tried to get statements from family and colleagues, but it went nowhere. There never was a legitimate threat against her.”
I give the desk a hard kick. “I was there! It was really scary!”
Lidia angles her head, surprised. “You remember?”
I stop kicking. Do I remember? I hear the sound of a gate, scraping. Hakim, the chowkidar, his face folded with fear. Abu’s scooter, bumping down with a hiss. Something wrong with the tires. I rub my eyes. There’s nothing more. Just that blank box where we put our old life.
“Something,” I say. “Maybe a gate?”
She sits up, taut. “Yes?”
A wriggling sensation in my stomach. I swallow. A taste of strawberry. But then another blank hole. “That time was such a blur.”
“You were young. Besides, there was also how your mother dressed for the hearing.”
“Oh my God, isn’t that completely sexist?”
“I told her. Dress down. No makeup. Maybe wear a plain sweaterdress. Look…innocent. When it came time for her to appear, she looked proud. She thought it was an interview for a job. They wanted her humble. And your mother isn’t humble.”
“My mother didn’t look grateful enough.”
She nods.
I hunch in my chair. “That is so messed up.”
“You should have heard the government lawyers. They pressed her on everything, to prove that she was privileged. How she had a servant, part time. How she was educated. How her family was well-to-do.”
“Family!” I spat the word.
“Look, it was a lousy outcome. We were assigned a judge with an eighty percent turndown rate. We immediately applied for an appeal. We got an extension. And then…” Lidia trails off, eyes glistening.
The noise outside, in the office, swells up. “We had an election. Your mother was unlucky.”
We’re supposed to be lucky. I’m supposed to be lucky. “That’s it?” I ask.
“I’m afraid so.”
“But that’s unfair!”
“Everything has changed under this administration,” she continues. “Some days I don’t know what is up, what’s down. The rules keep changing. I’ve got long-term clients in detention. I’ve got grandmothers put on airplanes without saying goodbye. People with job offers unable to get here. Every day it’s another story. Your mother’s story is just one of them.”
When I step outside, it’s as if a curtain has been ripped back: the muggy air, the buildings, and the people surging to the subway are a thick, stony wall. Not letting us in. I think about Hema Auntie’s house, the hedges and the shimmering pool. Why isn’t that possible for us? All our wily luck, remaking ourselves here, in this place we learned to seize as ours, without Abu. I belong here, in New York: in a subway car, jammed next to everyone else headed somewhere—a thousand lives, a thousand possibilities. Now I have slammed up against something hard, ungiving.
I kick and kick a low concrete wall until my toes are throbbing.
Sitting in a subway car later, Lidia’s conversation gnaws at me. I unwrap my new notebook and start jotting thoughts, memories. Something about that gate in our building in Lahore. It wobbled and screeched against concrete. Hakim let me help him soap down the cars, dunking the big sponge in a pail of sudsy water. He kept pictures of his family taped to the little booth. He was missing two teeth in the front. His hands felt like leather but they were kind. Where were we going? Ice cream. Pistachio, my favorite, at the shop across the street. But no. A smudge of a man so big, his shoulders block Hakim.
I’m so busy chasing down fragments, scribbling, when the doors ding, I realize I’ve almost missed my stop. Grabbing my bag, I rush out, to make my last classes. I don’t have a chance to hang with Fatima, but as the last bell rings, I rush again, to get to Kamal’s school on time.
When he bursts out of the doors, clutching his Machu Picchu project under one arm. We three worked for hours on it, carefully laying strips of newspaper and paste, then Ammi and me watching as he painted the model. Now his whole face is lit up. His friends josh him and he spins a few times, laughing. My heart wrenches. I’ve got to keep him away from all the bad news, somehow.
The phone rings; there’s a hollow rushing noise, then a woman asking if I’ll accept charges from Sadia Hasan. Ammi! My chest starts knocking. I remember what Lidia said, about all those other clients. What if it’s my mother, saying goodbye? What if she’s heading to a plane? I accept the call; Ammi sounds like her usual, brusque self. “Have you found your uncle? Did you speak to Mona?”
I glance at Kamal, indicate we should stop and pull away a few feet. “I did but she didn’t know anything. She sent me to Hema Auntie—”
“You went to Hema’s?” She sounds angry.
“She’s the one who had Salim’s address. Why are you so mad?”
There’s a tugging on my arm. It’s Kamal, impatient.
“Wait!” I tell him. I turn back to Ammi. “Who are all these people? Why didn’t you tell me about—”
“Let me speak to Kamal.”
I thrust the phone into his hand. “Here, talk to Ammi.”
He takes the phone from me. I watch him nod and tell her about the party in his class and the chocolate cake they ate and how his teacher said his project was awesome. “When are you coming back?” he asks. He listens, grinning in a secret, happy way, then he hands back the phone and tells me, “Ammi says she is going to get me a new Transformer.”
“When?”
“Soon.”
I take the phone from him. “Ammi, you can’t tell him things like that.”
“I’m calling for something else. I don’t have much time—someone else needs to use the phone.” Her voice lowers. “In the closet, inside that big bag I told you about, there’s another little velvet one. Just look. You’ll find it.”
“What?” I roll my eyes even though she can’t see. Ammi with her zippered compartments, her secrets.
“Jewelry. You can take it to Mr. Mehta. He’s at Seeta Jewelers, on Coney Island Avenue. Near where we used to live. He knows me. He will give you a good price. He won’t cheat you.”
“I don’t understand. Ammi, I was just talking to Lidia—”
“Rania, listen to me. Get what you can for the jewelry. That will hold you over for a while.” There’s a rattling sound in the background. “I can’t call very often. My phone isn’t charging right. And it’s costly to use theirs. And they can use it against me. Write me and send me a phone card. You can get the address from Lidia.”
“But, Ammi—”
“I have to go. I love you. Hugs and kisses to Kamal.” Then she clicks off.
Great. Who do I see in front of our building, but Mrs. Flannery, sitting on a folding chair. Sometimes she puts on an outfit, maybe the kind she used to wear when she was a principal, blazers with puffy shoulders and flat shoes, and she sits there, surveying the kids walking home bowed down with backpacks, the little ones tumbling off yellow school buses, hands fluttering with construction-paper drawings, the women pushing their carts piled high with paper towels and groceries, their children trailing behind in a row, like a colorful kite tail. Kamal’s got his end-of-year art project under one arm and a Popsicle in the other.
“How old are you?” Mrs. Flannery asks him when we reach the steps.
“Eight,” he replies.
“Is that right?” Her glasses flash for a moment. Then she stares at me. “How is your mother?”
“She’s fine,” I say with a snarl in my voice. I can’t help myself; I start to lie. “She has this really important job interview. To be head of a school.”
Mrs. Flannery stares at me blankly. “So she’s not home yet?”
I can see Kamal’s face crumple. Orange from his Popsicle drips down his wrist.
“Good day, Mrs. Flannery,” I say, and pull Kamal through the door.
Upstairs I usher Kamal into the apartment and then I march down the hall and press Maria Auntie’s buzzer, hard. Why can’t they help us? Be our standby guardians? Why does my life have to be ruined because of screwup Lucia?
The door swings open. It’s Lucia. She looks exhausted and is wearing an apron spattered with tomato sauce. I remember that Maria Auntie is making her work all the time since they have to pay for a lawyer. “Yeah?” she asks.
“Forget it.” I turn away.
Dinner is rushed: I overcook the chunks of meat, make soggy rice, bang the plates on the table. It’s too much: the talk with Mona, the meeting with Hema Auntie. The meeting with Lidia. And my mother’s call. Maria Auntie drops by to give us two yogurt containers filled with soup. She hands them to me like a peace offering. I stand there stiff, not sure what to say.
“Rania, I am so sorry. But you understand. When your mother first came to me, I said of course. But now, with Lucia’s troubles…”
I see how hard it is for her. “It’s okay, really.” Though it isn’t.
“I hear you have an uncle!” she says brightly. “Oh! I forgot the flan. I’ll have Lucia drop it off. I have to leave for my shift.”
“Flan!” Kamal shouts. Flan always makes Kamal happy—he says it’s like swallowing down sunshine.
She gives me a hug. “I’m so sorry,” she says, smoothing a palm on my hair.
Exhausted, I flop down on the sofa, to think. On Saturday I can drive up to Stamford. Maybe Kamal can hang with Amir. I still can’t believe this is happening to us. I’ve read all the headlines and watched the news about the awful stuff at the border. One evening we were cooking together with the TV on, when Ammi turned to me and said, “Just so you’re clear: We’re not undocumented, Rania. We are asylum seekers. There’s a difference.”
I remember being outraged at the time. “But what about those other families?”
She tilted up her chin, stared straight ahead. “It’s a waiting game. That’s all.”
I wonder, after what Lidia told me about her hearing, if that is true? Are we so different?
Just as I’m about to check on Kamal, there’s a soft knock on the door. Then firmer. I figure it’s Lucia with the flan. But when I swing open the door, a woman I don’t know is standing there. Behind her a man, shifting on his feet.
“Rania Hasan?” When I nod, she offers a smile. “May I come in, dear?”
My fingers are stiff on the knob. “You are?”
“Mr. Gonzalez.”
I pull back. “Who?”
The woman answers, “We left a card the other day?”
The card. I’d tossed it on the stack of mail, tried to push it away, like everything else.
“We received word that two minors are living here without a guardian.”
A slow burn as I realize: Mrs. Flannery. Her door, down the hall, shut. “It’s a mistake,” I start to say, but the man steps forward. He’s thickly built, like the woman, only bald, and he suddenly reminds me of one of those guys in a TV show. I half expect him to start throwing tarps over the furniture and stretching yellow tape across the doorway. But it’s not a crime scene.
“My uncle,” I plead. “I’m going to see him this weekend.”
The woman gives me a gentle smile. “You can straighten that out at the shelter.”
Shelter. The word knocks into me, like a block of ice.
They’re actually very kind, as kind as they can be. The woman and I go into the bedroom and talk softly with Kamal, who starts chewing on his collar but lets me fill his backpack with his favorite Transformer toys. The man, Mr. Gonzalez, has brought an old-fashioned yo-yo and he squats down before Kamal and distracts him, his wrist bending up and down, the round disc winking with tiny lights.
My eyes swing around the apartment. I take it all in—the clay pots with spider plants on the sill, our small sofa covered with an embroidered throw, the TV on the beat-up table. I keep saying, “We have an uncle. I have family,” even though I’m not sure, and the woman puts her arms around me and says, “Dear, it will just be for a few days, until it’s sorted out.”
I don’t know why I believe her.
Now my muscles know just what to do, every part of me springing to life: Pull out the luggage tucked under my bed, the one with the safety pin on the zipper. Fold up the quilt. Grab whatever is nearest—phone, laptop, books, headphones—and stuff it into my backpack. Don’t linger on the Nelson Mandela poster over my bed or the photo strip with Fatima tacked to my mirror, the carnival beads draped on its rim from a school Mardi Gras. Text Maria, tell her to water the plants and move the car. Text Fatima and say I can’t meet her at the subway tomorrow morning. Grab the jacket I bought from the Jamaican guy. My lace-up black boots, my Converse sneakers, my flip-flops. My graduation robe and cap, in their plastic. Maybe at some point we can come back for the rest.
There is just me and my brother following them out, hurrying down the stairs, Kamal tripping on his Nike slides, me careful not to bang the rolling wheels. We take only what our arms can hold, as if stripping down to the essence of ourselves. I’ve done this before: in Pakistan, when Abu disappeared. Turning myself light, thin as a shadow that can slip through a door crack, the seams of night, the corners of a neighbor’s eyes.
We pull open the front door into a muggy evening. I feel like I’m some kind of story in the newspaper. That smudge at the edge before you turn the page.
I keep thinking: This is not us.