Sometimes you think your life story is a straight line, a road humming forward. Maybe Ammi thought her story was a clear way ahead. She went to the best schools. She had a family, fancy clothes, a spot at university. A big wedding and husband.
Me too: I thought Fatima and I were the same.
I thought my biggest problem was Ammi trying to be me.
I thought I got my height from Abu.
I was so focused on what was ahead, that I didn’t understand what was behind me. It was too complicated. It didn’t make a clean story.
What good is a story if you don’t know all the parts?
Since we got back from the Canadian border three days ago, I sleep in Carlos’s bed. Sam and the others were pissed at what we did, but then they leave me alone. The pillow still smells of Carlos: of his soap, his hair, the chalky powder of pastels. When I shut my eyes, all I see are highway lanes, thrumming motion. Then sleep. And dark. I take Kamal downstairs to camp, a few hours later bring him up, and heat up one of the dinners the volunteers leave for us. I let him watch videos or TV. I don’t walk the grounds or take Kamal to the barn to jump onto the hay bales. I keep my phone off. The Canadian authorities probably took Carlos’s phone and it will be a while before I hear from him. Even so, it will probably be through the lawyers. I don’t look at my emails, the orientation announcement, the book list. I haven’t written to Amirah. What’s the point? I can’t go forward or back. I scribble in my notebook, try to write.
Disappeared.
The word I learned when Abu didn’t come back.
When a boy I loved hiked his backpack
Crossed a border, gone.
The gunky space under sink pipes.
Dusty floor-bottom where I dropped my barrette.
The place where things go to die.
Abu also taught me you can put an “un” before a word
Make it the opposite.
Why can’t that be true of a person?
Why can’t I put an “un” before his memory
Restore him
To me.
A happy, flushed Kamal jumps onto my bed holding two dripping ice cream cups.
“Don’t spill!” I push aside my notebook.
I thought Kamal would fold into sadness when Carlos left, but he walks around the sanctuary apartment with a puffed-out chest, declaring that he can take his own showers or pour his own cereal. He leaves the cup on the night table and dashes off. Slowly, I start spooning the ice cream, which soothes.
I feel a wave of nausea. A sour taste on my tongue. I set the cup down. A new memory lets loose in me, in a long hot strand: Hakim, the chowkidar. Ammi upstairs resting in the dark. She does that a lot since Abu disappeared. A tall man takes my hand. His aviator glasses shine so I can’t see his eyes. I am in the back seat of a car; the man is driving, promising me ice cream. There’s another man next to me. He tells me, “Lie on the floor. Make yourself round like an ice cream scoop.” He laughs like it’s a joke. I do not think it is funny but I do as I’m told. The floor smells of rubber and gasoline. The man’s shoes are turned up, showing mud. I can feel the road thrumming beneath, the twisting and turning. I want to throw up.
The man with the muddy shoes says, “What’s the plan, yaar?”
Silence from the front.
The car stops. My legs hurt when I unwind to the pavement. An ice cream cup is pushed into my hand. Strawberry scoop. I don’t like strawberry! I blink. How did we come back to our building? Inside the gate, Hakim is gone. We are standing next to Abu’s scooter, which has sat there since he went away. A silver flash in one man’s hand. The scooter bumps down. “You tell your mother if she asks too many questions, next time, you won’t come back,” the tall man says. He knocks the ice cream out of my hand. Pink foam-splatter on concrete. I cry. “Get out of here!” Legs pumping up the stairs, so hard, my knees burn. When I see Ammi with her dark worried eyes, my mouth clamps shut. Because she told me. Don’t tell anyone. Don’t speak of troubles. And my nani said to me: Your ammi, always making so much trouble.
I drop the scene like an ugly snake into a memory hole.
Now, in Carlos’s room, the ice cream on the sill is a sticky pink soup. I pull out my notebook, write down, fast, what I recall until my wrist and fingers ache and there’s nothing left. Then I dive into sleep.
The phone vibrates, nearly jumping off the top of the dresser. I push my face deeper into the sweaty pillow. The call can’t be from Carlos because they’ve taken his phone away. I roll over. A buzzing noise.
I snatch up the phone.
“Rania!”
I bolt upright. “Ammi?”
“I’m back! In Brooklyn! Lidia got the release. I told you she works miracles!”
“Miracles,” I say dully.
“That’s great.” I rub my temples. Why did Ammi get released? Why is Carlos gone? Why can’t the world stop spinning?
“We had a bond hearing. The judge said I wasn’t a flight risk or a threat to the community and I have a right to await our appeal.” She adds, “I’m sure it’s because I have one child who is a citizen, another who is such a good girl, an honor student!”
“Ammi, the judge doesn’t care about things like that. Did he say that?”
“No, but it’s what he believes!”
“Whatever.”
“Now, I am very cross with you, Rania. I heard what you did.”
She chatters on until I break through. “Ammi—”
“You had Lidia at her wit’s end. And you lied—”
“Listen to me!” I shout.
She stops.
“I know,” I say. “I know about my father.”
Quiet on the other end. Then a small sound. Is she crying? I’ve rarely heard Ammi cry.
“Come home,” she whispers. “Just come home.”
Sam and the sanctuary team stand in a circle in the gravel drive; one by one, they hug us, ruffle Kamal’s hair. They’ve given us a Styrofoam cooler with food and drinks, a puzzle for Kamal. I feel as if I’m saying goodbye to all that’s happened—the shelter, the motels, the Cape, the apartment on top of a synagogue, to who I became this summer.
“Straight through, Rania,” Sam says. “Promise?”
“I promise.” I hug him, hard. “Thank you so much.”
This time I will obey. I have no choice. Because I am one of the lucky ones: I can set my hands on the steering wheel and return to my mother. But there are still others crying at night. That old couple bumping their luggage on the dirt trail to the border. Boys like Carlos stepping toward a border, hoping for the best.
I turn on the ignition, turn back toward home.
She is smaller than I remember. She stands in the apartment doorway, her shoulders hunched, and tips up on her toes to hug me.
“Ammi!” Kamal shrieks. He flings his arms around her neck and sobs.
“It’s okay, my little boy,” she whispers. “It’s okay.”
We talk and we cry as Ammi and Kamal cling to each other. Ammi and I glare at Mrs. Flannery through the back window. We let Kamal bounce on his bed and then he stretches on his stomach on the floor, absorbed with play. Then we go from room to room, marveling. The apartment is almost the same, even the plastic containers left upside down to dry on the rack. We return to sit on the edge of my bed. It’s quiet; just the clicking sound of Legos.
“He’s grown.” Ammi slides her arm around my waist. “You too. You did a good job, Rania.”
I don’t answer, angry questions sparking through my veins.
“You want to see what Carlos gave me?” Kamal asks.
“Carlos?” Ammi asks.
“Our friend,” he says. “He came with us. He was so cool!”
“To Uncle’s?”
“Everywhere! We lived in a motel. And we saw whales!”
“And you swam a lot,” I remind him. “You even jumped off a dock.”
Ammi turns, crosses her arms across her chest. “You have a lot to explain,” she says sternly.
So do you.
After we eat takeout and Kamal goes into the bath, Ammi and I sit down together. When she tried to help Kamal, he told her firmly, “No, Ammi, I can do it on my own!” She watched, amazed, as he shut the bathroom door, later unfolded his pajamas from our luggage, and slid under the covers. “Don’t hold me,” he told her. “I’m a big boy.”
Ammi is different too. No rushing to the next task—laundry, cooking, poring over her real estate books. She sits in the living room, feet curled beneath her. In the dim light I see more lines etched around her eyes, her mouth. There’s a small wobble in her head.
“Why didn’t you tell me about my real father?” I finally ask.
She stares down at her hands, shorn of the rings she likes to wear, making her look even smaller. Everything about her seems stripped down, which makes me less afraid of her. “I could not stay, Rania. He was not a good man.”
“What do you mean?”
“He was petty. Small-minded. Controlling. His family too. They told him to get control of his wife, that I was shaming them. I was dying. Don’t you see? I was never meant for that world. I didn’t fit.” She gives me a weak smile. “Can you imagine? I drive an Uber! Everything about me was wrong. The way I think. The way I speak. Only your abu—”
“He’s not my abu.”
“Yes, he is.” She adds softly, “He was.”
“But why did you keep it from me?”
She hangs her head. “I needed to handle it, Rania. I always handle things. You know that.”
She wraps her hands around mine. “After Naved’s disappearance, I received terrible phone calls warning me not to investigate. One night I was so afraid, I called Salim Uncle. I thought I could trust him. But he betrayed me. He told Fawad.” A chill slices through me.
“I had to flee with you. Your father already thought my life was risky. Once he knew of Naved’s disappearance, of the threats, I would have had no power. They would say I was not a responsible mother. That you didn’t belong with me. He began to harass me. Calling at all hours. Stalking. He had everything on his side. Money. Lawyers. Even my own family, who believed I’d made a mess of things. He would have taken you away from me. He always said I was reckless.” She sighs. “And maybe I was.”
My lids burn, hot with grit. I was so ready to be angry, but this is the most honest my mother has ever been. She left because of me. To keep me.
“Am I in danger?”
“Since we settled here, he did not fight me. But he used his influence.” Her eyes are full, shiny. “Even with Salim, my own brother. That’s why we never saw your uncle when he moved here. Fawad poisoned how they saw me. A bad mother.”
“Uncle said you came to him for help here. But he couldn’t do it.”
“Is that what he told you?”
I nod.
“Ah, these men, with their pride! Fawad had loaned my brother money at home, for a business. Poor Salim, nothing ever quite works out for him. That’s why he emigrated—because his business went bust. And he was indebted to Fawad.”
“And now? What happens to us?”
“Now—if I am deported back, if we are—Fawad will get you. Of that I’m sure. My life with you will be over.”
“But I’m almost eighteen. A grown-up.”
She sighs. “He has his ways. He will make everything very hard for me. For you.”
I swallow. “Kamal?”
“He will stay with me. He is Naved’s.”
“But we’re a family!”
She smiles tiredly, and puts her hand on the side of my face. “Yes, we are. Always.”
That night, I lie in my old bed, clenched against my mother’s whole story. Now I understand: her iron pride, her secrecy. Maybe when she went for her interview, the judge sensed it was not the whole truth. She would not beg. She would not fit into a neat box. I roll over, punch the pillow, and try to get some sleep.
Early hour: the sky looks like streaks of milk. I slip from bed, flip open my laptop, and send the emails I’ve been avoiding. Then I sneak out of the apartment, buy a café con leche, cradling the cup as I sprint up the concrete stairs to the park. An old man is doing tai chi, his arms moving like a waving octopus. Another man, shirtless, is walking backward. A little dog sniffs at my feet until he’s yanked by his owner and trots away. Otherwise the park lies still.
From my pocket I pull out a phone card. I put in the number from the scrap of paper I’ve been carrying with me. The bleating of an overseas call—then it is picked up. “Hallo?”
“Hello, Uncle. It’s me, Rania.”
“Rania! What a surprise! How are you, sweetie?”
“I’m good. Ammi’s back.”
“Oh, I am glad.”
We chat about my cousins, about him living with his in-laws, and then our talk dwindles, awkward. Finally I ask, “Uncle, when Ammi decided to come here, what happened with my father?”
He sighs. “It was not good. The prospect of you leaving set him off. Fawad has a temper. Sad to say, I think he was glad of what happened to Naved. He could use it in some way.”
My head spins. I watch the man walking backward on the path. That’s what I’m doing—walking backward into something old and terrible. I press the heel of my palm against my burning eyes. I don’t want to hear this. I say, “My mother has to get asylum. That’s the most important thing.”
“Asylum! What does she need that for? That’s for poor people.”
You have no idea, I think.
“Come, come, Rania. Why should you suffer? Come back to Pakistan. It will be so good. You will see your cousins! You’ll be where you belong. With family.”
I try to brace myself against him, the affection in his voice. “Ammi—”
“Your mother made her choice years ago.” He is cold. “It doesn’t have to be yours.”
Quiet stretches between us. His words sink into me. Is he right? I could go back. Or maybe we should slip over the border, just like Carlos. Why make everything so hard? I remember what Carlos said: Make your family fight for your mother. For you. I say, “Uncle, you have to help us. Help Ammi.”
“Didn’t I do that before? Signing that paper—”
“This is different.” Then I explain that he should make a statement for our appeal, about all he knew of her situation, the phone calls, Fawad’s threats, before we left.
“I need you to be her bhayia.” I say brother in Urdu, not English, drawing the sound out. As if to throw him a line, across the oceans and continents, back to us.
Even from far away I can see Fatima: walking down the path with two cups of coffee, her flip-flops snapping at her heels. I’m calmer. After the call, I walked around and around the park until my body stopped humming.
We hug, tight. “Fa-Fa,” I say.
“Ra-Ra.”
We breathe into each other.
“I brought you a coffee,” Fatima says, as she pulls away. “But you’ve already got one.”
“Mine’s cold.” I take the cup from her and pop open the top. “Thanks.”
Fatima sits down, and for the first time I see the milky tint to her skin, her arms like pale brown silk. Why didn’t I notice this before? She’s got blue eye shadow on her lids and thick eyeliner. Her hair has been brushed and sprayed into stiff ringlets. “What’s with the whole do?” I ask.
She tips her head down. “I went out. With a boy my parents picked.”
I make a face. “You’re kidding.”
“What, you don’t approve?”
“No, Fatima! It’s not that.”
Finally, she says, “Look, it’s just easier. If I do it, I can go to college this year.”
“I get it.”
“Do you?”
“No,” I admit. My best friend seems a stranger to me—obeying her parents, going out with a boy they picked for her. Looking like an older woman on a cheesy movie poster.
“It was hard. You were gone. You got to be on the road! Free!”
I snort. “Free? Your family left me cold. I had no one. I only had Carlos to help me figure it out.” Tears start to leak out of my eyes. I hate her seeing me like this. I’m the strong one in our pair. The sensible one.
“Oh, Ra-Ra—”
She reaches for me, but I hunch away, sip my coffee. Then I sneak a look. Fatima is staring at her feet.
“So what was it like?” I venture.
“What?”
“The date.”
She sighs. “It was actually pretty boring. He doesn’t even know who the Beats were.”
“Most people don’t. They’re just some boring white dudes.”
She swerves to face me, her hazel eyes lit up. “Look, one day there’s gonna be some guy they pick who I like. I’ve made my peace with that, Rania. You…you can’t judge me. I can’t have my best friend judging me all the time.”
“Is that how you feel?”
She tilts her head so a curl loosens over her cheek and I can’t see her expression. “Yes. That’s exactly how it feels.”
“I’m sorry.”
We both stare at the jagged outline of Manhattan in the distance. There was a time when the two of us looked at this view and felt ourselves going in the same direction. But I set my hands on a steering wheel and went on the road. I kissed a boy, I found out who my father was, what danger we lived with. And Fatima went on to find something else, about herself. If I learned anything this summer, I claimed what was mine. Maybe Fatima and I both did, in our own ways.
She looks at me slyly. “I did tell my father he may be able to pick out a husband, but he can’t pick my BFF. In fact, he better lay off her.”
“You said that?”
Her eyes are shining. “You bet.”
The harbor shimmers in late-summer sun. I fish out the small bag of tiny ridged white shells and drop it in her palm. “Freedom,” she whispers.
“It’s overrated,” I say, and laugh.
“Is it?” Her eyes are pleading. She wants me to forgive her but for what? She didn’t do anything wrong. She tried to help. So why am I still so sore at her? For being different from me? For having a family that holds her too tight and loves her? How can I ever explain all I have been through, all I’ve come to know? And then she sets down the bag, and reaches for my hand. Her skin is not fragile, but warm, firm.
“Tell me,” she says. “Tell me everything.”
Lidia opens her door, gives me a hard look. It’s Labor Day, but she’s made a point of meeting us here at the office. “Where I grew up, they’d bring out a switch, Rania. Running off like that! You should have heard those shelter folks up in my face all the time.”
“We’ve talked about it,” Ammi says. “Rania says she’s sorry.”
“I do?”
“Rania!” The old Ammi is back.
I bow my head. “I’m sorry,” I mumble. I look at Lidia. “Truly. I didn’t mean to scare everyone.”
“All right then. Come into my office.”
Ammi and Kamal stay in the waiting room while I sit across from Lidia. First I unfold a piece of paper and pass it to her. “This is roughly what Salim Uncle told me. He promises he will send a statement that’s notarized.”
She folds the paper and sets it to the side. Her chair squeaks as she rolls closer to me. “Okay. On to you.”
I give her my notebook, where I wrote down my memories, best I could remember. Her brow bunches as she reads. She sets it down and pumps me with more questions, so many questions. I tell her about the time I came into the bedroom and Abu was lying in the dark, his head bandaged. The calls in the middle of the night, Ammi slamming the receiver down. The men who took me for ice cream.
“So you lived with danger even after your father disappeared?”
I shut my eyes. The Wellfleet pond rushes up: a space of green surrounding me. My own breaths, the slashing motion of my arms. That word—danger—glimmers up from the murky pond bottom, like a knife. There it was, all along. I clutch it, hard.
“Yes,” I say firmly. “We lived with a lot of danger.”
“You were scared?”
Another word, locked away. A little sob escapes. “All the time.”
When I blink my eyes open, I’m drained and sweaty. I’ve been grasping Lidia’s wrist, leaving tiny indentations. I yank away.
Lidia is very still. “You did good, Rania.”
“Will it make a difference?”
“I’m not certain. We’re back to waiting on the appeal. But we can file your statement and Salim’s, as a supplement. Once in a blue moon they actually send an application back to the original judge for reconsideration.” She taps her pen on the pad. “You’ve given us more context. The peril both you and your mother were in. Your biological father. We may want to rethink the terms by which we’re applying. It might be easier in some ways. Sometimes domestic violence…well, it plays into a certain—”
“Story,” I supply.
“Yes.”
We sit facing each other, suddenly awkward.
“You know, it was Carlos who told me to do this. Tell you about my memories. He thought it could help.”
She smiles. “Smart boy.”
Tears well in my eyes and I blink them back. “He is.”
She gets up, touches my shoulder. “My colleagues heard from Carlos.”
I jump up, my heart leaping into my throat. “Is he okay?”
“He’s fine. He’s in a shelter right now.”
“Oh no!”
“He’ll be okay, Rania.”
“Can I talk to him, please?”
She clasps both my hands. “He told me to tell you—be patient.”
I blink back tears, bite my lip, and nod. I will try. But it won’t be easy.
Gently, Lidia nudges me into the waiting room, where Ammi glances up at me, her eyes flashing with worry. Then she clicks off the light and says to my mother, “Go, Sadia. Enjoy the holiday with your family.”
When we step outside, thick late-summer heat eddies around us. All the offices are shut down, the streets quiet, but for an occasional cab or a delivery boy pedaling his bike.
“So hot!” Ammi declares. “The subway will be a bloody furnace. That’s one thing I didn’t miss.”
“What did you miss?” I ask.
She is surprised. “Why, you both, of course.”
For some reason, I don’t believe her. Maybe it’s because I’m just learning who my mother is, who I am. I keep glancing at her, waiting for some new secret to spring out.
“Have you registered for all your classes?”
“Yes,” I say.
“Which ones?” I tell her: a class on Victorian literature, since I placed out of freshman comp, then math, intro bio, an anthropology course.
“Victorian was my favorite,” she murmurs.
“I know.”
“When I did my MPhil, I wrote on Mill on the Floss. Not considered Eliot’s best, but I loved it. How apt! A brother who forsakes his sister.”
She’s told me this a million times. But I realize she’s giving me a clue about her, her past. She’s speaking to all those people who would not hear her. That’s why she repeats herself. To tell me her story, in her own way.
Before we cross the little park near City Hall leading to the subway, I pause. Kamal picks up a stick that he runs, clattering, across the metal fence.
“Ammi,” I start.
She looks at me.
“What if your appeal doesn’t work?”
“It will work.”
“Ammi. Don’t lie.”
She swivels. “I don’t know, Rania! Maybe I will try Canada, like your friend. I can’t go back. This is all I have. You, Kamal, are all I have. There I am only Naved’s widow. The wife of Fawad who did him wrong. Here I can be anyone.”
“You’re an Uber driver!”
She lifts her chin. “And what of it? That is nothing to be ashamed of.”
She’s right—and the shame burns right through me. We both shift uneasily on the bench.
“About this Carlos boy,” my mother begins.
I flush.
“They kissed!” Kamal chimes.
I turn and give him a little kick.
“What was it about him that you liked?” Ammi asks.
I want to say: watching him draw, the tiny jump in my chest when he’d return from working the morning shift, smelling of cooking oil. The dare, the exhilaration every time we came up with a new plan on the road. It was the feeling that I was protected and also, I was protecting him. And most of all he taught me patience. Paciencia. How to listen to myself.
Instead I say, “He was awesome, Ammi. He could draw anything! Anyone! Everyone loved Carlos. Kamal adored him. And most of all, he wasn’t afraid.” I pause. “He taught me to…wait.”
Ammi smiles broadly, puts her palms on either side of my head, and says, “You are my daughter then.”
A sob clutches my throat. “But I lost him, Ammi. How am I ever going to live with that?”
Her face crumples. “Oh, my child.” She puts her arms tight around my neck. We sway, shoulders pressed, her sandalwood scent and hair mingled with mine. I picture Carlos in a shelter, by himself, and I remember a line my mother sang: I should be patient, you say, without my love.
Then I pull away, wiping my eyes. “Please, no more lies. At least not to me, ever.”
She hesitates. She’s hidden her past for so long. But finally it has been flung open. “Okay-okay.”
She gets up, slaps her thighs. “Chalo. We go home, yes?”
I don’t get up from the bench. It’s as if I’m wedded to its slats. “Ammi, I’m not going back with you.” Seeing the cloud of hurt on her face, I add quickly, “I want to walk back. By myself.” I add brightly, “I got a job working in a bookstore.”
“Which one? Is it the one in Park Slope? I always go there—”
I hold my hand up. “Ammi, it’s my job. Not yours.”
She offers a crooked grin. “Okay-okay.”
We stand. We’re on the pavement that curves toward the entrance to the Brooklyn Bridge. A few bicyclists swerve down the bridge ramp. It seems that everyone has left the city: All the people with cars and houses, with money, have left or are shut into their air-conditioned apartments.
“Makes me think of Whitman,” Ammi murmurs. “ ‘Crossing Brooklyn Ferry.’ ”
Smiling, I quote: “ ‘Others will enter the gates of the ferry and cross from shore to shore.’ ”
Ammi answers, “ ‘Others will watch the run of the flood-tide.’ ”
We both laugh. Our hands find each other’s. “I still believe that, Rania. There is room for us, in this country.”
I feel her fingers, twisted light in mine. How much we share—books, words, poetry. Snatches of memory, the good ones too. Our life with Abu. But Ammi wanted me to finish out her story. I can’t do that. Maybe that’s what Carlos and this whole strange summer gave me. How to stay still and find my story. My words. Like the fisherman in Carlos’s tale, maybe mine won’t be heard either. But at least I tried. At least I set them down, gave them to Lidia.
“Ammi!” It’s Kamal stamping his feet. “It’s ho-ot! I don’t want to take the subway!”
Ammi wipes her wet face. “Come, come, you lazy boy. I have a secret for you. There’s pizza after we get out of the subway in Brooklyn. Will that help?”
He grins widely. “Yes!”
She lets me go, takes Kamal’s hand, and walks toward the subway stop. I pause to watch her: tiny, stubborn woman. Even Kamal is determined as he marches ahead. Then I cross over to the long path that leads to the bridge.
At the midway point, where the bridge widens, I stop, watching the ferryboats plow the river. It’s so hot even my wrists are sweating. Heat shimmers off the wooden slats. The suspension lines glint. All of this—the bicyclists whizzing down the narrow path, the water stabbed with diamonds of light, the jammed buildings, and the continent that now I know lies beyond, stretching to marsh and land and ocean—all of it mine too.
By the time I reach the other side, my shirt is damp and crumpled. I head over to Flatbush Avenue, thread through narrow streets, and come to a stop before the bookstore. Cupping my palms on the glass, I peer inside. Even though it’s a holiday, there is Amirah at the front counter, wearing a beautiful red headscarf, nodding at a customer. I step inside, wave. She waves back. The door swings shut behind me.
“I’m here,” I say.