Chapter 12
I got out of bed as the sun peeked its head over the horizon. I hadn’t slept in two days. Jawad Sahib would be here tomorrow.
Stepping into the kitchen, I blinked: My mother was out of bed again. She perched on a stool on the ground, kneading dough for buttery breakfast parathas like she used to. Her waist-length hair fell unbraided in waves around her shoulders.
“You’re up early,” she said. Her eyes were red. Her cheeks blotchy.
“I’m sorry,” I said. Guilt pooled inside me, liquid and dense.
She wiped her floured hands with a rag and stood up.
“I’m the one who should apologize,” she told me. “I haven’t been a good mother lately.”
“No, Amma, please don’t say that.”
“You’re my eldest, but you’re still a child,” she said to me. “I don’t know—it’s like I’d fallen into some kind of well the last month. Everything was so dark. It happens for a while each time I have a child.”
“Because we’re girls,” I whispered.
“What? That’s not true.” She gripped my hand in hers.
“I was there. You were crying. You wanted a son.”
“Yes, we did want a son,” she sighed. “But it doesn’t mean we don’t love our daughters. You’re part of me; how can I not love you?”
“Why is having a boy all anyone can talk about?”
“Who else will care for us in our old age? Who will run the farm and keep your grandfather’s dream alive?”
“I could,” I told her. “Seema and I both would.”
“You will get married one day. Then you’ll belong to a new family.”
“But I’m part of this family!”
“I wish it wasn’t this way, but this is how the world works. It doesn’t mean I don’t love my daughters. I love each and every one of you.”
“What are we going to do, Amma?” I whispered. “I made such a huge mistake.”
“Don’t you worry. We’ll fix it. We will.”
I used to sit with my mother most mornings as she made breakfast in the early hours while everyone slept—it was the only chance I ever had to be alone with her. I would tell her what I learned in school, the latest drama I might have had with my friends. If anyone could come up with a way to fix this, she could. She always knew how to make things right.
When Omar and Seema returned from school, we gathered by the wire chicken coop in the backyard, obscured from view.
“I’ve been running it over and over in my head,” I told them. “I still can’t figure out what he’s going to do tomorrow.”
“He’s not going to do anything,” Seema said. “If he wanted to do something, he’d have done it by now. Everyone knows he doesn’t think—he acts.”
“The things he’s done, though . . .”
“Rumors,” she said. “They’re just rumors.”
I looked at Omar, but he twisted the heel of his sandal in the dirt. He didn’t meet my eyes.
I didn’t want to tell Seema about Munira’s blackened fields. I couldn’t bring myself to correct her.
Afraid if I said it out loud, it might come true.
“Don’t worry.” She put her arm around me. “By this time tomorrow, this will all be behind us.”