HOW HAVE I ENDED UP BACK IN THIS HOUSE, CURLED UP on the floor in the bathroom, feeling exactly as powerless as I did when I left? When I went to Harvard, I was going for complete reinvention. I threw myself into the stature, the prestige, the intellect, the competition—all of it became my world. I wasn’t the weird goth-girl loner I’d been in high school. I wasn’t the teenaged intern who fell for a summer associate in her office. I wasn’t the orphaned waif who could never be grateful enough for the generosity of her adopted family. I wasn’t even the frightened little Bosnian girl hiding behind her older brother. When I left, I wanted it all to disappear. Scorched earth.
Yet here I am, years later, hiding in my uncle’s bathroom like a child afraid of punishment.
I rummage through my bag and pull out my cell phone. I need Paul. At least he called me back. Now I can apologize for being so self-absorbed when I begged him to leave Thebes and move to Minneapolis with me. I’ll explain. I’ll tell him it was all my bravado, all bluster and bullshit—I was scared, so scared that I was turning away from Uncle Christopher’s expectations, even though I felt in my gut that returning to Thebes and the family business would undo me. It has, Paul, it has! In a matter of minutes! Please forgive me. Andela and Mujo, us against the world.
No message. He must have hung up when I didn’t answer a few minutes ago. I push redial.
“Hello?” A soft voice on the other end that isn’t Paul. It’s a woman.
“Who is this?” I ask, keeping my voice down to make sure no one outside can hear me. “Where’s Paul?”
“He’s not here,” she says. She has the flat accent of a Thebesian, but I can’t place her voice. Not Somali unless she’s been in the States all her life.
“Well, can you get him? This is his sister!” I’m barely able to keep my voice from breaking.
“No. I can’t.”
“But I’ve been trying to reach him all morning.”
Her sigh on the other end is audible.
“I know,” she says, “that’s why I called back. I thought you should know that he’s gone, and we don’t know where he is.”
“We? We who?”
A pause. I listen intently, trying to pick up any information I can from the background noise. I think I hear the clatter of what could be pots and pans, a kitchen? Dishes being cleared after breakfast—or is the sound of metal against metal a concern: Weapons? A hostage situation?
“We’re Paul’s friends,” she says carefully. “We care about him too. But there’s nothing more I can tell you about where he is.”
I don’t know what to believe. Best to get as much information as I can though. I modulate my voice, both to keep my mounting panic at bay and to ensure no one outside of the bathroom knows what’s happening.
“Okay, can you at least tell me why you have my brother’s phone?”
“He handed it to me when things got confusing last night. Next thing I know, he’s nowhere to be found and Bashiir is being arrested.”
“Who is Bashiir?”
“Bashiir Abdi. We all share an apartment. The two of them were the organizers.”
Paul had mentioned rooming with people in the Somali area of town to save rent. I realize I don’t even know how Paul’s been making a living since he returned to Thebes. Did he tell me when we spoke on the phone a few weeks back? Why didn’t I listen more carefully?
“Where’s Bashiir now?” I ask.
“In custody, I think. He’s not picking up his phone. They must’ve confiscated it.”
“Is there really a warrant out for Paul’s arrest too? And what about the policeman who was injured?”
“I don’t know anything more.”
She’s lying. I can hear it. I need to see Paul’s phone, look at his recent calls and texts. I have to find out who he’s been talking to, if there are any clues to where he might be.
“Can we talk in person? I’m only in town for a little while and I have to—”
“I left town. After last night . . . and Bashiir in jail . . . it’s too dangerous.”
“I promise I won’t tell anyone where you are. Please, I’m just so worried about my brother. I’m on your side as long as you want to help him too.”
I hear her strangle a little laugh, or maybe it’s a sob.
“Of course I want to help him,” she says, so softly I have to strain to hear her. “I’m his wife.”
She hangs up.
I hit redial, three times in a row, but the call goes to straight to voicemail.
I stare at the phone in my hand.
My brother has a wife. And she doesn’t want to talk to me.
Why? What’s happening?
I slide down the bathroom door I’m leaning against until I’m sitting on the floor, knees drawn up to my chest. Have we truly drifted this far apart from each other, that he would have married someone and not told me? Part of my heart, a part I maybe didn’t know I had until this moment, feels like a sword has been thrust through it.
It’s my own fault. Maybe he wanted to tell me when we spoke. But I leapt in with my insistence that he didn’t belong here, that he had to come to Minneapolis and live with me or else he’d be useless. It makes sense now: if Paul was in love, married, that’s what would bring him back to Thebes and keep him here.
Minutes ago, I was certain beyond a doubt that the one thing I could count on in all of this mess was that even though Paul might disagree with my choices, he would never lie to me. Now that’s gone too.
Unless she’s lying about the marriage. Is it possible? All my instincts, professional and personal, tell me she’s not. I heard the hard edge in her voice when I mentioned the injured cop, and the soft emotion when she told me she was his wife. Whoever she is, and whatever the circumstances, I was speaking to my sister-in-law.
My brother kept his marriage a secret from me. His wife is almost certainly hiding more than merely her location. I don’t know if they need my help or want my help. I don’t even know if I can help. One thing is clear, though: this isn’t just another instance of Paul shutting me out when he doesn’t feel like hearing me lecture him about his life, or of him being so caught up in a movement or an idea that he doesn’t bother to connect. He’s either off doing something, or something is being done to him. But what? And how do I find out? I already know that his phone is too ancient for the GPS program I have to track its location—I can’t locate his wife without giving my phone to the police so they can do the tracking. I am a hundred percent not about to do that.
Bashiir Abdi.
I might not know where to find my brother’s wife, or my brother’s phone, but I know exactly where to find the town jail.
THE BATHROOM WINDOW SASH SLIDES OPEN WITHOUT A sound. I peek outside—no guard on this end of the property. I drop my gym bag into the little petunia beds dotted with cedar chips below, then climb quietly up onto the toilet seat. Now I’m grateful for my bike shorts and T-shirt. I squeeze myself through the open window, head and torso first, and walk my hands down until they touch the ground. From there I wriggle my ass through the window as I pull myself forward along the ground. Once my feet are through, I press them against the wall and lower everything until I’m belly flat on the new plantings. I jump up, grab my bag, offer silent apologies to the decimated pink blooms, then run to the front of the house where my getaway car, still parked akimbo, sits waiting.
Down the driveway, through the gates that open automatically for departure, I blast by Larry, whose head nods forward as he sleeps in the guard booth. I’m out before anyone inside realizes I’ve gone.
The slant of summer solstice light as I drive into the hot wind is so familiar, it’s almost as if I’ve dreamed myself back into it. Down the big hill, I whip past the lines of trees again. When I come to the crossroad sign—road to the highway, turn left; road to downtown Thebes, turn right—I pause. The road marker is local, hand-painted in the same style as the Welcome to Thebes billboard. To the Highway is no bigger in size than its opposing directional: To Downtown. No need here to call either by its proper, mappable name. Whoever painted the sign couldn’t imagine a person from the outside trying to puzzle out the code. The roads themselves declare their xenophobic loyalties.
It might be a bright June day here and now, all postcard-ready prairie flowers and waving grasses, but I know the weather in these parts never lasts. And the nights are black as hell. Oh, but you can see all the stars in Northern Minnesota! That’s what people who stay here and never leave claim is so special, why cities are so evil. But they’re full of shit. Seeing the stars is no recompense—they’re not beautiful to me. They’re just a reminder that from a place like Thebes, everything that appears magical is millions of light-years away.
I send one more longing glance to the left. Minneapolis, southeast, civilization. Then I gun the accelerator and peel out in a blaze of dirt and dust. To the right.
I blink to keep the tears of frustration from streaking down my face. With a hard wipe of my hand, I banish the ones that eke out too quickly for me to catch.
I have to know what happened to my brother.