Saturday comes, and while Baba is busy working, I find myself on bus 41, arms crossed loosely over my chest. Layla watches out the window and sometimes comments on things we pass, like odd-looking apartments or yards where dogs sit by the gates. As we go farther from Roxbury, the redbrick apartments change to big, fancy houses.
“My mom wants to live in one of those Victorian townhouses, but Dad says that’s only going to happen if we find buried treasure.” Layla swings her legs, glancing at me and then at the window. “I like our apartment, though. We’ve lived there pretty much my whole life.”
I nod and scoot closer to the edge of the seat. No one else on the bus seems to care that I’m sitting next to her, but I still can’t relax. Even though we are classmates, we’re not children any longer, and we are not related.
“Why did you live in all those places?” Layla asks suddenly.
“Huh?” I rub my thumb against the scar on my arm, hidden by my sleeve, and try to pay attention.
Layla’s looking at the seat in front of us. She presses the sole of her shoe against the back and lets it slide off. “You said you’d been to all those places with the coins. But you haven’t just been there, right? You lived there.”
I watch her put her foot against the seat again. She’s not pushing hard enough for the person in front of us to notice—just tapping it. Her question lingers between us. Why did we live in all those places? Because of the war. Because the Taliban tried to kill us. Because my parents died. Because it wasn’t safe in Iran. Because Europe sounded better. Because Sergeant Pycior convinced us America would have more opportunities. Because … because a lot of reasons that don’t actually give an answer.
“I mean, we were refugees, but…” I trail off. Words swirl in my head, Pashto and English and Greek. None of them explain it, though. Not really. At last, I say, “I don’t know. I don’t know why.”
She glances at me but doesn’t say anything. We sit in silence until we arrive at the bus stop a few minutes later and clamber off together. The street bustles with traffic and Saturday shoppers. Around the corner, someone plays a saxophone. An Indian restaurant is at the end of the block, and the smell of curry makes my empty stomach rumble.
“The shop’s right here!” Layla points to a green awning between a noodle restaurant and the Indian bistro.
COBWEBS ANTIQUES & JEWELRY is printed on the window in bold white letters. Flower pots and wire birdcages are arranged outside the door, spilling onto the sidewalk. Layla pats the head of a lion statue as she walks past.
I follow her inside. A bell rings to announce our entrance. Two middle-aged women and an older man standing near the counter on my left look up.
“Hiya, Layla!” the man says, smiling.
“Hi, Mr. Byrne!” Layla squeezes around the women as they resume their conversation, and she makes her way deeper into the room.
I follow, trying to avoid knocking into all of the items haphazardly on display. An antique trunk on the floor has an old map propped against it. A bright red Chinese lantern hangs from the ceiling; its black clumps of string sway above my head. A sheathed dagger sits on a low bookshelf to my right, and old wooden clocks tick on top of a table packed with small decorative boxes. Little framed pieces of paper say YES and YOU DESERVE IT and TREAT YOURSELF.
“My mom normally works downstairs,” Layla says over her shoulder.
Sure enough, when we round another bookshelf, a cramped stairway appears. Mirrors and paintings of ladies in large, cloudlike dresses decorate the walls. Chai cups and books sit on the edge of the steps. I keep to the left to avoid accidentally kicking anything.
“Mom!” Layla calls, going to the bottom step and then edging aside to make room for me.
“Oh! Hi, Lay.” A woman wearing a bright orange scarf wrapped around her hair rises from behind a counter piled high with odds and ends. “I didn’t realize the bus had come already.”
“Mom, this is the friend I told you about—Sami.” Layla leans against the wall and pokes me. “Sami, this is my mom.”
“Call me Michele,” Layla’s mom says. “I’m so glad you’ve come by! Layla doesn’t normally bring friends over.”
There’s that word again—friend. The “first day” has passed—I’ve been to the rec center twice this week. Does that mean we’re friends? In America, maybe friendship will be different—maybe the word is safer here. Less costly, less vulnerable.
“Nice to meet you.” I avoid saying her name, knowing instantly that I will not be able to call her Michele. In Afghanistan, I was never allowed to address an adult by their first name. I would usually say tra for “aunt” or akaa for “uncle,” even if we were not related. But it would be too strange to explain that to Layla’s mom.
“Come on back and I’ll show you around,” Mrs. Michele says, motioning me to enter. “Layla said you might like to explore a bit. You’re looking for knickknacks to trade?”
Layla stays where she is, so I hesitantly slip around her and into the room. It’s about half the size of the one upstairs, and just as crowded. There are so many items, and all of them so small and colorful and interesting, that it’s hard to focus on any one thing. I glance at Layla, but she shows no sign of following.
“So, this is Cobwebs,” Mrs. Michele says, spreading her hands to include the mini house statues to her left and the pile of books to her right. “Founded by the lovely Patrick Byrne, who’s from Ireland, and the shop is as eccentric as he is. How much has Layla told you about all this?”
“Only a little,” I say, half watching while Layla picks up an owl statue the size of her hand and examines it.
“Well, we get a lot of our stuff from estate sales.” At my confused expression, she adds, “An estate sale is like a big yard sale—um, market—but in someone’s house. Normally they hold them when the owner dies and relatives need to sell his or her belongings.”
I glance around again. All these things belonged to dead people.
“So we have quite the collection.”
“Including those creepy puppets.” Layla leans out of the stairwell to point at the far wall. Angry-looking painted puppets hang from pegs just below the ceiling. “Their eyes are weird.”
She’s not wrong. The puppets’ black eyes stare at me when I shift my weight, their half-smiling faces fixed almost in sneers. I tug my sleeves lower over my hands and turn away. Mrs. Michele shakes her head but smiles.
“They’re from a collector, and they’ll be snatched up soon. Anyway. We’ve got a back room over here with some new arrivals. Want to see?”
I nod.
“Excellent. Let me show you around some more.”
“I’m going to talk with Mr. Byrne,” Layla says, slipping up the stairs. “Catch me on your way out, Sami!”
“Okay.” I try to push down the uncertainty and shyness creeping over me.
“He’ll have her immigrating to Ireland before long,” Mrs. Michele says with a laugh. She looks a lot like Layla when she does, though she has faint freckles on her dark cheeks, while Layla’s are just plain. “So, this is where I work, mainly, logging inventory and keeping an eye on customers who come downstairs. We have warehouses off-site where our estate purchases go initially, but when we’re ready to restock, we bring them here.”
She leads me down an even smaller hallway. White lights are strung from the ceiling, and tables covered in lamps are pushed to one wall, while more mirrors are leaned against the other.
It’s another basement room, crammed with boxes and furniture. Near the end of the room, my gaze catches on a small statue of the Parthenon sitting on a pile of books. I pause beside it. When I lived in Greece, we could sometimes see the temple on a distant hill, high above the city. In person, it looked more crumbly than this little statue. Someone told me the pollution has damaged it so much you could stick a pencil through one of the columns. Some boys I met in Turkey, who had been held in detention in Greece, said every night they would look at it all lit up from their cell window.
“Cool, isn’t it?” Mrs. Michele lifts the Parthenon. “We’re just using it as a weight—it’s not worth much—but it’s a neat piece. Here, you can hold it.”
Carefully, I take the miniature. If I put my hands together, it fits on my open palms. The weight presses down into my skin while I examine it closer, closer than I ever got in person. The air stills, and I can almost smell the exhaust from cars, hear them honking as they rush down the street.
“It’s strange how things hold memories,” I say, half to myself, half thinking of the rebab. “They almost … hide them away for later.”
“I know exactly what you mean,” Mrs. Michele says.
I glance at her, embarrassed I said anything. But her expression is kind. She absently tucks a tuft of frizzy black hair under her scarf.
“I grew up as an army brat,” she explains. “We moved around a lot. There was this certain teddy bear—whenever I hugged it, I’d go straight back to our first move, when I was five years old. Strangest thing.” She touches a pair of silk gloves on the table beside us. “I wonder what these hold. It makes them precious, even if no one’s here to unlock those times anymore.”
My hands shake suddenly, and I almost drop the monument as an image presses up in my head with smothering force:
Shattered glass across the courtyard and the sweet smell of grapes mixed with air on fire—
The almost-memory sits sticky in my head. Without meaning to, I whisper, “Some memories should stay locked away.”
The words sound stupid as soon as they tumble out of my mouth, and my neck gets hot.
Mrs. Michele tilts her head. “Maybe,” she says finally. “But in my experience, the memories we try to contain have a way of breaking free. And then they just hurt more.”
Anger flares in my chest, so sudden and unexpected that my breath catches. What does she know about painful pasts? Even locked away, the memories claw at my mind, trying to suffocate me in shattered glass and gunpowder smoke. If they weren’t contained, they would consume me. But her eyes fog over, and my anger drains away. I know that look. Lots of people have suffered. Not just me.
“Well, so this is room one,” Mrs. Michele says with a little laugh. “Come on—let’s find out if Mr. Byrne’s promised Layla a visa yet.”
I put the Parthenon back on the books and follow her. Near the door, I spot something I never expected to see. My heart pounds.
Figurines. Figurines of pale, blond, blue-eyed boys with bicycles and girls carrying baskets.
Just like the ones Benj wants to trade.
Ahead, Mrs. Michele calls back to me, “Are you coming, Sami? Or did you find something you want to buy?”
“Coming,” I say as I hustle to the stairs.
As soon as I catch up, I pull Layla aside while Mrs. Michele speaks with Mr. Byrne. “Do you have Benj’s mobile number?” I ask.
“Mobile?” She frowns. “I have his cell.”
“Yes—that.” I’m so excited, I want to bounce on the balls of my feet. “Can you give it to me?”
“Sure…” She takes out her phone, we exchange numbers, and in a minute Benj’s contact information appears on my screen.
I send him a text: Hi, this is Sami. Could you send me a picture of those figurines?
“Sami, come meet Mr. Byrne,” Mrs. Michele says as I slip my phone back into my pocket. We exchange introductions and talk briefly, but the whole time I’m listening for a response from Benj.
My phone dings a few minutes later. Benj has attached his pictures. I glance at Mr. Byrne and clear my throat, uncertain. He looks up from arranging necklaces.
“Ah—I saw some little statues downstairs. They looked like this?” I hold out my phone. “I wondered if you’d buy more, maybe?”
“Mmm.” Mr. Byrne flips through the images. “These are nice Hummel figures. This one’s number one hundred forty-three, if I’m not mistaken? Mm-hm. I’d have to see them in person, of course, but I’d probably offer forty or fifty dollars.”
I lower my head. I was hoping for more for the iPod—it’s the most valuable thing I have.
Mr. Byrne is still looking through the pictures. “Yes, I’d say forty or fifty apiece.”
My head pops up. “Really?” I blurt. That would earn me more than one hundred dollars!
“Really.” He passes the phone back to me. His eyes are twinkling. “Bring them by and we can work out a deal.”
“Yes, sir!”
I type out a quick message to Benj:
Bring your figurines to practice. The trade is on!
TRADE LOG
Days: 24
THINGS TO TRADE:
Game Informer magazines (Dan)
PLANNED TRADES:
iPod for figurines
Figurines for money
COMPLETED TRADES:
1. Manchester United key chain -> iPod
2. Coins -> Game Informer magazines