13
On a Sunday evening, after the family came home from a dinner at Uncle Jee's house, Nadia walked towards her bedroom, with a troubled, distracted look on her face. Nisar called out to her as she walked past the kitchen, informing her proudly that he had finished the book she had assigned to him for reading, and asked if she would like to test him. She walked past him without as much as turning in his direction, as though she hadn't even heard him. He looked puzzled, and with a shrug of disappointment continued wiping down the kitchen counters.
Once in her bedroom, Nadia shut the door and locked it. She sat on her bed for a few minutes and then opened the bottom drawer of her wardrobe and pulled out her Magnificent Barbie. She turned and glanced around surreptitiously, as though to make sure no one was watching her, and then ripped off the doll's lovely chiffon skirt. Suddenly upset at what she had done, she shoved the doll back in the drawer and slammed the drawer shut. For a moment, she looked guilty and a tinge of sadness dulled her eyes. Then she took a pen from her desk, opened the drawer again, and scribbled over the doll's face and the drawer too, with so much intensity that the point of the pen made grooves in the wood. With a pair of scissors, she hacked off the doll's soft blonde hair.
She sat there for a few minutes, her expression blank. I saw her little shoulders tense up as fear made its way through her frame. Perhaps realization dawned on her, that she would be in trouble for ruining her expensive doll. She wrapped it up in a brown paper bag and hid it under her bed behind the extra blanket. Later that night, when everyone was asleep, she got out of bed and threw her doll in the kitchen trash, making sure to conceal it under the onion peels, orange rinds, and crusty bread ends. The next morning, the garbage truck took Nadia's secret out with the day's trash to be burned at the collection point.