“Khalas.” Stop. “She’s four. Why are we talking about her marriage?”
“God protect her and bless her and shower her with goodness,” Mama says.
Two and a half years will be gone in an instant.
Coming back to reality—the hum of the window air conditioner; the phone cord twisted round her finger; the neighbors’ footsteps creaking above her, their rock music thumping—does not ease her anxiety. In a few weeks, Muneer is coming to see his daughter. Saeedah hangs up the phone and retches into the toilet.
She calls her friend Weronika, who’s recently moved to Toledo for a nursing job. Having grown up in the Soviet Union, W gets the kinds of fear you can’t explain to Americans.
“Just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you,” W says.
DRAEGER’S
Saeedah lets the doorbell ring and ring. She tells Hanadi not to answer it, though the four-year-old knows her Baba is at the door.
The ringer loses patience and presses the bell relentlessly; the rings jumble into one sound.
“It’s too loud,” Hanadi says. “Why won’t you let Baba in?”
“OK, OK.” Saeedah yells a lie as she rushes to the door. “We were in the bathroom.”
Framed by the doorway, Muneer’s younger sister Lujayn wears a fringed T-shirt and bell-bottoms, and her hair swirls in hot-curled, inky ringlets past her shoulders. Her face is frozen in annoyance—eyes squeezed, jawline tight. She kisses Saeedah on the cheeks and lifts Hanadi onto one hip.
Behind them, Muneer paces on the front porch. “Where were you?”
“I told you,” Saeedah says. She’s angry that he won’t believe her lie.
Hanadi at four is too big to be picked up like a baby, but she lets her aunt hold her. She is in jean shorts and a white tank top embroidered with red and orange flowers. Her chubby bare legs hang down Lujayn’s thigh.
“I love you, Baba,” she says over her aunt’s shoulder. It’s the first time she’s seen him in two months. Her smile is sunshine falling on the frozen adult landscape around her. “Mama wasn’t in the bathroom.”
“I know, love,” he says.
Saeedah feels her jealousy in every fiber of her body, and she doesn’t want to cure it with a prayer for forgiveness. Hanadi smiles adorably at her father and aunt, and subjects Saeedah to tantrums over the smallest things. The food Saeedah puts on Hanadi’s plate, how long they stay at the ice-skating rink or at the shopping mall play area. Why should Muneer and Lujayn enjoy sweetness? Why should they not feel the impact of Saeedah’s jealousy? She hopes for Hanadi to kick and scream at them today.
Lujayn and Muneer exchange a look. Do they think she doesn’t notice? But they don’t call out her lie.
“We don’t need to waste time standing here,” Lujayn says. “She’s going to enjoy the rides at the amusement park. Right, love?” Lujayn kisses Hanadi on the cheek.
“Carousel!” Hanadi says.
“You’re not taking her there.”
“I told you not to say anything yet, Lujayn.” Muneer puts a proprietary hand on Hanadi’s head.
“What did you tell Lujayn not to say?”
“She didn’t give me a chance to ask you. We want to take Hanadi to the amusement park.”
The casualness of his gestures and his voice makes Saeedah want to scream. She fights the urge to yank her daughter out of Lujayn’s arms. She and Lujayn played together as children, throwing and catching pebbles on the rooftop the way the neighbor girls here play with jacks on the sidewalk. Lujayn bossed the other cousins and lied about what was in front of them: a pebble she failed to catch, the number of pebbles in her palm. Always needing to go first, needing to win. It irks Saeedah that Hanadi seems content in Lujayn’s arms—not giggling or flirting with her aunt, but not fidgeting, either. Muneer touches his forehead to Hanadi’s and she puts her hand on his shoulder.
They are already cutting Saeedah out of the picture, and they haven’t left the porch. She tries to remember why she’d flirted with him behind her parents’ backs. He’d been curious for new places, willing to take a risk by driving alone with her, though he’d acted nervous the whole time. Why is he settling for going back to Saudi and telling the stories society will allow, like her father?
“If you’d asked me before, I’d have said no. You’re going to take her an hour away? Or to the other park—two hours away?”
“I wanna go, Mama,” Hanadi says. She wriggles down her aunt’s leg. “Please, please.”
“Never mind. We’ll go for ice cream,” Muneer says. He turns to his sister. “You’ve ruined it. I told you not to say anything.”
“You say ice cream, but I know you’re lying.”
“The shop’s down the street. You know where it is.”
“Don’t fight,” Hanadi says, and Lujayn takes her hand and whispers something to her.
As Lujayn and Hanadi walk across the porch, Saeedah feels her anger like a separate being inside her—a child squirming in her belly or a jinni possessing her. She lunges for Lujayn and grabs her arm.
“Get away from my child!”
Not shocked or scared, Lujayn emanates angry heat. Her full weight rams into Saeedah, who has to catch herself from falling. Hanadi erupts in tears. Muneer takes her in his arms. The meter between them and Saeedah seems like an ocean.
“Lujayn!” Muneer says.
“You saw she came at me. I was trying to take Hanadi from the fighting.”
“Let Lujayn and Hanadi stay outside while we finish talking.” Muneer steps inside, ushering Saeedah into the living room, as though he’s the one who lives here.
Saeedah resents his implication that she’s failed to protect her daughter. Whenever Muneer comes back, these situations slip from her control. Nothing matters but Hanadi’s tears, which sit on her cheeks whole and perfect, tiny reminders of everything Saeedah has ever done wrong as a mother. Through the bay window, she watches Lujayn and Hanadi in the yard, poking sticks in the grass.
“Are you going to keep us from seeing her? The thing we came here to do?” Muneer says to Saeedah. He’s taken his boots off to come inside, left them neatly by the door, their toes and heels lined up perfectly. His socked feet seem too intimate. What’s changed in her? In Jidda, it’s customary to take your shoes off in someone’s home. It’s nothing special. Here, the sight of his shoeless feet on her wool carpet suggests a closeness they’ve lost.
She sits in the rocking chair. The urge to fight has leaked out of her.
“Fine. Take her for ice cream.”
“We’ll be back in an hour.”
She doesn’t believe him.
She has begun to tire of the phone calls. Once a week, during Saturday morning cartoons, he calls, as arranged. Hanadi lies flat on her stomach, legs kicking the carpet beneath her. She keeps her eyes on the black-and-white TV, barely larger than a toaster, that Saeedah bought at Zayre after Muneer took the color set.
Whenever the phone rings, Saeedah gives it to Hanadi without answering it. “Talk to Baba.”
Hanadi hardly speaks. She listens to her father and nods. Saeedah hears his tinny voice, trying to keep the conversation going, like a cold engine sputtering in Ohio in January. In Jidda, engines die of heat, not cold. When she takes the handset from Hanadi, Muneer is always angry because his daughter won’t speak to him.