“She’s four,” Saeedah says. “She’s watching cartoons.”
“Turn the TV off.”
“She’d yell.”
“What are you telling her about me?”
“Nothing. You’ll see when you visit.”
He comes every three months. They have agreed on this arrangement until Saeedah finishes her degree. Muneer has taken Hanadi to Draeger’s, the ice cream parlor on Van Aken Boulevard, during past visits. But Saeedah trusts Lujayn less than she trusts her ex-husband. Lujayn will goad him. She’ll complain about Saeedah’s refusal to let them drive Hanadi to an amusement park. She’ll insist it’s his right to take his daughter wherever he wants.
Saeedah turns on the TV. Nothing but soap operas and Leave It to Beaver. She opens a textbook, reads ten pages, turns back to reread passages because nothing has stuck in her brain. What if they didn’t go to Draeger’s? It would be better to know now, rather than wait for them to be gone for hours.
After a week of thunderstorms, it’s a beautiful, sunny, late August day. The heat doesn’t bother her. She likes to let it soak into her skin, hoarding sunshine in preparation for the long winter that will arrive soon. But her Beetle, which sits in the driveway because the garage houses the landlord’s rusted-out Chrysler, is blazing hot. The vinyl burns the backs of her thighs.
She rolls down the windows and drives through the leafy shade of the neighborhood, out toward Van Aken. A family of four walks home from the pool, damp towels hung over the crooks of their arms. Two boys race their bikes down the street toward her, veering over to the sidewalk when they see her car coming. Too late, she realizes she might miss Muneer, Lujayn, and Hanadi driving back along another route. She might as well drive all the way. If they arrive home before her, Hanadi will be home, and Saeedah will lie and say … She doesn’t know what.
In the parking lot of the shopping center, she spots Muneer’s white Chevy rental car. She lets the Volkswagen idle alongside the curb. Should she park at the far end of the lot and tail them back? Or leave, satisfied they are where they said they’d be?
Draeger’s glass door swings open, and Hanadi skips out, a smear of pink ice cream underlining her smile. Muneer takes a napkin from his pocket and carefully wipes Hanadi’s face with its edge.
Certainly they’ll see Saeedah. She’s a beacon of envy. She’s meters from them. But they turn their attention to crossing the parking lot, avoiding a tan Corolla whose driver seems not to see them at first. The car brakes suddenly, and Saeedah’s heart skids in her chest. Hanadi is fine, sandwiched between her father and her aunt, not noticing how they have shielded her. Saeedah smells the rubber of the Corolla’s tires, sees the driver’s stricken face and his shock at having nearly hit a family.
She steps to the curb and balances on its edge on the balls of her feet. Muneer, Lujayn, and Hanadi climb into the Chevy. Its engine growls and it begins to back toward her. It pulls up and passes her, so close she could tap on the window, but she is as invisible to them as a jinni.
GETAWAY
1975
Mama: You stole me. March 25, 1975. My fifth birthday. In broad daylight. You carried me to the car, in my purple giraffe pajamas and suede saddle shoes, through early-spring snow. I put my head on your shoulder. The flakes settled like sifted flour over the hard-packed, dirt-crusted snowbanks. The car’s seat was joltingly cold, the window icy against my fingers. The Bug was noisy, too, backfiring and sputtering. A terrible getaway car.
“This,” you said, and the s went on forever, “is a terrible car. Some people say Beetles are reliable. Hah. A little snow and it falls apart.”
Some people. Were you talking about my father?
I know that you stole me. If we had been moving like normal people do, the car would have been loaded full, the windows obscured by boxes and garbage bags and an overflowing laundry basket. You would have been forced to use the side-view mirrors because you couldn’t see over the crap stacked up in the back. But we weren’t moving, we were running. We had one light blue hard-sided suitcase and matching vanity, as though we were heading off for the weekend.
Once in a while, I’ll have this flash, and an object from the past will be illuminated in my mind. I’ll read about some returning seventies trend—culottes, ponchos, hip-hugger jeans—or I’ll be in a thrift shop and see a wild-eyed baby doll with a plastic head and oblong cloth body, and I’ll remember something we left behind. I’ll wonder, What happened to that oil painting of a crying boy?
You forced me to forget for so many years. I’m trying to remember. In my mind, I see the silhouette of the brick duplex in Cleveland Heights; the screened porch with a patch of mud underneath that never dried out; the rust-blemished, faded-blue swing set in the back; the lilac tree whose blossoms would, a month or so after we left, dangle like bunches of grapes; our down coats and snow boots and hats and scarves and the other odds and ends that might have kept us warm; your dishes and comforters and towels; the tulip-shaped Arabic coffee cups I used as teacups for my teddy bears; my books and Barbies and purple bicycle; the phone my father called me on; our memories of anything that had happened before you turned the key in the ignition that day.
Before I understood what happened, understood that you stole me, before I escaped you, I used to think about riding a purple bicycle. I didn’t know I was having a memory. I thought I was daydreaming. Sitting on the stoop of a suburban Midwest walk-up apartment or the porch of a California one-horse-town bungalow, I’d touch imaginary tassels, flip the nonexistent bell, rest my foot on the back, and push off down the driveway in my mind. I’d peer back at an imaginary brick duplex shaded by maples. The trees’ helicopter pods would twirl, hover, fall.
The car engine turned over for several minutes while you cursed. I put my fingers in my ears, and when the engine caught hold and sputtered to life, you had to repeat yourself several times and lean your whole upper body toward the back of the car to pull my fingers out of my ears as you waited for the car to warm up.
“For your birthday, we’re going to McDonald’s,” you said.
“No friends?”
“This is better.” The snow had stopped, and the windshield wipers squeaked against the salt-streaked glass. McDonald’s was on the way to the freeway. We passed the big yellow M and the brick building and pulled onto the on-ramp.
“There it is! Mama, we passed it.”
“For your birthday, we’re going to Cedar Point. OK?”
You sped up to merge onto the freeway. I tensed my body and gripped the passenger seat in front of me to keep from falling. My stomach ached, like there was a big rock pressing against my insides, and the pain migrated into my muscles, and my arms and thighs began to ache, too. The achiness would stick with me, stuck with me more than anything or anyone except for you. In the years ahead, my stomach would learn to always brace itself against sudden disappointment, suck itself in so far it might have grazed my spine. With you, everything was always changing in an instant. I could never feel settled.
“But I’m hungry.”
“We’ll eat there.”
I napped on the back seat. When I woke up, we were driving along the edge of the empty amusement park parking lot, as though you didn’t see the vast space to our left, the faded lines of the parking spots.