I was an idiot in many ways, it had turned out.
My scarf had been pushed back and forth enough times that it had bunched in places, shifted backward. My dark hair was pitch-black when wet, loose strands wild around my face, curling with damp. I was always pale, but today my pallor was deathly. I looked gaunt. My eyes were bigger, greener than usual. Glazed.
I did not think I was ugly. But I also did not think I would rate mention were it not for my eyes—for my irises—for the cold, sharp green of that which is not yet grown. I’d inherited my unripe eyes from my father, and some days I found it hard not to resent them both.
I became aware of my eyes in earnest last year, about the time my mother started locking herself in her closet. I became aware of my eyes because others had become aware of my eyes. My face. My body. So many women—always the women, only the women—talked about me, dissected me, my skin, my waist, the size of my feet, the slope of my nose, my eyes my eyes my eyes.
By the time I turned seventeen I’d definitively shed the wild awkwardness expected of most teenagers my age. This was right around the time my mother would not stop crying, around the time I’d lie awake in bed and pray to God to kill my father. I stopped laughing so loudly, stopped running around so recklessly, stopped smiling, generally.
I had aged.
People thought I was growing up, and perhaps I was, perhaps this was growing up—this, this, an uncertain spiral into a darkness lined with teeth.
My sadness had made me noteworthy. Beautiful. Had imbued in me a kind of dignity, a weight I could not uncarry. I knew this because I heard it all the time, heard it from old ladies at the mosque who praised me for my still lips, my folded hands, my reluctance to smile. They’d declared me demure, a good Muslim girl with fair skin, light eyes. My mother had since received five marriage proposals from other mothers, their grown sons standing behind them, beaming.
My mother threatened to move away. Threatened to leave the mosque. Damned the other women to hell, stormed through the house slamming doors. She’s only seventeen, she’d scream.
A child.
I didn’t remember walking into the hospital. I didn’t remember parking or opening the car door. I didn’t notice, not right away, when Ali came with me, said nothing when he lied to the nurse, assuring her that yes, we were siblings, and yes, the patient was our mother.
Our mother.
Not my mother. Not my mother, not my mother, my mother, who was supposed to be at home staring listlessly at the wall or else singing terribly melodramatic Persian songs off-key in the kitchen. My mother was young, relatively healthy, the one who never got sick and never, ever took time off for herself. This was a clerical error, a mistake made by God or maybe this guy, the one wearing blue scrubs and a Dora the Explorer lanyard, the one squinting at his computer screen in search of my mother’s room number. It was my father who was meant for this place, this fate. My father who’d earned the right to be murdered by his own heart and for whom I waited, with baited breath, for a similar phone call, for a summons to such a place, for a justice still overdue.
Dear God, I thought, this is not funny.
I saw my sister at the exact moment the Dora the Explorer lanyard stopped bobbing up and down. I felt, but did not see, when the nurse looked up, said something—a floor, a room number—
“Where the hell have you been?” Shayda said, marching up to me, her long, dark blue scarf billowing around her. I had the strangest thought as I watched her move, as the long lines of her manteau rippled in the air. The thought was so strange I nearly laughed. You look like a jellyfish, I wanted to say to her. Tentacles and elegance. No heart.
“Where is she?” I said instead. “What happened?”
“She’s fine,” my sister said sharply. “We’re waiting on some paperwork, and then we can leave.”
I nearly sank to the floor. I looked around for a place to fall apart, for a seat or an unoccupied corner, and made it only as far as the wall, at which I stared. There was a terror in my throat so large I could not swallow.
I turned around.
I needed to move, I wanted to see my mother, I wanted answers and reasons to sleep tonight, but my nerves would not settle. I stared at my sister with wide eyes, wings beating in my chest.
“Hey, you okay?” Ali said gently, reminding me he was there.
I looked up at him, not seeing him.
Shayda made a sound in her throat, something like disbelief. I swung my head around, blinked. Her irritation dissolved, evolved as she took me in, analyzed the mess. “So this is why you didn’t answer your phone? Too busy doing whatever you two were doing”—she shot a disgusted look at Ali—“to care that your mother is in the hospital?”
“What?” Ali said, stepping forward. “That’s n—”
I was still staring at my sister when I held up a hand to stop him. It was meant to be a gesture only, a signal. But he walked straight into my open palm, broad chest pressed against my splayed fingers. I felt warm cotton, a shallow valley, hard and soft planes.
I pulled my hand away.
Our eyes did not meet.
“Don’t worry about her,” I said quietly.
My mom hated it when my sister and I fought, so I rarely rose to the bait these days, but cutting out the petty fights had left us with little else. When we weren’t fighting, we seldom had reason to speak. I always thought it would help matters to ignore her, and yet, for some reason, my silence only drove my sister crazier. Even now I could see her anger building, her body tensing.
“What are you even doing here?” Shayda said, turning on Ali. “You know people might see you standing next to us, right? They might think you know us. Or—gasp—they might think you’re Muslim.”
Ali frowned. “What are you—”
“Please. Don’t engage with her. Please just ignore her.”
Shayda practically exploded.
“What do you mean, just ignore her? When was the last time you saw him at the mosque, Shadi? When was the last time he said a single word to either of us? Or to Maman and Baba? Last month he saw Maman at the store and she’d only talked to him for a minute or two—nothing more—but apparently it was too much. He left the store after that. Walked out the door. He abandoned his grocery cart in the middle of the aisle so he wouldn’t have to bump into her again. Can you even believe that?”
I looked at Ali, but he wouldn’t meet my eyes. He stared at the wall instead—stared at a blank, bright wall with a barely contained anger I’d never even known him to possess. I couldn’t process this right now. Not right now.
My mother was in the hospital.
I turned back around. “Shayda— Please—”
“Why are you even with him? He doesn’t associate with people like us anymore. His reputation can’t handle it.”
I felt Ali move before I saw the motion. He stalked toward my sister, looking suddenly murderous, eyes flashing. I could tell he was about to say something and I nearly shouted just to beat him to it.
“Stop,” I said. “Shayda, you’re yelling at the wrong person. Please. Please just tell me what happened. I couldn’t understand what you said on the phone. Is she hurt? How did she get here? Did you have to call an ambulance?”
Fear flitted in and out of Shayda’s face, giving her away. Her eyes shone, then dulled, the only evidence of the war within her, and in that moment she transformed. She was suddenly more than my stupid sister—she was the sister I loved, the sister for whom I would cut off an appendage, take a bullet. I pulled her into my arms even as she stiffened, held on tight when she softened. I heard the hitch in her breath.