Chapter 1 Salma
Salma
Aging is like many accidents. No one believes it will happen to them.
Over time, I have developed the remarkable and disorienting ability to remember different moments through time overlaid on top of each other.
A trick mirror of memory. Asma on her bicycle, hair lifted off her back in the slipstream of her happiness.
Asma clutching my hand tight, eyes locked on the horizon, as she drags me past a barking dog on a leash.
Asma standing, head cocked, one hand on a hip while the other strokes the soft tendrils at the back of her neck, looking equal parts confused and steely.
When did things start going wrong? If I look hard enough, can I detect the beginning of the end? Did it start when Asma went to university? Or is it even further back? Was our fate sealed when we came to this country? Was immigration my family’s original sin?
We came to America the year of the bicentennial, a moment in history thirty years after two world wars and scarcely a generation from the birth of a new country, Pakistan.
I thought we were special. That each flag and bunting, every song proclaiming America’s majesty and vast open arms, was a welcome meant for us.
First came Abu and then, a month later, Ami, Asma, and me.
I remember the heft of Asma’s arm around my shoulder as she ran us through the gauntlet of the customs line.
Ami pushed the cart weighed down with our worldly belongings.
I looked back to make sure she was with us still, and the fear and confusion sewn on her face terrified me.
Even then, I understood that we were her lifeline.
Without us, who would she be? When Mamoo stepped out of the line and claimed us as his own, Ami fell to the ground crying.
Within a few months of our arrival, we moved to a town on the edge of the woods.
Rosebud was rural and quaint, and housing was inexpensive.
It was as different from the city as Pakistan was from America.
Population 375, the town was made up almost entirely of German descendants who woke at four thirty in the morning to start the day’s work, ventured to the city once a decade, and died within a mile of where they had been born.
The first time we took that route, it had felt like we were starting a new life in a way that flying halfway across the world hadn’t.
In the back seat of the car, Asma had hunched over the coloring book Mamoo and Aunty had given us, carefully selecting the most vivid colors from the shared crayon box.
Fuzzy silver-white buds perched fat and content on branches.
Springtime daffodils and tulips, in various stages of bloom and decay, littered the sides of the wooded highway.
Looming rock cuts, multicolored and sparkling in the sunlight, traveled alongside us like giants on their path to somewhere in geologic time.
It felt like we were slipping passage to another land.
If I were to take that trip today, I believe it would conjure the same feelings, like some kind of childhood magic. Some memories are stamped on us, as permanent as tattoo ink.
The call from my father reminds me of how far I’ve come from the husk of a person that I was the last time I saw him. I am terrified of going back to that time. I have fought so hard for my equilibrium, small as it is.
My life is simple. I live in a teacup of a house that is out of a storybook, all crenellated edges and peaked roofs, arched entryway, and girded windows.
The sparsely populated and utilitarian interior meets none of the house’s exterior promise.
My curtains are almost always drawn. My daily companion is an orange tabby cat named Leonora.
Sleepy and warm, she is a living weighted blanket, padding behind me as I wander the house.
Mamoo lives behind me, our backyards connected by a well-lit walkway and a waist-high iron gate.
I have been a second-grade teacher for ten years at a small public elementary school, Sunnyside Elementary, in the shadow of a major university.
The children leaven my life and are the antidote to the death grip my history holds on me.
It is hard to feel depressed in their presence.
Their wide-eyed curiosity and literal interpretation of the world inoculate me.
Teaching them is my small way to help fix the world.
They remind me that life is lived in the small moments.
Last year, as I led my class to recess, we saw a kindergartener stride out of the bathroom with a pair of Bob the Builder underwear on his head like a skullcap, brown glossy curls poking through the leg holes, confident as a rooster.
I knew what I was supposed to do—reprimand him and explain proper school conduct—but how could I not laugh along with the rest of my class, our hee-hawing running up and down the hallway?
The new school year starts next week. Over the next nine months, the gaping hole that is my inside will develop a thin skin to the world, and I will find some relief from the relentless weight of being me. At the end of every interminable summer, I am sick of myself.
The fresh start a new year promises never disappoints.
The blank slate of a room, the class roster quickly scanned for younger siblings already known and which countries children hail from, the displays of crayons and markers and notebooks at the grocery store.
It works a kind of magic on me, flushing me with something more than excitement and anticipation, something more elemental than raw hope.
For a time, it allows me to feel that all is right with the world.
Another class of young ones, as steady and as predictable as the sunrise.
There is an air of joy thrumming through the school, like a heartbeat.
It is impossible to not get caught up in its spirit.
Mrs. Morris and Ms. Rhodes, the other two second-grade teachers, and I confer and plan, caught in the fever of teacher prep week.
There are impromptu lunches and conversations about children and their families passed down from one grade to another.
I do not participate in those conversations.
I do not want my perceptions colored by others’ views.
On this, I am firm. Each child deserves an open mind, the opportunity to be seen as someone more than who they were three months ago.
I am widely respected and liked by my fellow teachers and administrators for my unfailing dedication. But the truth is, I have nothing else.
The second-grade classes are housed in the early elementary wing of the school.
Our lunch and recess are with the kindergartners and first graders, and next to them, my students look like giants.
That is, until I see them next to the fifth graders.
It is my own definition of the theory of relativity.
They, with their round faces and barely concealed babyhood, make me feel loved and allow me to express care for another in a safe way.
I am careful to not get too attached. After all, they are my students for only a little while; twelve months later, another wave of seven-year-olds will wash up on my shore.
That does not mean that they do not get attached.
Some children are just like that. I am always surprised when it happens. I will forever see myself as tainted.
Outside of school, my life is curtailed. Some of it is a function of my personality. But mostly, it is purposeful. I don’t think I could survive another tragedy. Aunty died almost two years ago from cancer. It was tragic to lose her at such a young age. Mamoo says dying in old age is a privilege.
Other than my students during the school year, I allow myself very little.
I read. I garden in the backyard. The grave solitude, the cultivated wild drift of flowers, and the mineral earth are my companions.
I see young couples walking hand in hand, the girl wrapped around the boy’s arm, looking up at his face, all smiles.
I wonder what that must feel like. Sometimes, on balmy nights, I have an urge to wear a cute outfit and sit on the patio of a buzzy restaurant with friends.
Emil, the closeted gym teacher who knows something about secrets and quiet suffering, is one of my closest friends.
We do things outside of school, but our outings are largely oriented around activities like attending talks and watching movies where we can stay in our own heads.
What would Asma say if she could see me now?
Would she look at me with pity? Would she say that I am just like our mother?
Is it not enough to wander the woods of my mind asking who might Asma have become?
She would have said, no, it is not enough.
She would have said to get off the sidelines and get busy living the one life I’ve been given.
Should I meet our father? On this she remains stubbornly silent.
It is the first day of school, and I stand outside ready to welcome my new class.
Instead of a typical August morning in our landlocked suburb—already hot and sticky—it is one of those rare Midwestern mornings in which one could be mistaken for thinking they live in Santa Barbara.
The sky is rinsed clean of humidity, and the leaves look waxy and bright green.
Before long, the leaves will start to fall, and there will be a hint of coolness in the morning air. But today is close to perfect.
I wear my first-day-of-school outfit—a brightly colored dress with images of cats and dogs and birds and lizards printed all over it. I will have three English-as-a-foreign-language learners, and I find that nothing transcends language and culture better than small animals.