Chapter 3 Salma #3
I know something of being on the outside.
I have lived in this country for virtually my entire life and yet still feel like a pretender.
I have few to no actual memories of the place where I was born, just some sensory recollections—a string of lights in the dark-velvet night sky, drumming, jasmine heavy in the air.
I can understand Urdu through no choice of my own, but speaking the language is not so easy, the words thick and meaty on my tongue.
I am a functional member of society. I work hard.
I pay my taxes. I know how to buy a car.
I can still sing every word to the opening songs of Gilligan’s Island and WKRP in Cincinnati.
I love-hate hot dogs. I understand the spoken and unspoken rules of this country.
I am cut from this cultural cloth. I am as American as my neighbors were in Rosebud.
And yet, I am still an immigrant. I will always be an immigrant, which simply means that you’re more confused.
North is not always north. Contradictory things can be and frequently are true at the same time.
It is knowing that you’re supposed to feel grateful to your parents for their sacrifices but resenting their small mindset.
It is knowing that you are loved by your parents, even though they would never say those words out loud.
Discussions about the appropriate length of skirts and whether it is okay to have your shin show quickly morph into arguments about the role of women in society and inevitable comparisons between how women are treated in America and how women are treated in Pakistan.
It is speaking two languages that are not understood by the other.
The English you speak like a native never quite extending to understand colloquialisms. And the Urdu you speak so bastardized that native speakers laugh good-naturedly at your grammar mistakes while shaking their heads.
You are left a receiver, trying to filter and synthesize wildly disparate signals, always unsure about both.
I understand being culturally homeless and recognize it in Marlene.
I wake up to the phone ringing. My father has not yet given up in his efforts.
I will not be dragged back to that time.
The school year has begun, and I have these children and their learning I’m responsible for.
I am aware that I am being given an opportunity for closure. Yet I still do not reach for the phone.
As our days start to settle into a pattern and my students come to understand what is expected of them in the classroom environment, they develop greater focus and attention span.
At the same time, as they become more familiar with each other and the class develops its own community with alliances and fissures, there is more arguing and bickering in the way of siblings.
When the latter happens, I have a few tricks up my sleeve.
My favorite is, I stand on my head. I started doing this many years ago to combat my old friend despair, who comes and sits on my chest for weeks at a time.
They say that if your elbow hurts, stubbing your toe will make the elbow pain disappear.
Somehow, the blood rushing to my head has the same effect, making the malaise take leave, if even for just a little while.
In the classroom, it has the added benefit of focusing my students’ attention when they have too much yaya energy and cannot settle.
If no one is listening to me or taking the cues that it’s quiet time, or there are pockets of disputes around the room, I go silent, grab the cushion on my chair, walk to the middle of the red-circle rug around which we have our morning meetings, tuck my shirt in, and with no fanfare, stand on my head.
It has a singular effect. Whispers of “MissCh is standing on her head!” travel the room like brush fire, and the kids go crazy, jumping up and down.
“Please take your math workbook out and start working,” I say quietly and placidly. My voice sounds different when I speak upside down. It brings the children back into paying attention. It brings me back into my body.
At pickup one day, Marlene’s eyes are red, and she appears physically smaller. It reminds me of the way she looked that first day when I spied on her. Poppy runs to her mother, and instead of running into her arms, she puts her arm around her as though she is holding her up.
“Marlene? Are you okay?” I have to be careful about the overtures I make with parents; it can be a slippery slope.
Parents can be even more needy than children, needing affirmation and support, wanting parenting advice and me to be their parenting coach.
Who am I to tell anyone how to raise their child?
Look at my life. But Marlene looks so positively defeated that I can’t help but ask.
She smiles wanly.
I still feel bad about how I responded to her previous invitation and blurt out, “I am available. For a drink.” I’m such an idiot. As though what pained her was my declination.
It’s like I’ve poured water into a drooping plant. Almost imperceptibly, she stands taller. It is easy to imagine her as a child.
“Can you tonight? My parents are already babysitting.”
“Uh, sure.”
“Great! Where shall we go?”
Her eagerness makes me cringe. “Wherever you want.”
“I can pick you up. From here or from your house.” She hurriedly adds, “I haven’t gotten out much.”
The woman just moved here. Why am I asking her to select a place? “How about we meet up in an hour? There’s the restaurant up at the corner of Wanley and Hydown.”
“Can’t wait!” As she walks briskly to her car, there’s no question. She is a flower reaching for the sun.
All I want to do is go home and be by myself with the cat. I’m supposed to go to Mamoo’s for dinner. What was I thinking? I have nothing to do with Marlene’s sadness, so why did I feel the need to rescue her? I feel the warm weight of Poppy’s hand in the cocoon of mine.
Four thirty on a late-September afternoon, I wait outside on the patio of a local restaurant.
Predictably, Marlene is late. It is cool enough to sit outside and warm enough to not need a jacket.
The season is changing, the light already a little weaker and lower in the sky.
I find this time of the year so sad. For so many reasons.
Marlene arrives, and gone is the hangdog expression from earlier.
She is wearing makeup and has styled her hair, making it hard for me to look away.
She sits down, and before the waitress has even brought us drink menus, starts chattering like she’s been at a silent retreat for the last three days.
“I’m so sorry, Miss Chaudhry! What a beautiful night.
I really needed this. I haven’t been out in months!
It was hell getting out of Chicago. There was no plan.
Just get up and go. And then trying to find a place here.
I did not want to move in with my parents.
I mean, I’m so grateful to them and all their help, but my God, can you imagine?
And the school year was just about to start.
I wanted Poppy to start on the first day and not be late coming, you know?
It was rush rush rush.” She throws herself back in her chair and groans.
I wait to see if she’s done or if she’s just taking a breath. “Two things. One, your hair. Do you color it? It’s almost unnatural. Two, ‘Not be late’?”
For a second, I worry she might think I’m being mean-spirited, but she bursts out laughing, throwing her head back so far, I can see a crooked molar. She has a great laugh, full of belly and bubbles. She doesn’t take herself too seriously.
She orders an old-fashioned, and I order a club soda.
“Thanks, I think? I hated my hair as a kid.” She sits up straight. “Wait. You’re not getting a drink?”
“It’s a school night.” I demur.
“Do you not drink?”
“Sure, I do. I just don’t drink very much.”
She takes me in, almost suspiciously.
I tell the waitress, “I think I saw a cider on the menu. I’ll have that.” And then turn to Marlene. “You happy? If I have a hangover tomorrow in class, it’ll be your fault.”
She deadpans, “A hangover? From one cider?” She gauges my reaction to her sarcasm, and again, we start laughing.
“I just don’t drink often.” I can hear that I sound whiny.
“Actually, I think it’s . . . refreshing. You’re so . . . so . . .” She peers at me like she’s trying to see into my soul or find the right words.
“Boring?”
“Oh my God, no! You’re so interesting,” she gushes and leans across the table. It’s clear that she wants to be closer.
I am fairly certain she’s being sarcastic again, and I’m preparing to start giggling again, but no, she is serious.
“I think you may not know what that word means.”
“This sounds stupid, but you’re so, I don’t know, pure.”
I turn red. She has no idea the sins I’ve committed.
She goes on. “Poppy loves you. She comes home every day talking about you. MissCh this. MissCh that. I admire your work. Really. My father’s a doctor, and my mom has always said that some people just have a calling.
He’s been called to help heal people. I think you’ve been called to teach children. It’s obvious.”
I am a good teacher. I know that and am proud of it.
I’ve always told myself it’s because I have nothing else, nowhere else to go, no other family or commitments to rush off to, that I can pour all of myself into my classroom and my kids.
But hearing Marlene reflect on me as a teacher makes me feel understood, uncomfortably so.
It is so unexpected that I can feel my throat start to tingle.
I look away and watch a car clumsily trying to parallel park in front of us.
“It’s only because I have no other life,” I say softly.