Chapter 16 Asma #4
It was their end of the table that now held everyone’s attention. Her father may have been wandering around in his own thoughts, but everyone else sat on the edge of their seat. She was so sick of his justifications, his attempts to make what he did sound noble and warranted.
“I’ve been at work too much and not been here to teach you,” her father went on.
“Did Ami ever tell you?” Asma asked slowly.
“But enough is enough. I’m not letting my daughters run around like these American girls. These easy, anyone-can-have-me girls.”
“Did she tell you about what happened to me?” Asma’s voice was soft and exquisitely paced.
“No, I’m going to be better.”
“Did she?” Asma yelled.
Finally, he stopped and turned to Asma, warning lights reflected in the shine of his eyes. His attempts at good humor were running low.
“At the barbecue?” she continued.
“What are you talking about?”
“Why don’t you ask Ami? She knows.” Asma turned her head to the other end of the table. She looked down the table where her mother was meticulously slicing pie and ladling a gulab jamun in just the right amount of syrup.
“Don’t you, Ami?” She thought she could still hear her humming, but it might just have been the blood in her head.
Her father looked back and forth.
“Tell me what?” he asked flatly.
Asma wondered if her mother had genuinely forgotten. When it was clear her mother would say nothing, Asma said, “What your good friend Fazal Karim did?”
Her father stared at her with no effect, daring her.
“Do you remember the July Fourth barbecue we had when all the Pakistani people came from the city?”
“There was no barbecue.”
“After we got our citizenship. Five years ago!”
He remained silent, but his brows were furrowed as though his mind was working.
“So I guess Ami didn’t tell you that your good buddy Fazal Karim molested me?” Asma asked.
“What’s this molesting? What rubbish is this?”
At last, he was back to his old tone of voice, harsh and dismissive. In a way it was a relief. She knew these ground rules.
“Do you remember Salma running outside to tell Daisy that her father was angry and wanted to go?” Asma’s voice quavered.
“Of course not. It was just another night for you. You have no idea what we go through, do you? Not when we were little and not now.” The injustice of having to keep herself hidden, of always having to choose to take care of the feelings and needs of others over her own, of the memory of the child that had once been assaulted fueled her rage and metastasized with the rawness underneath.
Her voice got louder. “He touched me. He grabbed me. He kissed me . . .”
“You are a curse.”
Aunty moaned as though in pain. Mamoo stood up and sat back down, a man caught between polarities.
Asma backed up out of his reach. “You have no idea what ‘protect me’ means. It’s just a convenient little phrase you use to feel good about forcing me into marriage.
Because neither of you”—she pointed a finger at each of her parents—“protected me when I needed it.” Now that the words were coming, they were fast and clipped. No hesitation or equivocation.
“This isn’t one of your plays schmays. Always pretending. Always acting. You think you say whatever you want. No! This is real life. You can’t say these things. You have to learn your place!” He hit the table for emphasis, knocking over a glass of water.
No one moved to clean up the water or put a towel down. In that space, when the awful words poured out of her mouth, they were the only two people in the room. Asma’s vision dilated and got hazy at the edges. She felt like she was vibrating from the inside out.
“How do I learn my place, Abu? Huh? He trapped me in the bathroom. He kissed me and wouldn’t stop.
He put his hand up my shirt. He put one hand over my mouth so I couldn’t scream.
What would it take? Me being raped? Me getting pregnant?
What is this lesson you’re so desperate for me to learn?
” Fat, heavy tears rolled off Asma’s face.
“Shut up! Shut up!” He bolted up to his full height, tipping his chair backward. “Fazal Karim is a good man. He has daughters. You imagined it.”
“Imagined it?” Salma screamed. “You think this is what we spend our time imagining? An old man pinning us against the wall, kissing and suffocating us? Who makes something like that up?”
“You saw?” He faltered.
This was what Salma’s yelling voice sounded like. From some disassociated part of her brain, Asma noted that her father gave credence to the event only when it came out of Salma’s mouth.
“Yes, I saw! He was following Asma around all night, tracking her. How did you not notice? I found them in the bathroom. Asma was pushing him away, crying.”
He leaned over the table and braced his arms. “I just can’t . . . what . . . what else?”
“You want to know what else?” Salma asked. “Asma told Ami that Fazal Karim was kissing and touching her really weirdly. And you want to know what Ami said?”
Asma was aware that Salma was speaking on her behalf and telling things that she thought only she had known.
He didn’t move. He didn’t make a sound.
Asma said, “She said, ‘Never tell your father.’”
The room was deathly silent. Emotional debris scattered, walls blown out, gaping holes to the outside showing through. Asma’s ears rang in the sudden vacuum left behind. Mamoo cried noiseless tears.
Her father looked at Sadia from under his heavy brows.
He shook his head, his face drawn with disgust. “All this time, I’ve let you do what you want with them.
‘They need to fit in’ and ‘What’s the harm?
’ And the whole time you knew this. You let this happen.
No wonder she has no regard for her culture or us.
This girl blames us. What have you done, Sadia? ”
Her mother’s plate was barely touched. “He was your friend,” she said as she picked a green bean from the table and delicately nibbled it.
The table hushed, waiting to see how her father would react, but in the context of the rest of the night, the comment barely registered.
“I’m not marrying a man and certainly not some goonda Pakistani, fresh off the boat,” Asma said.
Her mother kept the same strange, small smile plastered on her face. “Oh, did I tell you about the monkey we saw begging for money on the side of the road? It was so cute.”
Asma announced, “We’re going back now.”
Everyone scurried away from the table like it was a drowning ship.
“Already? I made something for you.”
Her mother went to the kitchen and returned with a grocery bag cold from the freezer and extended it like a peace offering.
Asma didn’t reach for the bag. Her mother pulled out a sandwich bag from the paper sack.
It looked like it was filled with keema and peas.
“I packed some things for your freezer.”
“I have a meal plan.”
“Our food is good for your brain. It makes you smarter.” Her mother picked up Asma’s arm and placed the handles of the bag in her palm.
“What are you even talking about?” Asma didn’t move her arm, and the bag fell to the ground.
Mamoo was outside dragging a cigarette deep, his hands busy lighting another. Where did he get cigarettes from? Did anyone even know he smoked?
She went downstairs to get her still-unpacked duffel bag and sat heavily on her bed to gather herself.
She prayed Mamoo didn’t want to talk on the way back to school; she didn’t have it in her.
This place. It wasn’t home. It was a cage.
She felt like she was suffocating and her parents and Salma were trying to suck the life out of her.
Maybe Bram Stoker came from such a family.
No matter how much they tried to ruin her life, she wasn’t going to let them.
No, she was going back to her real life.
The rec center would open again tomorrow, and she could swim twice a day until Ruby came back on Saturday.
She heard Salma shuffle in through their shared closet. “Asma? You okay?”
Asma didn’t respond.
“They can’t make you. This is America, okay? They can’t make you marry someone you don’t want to.”
“Is there anything else you want to tell me? Any other secret plans about my life that I should know?”
“It’s not like that.”
“Then, what’s it like?”
Haltingly, stammering, Salma said, “I heard them, Ami, mention it. Before their trip.”
“You didn’t think to mention any of this? All that time at Mamoo’s . . .”
Salma’s tone hardened. “It was kind of hard to say anything since you weren’t around and, even when you were there, weren’t exactly talkative.”
Even as she said it, Asma knew that Salma was right. “I saw a Quoran on your desk. What? You’re reading it now? To get in Abu’s good graces?”
“No.” Salma sounded miffed. “Abu wanted to read it together after he picked me up from your dorms that night. Or maybe after the night of the play. I don’t even remember.”
Asma stood up and touched the handles of her duffel, a silent threat that she could leave whenever she wanted. “‘They can’t make you. This is America, okay? They can’t make you marry someone you don’t want to,’” Asma mimicked sarcastically.
“What do you want, Asma, huh? My faithful loyalty? You already have it. Accept whatever little attention you want to dole out for me? Done. They’re making me apply to CCC.
That’s where I’ll get to go to college. And you know what?
If that permits you more freedoms, I’ll gladly do it.
What else could I possibly do to show you that I’m on your side? ”
“You told Mamoo.” Asma’s voice was jagged.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Someone had to tell Mamoo, and God knows you weren’t going to.”
“Why? Why did he need to know?”
They locked gazes, warily.
Salma fished for an answer. “I don’t know. He just does. Maybe he can help.”
“You mean like at dinner tonight?”
Salma started to respond and then stopped abruptly like she was trying to work something out for herself.
Asma started toward the door. “You still don’t get it do you, Sal? No one’s coming to save us.”