Chapter 17 Salma
Salma
By the time Marlene arrives to pick up the kids, it is long after their bedtime and approaching mine.
Bear is asleep on the couch, thumb in his mouth, diaper butt in the air.
He is in one of my old T-shirts since his shirt got pizza all over it and he was wearing no pants when Poppy hauled him down the sidewalk.
I keep covering him with a blanket, and magically, it is off when I next look.
In one corner of the sectional, Poppy sits on my lap while Leonora sits placidly next to us.
My head leans on Poppy’s shoulder, and her head, in turn, rests on top of mine.
I can’t tell whether I’m holding Poppy up or she is holding me up.
The boundaries that lie between teacher and bystander, protector and protectee, are increasingly murky.
Mamoo is in his recliner. The only light in the room is the reading lamp next to him.
He reads The Wind in the Willows, his voice soothing and lulling.
I called him as soon as we walked into my house.
Within thirty minutes, he came through the back door with chocolate milk, pizza, cupcakes with candles, Hot Wheels, and a family of small rubbery dolls with an assortment of minuscule mix-and-match clothes.
I swear I don’t know how this man does the things he does.
“Imagine meeting you here,” he said when he saw Poppy.
When I was growing up, I used to think that only my family was crazy.
And then, when everything happened, I knew that to be the case.
I stalled out. My development, growth, progress, even my hair, everything just stopped.
Years later, when I started teaching, I saw many variations of family dysfunction, and almost every time, I thought, “But at least my father didn’t leave his pornography lying around” or “At least my mother loved us enough to cook for us every night.” It’s been a while since I had a thought like that.
But earlier, seeing Ruby go berserk, I had thought something similar.
“At least our neighbors never had to call the police on us.”
This is about something so much bigger than me.
I consider the great tragedy of my life relative to this family’s slowly unspooling chaos.
The worst possible thing that could have happened to me has already happened.
My life’s work is to come to terms with it.
But Poppy and Bear. Their future will be impacted by their mother’s drug-fueled rampages.
While we were singing “Happy Birthday” and blowing out candles on the cupcakes—once for me, once for Poppy, and many times for Bear—the phone rang.
I thought it might be Marlene. Instead, it was Abu in his croaky voice.
I looked at Mamoo without missing a beat and said, “Sorry, you have the wrong number.” Finally, I have learned to lie as smoothly as Asma. She would be proud of me.
I introduce Marlene to Mamoo. Despite the sadness and heaviness in the air, there is a moment of instant connection where like meets like. She shakes his hand while holding Poppy in one arm and says softly, “I’ve heard so much about you.”
We are standing in the living room, and she is putting on a brave front, but she is shaken up.
“Do you want pizza?” I ask Marlene. “I can heat some up.”
“We should get out of your hair. You’ve already done so much. I need to get Poppy to bed. School night.”
She is spent, and I can tell that the prospect of getting the kids home and starting all over again tomorrow sounds exhausting.
“There’s no school tomorrow, Marlene. It’s a PD day.”
Marlene throws her head back; whether from relief or stress, I can’t tell. Once Poppy is sure that Marlene is not leaving, she moves to the couch and leans against Mamoo.
“Do you want to spend the night? I don’t think you should be by yourself,” I say. I don’t know where Ruby is, and the thought of the children going back into that house curdles my stomach. I am being careful about what I am saying. Poppy is clearly listening to everything.
“We couldn’t impose on you any more than we already have.”
“Where are your parents?”
“Florida. Of all weeks . . .”
Mamoo pipes up. “Right then. That settles it. You should stay here. I have a perfect-size mattress for Bear. I’ll bring it over.” He hoists himself up off the sofa.
Marlene says, “There’s no need, Mamoo—sorry . . . Javed—don’t know where that came from . . .”
We all know where that came from.
“Nonsense. Salma is right. This is no time to be alone. I’ll be right back.”
Marlene looks at me apologetically.
“No, this is good. He’s great in a crisis. It makes him feel needed.”
“But . . .”
I know what Marlene is thinking. Mamoo is so clearly wobbly, and it’s dark outside.
“He lives in my backyard.” When I see the expression on her face, I am quick to be more precise.
“Not literally. His house is immediately behind mine. We have a lighted pathway from my back door to his. See?” I show her from the back sliding door.
“I’ll go with him to get the mattress. I’d feel more comfortable,” Marlene says. Poppy insists on going too. I put a blanket back on Bear and make sure the spare room is made up.
Marlene returns a while later without Mamoo and puts the papasan cushion, what Mamoo referred to as a small mattress, on the floor in the spare room. Fifteen minutes later, she returns after putting the kids down and collapses on the couch. I bring her two slices of pizza and one of Emil’s IPAs.
“Are the kids asleep?” I ask.
She nods while devouring a slice of pizza. “I’m sorry you had to see that. I’m so embarrassed, Salma.”
“Stop. I’m just so glad I was there. What happened?”
She says sardonically, “You didn’t look so glad standing there on the patio.”
“Well. I’ve gone to great lengths to be removed from the, um, messier side of family life.”
Marlene puts her plate down on the coffee table and leans back on the couch. She closes her eyes and pulls a long draw from her beer. She burps and then says, “I’ve never seen her quite like that. She was on something. That was more than just alcohol.”
“I was so worried about you and what she might do. It was terrifying. But I had to follow Poppy.”
“Oh, she would never hurt me or the kids. She’s not that kind of addict. She’s the kind that takes it out on herself.”
“Where is she now?”
Marlene slaps her empty beer down on the table and says, “Psych unit.”
“What?”
“Everything went to shit after the parade. Whatever you two talked about . . .” She holds up her hand to me. “I don’t know what was said, and honestly, right now, I don’t want to know.”
I feel guilty, responsible for Ruby’s spiraling. I saw that she was barely hanging on, and I pressed anyway.
Marlene goes on. “She was supposed to take the kids trick-or-treating while I gave out candy at the house. But she disappeared. Didn’t answer her phone.
Car was gone. I was worried because she’d been doing so well.
But it was Halloween, and Poppy wanted to go out .
. . she finally returned this afternoon—Jesus, was that really just today?
It feels like a week ago. Anyway, she shows up, all cocky and aggressive, trying to pick a fight.
Totally irrational. Saying things like she thinks the kids should live with her in Chicago. ”
I can’t help but snort.
“Right? She is not dealing with a full deck. Her eyes are dilated. She’s not breathing right.
I ask her whether she’s using drugs, and then she starts in on our greatest hits.
That I think she’s not good enough for me.
That I must be racist because I’m South African.
That I wouldn’t have these kids if it wasn’t for her brother. Wants to know if I fucked her brother.”
I am incredulous. “Was there something between . . .”
“No! Of course not! I’ve only ever had one boyfriend, and that’s when I was twelve. This is just her runaway insecurity. She doesn’t even make sense. I’m racist, and I fucked her brother. What? She’s trying to end us so that she doesn’t get left behind again. It’s pathological.”
“You mean, like with my sister?” I ask.
“Yeah. Like with Asma. She blames herself for what happened. That the great love of her life would still be here if it hadn’t been for her.
That she should have recognized the cultural barriers.
That she should have seen the risks and warned Asma.
After her brother died, it kind of tripped her generalized moodiness into a full-blown obsession about the past, and now, with you in the picture .
. . let’s just say that what happened very much still has a hold on her. ”
It’s so strange to hear Asma’s name come out of Marlene’s mouth. It’s even stranger to think that Ruby blames herself. I thought that was my proprietary domain. I go and fetch Marlene another beer and the rest of the pizza box. “So then what happened?”
“A neighbor must have called the police. Ruby seeing you—and, yes, she blames you, too, for what happened to Asma—and then the cops. She seriously lost it. Screaming threats, paranoid, lunging at the officers and calling them homophobes. I mean, I have no idea if they were. All I can say is that they tried talking to her, cajoling her, trying to get her to calm down. I don’t think they even knew we were a couple. ”
“Jesus, Marlene.”
“They finally cuffed her. She is going to be seriously banged up. But she would not stop throwing herself at them. It was horrible. Like, really, really bad. Thank God the kids weren’t there.”
Marlene’s voice peters out as she relaxes into the couch.
“I told them this was not normal and that I thought she was on some kinds of drugs and having a bad reaction and that I wanted her to be taken to a hospital. They called it in while she’s lying on the ground screaming obscenities at everyone past, present, and future.
I followed them to the hospital and gave a statement to the psych nurse.
They’re going to keep her a few days, get her sobered up, and then we’ll see what happens. ”
That night, I lie in the dark with Ruby’s family breathing under my roof. I feel sick that I pushed Ruby so hard. I could see that she wasn’t doing well, but I didn’t stop. Driven by my own self-interest, I kept pushing and pushing.
For so long, I have lived my life through small motions, wrapped in a protective film, that it has become habitual.
A few months ago, my past was so blocked that I could scarcely consider it.
But now it is all around me. Everywhere I go, everything I do is coated with the filaments of my history, that which existed and that which might have been.
The layers of my regret and guilt are infinite.
I should have tried harder with Asma. To protect her more by taking more of my parents’ wrath instead of trying to appease them.
To be more patient with Asma. That was the problem.
It was me and my incessant need to try and make everyone happy.
Maybe if I had been stronger, maybe things would have turned out differently.
Or. Maybe not. This is the first time I have ever ventured such a thought, and my brain lights up. Maybe there was nothing I could have done to save Asma. The thought is breathtaking and breaks my heart.
In my unrelenting search for who my family was, to understand our place in this world, in history, I thought that the diary could be a key.
And maybe in that process, I might heal.
But I realize I’ve been looking for an easy answer when the real answer, the real work of confronting my life, my history, the legacy of my family, must come from me.
It is a relief that nothing can hurt me anymore because the worst thing that could have happened to me already happened.
The next morning, while coffee is brewing, Mamoo arrives with a bag of diapers and toothbrushes.
“Since Poppy didn’t get a proper birthday meal, I thought we could go get breakfast.”
Poppy cheers. We go to a local breakfast restaurant that serves more whipped cream than waffle. The morning sun shimmies across the table, and Mamoo and Marlene talk nonstop.
Afterward, we follow Marlene to her house to watch the kids while she goes to the hospital. She returns a few hours later. “She’s agreed to go to rehab. I feel bad for saying this, but I’m so relieved. At least there she’ll be safe. And I’ll be off duty.”
I go, finally, with Mamoo to Aunty’s grave.
He holds my arm, pretending that he needs to lean on me.
But he is holding me aloft. When I pick him up, he teeters down his walkway with a red-plastic bucket, the kind children use to build sandcastles, an armful of spring flowers, and a lei of jasmine around his neck.
Asma’s headstone looks as fresh and new as Aunty’s. I wonder if Ruby has ever come here and, somehow, know with certainty that she has. Mamoo pulls a little broom with hard bristles out of his bucket and passes it to me.
I kneel, feeling the cold of the ground radiate up my shins, and brush the dead leaves off Asma’s grave.
What had I been so scared of? She is not here.
I have actively avoided this moment for so long and, perhaps by doing so, I have burdened it with more weight and terror than it was due.
Because, now that I’m here, I feel nothing.
Or more accurately, I do not feel what I was so fearful of feeling, the kneecapping, wailing pain of loss and unjustness.
Asma is not here in this cold, damp ground.
She is in me. The memories that I’ve been reliving these past few months have brought me a strange comfort.
There, she is still alive and as full of heat and bossiness and love as ever.
I place the flowers in a vase on her grave and thank the God I do not believe in for having given her to me.
Mamoo clears Aunty’s grave and caresses the cold granite like an old lover. He hangs the lei over the headstone. I kneel next to him and tell him my final secret.
“Abu called me.”
Mamoo looks disoriented and older than his years. His eyes water from the cold.
“He’s dying. I don’t know how he got my phone number. I think I have to go see him.”
Mamoo puts his hand, dry as the leaves we’ve just swept, over mine and says, “I can come with you.”
Our noses drip in the cold. The air, impossibly, is sultry.
No, this is something I must do alone.