Chapter 18 Salma
Salma
Marlene says, “Your house is so cute, but it’s kind of empty. Maybe I can help you decorate it?”
After having Marlene and the kids there for only one night, even I now feel the emptiness.
“What if I like it like that?” I ask.
She stares at me unblinking and, without breaking her gaze, pulls out design magazines from her tote bag.
She insists that making my living space look like something more than a college student’s first apartment will make me happier.
Mamoo eggs her on. So on weekends, while Bear naps and Mamoo babysits Poppy, Marlene and I go out on the town.
We go to furniture stores and houseware stores.
Emil, who has incredible taste, joins us, and Marlene and Emil discuss what my nonexistent taste should be.
Boho or traditional? Contemporary or coastal?
They debate and get heated as if world peace is at stake.
I feel like I’ve struck the jackpot. These two care so much about me that they want to argue whether I would be happier with floral pillows or a geometric design.
I do not hear Asma in my head, but I know with certitude that she would love both Marlene and Emil and be happy that they were forcing me to make these decisions.
On one such shopping day, Marlene takes me to the phone store, and I let her make me buy a mobile phone. Marlene says, “Now I can reach you whenever I want to talk.”
I mutter, “Great” sarcastically but am happy enough to burst inside.
For breaks, we stop to get coffee and croissants, or beer and snacks. Christmas decorations abound, and everything is merry and bright. At the end of our outing, Marlene and I, and Emil if he is with us, get takeout to eat with the kids and Mamoo at Marlene’s.
Sometimes her parents join us. They are as warm and enthusiastic and full of curious, loving energy as Marlene, and she makes a lot more sense.
When I observe Poppy with her grandmother and Marlene, I have a distinct and pervasive thought: If a girl’s empowerment stands on the shoulders of their mother and grandmother and aunt and other female mentors before them, this child will be powerful indeed.
Although she bears no relationship to my sister, she is an echo of Asma in the way she carries herself and the way she seems to know exactly who she is.
She is comfortable in her own skin in a way that I have never been.
Mamoo is deeply contented. He does for Poppy and Bear what he did for Asma and me by bringing little gifts and telling tall tales. We approximate a family. We plan Thanksgiving. Who will bring what side. What pies will we make.
At school, Poppy is thriving. She has asked if she can do a presentation on how South Africa celebrates the winter holidays.
I consciously treat her like I would treat any other student who asks to share a special interest with the class.
I say that our class time together is very important, and I take it seriously, that if I give her time in front of my students, I will need to know what she says in advance.
I suggest she do her research and propose a draft presentation to me and that we can use our English conference time to review it.
I research a local arts organization that puts on youth-theater performances and ask Marlene if I can sign Poppy up for a class as a belated birthday present. I am happy to take her. This time, I will fan the flames of a beloved’s interest in theater.
I do not ask Marlene about Ruby, and she doesn’t offer anything.
Abu calls again. So much has happened since his last call.
I did not think it possible, but his voice sounds even weaker.
Despite telling Mamoo I would see him, I am torn.
There are so many details I no longer remember.
Too many memories and feelings already lost to time.
This is the reason to see him. To collect his memories.
The irony is that if I had not met Ruby’s wife and child, I would probably not even consider meeting him.
They have inadvertently ripped the scab off. I am all soft red tissue beneath.
Some days, I think the trip to Pakistan was the turning point.
Because, as much as the parents I knew were challenging, helpless, and focused on survival, they were not the people who could have done what they did.
In other ways, I think there was no other logical conclusion to our family history.
That no matter what, we would have ended up in the same place.
After Thanksgiving, everything seemed to happen very quickly, even though my memory tells me living those days took a lifetime.
The days became shorter and darker and colder.
I returned from school in the gloom of winter’s twilight to a cold and dark house to find Ami talking to herself.
Not like the under-the-breath, self-conscious mumbling she was doing right before they left.
No, a full-throated conversation. When she saw or heard me, she stopped immediately, defiant.
Ever since their return from Pakistan, the week before Thanksgiving, I had been noticing changes.
They were different people from the ones I had dropped off at the airport.
At first, I thought the changes were a function of traveling back in time to wind up a day earlier.
But soon it became apparent that it was more than just jet lag.
Ami started covering her head with her dupatta when she left the house and told me that she expected me to do the same.
I was horrified but didn’t have it in me to fight.
So while Asma had changed into miniskirts and tank tops in the back of the bus her senior year, I started wearing a dupatta in mine.
As soon as I was out of sight of home, I shoved it deep into my backpack and only hoped that I remembered to take it back out on the way home.
She started saying her namaz, what seemed to me, all the time.
She had always said her prayers twice a day, waking before dawn to perform her ablutions, hypnotic movements to clean herself before prostrating to the will of God.
But after their return, I found her saying namaz late in the afternoon and, on weekends, late in the morning.
I wondered if she was taking a break at work to say her prayers.
And if so, where she did them. Sitting at her sewing machine?
Did her boss, Louise, born and raised in Rosebud, look at her strangely or just clear a small area in the back of the shop?
Out of nowhere, she developed a curiosity about the world.
She started bringing home the one-day-old paper from work and reading it from cover to cover.
But strangely, she retained nothing, appearing dumbfounded when I asked her about a current event.
Uncharacteristically lively and almost feverish at times, she would blurt out random things, like “Pakistan is so modern. Women drive!” and “Louise says that Miley girl in your class is having a baby!”
Ami started asking me what time I’d be home from school, how my day had been and about teachers and classes, and if I’d heard from any colleges or had plans for babysitting, and waiting for me at the door when I came home.
She looked at me intensely, like she was watching for something else.
Wasn’t this the mother I had always wanted?
One who was interested in me and engaged in my life, with all its small victories and losses?
I had friends who had mothers with whom they shared everything, like they were friends.
That kind of mother had always been as un-understandable to me as the idea of walking down a runway in a bikini.
That mother was for other people. Not me.
It made me feel uncomfortable. I didn’t trust it.
Our house had always been kept clean and tidy, a source of pride or the manifestation of Ami’s childhood training.
No clutter on surfaces, no dishes in the sink overnight, the bathroom mirror and toilet and sink always polished to a high shine.
But after their return, the state of the house had steadily declined.
Dishes started stacking up. Towels smelled musty.
She stopped making her bed, the muss of sheets and covers visible in the living room.
She stopped sleeping. She was awake when I woke up in the morning and prowled about at night so that even if I wanted to call Asma, I couldn’t.
If Ami started emerging after their return, Abu was receding.
It was almost possible to forget that his father had just died.
I would come upon him, pensive and still, staring out the window or sitting on the couch in the dark of the living room, the timer on the lights not having been adjusted for the gradually shortening days.
Leaning forward with his long arms propped up on his lanky knees, he held his head in his hands, as though he had been about to stand up but then forgot.
I would say his name, and he would turn to me slowly, his face having aged overnight.
Was he regretting the years he had been away from his father?
Was he wondering how it had come to be that the place they considered home was, and would always be, different from the place their children thought of as home?
Or was he realizing that they had left their homeland thousands of miles away with no simple return?
Or was he simply processing that his children were growing up and leaving his bed of influence?
Did he feel like he was returning home when he landed in Pakistan?
Or did he feel like he was returning home when the plane touched down in America?
Gone was his constant sermonizing. Somewhere along the way he had come to believe that his contribution to our lives, that his role as our father, was to impart lessons to us. But after the trip and Thanksgiving, there was only silence.