Chapter 19 Asma #2
Music from The Year Without a Santa Claus wafted upstairs. Salma shifted from one foot to another. Asma pushed a chair out with her leg, silently inviting Salma to sit down. She tried to meet Salma’s gaze, but Salma looked stoically ahead.
Her mother scooped up the photos and gathered them in a pile, tapping and aligning their edges on the table like a deck of cards. She started shuffling through them quickly as though in search of a particular candidate. Her father watched Sadia and Asma, frowning and thoughtful.
“Oh, here. This is the one I was looking for.” She held out a three-by-five snapshot to Asma. Asma didn’t reach for it, so her mother slid it in front of her on the table. Asma stared at it with no expression.
The color photo had a white border and captured a person somewhere between boy and man, his longish hair whipped off his forehead by a strong wind.
He wore what looked like jeans or dark pants and a white, billowy kurta.
The sun was in the boy’s face. It was difficult to tell through the squinting what he actually looked like.
He could be young, sophisticated, and handsome, or a cross-eyed middle-aged man trying to look Americanized and hip.
Asma sat unmoving, as frozen as the image.
She imagined this boy walking into the grocery store, asking Mr. Miller in which aisle the maxi pads were kept.
Her mother reached for the photo and flipped it over to look at the back. “This boy is nice-looking, no? Your aunts know his grandmother. He’s going to go to medical school too. What do you think?”
Asma’s body was rigid, all straining muscle, taut and tight. She kept her eyes focused on the white border of the photo and gave a noncommittal “Uh-huh.”
“Here’s a letter from him to you.” Again, she passed it. Again, it sat there like an empty bag of potato chips on the side of the road.
“I don’t think she’s ready for this,” her father said.
Asma looked up and said flatly, “I’m waiting for Ami to show me everyone.” She could see Salma out of the corner of her eye, arms crossed and not moving.
“Everybody?” her mother asked giddily.
“Yeah, sure.”
Her mother, encouraged, quickly flipped through pictures, as though she was looking for specific ones.
There were pictures of middle-aged men who didn’t even try and hide their paunches and graying hair.
She shuffled past those quickly. She passed photos of younger men across the table and mentioned the connection through which the introduction was being made.
“Here’s one.” She slid a picture across the table and consulted her little notebook. “He’s from Karachi, and he has a family business he’s going to take over.”
Asma put her hand out in slow motion, gingerly touching the edge of the picture in front of her. “So I’m supposed to move back to Pakistan for these marriages?” She spoke slowly and enunciated clearly, not even trying to hide her disbelief.
Her mother didn’t respond. Salma ground her toe into the carpet. Her father looked somewhere between bored and sleepy.
“Oh, oh. This is the one I was looking for. His name is Pervez, and he’s the youngest of four boys.” She turned the pages of her notebook scouring for some hidden fact. Not finding what she was looking for, she started rifling through the actual letters.
Asma looked at the dark, unsmiling eyes staring back at her.
The rest of the world was toasting Christmas cheer, and she was here looking at pictures of strangers in another country with whom she was supposed to spend the rest of her life.
She felt ridiculous. She already knew whom she was going to be with.
“Oh, this. This is what I was looking for. I wanted to make sure I didn’t misremember. Look. He’s been accepted to college in Maryland.”
Asma nodded in acknowledgment but otherwise didn’t give any indication of what she was thinking.
Her mother seemed to take silence for assent and kept going through her stack of people, each time looking for the next best one.
Asma sat sideways on her chair, ready to take off. Not that there was anywhere to go.
No one passed any pictures to Salma. Asma, who was focusing on anything but what was happening in front of her, could tell that Sama was breathing softly and shallowly, trying to avoid detection.
She recognized that regardless of how this went, Salma’s road was being paved.
She would be in this position eventually, and her fate would largely be determined by how Asma handled hers.
If she succumbed, Salma’s process would closely hew to hers.
If she rebelled, their parents would be fixated, even more committed to making sure Salma was married off successfully.
She felt a sense of responsibility and the need to protect Salma. Just not at her own expense.
After going through a dozen candidates, her mother paused and asked, “What do you think?”
Asma took a deep breath and with her most authentic, in-character voice, mustered, “Thanks for going over these. There are, uh, a lot of choices. I need time to think about it.”
Her mother seemed heartened by the response, perhaps expecting an out-of-hand rejection.
“Oh, and those are only some of the choices. There are more.” She fanned her little photo deck of misfits.
Asma couldn’t tell if it was a threat or her misplaced belief that more options would give Asma more comfort.
“Why are we doing this?” Salma blurted out.
Both parents looked over at Salma as though they had forgotten she was there.
“Uh. I mean, why are we doing this now?” she asked, this time less animatedly. “Asma’s, um, we . . . still in school. It’s too early.”
Abu waited for Salma to finish her halting speech and then looked at the floor for a few interminable seconds.
Finally, he said, “This American notion of going to college and getting an education . . . boys and girls all together at a time when it’s natural to be .
. . to be interested in each other . . .
you can go to school. But you should finish school as a married girl. A lady.”
Asma thought of Ruby’s long legs and the way her fingers fit so perfectly into the muscular ridge on the outsides of her quads and wondered what her father would do if he knew what she and Ruby did.
She couldn’t imagine telling her parents about Ruby, but surely coming out would be safer than being found out. She shivered.
“You don’t have to make a decision today, huh?
” her mother said, reclaiming the conversation.
She tilted her head trying to catch Asma’s downcast eyes as though she were a small child whom she was placating.
“Maybe we can look at a few a day and you can read their letters yourself? The ones in Urdu, your Abu or I can read to you.”
In high school, Asma’s German teacher had once live-translated a letter written in German during World War II from his aunt to his mother.
He had stood in front of the room, a brief pause as he read each sentence and almost simultaneously found the corresponding words in English.
Listening to him had made her feel like she was doing something illicit, hearing something not intended for her.
Her body had leaned forward, unconsciously waiting for something private to be revealed.
The idea of her parents translating a letter from someone who wanted to marry her, sight unseen, was almost funny.
“Okay,” Asma said flatly. She continued sitting there and put her hands on the table like she was making to go, but then, almost as though she’d just had a thought, she asked, “Did you both talk about me going to Chicago, by the way?”
It was clear that Asma had subjected herself to this entire conversation just to get to her question.
“I still don’t understand why you need to see your friends from school over break.
You’ll be together in just a few weeks,” her mother said tersely while putting the pictures in some kind of order, flipping back and forth through the stack and inserting pictures and accompanying paperwork, like card dealing in reverse.
“This is just what Americans do, okay? I don’t know. I might even have a friend come visit over a break.”
Her father said, “There’s no money for this kind of thing right now.” He shook the back of his hand at Asma, dismissing her.
The next day, sun as sharp as shards of glass reflected off the pristine snow. Christmas was done for another year. The world was anew. Asma shook Salma awake and said, “Let’s go sledding.”
They layered up. Asma wore her father’s boots, and Salma used an old set of boots that were a half size too small.
“You okay?” Asma asked as they trudged up the big hill in the park.
Salma grunted distractedly. “I’m still pissed about missing my show. And then that whole rishtha talk.”
“Oh. That.” Asma laughed. “It’s so stupid.”
“You’re not worried?”
Asma stopped. “I’m not not worried. I just think that there’s a long distance between these conversations and anything actually happening.”
The instant relief that flushed Salma’s face embarrassed Asma.
She grabbed Salma’s hand and pulled her to start walking again. “What I’m really pissed about is why they can’t let me just go to Chicago?” Asma’s volume and agitation made up for what had been missing a moment before when speaking about rishthas.
“Why do you care so much about this trip? You’re going to see your friends in a few weeks anyway.”
Asma willed herself to not answer. She had every intention of telling Salma about Ruby by the end of break. She just wasn’t ready to do it yet. For now, she was just happy to get her body moving.