Chapter 21 Salma #2
Asma walked me to the door and gave me a lingering hug, then pushed me out the door. I walked to the bus stop, conscious that it was going to be my last semester before my real life would start.
I returned home after school that day, and from the moment I stepped in the door, I knew Asma was gone.
I could taste and smell her absence; the air felt less full.
I ran downstairs, and her room looked like it had the night before.
Her bedside table and dresser cleaned up, tidy.
Her toothbrush and brush were missing from the bathroom, her towel in the hamper.
She was gone. I hoped she was only up the street. I hoped she’d gotten far away.
I closed Asma’s bedroom door softly. I felt feverish and panicky.
I went to my room and looked around, anything to indicate she had been here.
Sticking out of my Quoran, untouched and dusty on my side table, was a small piece of paper, easily mistaken for a bookmark.
I pulled it out. There was a red heart drawn on it in crayon.
I put it in my pocket and clutched it. She did say goodbye. She was okay.
I walked upstairs and made a Pop-Tart. My hands shook as I opened my backpack and made myself sit down. Instinct told me to not call Ami and ask her where Asma was. I had a role to play. The longer I acted normal, the longer it would take for them to figure out she was gone.
By the time Ami got home an hour later, I had cycled through every emotion, from fear to anger to sadness.
I staged looking busy at work, my books spread out across the kitchen table to give the best impression that I was preoccupied.
The light was dim, all the lights, except the overhead light above the table, turned off.
Ami said Abu was working a late shift and that we would be having leftovers.
I barely acknowledged her. She asked where Asma was.
I ignored her entirely. She pottered around, changed into her house clothes, took dishes out of the fridge, and asked again.
I looked up at her, as though coming back from a long way away, and shrugged.
Asma would have been proud of my performance.
Ami went to the top of the stairs and called down to Asma.
Halfway back to the kitchen, she paused, listened, and turned back.
She was going to go downstairs and find out Asma was gone.
I couldn’t believe she didn’t notice the absence of her shoes and coat.
If I made an excuse to keep her up here, she’d become suspicious of me.
So I stayed put, staying stuck in my math problem.
In minutes, she was back upstairs. “Where is she?” Ami asked.
I maintained my air of distracted workaday attitude. “Where’s who?”
Ami walked in front of where I was sitting, with her hands on her hips. “Where is Asma?”
“I told you. I have no idea. I came right home from the bus an hour ago and started working. They’re really laying on the homework already.
I mean, it’s supposed to be second semester senior year.
” I prattled on, all the while thinking, finally, I could stop pretending.
My worry had been a wave of dread creeping up my chest, but now that Ami knew, I could let it out.
Where was Asma? How did she get away? And worse, what would happen when, inevitably, she returned home?
Ami looked at me like she was trying to figure out if I was telling the truth or not.
She went back downstairs, and I could hear her going into the bathroom and looking about.
She picked up the white pages, which had Abu’s work phone number written in his shaky handwriting on the inside cover, and pushed it over to me.
“Call your father. He needs to come home.”
In all our years in America and Abu driving taxis, I could not remember even one time of someone calling Abu at work. I felt a strange comfort at being thrust back into my old role as translator.
Ami went to her room and closed the door.
If I hadn’t known better, I would have sworn there was someone else in her room with whom she was conversing.
It was unnerving. I sat at the kitchen table pretending to do homework for as long as I could handle it and then went to lie awake in Asma’s bed, inhaling her scent.
I woke to stark, overhead light and Abu yelling.
I tried to place myself in place and time.
I sat up, and it came back to me. Asma was gone.
She hadn’t told me her plan precisely for this reason, so that I wouldn’t be put in the position to have to answer for her.
I couldn’t tell something I didn’t know.
And now, I didn’t know where she was or any way of contacting her.
I was in no better of a position than my parents.
Disoriented and still partially asleep, I started crying, at first slow and mournful and then, as the skeletons of our life gathered around me, deep and sobbing.
Abu, who was so good at fighting, didn’t seem to know what to do or how to handle me crying. He stood there and, when it seemed like I was going to go on, sat down next to me and patted my back.
He said, “We’ll find her.” But he didn’t sound so sure.
And I wasn’t sure I wanted her found. For her sake.
I followed Abu upstairs. Every light was on in the entryway, living room, dining room, and kitchen. I caught sight of my swollen eyes and blotchy face, reflected as I walked by the dark window. The clock on the microwave read 11:48.
Ami had taken the pillows off the couches and was vacuuming underneath. All of the contents of the fridge sat on the kitchen counters and table. That was the night she stopped trying to hide her strange mutterings and talking to herself. We were otherwise occupied.
“Should we call the police?” I asked.
No one said anything.
“She could be in danger. I don’t think we should be worried about what people are going to say,” I said.
“Are you worried that she might be in danger?” Abu sounded surprised by my concern.
“Aren’t you?” I asked.
Abu stopped. I could see him questioning himself.
Ami snorted and said, “Who could make that girl do anything she didn’t want to do? Besides, she’s too big.”
“Yeah, Ami. Good point. Being tall is a known deterrent to abductors.” Neither of them were good at detecting sarcasm.
“All her things are gone,” Abu said. “I think she planned this.”
He turned to me, again, newly suspicious. “Where is she, Salma? You tell each other everything.”
“You keep asking me. I’ve told you, I don’t know.”
He appraised me for a long moment, and I felt like breaking but didn’t actually know anything.
“Has anyone called Mamoo?” I asked.
Ami and Abu looked at each other. It was clear they’d already discussed this and had a difference of opinion.
Ami got up wearily from the table. “I think we should get some sleep. She’s not coming home.” Her voice was resigned, but I sensed something underneath it. Not helplessness, not anger, not fear. Something like resolve.
When I woke up late in the morning, Ami and Abu were already up, sitting at the kitchen table, hunched over their mugs.
I had long ago missed the bus to school, but neither commented on it.
Abu’s leg shook rhythmically. Ami was openly making strange little sounds with no attempt to silence them or cover them under the guise of clearing her throat.
It’s amazing what people can get used to in short order.
He asked me to join them. I pulled out the same chair Asma had sat in for one of her rishtha conversations and sat down timidly.
“We are scared. We are scared that something bad has happened to your sister and you’re the only one who might have information. Wait.” Abu put up his hand to stop me before I could say anything. “You’re the only one that might be able to help. That might keep her safe.”
I was bleary and had barely slept, waking every few minutes, listening, watchful for any change of temperature in the house.
I believe they were worried about Asma. Any parent would be.
It was only normal. But at the time, I was so relieved, so happy that they were worried about her, too, and not vengeful.
For once, we were on the same side, as though that proved something.
“I don’t know anything,” I said slowly. “Specifically. I mean.” I stopped again.
Abu and I locked gazes that didn’t break.
“Maybe she went to visit her friend. She wanted to visit Chicago, right?” I figured it was okay to refer to something that we all knew.
I tried to hew close to what was fact and already known.
The silence extended. Abu tilted his head toward me, like he was waiting for more.
I write the above, making it sound like Abu forced me to say something, but he didn’t. It was my own discomfort with silence and ambiguity. It was my own weakness for my parents. It was my own fear of displeasing others.
It was then, I suppose, that I said the words that would change the course of my life. “I think her name is Ruby.”
“Ruby?” Ami asked.
“Yeah,” I whispered.
Ami and Abu shared a glance.
“Who is this Ruby? Do they know each other from school?” Abu asked, his voice was quiet and calm.
“I mean, Asma met her at school, but she’s not a student.” I thought about Asma’s bony back pressed against my cheek and hearing Ruby’s voice reverberate through her, like she was an amplifier.
Abu did the staring thing again. Why interfere when I was saying so much? I couldn’t seem to stop myself. “I think.”
The kindling was placed in a little teepee with fresh dried grass piled under it. And I handed them the match.
“She was the director in her play.”
Abu stood up, gripping the back of his chair tightly. Ami asked in Urdu if she was Black. I nodded mutely.