Chapter 21 Salma #3
Abu went back to work that night. Ami never left my side, as though I, too, might disappear.
I wanted to scream and yell that she was gone because of them.
They had caused it. They were so busy with their stupid efforts to convert her into someone more palatable, more manageable for them to accept, that they had chased her away.
I walked in circles. Without a car, without access, I was trapped.
And for the first time in my life, I finally understood how Asma felt in this house.
I wanted to hurl myself at the door, claw at the windows to get out, break down a wall.
I knew I never wanted Asma to come back here.
I would meet her wherever she was, but she should never, could never, come back here.
Ami sorted through the pictures of the rishthas with her little grunts and groans.
“Aren’t you worried?” I asked, trying to make a connection, any connection.
“I think she’s run away,” she said placidly and then gave a little giggle.
I wanted to slap her.
That night, I asked if we were going to call Mamoo. I wanted to hear his voice so badly. She said that she had. I found out later that she had not.
It felt like they were waiting. For something I didn’t understand.
As I was going to bed, I heard the phone ring.
How I longed for the phone to be back near my room so I could eavesdrop.
I was desperate for news about Asma. I felt like they knew something I didn’t and I was stranded on an island with no information, isolated and left to figure it out on my own.
I crept upstairs, avoiding the creaky stair, to see what I could hear.
At first, I thought Ami had already hung up the phone, until I heard her say, “And?” with such a rush and intensity, I knew it had to be news.
Then, there was a gasp. “What? What do you mean?” I risked a peek above the riser and saw her bracing herself against the kitchen wall with one hand.
She kept muttering, “Hiyallah. Hiyallah. Alla mafee they tho” over and over. God give me strength.
Was there bad news? Was Asma hurt? But in that repeated phrase, which Ami used when she was most frustrated at life, I sensed that Asma was victorious and Ami was registering her discontent.
Then came the days, one or two, that connected the before with the after.
We stopped talking about Asma and where she might be.
I believed I would see her again, but maybe not till I graduated and was out of my parents’ control.
It felt like a pause, a temporary reprieve, my reunion with Asma inevitable.
Asma’s grades came in the mail. She received all A’s and a B- in chemistry.
Once, the phone rang. Only one ring. Maybe it was a wrong number.
But I knew it was Asma letting me know she was out there.
Ami stopped going to work and never left the house.
How did she act during those days? I don’t remember.
I was in world history. It was spitting some combination of ice and rain outside.
Mrs. Schoen asked Jennifer Lister to please read out loud the note that she had just been passed by Scott Trundle.
Jennifer was bright red in the face and kept clearing her throat.
Mrs. Landing, the principal, walked into the class without knocking or waiting for permission.
For a moment, it appeared that she was there to hear the note read out loud.
But no. She motioned for me to follow her.
I looked around to see who she was talking to.
She said, “Bring your things, Salma.”
Never before had I been called to the principal’s office. Everyone turned to look at me.
Then, a bunch of things happened. I remember thinking that notwithstanding Mrs. Landing’s middle-aged softness, I could see her as one of those weightlifters from Romania.
I remember the police officer in her office who looked at a spot just to the right of my head.
I remember a woman with frizzy hair and a too-brightly-colored scarf wrapped around her head.
I remember the left eye of the scarf lady twitched.
“Who’s your closest family member here?” she asked.
“I need to get back to class.”
“Salma, can you please tell me the name of your closest family member?”
“My parents. Why?”
Her forehead broke out in sweat. “Who else?”
“What’s going on?”
“Can you please tell me?”
“My sister, Asma. She’s at college.”
The woman swallowed noisily. Mrs. Landing walked to the garbage can in the corner and threw up.
“Other than her, Salma. Who else?”
“What do you mean ‘here’? In America?”
“Yes.”
“My Uncle Javed and Aunt Priya.”
“What’s their last name?”
I told them.
Someone left the room.
The woman took my hand in hers and said, “I’m sorry, Salma, to have to be the one to tell you this. But there’s been an accident. We want to get you with your family.”
“What kind of accident? Where are my parents? Has something happened to them? Does Asma know?”
Mrs. Landing and the scarf lady looked at each other for a long time. Finally, she said in a raspy voice, “Salma. Your sister is dead.”
Light refracted and broke apart, and the cinder block walls swayed. The release bell sounded from a light-year away. I said something like, “No. She left because she needed to get away from my parents for a while.” I looked at each adult in the eye, defiant.
I remember sitting in that office with the smell of vomit permeating the air.
I remember asking where my parents were and the response being that they were taking me to Mamoo.
I remember sitting in the back seat of a car with Mrs. Landing for what felt like a cross-country drive.
I remember the bloodless, pink-ringed knuckles of the police officer who drove us to the hospital.
At the emergency-vehicle spot at the hospital, the officer parked next to a life-size Santa.
“Jingle Bells” played on the outside speaker.
Mrs. Landing opened my door from the outside as though she were a valet and I, a famous actress.
I didn’t move. Two EMTs wheeled out an empty gurney with mussed-up sheets.
Mrs. Landing took my hand and tugged at me to come out of the car.
The sliding doors whooshed open gently. Misty rain came down smelling of ammonia.
We walked down a long hallway to a repurposed utility room, a mop and cleaning materials still in the corner.
I remember that an old, gray, shrunken man walked up to me. Maybe once he used to have twinkly, playful eyes.
“Mamoo?” I looked to Aunty for help. She sat quietly in the corner, head against the wall like it had fallen there and she now didn’t have the strength to move.
He said to the woman, “We need to be alone right now.” He took my hands. “Salamander, I’m going to tell you everything because you’re going to find out anyway. But this is going to be hard, darling, okay?”
He needed a tissue. His nose was dripping, and he couldn’t even tell.
“They’re saying Asma’s dead.”
“Yes, she’s gone.”
“Do Ami and Abu know yet?” All I could think about was the last time Abu and Asma talked and how he was going to regret that fight forever.
“Your parents know. They were there.” He watched me like I was supposed to understand that thing that remained unsaid.
I stared at him.
“Salma. Your parents left Rosebud this morning after you left for school and went to Asma’s dorm.”
I waited.
He gulped.
“They killed her.”
And in that horror of a moment, I felt two things. The most tender parts of my inside wither and die and the uncontrollable urge to call the person to whom I told everything, because nothing ever made sense until I spoke to her.