Chapter 3 #2
Nicole sniffs loudly before covering her face with her hands. Hayley immediately puts her arm around her, drawing her close.
“It’s okay,” she whispers to Nicole. “It’s all right.”
I can’t look at anyone, and I don’t understand what’s happening, so I stare at a point on the table, letting my limited peripheral vision take in my surroundings.
“Her uncle died in Afghanistan,” Hayley says, and I know she’s talking to me. “From an IED that jihadists made.”
“Oh my God, Nic, I forgot,” Alexis says, horrified, her hands flying to her mouth. “I’m so sorry.”
Jenny comes behind Nicole, wrapping her arms around her shoulders. She stares at me, her expression half glaring as if his death is my fault.
I’m sure they think it is, with my name being what it is.
“May he rest in peace,” Jamie says quietly.
“Thank you, Jamie.” Nicole dabs the corner of her eyes. “It means a lot.”
They all stare at me then, waiting for me to speak.
My heart hurts where it beats against my ribs. It’s the same pain I had when I was five and wandered to a new aisle in the grocery store, searching for chips, but when I looked up, I couldn’t find Mama. It’s the pain that fear brings.
“Sorry about your uncle,” I finally say, my voice rough.
Nicole just sniffs and steers her gaze away from me.
“I don’t know. I think you should just stick to Ji.” Hayley crosses her arms.
“That’s not her name,” Jamie intervenes. “It’s not your call.”
Hayley shrugs, unperturbed. “Nobody is called Hitler now.”
Except Jihad isn’t like that, I want to say.
It’s an Arabic word, I want to say. It has nothing to do with terrorism, I want to say.
So many words from my language have been co-opted out of their beautiful, resonant meanings and made to be weapons of fear.
We never say Allahu Akbar in public, even though all it means is “God is great,” when Christians can praise God.
Intifada is uprising against oppression, when the French Revolution is a symbol of courage.
Our words, our meanings, my name, my meaning—all crushed under the boot of racism.
But I don’t say any of that.
My cheeks are hot, and there’s a hollowness in my stomach. I feel like an ant under a microscope, the sun’s rays shining through the lens until I burn.
They’re all staring at me, waiting for an explanation.
“I’m…” I croak out, my throat dry. “I’m sorry.”
It’s all I can say. I don’t know what I’m apologizing for.
I haven’t done anything wrong. But I think it’s what they want to hear.
My thoughts spread like a jellyfish’s tentacles further to the place I keep hidden in the dark.
Pressing my fingers to the edge my chair, I will the thoughts to calm down.
Jamie frowns, his jaw working before he gets up, grabbing his lunch, and walks away.
“Great, now you made Jamie leave,” Hayley says, disgruntled, and it snaps something in me.
“I didn’t make him do anything,” I say, voice hard.
“Okay, lay off, you guys,” Alexis says, her voice trembling a bit.
I look up at her, grateful, and she gives me a small nod.
“Jihad had nothing to do with your uncle, Nicole; you know that,” she continues. “She’s my childhood friend, and she’s been through enough.”
Hayley’s expression turns from stony to confused before it clears up a fraction.
“Wait.” Nicole blinks at me. “You lost your mom, right?”
I nearly break my fingers from how hard I’m holding on to the chair.
“I don’t want to talk about it.” My voice comes out cold.
Jenny flinches at my tone, and they all stare at me again.
But I don’t say anything else. I pick up my spoon and shove my food around in the Tupperware.
After a beat of silence, Alexis brings up the new Chanel store that recently got remodeled in SoHo. This sparks a new conversation, and I feel as if I’m studying a language everyone knows but me.
Alexis had told me a bit about her friends, but my memory betrays me sometimes. Especially after Mama’s death. Besides, I’m more of a visual learner. Learning through splatters of paint and charcoal drawings. I draw and paint to remember.
The colors paint a story of who a person is.
I can imagine Nicole’s colors as raven black contrasted against a stark white.
Rigid colors, standing in a perfect line.
Hayley’s feel like ash brown and porpoise purple, swishing together to create a muted shade, but there’s nothing warm about it.
Jenny’s colors would be a splash of tie-dye—loud pinks and yellows and greens swirling together.
I’m the odd one out. My colors are bleached. They’re a whirlwind of gray when once they were the deepest blue.
They discuss a summer solstice party they attended that, according to Jenny, was at Eric Cabot’s home upstate. Everyone came dressed as Greek gods and goddesses.
“That was a wild night.” Jenny giggles. “We got lost in the woods for hours.”
“And it was so peaceful. Walking under a full moon in that dress.” Alexis sighs. “I channeled my inner Aphrodite.”
“Oh, you channeled her all right.” Nicole winks, all traces of her earlier grievance vanished. I wonder if that will ever be me. A future where the pain glides off my skin like water. “I’m sure Homer wrote a poem about Aphrodite going to town with a guy in Eric Cabot’s parents’ bedroom.”
“Stop!” Alexis shrieks, covering her face with her hands and sliding down her chair.
Jenny laughs.
“It was just that one time.” Alexis peeks through her fingers.
“And the time after that in his car and the time after on your dad’s birthday,” Hayley says. “Look, he’s even staring at you right now.”
All of them turn around in their seats, and I peek at whom they’re looking at. A tall boy with floppy hair is grinning at Alexis. He sits between his friends, who shove his shoulder jokingly. He looks exactly like the kind of person I imagined Alexis would like.
She never told me about him. I asked her if she was seeing someone, and she said she wasn’t.
The loneliness is a slap in my face, waking me up.
While Alexis is my only friend, I am one of many.
There are moments in her life she hasn’t shared with me, because I wasn’t there.
I’m her friend out of nostalgia. I wonder if I’d met her for the first time today if she would have taken my hand like she did in kindergarten.
I know the answer, but I don’t want to think about it.
I can’t even be upset.
Alexis stopped coming over as much when her family moved to their new house. She visited three times over the years. Eventually, I stopped inviting her.
I don’t know when I started realizing how different our lives were. Her home was brand-new and straight out of an interior design magazine. Mine was filled with old furniture Mama brought over from Syria when she first got married.
I wanted to be someone she liked. Someone she kept.
Someone her mother wouldn’t mind her being friends with, even if my name is Jihad.
To do that, I kept things hidden. I don’t pray in front of her and don’t speak in Arabic when she’s around.
I don’t tell her when it’s Ramadan unless she asks. There are parts of me I hide.
And even knowing this, knowing my best friend and I exist in fractions in this friendship, it’s the only thing I’ve got.
Because it doesn’t matter if I don’t know about the floppy-haired boy and she doesn’t know how deep my depression goes.
She’s the only friend who stayed. The one who believes in the blessing.