Chapter 11
Spun Gold
We need to talk,” Alexis says, catching me at the end of the day.
She takes my arm, dragging me to a corner of the hallway as the other students rush by, calling out goodbyes to one another.
“What?”
“Are you okay?” she asks, mouth pressed into a thin line. “I just…I didn’t think it would be this awful for you.”
I nod, rubbing my shoulders. “I wish I could say I’m surprised.”
She frowns. “Why?”
I raise my eyebrows. “Come on, Alexis. This whole place isn’t made for someone like me. And your friends and boyfriend aren’t letting me forget that.”
She blushes, her eyes cast away, looking guilty. “I know what they’re doing, but they don’t mean any harm in it.”
I bite my tongue and say, “Did you tell Mason my family is struggling?”
Her eyes go wide. “What? No! Why would I say that?”
A knot forms in my chest. “I don’t know. He said—”
She exhales loudly. “I told him we’re childhood friends. That’s it. I have no idea where he got that from.”
She sounds sincere, and I believe her over anything Mason says. “Okay.”
Relief breaks over her expression. “I think the girls are just weirded out a bit because they’ve been trying to be nice, but you keep distancing yourself.”
My jaw feels heavy. “How?”
“Well, things would have been a lot easier if you let Nicole be Jamie’s partner.”
“But it wouldn’t be, Lexi.” I dig my fingers into my palm to steady myself. “If I were in the group with you and Hayley and Jenny, I’d be ignored. My texts wouldn’t be answered. I’m pretty sure they’d make another group with just you three. I’d be made fun of. Just like I am right now.”
Her face becomes a gray shade darker. “No, they wouldn’t. You’re just assuming.”
“I wish I were.”
“Look, the jokes go a bit too far, but you’re not helping your case either. You don’t smile. You don’t try to talk to them. You just sit in your chair and scowl. And look, I get it. I know you’re still traumatized with what happened to your mom but—”
“Stop,” I interrupt, nausea rising in my throat. I won’t discuss what happened to Mama in this hallway. “Don’t.”
“Fine,” she snaps. “I didn’t shut up talking about you to the girls.
They were actually excited to meet you. And yes, they knew you’re a Muslim and a hijabi.
They knew all of that. It wasn’t a surprise for them.
This is New York, not freaking Alabama! You’re the one who’s trying to find a problem with everything. ”
My grief is tangible. I can extract it from my heart and body and hold it in my hands. “No, you’re right, Lexi. It’s not their fault. It’s mine. Does that make you feel better?”
She scrunches her nose, and I know she’s holding herself back from crying. “That’s great. Shut down like you always do. Sometimes you’re impossible to be friends with.”
And with that she leaves. I stand in the corner, her last sentence playing like a loop in my brain.
A random loud laugh jars me back to life. The hallways have slowly started emptying. I move to leave, but then I remember I need my physics textbook. I borrowed it from the library rather than shelling out over a hundred dollars to buy a copy. I’m marking the pages I need to photocopy.
When I reach my locker, I’m the only one in the hallway. As I fiddle with the lock, a sense of dread fills me. Like I can see my future, but I’m not sure what it is. I look over my shoulder hastily and shove my hand in, grabbing wildly at the textbook.
I sense it happening before it does. A heavy hand grips my shoulder, and I twist around, a second too late. My back sharply bangs against the locker.
It’s not Mason, but one of his friends.
“You okay?” the mismatched blob says. His face sharpens and wavers, the shadows engulfing his face. His hand is still on my shoulder, the heat from it burning me.
“Fine,” I say, trying to sidestep, and his hand slips somewhere it shouldn’t, grazes my chest, and I hit my head against the locker trying to get away. Blood…blood…
“Holy shit, okay!” He holds up his hands in surrender. “That sounded brutal. Just wanted to introduce myself properly.”
His hand slipped. He didn’t touch anything.
This boy I’ve never spoken a word to.
“I’m Adrian,” he says. “I know your name, so I thought it was only fair you learned mine.”
I press myself firmly against the locker, the lock digging into my back, but I don’t mind. I need to feel myself on land and not falling down something bottomless.
He gives me a curious look before walking away.
At home, I stand in front of my parents’ room. Baba is still at the gas station, and my ears are still ringing from what happened by the locker. In this moment, I want Mama more than ever. Slowly, I open the door and step in.
Mama’s side of the bed is untouched, just like the last day she made it.
Baba sleeps on his side, unable to move like there’s a barrier preventing him.
Everything in the room still has her touch, and I allowed myself to go through her things only once after her funeral.
I made it as far as her hijabs and the messily drawn doodles on a notebook before I broke down.
She would draw little comic strips. Stories that didn’t make sense sometimes but did for her.
A rabbit looking for a carrot, and the carrot ends up on a spaceship without the rabbit in it.
They always made me wonder and imagine the world through her eyes.
But this time, I find comfort in the ghostly remains in this room.
The assortment of lipsticks, the blushes, the mascara bottles all neatly placed beside one another.
I sit at her vanity, the edges of the oval mirror in front of me covered with fake ivy intertwining between the gaps of the Syrian arabesque frame.
She even had little lights put on either side to create a soft glow.
I turn them on, marveling at the way it creates a certain feel in the room.
This vanity and mirror were part of her bridal gifts, shipped all the way from Arwad.
The wood is Syrian, she said brushing the top. It’s a part of home here. We had a brilliant carpenter in the village, and my aunt commissioned it from him.
I’ve always thought it was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
She’d put me and Amal side by side when we were kids. We’d smear lipstick outside the lines of our lips and apply too much rouge to our cheeks.
There are blessings in this vanity, girls, she said, watching our reflections with a secret smile. There were tired lines on her face, but her eyes twinkled like all the stars in the sky. You’ll always find them here because it’s home. That’s what my aunt said.
Mama, there is no such thing as magic, Amal said, frowning.
Not in the way you’re thinking, was all Mama said, but I held on to those words. To the stories she told us about her family. When I drew and painted, it was a blessing, making things that weren’t there appear. Making the colors dance.
I balance my elbows on the vanity, pulling my legs up and accidentally hitting the bottom only to hear an echo.
Blinking, I knock where I bumped and realize it’s a false drawer.
I didn’t even know it had that. Mama never said anything.
I slide to my knees and find a crescent carved into the center of the wood, but there are no handles to pull the drawer out.
So I stick my pinkie into the crescent, barely managing to wiggle in past my nail.
It’s stuck, but I know I can make it budge, so I strain and pull until a dent appears around my pinkie.
Finally, it gives, nearly clattering to the floor.
I scramble up and find one thing inside.
A notebook.
No, a sketchbook.
I pick it up, feeling its heaviness. The pages are empty, as fresh as if it’s been newly bought.
I flip back to the first page, and tears prick my eyes.
In someone’s unfamiliar Arabic handwriting—
All your wild imaginations, draw them here.
She gives you her dying blessing.
I stare at the words, reading them over and over again.
Her blessing?
My mind whirs with a thousand and one thoughts, all scrambling to find the right frequency to be heard.
Mama got this vanity as a gift from her aunt. The one she told us could talk to the trees.
My breath hitches, and tears form in the corners of my eyes.
This must be one of the trees she knew. I run my hand over the vanity, and a quiet thrum of life vibrates from it.
This Syrian tree that lived and died in Tartus now giving me something beyond her death.
My great-aunt’s blessing surviving after all these years.
She must have hoped Mama would find the false drawer. A surprise for her in New York. But Mama and her aunt passed away before this blessing could ease the hardship in Mama’s life. I wonder how my great-aunt knew this tree. What made the tree fall ill and have one last dying wish.
The stories of my family are lost to memory and time. All we have are the stories Mama told us. Our connection to where we come from is frayed and breaking and invisible.
I understand why it feels difficult for Baba to talk about it.
The homesickness is chronic, and there’s no cure.
It’s an eternal gray. But the result is that I don’t know much about where I come from.
I’m a mosaic of everyone who came before me, and yet, I don’t recognize who these eyes and nose and lips belong to.
But this sketchbook in my hand, this vanity, they’re real and tangible and a part of my heritage.
There are stories I can immortalize.
I push back the false drawer and rush to my room, shutting the door behind me and sinking to the floor.
My hands tremble a bit when I open the first page again. As I trace the letters, my mind calms, the white noise is gone, and my fingers itch with the promise of art. I see what I want to paint so clearly. I can feel the tree humming through the pages.
I crawl under my bed, pulling out the box I store my brushes and paint in. I haven’t touched them in a year; a thick layer of dust coats the top. I blow it away, opening the set. I still remember where each color sits.
The need to draw something soft, something innocent, is overwhelming.
This sketchbook was made for Mama, so something of Mama needs to be in it.
The empty page waits eagerly for me, and I can almost hear the tree murmuring encouragingly.
I want to start from the beginning. I’m so lost in what I’m doing I don’t even realize Baba is home.
He opens the door, sees me on the floor painting, tubes and brushes scattered around me, and pauses.
I stare up at him, and his eyes widen when he registers what I’m doing.
He clears his throat, opens his mouth to say something, and then reconsiders before shuffling out and closing the door.
I get back to work. I can’t see the colors, but I remember how they blend, can see them in my mind.
Merging the aquamarine blue with a white borrowed from a cloud on a winter day.
There are golden sunrays, wisps of seaweed green wrapped around the conch, pink cheeks on the little baby who’s smiling as she sleeps.
A rich, healthy brown covers the hands holding up the conch.
There is love in these hands, belonging, and home.
A tear slips from my cheek, splotching on the paper, blurring the edge of the conch.
It doesn’t feel like any time has passed at all, save for the ache in my wrist and the complete absence of light from my window.
I stand, massaging my neck and working out the kinks in it. A weight has fallen from my shoulders, and the familiarity of the feeling is striking. Like stumbling through a memory so rich and real—all the hours I spent in this room, painting everything that popped into my head.
Mama will love this, I think, reaching for the notebook. Halfway through I remember my reality.
My hand falls, and I stare at the drawing.
Right.
I don’t let myself think much when my stomach grumbles loudly. I glance at my phone and find that it’s nearly eleven p.m. I have six unread messages and one email notification.
Two are from Alexis, asking if I’ve done the chemistry homework. Four from Amal asking about me.
The email is from Jamie with today’s notes.
My stomach rumbles again, and I head to the kitchen to fix myself something to eat before I sleep. I didn’t study anything, didn’t do any of my homework, and I don’t care.
In the darkness, I eat my sandwich, staring at the wall in front of me. A light turns on from the neighboring building that illuminates the wall, and I see a dash of red.
I freeze midchew, my stomach tightening. But the color disappears just as suddenly, and I think I imagined it.