Chapter 3 Salma #5
I laugh. “Neither. Happily so.” That’s just a line.
I have no idea if I’m happily single. But I have no opportunity to test this hypothesis.
What can I ask her that won’t get asked of me?
I must be careful. “Seriously, next time just order a bowl of ketchup. You said you grew up here. Is this where you immigrated to?”
“Yep. All those little kids whose parents are postdocs? I was one of those. Do you remember much about coming?”
I get fidgety talking about my childhood. It is too geographically proximate to the topic of family. “Not really, not much. You?”
“I started in middle school. Sadly, I remember every painful memory. I was already this height, weighed 110 pounds, and my hair was even more red. It was a rough transition. Why not?”
“Why not what?”
“Why aren’t you with someone? Do you date? You’re beautiful, Salma. Inside and out. You’re a real catch.”
Beautiful? Seriously? She never knew my sister.
“Come on. It’s getting late. I still need to prepare for class tomorrow.”
“I’m getting the bill. You ate nothing.”
“Marlene, please let me contribute.”
“No. Go. I’ll pay up and then head home.” She slides her credit card out of her wallet. “Did I tell you that Poppy wants to get her hair cut? I said no way. It’s too beautiful. And besides, she gets nothing else from her other mom. At least she can get this.”
I stand up abruptly. There are safe memories and not safe memories. How I slide from one to the other is never predictable or in my control. It is too late. I am already back in a car with my parents, driving back to Rosebud and hearing my father venting about Asma’s hair.
There was no competition between Asma and me about anything, but by God, I envied her hair.
Thick and swingy, it moved like rippling water.
For some reason lost to memory, Ami and I had gone to mosque for Friday prayer with Abu, a rarity for us to attend as a family for anything other than holidays.
The last time we had seen Asma, her hair had hung midback.
The girl at the mosque had hair like a rock star, spiky and disheveled.
After we left her, Asma getting smaller in the rear window, I sat in the back seat and watched the world race by me and listened to my father rant about Asma.
When we were young, Abu would take advantage of any time we were trapped together in the car to grill us on our surahs or math problems. By all accounts, Asma was smarter, faster, and cooler under pressure, so she would respond breezily to whatever test was being put to us.
I faltered. Unable to recount a prayer that I had blindly memorized or the nine-times table, I worked myself into a state of anxiety, stalling until Asma saved me.
As we got older, it was to lecture us on things we should always or never do.
Never be by yourself with a group of boys or men.
Always change your oil before thirty-three hundred miles.
Listen to your parents; they always know what’s best for you.
There were no discussions, no nuances, no gray areas, just a series of mandates.
The summer before Asma left for college, I realized that I would soon be living with my parents without Asma as a buffer.
My friend Krissy, who had for so long feared the idea of being alone with her parents, refused to have dinner with them after her brother moved out of the house.
I, who did not have the cultural luxury of being permitted to refuse my parents, girded myself for their unrelenting attention.
The effect of their sole focus was never more acute as when I was stuck in the car by myself with them.
Enclosed in the small space with no escape, I had to confront the things that were the hardest thing for me—their attention, their fear, their neediness—and the corresponding conflicted reaction in myself.
To do the thing that would make them proud or to do the thing I wanted.
What must the men in the mosque think of him? Asma had walked in without even covering her head. How was he raising his daughters? She had no sense of what was appropriate. She looked like one of those men in that music band that wore all that makeup and had that hair.
Even though I knew it was best to not engage, I couldn’t help it. “Kiss?”
His eyes kept flitting up to catch mine in the rearview mirror. “Don’t you think?”
“Not really, no. Maybe New Kids on the Block . . .” I muttered to myself.
“You won’t cut your hair, right?” he asked.
Before I could say anything, Ami interjected, “Of course she won’t.”
My halo of frizzy hair with zero style framing my too-round face stared back at me from the side mirror.
Secretly, every quality of Asma that Abu felt affronted by, I celebrated.
The less affirmation I gave him, the more heated he became.
The more heated he got, the more I forgave Asma for not telling me about her hair in advance.
In our life, information was a currency of favor, and even though I was still bothered by her telling me only at the same time she told our parents, I refused to empathize with him.
And then, because it happened so frequently, the discussion slipped to his favorite complaint.
How was it possible that everything was so expensive in America?
How could anyone get ahead? Did Ami know that Mamoo was paying certain expenses for Asma?
How could she have let that happen? Why didn’t she tell him?
Somehow all upsets led to this same argument.
Although argument makes it sound like someone was arguing with him.
Maybe he should go back to the job at the doctor’s office, as though it was a career path he had just stepped off for a temporary pause and not a job he had held for only a few weeks.
The money would be more steady, and then they could pay for college.
If Asma was more dependent on them, they would hold more sway over her actions.
If only he made more money. If only this country permitted people to make a livable wage.
His thoughts, like water, ran into the same ditch.
Later that night, after we returned home from the mosque, I called Asma twice in quick succession from the wall-mounted phone in the basement and hung up each time after one ring. It was our code for her to call me back so the long-distance charges wouldn’t show up on our parents’ phone bill.
More than her hair had changed in the brief period of time we’d been separated, and I was still adjusting to the absence of her presence.
I weighed what I would say to her about my parents’ reaction.
I didn’t want to mar our limited time with complaints or being a nag.
We so rarely disagreed that when we did, it felt uncomfortable and against nature.
I found it hard to be truthful with her.
I am a peacekeeper and naturally conflict averse.
But even more than that, Asma and I, through some unspoken understanding, handled each other with care.
Our family culture was steeped in survival, an upbringing premised on “no time for feelings.” Or at least that was our parents’ mindset.
Asma’s and my relationship was a reprieve. With each other, we tried to be gentle.
The phone rang, and I snatched it up halfway through its first ring.
Before I could say anything, Asma said, “You still mad at me?”
I considered engaging in our old game of I Told You So.
There were countless examples of Asma pushing the edge—even though I counseled her otherwise—and then getting in trouble.
I have spent my life feeling like there was some essential experience that was foreclosed to me.
Something that wasn’t available. But Asma didn’t see that.
This world was for her, and she was of this world. She would be denied nothing.
“Eh. After listening to Abu rail on you for an hour, I guess I’m fine.
” The truth was that I would have caused myself more pain if it could have saved Asma the same.
I would rather have been uncomfortable by keeping my opinions to myself than to make her feel judged.
Finally, because I meant it and I knew she was waiting for my opinion, I said, “It does look amazing.”
She squealed in my ear. She had that haircut for only a short time, but when I think of her, I see her absently rubbing her fingers along the short, smooth edges on the back of her head.
“Seriously, did he yell at you? I’m sorry, baba.”
“It was fine. Same as always.” It reminded me of when she had gotten her ears pierced at thirteen without permission and I’d been permanently forbidden from ever getting my ears pierced.
I don’t know that I had any desire to get my hair cut short.
But that option was now off the table. “I don’t know what you’re doing. ”
Asma took a drink. I could tell it was water because of the sound.
She drank water heartily, with deep, long gulps, like a lumberjack in the woods after a long day of cutting down trees.
If she was home, to make me laugh and to carry forward an old joke from when we studied Paul Bunyan, she would have drunk the water while standing, legs astride, one hand on her hip, and after finishing, wipe her upper lip with the back of her hand.
I went on, “You’re basically out. Just do your thing.” I slid down the wood-paneled wall between our bedrooms. The long phone cord settled heavily into a snake coil next to me.
“I told you I was going to try out for the play. They need to accept me for who I am. I figured if I came to the mosque, it might help. You know, if I met them on their turf, blah blah blah.”
“You want them to accept you for who you are, or you just wanted to push their buttons?” I asked.
After a long pause, she said, “Maybe both?”