Chapter 4 Asma #2
Asma saw how carefully her mother watched the mouth of the man as he spoke.
She had learned English as a child in Pakistan and was comfortably fluent in written English.
But Asma knew, she didn’t yet trust herself in understanding the spoken word.
She turned to the interior of the house and called for her father in Urdu.
The two men looked at each other with a look of confusion.
“She’s gone to get our dad,” Asma said.
Sam turned to Asma and said, “So you folks do speak English?”
“We’re from Pakistan, which was a former British colony, so yes, we speak perfect English,” Asma said, with a hand on one hip and an arch tone, repeating a line she had once heard Mamoo tell about one of his American patients.
Sam looked incredulous. He bowed low to Asma. His hair looked like a turned-over flower, like the character from Fat Albert. Immediately, Asma knew he could be trusted.
Her father came to the door wearing his house salvar kameez. “Hello. How can I help?”
Sam reintroduced himself and explained again why they were at their house. “So where do you want us to put the furniture?”
Through the screen door, he asked the girls in Punjabi, “Is he telling us that this furniture is for us?”
They nodded.
“This isn’t ours. We didn’t buy.”
“They’re a present. Your friends at the flea market set aside some things for you and asked us to deliver them.”
He still looked like he wasn’t sure he was properly understanding and looked embarrassed.
“So can we bring these things in?” Sam asked when her father didn’t move. He glanced back as though he might ask Asma for help in translating again.
“It’s the end of the season, and sellers want to get rid of it,” Sam said matter-of-factly.
Her father looked like he was in physical pain and didn’t know what to do.
“People don’t like to throw perfectly good things away. You’re helping them out by taking it.”
Caught between offense and gratitude, her father hid behind the physical labor of unloading our new belongings: a bookshelf and couch for the living room, the long-coveted wagon wheel beds, a dining room table without chairs, a box of mismatched silverware and dishware. And a chair with green nubby fabric.
Maybe because the items were so unexpected and offered without a call for help, they felt sacred, almost holy. Through that one act of kindness, they had felt like they were a part of the community, and their house started feeling like a home.
Asma mumbled, “I just didn’t know you were coming.”
“Right then! Mari jan, what are we doing tonight?” Mamoo asked Aunty.
It was always sweet and embarrassing to hear Mamoo call Aunty Priya “my soul.” It felt so intimate.
“Sadia, what sounds good to you for dinner?” Aunty asked. She was always especially solicitous of her mother.
Asma said, “We’re all going different places after dinner, and I’m not sure you’ll be comfortable returning here by yourself. In the city. Unfamiliar roads. At night. Dark. And then, there’s the house alarm . . .”
Asma told herself that she was actually helping her mother. In the spare room, there was a television and VCR with a library of Indian movies. She would never watch Indian movies at home because her father thought they were trashy and cheap. Watching them at Mamoo’s was her guilty pleasure.
“You know I’m hopeless with directions.” She laughed her self-conscious little laugh, a cross between seeking permission and affirmation. “I’m happy to stay here and eat peanut butter toast.”
Asma flopped down on the couch in the family room and sullenly listened to Salma and Aunty explain the same old vagaries of VCR players to her mother, even though she’d been shown how to do it a million times.
This is the way you put the tape in. The stop button and the pause button are the same.
This is how to rewind. Everybody knew that she’d remember none of the instructions and manage to watch only one movie after all.
She hated what her parents brought out in her.
Everything they did, in all their daily actions, if not their personalities, was for Salma and her.
That much was obvious. Her father reminded them all the time of the sacrifices he had made to come to this country, and in that way, there was an obligatory sense of gratitude.
Asma thought about what her life would have been like if she had been raised in Pakistan and shuddered.
Imagining herself as one of the women in the mosque with their bland, ordered lives was bad enough.
At the same time, there was also resentment.
The decision to come to the United States was wholly their own.
Why was she expected to pay back the cost of something that she hadn’t even chosen?
Her mother, especially, washed ashore a complex set of emotions.
Intellectually, Asma understood that her mother was doing her best. She looked up to her and Salma and, regardless of whether she was able to express it or not, was deeply proud and perhaps a touch envious that her daughters operated in this culture in a way that she would never be able to.
On the other hand, Asma couldn’t help but be disgusted that her mother had done nothing with her life.
Asma knew that wasn’t entirely fair, but the feeling was still there.
Every part of her that believed in female empowerment wanted to believe in her mother.
But she was so mousy. She couldn’t ever assert an opinion, let alone stand up against her father when he called her a “stupid woman.” It made her crazy, until some days all she could express or even feel toward her mother was disdain.
And then, as happened when she thought about her mother without having to actually interact with her, Asma started feeling guilty.
For being impatient, for being a jerk, but also for her inability to fix her mother’s life—their lives.
Asma wanted their life to be easier, not so precarious and uncertain, dependent on tips from strangers and subject to the daily indignities that came with shift work.
A few years after they had come to America, she had woken in the middle of the night.
Her Cabbage Patch alarm clock read 2:20.
She realized the clattering and fearful voices were coming from upstairs and not a dream.
She crept to the landing, and above her in the thick dark, she could see her father lying on the love seat, his long leg dangling over the arm.
Her mother stood over him, her hands clasped over her mouth, trying to keep in whatever threatened to leap out.
Her father patted her leg to comfort her or quiet her.
Even in her heightened state, Asma noticed that touch, so rare.
Her mother went to the bathroom. The squeaky door of the medicine cabinet opened and closed. Through her loud snuffling, she said in Urdu, “Tell me what happened. Who would do this?”
The acrid scent of peroxide pierced the air.
Her father’s voice sounded muffled, like he had something in his mouth.
In a mix of Punjabi and English, he said, “Dispatcher sent me to a bar. These people, when they drink . . .” His voice gave way, and he stopped to take a slurp of water.
“Four men. I get out to move my things to the trunk and they pushed me and then . . . ‘camel jockey’ . . . ” His voice trailed off.
“What is ‘camel jockey’?” her mother whispered.
The silence that followed was somehow more ominous than what had been recounted. She felt her mother’s terror and helplessness, as though those men were about to push their way into their house.
“Should you go to the hospital?” her mother asked through her tears.
“No. No money.”
“Should I call Javed? The police?”
“No. No. I’ll be fine in the morning.”
But when Asma saw him emerge from the bedroom two mornings later, he didn’t look fine. His nose was swollen and out of alignment, both eyes were black and blue, and he had a long, deep gash on his left cheekbone where the skin barely connected, the red tissue beneath peering out angrily.
For a week her father hadn’t gone to work.
Back then, they still said their namaz together on nights when he was home from work.
He struggled to bend, so Salma and Asma brought him a chair to sit on to say his prayers.
Instead of leaning down to touch their knees and then prostrate themselves on the ground to place their forehead on the floor, only their upper body moved, hands to ears, hands crossed over their midsection, head to the right and head to the left.
Or, in her father’s case, his right hand to his right ear; his left arm stayed tucked protectively against his body.
During that week, though it was unsaid, Asma understood she needed to stay home, to stand guard, to be there in case they needed her.
She and Salma didn’t play outside on their swing set.
They didn’t go to the park across the street to watch the older kids play basketball or read a book in the bleachers or lie in the tall meadow grass to watch the birds build nests in the adjacent oak tree.
Taking care of her family was part of her responsibility.
For a long time, she carried the image of her father’s discolored face and her mother’s terrified voice.
It made Asma want to be the person her parents wanted her to be, to live up to their hopes and expectations, so at least that part of their life was not a disappointment.
And for a long time, she wanted to be the person that justified their sacrifices.
After dinner and rehearsal, Asma and Salma returned to Asma’s dorm.
“Where’d you get all this stuff?” Salma asked, letting the sheer curtains ripple delicately through her hands.