Chapter 5 Salma #4
I got out of the car. I wanted to say yes. I wanted to give her the affirmation she so clearly wanted. Abu stood next to me, and I could feel his agitation. Unable to be the person I needed to be for my sister and unwilling to distract my father by drawing his ire, I just stood there like a stump.
“What was that?” Abu’s mouth barely moved.
Asma stopped abruptly. Every pore in my body dilated, waiting for something. It felt dangerous.
“It was the play.” High from the thrill of the performance, she smiled brightly and looked around, waiting for a word of praise or connection.
Her expression held no guile or rebellion.
Perhaps it was the vulnerability that came from performing or the buoyant mood of the cast and supporters in the lobby, or maybe, for a moment, she forgot who our family actually was.
The bouquet of flowers in my hands felt heavier by the second.
“Where did we go wrong with you?”
The hopefulness and light slid off Asma’s face, and the bitter knowledge of who she was, who he was, the limitations of who we all were, hardened her features. “I love performing. Why can’t you understand that? Why does everything always have to come back to you?”
“What are you teaching your sister?”
Asma barely glanced at me and said clearly, “Me doing this performance has nothing to do with Salma. Other than I hope she can find what she loves to do.”
His head craned toward her like a street thug picking a fight. He was trying to incite a fight or a defense. “How do you not know who you are?”
There it was again. That question. As much as a question for himself as it was for Asma. I think Asma always knew who she was. It was just the rest of us who didn’t understand.
Asma stood rigid, fists at her side, shaking. “I live in this world, too, and sometimes I get to do what I want.”
He stepped toward her. “That’s what you want? To do that? In front of . . . all those people?” His voice quiet and loud at the same time. What kind of a person sees their child shrinking inward and smells blood in the water? Is impelled to attack even more aggressively?
Asma stepped back one foot and then caught herself. “It was just a play.”
“I told you to not do it. Why do I say things and you not listen?” He breathed hard through his nose, trying to regain control.
All around us, people were leaving the theater.
Dots of red, brake lights blinked on and off.
Cars slowly trickled out of the parking lot, the smell of exhaust fumes mingled with the lonesome smell of autumn and roses.
We stood in that pool of darkness, caught in the light cast between two lampposts.
Caught between cultures. Caught between the before and the after.
“Not everything has to do with you,” she said.
“All the people . . . boys and girls switching with each other . . . it was . . . filthy.” He started and stopped, struggling to find the words that could express the full range of his emotions. He looked around as though questioning how he had gotten there. “You bring shame down on our heads.”
Ami looked at Abu and then turned to Asma. “Everybody is talking about it.”
We all turned to Ami, confused.
Instead of asking her what she was talking about, Abu said, “This is because of you. You allowed this.”
Asma shook her head in disbelief and shook off her defensive posture. She spoke slowly, enunciating every word. “This is not Ami’s fault. There is nothing wrong with me.”
Sound travels faster than the mind’s ability to process.
One moment, Asma was braced for an argument, and the next there was the curiously flat, thudding sound of impact on soft tissue, followed by the sound of a quickly deflating balloon.
Like a black hole, it sucked in all the surrounding sound from cars, hustle, and people.
Time stopped, and just like that, we slipped into some other place.
I thought I had understood the fault lines.
I thought that we were living in a new world.
I learned that night that my father had never left the old one.
Ami screamed.
Abu’s left hand fell away from Asma’s shoulder, and his right fist unclenched and fell to its rightful spot at his side.
He looked confused, glancing down at his hands as though they were someone else’s.
Muted, delayed sounds returned as if from a long distance.
A car honked. A light flickered. The face of a little boy, mouth in an O, peered out from a passing car. The roses fell from my arms in a heap.
“Asma.” I swiveled to see if anyone else had seen.
Asma gripped her stomach, her eyes as shocked as the child in the passing car.
She pulled herself up shakily. She appeared old and frail, the darkness seeding shadows under her eyes and in the hollows of her cheeks.
She staggered back one step and looked at me blankly, like she didn’t know who I was.
Abu reached out, his arm suspended in the halfway space, as though he was going to pull her to him, but Asma had already pivoted and started back toward the building.
We sat in the car for a long time. I shook uncontrollably.
Ami kept clearing her throat like she had something to say, her hand moving back and forth from eyebrow to hairline.
Abu sat, unmoving. Later, a long time after the parking lot was deserted, we tentatively pulled out, Abu’s hands at ten and two on the steering wheel.
The drive home was pitch-dark, as if all the lights and stars had been extinguished and littered with each of our regrets.
For Abu, it was everyone else’s fault. Mamoo’s, for promoting ideas like getting involved in the theater.
Aunty’s, for marrying Mamoo. Ami’s, because wasn’t it her entire job to raise obedient children?
Asma’s lack of judgment and disrespectfulness could be traced in a direct line to Ami’s permissiveness.
Ami needed to get Asma under control. They should have brought Asma home with them.
Mine, because I should have known what Asma was up to and, presumably, told them.
I should have stayed with Asma that night and refused to go home.
That would have set a boundary and taught them a lesson.
From this vantage point, when the consequences of my complicity are so easy to see, it sounds like an excuse.
But back then, in that long, dark drive home, I still thought I could middle-road my way to family peace.
What does a rule follower do? She follows the rules.
It never occurred to me that I could rebel, that I could act like Asma and overwhelm their defenses, normalize Asma’s actions.
Would the end result have been different if I had challenged the facade that I was the good one?
Would it have been enough to change the trajectory?
I don’t know what was going through Ami’s mind, only that she eagerly nodded along in rhythm with Abu’s complaints, trying to get back in his good graces.
Periodically, she interjected with “Bilkool.” Exactly.
More and more she reminded me of a child seeking the approval from a parent, saying anything to win a favor or a soft look.
“We should have brought her back home with us,” Ami said.
“She has school tomorrow,” I muttered.
Ami turned her head to look at me in the back seat.
Her eyes had no discernible pupils. The only light for miles around, from an oncoming car, reflected off her black, flat orbs.
She hissed, “It’s not her choice.” And then, as though speaking to herself, she said, “Something has to be done. Otherwise they’re going to just keep talking about it. ”
Early the morning after Pippin, I woke up to the phone ringing over and over, stopping, and then starting all over again.
I heard Ami yelling and stumbled upstairs, still disoriented from a restless sleep and in fear for Asma.
“Salaam aleikum. Musharraf! Musharraf!”
In the twelve years we had lived in America, not once had we received a call from Pakistan. It was a time of firsts.
Abu held his salvar up with one hand and took the phone from Ami.
In the harsh overhead light, his pale skin appeared thinner, almost translucent.
I could only hear one side of the conversation, Abu’s Punjabi delivered rapid and brisk.
But it was enough for me to understand that Abu’s father, my Dadaji, was dying, and it was his final wish to see his only son once more.
Abu sat down in his chair, his head in his hands.
“Maybe Javed can help,” Ami said, her hand subconsciously traveling to her eyebrow.
“Your brother already has too many opinions. He doesn’t need anything else over us.” Instead of sounding nasty like he had the night before, he just sounded tired.
The rest of the day was surreal. We all steered wide paths around each other.
It felt like everything was distorted, like we were underwater.
I found myself questioning whether the occurrences of the prior night had really happened.
And then the full, resonant sound of Asma’s oof hit me.
We had returned home from the play different people than the ones who left.
The rules by which we lived—built for another time and place—had immutably changed.
At lunch, Ami said, “Javed said the tickets would be no problem.”
The clock on the broken stove ticked.
“I told you not to ask him.”
She stood at the opposite end of the table, out of his reach. “You need to see your father.” Her voice verged on being whiny. “I knew you wouldn’t ask, so I did. This is important.”
“I don’t need his help. Why do I bother telling you what to do when you don’t do it anyway?”
“It doesn’t matter how many extra shifts we work. Your father may not last long enough.”
I watched incredulously. Ami arguing with Abu was a rare sight. I felt the urge to call Asma.
Almost conversationally, Abu asked, “What do you mean ‘tickets’? You don’t need to go back. You don’t even have any family.”