Chapter 8 Salma
Salma
One week to the day after curriculum night, my brain fog starts to lift.
I don’t feel weak and woozy after taking a shower.
Mamoo and I walk around the block. Food actually sounds good.
I can keep more than one thought in my head at the same time.
Dr. Greta has become my de facto doctor and been kind enough to do a house visit.
She thinks I can go back to school on Monday, provided that I have help in the room.
Marlene arrives at my door with flowers, a South African beef stew, and a bag of trashy celebrity magazines. I sent Mamoo to his house for a shower and a break, so we are alone.
She wraps me in her arms, and inches from my face with eyes that threaten to spill tears, she says, “I’ve been so worried, Salma.”
I forgot how closely she likes to talk. “How’s Poppy?” I ask.
“She misses you. It’s all I hear about. Mrs. Morris doesn’t do independent time the way you do. No one can manage Tommy the way you do. She has no one to hang out with at recess.”
“Mrs. Morris and Ms. Rhodes have their hands full. I’m just so relieved that they were able to step in.”
“Here. Poppy sent you a picture.”
Marlene reaches into a large bag that is well proportioned to her and takes out a rolled-up piece of construction paper closed with a rubber band.
I unroll it and immediately recognize it as a picture of me and Poppy holding hands.
We both have curly, wild hair. We both hold cats in our free arms. The only differences between the near mirror images are that one person’s hair is longer, presumably hers, and one person is slightly taller and has an apple on her head, presumably me.
Also, my cat is orange, and hers is black.
“I love this picture so much.” The concussion has made me emotional. “Please tell Poppy thank you.”
We sit silently on the front porch, the two chairs at an angle so we can look at each other or out to the street.
“So.”
“So.”
“Roberta.”
“Ruby.”
“I’m sorry, Salma.”
“I know. You said that before.”
“You can ask me anything, you know.”
The smell of yeast and baked bread wafts from the bakery down the street.
The UPS lady jumps out of the side of her truck and walks briskly up my neighbor’s walk with a box in her hand.
A young man cycles by in a pullover with his pants legs clipped.
I am always amazed that life goes on regardless of the drama playing out on the inside.
“Is Poppy adopted?” That seems to be the best I can come up with. “Is that weird to ask?”
“Oh my God, no.” The way Marlene gushes makes me think she has just been waiting for me to show curiosity about her life.
“This sounds weird, but you’re more than Poppy’s teacher to me.
To us.” I wonder who the us is she’s referring to.
“You’re a household name in our house. My parents and I invoke your name as the person they don’t want to disappoint. ”
“Like a threat?” I don’t think I like the sound of that.
“No, like a higher angel. ‘Bear, what would MissCh think about you climbing that railing?’”
I am touched. “Does it work?”
Marlene laughs. “Not really. I haven’t found anything that gets him to slow down.” She gets shy. “And now, it’s almost like you’re . . . I don’t know . . . related in a way.”
I start to object, but she interrupts me. “Salma, I know everything.”
After all these years of hiding, this is how I’m outed. How could it be that, out of all the elementary schools in all the world and all the second graders in all the world, I would get Ruby’s child in my class? And with no plan to do so, I am unduly attached to her child and her wife.
Marlene goes on. “Your sister is a presence in my marriage. Her presence is in so many things that I feel like I know her.”
I think back on the dinner conversation with Marlene. I can feel a headache approaching, taking the long way around, inching toward me across a wide-open field. “So? Are the kids adopted?”
“No. I carried them. One of Roberta’s—Ruby’s—brothers was the donor. We wanted to keep it in the family.”
“Does she know?”
“Poppy? Well, you know her. She’s not very childlike sometimes. We talk about Uncle Barry and how she and Bear were very special to him.”
“Were?”
“Barry died of a heart attack suddenly, soon after Bear was born. Out of all of Ruby’s brothers, she was the closest to him. He wasn’t even forty years old. And then, a month later, Ruby’s mom died. That’s when she went off the deep end.”
“I’m sorry.” Sometimes, I’m so preoccupied with my own tragedy, I forget that others also suffer. It’s a good reminder that the world is littered with mundane, everyday tragedies. It’s a wonder we go on.
“Barry was supportive about us in a way that Ruby’s parents and her other brothers just weren’t able to be, especially in the beginning. Grandkids have a way of fixing everything.”
“So what did Ruby say when she saw me?”
Marlene pauses for a long time. “She didn’t. She was completely wasted.”
“Wait. What?” Maybe I haven’t been outed after all. “So why did you apologize to me that night?”
“I don’t know. Maybe because my wife walked into your classroom late and fell over drunk on your desk and you passed out and banged your head?”
I am so confused. “What do you know?”
“I told you. I know everything.” She holds up her hand.
“Let me finish. I was so mad at her. I took her home and was yelling at her about ruining our new start and Poppy’s chances of making friends at a new school.
I’ll skip the part where my parents saw her stumbling through the door.
I got her food and water at the kitchen table, and she was slowly sobering up, and then, suddenly, she stands up all robotlike.
Remember the picture you took with Poppy the first day of school?
It’s on the fridge in a little magnet frame.
Ruby marches up to it, like she’s seen a ghost.”
“So in my class, she didn’t even know who I was?” I am so stunned by the sheer incongruity of it, I start laughing.
“Not until she saw your picture.”
“What did she say?”
“Ruby is not a woman of many words these days. She said, ‘Do you know who this is?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, and you would too if you were ever around.’ I was still so freaking furious. And then she says, ‘That’s Asma’s sister’ like I’d betrayed her somehow.”
“That’s how she found out?” I am flabbergasted, unable to take in the unexpected confluence of these two segregated parts of my life.
“Yep. Then she walked out the door and drove back to Chicago.”
“Drunk?”
“I think she was sober by then. Maybe. I don’t know. It was all so sudden, and honestly, I wanted her gone. I just can’t take that shit in my house.”
In my dreams, when I finally confront my past, I will be ready to talk about the enormity of what happened with Mamoo, my parents, Ruby, and they each will be available and clear and articulate, having found some peace.
And we will be able to talk about the why and how of it all.
I have not accounted for the fact that life intervenes, moving all of us along the current of love and landmarks and pain and tragedy and subsequent scarring.
I have stayed more stuck than anyone else, and even my life has moved on incrementally.
Who was I to think that life would wait for me and my grief to catch up?
And then, the part of me that is still slowly waking up and finding itself back to coherent thought puts two pieces of a puzzle together and wonders if they make a picture.
“You told me when we went out for drinks that when Ruby—Roberta—gets drunk, she sometimes reads her ex-lover’s letters and watches something.
” I fervently hope that Ruby has had many lovers and many heartbreaks in her life.
“What were you talking about? Was there someone before you?” I whisper.
Marlene looks at me sadly. “No, Salma. Ruby has your sister’s diaries and audition tapes from Pippin.”