Chapter 18 Salma #4
I opened Asma’s door abruptly and told her that Abu wanted her upstairs.
She swung her legs out of bed and stood up.
She had lost weight since Thanksgiving. Gaunt and looking even taller, she seemed impossibly thin.
We stared at each other. The space between us, always scarcely a hair’s width, was now a vast ocean.
I wanted to tell her about the envelopes and the pictures and my feelings of dread, but she brushed by me on her way to the bathroom.
Upstairs, Abu paced the living room, his energy too big for the house, with all of us trapped inside. The snow fell outside with a thick stillness, muting all sound and feeling.
He said, “It’s snowing.”
Asma deadpanned. “You got me out of bed to tell me that?”
He stopped walking and stared at her. It was her need to antagonize him, make him feel small, her disrespectfulness that made me hold my breath.
Surely, she understood that he was simply frustrated by the weather and losing the opportunity for holiday tips.
I remembered his embarrassment as he pushed the wad of money into my hand before getting on the plane.
Why couldn’t she think of others, just for once?
Why did everything have to be a confrontation?
And then, to my incredulity, Abu stammered in a plaintive voice. “I . . . I thought we could look at pictures.”
Ami came out of the kitchen, her hand to her throat. “Hiyallah! You’re looking so thin. I made your favorite tonight—chicken salan.”
Asma and I stared at Abu, confused.
“To see pictures from Pakistan.”
Asma shook her head slightly and walked down the stairs. “I’m going to take a shower.” Halfway down, she called, “I can help you when I’m done.”
By the time she came back upstairs, I had already started pulling the plates out of the cabinet to set the table. The kitchen was steamy and fragrant with the idea of home.
“What do you want me to do?” Asma asked Ami, sidling into the kitchen.
“Get the basket for the rotis. Also, a new towel.”
When we were young, Ami used to make fresh rotis for almost every meal.
But as we’d gotten older and she’d started working, she fell out of the habit.
She pressed down on the uniformly thin dough in the hot, dry pan with a squared tea towel to make it brown evenly and then, with a small, deft flick of the wrist, rotated the roti a quarter turn clockwise.
The edges got lighter while small bubbles formed on the underside of the dough.
Impervious to the heat, she lifted one corner to test its doneness and then flipped it over, starting the whole thing again of spinning the roti in quarter turns while pressing down with the towel.
The entire routine was hypnotic, and it made me feel like I was a child again, mesmerized by the repetitive motion, aware that these were things no one else I knew did.
It had been her nightly missive to us, communicating her love and attention and care in a way she wasn’t able to do otherwise.
But instead of making me feel different and other, like a lot of my family’s habits, the metallic smell of the cast iron and toasted flour gave me a sense of belonging.
“Get some thanya out of the fridge and sprinkle on the curry. I haven’t washed it yet.”
I heard the faint sound of bells ringing.
Abu was watching the weather report on the evening news.
The sweet expectancy of Christmas morning was communicated everywhere we turned.
There was no escaping getting caught up in the feeling.
It was anticipation that, even while feeling it, was tinged with a sense of loss and letdown.
We understood that for us, the buildup would not be satisfied.
Television commercials showed rosy-cheeked, blond-haired children tearing open gifts on Christmas morning with beautiful, well-coiffed parents watching.
Carols and jingling bells were everywhere, from the radio to the grocery store.
Blue-eyed Santas in various stages of climbing into or out of a chimney plastered the post office and storefronts.
There were no commercials with mothers making rotis.
There was nothing on television where we could see a version of our life, sweeter, glossier, and more tender, reflected back.
Even though we were American in every way that mattered, this was one way in which we would never be.
Could never be. At Christmas, we were outsiders in our own country.
Asma meticulously pulled the cilantro leaves off their tender stalks, one leaf at a time. I looked over her shoulder and saw the green leaves suspended on top of the spicy red sauce like lotus leaves. The woodsy, limy scent synchronized with the other heady smells.
Ami glanced over and said, “What are you doing? You’ll be there all day. Just tear off a chunk and put it in.”
“I don’t want the stems in there. It doesn’t look as nice.” Asma grinned.
“Foolish girl. This American nonsense of everything having to look pretty.” Ami shook her head, playacting being strict. She kept her head bent, rolling the dough with a rolling pin that had seen better days. “Call Abu. Dinner’s ready.”
We assembled at the table. An easy mood had taken over. The snow continued to come down, dampening all of our sharp edges.
“The Charlie Brown Christmas special is on later. Do you want to watch it?” I asked Asma. She seemed more engaged, and I didn’t want to chase her away.
Asma nodded, chewing exuberantly.
“How many times can you watch those same shows?” Ami asked while serving Abu curry and folding a roti on his side plate.
“They only come on once a year.”
“I thought we could show you the pictures from Pakistan. We got them back. I don’t know how much you remember the house or your cousins,” Abu said hesitatingly.
“Uh. Sure,” I said.
“Abu, when can we pick up my car from the shop?” Asma asked.
Abu picked up his glass and drank his entire glass of water. “The shop called. The car needs an oil change and one tire. They can’t get to it until after Christmas.”
“But there’s nothing wrong with it,” Asma said.
“You don’t need it over break. It’ll be ready by the time you start school next semester,” he said, slowly and patiently.
Ami interrupted. “Your father’s friend is fixing the car for a trade. So he has to squeeze it in when he can.”
Every time I heard Ami speak up, let alone as an explainer of Abu’s actions, I was caught off guard.
Our whole life, when Abu would scold us, she acted like she was being scolded also.
When he lectured us, it was understood that she was also supposed to listen.
When he praised us, she bloomed a little.
But since their return, for the first time, she seemed to be a peer to Abu.
“When you start taking responsibility for oil changes and repairs, and pay for them, you can make those decisions.”
I wondered if Mamoo had told Asma how Ami and Abu had been able to afford the return to Pakistan.
Even as I thought it, I knew he hadn’t. He would have tried to protect their dignity.
I hadn’t even told her over my two weeks at Mamoo’s.
Maybe out of a sense of protectiveness of Abu’s dignity but also out of embarrassment.
I wondered if he was going to circle back to the pictures, but he didn’t.
Asma took a drink of water and spit it out. “What is this?”
“Don’t you love it? It’s rose water,” Ami said.
“It’s disgusting.” She rubbed her tongue with her napkin and got a new glass of water from the sink.
Later, while Asma and I cleaned up the table, Ami stood by us, hovering on the edges. “Do you want me to make you meetha paratha? I still have some atta left,” she asked.
She’d already taken the roti dough out of the fridge and was pulling the sugar out of the cabinet.
It was clear she wanted to be around us, and what better way than to make our favorite childhood dessert?
She started the whole roti-making process again.
But this time, she placed thick slabs of butter on the dough and sprinkled it all over with sugar.
She folded it over on itself like a little envelope, rolling the dough thin again before placing it on the pan with even more butter.
The smokiness of caramelized sugar filled the room, and despite all the uncertainty hovering about our future, I felt like a child when my mother loved me and spoiled me.
The moment the first meetha paratha was put on the plate, Asma and I both reached for it, pulling the crusty, sweet bread apart, yelping as it burned our fingers. Ami made three parathas, and we shared each one huddled over the stove.
As she made the fourth one, I asked, “Should we save this one for you or Abu?”
Ami smiled broadly, looking down at the pan. “No, baitay. You two eat them.”
Ami cleaned up the stove area as we finished the last paratha. It felt normal and wholesome and good. And then, maybe because she felt included in the air of camaraderie, she said playfully, “Let’s look at rishthas.”
Asma dropped the plate she was rinsing with a loud clatter. She turned to Ami and me. “What?”
I have no idea what my face did, but whatever Asma saw there made her realize that I knew.
Ami replied, “I have some people who are interested in you.” It was said with a breeziness, like she was asking about her shoe size.
Did she make meetha parathas to lower Asma’s guard?
Mamoo’s stories about her and about who she was a lifetime ago couldn’t be true.
Because if they were, how did she have no empathy for her own daughter?
“What do you mean ‘interested in me’?” Asma’s mouth barely moved.
“They’ve sent letters. Introducing themselves.”
Asma sneered and then shook her head dismissively. My entire body thrummed, ready to take off.