Chapter 23 Salma
Salma
He asked me to come visit him at his apartment because he is no longer able to travel.
He lives in an industrial-looking building on the edge of the southern sprawl of Chicago.
I sit in the parking lot for over an hour, searching for the courage to walk inside or the animosity to leave.
I find neither, so I sit and watch the inhabitants of this squat gray building come and go.
The best I can tell is that he lives in an apartment complex for the old, the brown, and the poor.
Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.
I don’t think that’s what the poem meant, but here we are.
I almost wish I had taken Mamoo up on his offer.
Just before I left, he told me the name of the prison where my father had served his sentence.
He told me the name of the prison where Ami had gone and the date she had died.
I thought she was still alive on the assumption that I would have felt something the moment she passed. But I never felt a thing.
Sometimes, when I can manage to get out of my own head long enough, I marvel at Mamoo’s ability to love so clearly, holding nothing back, despite the profound losses he’s suffered.
Maybe Mamoo wasn’t born with a sunny disposition.
Maybe it was a choice. Surely there is a lesson in that. A lesson for the living.
Finally, I tell myself to go inside or go home. I turn off the rental car, and the overly warm heat that has been blowing on my feet and my face stops abruptly. Within minutes, the pervasive cold can be felt worming its way through the windows and vents.
Inside, there is a sad Christmas tree in a corner with empty wrapped boxes underneath and some simple cardboard decorations taped on the walls.
A few people are accompanied by an aide.
Some with a family member. But most are alone.
This is the distant cousin, once removed, of the television image of a senior-living facility.
Here there are no benches interspersed on a grassy expanse or aides dressed in crisp white wheeling their charges.
Here there is no bucolic setting. I think of the hospice facility where Aunty spent her final weeks, where everything was pristine and nurse aides helped us avoid anything too personal, protecting Aunty’s dignity.
I smell urine overlaid with bleach. Old people shuffle along or sit alone in wheelchairs pointing nowhere, staring off into the middle distance.
An old woman sits at a chair looking out a window and carries on an impassioned one-way conversation.
An old man in a wheelchair is trying to take his own diaper off.
A group of ancient women sit in front of a small television watching a daytime talk show at full volume.
A multicolored group of elderly people sit at a card table, each seemingly speaking a different language.
This is a place for people whose first language has come back with a vengeance, the need for adopted language fading naturally like the need for food.
Christmas is in a few days, and I cannot imagine a more abject place to spend it. I think of Mamoo and find myself hoping that someone will pick these old people up and take them somewhere warm and full of cheer.
I long to be back at my house, where Marlene’s and Emil’s efforts have made it a home. Too long I have lived barely. This year I am looking forward to spending Christmas with Mamoo and Emil. Mamoo deserves it. I deserve it.
Three women in uniform stand at a front desk trimmed in a silver garland.
They are keeled over laughing and interrupt each other good-naturedly in their singsong English.
Their accents from somewhere in the West Indies lift some distant and small part of me, a reminder that happiness and joy still exist.
I tell them I’d like to see my father.
One of them says, “And I’d like to see the queen of England,” in her lilted voice. “This is no hospital, girl.”
Another woman says more kindly, “Do you know his apartment?”
I resist an overwhelming urge to turn back. Instead, I tell them his name. Instant sobriety. They glance at each other. “You are his daughter?”
I nod. If he came here to disappear, it appears to have been not far enough.
“He’s in apartment 111.”
My birthday.
The remaining member of the trio says somberly, “Your father is a gracious man. I am sorry.”
What is she sorry for? I have heard people say, “I’m sorry” to me more times than I can count.
Do these strangers, a short generation separated from when it happened, know about my family’s history?
It is now the internet age. Perhaps they have done what I have not dared and gone online to search his name.
I hear them resume speaking as I wait for the elevator, this time in their patois, designed to keep strangers out.
Did he pick his apartment number, or was it random?
I wonder whether he even knew my birthday and try to remember a childhood birthday party.
Surprisingly, the memories are right there.
Ami making cakes in shapes of animals—one year, a white rabbit with shredded coconut to look like fur.
Another year, a tiger with pink-and-black stripes.
Abu bringing home a bag of balloons and blowing up so many that he looked faint.
The hallway is long and poorly lit. The smell of age and decay is the same as in the lobby, but stronger.
Pine disinfectant tries to cover the smell, but it is like an unbathed person wearing too much cologne.
I fight the instinct to cover my nose. The old carpet with a faded pattern disorients me.
My legs are heavy and immovable. I look at the door and tell myself I can still leave.
I think about Asma and Aunty. I think about Mamoo in his recliner.
I think about Emil in my kitchen. I think of Poppy sitting in the basket of the hot-air balloon, legs propped up, nose in a book.
My life, such as it is, is waiting for me.
Finally, I raise my hand and knock.
A woman answers the door and motions me in.
I don’t know what I expected, but it’s not this.
The room is the size of a large dorm room and smells like oranges.
The back wall is a sliding-glass door with a tiny balcony.
Behind the apartment there is a wooded area casting light into the studio apartment.
Shadows from moving branches dapple the room, shifting the air and giving the impression that we are underwater.
To the right is an L-shaped counter with a small kitchen sink, a stove that looks like it’s pretend, and a fridge.
In the main area, there is a bed with a brightly colored cover and two mismatching chairs at a card table on which sits a small glass bottle with yellow flowers.
Between the bed and the glass doors is an old nubby-fabric armchair. Rosebud is in this room.
My father sits in the chair with a blanket across his legs.
I catch my breath. It is as though Asma is looking at me, eyes large and luminous.
He is a fraction of the size I knew him to be.
His always angular face now looks skeletal, the skin stretched tight over his cheekbones.
I realize that, unconsciously, I have been preparing for him to wear his same look of judgment and remove.
But there is only eagerness and transparency.
He wears his hope on his sleeve. For a flash, he reminds me of Mamoo.
I am the one who is wary now. I watch him from across the small room separating us like a thousand-mile desert, trying to remember why I’m here.
He croaks, “Baitay.” And then tears start rolling down his cheeks as he continues to smile.
The woman exits without a word. I panic.
I do not want to be here alone. I stand without expression for a long moment.
Slowly, I walk to him and sit on the kitchen chair that has been placed across from him.
It is a small room, and there is no avoiding anything.
We watch each other for a long time. Abu smiling and crying.
I have been so afraid for so long—afraid to not see him, afraid to see him, afraid of what I might feel—that I have gone numb, as though I have lost all feeling.
That is not true. I feel love. I do not want to, and yet I do.
The cruelty of love is that it outlives the anger and the suffering and the clawing blame.
Finally, he says, “How are you?”
I understand him to be asking about how my life has been, to catch him up on all those missing years.
“You wanted to see me,” I say flatly.
He stops smiling kindly and just looks sad. “I am sorry, baitay. I never meant for it to happen.”
I am not interested in hearing his justifications and explanations. This is not why I came. I thought I was coming to access his memories, to understand the why of my family history, but it is evident that he is in no condition to give me what I want.
“Even now, I don’t know what happened. I thought we were going to go talk to her about seeing the bad thing she was doing . . .” He stops and looks confused.
“What is it that you want?” Despite everything, I need to know what he has called me here to tell me. I need—I want—him to remove this weight I have dragged around behind me for almost two decades. It is evident from the way he looks that I will not have this opportunity again.