A Place for Us Read online

  Each one is different. Some light the whole sky a bright green, as if it were a haunted time of day. And Hadia is grateful for their yellow sun, its rays a blinding white. Some of them die so soon and others fall softly, become specks that look like bigger stars. These are her favorite—the delicate golden ones that burst and stay, their twinkling tails slowly dissolving. Smoke lingers. Amar hasn’t taken his cupped hands off of his ears but he giggles at the ones that sound like rockets, the ones that fizzle out in coils, and Mumma is holding him in her lap now, her arms wrapped around his body like she is hugging him, her chin resting on his head. It feels like the show has been going on for so long. Like it will go on forever. Each explosion makes her a little afraid: what if the tops of trees catch on fire, or what if the flame, which feels so close, lands on their jackets?

  “How will we know when the finale comes?” Huda whispers into her ear. Her voice tickles Hadia’s hair, her neck. At home they convinced Baba to come by telling him about it, how there were a bunch of little fireworks and in the end a big one, a finale—Hadia had offered the word—like in an orchestra.

  “You’ll just know,” she says, but she has no idea when it will be, or if she will know the end when she sees it. She looks back at Baba, and even his mouth is open, and she can see his white teeth. His face flashes green. And he looks like he is also thinking that the sky looks beautiful. Also thinking, How can I look up without smiling? Then comes the sound of the rocket ones and Hadia can hear Amar’s laughter and the tiny, twisty explosions, and Baba’s face is red, then blue, then gold, and then dark again, just his teeth still bright.

  * * *

  THE SUN IS relentless. Layla sits with her back straight against the balcony wall, practicing her posture. Her younger sister, Sara, is beside her. They are not touching one another. It is their rule for sitting on the balcony on a hot day: any contact between the two of them could make the heat unbearable. She is comforted by the sounds of her street. The man who tries to sell pomegranates and mangoes. A boy who shouts at his friend with words forbidden to her. The honking of the cars and the clacking of a hoofed animal that walks by their house and into the bustle.

  “You have a secret?” Sara whispers. Speaking softly is the other rule of the balcony, they come here only when they want no one to overhear them.

  Layla wants to be the one to tell her. She reaches up to tug at one of the magenta petals of the bougainvillea above Sara’s head. This summer is the first time she has felt close to her sister. Before, Sara was just a little girl with whom she had the unfortunate fate of sharing a cramped bedroom. One she had to make sure wasn’t listening with her ear pressed to their door when Layla’s friends visited. Now she is the sister Layla whispers to late at night before they fall asleep. The one she goes to with her complaints about her strict teacher or if she wakes from her dreams alarmed. Sara is a light sleeper, a patient listener. She wakes as soon as Layla calls her name and is eager to be included, to be regarded by her as a young woman, as a friend.

  “I might be getting married,” Layla says. She twists the orni around her finger until it is tight.

  Sara asks her when and there is hurt in her voice, and Layla wonders if it is because she hasn’t told her until today, or if it is because it means she will be leaving soon. Later that night, the proposal would be coming with his uncle to speak with Mumma and Baba and to meet her.

  “Mumma tells me it is a great proposal. That I have no reason to refuse it.”

  Sara leans her head on Layla’s shoulder. Layla does not remind her of the balcony rule.

  “Where does he live?” Sara asks.

  “America.”

  “That’s far.”

  “There are farther places.”

  “What does he do?”

  “I’m not sure. Mumma says he has a good job. And that he works very hard—he’s been an orphan for years. He moved there by himself, got a job, a place to live.” She does not know why she sounds like she is trying to convince her sister.

  “You said yes?”

  The wind rises. It moves through the branches of the bougainvillea and all the leaves quiver like clapping hands, their rustle a round of applause. It is one of Layla’s favorite sounds in the whole world.

  “Not yet.”

  “But you will?”

  The orni wrapped around her finger will not twist any tighter. She does not know what she will say. She has never had to make a decision so big before, so life-changing.

  “Because there is no reason to say no?” Sara’s voice sounds like she is a child again.

  “Mumma thinks he is a good fit.”

  Mumma had been eager to share the proposal with her when it came. She told Layla he was from a good family, that his parents had been respectable people before their passing, and he was one of the lucky ones who had gone to America. But to move so far from her family? I want you to have a good life, her mother had said to her, an enriched one, a pious destiny. Layla felt a strong intuition that if she listened to her mother, if she trusted her, if she aimed to please her, it would be all right. The little fears she felt now would be resolved somehow. After all, her parents would not find someone for her who would be unkind, or someone who was lacking in values. God would be pleased with her if she pleased her parents, and she would be rewarded.

  “You could be like those women in the movies, the ones who say, ‘But, Babu-ji, I can’t marry him! I love someone else! The one who is forbidden.’ ”

  “Don’t be silly.”

  “What about Raj?” Sara whispers, still smiling.

  Layla tells her to shush. The joke is not funny anymore. But something about the mention of his name excites her, and as soon as it does she feels a soft sadness. Raj sells ice cream outside of her school. He always nods when she walks by. Layla has not noticed him doing this with anyone else. She orders a scoop every few days—even when she does not want one. And once in a while, he will shake his head when she offers up her coins, and she will walk home with her gift. They have begun to joke about him. Raj and her future with him, the flavors of ice cream they would serve at their wedding, the successful business he will start all over Hyderabad.

  “What’s his name?” Sara asks after a long time.

  Layla opens her mouth to answer but realizes she has forgotten it.

  * * *

  THAT NIGHT LAYLA repeats his name in her mind: Rafiq. Will she go with him to America? What will the roads look like there, and the people in their houses? She cannot sleep. She tries to recall his visit, how he wore a light brown button-up shirt that did not suit his complexion. All evening she studied her own hands in her lap, the one knuckle redder than the rest, the unevenness of her fingernails. Mumma had advised her before he came: do not dare look up unless directly spoken to. But even then, Mumma said, do not look at him. She had stolen one glance just long enough to note the color of his shirt.

  She calls Sara’s name in the dark and Sara mumbles a reply, rubs her eyelids, stretches a bit, and when she speaks again her voice is thick from sleep.

  “Do you remember anything about him?” Layla asks.

  “About who?”

  “You know who,” she says, suddenly aware that she is too shy to speak his name.

  “He was wearing an ugly shirt,” Sara says.

  Layla laughs. Sara begins listing what she remembers: he smiled at Baba’s jokes but did not laugh, he did not eat the sweets Ma had made but did finish almost all of the almonds in the bowl of mixed nuts, he coughed into a folded cloth, he never started a conversation, just added to them, and he looked at Layla from time to time.

  “Do you like him?” Sara asks.

  Layla shrugs and in the dark Sara does not see it.

  “This is how it is for everyone in the beginning,” Sara says.

  Layla nods and still Sara does not see it.

 
Sara continues, “Maybe he will know to close the curtains as soon as it is nighttime. And to wake as soon as the first alarm rings. Or he’ll be able to tell when you want to be alone and when you act like you want to be alone but you actually want him to speak to you.”

  “You mean like you.”

  Layla asks if there was anything else she noticed.

  “How you knew the whole time which voice was his.”

  * * *

  HADIA IS CONCENTRATING on curling the tail of the y when the phone in her classroom rings. She wants to make sure her handwriting is neat, just in case Baba is in a good mood that night and asks to see her schoolwork, so she steadies her hand and bites down on her bottom lip before remembering it is bruised. It pulses. Sometimes, Baba would tap at her papers and say to Amar, look, this is how you write properly. And Hadia’s happiness would turn into guilt when she saw the pained look on Amar’s face: having wanted Baba to notice, and wanting him to praise her still. Her teacher, Mrs. Burson, drops the chalk into the silver tray, steps to answer the classroom phone, and Hadia presses her nails into the skin beneath her wrist as she thinks, Please God, not again.

  Mrs. Burson hooks the phone back on the wall and turns to look directly at Hadia. She nods at her. Hadia knows what this means. Her classmates begin to whisper. They shift in their seats. She hates when anything draws extra attention to her. She already looks so different from them, being the only girl in the entire elementary school who wears hijab. Even when her teacher calls on her for an answer, she blushes. She puts away her notebook, scoots her chair into her desk, and avoids looking at all of them except her best friend, Danielle, who waves as she walks out the door.

  It is likely that nothing is wrong. She takes her time walking down the empty corridor, annoyed at Amar for embarrassing her again, for pulling her from her lesson. Her footsteps echo and she tries to quiet them by walking on tiptoe. Sentences from classrooms drift from open doors. Grades older than fifth grade, where they are talking about spelling, math, stars, and stories. She pauses at every open door just to see what those lessons are like. But what if, this time, it is not nothing? She thinks of grazed knees and broken bones. She thinks of hearing Amar cry out after he has hurt himself, how she recognizes his cry even if she hears it when they are at mosque and separated by a divider. How she rushes down the stairs or through the hallways until she is at his side, how she has to go, even if her parents are around. She quickens her pace. By the time she reaches the corner she is running, and the reflection of the lightbulbs on the floor blur beneath her.

  The school nurse looks up from her paperwork at Hadia, who arrives breathless, and she welcomes her in with a wave that tells her all is well. Bad news is always delivered in a hurry.

  “He’s in the sick room,” she says, and gestures down the hall, though Hadia knows where it is.

  “He’s been calling for you,” the nurse says.

  Hadia knows this too. Amar is lying on the tan bed wearing red corduroy pants and a white T-shirt, the outfit of his that always reminds her of a little bear, and as he shifts the paper cover crunches beneath him. The room is cool and gray. He looks fine, suffering only from boredom, blowing the hair in his face so it lifts up and falls on his forehead again, but he stands when she enters and waves at her as if he’s been waiting for her to join him at a tea party.

  “What happened?” she asks. She tries to catch her breath.

  “Nothing,” he whispers in Urdu. He looks like a boy keeping a secret, excited to let her in on it.

  “Then why are you here? Why did you call me?” she replies in Urdu as well, not wanting the nurse to overhear and confirm her suspicion that nothing is wrong. Her tone is harsh, like her mother’s.

  “I didn’t want to be in class,” he says, and she glares at him. “And I didn’t want to be alone.”

  She had been taking notes for Social Studies when the call came. They were learning about the American Revolution. She had not finished copying the board, and now it would be erased. She turns to go back.

  “It was a hard lesson, Hadia Baji. It made me feel sick.”

  He only called her sister when he needed something from her.

  “Don’t go.”

  Why do things always sound sadder in Urdu? Prettier too. She likes that they speak to each other in Urdu, how even speaking it feels like access to their secret world, a world where they feel like different people, capable of feelings she could not experience let alone speak of in English. She turns around and faces him. He looks worried and scratches his cheek. He is only six. First grade has just begun and he has had a hard time adjusting to the longer hours.

  The year before Amar started kindergarten, there were three days when Mumma disappeared and Baba took them to a family friend’s house. Amar was almost four and it was his first time being away from Mumma. Hadia remembers asking Baba where Mumma was as Baba packed a duffel bag of their clothes and toothbrushes, but Baba gave her a silent look that said, Don’t you ask me again. They had never spent the night in anyone else’s home before. It was not allowed. Then, as if Baba regretted his look, he told her Mumma was fine, everything would be fine. His face was serious like it always was but this time it was sad too, and when he dropped them off at Seema Aunty’s house, even she looked so concerned when Baba passed her their duffel bag that Hadia felt even more alarmed. Hadia watched Huda and Amar follow Seema Aunty into her big house. Even the fact that it was so big frightened her: what if they got lost, and Baba could not find them when he came back? Baba placed a hand on her shoulder. He told her he would be back to check on them tomorrow evening after work.

  “It’s your job as the big sister to take care of them,” he told Hadia. “You are like their mother when Mumma is not here.”

  Hadia held on to her arm and pinched her skin so tight she had no space to feel sad about what Baba was saying.

  “I know you will do a good job, Hadia. I am certain,” Baba said, then he leaned down to kiss her forehead.

  She had the ugly thought that she would be okay not seeing Mumma for a day or two if it meant that Baba believed in her. But when Baba pulled his car from the driveway, Amar realized he was not coming back, and that Mumma was not coming that night either, and he latched onto Hadia fiercely and screamed if she tried to pry herself from him. But he did not ask for Mumma once, and Hadia wondered if he understood something that she did not.

  The next day, Hadia couldn’t go to school because Amar cried when she put her socks on, and screamed when she zipped up her backpack. He even threw things and Hadia was so embarrassed because now Seema Aunty would know about his misbehaving. Seema Aunty called Baba and Baba told her Hadia could stay at home with him. So everyone went to school—Huda and Seema Aunty’s sons—but Hadia stayed back with Amar and Seema Aunty’s baby girl, who was almost two and learning how to speak. If Amar watched TV, he looked at Hadia every few minutes, as if he were afraid she too would disappear if he looked away for too long. When she went to the bathroom, he waited outside in the hallway until she emerged again. Seema Aunty let Hadia play with her son’s video games. Amar threw a little ball that squeaked at the baby girl and the baby girl laughed. Hadia liked to pick her up and point to things and name them, and the girl repeated the words back to her: light, fire, tree. Amar pointed to his nose and said his name, and the girl tried to say it, but said mar instead, and that was the first time Hadia and Amar laughed, knowing it was the Urdu word for hit, or hurt.

  In the evening when Baba visited, Hadia watched him carefully for signs of what was going on, but he just looked tired, or like he was just pretending to be there with them. When Baba got ready to leave, he hugged Hadia and Huda and stood for a long time watching Amar sitting on a couch, his back to Baba. Hadia tried to look at Amar’s back too, tried to see what Baba was looking at there, but saw nothing special.

  “You should be so proud of Hadia,” Seema Aunty said to
Baba. “She helps so much it is like I hardly have to watch them at all.”

  Hadia waited for Baba to react, but instead he nodded and said he had to go. Hadia watched the headlights of the car pull away and all the terror she had felt the night before came rushing back, even though she knew that Seema Aunty was nice to them, that her baby was cute, that the food tasted like Mumma’s, and the boys in the house shared their toys with them.

  Those days were the first times she really felt like a sister. Like it was a job she had to do, and that she would do her best at it. And after, she never stopped feeling it. She took the job as seriously as listening in class or cleaning the kitchen counter when Mumma passed her a dishcloth. When Amar cried and shook his head if Seema Aunty tried to spoon rice into his bowl, Hadia sat up in her chair, took the spoon, and served him, remembering what Baba had told her. She did not let Huda tease Amar. She thought of games they could play together. She told them stories before they went to sleep. The one they liked about when the Prophet split the moon, or the one about the two children who get lost in the woods but find their way home by sticking together and by dropping breadcrumbs.

  “You’re good at telling stories,” Seema Aunty’s oldest son, who was Hadia’s age, told her. He was nice, but Hadia kept forgetting his name.

  “My Mumma tells good stories,” she told him proudly, and that was the first time she missed Mumma, and she felt bad that it had taken her so long to miss her when Amar missed her every day.

  By the third day, Amar was calmer. Maybe he knew that whoever else left, Hadia would not, or maybe he was bored with her and wanted to play with the toys that filled the big house. Hadia left his side and spent the whole day playing with Huda and Seema Aunty’s three boys. She took breaks to check on Amar, and he was fine, helping Seema Aunty by carrying snacks to them outside, or playing with the baby girl when Seema Aunty was busy cooking. The baby girl followed Amar around the house. And when she reached across to scratch his face, leaving a long red line that raised instantly, Hadia was impressed that Amar, despite having not spent time with many toddlers, knew not to hurt her back, and he just laughed.