A Place for Us Read online

  Hadia enters the kitchen, dressed in a baby blue shalwar kameez that drags to the floor. She looks nervous, knowing that the event is for her; she twists her watch on her wrist. Home is home when Hadia is in it. Amar offers her a cup of lassi and she takes it. Whenever Hadia visits, Huda and Amar remember that they are friends too, and the three of them gather in her bedroom, stay up late talking, or they take their homework to a café, just to be near her. Huda appears, puts her arm around Hadia, and tilts her head quizzically to one side as she takes Amar in.

  “Someone looks good today,” Huda teases him.

  He fills a cup and places it on the tray. Then another.

  “No better than any other day,” he says.

  His sisters watch him. Huda grins. He takes a sip. Then their doorbell rings, and he looks up, and Mumma opens the door, and it is her family. He tries to meet Amira’s eyes without making it appear as though he’s trying, but she follows her mother straight into the garden with a lowered gaze. Tables have been set up in the backyard—some for the ladies, some for the gentlemen. All afternoon he is aware of where she is. There is a gravity about her and he finds he is not the only one pulled into her orbit. A group of other girls surround her. Even the older girls lean into her; when she speaks they listen, ready to laugh. She affords whomever she is speaking to her entire attention. Once he overhears an elderly lady comment how pyari she looks, a word that he knows means “lovely.” She is wearing a red and orange shalwar kameez, a delicate red orni is wrapped around her neck. Her lips have been painted red. This is new. He sulks about the garden upset that they cannot be alone. A few of his friends are there too, but he engages in conversations with them as if he is only overhearing them.

  “Time for a walk?” Abbas asks, their code for sneaking away for a smoke.

  “Baba would be mad,” he says, shaking his head, which is true, in a way, but not the reason he does not want to leave, not even for a minute. Abbas watches him a moment longer, in that same suspicious way Huda just had, and Amar wonders how he can be so transformed by his thoughts that his closest friend and sister notice instantly.

  Amira stands at the farthest edge of the garden, by Mumma’s mint plants. A breeze lifts her hair then lets it go. A cloud moves over the sun and the entire world is shifted. Why had he expected it to be any other way? He’s upset too, that it is clear to him now that he has constructed this all in his head. That to her, he is no one, at most just a friend of her brother’s.

  Despite the disappointment, he cannot deny how his garden is changed just by her being there. The air, changed. The charge of his body moving through it, changed. There is even delight in knowing that Huda and Abbas noted that change within him. So she does not speak to him, she does not even lift her eyes to his, so she does not smile, it is still a pleasure, feeling this way, inhabiting this space he has lived in for years without a modicum of enchantment.

  For once, he does not wish that everyone would leave as soon as possible. But as the sun begins to set they gather their coats and adjust their scarves and approach his mother to thank her for a wonderful afternoon, and one by one they go. The last moments of the day always make him uneasy, the changing color of the sky, the empty feeling of knowing another day is about to be swallowed by the dark. Even in this, he is so separate from his father, who waits for dusk to step out for his walk, either around the backyard or to the horse pasture streets away, looking up at the world as though its wonders were made to be beheld by him alone.

  Her family leaves and she leaves with them. The garden is just a garden. The living room just a living room. The long haul up the staircase. The sound of the door shutting behind him. Alone again in his bedroom that is just a bedroom.

  Something white on his pillow catches his eye. It is a piece of paper, folded into a tiny square. He unfolds it. It has been carefully ripped, as though it had been pressed down with a nail before being torn, and its edges are softened. He does not recognize the handwriting, but appreciates its neat, measured quality before reading it. It says: I am afraid to lose my capacity to feel, to really feel.—A. P.S. What’s it like?

  At first he is confused. Then it hits him: she is answering the question her mother had interrupted. She wants to continue their conversation.

  He reads it again.

  Then again.

  Then one more time.

  Then he sits at his desk and takes out a blank sheet of paper and a fine-tip black pen.

  * * *

  HADIA WAKES TO a paper taped on her door: a drawing of a boy playing basketball, wearing red shoes and jumping impossibly high. Soon she realizes that posters just like it have been taped on every bare wall, on both sides of every door—even on the door of their parents’ bedroom. Some posters are simple: drawings of red shoes sketched in marker, a black-and-white sketch of a boy smiling wide, the only color the red of his shoes. Some have quotes by boys in Amar’s class.

  “THESE ARE THE BEST SHOES I’VE OWNED!” —Omar M.

  “MY PARENTS WERE SO KIND TO GET ME THESE SHOES.” —Gabe M.

  “I HAVE NOT TRIPPED ONCE WHEN WEARING THESE.” —Michael C.

  Their favorite posters are the emotional appeals to Mumma and Baba, written in big, block letters:

  DON’T YOU WANT TO MAKE YOUR ONLY SON AND YOUNGEST CHILD HAPPY FOR ONCE?

  AFTER THIS I PROMISE TO NEVER ASK FOR ANYTHING ELSE.

  LAST YEAR FOR MY BIRTHDAY I GOT A BOOK.

  ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY DOLLARS IS NOTHING IF IT BUYS SO MUCH HAPPINESS.

  WE HAD ENOUGH MONEY TO GET UGLY NEW LIVING ROOM CURTAINS.

  Just yesterday, Amar came home from school and announced that his best friend, Mark, had gotten new shoes. Mark was in Amar’s third-grade class, and his first real friend. Amar often talked about Mark. How Mark was allowed to play video games every day. How Mark had the latest console. Mark got to eat in front of the TV. Baba told him that meant Mark was spoiled, not special. There was a rule in their house that Baba only let them bend on rare occasions: they were not allowed to go over to their friends’ houses, they could only see them at school. Baba told them, “There is no such thing as friends, only family, and only family will never desert you.”

  Hadia disliked it when Baba said this, it was untrue and unfair, especially because Baba had friends from work and friends from mosque, who he was closer to than Mumma was to her few friends. And besides, Hadia thought, she had Danielle, who had been her friend since the first grade, and even now that they were in seventh grade and only saw each other during lunch or in PE, Danielle slowed her pace while running the mile to jog alongside Hadia, and if their classmates pointed to Hadia’s head and asked her, “But aren’t you dying under that thing?” it was Danielle who stood up to defend her, Danielle who shouted back at them, “Does anyone ever ask you if you’re dying in your clothes?”

  Hadia was the only girl in their grade who had never spent a night at a friend’s house, had never spent a Saturday with one either, swinging in the park or wandering malls and trying on lip gloss and doing whatever else it was that girls did together. Instead, Hadia and Danielle shared a slam book that they decorated and filled with quizzes and journal entries written like letters to each other, and on weekends, Danielle called the house phone and Hadia would take the phone into her closet and pray to God that no one would pick up and listen in, and if Amar did, they had code names for everyone and their own version of pig latin.

  Still, sometimes Hadia wondered if it was true, or possible, that someone who was not in her family could ever really love her. Baba’s words made her think of her home like a fortress they could only leave to go to school or mosque or to the home of a family friend who spoke their language, and in this fortress she and her siblings were lucky, at least, to have each other.

  Last night, before dinner, while Hadia was studying for her math test, Amar had knocked on her bedroom door and asked, “Do you think I should
ask Baba to get the shoes for me?”

  Amar always trusted her to know how their parents would react to things that he had done or wanted to do, as though he were not also their child who could predict them. She felt guilty about how little patience she had for her brother now. She used to appreciate his lingering in her doorway, how he would pause between his stories, thinking of what to say next, as if just speaking to her was the important thing. She did not miss their old games but did miss wanting to play them, wanting to run in their backyard together until she was out of breath. Amar felt it too. Sometimes the three of them would play again but Hadia would find an excuse to cut the game short, or would injure her character and die a tragic death, despite her siblings begging her to find a cure.

  “How much are they?” she asked.

  “A hundred and fifty dollars,” he mumbled, so fast he blurred the numbers together. He watched her with a worried look on his face, as though her response would determine if he should have hope.

  It was never going to happen. Mumma bought them shoes from the cheap shoe stores; they were allowed one pair a year, usually in the fall before school began, and they wore them until they became too tight or until the next school year.

  “Definitely,” she said, just so he would let her study in peace, but when he jumped off her desk and almost ran out the room, she did not know why she had said it.

  That night at dinner Amar looked up at Baba from time to time. Mumma refilled bowls and brought the dishes out to the table, still steaming, rice and dhaal and talawa gosh, the dishes she cooked so often. She poured more for Amar before taking a seat. Amar did not even thank her. Hadia reached across the table to help herself to more rice. And then Amar asked for the shoes, and because her home was given to arguments, in the way she imagined other homes might be given to laughter, Amar continued to ask even after Baba refused him, his pleas growing more desperate as Baba’s request to not be tested turned into a firm command.

  “Are these the hundred and fifty dollar shoes?” Huda asked him.

  Amar glared at Huda, then looked to Baba to see if he had reacted. Mumma had stopped eating but she did not look up from her plate. They knew Baba. Knew which of Baba’s faces to not push further, knew that his reaction depended on how stressful his day had been. But Amar never knew when to stop. Hadia wiped her hand on her napkin so she could reach beneath the table to pat him, to warn him before it was too late.

  “Baba, just this once can you—”

  It was too late.

  “Enough,” Baba barked and banged his hand on the table and their dishes rattled. The light above them flickered. For a split second there was nothing but dark and the water in their glasses sloshed up before settling again.

  “Do not ask me again,” Baba yelled at him, his voice the rough and loud one, the one that made Hadia jump no matter how many times she had heard it, even when she expected it, even when it was not directed at her. In these moments she hated her father. How the fury he was capable of contorted his features and made his skin flush red. The little gems that dangled from the chandelier trembled.

  “There is no sense in shoes that are over a hundred dollars. No sense,” Baba said furiously.

  Amar turned to Huda and spat out, “I hate you.”

  “What did you say?” Baba yelled.

  “He said he hated me.” Huda sat up in her chair.

  “I heard what he said,” Baba snapped at her.

  Huda opened her mouth to argue but saw how Baba glared at her. Even Mumma looked at Huda angrily. And Hadia decided in that moment that she too hated them all—her brother, who made everything difficult for himself. Her mother, who turned against her own children just to stand by her husband. Huda with the smug look on her face, and how provoking Amar’s anger was like a game to her. They were all cruel to each other. They could not even get through one dinner. She stared at the food on her plate and made a silent pact with herself: she would work hard, she would study, and she would find herself a new family. A new house that never got angry, a home where weeks would pass without a voice raised.

  “What did you say, Amar?” Baba asked Amar again.

  Amar stared at his plate. His face was blank. He pushed his plate forward. He lost his appetite so quickly. Hadia could see the way his eyes filled with tears but he bit the inside of his cheek so he would not cry.

  “Amar, I asked you a question,” Baba shouted. “Look at me.”

  He did not look up. No one in their family was as stubborn as Amar. He was even more stubborn than their father. His lip quivered and what had hardened in Hadia a moment ago suddenly softened: she did not hate him, she took back the thought, reached under the table and placed her hand on his knee, pressed on it just a little.

  “You never tell your sisters you hate them, do you understand?” Baba said, pointing his finger at Amar.

  Amar still did not flinch. “Did you hear me?” Baba kept shouting. Underneath the table, out of sight, Amar placed his hand, so much smaller than hers, on top of Hadia’s and squeezed it.

  * * *

  SO WHEN SHE wakes the next morning to see pamphlets with facts and testimonials slipped under their doors, and posters taped all over the home, she is surprised. While the rest of them slept, Amar had taken a stack of Baba’s good printer paper and begun his campaign. By midday, a petition circulates, five blank spaces under the line: WE, THE PEOPLE OF OUR HOUSE, BELIEVE AMAR DESERVES THE SHOES, everyone signing their name except Baba. Mumma asks Amar to come to lunch and Amar shouts from upstairs that he is protesting peacefully, and that means he will not eat, and Hadia is sent with a plate that she sets by his door. An hour later, it is found empty in the sink. And even though Baba had been so adamantly against Amar asking for the shoes last night, he remains silent during Amar’s campaign, and Hadia wonders if he is curious to see how far Amar will go.

  “I would like to deliver a speech,” Amar announces at the head of the dinner table.

  Mumma turns to Baba and touches his arm. “Let him,” she says. “Let’s see what he says.”

  Mumma smiles. She appears to be proud of him. Hadia is confused—how could she be amused by an inherently defiant act? They wait to see what Baba will say. Baba raises his eyebrows and extends his hand toward Amar, palm up, as if to say, well then, proceed. The gesture surprises Amar too. They take their seats at the dinner table and Amar waits until they are quiet and facing him before pulling a piece of binder paper from his pocket, unfolding it, coughing into his fist twice like he had seen in some movie, and beginning to read.

  His hands shake. His voice trembles. He reminds everyone that Baba’s signature is the only one missing from the petition. Then the rest of his speech is written in the form of a letter addressed directly to Baba, telling Baba all the things Amar will do if his wish is granted. He holds the paper high so his face is hidden, and Hadia looks from Mumma to Baba. They are both listening. There is a tenderness to their expressions. It seems very possible that Baba will grant him his wish. She has never thought to do anything like it, has never thought to continue to fight for what she wants after Baba has told her no. Hadn’t she wanted a pet? Hadn’t she wanted to go to the movies with Danielle, wanted to read the book Mumma said she was too young for after flipping through it and forbidding her?

  “I will try more on my spelling tests,” Amar says, and at this Baba leans forward and stops him.

  This year, Amar has gotten no more than six correct on a twenty-word spelling test. His teacher has constantly sent letters home, concerned about his performance in various subjects, calling Mumma Baba in for extra meetings. One more hour would be cut from Amar’s television time, one more toy taken away, but he has never improved.

  “Let’s make a deal,” Baba says.

  Everyone blinks at Baba. Amar lowers his paper, nods eagerly; he is more surprised than any of them.

  “If you get one
hundred percent on your next spelling test, I will get you the shoes.”

  “Done.”

  “Not one word misspelled.”

  “I can do it. I will.”

  “This week’s test, Amar.”

  “Deal,” Amar says, extending his hand.

  Baba takes his hand and Amar shakes it solemnly, looking Baba in the eye. Then Baba claps his hands together and says let’s eat, before returning to his seat, and in that moment her father seems like a gracious man, and Hadia looks up at him, and then again, in awe.

  * * *

  ON THE MORNING of the test they are almost late for school because Amar refuses to get out of bed. Hadia and Huda hear him whining while they brush their teeth.

  “I am sick,” he says. “I swear it, I can’t go. I don’t want to.”

  When Hadia peers in from the doorway, Mumma is parting the curtain and Amar is hiding under his covers.

  “You have to try,” Mumma says to him softly. “You have to at least try.”

  He peeks from the covers and relaxes a little when he sees Hadia, and Hadia tells him if he hurries she will test him one last time in the car.

  “But my sore throat,” he says, touching his neck, “my dizzy feeling.”