A Place for Us Read online

  Mumma pulls his covers away until he has no choice but to sit up, and she says good boy to him, good boy, using her gentlest voice as if he were still a baby, and Amar gets up slowly, still touching his throat in a last attempt to fool them.

  “You’re good at studying,” Amar had told her the night he struck the deal. “Can you help me?”

  “It’s a spelling test. You just have to memorize things.”

  “I know that,” he said, but he looked embarrassed, as if the thought had only just occurred to him. “I just know that you get one hundred percent on things.”

  In the few days leading up to the test, Amar came to her bedroom after school holding the list of words and waiting for her instruction. It was so simple. She hardly had to help. She glanced at him from time to time to see how often he looked at the wall, swayed in his seat, busied himself with something on the floor.

  But he was dedicated. He may have shifted in his chair but he never left it. After he wrote out each word ten times he would ask her, what now? Write them ten times more, she told him. He did not doubt her, or complain, as she anticipated he might. Each night she tested him. Beautiful, she said, and watched him write it down. Bookcase. Photograph. Analyze. Cylinder. Approximate. Consequences. While she graded them he bit the inside of his cheek, kicked his feet back and forth. Ten right, ten wrong. When she told him that, he appeared sadder than she had ever seen, and she reassured him that he had another day to study. Hadia helped him come up with songs for the particularly difficult ones. He hummed as she tested him. The night before the actual test, she tested him again. He got them all right but one—approximate—the one that had given him trouble since the beginning.

  “It is just one word,” Hadia told him. “By morning you will have it memorized.”

  “You really think so?” he asked her.

  “I really do,” she said. She was glad she said it: it took so little of her and it put him at ease, made him happy.

  But in the car he is visibly worried. Hadia tests him the whole way and he spells each word aloud. Still, he gets approximate wrong.

  “I’m so proud of you no matter what happens,” Mumma says to him. “I am so happy you studied.”

  Amar slams the car door and disappears behind the school gates. He becomes one of the hundreds of kids hurrying to make it before the late bell, and Hadia tries not to meet Mumma’s eyes, afraid that Mumma will realize that she has not once, not ever, told Hadia she is proud of her for studying, even though it is all Hadia does.

  “I’m sure I got them all right,” he says to her after school that day. “Thank you. The songs played in my head when I took the test.”

  “What about approximate?” she asks.

  He is silent. He twists his mouth and presses his tongue against his cheek. Then he lifts his dirty white shoe and reveals its sole. Approximate is written on the heel in black pen.

  “I wrote it just in case. But I didn’t really use it. I just checked to make sure I got it right.”

  Hadia’s breath catches in her. It had never occurred to her to cheat.

  “Khassam you won’t tell Baba?”

  “Khassam,” she tells him.

  3.

  BY THE TIME SHE HAS REACHED THE BOTTOM OF THE STAIRS she has shaken the heaviness of sleep and now moves quickly, aware of the little time they have left to eat. Fifth day of Ramadan. Middle of the night. She flips rotis she rolled out last night. The heat of the stove dissolves the numbness of her face, her eyelids. One after another and they rise and she presses down with her spatula, feels the rush of heat as they deflate. In her tired state, the black spots appear like unique patterns. Hadia and Huda are used to fasting but this is the first year that Amar—only ten, five years before his baligh age—is trying. The first three days he kept half roza, broke it when Layla coaxed him with macaroni and sliced fruit, reminding him he was still too young. He could wait to assume the obligation that would last his lifetime. But last night, after she finished telling them stories about the Prophet’s love for his grandson Hussain—a rare end to their nights now—he insisted he would fast the full day and that she should wake him for sehri. She regards him as younger at ten than her daughters seemed at nine, when they began wearing hijab and praying and fasting during Ramadan. Were you two also that little then? she wonders when she sees her daughters, now thirteen and fourteen.

  The rotis are put into their box and the lid sealed shut. Now she fries an egg for Rafiq, reheats leftover spinach for the children. She rinses a bunch of purple grapes. The month of Ramadan awakens a primal instinct in her: she is sensitive to how much her children eat, watches them drink a glass of water and then gulp milk and still worries for them. Some nights, when she feels particularly affectionate toward her daughters for fasting, she piles the food on trays and carries them either to the girls’ beds or to a corner in her room, where they huddle and feast half awake in the night.

  She does not know why Amar decided this was the year he would try to keep fasts. More perplexing is that it seems he genuinely wants to, despite fasting being the most difficult and tiring ritual for the body. First begin to pray, she had told him. First stop bothering your sisters so much. First learn to control your anger. But who was she to say no? What was the phrase—beggars cannot be choosers? If this was how he wanted to participate, she would support him. She would make it easier for all of them. She would let them stay up at night if it meant they were snacking and not waking her or Rafiq, let them sleep in during the day. She would plan the meals that broke their fast around their tastes. This was the month she allowed them takeout days in a row, endless helpings of dessert. She wondered if Amar’s recent insistence might be because his friend, Abbas, Seema’s boy, had just turned fifteen and begun fasting himself. Layla liked him and his younger brothers—much more than she liked Seema—partly because of how much their friendship meant to her son. But also because Abbas always made a point to say salaam to her and he dipped his head in that respectful way before joining Amar outside. Or maybe her son was just reacting to Ramadan, a month so holy she was sure it softened the heart of every believer.

  She is startled when she hears Rafiq’s footsteps. Sometimes he wakes with enough time for them to prepare sehri together, and they stumble about the kitchen. Other times it is just her, turning on only the lights she needs to see the space before her.

  “Let’s eat upstairs?” she says, and he nods his slow, half-asleep nod and brings out the trays. Layla sets glasses on one tray and pours water in some and milk in the others, ever conscious of the ticking clock, anxious there will be no time left for her children to eat before being hungry all day.

  “We don’t need to wake Amar,” Rafiq says, when she counts out five plates. He lifts the heavier tray.

  “But he insisted—he wants to.”

  “He doesn’t need to yet.”

  “Shouldn’t we encourage him?”

  “On any other day, yes. Tomorrow is going to be the hottest day of the summer, the longest roza, and he’s still going to want to play basketball.”

  She returns a plate to the shelf and follows with the second tray. Sometimes he surprises her with his lenience, other times it is his strict adherence that unsettles her. She could guess, but could never accurately predict, where he would stand on a matter. They set down the trays in their room and Rafiq begins to divide food onto the plates. Layla goes to wake the girls. Amar will be so angry in the morning when he realizes no one woke him. You promised you would, you promised—she would hear it all day. Promises meant more to Amar. And she had no doubt he would refuse breakfast, refuse lunch, and if he ate it would only be in secret.

  She does not want another day disrupted by his bad behavior, the domino effect it has on Hadia and Huda. Yesterday there had been one of those bizarre, rare hot summer thunderstorms that forced her children to entertain themselves indoors. Before the storm passed, al
l three of them were in time-out—or maybe the term was “trouble” now; they were getting too old for the reprimands she knew how to implement. Some fight over the television remote and she was exhausted. The television screen black, Hadia sent to her room, Huda to hers, Layla’s voice hoarse from shouting that this was not appropriate behavior, and Amar was to sit quietly in the kitchen with her and think about what he had done, how he had thrown the remote at a wall so the battery compartment came loose and the batteries fell out. Huda screamed that he had aimed it at her, while Amar insisted loudly that he had not. Layla did not know what to do, except to tell them to scatter. Maybe her hold over them was lost but Rafiq, when he was home, still had his spell that he could conjure just by looking at them, just by sitting in the same room. They listened to him and were not rude to him and for whatever reason they had decided that not only would they not listen to her, but they would be rude too, openly questioning her decisions—Hadia mumbling, of course you let Amar stay downstairs still, and Huda stomping up the stairs after her.

  Amar and Layla had stood in the kitchen in silence. Amar watched the rain hit the window, anger emanating from him like steam rising from a hot mug. Upstairs, either Hadia or Huda slammed her door shut and banged things around in her room to emphasize her frustration.

  Amar pointed to the glass and said, “Look, when it rains harder the drops join together more quickly.”

  She raised her finger to her lips to shush him, but when she turned back to the window she saw what he meant.

  She waited for the rain to stop its storming and stepped out into her garden to check on her tomatoes, and the moisture from the damp grass seeped through her sandals. They were fine. Little green tomatoes just beginning to grow. Amar watched her from behind the sliding door, his face pressed against the glass so his eyebrows looked strange and flattened down. She tried not to smile. He was so alone in their home. Hadia and Huda were ready to comfort each other. Her daughters’ faces were not at the window to see her and accuse her of special treatment, so she waved Amar over and he came. They walked together and he followed closely. What did he notice that she didn’t? He tugged at a leaf of her basil plant as if to show her he was angry still, then let go before it snapped, the bush shaking and drops of rainwater flecking out in all directions. Her son knew how to look closely at the route of rain on glass. She had not taught him this. What could she teach him about how to be in the world other than how to behave?

  Amar looked at her in a way that asked, have you forgiven me yet? And because he looked at her in that way—his initial anger replaced by shyness—she knew the power was tilted in her favor, and she could try to extend his guilt, hoping it would make him think twice next time.

  “You know, Baba would be very angry if he saw what you did today.”

  They didn’t care how she was affected. Maybe children could never imagine their mother as being anyone other than their mother.

  “I already know that.” He put his hands in his pockets. Then looked up at her from the corner of his eye. “Are you going to tell him?”

  “No.”

  “Will they?” He nodded toward Huda’s window. How quickly he separated himself from them.

  “Maybe if you apologize they won’t.”

  His face soured. What was it about an apology that was so difficult? It always felt like it cost something personal and precious. Only now that she was a mother was she so aware of this: the stubbornness and pride that came with being human, the desire to be loyal and generous that came too, each impulse at odds with the other.

  “You have to apologize when you have wronged someone no matter what, especially if it is your sisters.”

  What more could she say? She felt a consistent tug to give to him, to give to all of them, sliced apples and time in the sun, a spot in the shade, but something more too, an instruction on how to be in the world. It particularly tugged at her then, watching Amar kneel and pull at another leaf until it tore. The smell of fresh basil. These were their daily battles. And every day there were fallouts, and reparations made by the time Huda asked for salt and Amar was the first to pass it to her.

  By the time her girls stumble into her bedroom they have only thirty minutes left to eat. Layla tells them they have twenty, hoping they will eat quickly, then bites her tongue: her roza has not even begun yet and she has lied. But they never care to feed themselves as much as she cares to feed them. They sit cross-legged on the floor, eyes blinking at nothing, wincing and groaning when she switches on the light.

  “Hurry and eat,” Rafiq reminds them, and they eat so slowly she cannot believe it.

  “You didn’t wake me,” Amar says from the doorway. There is hurt in his voice, he sounds like a little boy, he rubs his eyelids. One leg of his pajamas has gathered up at his knee.

  Layla looks to Rafiq. They have not brought up a plate for him. If he is already grumpy from sleep, refusing him will only make him cry. Rafiq looks at him, and then at his watch. Then he taps at the space next to him, grabs another roti and places it folded on his plate, pours some of the fried spinach next to his egg. Yawning, Amar enters, and half asleep he leans against Rafiq as they eat from the same plate.

  * * *

  HADIA WAKES TO the smell of biryani cooking and the news that Mumma is throwing her an early birthday party. On Wednesday, she will be nine. Mumma presents her with the dress she will wear, an American one that embarrasses Hadia when she sees it dangling from Mumma’s finger. Mustard yellow and not at all fashionable: a giant swoop of a skirt that swallows her up and drags past her ankles, puffy sleeves and a lace collar. Her embarrassment only deepens when she sees Huda wearing the same only in magenta, a fact that makes Huda spin and say, look, we’re like twins now. But when Mumma beams as she lines the three of them up against the wall under their old HAPPY BIRTHDAY sign, Hadia tries to push her disappointment aside and smile for Baba, who twists the camera lens back and forth before photographing them.

  “You’re impossible,” Mumma says in the bathroom when Hadia asks if she can wear something else. “You complain if I give you Indian clothes, you complain if I get you a dress after you insist on dresses.”

  “I didn’t mean this,” she says, her voice low and head bent, speaking into the folds of the skirt. Mumma brushes her hair roughly, pulls her hair into a too-tight braid. When she finishes the braid Mumma looks up at Hadia’s reflection. The expression on her face softens.

  “Your ninth birthday is a very special one,” Mumma says tenderly. “Are you ready to start wearing hijab? It’s your choice. But you know you are nine now, and so you should choose soon.”

  Mumma wore a scarf whenever they left their house or whenever a man came to visit. Almost all older girls at mosque wore it. Hadia always thought it was just what would happen to her when she turned nine, never thought that she would not wear it. She considers both her options: what Mumma would think if she wore it and what Mumma would think if she didn’t.

  Hadia is quiet, so Mumma continues, “Remember, nine is the year your record of deeds begins to be kept. You’re old enough now to know right from wrong.”

  “I know that,” she says, louder than she intended, and she twists out from beneath Mumma’s hand on her shoulder.

  The doorbell rings and Mumma leaves to receive the guests. It is a midday party. Hadia tiptoes to see her reflection in the bathroom mirror. She runs her hand along the ridges of her braid, not a single hair unkempt, and considers untying and untangling it. Mumma would be angry but unable to do anything, because all the aunties and uncles would be watching, and watching her kindly, knowing it was her birthday.

  Last night, Mumma had told them the first part of the story of Prophet Joseph, and it is this story she thinks of as she waits for the last possible second before having to go downstairs. It has always been one of her favorite stories, but Amar, who is five, hadn’t heard it before.

  “W
hy did the brothers throw him into the ditch?” he asked.

  “Because they were jealous,” Huda said.

  “And is jealousy a sin?” Mumma asked.

  They all nodded.

  “What happens when you sin?” Mumma asked them.

  She was always making good stories boring by asking them questions like that after, questions that made the stories feel less like magic and more like lessons. Amar looked at Hadia to offer an answer, but she had none.

  “The angel on your left shoulder writes it down in his notebook,” Huda said.

  “That is true. But you also get a speck on your heart, a dark, small speck.”

  “A dark speck?” Amar asked.

  “Yes,” Mumma said, “with every sin. Jealousy is a sin. That’s a speck. Lying is a sin. Another speck. Each of them like stains.”

  “A permanent marker stain?” Amar asked. He had recently gotten in trouble for using a permanent marker to draw on the window, a stain that had not gone away completely even after Mumma scrubbed. Now he lifted every marker before he used it and asked, is this a permanent marker?

  “Yes,” Mumma said, as she brushed his hair, “a permanent stain. And with every sin, the heart grows harder and darker. Until it is so heavy and black it cannot tell good from evil anymore. It cannot even tell that it wants to be good.”

  All three of them were silent and horrified, until Mumma said, “Of course, there is always the opportunity of asking Allah for forgiveness. One must be remorseful.”

  “Resourceful?” Hadia asked.

  “No, remorse. Deeply regretting it. And resolving never to do it again.” Mumma made her hand into a fist and shook it.

  “Are the brothers remorseful?” Amar asked. They had only reached the point of Joseph’s brothers throwing him into the ditch, ripping his coat and covering it with the blood of a sheep, and taking it back to their father. Hadia’s favorite part of that story was when Joseph was reunited with his father, but it would probably take three nights to reach the end.