She smiled sweetly, her head tilted to the side. But her transfixed eyes and set jaw warned me not to disobey. She poured shampoo onto the top of my head and watched as I washed my hair. With a huff, she pushed my hands out of the way and dug her fingers into my hair, scratching at my scalp. Then she handed me a washcloth similar to the ones my mother would crochet and told me to scrub hard, then harder, at my skin. Not since I was an infant had anyone but my mother seen me naked.
“It should go without saying, but you need to clean your girl parts too,” she said, pointing one finger in the general direction of my body.
I emerged from the bathroom, reddened and chafed by more than the scrubbing. I slipped into a dress that she had brought me, one that looked just like the one Shawna wore. She’d taken the clothes I’d just shed, as I thought she might.
We were summoned for dinner around the time the sky had started to turn a dusky orange. I followed Shawna and Gabriel down the steps and into the kitchen, where the table had a setting for each of us, silverware, plates, and cups arranged as perfectly as the features on a face.
“Let us bow our heads and say grace,” Everett said with his hands clasped together, his voice deepening. “Bless us, Oh Lord . . .”
Gabriel fidgeted in his seat. He shot a quick glance my way, wiggling the fingers of his clasped hands. Shawna kept her head bent, her shoulders pulled primly back. I followed suit, recognizing the posture of prayer. My family had prayed at meals too, though we held our hands cupped instead of clasped, as if Allah’s blessings would fall from the heavens like snowflakes.
The meal was a colorful one—slices of red tomatoes and green peppers arranged in a circle, chicken breast the color of honey, corn on the cob, and a bowl of pasta. Everett helped himself, as did Janet. I waited, noticing but not caring that the food looked raw or at least undercooked.
“Now the children,” Janet said. Children always ate last at my aunt’s house as well. She worried that my uncles would find picked-apart platters devoid of meat and think her a terrible host.
I reached for the corn, but yelped when I felt a hard thwap across the back of my hand. Janet held a metal spatula in the air like a scepter, one that seemed to have appeared out of thin air.
“The macaroni is for the children. A child is a simple creature and needs simple foods. We don’t want you to fall ill your first day here,” she said, glancing at Everett, who nodded approvingly.
I lowered my gaze to hide the tears rimming my eyes. I felt a tap against my shin and realized it was Gabriel. He held out the serving spoon for the pasta, his eyes darting to his own plate so that I might see the scoop he had served himself and realize that Shawna had taken the same amount. I accepted the spoon with a trembling hand and served myself the exact amount that he and Shawna had taken. The dull glow of the ceiling light cast shadows beneath Shawna’s eyes. Where before I’d seen high cheekbones, I now saw sunken cheeks. Her lips were thin. She had edges I’d not noticed at first.
I chewed slowly, surrounded by strangers with their own peculiar haunts and habits. I wondered why this place of salvation felt suffocating.
I prayed for a moonless night, for a chance to be visited in the dark by the distant twinkle of gathered stars.
Chapter 31
When I was eight years old, I’d challenged Neelab to a race around the palace gardens. She was always reluctant to run against me. I loved to run, enthralled by the feeling of lightness. It was also a skill born of necessity, for otherwise my mother would have known that I had dawdled on my way home from school and Boba would have realized his binoculars were missing before I could return them to his office.
You were born with bird bones and that’s unfair, my friend had declared.
That’s ridiculous. Birds are terrible runners, I’d retorted, though I reveled in the supernatural idea that my bones might carry the gift of flight.
We were a couple of days away from the spring solstice. I had marked a circuitous path, and learning it was part of the game. The course ran past a long rectangular pool and an acre of green grass. It cut through the pocket of fruit trees and followed the far western border, looping around one of the buildings that once served as army barracks and coming back to the starting point.
The palace was distracted as everyone inside prepared for the Nowruz celebrations, either at home or with loved ones. Soaked in water, dried apricots and the mealy oleaster fruit grew plumper than they’d been before they were plucked from the trees. Bright green and black raisins simmered in tall pots, their sugars steeping the water of the haft mewa, the seven-fruit compote. It was so labor-intensive that the medley was made only for the occasion of the new year. Mounds of shelled pistachios, walnuts, and blanched almonds soaked in wide bowls to soften their skins and make them easier to peel. The walnuts were the most difficult, and every year it was the walnuts that made my mother swear she would never make haft mewa again.
Despite the festive air, Neelab was reluctant to play. In our games and contests, winners weren’t rewarded with trophies or prizes. Instead, the winner had the chance to assign the loser a punishment. When I’d claimed victory, I’d restricted Neelab to moving around by hopping on one foot for an entire day. She thought she’d secured her revenge when she made me walk an entire day with orange peels stuffed in my shoes, but to her dismay, I’d ended up with soft, citrus-scented heels.
Neelab finally agreed to the race, maybe because she’d designed some clever retribution for me. We began at the starting point, on her count. I put my all into my start, but Neelab paced herself. She wasn’t on my heels but kept respectably close. I wanted to put more distance between us, wanting to win by more than a few strides. I pumped my arms at my sides and leaned into the wind. When I had passed the green acre, I stole a glance over my shoulder. Neelab was smiling, closer to me than I would have guessed.
As I looped around the building, Neelab was briefly out of view. I made a hasty decision to leap over a row of shrubs instead of circling around them. They were barely waist high, and I was certain I could clear them.
I was wrong.
Neelab stood over me, panting and terrified to see me bleeding. My shirt had been smeared red. I had a gash across my left eyebrow where my face had met a rock. Boba took me to the hospital, where a doctor stitched my gaping wound closed.
It is so big! I cried to Boba while we waited for the doctor to see me. I had seen my reflection on a glass door.
The wound is where the light enters you, Boba said softly.
I did remember the verse from Rumi, but did not admit I hadn’t quite grasped the meaning. I didn’t want my father to think I was dense.
When pain retreats, when skin repairs, when a broken bone becomes whole again, it is a miracle. It is grace, he explained. But you would never feel this without the hurt. I would never wish the wound for you, sweet, mischievous Sitara. But I certainly wish you the light.
Shawna fell asleep before me. On parallel beds a few feet apart, we lay curled on our sides, my back to her. Her breaths stretched long and slow as winter nights. I hoped the rhythm would lull me to sleep too. But flickering headlights came through the bedroom window, and my eyelids, heavy as they were, kept fluttering open. When I did drift off, I fell into a terrifying nightmare in which someone was searching me out in the palace basement with a flashlight. I rolled over so that I was facing Shawna and watched lights play against the striped wallpaper like a movie projected onto a screen.
I heard the television switch off and then the sound of footsteps plodding up the stairs. A distant door creaked open, and I heard Everett’s voice.
“I’m going to check on them. They’ve probably kicked their blankets off, restless sleepers.”
Everett entered the room and sat on the edge of Shawna’s bed. I watched through the mesh of my eyelashes, not wanting him to know I was still awake. His hand hovered above the subtle curve of her hip, moved down toward her feet, and then back upward, as if he were tracing her form in the air. He leaned in and I hea
rd him inhale deeply. His fingers touched her hair ever so lightly.
He pulled her blanket up and smoothed it over her shoulders. I saw her eyelids squeeze tight then, though she did not stir. Lines formed across her forehead. His hands moved out of view, disappearing as he straightened the four corners of the blanket that had been perfectly in place before he entered the room.
Shawna let out a soft whimper and he hushed her. My muscles had turned to stone. Was he hurting her or soothing her? I felt stupid not to know the difference, to feel uncertain about something as important as this.
Shawna’s eyes opened for a flash, the single beat of a bird’s wings. They closed again, a flight stymied, before I could even tell if she’d seen me. I closed my eyes too, as Faheem did when he played hide-and-seek.
But I didn’t feel like a child. I felt like a coward.
Shawna did not scream. She did not cry. She did not kick or bite or utter a single word of protest. Maybe I’d been waiting for her to do something to make me certain. My head spun.
In the morning, Shawna avoided my eyes and I avoided hers. She spoke brightly, but her voice quavered like a plucked string. As she pulled her bedsheets over her mattress, arranging the pillow and quilt so evenly that it seemed impossible a body, much less two, had ever rested on it, she filled the silence with chatter about the beehive they had once found under the rafters. She picked out clothes from a dresser drawer and held them close to her chest as she walked to the bathroom.
“You better wash and dress too,” Shawna said. “It’s Sunday and Miss Janet likes to go to church early. I’m to get breakfast ready for everyone by seven-thirty. If you want to help, you can.”
Adults shake their heads and shine flashlights into dark corners when children insist that there’s a monster lurking in the closet. But irrational fears are a training ground. That drop in the stomach, that quickening of the pulse, those prickling bumps on the skin—all are electrical impulses that teach a child to recognize peril. They stop short of teaching the child to run.
I followed Shawna’s lead in the kitchen. She cracked eggs into a bowl and showed me where the plates were kept. Janet came down the stairs, wearing a pale green dress with a dark green vine print.
“Good morning, Miss Janet,” Shawna said.
Janet looked at me expectantly.
“Good morning, Miss Janet,” I parroted.
“Good,” she said, without returning the greeting. Her hair was smoothed back in a knot, and she wore a pearl bracelet on her wrist. Because I’d tried on my mother’s pearl necklace more often than my mother knew, I recognized that the beads on Janet’s wrist had likely never seen the sea. I wanted to say so out loud but held my tongue.
“Miss Janet,” I said instead, approaching her timidly.
“Yes, Anna?” she replied. I didn’t bother correcting her.
“I want to see Ms. Tilly. Please. She is in hospital.” I would have explained more if Janet hadn’t turned her attention back to the calendar on the wall.
“I don’t know who Ms. Tilly is, dear. I’m sorry to hear she’s in the hospital. I think it would be wonderful to pray for her in church this morning.”
I was trying to find more persuasive words when Everett descended the stairs wearing a green tie and a white short-sleeved dress shirt. A crease sharp as a blade ran down the length of his slacks. His hair was parted on the side and had a remarkable sheen to it. He must have taken great care to pat every rogue strand into place. I could picture him lingering in front of a mirror to take in his carefully arranged image.
Shawna greeted him as she had Janet. He barely looked at her when he replied. I followed suit, as did Gabriel, who had burst into the kitchen with his shirt on inside out.
“Good morning, family,” Everett said, breathing in deeply. “Nothing like a good breakfast to begin our Sunday.”
I knew what to expect by then. Janet and Everett enjoyed fried eggs, orange slices, and toast and jam while we ate slices of white bread that might have stuck to the roof of my mouth all day had I not had a glass of water to wash it loose.
Once we children had washed the breakfast dishes, they piled us into their car. I did not bother telling them I was not Christian because I worried that they might make me stay behind with Everett or punish me for disobedience. I was also curious. My mother had said that the church she’d visited in Oklahoma had the most beautiful glass windows she had ever seen, as colorful and intricate as the painted mosques we attended on holidays.
Everett’s cologne filled the car, musky and overwhelming. Janet looked over her shoulder at us.
“Gabriel, roll up your window. The wind’s blown your hair every which way. You’re looking more like a sheepdog than a young man.”
Gabriel did as he was told, and the smell of cologne intensified. My head ached, and I thought how terribly untidy it would be if I were to vomit in the backseat of Everett’s car.
The church was a brick building with white trim and a sloped roof. It had a single spire with small windows toward the rear and an enormous metal cross planted in the front lawn. Janet and Everett, who knew a lot of people in the church, shook hands and hugged other worshippers just outside the heavy, wooden doors. Intrigued, I found myself moving toward the entrance ahead of Shawna and Gabriel.
We slid onto a long bench three rows from the front. The church had a smell much milder than cologne but distinct—like flowers pressed into the pages of an old book. A hundred lit candles in short glasses were arranged at the front. These drops of fire unnerved me, and I found myself looking away.
A painted glass window drew my attention. It looked like a rainbow had crystallized and shattered and someone had arranged the pieces in the shape of a cross. I couldn’t understand a word the gowned priest was saying. I didn’t understand the Arabic of our prayers either. We stayed there for hours. The priest raised a hand, and like the tipping of candle flames by a draft, the heads of all the worshippers bowed forward.
I kept my gaze on the window for the entire service, tracing the borders of each of the colors and counting the number of shades of blue and then losing myself in the task of counting how many fragments had come together to form this marvel.
When the priest called Everett’s name, Janet’s expression was one of composed surprise. She squeezed Everett’s hand gently. Everett looked almost embarrassed, and I wondered what the priest had said about him. He stood, reluctantly, suppressing a smile. He kept his head bowed. The church clapped politely. Amen, I heard people say, and it reminded me of our Ameen. Janet whispered sugared words of gratitude to the people seated closest to us.
Outside, under the late morning sun, Shawna, Gabriel, and I waited while Janet and Everett lingered to shake hands and ask after people’s children. They pointed toward us and beamed with pride, as if they’d just carved the three of us from a single block of wood.
“This is what every Sunday looks like,” Shawna whispered to me, answering a question I hadn’t yet asked.
“I have to pee,” Gabriel said, as he shifted his weight.
“I told you not to drink water this morning,” Shawna chastised.
“I was thirsty,” he pouted. “And you drank water. I saw you.”
“But I can hold it. You can’t.”
Gabriel took a step forward, inching toward Janet. Shawna muttered something under her breath.
“What is problem?” I asked Shawna.
Shawna shook her head, just as Gabriel tugged on the sleeve of Janet’s jacket. Janet’s mouth pulled tight at the corners and her eyes narrowed as she looked down at Gabriel.
“They do not like to be interrupted,” Shawna sighed.
Janet brought her lips close to Gabriel’s left ear. She cupped a hand over his right ear, as if to prevent her message from floating out the other side of his head. Gabriel nodded stiffly. He took a step back and fell back into line. Shawna didn’t bother to ask what Janet had said. Gabriel chewed his lip. When I looked down, I could see his small hands clench
at his sides. I turned to Shawna, but before I could speak, she silenced me.
“It will be worse.”
Gabriel looked like he might burst, his face flushing as we clamored into the backseat of the car again to head home. Janet walked so serenely that I was certain Gabriel must not have told her of his urgent need for a bathroom.
But once all four tires were on the road and the church was shrinking in the rearview mirror, Janet flipped the sun visor down. It had a small mirror in it so that we could see her seething.
“Why is it that we cannot get through a church service without you threatening to wet your pants?” she asked, exasperated.
“But I really need to go,” Gabriel cried.
“How many hours do you sleep at night? Ten? Twelve?” Everett yelled. His voice exploded in the small space of the car. I looked to Shawna, who had one hand on Gabriel’s leg. Her head was lowered as if she were in prayer still. “If you can hold it all night long, how is it possible that you can’t hold it for a simple service?”
Everett whipped a sharp left turn, crossing two lanes and spinning into a graveled parking lot of a long brick building. Shawna fell against my left shoulder until the car righted itself and came to a sudden stop. Though the road was busy, the parking lot was empty.
Gabriel’s cheeks were streaked with tears by then. He sniffled, his leg tapping furiously as he held both hands over his groin.
“Go on. Get out of the car if you need to go so bad,” Everett said coolly. He kept his hands on the wheel. “But stand where we can see you.”
Gabriel unlocked the door and stepped out. He started to run toward the edge of the parking lot when Everett rolled his window down and called out to him.
“Stand where we can see you, I said!” He jabbed his finger toward the hood of the car. Gabriel ran back. It was painful to watch him struggle but hard to look away too. I felt bad about it, but later realized all people are terrible in that way—ready to cause a car accident just to get a good look at the one that’s already happened.
Sparks Like Stars Page 18
