The Girl at the Border

by Leslie Archer

  How could she walk away? She couldn’t. She didn’t. It was only later, after it was all over, that she understood that in trying to save Bella, she was saving herself.

  She moved forward, stepped across the border into the FBI’s range, into the center of their attention as she climbed the steps to the Shehadi house. The front yard she had passed through was a mess, deep tire tracks grinding up the lawn. A mailbox that looked like it had been struck several times with a baseball bat. Around the side of the house, repairs were underway on two windows of the second floor, new panes of glass being hauled up stout ladders and installed.

  While all this activity was going on at the side of the house, the front appeared entirely deserted. Ascending the set of steps, Laurel felt an abrupt bout of nerves, and she halted for a moment before the door to catch her breath. Before she could reach out and ring the bell or knock, the door flew inward, and she was confronted by an extremely pretty dark-eyed young woman in her midtwenties, wearing a high-collared, long-sleeved shirt; a charcoal-gray skirt that came down below her knees; and a hijab. It took Laurel a moment to register the fact that her hijab was an American flag pattern. So she wasn’t afraid to make a statement in the face of the family’s harassment. Good for her.

  Behind her: a dim foyer, a jewel-tone Middle Eastern rug, a pair of brass pitchers with long, sinuous spouts and arabesques incised on their bodies residing on a polished fruitwood table. Three matching suitcases were lined up against one wall, a dark-blue coat slung over the top of the largest one.

  “If you’ve come for an interview,” the young woman said, her voice dripping with suspicion, “I must disappoint you.”

  As she began to swing the door closed, Laurel found her voice. “Are you Elin?”

  “No.” Eyes narrowed.

  “Bella’s friend, yes?”

  The door began to close again. “I told you—”

  “I’m a friend of Richard’s, Bella’s father.”

  “I know who Richard is,” the young woman said shortly. “I don’t know you.”

  “Richard and I met . . .” Laurel’s voice trailed off. Her throat ached. “We met on Crete, his last dig.”

  Elin—Laurel knew by her reactions that this young woman was Elin Shehadi—regarded her critically. “Are you the one . . . the woman in the photo?”

  Laurel’s smile was tinged with sorrow. “I’m afraid I am.” She held out a hand, but it was not taken. She let her arm drop to her side. Okay, she thought. Fair enough. “Laurel Springfield.” She was not going to lie to this woman. “Yes, I know. I had a different name while I was on Crete.” She waved a hand. “It’s a long story.”

  Elin seemed to accept all this at face value. “And you came all this way for his funeral.”

  “In a sense.” Laurel cleared her throat again. So close to Bella she could almost feel her, it seemed she had turned shy. “I also came . . . to find out what happened to Bella.”

  Elin stared at her, bell-like mouth slightly open so that Laurel could see the tips of her white teeth. After what seemed a very long time, Elin stepped back. “Come in,” she said. “Please.”

  Laurel knew enough to take off her shoes. In stockinged feet she padded after Elin through a comfortably furnished living room. There were books everywhere—novels, biographies, historical and religious texts. Electronic versions of various Transformers at rest in one corner, a couple of laptops open on the coffee table. She paused at a framed photo of the family. Elin turned back, pointed out her mother, father, her four brothers. Laurel was most interested in Gabriel, the firebrand, but she sensed it was too early to ask Elin about him. Could he be the root of the problems the Shehadis were suffering through now?

  In a large sunlit kitchen, scents of unfamiliar spices wafted through the air.

  “How are your parents?”

  “Shaken,” Elin said.

  Laurel sat down at the wooden table while Elin prepared mint tea. A large carved bowl in the center was mounded with fresh mandarin oranges, fresh figs, dried dates, and colossal pistachios. Laurel waited until Elin set a glass of tea in front of her, then sat at an angle to her. Along with the glasses, she had brought several sheets of creased paper, indicating they had been folded.

  “Thank you for taking the time to talk with me,” Laurel said. “I was looking for you at the funeral.”

  Elin gave her a twisted smile. “Well, it wasn’t for lack of trying.”

  “What d’you mean?”

  “We were told by the local cops—who I’m sure got their orders from the FBI—not to come, that our presence would be a distraction, that it most likely would cause a disturbance.”

  To this, Laurel said not a word; she felt too ashamed.

  Elin sipped her tea. “Please. Drink.” She waited until her guest had taken a sip. “It’s to your liking? Not too sweet?”

  “It’s delicious. Just right.”

  Elin nodded, clearly pleased.

  “May I ask you a question?”

  “That’s why you’ve come, isn’t it?”

  “It’s about you. You were very young when you went to work for the Mathises.”

  “Eleven.”

  “That seems odd.”

  Elin smiled. “Yes. I suppose it does. But first, we’re talking about Maggie. Every decision she made—or failed to make—was odd. Second, I had what she called the three Rs—I was respectful, responsible, reliable. Third, Bella took to me right away. I was a combination of big sister and mother.”

  Laurel nodded, feeling once again ashamed. “I understand completely. I didn’t mean—”

  “Don’t worry,” Elin said, waving away her words. “I would have done the same thing.” She smiled. “It did put a great deal of pressure on my schoolwork. Many nights I hardly slept.” A rhythmic banging commenced from somewhere above them. She rose, went to the window behind the sink, tried to look up. “I assume you saw the work going on outside the house.”

  “Yes. I wondered about that.”

  Elin, returning to the table, slid the papers across the tabletop. With a quizzical glance at her, Laurel read them with mounting horror: Go back to the fucking desert ware you belong, the first one read in an illiterate scrawl. We HATE you more then niggers.

  “My God!” Laurel exclaimed, then instantly put her hand over her mouth. “Sorry.”

  “It’s all right. We believe in God in this household.”

  Laurel, shaken to her core, read the second one: You started this but we’ll stop it, sand nigger. We’re coming for you.

  “The night my father was first taken away,” Elin said as Laurel pushed the hateful mail back at her with disgust, “someone shot out the windows of the bedroom where Bella was sleeping with me. Maggie—her mother—had been hospitalized, you see.”

  Laurel nodded. “This is sickening, beyond terrifying. Have you notified the feds?”

  Elin laughed, but not in a good way. “The feds. Yes, of course, right away. I also gave them the originals of these letters.”

  “What did they do? Have you heard from them?”

  “They came and took Umm—my mother—away for questioning.”

  “Because she’s Lebanese, because she’s a Muslim.”

  “That and because of how close we were—are—to the Mathis family.”

  “The hit-and-run.”

  Elin nodded. “No one here believes it was an accident.” She sighed. “I’m beginning to think that my father is right. We’re not welcome in America any longer.”

  “Those are frightened bigots talking. You’ve got to fight—”

  “It’s fascism, isn’t it? What’s happened to democracy?”

  “When people get frightened, they circle the wagons. They say stupid things. They’re terrified.”

  “Well, but that’s just what ISIS wants. It plays into all their propaganda. I don’t understand.”

  “Frightened people are stupid people.” Laurel shook her head. “But as far as that goes, I don’t fully understand the reacti
on myself.” She reached over, took Elin’s hand briefly. It was warm from the tea. How close in age they were, Laurel thought, how distant they were in their experiences. And yet they were two women, and on a fundamental level their empathy for each other was a power not to be denied. “But you can’t let these people drive you away. You have as much right to be here as anyone else.”

  Elin’s eyes magnified as tears overflowed them, ran down her cheeks unheeded. “Thank you, Laurel. No one has . . . it’s been so long . . .” She took a breath, struggling to come to grips with her emotions. “Sometimes lately I feel as if we’re already living in a penal colony. We’re spied on all the time, followed wherever we go. Maybe our phone lines are tapped. It would be easy, wouldn’t it. Those magic words: a matter of national security. Like open sesame.”

  Laurel took Elin’s hand again. She knew only too well what it felt like to be constantly on edge, constantly anxious, to feel ghostly footsteps behind you. Only the footsteps Elin heard were real.

  “Listen, Elin. I want to help in any way I can, limited though it may be. You know Bella better than anyone. What can you tell me about her disappearance? What do you think happened to her? Do you think she ran away?”

  “No, no, I don’t think that.” She stopped abruptly, as if in midthought.

  “Elin?” Laurel squeezed her hand. “What is it?”

  Tears overflowed Elin’s eyes again. “A week ago we had a terrible fight.”

  “What about?”

  Elin stood up, crossed to the sink, turned on the water. But she just stood there, immobile, her back to Laurel.

  “Elin, what did you and Bella fight about?”

  When Elin turned, there were more tears in her eyes. She had backed herself against the edge of the sink, hands gripping it, knuckles white. “Yes, all right. Yes. I think she ran away, and it’s all my fault.”

  “Why d’you you think that?”

  “She took everything important to her—her laptop, her cell phone, her diaries, books—with her. The police crawled all over the house. They found nothing.” She bit her lip, shook her head. “I’m leaving, you see. I’m moving to Chicago; I’m due to be picked up any moment. I met someone, a wonderful man named Matt Kirby. He gave a lecture here just over a month ago, the evening Maggie collapsed. I went with my parents; we followed the ambulance to the hospital. I was waiting down in the lobby when Matt came in. He was worried about the woman who had passed out. He’s a very compassionate, caring man. I told him what had happened, and we got to talking. He got a new position in the Division of Social Sciences at the University of Chicago. He’s asked me to come with him, and I said yes.”

  “That seems precipitous.”

  “To you, maybe. But you see, from that moment on we Skyped every night. We spoke for hours and hours. It’s odd, maybe. My parents don’t get it, but you have to understand—I’ve been taking care of Bella since we were both very young. That’s all I’ve known. All I’ve thought about is how to keep her as happy as I could. And now, well, I’m twenty-eight. It’s time I thought about myself.”

  Laurel thought, So close in age, but I feel decades older. “Bella took it badly, I imagine.”

  “Worse than badly. She pretty much flipped out. I’d never seen her like that, snapping at me, baring her teeth. I tried to calm her, but it was as if I wasn’t even in the room. She was frenzied, I guess is the best word to describe it. I mean, it was so crazy, so out of character. I expected her to break down, cry. I was expecting to console her, rock her in my arms like I always did when she was sad or frightened. But this—this explosion of rage and violence—no, that was far beyond anything I had foreseen.”

  “What exactly did she say? Can you remember?”

  “I was so shocked I . . . let me think.” She worried her lower lip. “She said things like, ‘Don’t you see how this country is changing, how it treats you like second-class citizens?’ And things like, ‘I don’t know how you can buy into the falsity and materialism of this culture.’”

  “That sounds like pretty sophisticated thinking.”

  Elin’s smile had about it a wistful air of times remembered. “Bella is brilliant. I’m convinced she can do anything she sets her mind to.” Her face clouded over.

  “Except.”

  They were interrupted by the front doorbell. Elin excused herself. Laurel heard voices, craned her neck, but could see nothing. Then Elin came in with a tall, good-looking man dressed in a charcoal-gray suit, wing tip shoes, a white shirt, and a polka-dot tie. A serious outfit with a bit of whimsy: perfect. She introduced him as Matt Kirby. With a smile, he nodded deferentially to Laurel, then turned to Elin.

  “I’ll go upstairs and pay my respects to your parents. I want to hear about their brief incarcerations; maybe I can help. Then I’ll take your luggage out to the car.”

  “Thank you,” Elin said, a sweet smile wreathing her face. “I’ll be out in a minute.”

  “Take your time,” Kirby said. He turned to Laurel. “A pleasure.”

  Moments later they heard his tread on the stairs.

  Elin came back to the table, but she didn’t sit down, instead stood gripping a chairback with the same white-knuckled grip.

  “We were speaking about Bella,” Laurel said.

  Elin nodded. “Bella finds it difficult to believe in herself. Despite how she excels at school, despite what I and my family have tried to give her, she remains wary, terrified of the world at large. She deals with her terror by isolating herself. In a way, she’s severed herself from the world around her.”

  “She’s not delusional.”

  “Oh, no. But she lacks an inner compass. Not surprising, given what her parents . . .” She waved a hand. “But I don’t want to get into that, not on the day her father was buried.”

  Feeling there was no better time, Laurel said, “What can you tell me about your brother, Gabriel?”

  At once, Elin’s demeanor changed. She stiffened as if Laurel had delivered her a blow. “Why do you ask about Gabriel especially?”

  “Did he have any contact with Bella?”

  “What? No. Not any more than my other brothers. Bella was closest with me and with Umm—my mother.” She sighed. “To be honest, my father wasn’t thrilled about having another girl in the house; I was more than enough for him. Praise Allah Umm delivered him four boys. And as for my brothers, they were unfailingly polite to her, Gabriel included, but I don’t think they knew what to make of her. They really weren’t sure why she was here so much.” She cocked her head. “Again, I’d like to understand your interest in Gabriel.”

  Laurel shrugged. “Along the way, I’d heard some things about him.”

  “Let me guess. You talked to Rosie Menkins at the funeral.”

  “Rosie Menkins talked to me, more like it.”

  Elin’s wide mouth twitched. “Yes, that’s about right. What did she tell you?”

  “That Gabriel and a bunch of his friends beat up a group of Christian boys.”

  Elin gave a humorless laugh. “I’m assuming she didn’t tell you that those boys Gabriel went after attacked Ali, the owner of Ali’s All-Night, and beat him very badly. The cops wouldn’t do anything, so Gabriel felt he had a responsibility.”

  “Revenge.” Laurel knew more than most people about revenge. Hers had gotten a man—admittedly, a very bad man—killed.

  “I don’t say what he did was right. My parents punished him. But, you know, he’d had enough of being pushed around. Even Bella felt it.”

  “It was clear from the outset that Rosie’s a bigot.”

  Elin sighed. “She’s not saying anything most of Dearborn isn’t thinking right about now. All Muslims are terrorists: that’s the hysteria of the moment. Another reason to get out of here.”

  “Running away?” Laurel was immediately ashamed. She was the last person in the world to accuse someone of running away.

  Elin gave her a pained look. “Perhaps some people will think that, Umm among them. But the truth is
I think I can do more good elsewhere. I’m transferring universities. I’m going to get a degree in international law. Then I can help my people.”

  Laurel felt a surge of empathy and respect for this young woman. She had smarts—guts too. She knew what she was about.

  “Elin, I know this could be construed as an offensive question. Nevertheless, I have to ask: Have you made any attempt to find Bella?”

  Elin drew herself up to her full height. “I’ve been Bella’s substitute mother for fifteen years. So yes, it is an offensive question.”

  “And yet you’re leaving her for good today.” Abandoning her, but Laurel knew she had no business even thinking that. This woman had devoted her life to Bella. How long could she be expected to keep it up?

  “Listen to me, Laurel. Our family involvement with the Mathises has brought us nothing but persecution and misery, though I have no idea why.”

  Laurel could make an educated guess that it had everything to do with Richard’s twinned life, as Jimmy Self had put it, but she knew it would do no good to tell Elin this. And anyway, how could she be sure? When it came to Richard, how could she be sure of anything?

  “She ran,” Elin was saying now. “I know she ran away. It’s the only explanation.”

  “But where would she go? Surely she had favorite places.”

  “Only one,” Elin said. “The library.”

  THIRTY-THREE

  The chat room where Bella had met Salim was eight months behind her. It seemed like a lifetime. As she waited here in the safe house, a broken-down apartment above Ali’s All-Night, she shivered. She longed to email Salim, to “hear” his reassuring words, the words of Allah, but it was still daylight in Syria; Salim was at work with the other freedom fighters of ISIS, securing a permanent homeland where the true word of Allah could flourish.

  It had been four days since she had walked out of her house. She should have made her hijrah by now; she should have been with Salim in Syria. But something had gone wrong. The contact who was supposed to pick her up on the first leg of her journey never showed. Salim told her he and his cell had been picked up by the federal police, as he called them. But she needn’t worry. Her contact had no knowledge of her, had not yet been given the address of the safe house.