No True Believers

by Rabiah York Lumbard

  “Well, better be off,” she said with phony cheer, turning away. “Drexler loves his walks.” With her free hand, she tapped a Fitbit and headed toward the sidewalk. “So do I. Keeps us both in shape. Every morning and every night. Just you and me, ain’t that right, buddy?”

  My heart sank. I scrambled for a comeback. “Love your tracksuit, Mrs. Turner!” I called.

  “Kate!” she corrected over her shoulder. She laughed and waved. “Thank you, Salma!”

  I watched her disappear around the bend. Not the smoothest recovery. Not the truth, either. But at least it was a lie that kept my side of the street clean.

  * * *

  —

  A few minutes later, with my mood somewhat improved and my body more or less awake, I reached the bus stop. The usual crew of neighbors and schoolmates awaited, specifically: Jorge Cruz, Aaron Sheppard, Michelle Mayor, and Ava Brown. I stress neighbors and schoolmates—not friends, not in the same orbit as Vanessa Richman or Lisa de la Pena, perhaps not even in the same galaxy.

  Still, love isn’t radical if applied only to friends.

  I beamed my pearly whites at them…for a moment, and then a few more moments. The wait became uncomfortable. Then excruciating. My smile vanished, unreturned. I got a glare from Michelle Mayor. She whispered something to Ava Brown. Assholes, I said to myself, even though I knew I shouldn’t take it personally. But how could I not? Sure, there was a possibility it had nothing to do with me. The weather was dreary. It was Monday. So really: no offense.

  The bus pulled up and the doors opened. We piled on. I scanned the crowd for a friendly face, only allowing myself to breathe when I spotted Kerry in the rear, an empty seat beside her. Usually I liked to sit up front by myself and zone out to music, but today I could use the company.

  She lowered her eyes, clearly trying not to see me.

  Perfect, I thought. But then she furrowed her brow and looked back up with a smile. Phew. A friend of a friend is a friend indeed, I thought, not caring how corny it was. I sat down beside her and began to feel whole again. But just as the bus started up, someone, somewhere, broke the silence with a single harshly whispered word.

  “Mooslims.”

  I slipped my hoodie over my head.

  In that moment, I considered bolting. Not to escape, but to tell the All Souls Church that I finally understood their message. An act of love isn’t radical. Acts of love happen all the time—in jokes about burnt toast and in promises to write songs and in shouted goodbyes to see therapists. To love radically? That was the ability to love anyone. No matter the circumstances. No matter the faith in question.

  * * *

  —

  First period, Pre-Calc (a class I utterly despise) has an added grump-inducing bonus. Michelle Mayor from the bus stop sits next to me. It used to be Vanessa’s seat, but Mr. Davis forbade us from sitting next to each other after repeated reprimands to stop socializing. Now she sits in the back.

  Michelle is a newcomer; she moved to Arlington last year. She flips her dyed blond hair with the practiced regularity of a religious devotion. Same with the stink-eye she gives me. She used to give it to Mariam, too…until, well, now. Mariam and I theorize that her wrestler boyfriend, Chris, might have been the very first person on planet Earth to coin the term “Mooslims.” But I’ve heard him burp more than I’ve heard him speak actual words in any language, so we could be wrong.

  Mr. Davis was organizing his desk, waiting for the rest of the class to shuffle in.

  As I thumbed around my bag, searching for a pencil, Michelle started to sling her backpack off her shoulders. But then she stopped. Dramatically. She froze, her posture perfectly straight, to draw attention to herself. Instead of sitting, she marched toward Mr. Davis.

  Everyone was staring at her now. The last of the hushed pre-bell conversations fell silent.

  Mr. Davis looked up. “Yes, Michelle? Is something wrong?”

  “I don’t feel safe, Mr. Davis,” she announced, as if she were onstage. “You know, with what happened over the weekend.” She jerked her head at me. “What with these jihadis still out there.”

  I blinked back. At first I wasn’t sure if I’d heard her correctly. Did she just say jihadis? The rest of the room was nonresponsive. Embarrassed? Unmoved? I whirled around to Vanessa in the back. She was shaking her head in disgust.

  “Seriously, Michelle?” she spat. The veins in her neck bulged. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  “Language!” Mr. Davis barked.

  I turned to face the front again. My heart began to thump. I waited for him to defuse the situation. And waited…

  After an eternal pause, he sighed.

  “You can go to the office, Michelle. The rest of you, open your books to page one-forty-three.”

  Michelle hurried out the door and slammed it behind her.

  Mr. Davis stood, as if nothing had happened at all.

  My mind whirled as I overheard Vanessa whispering obscenities on my behalf. Had Michelle just been punished? Or had Davis just given her a free pass to skip Pre-Calc because of me—because she thought I was one of “these jihadis”? Mr. Davis’s tone was unreadable. Which scared me. He could have stuck up for me, could have made this a teachable moment. He could have talked about the facts.

  Fact one: the authorities were still investigating. Fact two: jihad is misunderstood and abused by Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Fact three: the only jihad I was guilty of was an internal one: the battle of the nafs: higher vs. lower self, consciousness vs. ego.

  Those were the facts. And higher-self Salma—the girl who makes way too many excuses for others—wanted to take Michelle down with a love-bomb tackle, roll her around in a big bear hug. (Radical love.) But my lower self—the one that always tries to get its way—was more than ready to bitch her out. Wasn’t that Mr. Davis’s job, though? Not the bitching, but the handling, the “adulting”? Wasn’t he supposed to reach for his higher self and deal with Michelle’s offensive behavior in a meaningful way? Didn’t he at least feel responsible to talk it out?

  He shot a surreptitious glance at me.

  I sat up and opened my hands, silently telling him: Yes? Say something!

  In response he pushed his glasses up his nose, turned his beady eyes on the whiteboard, then scrawled away, oblivious—or pretending to be oblivious.

  I couldn’t decide which was worse: faking that he didn’t care or truly not caring.

  * * *

  —

  As soon as the bell rang I gathered my belongings and bolted out the door. Vanessa was calling my name, but I kept walking. She wouldn’t give up, though. She ran to catch up to me in the hallway.

  “Hey,” she said breathlessly. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  I dropped my shoulders. “I’m sorry. That was lame. I just—”

  “Needed to get the hell out of there?” she said, finishing my sentence.

  I nodded.

  Vanessa cracked a mischievous smile. “Please,” she said, patting her cargo shorts. “I get it. So, look, I was going to save these to get out of his next exam, but now I’m thinking we could use them to make a point.” She pulled out a bright purple pack of grape-flavored gum.

  I stared back, not following. “Um, how?”

  Her eyes widened. “Wait, you don’t know about Mr. Davis’s aversion to grape flavors?”

  If Vanessa devoted even a tenth of the time to schoolwork that she devoted to digging up dirt on the teachers at Franklin—or useless information like gum flavor preference—she’d be a shoo-in for valedictorian. But she was obsessed with the personal lives of the staff and administration. They were a constant source of outrage, fascination, amusement, and horror…and even, in some rare instances, envy. It was a good thing she wasn’t into blackmail.

  “It’s like he has an allergic reaction or somet
hing,” Vanessa went on, unwrapping a stick and shoving in into her mouth. “It makes him nauseated. He’ll vomit. I’m serious. It happened two years ago. My older brother Luke was there.” She stopped chewing. “What?”

  My nose wrinkled. I was actually with Mr. Davis on this one. With my sensitivity to synthetic smells and tastes, that gum smelled like bad cotton candy left in the sun.

  “Yes, I know it’s gross.” She giggled and shoved the gum back in her pocket. “But here’s my plan: I’ll bring these to the next class with Davis. And I’ll tell everyone but Michelle. I’ll make sure everyone starts chewing at once, and he’ll barf. She’ll be so bummed not to be in on it.”

  Now I had to giggle, too, even though I would probably barf. I didn’t doubt she could pull off her plan. No doubt she could get the very same people who had stayed silent moments ago to go along with her. Vanessa transcended cliques; it was one of the things I loved most about her. Then again, her only other school-related passion was throwing parties, either at home or at her family’s place on Lake Arlington. Wherever her parents weren’t, Vanessa was. Hosting for everyone.

  She locked arms with me and steered me toward our lockers. “But listen—” She stopped mid-sentence. “Oh crap! It’s Monday.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Duh, I’ve got gym!” She shoved her textbook into my hands. “Would you hold on to this until later? I need to get to Ms. Wallace early, before class starts. It’s track week and there’s no way in hell I’m going to do any actual running.”

  I arched an eyebrow. Even kids who’ve never had Ms. Wallace knew that she made “no exceptions for anyone!” Anyone on the Franklin premises would have heard her shriek these words at one time or another. Plus, rumor had it that she’d eaten several office passes in front of horrified students—literally chewing and swallowing—and that her husband had left her for another man. The rumors came from Vanessa, of course. But Mariam had been there to corroborate….

  My throat tightened. Mariam should be here now, too. I needed the bright side of our moon.

  “What?” Vanessa asked, peering into my moistening eyes. “You’re not worried about me, are you? Salma, please. I’m the only case where Wallace makes one exception!”

  I had to laugh. The impersonation was dead-on. Maybe she had started blackmailing the Franklin grown-ups. Or more likely inviting them to her parties. Radical love, Richman-style.

  * * *

  —

  Stupidity is one thing. Vandalism is another. Nobody had ever defiled my locker before.

  I saw the graffiti from down the hall. And of course, people saw me seeing it, so they averted their eyes and cleared the area. Such courtesy. Now I was alone with this lovely little message. Two messages. Some bigot with the artistic skills of a toddler and the intelligence of a primate had scrawled in indelible black marker RACE TRAITOR and TOWEL HEAD GO HOME.

  This was a first. I’d gotten plenty of nasty looks and whispers, but nothing written. No lasting, visible, inscribed articulation of the thoughts behind the fleeting glances and mutterings. Rage welled inside me. At least it was tempered by the desire to laugh at the idiocy.

  Seriously: race traitor? I don’t know what that means. To look at me, you’d say I was as white as Michelle.

  So…what, then? Good luck pinning me down. Dad’s side is an enigma. Yes, he’s North African, Berber—Riffian to be exact—but he looks white, specially with his red hair.

  Mom’s even more complicated. A few years ago she took a swab test from one of those ancestry sites. Conclusion? She’s a global hybrid: Scottish, German, Irish, Scandinavian, Eastern European, Greek, 1 percent South Asian. And she looks even “whiter” than I do. She’s so white that the DAR keeps soliciting her to join them. Yes, that DAR: the Daughters of the American Revolution. But why wouldn’t they? Her mother, my grandma Thiede, had been a member; her side of the family has a veteran in every generation dating back to the War of Independence. And while most in the DAR are like Grandma Thiede was when she was alive—a high-society Southerner who promoted patriotism and general do-goodery—a few of them also promote waving the Confederate flag in the name of “heritage.” To this day, Mom fantasizes about joining just to be a secret progressive among them. She once even prepared a lecture for the DAR about the forgotten history of American Muslims in our armed forces.

  I scowled at the graffiti. Bet you’d be shocked to learn about that, you assholes. Whatever. The race thing made no sense, but TOWEL HEAD GO HOME was truly moronic.

  First of all, I didn’t wear a scarf. Well, unless Mom made me.

  Secondly, hijabis got style. Why don’t others see that? Of course, the question was as stupid as the graffiti itself.

  And the GO HOME part! Go home? If by “home” they meant “go to a different country,” then sorry, buddy, but no can do. I was born and raised here. America is my home. If they meant “go home” in a literal sense, then hey, I’d gladly oblige and skip the rest of this gloomy piss-poor day.

  It’s true that I share some fundamental beliefs with the billion or so Muslims out there. But scratch beneath the surface and things get complicated. Real quick. Besides, Islam is not a “foreign” religion by any stretch. Nearly a third of the millions of slaves dragged here from Africa were Muslim. Of course, acknowledging that piece of U.S. history required a little honesty and intelligence.

  I took a deep breath.

  It’s your senior year, Salma. A lot is riding on this.

  I fought to stay calm, sensing people returning to the hallway. I could feel the presence of multiple eyes staring at my back, my locker, my space. My gaze wandered to a black Sharpie I kept on the top shelf. Impulsively I grabbed it. I wouldn’t call what I did next Zen doodling; I hardly felt mindful and composed, but I did feel as if I were in a different state of consciousness. I even managed to forget about all the curious stares.

  Within seconds I transformed the slurs into a jumble of tiny swirls and butterflies. I was particularly proud of how I used the “R” in “RACE” to create half of the biggest butterfly of all.

  Butterflies are a long-held obsession. I wear the obsession. Mom gifted me an open, spiral ring set with a tiny hand-carved butterfly the week I was first diagnosed with EDS. We’d just returned from the hospital. I was five years old and a sobbing wreck. (A suspicion I’ve never shared with her—not that she would confirm it anyway—I actually think she picked the ring because she mistook the butterfly design for a ribbon tied into a bow. She wanted me to view my condition as a gift. I was “stretchy!” She used that word a lot in the early days.) Since then it had gone from barely fitting my thumb to tightly squeezing my left pinkie.

  Over the years, the butterfly has come to signify more than “turning my EDS-frown upside down.” Mom’s words again. Truly awful: a shocking low for her. But maybe even then she knew that one day I’d see kinship in the butterfly-as-caterpillar, how it’s a lowly pest in its first form, yet all about the possibility. How the caterpillar embraces the dark, wrapping itself in a chrysalis of solitude, then morphs into a new entity—a majestic, winged beauty…how could anyone not be enraptured? And do you know how that happens? The morphing part? Through cannibalism. Self-destruction. The caterpillar turns into a stew of enzymes and literally feasts on its own body, following a genetic instruction code that scientists call “imaginal discs.” In simpler terms, it means that a worm (no bigger than a speck of dirt) dares to imagine a higher existence.

  In simplest terms, though, it means that butterflies give me hope.

  * * *

  —

  On my way to my next class, I kept my head down. I turned down a stairwell just to avoid the crowds; whatever, I’d take a different stairwell back up. I couldn’t help but contemplate how lame humans can be compared to other life forms. Especially when I heard someone yell, “Bet she’s got a bomb in there!”

  I almost
laughed again. Then a heavy hand shoved my backpack.

  Off balance, I tumbled down the last few steps and crashed to the linoleum floor.

  I wasn’t hurt. Only shocked. Numb. Besides the outrage and humiliation, I felt instant panic. Crap. My computer. I flung my bag around and checked my baby just in case. Solid. It was fine. This could have been bad. It had sensitive material on it. Like proof of my hacking into Dr. Muhammad’s server….I raised my eyes, hoping to see if the asshat that did this to me had the balls to stay, but he or she didn’t.

  No one stuck around. The bell rang and people were scurrying to class.

  As I tried to stand, my left knee buckled. There was a loud pop, followed by an intensely sharp shooting pain up and down my left leg. I winced and collapsed onto the steps. Shit. I knew exactly what was wrong. It wasn’t the first time I had laterally dislocated my patella.

  Now I wouldn’t be able to get onto my feet without help.

  I forced myself to take a few deep breaths. Overall, for me, EDS isn’t that big of a deal. I’ve gotten used to—or at least learned to live with—the constant anemic headaches, lethargy, and random bruising. Sometimes, just for fun, I even enjoy grossing others out with my super bendy fingers, curling them backward and saying, “Oh, my fingers!” I would have liked to gross out the jerk that pushed me. Or showed them the middle. Whoever it was. I doubt I’d find out. The hallway and stairwell were deserted. Not only had I been shoved down the stairs and abandoned, I’d been injured. But maybe that was the point.