“I hate cats,” Grandpa says.
“They’re so sloppy,” I say to humor him. I actually like cats, but at this moment, when my cover has been almost broken, I’m willing to agree with everything he says. Yes, Americans are infidels. MTV is full of gyrating prostitutes. VH1 is the devil’s channel. Whatever you say, Grandpa.
Grandpa tells me he’s ready to leave. He has to get away from our house of hellfire and brimstone. He averts his eyes from Mom’s nakedness as we walk past her to get to the driveway. The visit has been a double dose of decadence for him: Mom’s scanty clothes and a granddaughter lusting over a famous movie star/inventor.
This time I’ll drive to the shopping plaza. It’s a three-minute drive and roads are deserted this morning. My feet know what has to be done at red lights and stop signs. I still feel a tremble run through my body like a tuning fork when I drive, but for the most part I know what I’m doing. Grandpa is unpleasant on our way to the plaza, so I’m filled with a sense of foreboding. He makes a demeaning comment about female drivers when a woman makes an illegal U-turn in front of us. Our windows happen to be open when he yells at her—PROSTITUTE—as she drives away. I would’ve felt better if he said “F you” instead. The F bomb sounds less personal and judgmental than “prostitute.”
“Are you fasting properly?” he asks me sharply.
“Yes,” I say.
“You’re not eating cookies or candy during the day?”
My entire body hardens at his assumption that I might be cheating. “No, Grandpa, I don’t eat anything during the day.”
“That’s good.”
“So what’s my lesson for today?” I say, to change the subject.
“You’re going to learn how to drive in reverse.”
My mouth hangs open in shock. I don’t know why I have to drive in reverse since people are supposed to drive forward. This lesson has to have a point to it. Grandpa tells me to park in reverse and I have to do it five times until I neatly encase the car in between the yellow lines of the parking space. Now I know why people don’t drive in reverse more often. It’s really hard.
“Now drive and make a turn in reverse,” Grandpa orders.
I go backwards, to where the L is in the parking lot, and successfully make the turn. “I did it,” I gleefully say.
“Good. Now I’m going to get out of the car so that I can see how you’re doing.”
Grandpa leaves the car so that he can have a visual on how I drive. Do I park properly or at an angle? Do I drive zigzagged or straight? So he watches me drive in reverse at the next L.
My throat tightens as I hold my breath. There’s no one else in the parking lot, so I don’t know why I feel so fearful. The strip mall, with its boring businesses, is empty this early in the morning. So I make the turn, while Grandpa watches in the distance. His form, in high-waisted pants and a lime-green shirt, becomes smaller and smaller.
What happens next is my fault, but I don’t exactly know how I commit such a goof. It’s probably part being a newbie driver and part feeling nervous. I keep driving until I make a reverse turn out of the parking lot and onto a small road. “Uh oh,” I say. Instead of seeing store fronts, I see manicured lawns and Spanish-style stucco houses. Grandpa is nowhere in sight. I have to find him.
Another car is right in front of me, coming head-on, since I’ve driven into the wrong lane. The woman honks at me, which rattles me since I’ve never been honked at before. There’s no leeway for me to get back into the entrance I just drove out of, so I go around her and keep driving. I’m looking for another entrance, but there’s no other way into the strip mall on that side of the street.
Don’t panic, I think. I’m sure that if I make one or more left turns, I’ll be back to where I started. I make a left turn and see more houses, but at the end of that road I can only make a right turn. I want to scream. I don’t even recognize the streets or houses. The biggest problem of living in Coral Gables is that all the street signs are on the ground and I have to strain my eyes to find them. On every corner I see stone slabs saying Malaga Avenue or Anastasia Avenue. Also, it isn’t like the rest of Miami where you have a grid line of streets and avenues. In Miami, I know that SW 8th street is below SW 7th street and that NW 10th avenue is to the west of NW 9th avenue, but in Coral Gables you have to know exactly where all the roads are. I’m on Palermo Avenue and want to get off of it.
My cell phone starts ringing, but I don’t want to lose my train of thought by reaching into my purse for it. I glance at the passenger seat and see my MAC lipstick roll out of my purse. My first impulse is to reach down to the floor to find it, but I have to abandon it. This requires all of my concentration.
I drive onto a main road with three lanes and I feel a little less lost. We drove on this road to get to the strip mall, and now I know where I am. The openness of all these lanes scares me. And I’m driving all alone. I want to cry, but no, no, I won’t. The world is unfair, being that I’m big-boned, have a mom better-looking than me, and can’t have Peter when Shakira is in the way. I have to at least conquer the roads and have something for myself. If I can’t have Peter, then I can at least have my driver’s license. If Shakira is going to do her best to hurt me, then I should have mastery over the county roads. I have to have this, I tell myself. I don’t have much, but I will be an excellent driver.
I’m not excellent yet. A tire hits the curb when I pull into the strip mall. Grandpa is waving at me and I stop right in front of him.
“Where were you?” he yells at me. He gets into the car and slams the door. “I was calling you!”
“Grandpa, please, I was fine. I just made a wrong turn somewhere. I’m back, aren’t I?”
“You were gone for ten minutes. I’m going to tell your father. And the rim is caved in. Did you hit something?”
“I hit the curb.” I don’t care about that. Grandpa is always hitting something. Maybe the damage to the rim was his fault from hitting our mailbox so many times, and now he’s blaming me for it. But I definitely did hear a pop of metal on concrete when I hit the curb.
“Go home now,” he says, rubbing his forehead.
“Okay.”
Grandpa leans forward. “What’s this?” he asks. He’s holding my MAC lipstick.
“That’s mine,” I croak.
“You’re too young for this.” He throws the lipstick out the car window. What! Hell no!
“Grandpa, that’s a MAC lipstick!” I say.
“So what!” he roars.
So, it’s only a top-of-the-line lipstick that I bought at a MAC store with my own money. That’s all. And who is he to callously throw out my favorite lipstick? It was only halfway done. And he littered! That’s so gross, and wrong for the environment.
I’m silent and try not to cry on the way home. I sit with a stiff posture, pretending to be unaffected by his anger. Does Grandpa have to upset me during every Ramadan? A year ago I burned with the same intense ire toward him. When I emerged from my room with the chocolate crumbs embedded in my lip-gloss, Grandpa walked toward me while I backed away from him.
“You were eating!” he roared.
“What are you talking about?” I squeaked.
“Do not deny anything! We can all see that you’ve eaten something. This is the holiest of months. The Koran was revealed to us at this time. So many people are following this holy month, and you turn around and cheat! I knew you couldn’t do it!”
I felt horrible after Grandpa’s outburst, as if I had no will power or self-control. I knew of other family members who didn’t participate in Ramadan, and even though some people looked down on them, they still led normal lives. But I really wanted to do it last year.
His words had shaken me, and I cried plenty that day. I knew you couldn’t do it! He never believed in me in the first place when it came to fasting, and now I see
that he doesn’t believe in me when it comes to driving.
When I pull into our driveway, I jump out of the car and go inside without a word. It’s Saturday—it should be a day of relaxation, of getting away from school and doing fun things, and this morning has started off on such a bad note. Big deal that I ruined the rim of the car! Grandpa’s car is covered in dents and scratches. I guess it’s fine if he messes up, but not me. I have to be perfect!
I go into my room and hear an argument ensue. It’s an ugly one. It happens yards away from my room, but it sounds like it’s right outside my door. I sit up in bed, blinking in disbelief at what I’m hearing.
“She is disobedient!” Grandpa yells. “She doesn’t follow directions and she ruined my wheel!”
“We’ll pay for the repair,” Dad says. “Didn’t I ruin the bumper of your car when I was learning how to drive at that age?”
“Yes, that was a stupid mistake, but at least you owned up to it. Almira is acting like a spoiled brat!”
“Hold on. You insisted on teaching her how to drive,” Mom says. “That means you have to accept all her faults and give her your time and patience.”
“And I’m going to listen to you? Look at you. You’re dressed like an infidel.”
“What does my way of dressing have to do with this? I was exercising when you came in. Do you expect me to wear a veil when I do yoga? How ludicrous.”
“I once saw a woman jog in hijab.”
“Well, this is my home and I’ll wear whatever I want when I’m working out—”
“No wonder Almira acts with such arrogance and disrespect,” Grandpa says.
I’m arrogant and disrespectful? Am I really those things? I wasn’t aware. My heart feels like it will shatter into pieces hearing such horrible things about myself. I once heard a teacher talking about me to another teacher before school started. I was behind a door when my computer teacher told my science teacher how stupid I was and that I must be missing some chromosomes because I didn’t know how to create html codes. I rushed to the bathroom hyperventilating, but that was three years ago, when I was younger and more sensitive. (Also, Raul tutored me until I conquered html, so that showed my teacher what he knew about me.) I’m older and stronger, yet I’m depressed hearing Grandpa’s belittling tirade about me. I know Grandpa is old-fashioned, cantankerous, and melodramatic, but his words hurt me. I feel so small.
I put a pillow over my head, even though it doesn’t do any good. Their voices are so loud that they penetrate a layer of down feathers. I realize that this argument was bound to happen, that Mom and Grandpa never seem to agree on anything, but to actually have this fight unfold within my earshot pains me.
Because cell phones become smaller with each passing year, I’m having trouble finding mine. Years ago, Dad lent me one of his cell phones and the palm-sized bulk was easy to find. Now cell phones are so lightweight and small that I can’t locate my BlackBerry Pearl in my purse. I throw my purse against the wall to join in the rage of the household.
“You cannot dress like that in front of Almira, and you allow her to do whatever she wants!” Grandpa rants. “You let her go out at night. She’s probably seeing boys for all you know! And do you know how much makeup she wears? A lot! I just had to throw her lipstick out and she was defiant about it!”
My cell phone tumbles out of my purse when it collides with the wall. I pick it up and call Lisa. The line is busy. I sit down at my computer.
“And she had a picture on her computer of a man! You need to throw out her computer! It’s probably giving her all sorts of ideas! I watch the news, and men kidnap girls over the computer! I see what infidels do on the news shows! Ibrahim, you must stop this nonsense with your daughter immediately and take that computer away from her!”
“Almira is intelligent and knows what she should and shouldn’t do with a computer,” Dad says.
I quickly unlock my computer with my password and I’m relieved to see the Hello Kitty desktop still there. I forgot about my Jake Gyllenhaal screensaver, so I quickly change it to one with a bouncing star just in case Dad comes over to see if Grandpa’s accusations are true. I want Grandpa to leave. He’s getting nastier and louder the longer he stays.
“You’re the one who’s rude and arrogant!” Mom huffs. “Don’t you dare tell me how to raise my daughter!”
AlmiraRules: are you there?
“Father, please!” Dad yells.
AlmiraRules: is anyone there?
I’m typing into an empty void because I’m not getting a response. Lisa, Maria, and my other friends are not online as I expected them to be. I type in their screen names and the only message I see is OFFLINE OFFLINE OFFLINE. I’m sending out a mayday signal and nobody’s responding.
My bedroom has a wide glass door that opens to the pool and backyard. I slide the door open, walk through the yard, and pry open the fence. I’m on the sidewalk, away from adults. I feel that I can breathe, even though I’ll eventually have to return to my tense, angry family.
Without me even paying attention, my feet lead me to Lisa’s house. She’s out front with a cousin, the both of them washing her mom’s car. Lisa tells me that she’s almost done. I watch the suds roll off her mom’s BMW. Lisa and her cousin giggle at the normalcy of washing a car and getting wet in the process. I stay at her house for an hour, until my cell phone rings and Dad asks me in a mollifying tone to come back home. I don’t want to leave Lisa’s home because she’s so understanding. She’s as shocked as I am that Grandpa discarded my MAC lipstick through the window. “MAC’s, like, the best lipstick ever,” she says.
“I know!” I say. “It’s the bestest!”
Lisa hugs me and I melt into her. What a terrible day. Pattinson was discovered on my computer, the driving lesson was disastrous, and Grandpa was monstrous toward Mom and me.
“I’ll get you another lipstick,” Lisa says.
Her generous offer makes me burst into tears.
The only thing Mom says about Grandpa after the fight is, “He’s not allowed in this house again.”
“We’ll work things out with him,” Dad says.
I know Grandpa’s thinking is from the past and all, but he seemed to come down really hard on me and Mom, judging us based on the clothes we wear and our American values. Mom was born in Miami and Dad came to America when he was a little kid, whereas Grandpa was already a grown man coming from another country when he moved to Florida. They don’t understand each other. I used to think Grandpa’s way of thinking was funny, the way he calls harmless-looking women on the street “prostitutes,” how he thinks my teachers are infidels by teaching me that we come from monkeys, and how he insists that Allah (not sonic waves) makes thunder. It used to be ha, ha, ha, Grandpa is so loony. Dad would shake his head and chuckle, and even Mom would smirk at the things he said. But Grandpa has taken it too far. He acts like the morality police, ready to stone Mom for the way she dresses and raises me. I like Mom’s clothes (as long as she doesn’t wear the exercise gear outside), and I think she did okay raising me. I get good grades, never cheat on tests, and clean my room without being asked. And it isn’t a crime that I want a boyfriend. Grandpa mentioned the man on my computer, the wonderfully talented Mr. Pattinson, and I’m glad my parents haven’t followed up on that. My computer is guarded by my password, at least. But Grandpa is unlikely to sneak up behind me again, so I remove Hello Kitty so I can gaze at Robert once more.
I go to school Monday feeling burdened by the argument. There’s a Hershey’s Kiss on my seat in first period, but that doesn’t cheer me up. The prospect of a secret admirer or vindictive saboteur doesn’t fill me with curiosity or wonder. I feel so low. Weekends are a time to refresh the senses, but I look like a zombie. People keep asking me if I’m all right. I don’t want to reveal my family problems to everyone, so I don’t say anything. I’m most honest in my English jo
urnal:
So, old people can be really old-fashioned and they look at younger people and judge them. My grandfather said some really horrible things to Mom this weekend. He really crossed the line. It seemed like he was grasping at straws, trying to beat her down on these non-issues. He took these small things about her and turned them against her. My mom likes to dress in exercise clothes most of the day since she works out constantly (it’s like an addiction) and he talked about that as if she wears a bikini or nothing at all. Nobody can see her stuff with what she wears. Some women wear things that become sheer with sweat and my mom wears layers, with a tank top over another tank top. She dresses G-rated. Maybe my grandfather never liked her and wanted to use something against her.
I think he hates the way I turned out, because he said that I wasn’t raised right. I may not go to the mosque like he does and I don’t pray five times a day, but I’m still a good person. I’m fasting for the first time ever. It’s hard, but I don’t cheat. I don’t sip any water or have any snacks during the day. This is the ultimate sacrifice. I know other people my age who don’t fast, but I want to prove to myself and God that I have this willpower and control. This is a month to become cleaner and purer, and I’m feeling lighter (even lightheaded) from fasting. This is a month of discovery, and I discovered that my grandfather can be really mean and ugly. He refuses to understand people my parents’ age and my age.
Forgive me for rambling.
At the end of class, Ms. Odige gives our journals back to us. Scrawled in red ink are her comments. What a thoughtful entry. Yes, you ramble, but I’m sure that if you had more time to write this it would be a fantastic essay. Hang in there and things will work out.
What a trite saying. Hang in there. I’m reminded of the poster Ms. Odige keeps above her desk, the one with a kitten hanging on a clothesline by both paws. I’m hanging on, but for how long? When can I let go, and is there a cushion under me to catch my fall?
Bestest. Ramadan. Ever. Page 13
