His Other Wife

by Umm Zakiyyah

  The door closed behind them as he followed Melanie to the end of the hall. She stopped in front of an open door and gestured for Jacob to come inside. He stepped beyond the threshold and nodded approvingly at the large, spacious office bearing framed degrees and certificates, inspirational quotes, and paintings.

  He gestured his head toward an acrylic painting of what looked like the lower half of a table with a girl sitting and eating. “I see you still like mystery.”

  “I have you to thank for that,” she joked.

  Jacob coughed laughter, but he got choked up instead. It still pained him that he had convinced Melanie to abort their child while they were an official couple in high school. Though he’d heard that she had three children now, he couldn’t help wondering if the wound he’d inflicted would ever heal.

  “Come here,” she said affectionately as she pulled Jacob into an embrace.

  He immediately lifted his hands as if in surrender in an effort to avoid participating in the hug. “I’m sorry. I…” he said, unsure how to explain his awkward predicament.

  Melanie jerked her body away from him and brought a hand to her mouth. “Oh my God, Jacob. I totally forgot. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” he said, chuckling self-consciously. “It happens all the time.”

  “That must be so annoying though,” she said sympathetically as she sat down on the long leather couch in front of her desk.

  “I fear it annoys other people more than me,” he said, a tinge of sad humor in his tone.

  “Well, they’ll just have to get over it then, won’t they?” she said. “Living according to what you believe is more important than sparing people’s feelings.” Her words immediately reminded Jacob of having said something similar when they were in high school and Melanie’s parents objected to their relationship because he wasn’t Jewish. But Jacob had always suspected that their objection was due more to him not being White.

  Seconds passed in awkward silence until Melanie patted the space on the sofa next to her. “Sit down. Tell me what’s bothering you.”

  An embarrassed smile formed on his face as he sat down on the couch as far from Melanie as possible. “How do you know something’s bothering me?”

  “You live in another city, Tiger. And you’re not the type of person to just stop by and say hello. I haven’t seen you in over ten years.” She rolled her eyes good-naturedly. “Besides, I know you. Don’t forget that.”

  “Don’t you have an appointment or something?”

  “Yes,” she said. “In twenty minutes, but I canceled them. I told them to reschedule.”

  Jacob’s eyes widened apologetically. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…”

  “Every time is a bad time, Tiger.” She gave him a friendly tightlipped smile.

  “Oh… well… thanks.”

  “Congratulations, by the way,” Melanie said.

  Jacob creased his forehead. “For what?”

  “For being an inspiration to so many people.”

  “An inspiration?” Jacob said as if waiting for the punch line.

  “Your marriage workshops, your interviews, your—”

  “You’ve seen some of my interviews?” Jacob couldn’t conceal the surprise in his voice.

  “No,” Melanie said. “I’ve seen all of them. I follow you on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. And,” she said, raising a forefinger, “I get Google alerts for your name.”

  “Are you serious?” He coughed laughter. “That’s insane.”

  She shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. But I call it caring about what’s going on with you.”

  Jacob nodded. Though he hadn’t gone as far as to follow Melanie on all her social networks, he did follow her on Twitter and occasionally Google her name when his curiosity got the better of him, so he couldn’t blame her.

  “I really like that last interview you did,” she said. “The one with you and your wife. I’m really glad you made those points. The truth is, I get really annoyed when experts insult each other.” She groaned and rolled her eyes to the ceiling. “And using religion to justify your opinion? I think that’s my number one pet peeve in this field.”

  “So it happens in your religious community too?”

  “Are you kidding me?” Melanie looked pointedly at him. “Show me a religious community it doesn’t happen in.”

  Jacob nodded thoughtfully. “I thought it was mainly Muslims doing that.”

  Melanie laughed. “Please don’t tell me you’re falling for the Islamophobic propaganda. Like you said, everybody has problems.”

  Jacob laughed in agreement. “You have a point.”

  “Soooo….” Melanie said, her voice teetering between cautious and serious. “…let me be really honest with you. My wild guess is that there’s a lot of trouble in the waters of your marriage, and you want my professional perspective.”

  Jacob grunted, surprised that it was still easy for him to be frank and honest with Melanie. “To put it lightly,” he said, agreeing. But Jacob didn’t mention that he’d chosen Melanie also because she was the only person he trusted to not misconstrue his and Deanna’s marital struggles as some proof that Muslims weren’t upstanding citizens, or to surreptitiously leak their marriage problems to the public. He and Deanna were well respected in both secular and Islamic circles, and he didn’t want to take the chance that anyone would betray their confidentiality in an effort to ruin that respectable image. Unfortunately, the Muslim experts he knew had lives too deeply intertwined with his and Deanna’s to trust their impartiality.

  “In that last interview,” Melanie said, shaking her head, “your wife looked like she was about to spit bullets when you gave a point of view different from hers. I felt like the only thing keeping those bullets in her mouth was that frozen smile on her face.” She shook her head again. “And all I could think was, poor Jacob. He must be going through a lot.”

  “Well…” he said uncomfortably, “I wouldn’t put it like that.”

  “I don’t mean that judgmentally,” she said sincerely. “Many of us are going through a lot, Tiger. I filed for divorce twice then backed out both times. So you’re not getting any judgments from me. I might need to find a marriage counselor myself.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  She waved her hand dismissively. “Don’t be. It’s not your fault.”

  Silence filled the space between them for some time.

  Jacob glanced at the clock on the wall. “Melanie,” he said with a sigh, “I’m not even sure it was a good idea to come here, so I should probably just go.”

  “Okay, sure,” she said, her tone unconvincing. “But let me say something first.”

  Jacob was silent as he gave a hesitant nod.

  “Remember how I used to say you need to get in touch with your feelings more?”

  A smile crawled on his face. “Yes, I do.”

  “Well, that’s my advice. You avoid things too much, and you try too hard to put a positive spin on everything.” She raised her hand as if anticipating a rebuttal. “I’m not saying you should think negatively of your marriage. All I’m saying is, being positive is only good when you’re honest with yourself about the whole picture. You have to take a long, hard look at the good and the bad, and the positive and the negative. Otherwise, you’re not being positive or optimistic. You’re being willfully blind. It’s like putting on blinders after you’ve already seen what’s in front of you, then wondering what you keep bumping into and why you keep getting hurt.”

  On the drive back home, the bass of music thumped in his car speakers, and Jacob kept replaying Melanie’s advice in his head. You have to take a long, hard look at the good and the bad, and the positive and the negative. As he tried to think of the bad circumstances in his life in a concrete way, his mind kept warding off the thoughts as if in self-protection.

  Yes, Deanna had an explosive temper at times, but Jacob wasn’t an angel himself. How then could he fault his wife for being flawed? Jacob’s occa
sional frustration notwithstanding, her actions weren’t hurting anyone. Deanna herself always tried to focus on the positive. How then could he allow himself to do anything differently?

  ***

  Deeja Marriage Guru: You know someone’s Islam is a front when they line their pockets with your sadaqah, pretend to be needy so you’ll help them get a job, and then drop you when they feel they can’t use you anymore. #TiredOftheBS #ImTooThrough

  Juwayriah bint Abdullah and 29 others like this. 14 comments.

  Chapter 9

  He Broke Her

  “You just need to work on your mudood and ghunnah,” Reem said.

  As Aliyah held the cordless phone to her ear Friday evening, she made a mental note of what her Qur’an teacher was saying about her recitation. Aliyah had begun studying tajweed with Reem a few years ago when Reem started the evening and weekend classes at the local masjid. But after Aliyah and Matt divorced, Aliyah was unable to attend regularly. It had been Reem’s idea to resume classes via telephone, and initially, Aliyah refused. She did not want to inconvenience her Qur’an teacher. Besides, she had no way to compensate Reem for her time. It was one thing for Aliyah to accept Reem’s offer for her to attend the regular group class without paying, but it was another thing entirely to accept a one-on-one class specifically catered to Aliyah’s schedule and needs.

  “Let me clarify something, Aliyah,” Reem had said to her about a year ago when Aliyah refused the offer for a third time. “This is not something I do for everyone. As you know, my schedule is really busy. But you’re one of my best students, mashaAllah tabaarakAllah, and I’d hate to lose you. So this is something I want to do for myself, honestly. I know you might not understand this right now, but, truthfully, it would be an honor if you allow me to teach you privately.”

  “My madd counts are still off?” Aliyah’s gaze was on the bundle of postcards on the floor table in front of the couch near where she stood.

  “Only slightly,” Reem said. “But you have a tendency to implement ghunnah in some of the mudood letters, especially at the end of an ayah.”

  “Make du’aa Allah helps me with that,” Aliyah said, sighing in self-reproach. “It’s a really bad habit of mine.”

  “It’s a normal mistake, actually,” Reem said. “Even some of the most famous reciters of Qur’an do it.”

  Aliyah nibbled at her lower lip, her mind distracted with thoughts of her family returning all the postcards she’d sent them. How was she supposed to fulfill the Islamic requirement to uphold family ties when her family refused to even speak to her or acknowledge her presence?

  Aliyah was beginning to feel as if her world was caving in, and she wanted so badly to reach out to someone—anyone—who could help. But she had no idea where to turn. Her uncle Benjamin had always been a source of comfort and support over the years. Out of everyone, he understood Aliyah’s predicament best. Though he was still married to his Christian wife (a sister of Aliyah’s mother), Benjamin had experienced his own level of alienation because he was (allegedly) “forcing” his wife to stay married to him. As was the case with their view of Aliyah, that Ben’s wife was a grown woman with a mind and life of her own was lost on them.

  Despite his personal understanding of what she was going through, Aliyah felt that her uncle wasn’t emotionally available to really hear her right then. He was so determined to get Aliyah remarried that she sometimes felt invisible to him. Aliyah had concerns that needed to be addressed and dreams she wanted to fulfill irrespective of whether or not she ever found “the one.” Though Larry seemed nice enough and Aliyah was still contemplating marrying him, she just couldn’t bring herself to be excited about the idea. Maybe she was still recovering from what she had gone through with Matt, but she was beginning to wonder if she wanted to remarry at all.

  “How are you doing though, habeebti?” Reem said, her voice soft with compassion and empathy.

  “I’m good, Alhamdulillaah,” Aliyah said, offering her standard response followed by praising God for His blessings.

  “Are you sure everything’s all right?” Reem said, concern in her voice. “You seem a bit distracted today.”

  You know someone’s Islam is a front when they line their pockets with your sadaqah, pretend to be needy so you’ll help them get a job, and then drop you when they feel they can’t use you anymore. Aliyah gritted her teeth at the sudden reminder of Deanna’s offensive Facebook status.

  “I’m just tired,” Aliyah said. But she felt a lump developing in her throat as she realized how emotionally exhausted she was. Maybe her Islam was a front. She wasn’t feeling exactly spiritually motivated right then. She was even beginning to doubt that she had the ability to maintain her sanity much longer. She just felt so lonely. The sustained estrangement from her family, the unexpected divorce from Matt, and the eventual fallout with Deanna left Aliyah wondering if it was even realistic to have a companion or friend she could trust.

  Aliyah wished she had the wherewithal to reach out to Reem and ask her perspective, but Aliyah just couldn’t bring herself to admit her frailties to the one person besides her uncle who saw something special in her. But Aliyah hoped that she and Reem could become good friends one day. Aliyah imagined that there was so much she could benefit from her Qur’an teacher. Though Reem was a couple of years younger than Aliyah, Reem’s knowledge of Islam and Qur’an made her seem like an elder.

  “Okay…” Reem seemed hesitant to get off the phone, and Aliyah felt horrible for inciting concern in her teacher.

  Can’t you have a relationship with at least one person without stressing them out? Aliyah scolded herself.

  When Aliyah finally hung up, she was overcome with sadness and frustration. What was it about her that made her so off-putting to people? First her family, then her husband, and now her best friend.

  You know someone’s Islam is a front when they line their pockets with your sadaqah, pretend to be needy so you’ll help them get a job, and then drop you when they feel they can’t use you anymore.

  After more than ten years of friendship, that was Deanna’s perspective of Aliyah? What had Aliyah done to make Deanna hate her so much?

  ***

  Hurt people hurt people.

  It was something Jacob’s father would say often. “Except when inflicting or suffering some egregious wrong, no one is completely wrongdoer or victim,” he told Jacob. “So be careful before you align yourself with anyone’s cause. Things aren’t always as they seem.”

  But when Jacob heard the heartbreaking story of Janice Michaels, he couldn’t fathom there being any explanation for her predicament except her having suffered egregious wrong. From childhood, Janice spent many afternoons and weekends in the church. The church was only a few blocks from her home, so whenever the bus dropped off her and her cousin Bailey after school, Janice (and sometimes Bailey) would often make the short trek to God’s House of Worship. Usually Janice’s father (who would later become a deacon), mother, and elder brother, Asher, would be at the church volunteering or facilitating one of the many activities that were always happening there: a youth group meeting, a clothes or food drive, a soup kitchen, choir practice, or merely dusting and cleaning the pews.

  Bailey, who had lost his father to the war in Iraq and his mother (though still alive at the time) to drug addiction, lived with Janice’s family off and on and gradually became like a second son to Janice’s father and good friends with Asher. Bailey and Asher were around the same age, ten years older than Janice, so their interactions with Janice were primarily of obligatory tolerance and a mild annoyance. By eight years old, Janice had mastered the art of entertaining herself, so no one usually gave more than a passing shrug whenever she sifted through the donation boxes in the church basement and played dress-up with all the grown-up clothes and women’s heels she’d find there.

  “Child, take your butt to the bathroom and put on some proper clothes and wash that crap off your face.” This is what her father would say if he lost p
atience after catching sight of her in layers of fake jewelry, oversized heels, and red lipstick, eye shadow, and foundation smeared childishly on her face. Janice would giggle and run along out of his sight, where she would resume her “pretty lady” walk in the shadows of an empty room as she held her mother’s large purse (where she’d found the make-up) clamped closely to her side. Sometimes she would sing a popular song or hymn to herself as she swayed her small hips from side to side, imagining herself in front of flashing cameras and television crews eager to catch a glimpse of the famous, stunningly beautiful “Niecey Meesy,” as she called herself in her pretend world.

  “That’s a stupid name,” Bailey said to her once as they walked from the bus stop to the church during a particularly cold day in the winter, his hands stuffed firmly and deeply into the pockets of his wool-like polyester coat. The bottom of his face was ducked awkwardly behind the upturned collar, so his voice was muffled. He rarely wore a hat, earmuffs, scarf, or gloves; but Janice’s mother was rather adamant that Janice herself never left the house during the winter except that she wore all of these items.

  How Bailey was able to escape the tongue lashing of Mr. and Mrs. Michaels while he stayed in their house was a conundrum that Janice’s young mind had never been able to decipher. Janice was equally perplexed as to why her parents would let her walk home or to church alone whenever Bailey was not staying with them but insisted that Bailey, whose high school was next to her elementary school, make sure Janice got home or to church safely whenever he was staying in their house. Asher couldn’t see her home safely because he went to a magnet school for the gifted and talented in another part of the city. Ironically, he usually arrived to the church before Bailey or Janice.

  “So. I don’t care,” Janice said, her voice muffled through her wool scarf as she turned up her head as much as she could manage with all the layers. “When I get famous, I’m going to be Niecey Meesy, and you’re going to be sorry you ever said that. I won’t even give you an autograph.”