Wolf Season
Page 19
It’s true. Rin is weaving all over the place like a drunk. All she needs is one of the town’s busybody cops—who knows, it might even be Flaherty—to pull her over and give her a blow test. She’d like to see him try. Foot in the fucking air, heel to toe—she’d walk a straighter line than any state trooper around here could. She would blow zeros all the way home, too, embarrass the hell out of him. She doesn’t drink anymore, she’d tell him. Hasn’t touched a drop since pregnancy wrung the need for booze out of her, along with her craving for tobacco. I’m cleaner than you will ever be, she’d say.
On the other hand, she does have some mighty precious cargo in here and the road is dangerously wet.
“No, it’s okay,” she says, slowing down. She leans forward to see better through the rain-splatted windshield, trying to keep the car straight and on the right side of the road, telling herself to ignore all visions of bloated dogs and donkeys, girls, ghosts, and snipers; of cops shooting her wolves. The roads in these parts hardly deserve the dignity of being called roads, she might add. They are more like tracks that happen to have a few patches of asphalt spilled on them here and there, flanked by dark channels of gravel and mud and bordered on either side by woods. Black trees rearing up without so much as a single streetlamp in sight. Thank the Lord, Allah, Krishna, Buddha, and Santa Claus, too, that the Iraq War wasn’t fought in woods like these.
Betty is purring now, if dogs can be said to purr. She has a way of making a low hum in her throat when she senses Rin needs grounding. It’s not a growl because there is nothing aggressive about it. If she were that librarian Rin imagined her to be, in glasses and a gray bun, she would be telling Rin to pull her skittering mind together and get this over with.
Juney is humming now, harmonizing with the dog. Rin wonders what Tariq thinks of her singing companions, a pudding brown mutt and a girl. The noise is pretty awful, but it is sweet, too, because they are doing it to anchor her. Juney starts up on her lyrics next, not self-conscious at all about the nonfamily member in the car. Rin has given Juney so little exposure to guests she has no idea that certain behaviors are not for outsiders, which makes Rin wonder if Juney sings like this at school and what the kids do about it.
“Mommy is driving Tariq home, Betty is singing, singing,” she chants in that off-key way of hers.
“Mommy is driving,
Betty is singing,
Tariq is happy,
Mommy is fine.
La di la di la.”
Rin is being nursemaided by two kids and a dog and she’s still a basketcase. Don’t let that doctor see me and remember. Don’t.
“Turn right here, Mrs. Drummond,” Tariq says above the singing, and Rin doesn’t hear any laughter in his voice. She can only guess what he’s thinking inside that old-before-his-time head of his, though.
“I’ll just drop you off, so we can get back home for dinner,” she tells him.
Juney stops singing. “Mommy, that’s rude! Anyhow, I want to meet Tariq’s mom. She’s a hero, like you and Daddy.”
Oh god of war, let me weep.
“Yeah, I want my mom to meet you, too,” Tariq chimes in.
The girl with the bloodied eyes rises in Rin’s mind again, the one she shot like a rat in Sadr City. The girl opens her mouth, teeth knocked out, tongue torn and bleeding. The girl is laughing.
22
THRESHOLD
Naema pulls up the blinds covering her front window and peers into the black wall of rain beyond, wondering why Tariq is so late. She assumes he is visiting Juney, but cannot think of him walking home alone at this hour and in this weather without a curl of fear wrapping her heart, so hurries across the room to fetch her phone. She no longer needs to draw in long, crackling breaths as she moves, but she can still feel a bronchial resistance holding her back like a leash.
The rain is driving harder now, battering urgently at her windows, the sound awakening the memories that are always hovering like an invading army in the corners of her mind. With a shiver, she pulls the phone from her purse just as a beam of light sweeps over the room. Peering out again, she sees Tariq running toward the house, head ducked against the downpour. She opens the door, clutching her hand to her chest in relief.
“Make some tea, please, Mama. We’ve got guests.” He steps inside, shaking the water from his hair like a dog, and kicks the shoe off his good leg, leaving the other on.
“Why are you so late?” she asks in Arabic. “Take off your other shoe, please.”
“Sorry. It’s because of the rain.” Then he says in English, “This is my friend Juney. And this is her mom, Mrs. Drummond.” A woman appears out of the dark, holding a small girl by the hand, both of them bareheaded under the deluge and illuminated only by the yellow porch light over the door. They look familiar, although Naema cannot think why.
“Oh, good evening,” she says, speaking English herself now, and opens the door wider to let them through. “I am so happy to meet you at last. Please, come out of the rain.”
No response. The woman only stands there, a bulky shape in the doorway, the child beside her flickering like a candle.
“Hurry, Mommy. I’m getting wet.” The child tugs at her hand.
“Yes, please. Do come in where it is dry,” Naema says.
Juney yanks again at her mother’s hand, but Rin’s feet are locked to the ground. The rain hurtles down on their heads.
Realizing his friends need help, Tariq takes Juney’s other arm and pulls. “Come on.”
“Ow!” she yelps with a laugh. “I’m snapping in two!”
Rin tells herself to unfreeze and take a step. Just one. Now another. And so, shuffle by shuffle, she allows her daughter to wrench her over the threshold of an Iraqi home, the first such home she has entered since the war and the first time ever without a weapon, her Kevlar, and a team of fully armed U.S. soldiers at her back.
Tariq tells Juney to remove her shoes and pries his own sneaker off his prosthetic leg at last, revealing the molded silicone foot of which he used to be so proud but is now only ashamed. Taking her by the hand, he leads her off to fetch some towels while Naema smiles encouragingly at Rin.
“I am so glad to meet you!” she says again. “And thank you for bringing Tariq home on this terrible night. My son, he has been very happy to make a friend of your daughter and you have been so generous to have him to your house so often. I must now repay you with some Iraqi hospitality.”
Her voice is welcoming, but to Rin she could hardly have said anything worse. In her platoon, “Iraqi hospitality” meant being captured and tortured. She does, however, manage to get herself far enough inside the door for Naema to close it, quieting the racket of the storm and the grumble of Rin’s still-running engine. Rin reminds herself that the car is there and ready, as is Betty, should she need to escape. Her invisible wolves, however, have unaccountably disappeared.
“Now, may I make you some hot tea?” Naema asks.
Rin understands she is obliged to accept, so manages a nod. Recognizing this is not enough, she adds, “Thanks,” which comes out sounding like a cough.
Naema looks at her a moment, able to see her more clearly now that she is lit by the living room lamps. A round face, red-cheeked and gray-eyed, younger than on first impression but roughened by sun and wind. Stubbled hair, inky with rain. Body a square of muscle. Boots, jeans, and a man’s white undershirt. Arms pocked with scars and a tattoo on her forearm so badly lasered-out that Naema can see exactly what it was: a bayonet encircled by a wreath. Naema has not worked at a VA clinic all these years without learning to recognize an army Combat Action Badge when she sees one. Perhaps she should not have mentioned Iraq.
Tariq reappears then, holding Juney’s hand and carrying a towel for Rin. Juney has her own towel draped over her head like a scarf and is smiling happily, her bare feet pink and tender under the wet hem of her jeans. Naema examines her with curiosity. Her face the shape of a dewdrop, her chin a pleasing point. But her irises are reflective and bla
nk, the color of bluish water; the color of near-nothing.
“Welcome to our home, Juney,” she says. “Tariq, he has told me much about you.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Jassim.” Juney swings her head about like a lily. Naema pats her shoulder, having long since given up explaining that Iraqi wives do not take their husbands’ names. Jassim was the family name of her grandfather.
“Please, sit,” she tells Rin then. Rin hasn’t budged since she stepped over the threshold. “Tariq, go see if we have any cookies.”
“We don’t eat cookies,” Rin blurts, jerking back to life. “And we’re about to have dinner so we can’t stay long.” She swallows, wishing she had brought Betty inside with her. Even Juney is not enough here.
Naema blinks at this rudeness. She was raised to consider hospitality a sign of Allah’s great goodness, not something to refuse on a whim. “Very well,” she replies, determined to serve the cookies anyway. “But your dinner, it can wait a few minutes, no? Please, make yourself at home. Your boots you can put there.” She points to a low rack along the wall by the door, heaped with shoes and slippers. “And do sit down and warm yourself. This is not a friendly night.”
Rin nods stiffly. She doesn’t want to take off her damn boots—it’ll make it harder to run. But she rubs her head with the towel and crouches to untie them anyway, placing them where she can grab them, if need be. Then she crosses the room and sits on the bloodred couch. Not a friendly night.
In the kitchen, Naema finds the children raiding the cookie jar with the concentration of diamond thieves. Tariq looks at her guiltily, but she only puts a finger to her lips and winks. Juney is blissfully stuffing her mouth with as much cookie as she can get into it at a time. “Her mom won’t let her eat sugar,” Tariq whispers.
“Well, try not to gobble them all, Juney. Save some for your mother.” Naema sets the kettle to boil and spoons tea leaves and cardamom into a small saucepan. Once the water is ready, she will pour it over the tea and then place the smaller pan inside a larger one to create a double boiler so the leaves can brew in the steam, thus creating the strong black chai of her homeland. She decides to use the enameled tea glasses she found in Damascus, the ones that normally sit so neglected on her sideboard. It is such a pleasure to formally serve a guest.
Out in the living room, Rin is hunched on the edge of the Iraqi’s gore-colored couch, feet wet and miserable in their socks, hands squeezed so hard between her knees they feel like rubber gloves, wishing she hadn’t left Betty in the car. Does this woman really not recognize her, or is she only biding her time until she can take revenge?
Glancing about the room, she tries to reconnoiter her surroundings and reel in some sense of control. She needs to find a balance between the thoughts that might be reasonable and the fears that might not. Because right now she can’t tell the difference.
On the surface, the room looks like any living/dining combo, if somewhat bare. The table on one side. A couple of armchairs in the same bloodred as the couch under her butt. A wooden coffee table as polished as a liar’s smile, and a stretch of red carpet woven with the image of a tree, its branches writhing. The walls are naked but for a few Islamic tiles, no family photos anywhere. Rin knows this. She’s seen it. Nothing to be scared of.
What if the Iraqi walks out of the kitchen not with tea but a gun . . . what if she kidnaps Juney . . . what if . . .
Rin studies the carpet, its branches squirming beneath her feet like worms, wishing she could squirm out of here with them. I should never have come. I can’t handle this, I can’t . . .
She jumps to her feet just as Tariq walks in balancing a platter of cookies, Juney close behind him, a hand on his shoulder for guidance. He lays the platter down on the coffee table and looks up at Rin. “There are five kinds of cookies here,” he announces like a car salesman. “There must be one you’ll eat.”
She inhales and forces herself to focus on him. Then she takes in Juney. “Have you been helping yourself to these, young lady?” She is working to steady the shake in her voice and sound like a normal mom.
“Oh, no, I know they’re not allowed.” Juney slides her little hand down to hold Tariq by the wrist. Her mouth is smeared with chocolate and her chin is sparkling with sugar. Rin is about to scold her. Then she doesn’t.
“Mommy, I can feel you standing and being weird. Sit.”
Rin obeys. Her legs jiggle up and down. Her hands clench and unclench, badly missing a rifle. Her back is to the kitchen door and she is sweating so hard she feels her underwear getting wet.
She stands, moves to an armchair, and sits with her back to the wall. Better. Still, where are her invisible wolves?
A clattering in the kitchen. What is the woman doing? It doesn’t take this much time or noise to boil a kettle. Then she abruptly appears, nods at Rin with a smile, crosses the room, and disappears again. Must be a second door to the kitchen, which means she could come in from two angles. Rin begins to shake.
Tariq and Juney are sitting on the floor beside the coffee table now, both cramming cookies in their mouths as if they haven’t eaten for a week. Juney looks tremendously pleased with herself, but Rin knows she won’t eat her dinner now, probably won’t sleep, either, with all that sugar spinning inside her. She might even throw up, assaulting her pure little stomach as she is. They are in for a rough night—if they get out of here alive. Jay, get us out of here alive.
Rin stands up again. “Betty. I shouldn’t leave her in the car with the ignition on. She could get gassed. I’ll just go fetch her.”
Tariq glances at Rin, startled. “Um, Mrs. Drummond? I’m sorry, but we can’t. I mean, my mom doesn’t allow dogs in here.”
She looks at him. Little nut face under his tangle of curls. Oh, right. Iraqis don’t like dogs in their homes. She sits back down.
“Betty won’t care,” Juney says. “She’s probably chasing raindrops on the windows.”
But Rin needs Betty now. She also needs—and she is aware of this—to calm the hell down.
“Juney?” she says. Just one word, but Juney understands. She scoots along the floor to Rin, feels for her legs, and leans against them. The warmth of her little back, the shine of her hair. Rin puts her hand on Juney’s head and feels her heart slow. For the moment.
A tinkling of glass against glass and the Iraqi enters, instantly triggering Rin’s fearsweat again. She is carrying an oval brass tray laden with fancy glasses rimmed in gold, each one only a little bigger than a shot glass. Amid them stands a tall and narrow silver teapot, its spout curving up it like the stem of a tulip. She moves slowly, her breath strangely heavy, and Rin can hear a wheezing sound from her throat. What could that be?
Oh.
Fuck.
The Iraqi sets the tray on the coffee table and then herself on the couch Rin just left, folding her thin hands on her lap. She is wearing loose black pants and a pink button-down shirt, a long black braid draped over her shoulder—no hijab, abaya, burqa, or anything like that. Thank god. But her cheek is stamped with that shrapnel scar Rin remembers only too well, a star of fire and metal right there on her cheekbone.
She studies Rin’s face.
Please don’t recognize me. Please.
“Mrs. Drummond, I am thinking maybe we met before, no? Your daughter, was she ever a patient of mine? Are you one of my veteran parents?”
Rin can’t say a word.
“Oh no,” Juney chimes in. “I’d remember your voice if you were my doctor. I didn’t like my doctor. But I like you.” She takes another bite of cookie.
Rin’s eyes refuse to blink. She has no idea if Juney is lying to protect her or if this is indeed what her memory has done with that unforgiving day.
“You were not in the clinic the morning of the hurricane?” the woman asks then. “Do excuse me, for my memory of that day, it is very hazy. I remember only rain and all that wind and water and noise. And then I was so sick afterwards, it is all like a bad dream now.”
Good. Don’t eve
r wake up.
“Yes, we did go to the clinic that day—it was so scary!” Juney says. Rin stares at her. Her daughter the Judas. “But my doctor was this lady who treated me like a baby. Not you.”
The Iraqi frowns while Rin sits stiff as a shot deer. Then, after an interminable pause, the woman shakes her head. “Ah, perhaps you saw my colleague, Dr. Jordan. No matter. Come, the tea, it is ready. It is too strong for the children, Mrs. Drummond, but may I serve you? I think you will probably want sugar.”
For the first time in her life Rin is glad that trauma plays havoc with memory. She accepts the tea and capitulates about the sugar, too, only on one condition. With each sip, she will swear in the secret blood of her every vein and artery that she will never, ever go near Tariq’s mother again.
Later, as she drives home, having managed to escape the house with no more damage done than a daughter full of cookies and nerves cinched tight enough to snap, Juney sits beside her singing again, rocking even more than usual in her sugar high, her voice bouncing off Rin’s ears like bubbles. Betty is asleep in the back, snoring her doggy snore, probably half poisoned by carbon monoxide. And Rin is in such a snarl of relief, confusion, and what might possibly be regret that she scarcely pays any notice to her usual nighttime visitations. Even the shot-up girl leaves her alone.
The driving demands attention, though, the rain sheeting down. It is solid black out here—so black she can barely see the road. She won’t be able to see a cop car, either, at least not till it’s right up behind her, and she expects to find Flaherty or the DEC on her tail at any moment. Oh god, how is she ever going to tell Juney? Juney has never known life without their wolves—she and Silver and Gray were born in the same year; her lupine sister and brother. How is Rin going to tell her that their family might be ripped apart? That Rin herself might even be arrested?
“Mommy? Isn’t Tariq’s mom nice?”
Deep breath. “We don’t know her yet, bean. We can’t tell if she’s nice.”
“But she gave us cookies and tea and she didn’t ask any dumb questions about my eyes. I like the smell of her house, too. Spicy and minty and peppery, like a pie.”