I freeze at the mention of a newspaper. “What does he want?”
Emmy laughs at me. “Duh, he thinks you’re cute. He wants to meet you. Here, I’ll introduce you.”
Before I can do anything to stop her, Emmy stands up and waves Ian over. His face reddens slightly when he realizes that he’s been caught staring. Good. I’m pleased that he feels ashamed. I haven’t yet grown comfortable with how boys and girls interact here. There’s something crude and carnal about the way they mingle and touch and talk to one another so casually. It makes me nervous.
Sure enough, Ian sits on the bench next to me, sliding closer than I’m used to. I know it doesn’t mean anything here, but when his elbow brushes against mine as he leans over to talk to Emmy, I yank my arm and lean away automatically.
He notices. “Sorry,” he says, and jumps to his feet. He looks mortified. “Sorry,” he repeats.
Good, I think again, not entirely sure why his discomfort pleases me. He’s more aware of the space between us than most of the other boys I’ve encountered here—bucket-fed giants, bigger than most grown men in my country, who jostle me in the hallways or brush against me in doorways without even noticing.
Emmy is gleeful. She introduces us with a teasing note to her voice that doesn’t vanish even when I glare daggers at her. “Ian, Laila. Laila, Ian. You two have a lot in common. Or maybe you don’t. I really have no idea. Why don’t you talk and figure it out?” She leaps off the bench and skips away, turning back just long enough to wink at me.
Now I am the one who is mortified.
Ian rolls his eyes at Emmy’s back. “Subtlety is not her strong point,” he says.
He shifts from foot to foot. I fidget on the bench. We at least have our awkwardness in common.
He finally speaks. “So, um, I’ve heard a lot about you. Well, I’ve heard about you a lot, anyway. I guess that’s different, isn’t it?”
He’s rambling. I let him—perhaps a cruel thing to do, but I don’t know the rules here. I feel vulnerable without Emmy to translate his shifting weight, his lopsided smile, and his habit of pushing his hair back out of his eyes more often than necessary.
“I know how hard it is to move to a new country,” he’s saying.
Now I’m interested. “How do you know?”
“We moved around a lot when I was a kid,” he says, looking grateful for the foothold my question gives him. “My family, I mean. Sometimes here in the States, but we also spent a couple of years traveling around South America. A few months in Ecuador, almost a year in Paraguay. All over, really.”
“Why?” I don’t mean to be abrupt, but this question feels somehow important to me.
“My parents were working as missionaries.” He holds his hands up quickly, palms out. “But wait. Don’t be freaked out by that. I’m not trying to convert you or proselytize or anything. I’m not like that. At all. They’re not either, really. It was just a thing they did.”
I keep my face neutral, but in my mind I put up an invisible barrier between us. Newspapers. Religion. Two things that have torn apart my family. Ian has two strikes against him, even if he does seem sweet. “It’s nice to meet you,” I say, standing up from the bench. I pick up my backpack and start to edge away. I know I’m being rude, and I hope he doesn’t take it personally. It’s not him. It’s what he represents.
Ian, perceptive once again, hears the stiffness in my voice and doesn’t try to prolong the conversation. His half wave goodbye shows his confusion, though. “See you around?”
I nod once and he looks encouraged. As I walk away, I realize that I’m smiling. It was purely an accident, that smile, and I hope that Ian didn’t see it.
RECOGNITION
More visitors.
This time I come home to a group. Five men, a boy my age, and my mother. They’re squeezed three to the couch, and the rest on the rickety seats that usually circle the table where we eat. Mother holds court from the one and only chair in our apartment that doesn’t fold up for storage.
This is no social call, I see immediately. There’s tension in the air, and everyone except my mother seems edgy and cheerless. She alone looks poised and controlled—she is a woman whose face gives away nothing. She is also accustomed to hosting cheerless gatherings—a souvenir from her old life. She and my father used to plot out her role in advance of important meetings—where to sit, what to say, who to charm and who to snub. She was very good at this.
Even so, she looks relieved to see me. “Laila, there you are. You’re late. There’s someone here I want you to meet.” Her voice is artificially merry, and I wonder if the others in the room can hear her nervousness, even if they can’t see it. Probably not. She hides it well. “Laila, this is Amir. He goes to your school!” She says this as if it were an incredible coincidence worthy of exclamation.
Amir does not move from his chair. He just sits there, still as a statue. Only his eyes give any hint that he has heard my mother’s introduction.
His eyes are full of hate.
It’s hard to describe what hate looks like, but so easy to spot it. To feel its heat. His eyes are narrowed and locked onto my own—the trajectory of his hatred unmistakable.
I reflexively take a step backward and nearly stumble over Bastien’s new backpack, which is lying on the floor. I catch myself just in time to keep from falling, but I still feel off balance.
I don’t recognize Amir or any of the other men, but I do recognize their features. They have the burnt-almond eyes, deep olive skin, and high cheekbones of the northwest region of my country. The Trouble Spot, my father used to call it. What little I know about the region, or its people, comes from overheard bits of hushed conversations and brief mentions in my library readings. What little I know all points to these people being enemies. Of my father, at least, which I think means of the rest of my family as well.
And yet my mother now welcomes them into her home.
She pauses a moment, giving Amir a second chance to respond. When he doesn’t, she pushes harder. “Laila, won’t you please ask Amir to help you in the kitchen? There’s a tray of food ready, but it’s quite heavy.”
I don’t often disobey my mother, but this time I do. I take my cue from Amir and remain silent. One of the men snickers, but everyone else is quiet. I feel the weight of their collective scorn—it’s not just coming from Amir—and I am nearly overcome with the need to flee.
“Bastien!” I call out. My voice is too loud in the quiet, tense room. “Bastien, are you in there?” I know that he must be. His backpack on the floor and the closed bedroom door are proof. “Come on, I’ll take you to the playground.”
Now my mother is glaring at me too.
Fortunately, Bastien bursts out of the door almost immediately. He must have been pressing his ear against it, listening. I grab his hand, even though I know he hates it when I do that, and pull him out of the apartment.
“What are they doing here?” I hiss as soon as we’re outside. “What do they want?”
Bastien shrugs and then points to someone on the far side of the playground. “He told Mother to invite them.”
“He” is the man from the other day. The one with the gift basket.
“Go play,” I command Bastien, and he runs to the basketball court to watch the older boys practicing jump shots.
The man is leaning against the building, smoking, but he’s doing it in a way that makes it obvious he’s not a smoker. He’s holding the cigarette strangely, like a pencil, and he never lifts it to his mouth to inhale. It burns away, forgotten between his fingers. He’s using it as a prop—a reason to linger, I think.
“Hello, Laila.” He does not seem surprised to see me.
“I don’t know your name,” I respond.
“Darren. Darren Gansler.” He drops his cigarette to the ground without having taken a single puff that I could see, as if its purpose had already been accomplished. Was he waiting for me?
“You don’t look like a Darren.” I realize t
his is ridiculous as soon as it’s out of my mouth. I know nothing about what a Darren does or doesn’t look like. I do, however, know what a liar looks like. He looks like a liar, this man who has followed us from the worst day of my life to here.
He shrugs. “You’re probably right.”
He is utterly indifferent to my challenge. He knows that I know he’s a liar. But he doesn’t care. “What are you doing here?” I ask, even though I suspect he’ll just lie to me in response.
“Waiting to talk to your mother,” he says, then ducks away to answer the cell phone that begins to ring from his pocket.
Frustrated, I walk off. I’m not going to get any answers from this Darren who isn’t Darren anyway, and I’m offended to have been so easily dismissed. But I am certain that neither his presence nor the men in my apartment can possibly mean anything good.
COMPENSATION
The days that follow bring no answers.
Mother is vague about the gathering; my questions only invite pinched lips and irritable head shakes from her. She’s suddenly busy all the time—not an easy thing to accomplish in our tiny, distractionless apartment. Bastien didn’t overhear anything useful either, so I am left alone with my confusion. At least one surprise comes from the meeting, though.
Food.
I arrive home from school to find the refrigerator and the cabinets full. Mother must have gone to a hair salon too, because the gray streaks that were beginning to snake their way through her hair have vanished. She laughs and waves away my questions. “Just enjoy it, Laila. I bought you something special—look in your bedroom.”
I walk into the room expecting to find a small trinket, or maybe a new blouse. Instead, I find a laptop computer sitting on my bed, brand-new and still in its box. It’s the same kind as Emmy’s, but a more recent version. Bastien’s bed has a box on it too—it looks like a video game console of some sort.
I rush back to the living room, positive there’s been a mistake. “But these things are so expensive! How did you get them?”
Mother laughs again, then twirls around in the middle of the room. She’s wearing a new dress. It looks like it cost as much as my computer, if not more. She’s always had expensive taste.
“Mother, where did you get the money for all this?” My heart is pounding in my chest, partly because I’m excited to have my own computer, but more because I’m afraid of what these gifts mean. Did she trade the last of her jewelry for one final splurge, or has she bartered something else? It pains me that I can’t just accept, can’t just enjoy. But I can’t. There’s something stopping me, even if it is only the perpetual sourness that seems to run, corrosive and sluggish, through my veins these days.
“I told you that money would come.” She is smug. Proud. Standing there, stunning and confident in her expensive new dress and young-again hair, she could be a snapshot from our past—a photo ripped in half, my father’s image torn away.
But I’m tired of the way she dances around questions. I have a right to know.
“Mother!” My voice is shrill as I repeat my question. “Where did you get the money for these things?”
Her head snaps up. She’s said nothing about my small act of rebellion the day before, but I know there is a tally in her mind. Confronting her, questioning her, is my second act of defiance in two days. She’s indignant, but after trying out her anger for just a moment, she softens and discards it. “It’s from Mr. Gansler. Darren. I’m doing a little work for him, and in exchange he’s going to pay our expenses for a while.”
“What kind of work?” My mother has never worked a day in her life, and I find it difficult to imagine what she could be doing that would be worth a laptop, a silk dress, and cupboards stuffed full.
“Just some networking,” she says. “I’m making some connections for him. In our community here.”
I wasn’t aware that we had a community. I certainly haven’t felt a part of one. And I know for a fact that my mother would never have allowed me to cross paths with someone like Amir back home, much less introduced us. But I feel relief. This explains why my mother, long accustomed to servants attending her every need, was herself serving tea and cookies to a group of men who looked like they’d never come within miles of someone from her station in life. Her old station, that is.
I fight back the sourness before I respond. Why am I the only one who seems to feel luck like a sunburn? Why should I be the one to question our sudden good fortune? I swallow my questions and resolve to be more like Bastien and my mother. To just accept.
“That’s good news,” I force myself to say.
Mother relaxes, smoothing the fabric of her skirt as she sits down. She’d been tensed for an argument, ready to do battle with me over this. “Yes, I think that it will be good for all of us. But I’ll need your help, Laila, if I’m going to make this work.”
I can’t imagine how I can possibly help, but she tells me before I ask.
“Amir. I need you to be nicer to him next time. I’m going to be working with his family, so they may be here quite often. There are a lot of them living in this area, and they’re well established here. They have connections I need.”
“What do you want me to do with Amir, exactly? Seduce him? Marry him?” I say it for shock value, my small way of lashing out, but Mother bats away the provocation.
“I just want you to distract him, Laila. He has a bad attitude, and it would help me if you could keep him entertained while I talk to the adults. He has a way of making unpleasant comments that keep us from moving forward.” Her voice turns bladelike. If I am sour, then my mother is sharp. “Kind of like another teenager I know.”
What can I say to this? If I am to become someone who attracts, rather than suffers good fortune, then I suppose that I should do its bidding. I swallow my questions yet again and nod.
OPENINGS
“Is it stuck?” Ian slides out of the crowd to lean against the locker next to mine. His shirt has a dime-sized hole on one sleeve, and the bottom of his backpack is stained with blue ink—small flaws I notice only because I’m avoiding eye contact.
“No. I—” I’m flustered, too embarrassed to find a clever lie. “I can’t remember the combination. I know it’s stupid. I’ve opened it dozens of times.” My brain is spongy lately. Porous. Useless memories seep in, unbidden and unwanted, while necessary facts leak out.
“Close your eyes.”
I don’t. “What? No.”
He smiles and shifts his bag to the other shoulder. “I’m serious, just try it. Close your eyes and try opening the lock. You won’t get it exactly right, unless you’ve got some sort of Jedi Master mind thing going on, but maybe it’ll trigger your memory.”
I don’t disguise my heave of a sigh, but I do close my eyes.
He’s right. Blind, the padlock feels more familiar to me. I turn it right, left, right, and then yank. The lock doesn’t yield, but something in my mind does and I remember that the first number is fifteen. I open my eyes and the next two numbers stumble back to me as well.
“Thank you.” I face my open locker, but he’s still in the corner of my vision.
“No worries. I forget my combination every time we have more than a three-day weekend. But the muscle memory is always there. Your hands remember things even when your brain doesn’t. At least, that’s my official, scientific explanation.” He grins and pushes away from the locker. “See you around?”
I turn toward him at last and nod. His eyes are an unusually pale shade of hazel and they give him an intense, almost leonine appearance. “Yes.”
I wait until he leaves before I look down at my hands. Muscle memory. I’ve never heard that term before, but it makes sense. I’ve been trying to will away the unwelcome thoughts of my last days at home, but my body can’t be denied the things that trigger. Familiar smells and sounds, a blast of hot air from a passing bus, even the sight of a bottle of water the same brand that someone—I don’t even know who—thrust into my hands as I sobbed and
retched through the plane’s takeoff.…
I shut the locker and hug my books against my chest as I walk to class, trying not to brush against anyone or even breathe too deeply, lest some lingering odor attack my senses with false familiarity. If I can’t control my memories, then perhaps I can at least escape the triggers.
AIR
I’ve been underwater for nearly a month.
That’s what it feels like here—a life submerged. Wave-tossed and sand-scoured. Voices around me in school sound muted and distorted; faces are out of focus. I’m experiencing my new life through fathoms of water, making everything seem dreamlike and unreal, as if my brain can only accept so much change before it drowns.
Gradually, though, I’ve been surfacing. Certain things, certain people, have been pulling me out of my floating state, whether I like it or not.
Emmy, for example. After all this time—these weeks that have felt like years—she is still here, still hasn’t discarded me in favor of a new specimen for her rotating collection of friends. And she does not take no for an answer.
“I knew you’d say no. But it’s just a dance, and I already have the perfect dress for you to wear. It’s too small for me now, but it would definitely fit you. You’re so tiny!”
From her this is a high compliment. She and her friends are fiercely competitive in their suffering to be smaller, and even now Emmy is peeling the cheese and pepperoni off a slice of pizza—she’s gone vegan this week. Around the lunch table everyone seems to have given something up—dairy, meat, gluten, sugar, carbs. Only in a land of plenty could people voluntarily go without so much.
The Tyrant's Daughter Page 4
