Saints and Misfits

by S. K. Ali

  The woman across the street waves at me while directing some guy gardening for her, but I ignore the random act. She probably sees a kindly babushka doll when she looks at me, sitting in my hijab. Well, that’s okay, because I see overfried hair and strange taste in fashion.

  See, that’s the thing. I don’t get why it’s easy to up-yours someone I don’t even know, maybe someone who’s even nice. But Farooq? He freezes my anger. My justified anger.

  Ya Allah, help me. I’m descending. I can’t speak the truth like I’m supposed to. Help me.

  A second backpack joins mine on the steps, and I know who it belongs to without looking up. Only one person would carry around a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle backpack proudly. The kind that looks like a turtle shell.

  Well, besides my brother.

  “Oh man, your dad loaded our plates again so much that I can’t move,” Nuah says. He doubles over in feigned pain before stretching his bent arms back, as though getting ready for some basketball shots.

  I notice he happily waves preemptively at the woman “gardening,” and she flails her arms back at the happiness of it all. Well, yeah, he doesn’t have some person in his life trapping his ability to simply be.

  “Did you guys feast like this growing up?” Nuah asks.

  I tilt my head at him so he can notice my do-not-disturb earbuds. Then I scroll up the volume.

  “Is that ‘Walking Contradiction’ by Green Day I hear?” he asks, louder, so loud the woman across the street waves again.

  “What?” I say, flinging the buds out of my ears. “I thought you guys were having so much fun watching the Janna Yusuf Show. Wait, no, it must be time to do some weird yoga on the front lawn while waving at Ms. I’m-rich-now-so-I-will-order-around-this-Hispanic-guy-doing-my-grass-while-waving-at-the-nice-loaded-brown-people-across-the-street-and-guess-what-I-still-do-my-own-hair-from-a-box-ain’t-I-economical?”

  Nuah does this look I’ve never seen on anyone, so I hold up my phone and snap a picture of it.

  “Wait a minute,” he says. “I know what’s happening with you.”

  “Yeah? What’s happening with me?” I ask, using an editing app to clone, enlarge, flip, skew, and totally mutate his picture until he looks like some bizarre freakoid. Now I know why Flannery used the line She looked at nice young men as if she could smell their stupidity.

  “You’re mad ’cause we lost,” Nuah says, leaning back on the sole tree in Dad’s front yard, a birch, not even trying to peer over at my ongoing voodoo job on his photo. “The Quiz Bowl. It stings. You’re upset. Hence the Green Day.”

  I snort really rudely and throw my phone on the steps.

  What is wrong with this guy? Go away, go away, go away, I think over and over again. Then I say it.

  “Go away,” I say, looking up at his face looking down at me, with that same expression he had on before. It’s the expression you make when you’re shocked at something but pretending you’ve got a handle on it. “Away, far away. It’s like you guys can’t hear people who say things. I don’t want you around, okay? Good-bye, loser.”

  “Okay,” he says.

  He picks up his backpack and leaves. Back into the house, turtle shell clinging to taut shoulders.

  That was so bad, it feels good.

  • • •

  Sarah drops us at the mosque back in Eastspring, where Muhammad’s car is parked. While Muhammad hangs around, leaning into Sarah’s driver’s-side window, I bolt to his car to get away from their waltzing talk—him, pumped up about their impending marriage, thrusting discussion topics at her; her, nimbly sidestepping every major commitment.

  My phone vibrates as I slump into the seat.

  Nuah. Who was in the car the whole way back from Chicago and didn’t say a word to me the entire time.

  I know why you’re mad.

  I look up and see him walking to his car, head bent over his phone.

  My traditional self would have ignored such an intrusion, but something kick-ass woke in me when I saw the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle backpack walking away this morning, actually walking away from me when I told it to. I want to wreak something.

  Do you have a problem other than a total lack of maturity and intelligence?

  It’s that dude Farooq.

  Go play with your turtles.

  He’s bothering you.

  Did I ask your opinion on anything? No, cause you’re like 4 years old.

  Right?

  I glance at his car, hoping he’ll look my way and see my scowl. But he’s at the steering wheel, intensely staring at his phone, oblivious to my shut-the-hell-up face.

  I’m about to turn my phone off but can’t resist one last message. And fyi, only hot guys look good in necklaces.

  Muhammad gets into the car, and I shut the phone off. As Nuah drives by, my brother waves, but there’s no wave back because Nuah’s eyes are straight ahead.

  I, astounded at my power, finally smile. I can’t wait to get home and get ready to meet Jeremy at the lake.

  • • •

  Mom, who is totally absorbed in her own state of affairs most of the time, decides to pick this day of all days to “reconnect” with me.

  She starts with questions about the Quiz Bowl and then hops to Chicago and then home-runs to gossip gathering about Dad and his brood. Though Muhammad is available and willing to entertain her with a fully mimed performance of the whole weekend, saving his surprise status change as the last juicy tidbit of his recount, Mom persists in following me while I head to the bedroom to dump my stuff.

  I grunt replies. I mean, what can you say to “Did Linda cook Indian food or white food or Greek food?” except “Food, just food”?

  I close my/her bedroom door on her after I grunt, “Sweaty, must change.”

  Where were you, Mom, when I came home from Fizz’s house a few weeks ago and curled into bed without taking off my shoes or hijab because no one told me Muslim boys could also be pervs?

  Oh yeah, you were with your friends, having another girls’ night out.

  And then I see my seerah book lying on my bed, open to the last page.

  A sketch of two people at the lake and a date, today’s, underlined three times.

  OMG, Mom totally knows. She’ll never let me out of the house.

  But not overtly, because she promised me privacy. Such a lie.

  “Janna, I made your favorite, salmon cakes,” Mom calls from too close to the door, her breathing, uneven and stressed, belying her chipper words. “And I got us season four of Downton Abbey, Mary on her own. We got a long night, so I got a big tub of Ben and Jerry’s Half Baked.”

  I need help. I need Fizz.

  Can you call me right now? On the home line?

  I wait for a text back but instead get the sweet sound of our phone ringing. Muhammad raps on the door, yelling, “Fizz to Janna, come in, come in.”

  I open the door and grab the phone, ignoring Mom standing in the hallway.

  “Fizz, can I come over?” I whisper.

  “Sure, but I’ll be home in about an hour; I’m still teaching Sunday school,” Fizz whispers back before yelling, “Adam, sit down! You don’t need to wash your shoulders before prayer. Can someone else come up here and demonstrate washing up before salat?”

  “That’s okay—I’ll be there after two anyway,” I say. “Thanks, see ya.”

  “Okay, give me a full replay of Chicago when you come. Aliya’s version wasn’t impressive. Plus, why are you ignoring my messages on Facebook? What’s up with your nonhijab pics? Is someone shaming you?” Fizz says.

  “I’ll talk to you later. Promise.”

  I place the seerah book under the bed and slide out of my jeans and top. I already planned my outfit on the way home this morning: my white ultrathin sweatshirt, the one with the witty sayings written in an owl shape, layered over a pink shirt with my favorite jeans and pink jelly flats. And black hijab.

  After changing, I throw some lip gloss and mascara into my sling purse. The lobb
y mirrors are perfect for adding last-minute makeup.

  I open the door and breeze by Mom. She hasn’t moved from her spot in the hallway, and though Muhammad has reached the pivotal point of Sarah “declaring” her commitment to him, it isn’t him she’s staring at.

  I turn at the last second, at the door, as if in afterthought.

  “Oh, Mom, Fizz wants me to come over for help with something,” I say. “So assalamu alaikum.”

  “But Fizz teaches at the mosque and it’s not done yet,” Mom says, coming closer to me.

  “But it is at the mosque,” I lie supremely. “I’m going there now. To help.”

  “I can drive you,” Mom says, stepping forward to reach her purse hanging on the hooks by the front door. “Auntie Fatima asked me to try to come by to pack the care packages for Syria. That’s why Fizz probably needs you. We can work together.”

  “No, I need to stop by the stationery store to get stuff for studying anyway. I’ll go.”

  “That’s on the way; I can take you,” says Mom, sliding her purse up to her shoulders.

  And then, thank Allah, Sarah saves me. She rings up from the lobby, saying she wants to come up to drop some stuff we forgot in her car. In the noise of Muhammad insisting that she be asked to stay for lunch and Mom scrambling to find something to serve her (What about salmon cakes and Ben & Jerry’s, Mom?), I slip out.

  For sure the sun has to shine the rest of the afternoon: I don’t even see Sarah on the way down, even with our elevator situation. I put on makeup hassle free in the lobby.

  The wind that’s ever present outside our lobby doors due to the way the buildings are clustered feels special when it hits my face and blows back my hijab a bit. Some of my bangs loosen and fall across my forehead. The wind skips behind me, nudging me forward down the walk and then away from the main road, toward the older homes, his neighborhood, right beside the lake.

  I refuse to glance back. Mom’s bedroom looks out right onto the path, and I know the face that would be staring at me from the window would be filled with utter disappointment. While I’m filled with utter hope.

  • • •

  How do you know if an experience is going to become a memory while you’re actually in it? Like, as I come closer to the picnic table next to where Jeremy stands, with the lake shimmering behind him, I can feel the nostalgia already creeping in for this scene to repeat again and again, even though it hasn’t even officially begun yet.

  Me, walking toward the guy I’ve been thinking about since April. Him, waiting with a smile on his face.

  I adjust my hijab and turn to snap a picture of the formation of rocks edging the walkway. To quell things.

  When I turn back, I see the rest of them. Besides Jeremy, who’s turned around to face the water, there are a few others. So he came through on his promise of making it a group thing. How had I not seen them before?

  Three guys and two girls, older than me. I suddenly wish Tats were here. She would run up to them and start chatting.

  I meander over, pretending to be really interested in the ground leading up to the group. I take a lot of pictures of the trail.

  I would have bumped into the picnic table had J’s feet not shown up in my phone’s screen.

  “Hi,” he says.

  I do a wiggle-wave with my fingers, realizing two of his friends, the girls, are looking at me.

  “Nice view,” I say, trying hard to look at the lake and not his face.

  “Yeah,” he says, looking at me and not the lake.

  He backs up and gets up on the picnic table, his feet resting on the bench, elbows propped on his knees. Facing me.

  His friends are now clustering close to the water, and someone’s taking a bottle out of a backpack. I pretend not to see. I have nowhere to look but Jeremy’s face.

  “So, do you come here a lot?” I say.

  He laughs and I cringe. How did I blurt out the cheesiest pickup line in existence?

  “Actually I do,” he says. “It’s almost in my front yard. See, that’s my house up there.”

  He gestures up a hill on my right, and I immediately turn and look at it, without needing much of his directing. The house that I’d looked at through Google Earth countless times.

  “A lakeside house,” I say. “Nice.”

  “Yeah, you can come up after,” he says. “My dad’s barbecuing.”

  “I’m kind of a vegetarian,” I say.

  “You mean you eat halal?” he asks, laughing again. “Not to worry, we have halal hot dogs. I’ve got Muslim friends.”

  “That’s cool,” I say.

  “Want to see something that is actually cool?” He gets off the bench and walks toward a group of trees. I follow, glad to get away from his friends.

  We stop at a tree with a small burlap sack hanging off a branch. He takes it down and opens it up. Birdseed.

  “Watch,” he says.

  He holds out a pile of seeds in the palm of his hand and makes a bird noise. A real-sounding one.

  Pretty soon a few tiny birds begin assembling on the branches overhead. One hops down from branch to branch in a zigzag fashion, watching me carefully. I stand still, and it lands on Jeremy’s palm, pecking at the seed while giving me sidelong glances. I wonder if it’s female.

  “Want to try?” he asks. “They’re chickadees. Very friendly.”

  I hold out my palm, and he tips in the seeds remaining in his hand. I don’t know if he’s being careful not to touch me or if my hand stiffens involuntarily, but there’s no contact. I make the mistake of looking up at him at that moment. He looks back, and there’s so much that passes between us that I feel exposed.

  He calls out his bird sound, and a chickadee finds its way into my palm, grazing my skin with its light claws. It’s so thrilling that I laugh and it flies away.

  “They’ll even come over to the picnic table,” Jeremy says, walking back to our previous spot.

  I drop the seeds on the table, flicking off the ones sticking to my clammy palm. Jeremy’s about to call out again when we hear a whistle. An older man in a white apron stands waving a spatula on the lawn of the house with the turquoise door.

  “Hey, food’s ready,” Jeremy says to his friends.

  As they begin walking to the house, Jeremy works on smoothing out the birdseed on the table.

  “Here, you might want to take a picture of that,” he says, revealing his handiwork. “For the love of chickadees, you know.”

  I position my phone and click, the skin on my face prickling with heat. The seeds have been shaped into a heart.

  • • •

  As we amble up the hill, he’s quiet and I am too, wondering what to say next.

  “Good, Farooq is here,” Jeremy says, pointing at a Honda parked in front of his house. “You know him, right?”

  “Yeah,” I say, freezing.

  “He hangs out at my place a lot. His house is the next street over.”

  “Which reminds me, I promised his cousin I’d be at her house right about now.”

  “Really? Now?” he asks, pausing on the sidewalk. “At least have a bite first. Food’s hot.”

  “No, I can’t,” I say. “Sorry.”

  Down the side of the house, by the fence, Farooq is standing beside Jeremy’s dad at the barbecue. He hasn’t seen me yet, but in a matter of seconds he will.

  I take off down the street, not even waving good-bye to the sweetest guy I’ve met so far in my life.

  • • •

  Of course I get to Fizz’s early, even with the slow Sunday bus service. Everyone is at the mosque, so I slip into the backyard and head to her dad’s hammock.

  I need to sprawl on this thing to think about getting rid of Farooq’s presence in my life for good.

  What can I do that’s legally permissible? Nothing. I’ll have to be a Silent Sufferer, like those women Mom watches documentaries about. She showed me one woman’s lined face as she toiled in the fields, two kids attached to her legs, while her husband h
ung out at the tea shop with his friends. Mom said, Look at that beauty—now that is a strong woman, keeping on while the going is rough. She admires stuff like that. Mom told me that her mother, my Teta, had lost four children in Egypt to various things, some even at young ages, and yet no one saw the toll it took on her.

  Anyway, why are all the Silent Sufferers women? Silently suffering men are not looked up to in any way, as far as I can tell. I mean, even Gandhi, Mr. Ram’s favorite go-to for quotes, the man of peace, was not like that.

  Come to think about it, Mom isn’t even like that. She didn’t suffer in silence with Dad. She jumped to action and dumped him. She acted like Sausun said she would if somebody kicked up dirt in her life.

  I’m not Mom. I’m not Sausun. I’m this girl who wants to be left alone.

  Thinking so hard makes me fall asleep in the hammock.

  I wake up to a low, laughing voice. Fizz’s dad. “There you are! Your mother is in the house saying you were abducted by a boy at the lake.”

  I’m groggy, and what he’s saying doesn’t register.

  “Your mother came to volunteer at the mosque and asked for you. No one knew where you were so she’s very worried. Auntie Fatima and the girls are comforting her in the house right now.”

  I walk to the back door. Is she freaked out in an angry or a devastated way? I hope the latter. She’d be happier to see me.

  Her face instantly registers anger when she sees me. She clutches my sleeve and leads me out to the car, like I’m a juvenile delinquent she arrested. The twins are laughing behind their hands, and Fizz mouths, What boy at the lake?

  Thank you, Mom, I seethe to myself. Do you want me to be a woman of action or, really, just your ideal Silent Sufferer? I conclude that she wants the latter from me as I bear her lecturing.

  • • •

  Fizz calls me after dinner, while Mom watches Downton Abbey by herself.

  “I don’t know what to say,” she begins.

  “Okay?” I say. Her tone sounds like Mom’s in the car.

  “You kept everything from me? Like every single thing?” she says.