by Nawaaz Ahmed
In the living room, Tahera insists on making up the futon herself. She wants—no, needs—the futon to be uncomfortable, the blanket inadequate: something of a penance. Something to erase from her memory the image of Seema’s paralyzed face as the chair teetered. Something to expunge from her mind the thought that accompanied it, however fleetingly. In the instant before she threw out her hands to grab her sister, she’d wanted the chair to tip over, she’d imagined Seema arcing back, her head striking the floor.
Even the isha namaz cannot quite eliminate the guilt and shame that burns her now.
6
Oh, Grandmother, you’re not asleep yet. The voices from the kitchen are no lullaby. Your daughters are fighting, and you blame yourself. There must have been something you could have done, before the rifts widened to such chasms.
It’s your elder daughter you’re agonizing over, it’s my not-yet-born self. Who’s there to care for us? You abandoned Seema when she needed you most, and you won’t be there when she needs you again. You have little time to make amends—a few months, perhaps a year—and there’s little you can do for Seema now other than persuade Tahera to take back her sister. But Tahera is stubborn, like her father. How unbending she has become over the years, sequestering herself behind her hijab and her five-times-a-day namaz. You’re afraid you no longer know how to reach her. You’re afraid you have failed them both.
You pretend to be sleeping when Seema returns to the bedroom, turning away when she climbs into bed, so that she can, as she’s been doing the last few days, snuggle into you, her belly pressing into your back, one arm resting on your waist. This connection is precious to you—three generations: mother, daughter, and grandson—and somehow its very existence gives you some hope, the sense of life persisting and persevering. There is tomorrow, even if there are not many more tomorrows for you.
7
Tahera’s alarm wakes her at five fifteen Friday morning, so she can speak with her children on the phone before they leave for school.
She calls from the kitchen with the door closed to avoid waking up her mother and sister. Ismail is getting the children ready. Amina is crying, he says, missing her mother and refusing to cooperate. Tahera croons into the phone, “Ammi’s little sweetheart. You have to be a good girl, you have to do what Abba tells you.”
Hearing her mother’s voice, Amina’s sobs become all the more anguished. She calms down only after Tahera promises to return soon. But how soon? Tahera wishes she could squeeze herself into the cell phone and magically appear on the other side to ease her daughter’s distress. To avoid having to lie, she distracts Amina by talking about everything they’ll do together when she gets back, like sewing new dresses for Asma doll, painting and coloring, baking cookies. She manages to coax Amina into letting Ismail dress her in her navy blue tunic and new sky-blue hijab.
After the half hour with Amina, there’s little time left to talk to Arshad, who is as usual self-sufficient: he’s done his homework, he’s studied for his test, his lunch is stowed in his backpack. She tells her son to take care of his younger sister, not to tease her.
“Why would I tease her?”
“Just saying you should be extra kind to her while I’m away. Look how she’s crying.”
“You don’t need to tell me to be kind. I always am.”
He sounds older than his eleven years, his voice slightly amused, which Tahera invariably finds a little disconcerting. As though he’s aware of her partiality to Amina but is inclined to overlook it. Tahera works hard at concealing it, but whenever she even thinks of Amina, a deep yearning stirs within her that Arshad doesn’t elicit. Toward him she has always maintained an affectionate rectitude but has never showered him with the outpouring of love that Amina receives. Arshad is his father’s child—Amina is hers. That’s how she’s always viewed them.
“Go, go to school,” she says. “And don’t forget to practice your tajwid. You have only one day left before the competition.”
Afterward, Tahera prepares for fajr namaz. The namaz at dawn is the one time of day she and Ismail always spend together. Praying alone now, she misses their comforting communion. Their two janamazes side by side. The rustle of their clothes, the combined rhythms of their inhalations and exhalations, the mingling of the verses muttered under their breath. And the synchrony of their movements, as though bound together in time and space by some invisible impulse that brings them dropping to their knees in unison, then sinking to their haunches, then rising to stand. She catches herself glancing at the spot to her left, where Ismail’s janamaz would be, flustered to encounter empty space instead.
She’s glad she can return to sleep, not having her usual morning chores. She’d like the extra minutes of seclusion before her mother and sister wake up.
8
Tara!—star!—is how you wake your younger daughter, Grandmother, a cup of coffee in your hand. Tara from Tahera—pure, chaste. The way Tahera’s three-year-old tongue struggled with her name. By calling her Tara, you’re invoking the girl of your memories, firm-limbed and pigtailed. And as if in answer, it’s that Tahera who props herself on her elbows and gazes back at you. Her face is soft, unlined, yet to assume its adult creases and severity.
Which mother is she seeing? You’ve showered, and made yourself up with care, sandalwood soap for your body, talcum powder for your face, kohl for your eyes. You’ve chosen a sweater to conceal your caved-in chest, and you’ve arranged your saree to minimize the bulk of the tucked-in folds against your shrunken waist. You’ve braided what’s left of your hair, together with an extension, and drawn it into a bun. All this to hide the sense of decay you’re afraid escapes from you. At least today you’re free of the pain you sometimes wake up with, too challenged to drag yourself out of bed.
Tahera pulls her nightgown over her knees and takes the coffee from you. You watch as she takes a sip and sighs appreciatively. It’s the brand you bid Seema to buy, knowing Tahera’s fondness for it. A memory: Tahera waking at four in the morning to study for her twelfth-standard public exams, and you bringing her coffee. Getting a seat in a medical college was highly competitive, especially the college she wanted, the one her father attended.
“Coffee with chicory,” Tahera says, smiling up at you. “I was afraid Seema would only have the American kind.”
She pats the place beside her on the futon. You perch on the edge, as though afraid to take up more space.
Tahera scoots over. “Sit comfortably, Ammi. Why are you sitting like a bird, ready to fly away?”
“I can look at you better from here.”
But she insists, and you settle in closer, as she drinks her coffee. Halfway through, she holds her cup out to you, a ritual of sharing from the past. You take a sip, and she lays her head in the hollow of your lap.
“I could lie like this all morning,” she says.
The last time you remember her lying in your lap was before your grandchildren were born, a decade or more. You stroke her hair with your free hand. Once luxuriant and lustrous, her hair was the envy of all her female relatives, but it’s much thinner now, and much streaked with gray already, and she’s not yet forty. You try to tease the tangles out, but she won’t let you—she holds on to your stroking hand tightly and closes her eyes.
You’re grateful: you’d been worried that she’d hold on to her anger from last night.
When she opens her eyes, you look at each other, both suddenly bashful, tongue-tied. “Do you want me to heat up the coffee?” you blurt out, and simultaneously she says, “What shall we do for breakfast?”
There’s so much you want to tell her, so much you mean to ask. But can you speak, knowing that Seema is in the next room? And will Tahera listen? You worry that the day will fritter itself away in inconsequences. Cups of coffee and tea will be brewed and drunk. Breakfast and lunch and dinner will be cooked and served and eaten. Another day will have passed ordinarily, as if you still have a lifetime’s supply of them.
“Seema’s stil
l in bed,” you say. “She’s complaining of backache.”
“That’s not unusual in the ninth month,” Tahera says. “Her baby seems big.”
She has less concern for her sister than she’d have for a patient. You recall the argument you overheard last night. “Go to her, Tahera, ask her how she is,” you plead.
Tahera draws herself up with a jerk, knocking over the cup in your hand. The coffee spills onto the futon.
“Look what you made me do.” She brushes aside your apology, yanking from under you the sheet covering the futon. Some coffee has soaked through already. She runs to the kitchen to fetch a roll of paper towels and begins to scrub at the patch. The spreading stain on the futon stares back at you.
9
My mother’s backache is real, a result of carrying my substantial weight, but it’s also an excuse to stay longer in bed, for the rest of the apartment already feels like territory Tahera controls. Seema regrets having given in to her mother’s appeal: “I want to see both my daughters at the same time.” An implicit “one last time” had trailed Nafeesa’s request, and she couldn’t refuse. But Tahera’s fraught presence has now made Seema an exile in her own home. She decides to claim an unavoidable appointment and stay out for most of the day.
When Seema’s dressed and ready to step out, she finds the living room tidied up, Tahera’s bedding cleared away, the futon restored, the coffee stain caused by the altercation barely visible. Tahera’s bags are stashed away behind the futon, out of sight. There are only a few signs of Tahera’s presence: A Quran resting on a rehal in the bookshelf, a janamaz in one corner. Tahera’s hijab and jilbab benignly draped over the back of a chair.
In the kitchen, her mother and sister sit in companionable silence, like childhood friends. There’s a smell of cooked eggs and the whiff of brewing tea.
“Come, have breakfast,” Nafeesa says, and Tahera rises and pours out juice—freshly squeezed orange juice!—for her. “I asked Tahera to get me oranges from the corner store.”
“You two have been busy. What else have you planned for today?”
They are excited to cook lunch together. The fridge is well stocked, and they plan on making a sambar with eggplant, a curry with capsicum and potatoes, a stir-fry with beans. They can find a halal meat store later, Tahera says, if Seema doesn’t mind being vegetarian today.
“No, that’s great,” Seema says. Their plan absolves her of any guilt about abandoning them. “I need to go out for a while. I’ll try to be back by lunch, but don’t wait for me if you become hungry.”
She first takes a cab to the Kamala Harris campaign office, where there’ll be a buzz about Obama’s presence at the fundraising event the previous evening. She also hopes to run into Divya, who probably attended the fundraiser and whom she hasn’t seen in a few days. Divya can always be counted on to boost her spirits.
It’s around ten in the morning, the phone banks haven’t yet started, and there’s a chattering crowd at the doughnuts-and-coffee table, mostly volunteers, surrounding Divya and peppering her with questions about the fundraiser. Three years ago, Divya started South Asians for Obama, and she’s distinguished herself since as one of his top bundlers in San Francisco, adroit at hitting up Silicon Valley’s South Asian entrepreneurs and newly minted engineer millionaires for big donations. She catches sight of Seema. Excusing herself, she leads Seema to her office.
“Didn’t go well?” Seema asks, when Divya shuts the door behind her and leans against it, sighing. Divya is striking in her maroon scoop-necked dress and a frilly pigeon-gray sweater—Divya dresses as stylishly for work as she would for an evening out—and Seema would have felt frumpy by comparison if she hadn’t worn her favorite maternity top, sunflowers in a turquoise sky.
“The fundraiser was fine enough,” Divya says. “But things are not looking good.” Divya works on campaign finances but is well informed about most of the issues the campaign faces. An internal poll has just shown them slipping even further behind than the public polls indicate. With less than three weeks to the election, the team’s mood is quite somber.
It shouldn’t have been this difficult—any other year they’d be coasting to victory. But now it isn’t even clear if Obama’s visit helps or hurts. Divya describes the scene outside the fundraiser venue: not only Tea Partiers, waving placards of Wall Street Traitor, Obamanator, Kills jobs, kills hope, and No death panels, but also leftists, with their Repeal Don’t ask, Don’t tell and Stop the discharges. The fundraiser attendees, too, challenged Obama, quite aggressively, accusing him of broken promises—to be tough on Wall Street, to close Guantanamo. And even about his pledge to work with Republicans, to unite the nation. “As if he hasn’t been trying,” Divya fumes.
Seema lets Divya rant—it’s a distraction from her other worries. Seema personally thinks Obama is trying too hard at conciliation. She also suspects that some of Obama’s inaction is opportunistic, with an eye toward reelection. But Divya still has faith, still believes his election is proof that the country has turned a corner. An African American as president, then two years later an Indian American woman as California state attorney general—Divya will have worked on both their campaigns—the world is surely changing.
“How’s Kamala doing?” Seema asks when Divya finally runs out of steam.
“She’ll hang in there, she’s a fighter.” Kamala is campaigning in Los Angeles, appealing to her Black roots, making a round of the megachurches.
A knock on the door, and Divya reverts to her usual self, confident and in control. She taps on her computer, looks up information, gives directions, while Seema looks on, admiringly.
“I wish I could do more to help,” Seema says when they’re alone again, “but as you can see—” She pats the pronounced globe of her stomach.
“Oh my God, Seema, you must be due any day now,” Divya says. “I’m sorry, I haven’t even asked how you’re doing. And your family is here. What a bad friend I am, let me make it up to you.”
She cocks her head at Seema, her dimples popping a question. Then, ignoring Seema’s finger wag, she heads to the door to lock it and lets the blinds down. But Seema doesn’t protest when Divya, returning, enfolds her in an embrace from behind.
They sway like this for a minute, Divya’s hands supporting the weight of me. Seema says, “Is this what friends do?”
Divya murmurs, her lips by Seema’s ears, “Just say the word Seema, and I’ll swoop in and save you from anything that’s troubling you.”
“You won’t be able to save me from my mother and sister.” Seema tries to disentangle herself, but Divya wishes to hold on a little while longer, and Seema lets her.
“And the twenty-year-old? Is she still pestering you?”
“She’s not twenty!” Seema laughs, pulling herself free. “Though sometimes she does make me feel twice her age.”
“That’s what you get for dumping me for someone younger. Will you manage to see her while your family’s here?”
“Yes—she’s waiting for me.”
10
Seema first met Leigh at a product release party that she’d organized for a software company, a client of her consulting firm. I was all of four months old then, barely showing, a small bump in my mother’s body.
Leigh is a journalist, working for a nonprofit news organization serving the ethnic communities in the Bay Area. She sees Seema across the space of a ballroom and makes a beeline for her. Seema is dazzling that day: in her sapphire-and-silver dress, Seema outsparkles the glitter and glitz of the release party. At the first opportunity, Leigh asks to meet later, ostensibly to interview Seema about her client. At the end of that interview, Leigh asks her out on a date. Only later does Seema realize that she accepted because Leigh reminds her of Reshmi, her first teenage crush.
Leigh is half-Chinese, half-Irish. Leigh is lanky, lightly freckled, black-haired. Leigh is fifteen years younger than Seema and a head taller.
What Seema likes about Leigh: Her youthful nonchalance, her t
ousled hair, her spindly-muscled frame, the way her pale shoulder blades jut from her back like the hidden stubs of wings. The bowler hat that gives her face an impish insouciance. Eyes that are no color Seema has ever seen before—neither black, brown, blue, nor green but at various times all of them. A smile that welcomes everything, and her frank excitement every time they meet. The gentleness with which she cradles Seema’s growing stomach, the tender firmness with which she clasps Seema to her as they lie cuddling in bed.
It’s been agreed that while Nafeesa and Tahera are visiting, Leigh will take time off work if necessary to wait for Seema in her studio apartment in Oakland. Today Leigh is ready at the door to draw her in. First a kiss and an embrace before words are spoken, a rocking of bodies from side to side, forehead touching forehead, eyes melting eyes. Then Seema kicks her shoes off, and allows herself to be led to the bed, the only furniture in the room that can accommodate two people.
Ensconced between Leigh’s tented knees, Seema leans back.
“My poor babe,” Leigh says, “has it been very stressful?”
Seema nods and leans back even further, her entire weight now borne by Leigh. When Leigh presses her for details, she says, “Let’s not talk about my family.” Some degree of loyalty holds her back, toward Nafeesa mostly, but Tahera as well.
They lie in bed, body against body. At some point, as it usually happens, they are down to their undergarments, and then to skin.
There are no windows in the room. Leigh’s bedside lamp bathes the room with dappled blues and greens. They are deep in a forest, by a stream, and the outside world recedes to the edges of consciousness. Now there is a place only for lips and breasts, for scent and sweat, for voices that speak not in words but in a more primitive language—in croons and cries, in urgent whispers.
