She’ll try again this afternoon, just in case. Until then, there’s nothing more she can do.
FADE TO BLACK
headache. “I think I’ll go get some Advil from the office,” she tells Yasaman and Katie-Rose.
“Do you want me to come with you?” Yasaman says. She rises from the bench they’re sitting on. “I’ll come with you.”
Violet pushes her back down. “No, stay. I’ll be back in, like, five seconds.”
“They won’t give you Advil without a note from a parent!” Katie-Rose calls to her back. “Just so you know!”
Milla spots her as she passes the tetherball stand and hurries to her side.
“Violet?” she says. “Are you okay?”
“Got a headache, no big deal,” she says. She gestures at Max, who’s waiting for Milla to return. They’d been leaning against the tetherball pole together. It was very cute. “Go back to your knight in shining armor.”
“He’s not my—” She makes a sound that’s half indignant, half pleased. “Get real. I don’t need a knight in shining armor.”
“I know, but go back to Max-Max anyway. I’m fine.”
In the office, she hesitates before approaching Mr. McGreevy, the young office assistant whose British accent charms all the parents and most of the students, too. She hesitates because she doesn’t want an Advil. What she wants is to use the phone. Except she also doesn’t want to use the phone. Frankly, she doesn’t know what she wants, and it’s making her antsy.
She got the butterfly bush issue cleared up, which is excellent. Yaz said she’d be thrilled to keep it and gave Violet the biggest hug ever, and Milla seemed totally fine with the regifting.
But the issue of her mom is not cleared up. In fact, it’s messed up, that’s what it is. Sometimes when she’s with her mom, it’s great. Other times, it’s not. Sometimes Violet can’t bear to be near her; other times, she can’t bear to be apart. And when she’s at school, well, that’s the worst, because she has no control over the matter. It drives her crazy!
Ugh, wrong word. Forget that word. Plus, the truth of the matter is that she does need breaks from her mom. It’s just, she can’t enjoy them because of her endless string of worries.
Like, what if her mom needs her? What if she’s sad? What if she eats raw chicken nuggets, or can’t remember what channel the cupcake show is on, the show she and Violet watched five episodes of last night, even though Violet had homework to do?
Just call her and check, she tells herself, wanting to tear at her hair. Yes, it’s dumb, but you’ll feel better afterward. Just use the office phone and call her.
“Vi? Is that you hiding behind the corner, luv?” Mr. McGreevy says.
“Um, hi,” she says. She hadn’t intended for him to see her yet. She hadn’t thought he could see her yet, but apparently she was wrong.
“What can I do for you?”
She sighs. To use the phone, she has to have permission, but she feels weird asking. She does step closer, though.
Mr. McGreevy swivels away from his computer. “Aren’t you supposed to be outside? Or did the weather turn dreakit?”
Violet has no clue what “dreakit” means. It must be one of his odd non-American expressions. It has a dark and gloomy sound to it, though, and Violet wonders if perhaps she herself is dreakit, and she just didn’t know the word for it until now. “Um, I don’t think so. But … can I use the phone, please? To call my mom?”
“Dunno why not.” He pushes the phone across the desk, lifts the receiver, and presses 9. He hands the receiver to her and says, “All yours, luv.”
Violet pushes in her own telephone number, all the while wishing the phone was all hers, and that Mr. McGreevy would go make coffee or something. But no, he stays put, typing away and murmuring the occasional phrase beneath his breath.
“Crikey,” he mutters, for example. “Must call Revolution Foods. Order’s due this afternoon.”
“Hello?” Violet’s mom says on the other end of the line.
“Mom! Hi!” Violet says. Mr. McGreevy glances up, and Violet turns sideways. “Um … so how are you?”
“Violet?” her mom says. “Aren’t you supposed to be at school?”
“I am at school.” She lowers her voice. “I just wanted to check on you.”
“Check on me? Why?”
Violet ducks down as far as the cord will let her. Because I love you? Because I’m worried about you? Because I don’t want to be worried about you? None of these answers will do. “Did you eat breakfast?”
“Violet. Boo.”
Don’t call me Boo, not when I’m at school, Violet thinks as her eyes tear up.
“Go back to class, baby.”
“I’m not in class. I’m outside.”
“They have a telephone outside?”
This remark could be funny, but today it’s not. Not to Violet. “No, everyone else is outside. I’m inside. I just …” She closes her eyes. “Never mind.”
“I don’t know what to tell you, Boo,” her mom says. “You’ve got to trust that I’m all right, and that I can take care of myself.” She laughs. “I don’t need you checking in on me during playground time, for heaven’s sake.”
Recess, Mom, Violet thinks. Not playground time. “You’re right,” she says abruptly. “I’m going back to playground time. Bye.”
She has to straighten up in order to hang up the phone. When she does, she sees Mr. McGreevy studying her. Fantastic.
“All’s well at home?” he says. “Everything shipshape and Bristol fashion?”
“I have no idea what that means,” she tells Mr. McGreevy, starting back toward the playground.
“You’re ribbing me,” Mr. McGreevy says, projecting his voice. “‘Shipshape and Bristol fashion’? You’ve never heard that?”
Violet halts. You can’t just walk away from a teacher, even if he isn’t a real teacher but a secretary or an administrative assistant or whatever. She turns and says, neutrally, “Nope, that’s a new one for me.” She realizes she’s curled her hands into fists, and she hides them behind her. “I’m going back outside, okay?”
“Then again, perhaps shipshape isn’t a term much used by the ladies,” Mr. McGreevy muses. He taps his chin. “What might a girl say in its place, hmm?”
A girl, if she weren’t raised with good manners, might say that she didn’t care in the slightest. An ill-mannered girl might go so far as to suggest that no one uses the term shipshape, whether male, female, or a talking teacup.
Mr. McGreevy snaps his fingers. “Tickety-boo! That’s it! That’s what me mum said when I was a boy.” He adopts a falsetto. “‘Everything tickety-boo, lad?’” He pretends to be an aggrieved grade school student. “‘Yes, Mum. Tickety-boo. I’m going back to my models now, right?’”
Violet ducks her head. Mr. McGreevy was a boy once, and he made models. Of what, she wonders? Boats? Planes? Cars?
“Violet …,” he says.
His voice is gentler than before, and she braces herself, because here it comes. Whatever it is—words of sympathy or a well-meaning reminder to keep her chin up—here it comes.
“It’s a mum’s job to be a mum,” he says.
“Uh … what?”
“Even when they’re irritating as all get-out. Even when you’re at the end of your tether, and you think no one’s got it worse than you.”
No one does have it worse than me, Violet thinks.
“But that’s the beauty of it, see?” Mr. McGreevy says. “It’s not your job to smother your mum by checking in on her and the like. It’s her job to smother you.”
Violet holds herself still. She tries not to breathe, even. “But … what if she can’t?”
“But she can. You’re the kid, not the parent. That’s what makes it so brilliant. Your job is to love your mum, and mind her, but that’s all there is to it, really.”
Tears flood Violet’s eyes, surprising them both. Violet is horrified, and Mr. McGreevy winces.
“A
h, great,” he says. “I’ve put my foot in my bloody mouth, haven’t I?”
Violet blinks rapidly. “Can I go back to recess?”
“Of course. Go, go! Begone, you scurvy lass!”
Violet starts off. Then she stops, staring at the carpet. She wants to tell him she’s not a scurvy lass, because that’s what a normal girl would say. She also wants to tell him thank you, kind of.
“Listen, you,” he says, sparing her the trouble. “It’s all going to be tickety-boo, you hear?”
She looks back at him from over her shoulder. She gives him the best smile she can muster. “Right. And also shipshape and … and—”
“Bristol fashion,” he supplies.
“Yeah. That.”
along with Nigar. Her ana is unusually quiet, but Nigar fills the silence with her report of the day. Her words form a bubbling, never-ending stream of joy, and Yaz smiles, because it wasn’t always this way. At the beginning of preschool, some of Nigar’s classmates—two boys, in particular—teased Nigar about her name and about the way she looked.
But Nigar is over that now, and she’s blessed with a little person’s ability to truly forget, forgive, and move on.
Today, it seems, Nigar moved on using one of her favorite forms of locomotion: hopping.
“We were galloping kangaroos,” she tells Yasaman and her mother from her booster seat in the back. “We were galloping kangaroos, and do you know what we called ourselves? We called ourselves The Galloping Kangaroos!” She breaks into a peal of giggles.
Yaz glances at her mom, ready to share a smile.
“That’s clever,” Yasaman’s ana said, distracted.
“I was the leader,” Nigar proclaims proudly, “so I got to boss everyone around. ‘Jump, jump, jump!’ I said.” She bounces in her booster seat. “‘Now dig! Dig, dig, dig!’ Kangaroos love to dig. Did you know that, Yazzy?”
“I did,” Yasaman says, twisting to grin at Nigar. She turns back. “Ana? Are you all right?”
Her mother doesn’t reply. She opens her mouth as if she might, then closes it when Nigar continues with her kangaroo update. She could have spoken on top of Nigar, though. In a house—or a minivan—with an almost-four-year-old in it, the older people pretty much have to talk over the four-year-old if they ever want to get a word in.
Troubled, Yasaman sits back in her seat. Katie-Rose called that girl, Josie, she reminds herself. Ana’s not worried about that. Anyway, does everything in the world revolve around Yasaman? No.
“And then we were galloping kangaroos with sticks!” Nigar exclaims. “So I said, ‘Now pick up sticks, everyone! Now gallop, gallop, gallop!’”
Yaz lets Nigar’s silliness wash over her. She’s proud of her little sister for being so free and wild and bold, even as a galloping kangaroo with sticks. Yasaman, when she was in preschool, was never a galloping kangaroo with sticks. She mainly swung a lot, or sat by herself in one of the plastic playhouses.
When they get home, Yaz takes off her hijab, folds it up neatly, and shakes out her hair. Ahhh. Then she says,
“Do you want help with dinner, Ana?”
“No, no,” her mother says. “Do your homework. I’ll take care of dinner.”
“Um … okay,” Yaz says, even though her ana doesn’t like the word um or the word okay. Her ana would prefer Yasaman speak more properly than that.
Yaz retreats quietly from the kitchen with her schoolbooks, taking them outside. Nigar is outside, too, galloping around like a galloping kangaroo. Her bows are pink today, to match her pink jeggings. Pink jeggings! Yasaman would never have been allowed to wear pink jeggings when she was Nigar’s age.
She shouldn’t complain. Hulya, Yaz’s older cousin, has given Yaz some awesome hand-me-downs (which Nigar calls handy-downs), including black skinny jeans and a black-and-white hijab that matches the jeans perfectly.
Yaz settles down by her beloved butterfly bush, tucking her legs beneath her. The bush is now out of its pot and fully and officially planted in the soil of the yard, and just looking at it makes her feel blessed. It’s her butterfly bush. Hers! A friendship gift, which is the best kind.
A yellow butterfly alights on a purple blossom. Its wings are tissue-thin.
“Hi, butterfly,” Yaz whispers. “Is it fun being a butterfly? It is, isn’t it?”
“Yee-haw!” Nigar shouts as she loops past.
Yaz smiles. “Where did you learn ‘yee-haw,’ Nigar?”
“My boyfriend, Damien!” Nigar shouts as she gallops past. “Only he is not really my boyfriend! He is Lucy’s boyfriend, but sometimes we share, and sometimes I am their baby. Or their cat. Yee-haw!”
Yasaman is amused at the idea that her little sister has a sometimes-boyfriend-sometimes-owner. Katie-Rose would be appalled, and thinking about that amuses Yasaman, too.
Yasaman opens her Wordly Wise book, but she doesn’t look at it. She watches the yellow butterfly instead. She remembers learning at some point in her life that a butterfly’s life span is short, that they live for just one day or maybe two. So sad, Yaz thinks. Still, that one day—or two—must be glorious.
She sighs and starts her homework. Sometime later, her mother calls, “Yasaman? Come in now, please. Your baba is home, and he and I would like to talk to you.”
Her ana and baba want to talk to her? Why? Shakily, she stands.
“Yee-haw!” Nigar cries, circling around once more.
Yasaman finds her parents in the living room. Out of all the rooms in their house, the living room feels the least homey, which is ironic since it’s called the living room. Her parents are sitting on the pale blue sofa that doesn’t have a single stain on it. Their expressions are … hard to read. Not happy, though. Definitely not happy.
She crosses the plush carpet. Rather than squishing into the sofa with them, she sits in the nearby armchair. Her mouth is dry. “Yes?”
“Your ana got an interesting call today,” her father says. Yasaman’s parents share a glance. “From a … Josie Sanders?”
Yasaman closes her eyes. Katie-Rose, what did you do? she thinks. Or rather, what didn’t you do? Because Katie-Rose promised up and down and side to side over her heart that she talked to Josie and said to take Yasaman’s name off the trapeze class list. She swore to this a million times over the course of the day, starting in their morning art class and keeping it up until their very last class.
During math, she wrote notes and tossed them onto Yasaman’s desk. She whispered, “You believe me, right?” when they were copying vocabulary words, and during lunch, she said, “I am making a cross over my heart right now. Do you see? Do you see me making this cross? And I’m not even Catholic! But that’s how much you can trust me when I tell you that I have taken care of everything!”
And Yasaman did. She did trust her.
Now Katie-Rose’s earnestness smacks of desperation, and Yasaman feels the cold weight of a stone in the pit of her stomach.
“This Josie, she said you wanted to take … trapeze lessons?” Yasaman’s ana says. “She said she visited your school, and the children, they turned in their names if they wanted to participate?”
Yasaman is miserable. She twists her hair around her fingers.
“She was surprised you hadn’t told me,” Yasaman’s mother says. She frowns. “I, too, was surprised.”
Yasaman’s baba takes her mother’s hand. “Would you like to explain, Yasaman?”
To Yasaman’s dismay, she bursts into tears. She tells her parents everything—well, almost everything—and ends with, “And Katie-Rose, she called Josie and took my name off the list! She promised!”
“Let me get this straight,” Yasaman’s father said. “Katie-Rose filled out a … what, a sign-up sheet? She filled it out with your name?”
“She filled one out with her name, too,” Yasaman hastens to add. “She’s really really really excited about the trapeze classes, and she knew her parents would say yes. She wanted me to sign up, too, but I told her no.”
She t
akes a quivery breath. “And when I found out that she signed me up anyway, I told her to call the teacher. You have to believe me.”
“I do believe you, Yasaman,” her baba says. “You’ve never given me reason not to.” Yasaman’s relief is short-lived, as the next words out of his mouth are, “But as for Katie-Rose … I’m not pleased with what I’m hearing. Yes, Katie-Rose is an energetic child. That, I know. I assumed she was a person of strong character, however.”
Yasaman’s tears start anew. “She is! She just … she just …” Hopelessness descends over her, because what can she say to make her baba understand? Muslim families are different from non-Muslim families. Or, no. That’s too easy. Yasaman’s family is different than Katie-Rose’s family, because there are strict and less-strict parents in every religion. Yasaman is sure.
On top of that, Katie-Rose’s parents wouldn’t be pleased to find out their daughter had forged Yasaman’s name, either. Their reaction might not be as strong as Yasaman’s father … or then again, it might.
“Please don’t be mad at Katie-Rose,” Yasaman says. She stares at her legs, too ashamed to meet his gaze. “Please?”
There is murmuring between her parents.
“Hmm,” she hears her baba say, as if to express again his disapproval. But he leaves—Yasaman hears him stand and go out of the room—and then her ana is beside her, brushing away her tears.
Yasaman sniffles and lifts her head.
“Küçüğüm”, her ana says, which in English means “my sweet girl.”
“Is Baba going to make me stop being friends with Katie-Rose?” Yasaman says.
Her ana shakes her head. “No, Yasaman. Everybody makes mistakes. And Katie-Rose didn’t act out of malice, did she?”
“No, never. She just … doesn’t think sometimes, that’s all.”
Her ana perches next to Yasaman on the armchair. She strokes Yasaman’s long, glossy hair. Yasaman’s heart is still thumping, but not as frantically as before. She gulps and takes a shuddery breath.
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