Chapter 18: Salma (2007) - The Daughters of Rosebud

Marlene says, “Your house is so cute, but it’s kind of empty. Maybe I can help you decorate it?”

After having Marlene and the kids there for only one night, even I now feel the emptiness.

“What if I like it like that?” I ask.

She stares at me unblinking and, without breaking her gaze, pulls out design magazines from her tote bag.

She insists that making my living space look like something more than a college student’s first apartment will make me happier. Mamoo eggs her on. So on weekends, while Bear naps and Mamoo babysits Poppy, Marlene and I go out on the town. We go to furniture stores and houseware stores. Emil, who has incredible taste, joins us, and Marlene and Emil discuss what my nonexistent taste should be. Boho or traditional? Contemporary or coastal? They debate and get heated as if world peace is at stake.

I feel like I’ve struck the jackpot. These two care so much about me that they want to argue whether I would be happier with floral pillows or a geometric design. I do not hear Asma in my head, but I know with certitude that she would love both Marlene and Emil and be happy that they were forcing me to make these decisions.

On one such shopping day, Marlene takes me to the phone store, and I let her make me buy a mobile phone. Marlene says, “Now I can reach you whenever I want to talk.”

I mutter, “Great” sarcastically but am happy enough to burst inside.

For breaks, we stop to get coffee and croissants, or beer and snacks. Christmas decorations abound, and everything is merry and bright. At the end of our outing, Marlene and I, and Emil if he is with us, get takeout to eat with the kids and Mamoo at Marlene’s.

Sometimes her parents join us. They are as warm and enthusiastic and full of curious, loving energy as Marlene, and she makes a lot more sense. When I observe Poppy with her grandmother and Marlene, I have a distinct and pervasive thought: If a girl’s empowerment stands on the shoulders of their mother and grandmother and aunt and other female mentors before them, this child will be powerful indeed. Although she bears no relationship to my sister, she is an echo of Asma in the way she carries herself and the way she seems to know exactly who she is. She is comfortable in her own skin in a way that I have never been.

Mamoo is deeply contented. He does for Poppy and Bear what he did for Asma and me by bringing little gifts and telling tall tales. We approximate a family. We plan Thanksgiving. Who will bring what side. What pies will we make.

At school, Poppy is thriving. She has asked if she can do a presentation on how South Africa celebrates the winter holidays. I consciously treat her like I would treat any other student who asks to share a special interest with the class. I say that our class time together is very important, and I take it seriously, that if I give her time in front of my students, I will need to know what she says in advance. I suggest she do her research and propose a draft presentation to me and that we can use our English conference time to review it.

I research a local arts organization that puts on youth-theater performances and ask Marlene if I can sign Poppy up for a class as a belated birthday present. I am happy to take her. This time, I will fan the flames of a beloved’s interest in theater.

I do not ask Marlene about Ruby, and she doesn’t offer anything.

Abu calls again. So much has happened since his last call. I did not think it possible, but his voice sounds even weaker. Despite telling Mamoo I would see him, I am torn. There are so many details I no longer remember. Too many memories and feelings already lost to time. This is the reason to see him. To collect his memories. The irony is that if I had not met Ruby’s wife and child, I would probably not even consider meeting him.

They have inadvertently ripped the scab off. I am all soft red tissue beneath.

Some days, I think the trip to Pakistan was the turning point. Because, as much as the parents I knew were challenging, helpless, and focused on survival, they were not the people who could have done what they did. In other ways, I think there was no other logical conclusion to our family history. That no matter what, we would have ended up in the same place.

* * *

After Thanksgiving, everything seemed to happen very quickly, even though my memory tells me living those days took a lifetime. The days became shorter and darker and colder. I returned from school in the gloom of winter’s twilight to a cold and dark house to find Ami talking to herself. Not like the under-the-breath, self-conscious mumbling she was doing right before they left. No, a full-throated conversation. When she saw or heard me, she stopped immediately, defiant.

Ever since their return from Pakistan, the week before Thanksgiving, I had been noticing changes. They were different people from the ones I had dropped off at the airport. At first, I thought the changes were a function of traveling back in time to wind up a day earlier. But soon it became apparent that it was more than just jet lag.

Ami started covering her head with her dupatta when she left the house and told me that she expected me to do the same. I was horrified but didn’t have it in me to fight. So while Asma had changed into miniskirts and tank tops in the back of the bus her senior year, I started wearing a dupatta in mine. As soon as I was out of sight of home, I shoved it deep into my backpack and only hoped that I remembered to take it back out on the way home.

She started saying her namaz, what seemed to me, all the time. She had always said her prayers twice a day, waking before dawn to perform her ablutions, hypnotic movements to clean herself before prostrating to the will of God. But after their return, I found her saying namaz late in the afternoon and, on weekends, late in the morning. I wondered if she was taking a break at work to say her prayers. And if so, where she did them. Sitting at her sewing machine? Did her boss, Louise, born and raised in Rosebud, look at her strangely or just clear a small area in the back of the shop?

Out of nowhere, she developed a curiosity about the world. She started bringing home the one-day-old paper from work and reading it from cover to cover. But strangely, she retained nothing, appearing dumbfounded when I asked her about a current event. Uncharacteristically lively and almost feverish at times, she would blurt out random things, like “Pakistan is so modern. Women drive!” and “Louise says that Miley girl in your class is having a baby!”

Ami started asking me what time I’d be home from school, how my day had been and about teachers and classes, and if I’d heard from any colleges or had plans for babysitting, and waiting for me at the door when I came home. She looked at me intensely, like she was watching for something else. Wasn’t this the mother I had always wanted? One who was interested in me and engaged in my life, with all its small victories and losses? I had friends who had mothers with whom they shared everything, like they were friends. That kind of mother had always been as un-understandable to me as the idea of walking down a runway in a bikini. That mother was for other people. Not me. It made me feel uncomfortable. I didn’t trust it.

Our house had always been kept clean and tidy, a source of pride or the manifestation of Ami’s childhood training. No clutter on surfaces, no dishes in the sink overnight, the bathroom mirror and toilet and sink always polished to a high shine. But after their return, the state of the house had steadily declined. Dishes started stacking up. Towels smelled musty. She stopped making her bed, the muss of sheets and covers visible in the living room.

She stopped sleeping. She was awake when I woke up in the morning and prowled about at night so that even if I wanted to call Asma, I couldn’t.

If Ami started emerging after their return, Abu was receding. It was almost possible to forget that his father had just died. I would come upon him, pensive and still, staring out the window or sitting on the couch in the dark of the living room, the timer on the lights not having been adjusted for the gradually shortening days. Leaning forward with his long arms propped up on his lanky knees, he held his head in his hands, as though he had been about to stand up but then forgot. I would say his name, and he would turn to me slowly, his face having aged overnight. Was he regretting the years he had been away from his father? Was he wondering how it had come to be that the place they considered home was, and would always be, different from the place their children thought of as home? Or was he realizing that they had left their homeland thousands of miles away with no simple return? Or was he simply processing that his children were growing up and leaving his bed of influence? Did he feel like he was returning home when he landed in Pakistan? Or did he feel like he was returning home when the plane touched down in America?

Gone was his constant sermonizing. Somewhere along the way he had come to believe that his contribution to our lives, that his role as our father, was to impart lessons to us. But after the trip and Thanksgiving, there was only silence.

It was my job to bring the mail in from the mailbox at the end of our driveway. After Thanksgiving, international letters started arriving from Pakistan. When we were young, the tissue-thin blue tri-folded envelopes, emblazoned with par avion, arrived at least once a month. I took outsize pride in those two little words. We had received mail with French written on it! They had long ago stopped arriving with any kind of regularity. But after my parents’ return from Pakistan, it was like a spigot that had been left on. Each day, we received more of the blue self-folding envelopes, regular envelopes stuffed thick with paper, manila envelopes, one-third covered with jewel-tone stamps with Arabic curlicues. I put the envelopes gingerly on the kitchen table and watched the pile expand with growing unease.

When Ami returned home from work, she strode to the table immediately and tore through the envelopes as though they contained state secrets, lips moving almost silently. She didn’t even take her shoes off. She tracked her outside shoes through the house to get to those envelopes.

She had been prattling on about distant aunts, uncles, and cousins since they’d returned, and so, at first, I didn’t think much of it. I assumed they were letters from family with whom they had reconnected. But that didn’t explain her hunger for them. And then, one day, I picked up an unsealed manila envelope in which opened letters were stored. Without planning to, I spilled its contents onto the table. Some were written in Urdu, so I couldn’t read them. Some were written in English. I glanced at a few sentences of each and cringed at the overly formal or overly awkward writing.

And then pictures fell out. A sea of men. From awkward, pimply teenagers to middle-aged men that looked almost as old as Abu, from formal portraits to candid photos, they gazed out at me, dark and blaming. I sat down heavily. Was that discomfort I saw in their eyes or resignation?

The call for rishthas was not a bogeyman intended to scare Asma into submission. It was actually in the works. These were letters of introduction sent from families. There was no avoiding the meaning of these communications when they were accompanied with visuals. I felt faint from understanding. What did these letters say? How directly was the marriage proposal presented? Did they inquire about the bride or tout only the groom’s accomplishments? Did any of them ask Asma’s favorite flavor of ice cream?

I had told Asma at Thanksgiving that the idea of a rishtha was just for show. A threat. How was I going to explain this? How was she going to take it? I felt terrorized for her. And then, at some point, I realized that as Asma’s fate went, so would mine. The chances were high that one of these men would be selected for me. Perhaps the thought had been floating around my mind, like a free radical. But until I held those pictures and felt the finger oils of men on the other side of the world, the threat hadn’t attached itself to me. I dropped the picture like it was on fire and considered ripping them all up and throwing the letters away. But what would that accomplish? The waves of men that were eligible and available were endless, and another wave would surely wash ashore.

The thought of Asma finding any of these men acceptable would have been comical if it wasn’t so real. She could turn down every single rishtha, and there would still be a line of men, hundreds deep, who were desperate to get to this country. The thought made me feel nauseous. I never really considered how lucky we were to be in America. Our being here was just a fact, as unremarkable as the Kohlmanns being our neighbors. But it was hard to not see our privilege in the face of the unrelenting wave of people willing to sacrifice to live in this country.

Did the letters conjure for my mother the events of her long-ago betrothal and the circumstances in which it had been arranged? Had she worried about how appealing she would look to strangers? Had she, unconsciously, started wondering whether she was desirable and whether anyone would select her? But then I remembered the actual circumstances around her marriage and felt a momentary pang for that young girl. After hearing Mamoo’s story about Ami, I thought that perhaps I understood them, that I was piecing things together. But it was all illusory.

It was a weird time. A first-of-its-kind big-box store had opened in the next town and caused a seismic cultural shift in the area. People from towns in a thirty-mile radius were drawn to the endless aisles and staggering number of choices. Long known and familiar to everyone in Rosebud, for the first time we drew strange looks and whisperings from people who came from surrounding areas as we walked the aisles looking for shoes and Tupperware. It was post-Reagan revolution, and the call to the primacy of self and individuality, at the expense of the shared and common good, had already begun. Twelve years after our arrival we were being othered.

Everything seemed to be shifting, including myself. The time at Mamoo and Aunty’s, away from the routine of school and my parents, had been like breathing different air. It had given me a sense of perspective. High school would soon be over. I could be anyone I wanted to be. The trouble was, I didn’t know who that was.

To whom did we belong? To whom did we owe loyalty? They told us to be careful with these Americans, to remember who we were and stick to our own. But we didn’t know anyone like us. They told us that this country was not our home. But then they did exactly that—found a home among the Americans. I didn’t want to only be that child who satisfied my parents’ expectations—their grateful appreciation that I didn’t cause problems was a kind of suffocation. But what did I want from the world? Who was I supposed to be?

The void between knowing what I didn’t want and what I did want was vast. Asma appeared to be totally American with seemingly no limits to what she would do, other than maybe not eat pork. That wasn’t going to be my way. I knew that. But what was going to be my way? What did I want to keep from my culture? What was I going to leave behind? Like all immigrants, I was determining my own unique amalgamation of old and new. And perhaps in this way, I was no different from any other high school senior in the country, ready to leave home and find myself.

I wasn’t quite clear on where things stood with Asma. Without the daily act of living together and the opportunities to work things out through small kindnesses, the slow accumulation of misunderstandings and resentments had grown. At Mamoo’s, we had spent most of our time disagreeing about surface things and avoiding the sewage that lay below. And then, of course, there was Thanksgiving. We didn’t talk late at night. Even if I rang her, she didn’t call back.

I was aware my parents were watching me in a way I’d never felt before. Or was it that I was watching them in a way that I’d never done before?

Once, I heard them speaking in their room. They spoke in their typical combination of Urdu and Punjabi with a smattering of English thrown in.

“Are you going to be able to go this week?” Ami asked.

“I don’t know my area until I check in,” Abu said.

“What will you do when you see her?”

“If she’s going about her business, classes and whatnot, that’s good.”

“What if she’s up to . . . mischief?”

“What should I do?” Abu asked tiredly.

My days were cast with a green glow, an unnatural twilight where nothing was as it seemed and no one said what they meant. I got into the same college as Asma. The financial aid packages wouldn’t be handed out until late January, and until then, it was equally plausible that I would be going to a top-tier university or a community college. College, that pinhole of light and life, seemed small and far away. The risk of getting hitched to a rishtha felt right around the corner.

As I walked to the school bus in the morning, the fog cleared, and life seemed to follow normal rules. But then I’d return home, and the feelings of groundless anxiety and unsettlement took root again. Envelopes I’d brought inside and pictures I knew I’d seen disappeared. My parents stopped talking when I came into the room. The corners whispered. Some days I felt like I was going mad. I fell asleep to the rhythm of Ami’s pacing overhead. I woke up as exhausted as I’d gone to bed, dimly aware of my restless dreams. The time at Mamoo and Aunty’s felt like it was only yesterday and, at the same time, years ago.

I started getting off the school bus early, taking the long way home, just to be out of the house for as long as I could. I steeled for Christmas break. The thing with being a person who does not like conflict is that being around others who are fighting feels exactly like I am the one in the fight. What would a monthlong stint of all of us in the same house be like?

It was the time of year that the Midwest is an unrelenting gray, no distinction between sky and earth. Only leafless tree trunks and branches cut the horizon line. Neighbors’ houses glowed from the inside with warmth, intermittent bursts of light from a roaring fire or lamplight. I imagined myself on the inside of such a house, claiming that ordinary life where the simple act of growing up was not seen as an act of rebellion. Where your life, or some close approximation, was reflected back to you on television. Multicolored, twinkling, Christmas trees beckoned, promising treats to come and an escape from lonesomeness. One minute I felt a tired relief that school was almost done and the next a fearful anxiety about Asma coming home for the holidays.

The week before Asma was supposed to come home, Ami told me to call Asma. The phone picked up on the first ring, and Asma sounded breathy, as though she had just run into the room to pick up the phone. “Oh, it’s you,” she said flatly.

The phone handle felt like it weighed five pounds. “We haven’t heard from you.” God, I sounded like Ami. I wanted an opening; I had so much to tell her. But she gave none.

Ami took the phone from me and started discussing when Abu would pick Asma up to come home, because her car needed to be dropped off for an inspection at the mechanics’ shop in the city, where Abu paid for work on trade. She nodded along to something Asma was saying and then stopped abruptly. “Come home first, and we can talk about that.” She passed the phone to Abu, but Asma had already hung up. Ami said to Abu, “She says she wants to go to Chicago or somewhere to visit friends.” I don’t remember my father’s reaction.

The day Asma was coming home for break, I got off the bus and could smell onions and cumin down the driveway; all of Rosebud knew Ami was cooking. Inside, a cold and bare overhead light cast its meager glow in the living room. Coming in from the outside, I could feel the warmth of the house. I liked little reminders that everything in life was relative. I turned off the overhead light and switched on the one lamp in the living room and watched for Abu and Asma’s arrival from the front window. It reminded me of how we felt when Mamoo and Aunty used to visit when we were little. Oh, what sweet excitement.

Even though I feared an extended stay, and the baggage that had sprung up between Asma and me, my natural disposition relative to her was excitement. I was still the little sister always seeking a way to be with my big sister. I had always thought that in her presence I was a person fully embodied, and without her, I was something less. She helped define me, her love giving me some kind of assurance. But after my time at Mamoo and Aunty’s, I became increasingly uncertain. There was so much I wanted to tell her. Should I tell her about the conversation I’d overheard? But what would that do other than make her anxious at school and in the one place she was happy? Should I tell her about the letters and what I’d seen? After Thanksgiving, I felt like I needed to but was scared by how she’d react.

Ami was in the kitchen preparing dinner. She wasn’t just making normal, everyday dishes but special-occasion, labor-intensive shami kababs and samosas. Head down, she rolled the dough, cut it into circular pieces, folded them to become pretty little cones, spooned the dryish potato-and-pea mixture into each, pinched the packet closed, and placed each samosa on a tray, uniform and precisely equidistant from its neighbors. I remember each step.

There were times that I was so angry at her I never wanted to see her again. Her carelessness at Thanksgiving and general cluelessness grated on me. And yet it was impossible to not recognize her attempts at creating an image of a happy family gathering for the holidays. There was a strange purity in her intentions, no matter how destructive or unrealistic, and I hated myself for feeling protective.

They emerged from the car as if they didn’t know each other, not exchanging a glance or a word. Asma, hair flat on one side of her head and looking like she’d slept the entire drive. Abu paused to stabilize himself before turning. Abu inserted the key into the trunk and lifted her suitcase out. Without even looking up the half flight of stairs where Ami and I were waiting, she said, “God, the house stinks of fried food. I’ve told you this so many times. You need to put the fan on when you cook.” She shrugged off her coat and hung it haphazardly on the hook and started down the stairs. “I’m going to sleep.”

All the cooking, waiting, and hopeful anticipation had been for nothing. I sensed rather than heard a shaky exhale and, for a second, couldn’t tell if it was Ami’s or mine. I expected Asma to show contempt for Ami and Abu, but not me. Never me.

I ate dinner with my parents like every other night, two bites of kabab and picked at a samosa, crumbly and tasteless in my mouth. After dinner, I crept into Asma’s room with a samosa wrapped in a napkin as a peace offering, for a peace I could neither name nor negotiate. I had hoped she was awake and skipped dinner just to avoid my parents, but she was curled up on her side, snoring lightly and steadily. Her eyelids, translucent as butterfly wings and shot through with veins, remained a tiny bit ajar, as though her eyes were too big to be covered by such a delicate fabric of skin. She was speed-reading in her sleep. I left the samosa on her bedside table in case she woke up hungry in the middle of the night.

Late that night, long after Ami and Abu had gone to bed, I lay on the couch in the TV room downstairs. Half asleep, I watched an old-fashioned black-and-white movie on low volume. I felt, more than saw, Asma emerge from her room and freeze when she saw the television on. In the low light and harsh shadows cast by the movie, I didn’t move, feigning sleep. After a long moment, she quietly took the phone off the hook and pulled the long cord into her room, softly closing the door.

There was always a collective exhale in the minutes after Abu left for work. Like music only some could hear, the door clicking shut followed by the crunch of tires on gravel let something free in us. The house resumed breathing. When we were younger, we all fell into the roles we were accustomed to, in which Ami felt more like one of the kids than an adult. Asma would take out her stash of old Cosmopolitan and Seventeen magazines bequeathed from Heather, and Ami pretended like she didn’t see them. In summer, Ami would go to her room, draw the shades against the summer sun, and take an afternoon nap, one of those vestiges from Pakistan that did not translate to our air-conditioned life. It was the only time Ami ever took off her bra; even at night, she wore a bra. But when Abu was gone, she gave herself that little luxury. I would put the radio on. Asma would strip down to a T-shirt and underwear, her long colt-like legs bony and awkward. Asma and I would dance around, and even Ami would shake her behind, in a self-conscious way. We never discussed it. The loosening and permissiveness were entirely organic.

It was late morning on Christmas Eve. I was on the couch in the living room with a book, still smarting from how Asma was treating me. Ami seemed to have forgotten I was there. She sat at the kitchen table, hunched over something, her left hand moving in a writing motion, talking softly to herself. I strained to catch a word or a tone. I was fascinated. The most I ever saw her write was a grocery list, and even that was in a shorthand that no one but her could understand. Head bent, she wrote furiously until we heard Abu’s car return, the sound muffled by falling snow. He walked in, eyebrows thick with snowflakes, and proclaimed that the roads were so bad that there weren’t even any snowplows out. The weather forecasters in the city had predicted twelve to eighteen inches, meaning we would get even more. It was going to be a white Christmas.

He sat down on the small bench in the entryway, and Ami pulled off his galoshes without his asking. How had I never noticed that she pulled his boots off? He glanced at me and barked, “Go, wake up your sister!”

I stomped down the stairs. Why was he yelling at me? I had spent two days waiting for Asma to see me, to acknowledge me beyond the bare recognition of a nod. I had read. I had cleaned my room. I had worked on a partially completed latch-hook rug I found under my bed in its original box. I had stared out windows. I had eaten breakfast alone. I had helped fold the laundry and clean out the linen closet. All while waiting for Asma to move in my direction, to miss me and come back to me of her own accord. But she hadn’t. And now, instead of a day watching Christmas specials with no demands and wallowing in self-pity, I was going to be boxed in with all of them and their overreactions in a too-small house.

I opened Asma’s door abruptly and told her that Abu wanted her upstairs. She swung her legs out of bed and stood up. She had lost weight since Thanksgiving. Gaunt and looking even taller, she seemed impossibly thin. We stared at each other. The space between us, always scarcely a hair’s width, was now a vast ocean. I wanted to tell her about the envelopes and the pictures and my feelings of dread, but she brushed by me on her way to the bathroom.

Upstairs, Abu paced the living room, his energy too big for the house, with all of us trapped inside. The snow fell outside with a thick stillness, muting all sound and feeling.

He said, “It’s snowing.”

Asma deadpanned. “You got me out of bed to tell me that?”

He stopped walking and stared at her. It was her need to antagonize him, make him feel small, her disrespectfulness that made me hold my breath. Surely, she understood that he was simply frustrated by the weather and losing the opportunity for holiday tips. I remembered his embarrassment as he pushed the wad of money into my hand before getting on the plane. Why couldn’t she think of others, just for once? Why did everything have to be a confrontation?

And then, to my incredulity, Abu stammered in a plaintive voice. “I . . . I thought we could look at pictures.”

Ami came out of the kitchen, her hand to her throat. “Hiyallah! You’re looking so thin. I made your favorite tonight—chicken salan.”

Asma and I stared at Abu, confused.

“To see pictures from Pakistan.”

Asma shook her head slightly and walked down the stairs. “I’m going to take a shower.” Halfway down, she called, “I can help you when I’m done.”

By the time she came back upstairs, I had already started pulling the plates out of the cabinet to set the table. The kitchen was steamy and fragrant with the idea of home.

“What do you want me to do?” Asma asked Ami, sidling into the kitchen.

“Get the basket for the rotis. Also, a new towel.”

When we were young, Ami used to make fresh rotis for almost every meal. But as we’d gotten older and she’d started working, she fell out of the habit. She pressed down on the uniformly thin dough in the hot, dry pan with a squared tea towel to make it brown evenly and then, with a small, deft flick of the wrist, rotated the roti a quarter turn clockwise. The edges got lighter while small bubbles formed on the underside of the dough. Impervious to the heat, she lifted one corner to test its doneness and then flipped it over, starting the whole thing again of spinning the roti in quarter turns while pressing down with the towel. The entire routine was hypnotic, and it made me feel like I was a child again, mesmerized by the repetitive motion, aware that these were things no one else I knew did. It had been her nightly missive to us, communicating her love and attention and care in a way she wasn’t able to do otherwise. But instead of making me feel different and other, like a lot of my family’s habits, the metallic smell of the cast iron and toasted flour gave me a sense of belonging.

“Get some thanya out of the fridge and sprinkle on the curry. I haven’t washed it yet.”

I heard the faint sound of bells ringing. Abu was watching the weather report on the evening news. The sweet expectancy of Christmas morning was communicated everywhere we turned. There was no escaping getting caught up in the feeling. It was anticipation that, even while feeling it, was tinged with a sense of loss and letdown. We understood that for us, the buildup would not be satisfied.

Television commercials showed rosy-cheeked, blond-haired children tearing open gifts on Christmas morning with beautiful, well-coiffed parents watching. Carols and jingling bells were everywhere, from the radio to the grocery store. Blue-eyed Santas in various stages of climbing into or out of a chimney plastered the post office and storefronts. There were no commercials with mothers making rotis. There was nothing on television where we could see a version of our life, sweeter, glossier, and more tender, reflected back. Even though we were American in every way that mattered, this was one way in which we would never be. Could never be. At Christmas, we were outsiders in our own country.

Asma meticulously pulled the cilantro leaves off their tender stalks, one leaf at a time. I looked over her shoulder and saw the green leaves suspended on top of the spicy red sauce like lotus leaves. The woodsy, limy scent synchronized with the other heady smells.

Ami glanced over and said, “What are you doing? You’ll be there all day. Just tear off a chunk and put it in.”

“I don’t want the stems in there. It doesn’t look as nice.” Asma grinned.

“Foolish girl. This American nonsense of everything having to look pretty.” Ami shook her head, playacting being strict. She kept her head bent, rolling the dough with a rolling pin that had seen better days. “Call Abu. Dinner’s ready.”

We assembled at the table. An easy mood had taken over. The snow continued to come down, dampening all of our sharp edges.

“The Charlie Brown Christmas special is on later. Do you want to watch it?” I asked Asma. She seemed more engaged, and I didn’t want to chase her away.

Asma nodded, chewing exuberantly.

“How many times can you watch those same shows?” Ami asked while serving Abu curry and folding a roti on his side plate.

“They only come on once a year.”

“I thought we could show you the pictures from Pakistan. We got them back. I don’t know how much you remember the house or your cousins,” Abu said hesitatingly.

“Uh. Sure,” I said.

“Abu, when can we pick up my car from the shop?” Asma asked.

Abu picked up his glass and drank his entire glass of water. “The shop called. The car needs an oil change and one tire. They can’t get to it until after Christmas.”

“But there’s nothing wrong with it,” Asma said.

“You don’t need it over break. It’ll be ready by the time you start school next semester,” he said, slowly and patiently.

Ami interrupted. “Your father’s friend is fixing the car for a trade. So he has to squeeze it in when he can.”

Every time I heard Ami speak up, let alone as an explainer of Abu’s actions, I was caught off guard. Our whole life, when Abu would scold us, she acted like she was being scolded also. When he lectured us, it was understood that she was also supposed to listen. When he praised us, she bloomed a little. But since their return, for the first time, she seemed to be a peer to Abu.

“When you start taking responsibility for oil changes and repairs, and pay for them, you can make those decisions.”

I wondered if Mamoo had told Asma how Ami and Abu had been able to afford the return to Pakistan. Even as I thought it, I knew he hadn’t. He would have tried to protect their dignity. I hadn’t even told her over my two weeks at Mamoo’s. Maybe out of a sense of protectiveness of Abu’s dignity but also out of embarrassment. I wondered if he was going to circle back to the pictures, but he didn’t.

Asma took a drink of water and spit it out. “What is this?”

“Don’t you love it? It’s rose water,” Ami said.

“It’s disgusting.” She rubbed her tongue with her napkin and got a new glass of water from the sink.

Later, while Asma and I cleaned up the table, Ami stood by us, hovering on the edges. “Do you want me to make you meetha paratha? I still have some atta left,” she asked.

She’d already taken the roti dough out of the fridge and was pulling the sugar out of the cabinet. It was clear she wanted to be around us, and what better way than to make our favorite childhood dessert? She started the whole roti-making process again. But this time, she placed thick slabs of butter on the dough and sprinkled it all over with sugar. She folded it over on itself like a little envelope, rolling the dough thin again before placing it on the pan with even more butter. The smokiness of caramelized sugar filled the room, and despite all the uncertainty hovering about our future, I felt like a child when my mother loved me and spoiled me.

The moment the first meetha paratha was put on the plate, Asma and I both reached for it, pulling the crusty, sweet bread apart, yelping as it burned our fingers. Ami made three parathas, and we shared each one huddled over the stove.

As she made the fourth one, I asked, “Should we save this one for you or Abu?”

Ami smiled broadly, looking down at the pan. “No, baitay. You two eat them.”

Ami cleaned up the stove area as we finished the last paratha. It felt normal and wholesome and good. And then, maybe because she felt included in the air of camaraderie, she said playfully, “Let’s look at rishthas.”

Asma dropped the plate she was rinsing with a loud clatter. She turned to Ami and me. “What?”

I have no idea what my face did, but whatever Asma saw there made her realize that I knew.

Ami replied, “I have some people who are interested in you.” It was said with a breeziness, like she was asking about her shoe size. Did she make meetha parathas to lower Asma’s guard? Mamoo’s stories about her and about who she was a lifetime ago couldn’t be true. Because if they were, how did she have no empathy for her own daughter?

“What do you mean ‘interested in me’?” Asma’s mouth barely moved.

“They’ve sent letters. Introducing themselves.”

Asma sneered and then shook her head dismissively. My entire body thrummed, ready to take off.

Ami waited, and when it appeared Asma was going to say nothing else, she patted Asma’s shoulder and walked out. Asma and I cleaned the kitchen in silence, giving each other a wide berth. I watched her out of the corner of my eye in case she looked like she wanted to talk. She walked by me in small, mincing steps and put a container away in the fridge.

I softly touched her arm. “Come on, the show is going to start in just a few minutes.”

She turned on me. “There are pictures? There are actual people? You knew?”

I hesitated, unsure of what or how much to say. We were so close to my parents’ bedroom. “Yes.”

Asma looked straight at me and shook her head in disgust. She straightened the dish towel on the oven door until it hung precisely and, instead of following me to the stairs, walked to our parents’ room.

I could see Ami sitting on the floor, settling down to sew a button on one of Abu’s shirts while Abu lay on the ground propped up against a round pillow, watching commercials on the television with the volume off.

“Did you ask Abu if I can go to Chicago to visit my friend over break?” Asma asked Ami.

Ami stole a glance at Abu.

“Who is this friend?” Abu asked, without turning away from the television.

“Just a friend from school.”

“Things are expensive right now . . . ” Ami trailed off.

Asma’s voice rose, urgent and quick. “I can get a train ticket. I have money, and it’s supercheap.”

Ami put her mending down in her lap and gave Asma a long, appraising look, like she’d seen something she recognized. “Let your father and I talk about it,” she said in a slow, deliberate tone.

The commercial had ended, and Ami turned the volume back on.

I followed Asma downstairs, and as she was about to reach for the phone, I asked, “Don’t you want to watch Charlie Brown?”

“Are you kidding me right now?”

“It’s only on once.”

“Jesus.”

“What? I’m sorry, okay? What did you want me to do? It’s not like you returned my calls. How was I supposed to tell you?” My disappointment was elastic in my voice. Being on the outside of Asma’s orbit felt like I was floating in the black of space, devoid of light and air. “What? You’re going to never talk to me again?”

Her features relaxed, and she looked at me bare of any affect. For a brief moment, I thought she was going to break into a wide, sarcastic grin. But then the look passed, replaced with a new, hardened expression I wasn’t used to. “They’re not trying to marry you off, Salma.”

“Maybe they’re just trying to scare you,” I said meekly.

She pulled me into her room and sat down heavily on the floor cross-legged. I mirrored her, and it felt like we were in elementary school again and about to play Go Fish.

We looked at each other defeatedly. I could see she wanted to say something, but she held back.

“What are you upset about?” she finally asked.

“I haven’t talked to you in weeks, and you come home and treat me like Ami and Abu. And I’m probably going to have to go to a community college. And by the way, I’m the one who brings in the mail. I see and hear everything. I’ve seen the pictures of these men and read their letters.”

“You’ve seen them?”

I nodded.

She shuddered.

“Has it occurred to you that whatever happens to you also happens to me?” I asked.

“The whole thing will be different for you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

There was a secret lurking behind her expression. But what came out of her mouth was, “You’re the model child.”

“Why do you keep saying that? I’m just like you!”

Asma held her knees and tilted her head back so she was staring at the ceiling and took a deep breath. Slowly she said, “No, you’re not. And that’s okay.”

“Then, what?”

“Listen. It’s just really hard for me to be here. I’m trying to not be reactive and get in a lot of fights.” She said it like she meant it, but her eyes were begging me to stop pushing.

“What? Say it. Say whatever you want to say.”

“I can’t just turn it on and off.”

I looked at her blankly.

“When I lived at home before, it was . . . different. I was different. No matter how hard it was living with them, we had our own thing. How I felt with them and how I felt with you could coexist. But now, I can’t do that. I have to have my guard up in this house all the time or have it down all the time. I can’t do both. And all this stuff.” She shook her hand in the direction of upstairs. “I don’t know how to handle it yet.”

The half window at the top of her wall was covered with snow. Even then I knew that if the world ended, this is where I would want to be. With Asma, in her room, the dark-purple hood of snow coming to tuck us in.

“You realize that I do this on purpose, right? I could argue with them about the restrictions they put on me, all the ways they misjudge everything about this society. But I don’t want to. I want some peace. You think because I don’t get into it with them, I’m going to somehow be immune to this rishtha crap?” Even as I said it, I wondered how true it was. I knew that I would handle the situation differently than Asma, but not specifically how. On its face, I would be more compliant and go through the steps, again, to keep the peace. But what would I do when it really came down to it? Would I choose my parents’ happiness over my own?

I got up and started to walk to the TV room. I’d already missed most of my show, but it was worth it if we’d cleared the air. “Wait. What do you mean you’re different?”

But she had already pulled the phone into her room, dialing and quickly hanging it up, using our callback code with someone else.

Later, in bed, I heard her still speaking softly on the phone. I listened intently, trying to decipher what was being said, but all I could hear were the buzzing bees of her words.

* * *

In early December, Marlene tells me with a heavy brow that Ruby will be discharged from rehab by the end of the month.

I want to ask if she will be returning to Chicago, but instead I ask, “How do you feel about that?”

Marlene is no fool. She says tenderly, “I think she’s going to come here. There’s more support.”

“That’s good,” I lie.

“Salma. Nothing needs to change with us.”

“What about the divorce?”

Marlene shrugs. “I don’t know.”

I have no business asking, but I do anyway. “What don’t you know?”

“I don’t know if that’s what we’re going to do.” She reaches out and takes my hand. “We’ve been doing weekly counseling sessions via phone. I understand Ruby better. I think there’s a path for us.”

I see the happy little mirage I’ve stumbled into the past six weeks break up and dissolve like steam in cold air.