Chapter 21: Salma (2007) - The Daughters of Rosebud

Now comes the part of the story that I find hard to share. Every part of it is impossible to tell without my role, my blame, laid bare.

New Year’s Eve. The next day was the first day of 1990. Abu was home. Ever since that long-ago ride when he’d been beaten up, he left the shifts where there would be widespread inebriation to young men, the new immigrants who were desperate for shifts and still innocent to the bad things that could happen.

I thought the hardest part of Asma’s return home was behind us. I lay on the couch downstairs watching a Cheers marathon with the volume low. I couldn’t hear what they were saying upstairs, but there were no raised voices. On the TV, Sam was explaining something with wide-open hands and a beseeching look while Diane, arms crossed across her chest, squinted at him skeptically. And there was Woody, good old Woody, polishing glasses, pretending like he didn’t see anything amiss.

I wonder how Asma handled herself. Did Ami share all the pictures, even the ones with the old and fat men? What did Asma say to make them feel like she was taking them seriously?

In one way, it made total sense that Asma and Ruby were together. In retrospect, their body language at the cast party was completely obvious. But in other ways, I had so many questions. Even though I had never kissed a boy or had any kind of a romantic encounter, I could imagine what it would be like because of Sam and Diane and the hundreds of other couplings I’d seen on television. But I just couldn’t quite imagine what it was like between Asma and Ruby. Because they were two girls, but also because Asma was not American American. In my fantasies about my nonexistent love life at that point, the boys I kissed were always white boys. If Asma brought Ruby home, which part would Ami and Abu have a harder time with? The fact that she was American? The fact that she was not Muslim? The fact that she was Black? Or the fact that she was a woman?

Asma came downstairs after one episode and flopped down on the couch.

“What were you doing?” I asked softly.

Asma reached over and patted my leg with the saddest smile. She left her hand on my leg, but instead of it feeling like a reassuring weight, it felt like a bird’s bone, undetectable, offering no comfort.

We watched a few episodes and at 10:50 turned the station to watch the New Year’s Eve ball drop in New York. The buildup, the anticipatory energy seemed to work on everyone. But I could never understand what came after. What was the feeling I was supposed to have after the ball dropped? Because all I ever felt was disappointment, an echo to Christmas. Asma’s face was lit by the television screen and from within, her eyes shiny with tears or excitement. The camera panned over the faces of people, elated, reaching up for life, screaming, happy; I felt like they were a different species of human than me. The countdown wound down on the corner of the screen, and then it was the last ten seconds. And then the ball dropped. Strangers hugged and kissed each other. The TV played that song that always gets played on New Year’s Eve, a lonesome lament that reminds me of endings and loss and makes me want to cry. I felt out of step with the world around me. Was this just one of those American things I hadn’t yet learned or understood? Was this like sauerkraut, an acquired taste?

The year before, I might have told Asma that I was thinking these things on New Year’s Eve. But on that night, our last New Year’s Eve together, I didn’t want to upset the delicate balance we had finally achieved.

We brushed our teeth, and I followed Asma to her room. The joy on her face had evaporated.

“What happened?” I whispered.

“Nothing to worry about,” she said.

“Come on. Don’t treat me like I’m stupid. I know you’re up to something; I can tell. You never listen to me, and I’m always right.”

“I’m not treating you like you’re stupid. It’s nothing.” She tried to make her voice sound soothing, but it just came out sounding strangled. “But listen.” She grabbed my hand. “I have to tell you something.”

I waited, anticipating finally being told everything. That, somehow, even after all the secrets and half answers she had given me over the last few days, there was something more. Some overarching, big-picture, comprehensive story that would tie up all the loose ends and complications of our liminal lives.

“I love you, Sal. I will always love you. No matter what happens, no matter where I am or where I go, no matter who I love, you are and will always be my favorite person on earth. Do you understand that?”

I think her voice was cracking, but I couldn’t tell. Her words, her seriousness, her sincerity filled me with nostalgia. She was telling me that things were going to change. She was signaling that we were leaving behind the way we had always been. I put my head against Asma’s shoulder and slumped into her body, crying. She held me. It was the acknowledgment and understanding that I’d wanted for so long, and upon finally receiving it, I felt guilty for ever having needed such reassurance.

Once, when we were young, Asma read something about the prisoner’s dilemma and asked me who would be the one person I would save if we were all on a capsizing boat. I didn’t like talking about such things, but Asma was not one to be dissuaded. She insisted I answer. Finally, I said, “You. But what about everyone else?” She smiled all-knowingly. She was always one who knew the answer before asking the question. “I’ve got that part figured out. I pick Mamoo, you pick Aunty, and they pick each other.”

The New Year broke. Asma bounded into my room from my closet, earlier than she had woken up all break. She pushed her way under the covers with me, her feet ice cold, and wiggled against me until she had my warm spot. I felt a heavy disorientation. My eyes were still swollen and my nose congested from the night before. Asma started chattering that she was going to get organized because she was returning to school in a little over a week. She sounded nervous but happy. I thought it was because we heard Abu leaving.

We got up and made pancakes with slices of the last banana. We forgot to add chocolate chips to the batter and sprinkled them on top of the bananas afterward. I was so busy feeling grateful that everything had gone back to normal between us that I didn’t focus on signals that should have been obvious to me.

Ami was going to pick up an extra day at the tailor starting this week and acted like she would be returning to work full-time, asking repeatedly how she was going to manage everything. Asma offered to do all the family’s laundry because she would be doing her own. As she gathered the kitchen towels and the towels from my parents’ bathroom, I heard Asma say to Ami, “Let’s boil it down to the final today.”

School started the next day for me, and I regretted how much time over break had been wasted struggling for clarity with Asma. With the resumption of our old selves, I could feel how heavy a burden I’d been carrying. Late that afternoon, Ami said that she was going to lie down and that we should just make pizza for dinner. Oh, frozen-pizza nights. It meant that Ami and Abu were tired and going to be absent. It meant that we were left to our own devices, happily unwatched, uncared for, and unsupervised. When we were younger, we could watch TV late with the volume down. As we got older, we’d put on makeup and do each other’s hair in the style of the moment, gathered from old magazines.

Tootsie was going to be playing at 7:00. Asma put the pizza in the oven while I set up our pedicure station and hair station in front of the TV. I put down an old towel, got out the hair-conditioning oil, the bottle sticky from the last time it had been used at least a year before, hair covers, a wide and shallow bucket, and a nail file. There were no nail polishes in the medicine cabinet, so I went to Asma’s room to see if there were any on her dresser. When I put on the light, the room looked immaculate. The way it looked when Asma was at school. Nothing on the surface of the dresser or the bedside table. No clothes hung over the bed railing or on the floor. It was as though no one lived in there. I quickly shut off the light and backed out of the room. I didn’t want to look in the closet to see if her clothes were still there or feel how heavy her suitcase felt out of fear of what I’d find. I sat on the couch to wait for Asma, taking deep breaths to chase away my uneasiness. So what if her room was clean? She’d said this morning that she was going to be getting organized for school. I knew she was doing her laundry. There was nothing wrong with getting things in order.

On Tuesday, I returned to school. Asma was up before I left the house. I figured it was so she could see me off before having the whole house to herself. She casually ate her cereal while reading the side of the box and said, “I’m leaving the secret decoder ring in this one for you.”

When you know someone really well, it’s possible to tell when they’re acting. Even though they sound the same and appear the same, they are not the real person. It is a wrapping in which they’ve dressed themselves for some other reason. When Asma said that, I knew something was happening.

Ami rushed by with her head covered in a dupatta, like she was going to the mosque. “Hurry, hurry! You’re going to miss the bus. I can’t take you to school today.”

Asma walked me to the door and gave me a lingering hug, then pushed me out the door. I walked to the bus stop, conscious that it was going to be my last semester before my real life would start.

I returned home after school that day, and from the moment I stepped in the door, I knew Asma was gone. I could taste and smell her absence; the air felt less full. I ran downstairs, and her room looked like it had the night before. Her bedside table and dresser cleaned up, tidy. Her toothbrush and brush were missing from the bathroom, her towel in the hamper. She was gone. I hoped she was only up the street. I hoped she’d gotten far away.

I closed Asma’s bedroom door softly. I felt feverish and panicky. I went to my room and looked around, anything to indicate she had been here. Sticking out of my Quoran, untouched and dusty on my side table, was a small piece of paper, easily mistaken for a bookmark. I pulled it out. There was a red heart drawn on it in crayon. I put it in my pocket and clutched it. She did say goodbye. She was okay.

I walked upstairs and made a Pop-Tart. My hands shook as I opened my backpack and made myself sit down. Instinct told me to not call Ami and ask her where Asma was. I had a role to play. The longer I acted normal, the longer it would take for them to figure out she was gone.

By the time Ami got home an hour later, I had cycled through every emotion, from fear to anger to sadness. I staged looking busy at work, my books spread out across the kitchen table to give the best impression that I was preoccupied. The light was dim, all the lights, except the overhead light above the table, turned off.

Ami said Abu was working a late shift and that we would be having leftovers. I barely acknowledged her. She asked where Asma was. I ignored her entirely. She pottered around, changed into her house clothes, took dishes out of the fridge, and asked again. I looked up at her, as though coming back from a long way away, and shrugged. Asma would have been proud of my performance. Ami went to the top of the stairs and called down to Asma. Halfway back to the kitchen, she paused, listened, and turned back. She was going to go downstairs and find out Asma was gone. I couldn’t believe she didn’t notice the absence of her shoes and coat. If I made an excuse to keep her up here, she’d become suspicious of me. So I stayed put, staying stuck in my math problem.

In minutes, she was back upstairs. “Where is she?” Ami asked.

I maintained my air of distracted workaday attitude. “Where’s who?”

Ami walked in front of where I was sitting, with her hands on her hips. “Where is Asma?”

“I told you. I have no idea. I came right home from the bus an hour ago and started working. They’re really laying on the homework already. I mean, it’s supposed to be second semester senior year.” I prattled on, all the while thinking, finally, I could stop pretending. My worry had been a wave of dread creeping up my chest, but now that Ami knew, I could let it out. Where was Asma? How did she get away? And worse, what would happen when, inevitably, she returned home?

Ami looked at me like she was trying to figure out if I was telling the truth or not. She went back downstairs, and I could hear her going into the bathroom and looking about. She picked up the white pages, which had Abu’s work phone number written in his shaky handwriting on the inside cover, and pushed it over to me. “Call your father. He needs to come home.”

In all our years in America and Abu driving taxis, I could not remember even one time of someone calling Abu at work. I felt a strange comfort at being thrust back into my old role as translator.

Ami went to her room and closed the door. If I hadn’t known better, I would have sworn there was someone else in her room with whom she was conversing. It was unnerving. I sat at the kitchen table pretending to do homework for as long as I could handle it and then went to lie awake in Asma’s bed, inhaling her scent. I woke to stark, overhead light and Abu yelling. I tried to place myself in place and time. I sat up, and it came back to me. Asma was gone. She hadn’t told me her plan precisely for this reason, so that I wouldn’t be put in the position to have to answer for her. I couldn’t tell something I didn’t know. And now, I didn’t know where she was or any way of contacting her. I was in no better of a position than my parents. Disoriented and still partially asleep, I started crying, at first slow and mournful and then, as the skeletons of our life gathered around me, deep and sobbing.

Abu, who was so good at fighting, didn’t seem to know what to do or how to handle me crying. He stood there and, when it seemed like I was going to go on, sat down next to me and patted my back.

He said, “We’ll find her.” But he didn’t sound so sure.

And I wasn’t sure I wanted her found. For her sake.

I followed Abu upstairs. Every light was on in the entryway, living room, dining room, and kitchen. I caught sight of my swollen eyes and blotchy face, reflected as I walked by the dark window. The clock on the microwave read 11:48.

Ami had taken the pillows off the couches and was vacuuming underneath. All of the contents of the fridge sat on the kitchen counters and table. That was the night she stopped trying to hide her strange mutterings and talking to herself. We were otherwise occupied.

“Should we call the police?” I asked.

No one said anything.

“She could be in danger. I don’t think we should be worried about what people are going to say,” I said.

“Are you worried that she might be in danger?” Abu sounded surprised by my concern.

“Aren’t you?” I asked.

Abu stopped. I could see him questioning himself.

Ami snorted and said, “Who could make that girl do anything she didn’t want to do? Besides, she’s too big.”

“Yeah, Ami. Good point. Being tall is a known deterrent to abductors.” Neither of them were good at detecting sarcasm.

“All her things are gone,” Abu said. “I think she planned this.”

He turned to me, again, newly suspicious. “Where is she, Salma? You tell each other everything.”

“You keep asking me. I’ve told you, I don’t know.”

He appraised me for a long moment, and I felt like breaking but didn’t actually know anything.

“Has anyone called Mamoo?” I asked.

Ami and Abu looked at each other. It was clear they’d already discussed this and had a difference of opinion.

Ami got up wearily from the table. “I think we should get some sleep. She’s not coming home.” Her voice was resigned, but I sensed something underneath it. Not helplessness, not anger, not fear. Something like resolve.

When I woke up late in the morning, Ami and Abu were already up, sitting at the kitchen table, hunched over their mugs. I had long ago missed the bus to school, but neither commented on it. Abu’s leg shook rhythmically. Ami was openly making strange little sounds with no attempt to silence them or cover them under the guise of clearing her throat. It’s amazing what people can get used to in short order. He asked me to join them. I pulled out the same chair Asma had sat in for one of her rishtha conversations and sat down timidly.

“We are scared. We are scared that something bad has happened to your sister and you’re the only one who might have information. Wait.” Abu put up his hand to stop me before I could say anything. “You’re the only one that might be able to help. That might keep her safe.”

I was bleary and had barely slept, waking every few minutes, listening, watchful for any change of temperature in the house. I believe they were worried about Asma. Any parent would be. It was only normal. But at the time, I was so relieved, so happy that they were worried about her, too, and not vengeful. For once, we were on the same side, as though that proved something. “I don’t know anything,” I said slowly. “Specifically. I mean.” I stopped again. Abu and I locked gazes that didn’t break. “Maybe she went to visit her friend. She wanted to visit Chicago, right?” I figured it was okay to refer to something that we all knew. I tried to hew close to what was fact and already known.

The silence extended. Abu tilted his head toward me, like he was waiting for more.

I write the above, making it sound like Abu forced me to say something, but he didn’t. It was my own discomfort with silence and ambiguity. It was my own weakness for my parents. It was my own fear of displeasing others.

It was then, I suppose, that I said the words that would change the course of my life. “I think her name is Ruby.”

“Ruby?” Ami asked.

“Yeah,” I whispered.

Ami and Abu shared a glance.

“Who is this Ruby? Do they know each other from school?” Abu asked, his voice was quiet and calm.

“I mean, Asma met her at school, but she’s not a student.” I thought about Asma’s bony back pressed against my cheek and hearing Ruby’s voice reverberate through her, like she was an amplifier.

Abu did the staring thing again. Why interfere when I was saying so much? I couldn’t seem to stop myself. “I think.”

The kindling was placed in a little teepee with fresh dried grass piled under it. And I handed them the match.

“She was the director in her play.”

Abu stood up, gripping the back of his chair tightly. Ami asked in Urdu if she was Black. I nodded mutely.

Abu went back to work that night. Ami never left my side, as though I, too, might disappear. I wanted to scream and yell that she was gone because of them. They had caused it. They were so busy with their stupid efforts to convert her into someone more palatable, more manageable for them to accept, that they had chased her away. I walked in circles. Without a car, without access, I was trapped. And for the first time in my life, I finally understood how Asma felt in this house. I wanted to hurl myself at the door, claw at the windows to get out, break down a wall. I knew I never wanted Asma to come back here. I would meet her wherever she was, but she should never, could never, come back here.

Ami sorted through the pictures of the rishthas with her little grunts and groans.

“Aren’t you worried?” I asked, trying to make a connection, any connection.

“I think she’s run away,” she said placidly and then gave a little giggle.

I wanted to slap her.

That night, I asked if we were going to call Mamoo. I wanted to hear his voice so badly. She said that she had. I found out later that she had not.

It felt like they were waiting. For something I didn’t understand.

As I was going to bed, I heard the phone ring. How I longed for the phone to be back near my room so I could eavesdrop. I was desperate for news about Asma. I felt like they knew something I didn’t and I was stranded on an island with no information, isolated and left to figure it out on my own. I crept upstairs, avoiding the creaky stair, to see what I could hear.

At first, I thought Ami had already hung up the phone, until I heard her say, “And?” with such a rush and intensity, I knew it had to be news. Then, there was a gasp. “What? What do you mean?” I risked a peek above the riser and saw her bracing herself against the kitchen wall with one hand. She kept muttering, “Hiyallah. Hiyallah. Alla mafee they tho” over and over. God give me strength.

Was there bad news? Was Asma hurt? But in that repeated phrase, which Ami used when she was most frustrated at life, I sensed that Asma was victorious and Ami was registering her discontent.

Then came the days, one or two, that connected the before with the after. We stopped talking about Asma and where she might be. I believed I would see her again, but maybe not till I graduated and was out of my parents’ control. It felt like a pause, a temporary reprieve, my reunion with Asma inevitable. Asma’s grades came in the mail. She received all A’s and a B- in chemistry. Once, the phone rang. Only one ring. Maybe it was a wrong number. But I knew it was Asma letting me know she was out there. Ami stopped going to work and never left the house. How did she act during those days? I don’t remember.

I was in world history. It was spitting some combination of ice and rain outside. Mrs. Schoen asked Jennifer Lister to please read out loud the note that she had just been passed by Scott Trundle. Jennifer was bright red in the face and kept clearing her throat. Mrs. Landing, the principal, walked into the class without knocking or waiting for permission. For a moment, it appeared that she was there to hear the note read out loud. But no. She motioned for me to follow her. I looked around to see who she was talking to.

She said, “Bring your things, Salma.”

Never before had I been called to the principal’s office. Everyone turned to look at me.

Then, a bunch of things happened. I remember thinking that notwithstanding Mrs. Landing’s middle-aged softness, I could see her as one of those weightlifters from Romania. I remember the police officer in her office who looked at a spot just to the right of my head. I remember a woman with frizzy hair and a too-brightly-colored scarf wrapped around her head. I remember the left eye of the scarf lady twitched.

“Who’s your closest family member here?” she asked.

“I need to get back to class.”

“Salma, can you please tell me the name of your closest family member?”

“My parents. Why?”

Her forehead broke out in sweat. “Who else?”

“What’s going on?”

“Can you please tell me?”

“My sister, Asma. She’s at college.”

The woman swallowed noisily. Mrs. Landing walked to the garbage can in the corner and threw up.

“Other than her, Salma. Who else?”

“What do you mean ‘here’? In America?”

“Yes.”

“My Uncle Javed and Aunt Priya.”

“What’s their last name?”

I told them.

Someone left the room.

The woman took my hand in hers and said, “I’m sorry, Salma, to have to be the one to tell you this. But there’s been an accident. We want to get you with your family.”

“What kind of accident? Where are my parents? Has something happened to them? Does Asma know?”

Mrs. Landing and the scarf lady looked at each other for a long time. Finally, she said in a raspy voice, “Salma. Your sister is dead.”

Light refracted and broke apart, and the cinder block walls swayed. The release bell sounded from a light-year away. I said something like, “No. She left because she needed to get away from my parents for a while.” I looked at each adult in the eye, defiant.

I remember sitting in that office with the smell of vomit permeating the air. I remember asking where my parents were and the response being that they were taking me to Mamoo. I remember sitting in the back seat of a car with Mrs. Landing for what felt like a cross-country drive. I remember the bloodless, pink-ringed knuckles of the police officer who drove us to the hospital.

At the emergency-vehicle spot at the hospital, the officer parked next to a life-size Santa. “Jingle Bells” played on the outside speaker. Mrs. Landing opened my door from the outside as though she were a valet and I, a famous actress. I didn’t move. Two EMTs wheeled out an empty gurney with mussed-up sheets. Mrs. Landing took my hand and tugged at me to come out of the car. The sliding doors whooshed open gently. Misty rain came down smelling of ammonia. We walked down a long hallway to a repurposed utility room, a mop and cleaning materials still in the corner.

I remember that an old, gray, shrunken man walked up to me. Maybe once he used to have twinkly, playful eyes.

“Mamoo?” I looked to Aunty for help. She sat quietly in the corner, head against the wall like it had fallen there and she now didn’t have the strength to move.

He said to the woman, “We need to be alone right now.” He took my hands. “Salamander, I’m going to tell you everything because you’re going to find out anyway. But this is going to be hard, darling, okay?”

He needed a tissue. His nose was dripping, and he couldn’t even tell.

“They’re saying Asma’s dead.”

“Yes, she’s gone.”

“Do Ami and Abu know yet?” All I could think about was the last time Abu and Asma talked and how he was going to regret that fight forever.

“Your parents know. They were there.” He watched me like I was supposed to understand that thing that remained unsaid.

I stared at him.

“Salma. Your parents left Rosebud this morning after you left for school and went to Asma’s dorm.”

I waited.

He gulped.

“They killed her.”

And in that horror of a moment, I felt two things. The most tender parts of my inside wither and die and the uncontrollable urge to call the person to whom I told everything, because nothing ever made sense until I spoke to her.