Chapter 4: Asma (1989) - The Daughters of Rosebud

Asma emerged from the underground lecture hall into the late-afternoon sun and the green scent of cut grass. She inhaled deeply. It was one of her favorite smells and reminded her of being eleven years old and spending long, languid days at the park in Rosebud. She felt a little nostalgic at the thought of knowing she wouldn’t smell it again until next summer.

It felt like the weekend had already started and she was late to joining. She made a mental note to never take a late-Friday-afternoon class again. Salma was coming tonight, and while she was the one who had invited Salma a few weeks before, now that she was on her way, Asma regretted it. Asma genuinely wanted to do for her sister what no one had done for her—guide her through the labyrinth of life rules outside of their family, rules that others just seemed to just understand. She just didn’t want to do it today.

But even as she thought it, she knew her unsettledness was about more than just her class schedule or Salma coming. Ruby was having a party tonight. A little bird of exuberance fluttered in her chest. Her friend Mary, the makeup artist, was doing makeovers between rehearsal and the party.

Mary had done Asma’s makeup one time, and it had been one of the best nights of her life. The boys in the group had also gotten made-up, in honor of their hero, David Bowie, and they had all ended up in an old warehouse dancing to house music. It was entirely opposite to the one frat party she had gone to where the pressure to conform and the silent rules that dictated interactions felt as oppressive as her own culture. In the dark and thumping industrial space, her friend Ronny, the only person around whom she’d ever felt petite, had offered her a little pink pill. She looked up at the inky darkness. The room was vast, and she knew there should be a ceiling up there but could discern none. What would her parents think of her, here, in this room, with these people, wearing an off-the-shoulder shirt with no bra, combat boots, and a miniskirt so short that she couldn’t bend over, dancing in close, sweaty proximity with strange men? She opened her mouth like a baby bird, and Ronny dropped the pill in with a debauched grin. The rest of the night had devolved into joy.

She walked jauntily to the bike rack and unlocked her Trusty Steed. Every time Asma laid eyes on her bike, she said a little thank-you to the Miller boy who had, all those years ago, given her his old bike and taught her how to ride it. She waved to the groundskeeper mowing the lawn who, in turn, tipped his hat at her. She loved people, and there were times when a passing interaction like this felt magical.

When Asma was twelve, the Miller boy asked her at the park if she knew how to ride a bike. By then, most of the kids who had hit puberty were already going to the clubhouse at the creek, a makeshift treehouse and hangout away from the eyes of adults and populated by the predriving crowd. It was a long walk but a short bike ride down an old dirt road, and among junior high students, it carried a whiff of illicitness. It was there Asma was given a copy of Forever, the book cover fashioned out of an old paper IGA bag. It was there that her best friend, Heather, gave Asma her old shorts, miniskirts, and Seventeen magazines, which she smuggled home.

The Miller boy and his father, the local grocer, had appeared at their back door to give Asma and Salma their hand-me-down bike. Her father had been mortified—they were long past the point of needing help from their community—but Mr. Miller had insisted, saying they had no one to give it to and it was still in great shape. A few days after that, when her father was away at work, the Miller boy had come over and offered to teach her how to ride. She grew confident on the bike quickly; the rush of air on her face and the weightlessness of her hair lifting off her back made her feel like she was flying. Instinctively, she understood that it was best to not put her independence and autonomy on full display. But over time and bit by bit, she let him see her ride her bike around their driveway, then to the market, until eventually, it lost any potential taboo.

Asma rode the long way back to her dorm, her mind adrift. Music competed, U2 playing from Harpo’s and AC/DC from Steelmaker, the two bars on the edge of campus. There was a wildness in the air. Patios were filling up with boys wearing shorts and T-shirts, wholly unconcerned with how they looked, and girls who looked more like they were going to a sorority mixer than a grubby bar. The sweet funk of weed floated by. She heard catcalls but didn’t turn to see who they were aimed at.

She could easily take Salma to Mary’s, but Asma knew that her sister would be self-conscious and clingy. She was ashamed at her own thoughts. Salma could lie, gaslight, and distract with an innocent sincerity. In fact, she possessed an entire set of skills she was unable to deploy for her own use but used unflinchingly on behalf of Asma.

Their relationship was unlike any other sibling relationship she had ever known. Unlike Americans who had a common cultural understanding, whose lives, histories, influences, and culture borrowed from the same set of blueprints, there were no examples or road maps that taught her and Salma how to navigate the cultural fences they straddled. How many Pakistani immigrant kids had come to America in the mid-seventies? How many of them had no extended family or friends with whom they could exchange notes? How many lived in rural America? They were the sample size, and it bound them together in a way that no amount of a parent telling their child to take care of their sibling could.

Sometimes Asma wished for a little of Salma’s even nature and contentedness, but there were times, like on a warm seventy-degree autumn night with a party to go to and electricity in the air, that she fed on her own restlessness. She hurtled down the hill, picking up speed, looked to the left to make sure no cars were approaching, and leaned into the turn. Her scalp tingled as the wind sheared through her short hair and her Trusty Steed felt like a continuation of her body, as much under her control as her own legs. Asma waved at a passing friend while in mid-turn and felt like she had caught a stray ball with one hand.

The plan was to meet Salma at Mamoo and Aunty’s, have dinner together, and go to Asma’s rehearsal. And then, of course, the party. Maybe Salma would want to stay the night at Mamoo’s instead of spending the night at her dorm. She had sincerely meant it when she told Salma to visit her, but now, with this thing for Ruby pulling at her navel, she wasn’t sure she wanted her sister’s eagle eye observing her, and she certainly didn’t want to spend her evening taking care of her.

Asma’s favorite times with Salma involved doing nothing at all. Watching Tarzan and Land of the Lost on Saturday mornings. Salma in her bed and Asma on the floor, arguing about a book and their competing interpretations. Gossiping about girls at school, equal parts judging and jealous about what they were permitted to do. But there wouldn’t be time for that this weekend. Even if the schedule allowed, Asma wasn’t much interested in spending her time doing nothing. College had shown her how much life there was to be lived, and she was busy eating it by the handfuls.

It would be fine, she told herself. Salma could sit in the audience at rehearsal while she ran her lines, and then she would just have to come to the party. It would be good for her.

Asma pulled into her typical spot at Mamoo and Aunty’s and saw her family’s Buick station wagon already parked there. As she opened the side door into the kitchen, she noticed several things: the tiny witch shaking on the Halloween wreath Aunty had put up, the heady fragrance of lilies that Mamoo brought Aunty each Friday, and her mother’s voice. Oh God. Asma thought about turning and leaving before anyone saw her, but it was too late. What was she doing here?

“Look who’s here!” Mamoo said, popping a walnut with an ornate silver nutcracker and adding the meat to the small mound in front of him at the table.

Salma sat next to Mamoo at the table looking slightly miserable. Asma nodded to her in acknowledgement and then turned to her mother. “What are you doing here?” Asma said, more a statement than a question.

Her mother said, “Oh, I needed to get a chair.”

Asma rolled her eyes; her mother so frequently made no sense. She was about to say something snarky but caught Mamoo’s look of disappointment and stopped herself.

That chair was a whole thing. She remembered when it had been gifted to them, their first summer in Rosebud. She and Salma were playing in the front yard late on a Saturday afternoon when a truck, loaded high with furniture, pulled into their driveway. Two men, wearing worn overalls and baseball caps pulled low, got out from each side of the cab. They looked familiar. They glanced over at her and Salma and knocked on the frame of the screen door. When their mother saw two strangers, she pulled her dupatta up higher on her head.

The older man took off his hat and said very slowly and loudly, “Hello, ma’am. I’m Sam, and this is my son Ben. We help deliver things people buy at the flea market. We have some things for you”—he pointed back at the truck—“and we’re just here to drop ’em off.”

Asma saw how carefully her mother watched the mouth of the man as he spoke. She had learned English as a child in Pakistan and was comfortably fluent in written English. But Asma knew, she didn’t yet trust herself in understanding the spoken word. She turned to the interior of the house and called for her father in Urdu.

The two men looked at each other with a look of confusion.

“She’s gone to get our dad,” Asma said.

Sam turned to Asma and said, “So you folks do speak English?”

“We’re from Pakistan, which was a former British colony, so yes, we speak perfect English,” Asma said, with a hand on one hip and an arch tone, repeating a line she had once heard Mamoo tell about one of his American patients.

Sam looked incredulous. He bowed low to Asma. His hair looked like a turned-over flower, like the character from Fat Albert. Immediately, Asma knew he could be trusted.

Her father came to the door wearing his house salvar kameez. “Hello. How can I help?”

Sam reintroduced himself and explained again why they were at their house. “So where do you want us to put the furniture?”

Through the screen door, he asked the girls in Punjabi, “Is he telling us that this furniture is for us?”

They nodded.

“This isn’t ours. We didn’t buy.”

“They’re a present. Your friends at the flea market set aside some things for you and asked us to deliver them.”

He still looked like he wasn’t sure he was properly understanding and looked embarrassed.

“So can we bring these things in?” Sam asked when her father didn’t move. He glanced back as though he might ask Asma for help in translating again.

“It’s the end of the season, and sellers want to get rid of it,” Sam said matter-of-factly.

Her father looked like he was in physical pain and didn’t know what to do.

“People don’t like to throw perfectly good things away. You’re helping them out by taking it.”

Caught between offense and gratitude, her father hid behind the physical labor of unloading our new belongings: a bookshelf and couch for the living room, the long-coveted wagon wheel beds, a dining room table without chairs, a box of mismatched silverware and dishware. And a chair with green nubby fabric.

Maybe because the items were so unexpected and offered without a call for help, they felt sacred, almost holy. Through that one act of kindness, they had felt like they were a part of the community, and their house started feeling like a home.

Asma mumbled, “I just didn’t know you were coming.”

“Right then! Mari jan, what are we doing tonight?” Mamoo asked Aunty.

It was always sweet and embarrassing to hear Mamoo call Aunty Priya “my soul.” It felt so intimate.

“Sadia, what sounds good to you for dinner?” Aunty asked. She was always especially solicitous of her mother.

Asma said, “We’re all going different places after dinner, and I’m not sure you’ll be comfortable returning here by yourself. In the city. Unfamiliar roads. At night. Dark. And then, there’s the house alarm . . .”

Asma told herself that she was actually helping her mother. In the spare room, there was a television and VCR with a library of Indian movies. She would never watch Indian movies at home because her father thought they were trashy and cheap. Watching them at Mamoo’s was her guilty pleasure.

“You know I’m hopeless with directions.” She laughed her self-conscious little laugh, a cross between seeking permission and affirmation. “I’m happy to stay here and eat peanut butter toast.”

Asma flopped down on the couch in the family room and sullenly listened to Salma and Aunty explain the same old vagaries of VCR players to her mother, even though she’d been shown how to do it a million times. This is the way you put the tape in. The stop button and the pause button are the same. This is how to rewind. Everybody knew that she’d remember none of the instructions and manage to watch only one movie after all.

She hated what her parents brought out in her. Everything they did, in all their daily actions, if not their personalities, was for Salma and her. That much was obvious. Her father reminded them all the time of the sacrifices he had made to come to this country, and in that way, there was an obligatory sense of gratitude. Asma thought about what her life would have been like if she had been raised in Pakistan and shuddered. Imagining herself as one of the women in the mosque with their bland, ordered lives was bad enough. At the same time, there was also resentment. The decision to come to the United States was wholly their own. Why was she expected to pay back the cost of something that she hadn’t even chosen?

Her mother, especially, washed ashore a complex set of emotions. Intellectually, Asma understood that her mother was doing her best. She looked up to her and Salma and, regardless of whether she was able to express it or not, was deeply proud and perhaps a touch envious that her daughters operated in this culture in a way that she would never be able to. On the other hand, Asma couldn’t help but be disgusted that her mother had done nothing with her life. Asma knew that wasn’t entirely fair, but the feeling was still there. Every part of her that believed in female empowerment wanted to believe in her mother. But she was so mousy. She couldn’t ever assert an opinion, let alone stand up against her father when he called her a “stupid woman.” It made her crazy, until some days all she could express or even feel toward her mother was disdain.

And then, as happened when she thought about her mother without having to actually interact with her, Asma started feeling guilty. For being impatient, for being a jerk, but also for her inability to fix her mother’s life—their lives. Asma wanted their life to be easier, not so precarious and uncertain, dependent on tips from strangers and subject to the daily indignities that came with shift work.

A few years after they had come to America, she had woken in the middle of the night. Her Cabbage Patch alarm clock read 2:20. She realized the clattering and fearful voices were coming from upstairs and not a dream. She crept to the landing, and above her in the thick dark, she could see her father lying on the love seat, his long leg dangling over the arm. Her mother stood over him, her hands clasped over her mouth, trying to keep in whatever threatened to leap out. Her father patted her leg to comfort her or quiet her. Even in her heightened state, Asma noticed that touch, so rare.

Her mother went to the bathroom. The squeaky door of the medicine cabinet opened and closed. Through her loud snuffling, she said in Urdu, “Tell me what happened. Who would do this?”

The acrid scent of peroxide pierced the air.

Her father’s voice sounded muffled, like he had something in his mouth. In a mix of Punjabi and English, he said, “Dispatcher sent me to a bar. These people, when they drink . . .” His voice gave way, and he stopped to take a slurp of water. “Four men. I get out to move my things to the trunk and they pushed me and then . . . ‘camel jockey’ . . . ” His voice trailed off.

“What is ‘camel jockey’?” her mother whispered.

The silence that followed was somehow more ominous than what had been recounted. She felt her mother’s terror and helplessness, as though those men were about to push their way into their house.

“Should you go to the hospital?” her mother asked through her tears.

“No. No money.”

“Should I call Javed? The police?”

“No. No. I’ll be fine in the morning.”

But when Asma saw him emerge from the bedroom two mornings later, he didn’t look fine. His nose was swollen and out of alignment, both eyes were black and blue, and he had a long, deep gash on his left cheekbone where the skin barely connected, the red tissue beneath peering out angrily.

For a week her father hadn’t gone to work. Back then, they still said their namaz together on nights when he was home from work. He struggled to bend, so Salma and Asma brought him a chair to sit on to say his prayers. Instead of leaning down to touch their knees and then prostrate themselves on the ground to place their forehead on the floor, only their upper body moved, hands to ears, hands crossed over their midsection, head to the right and head to the left. Or, in her father’s case, his right hand to his right ear; his left arm stayed tucked protectively against his body.

During that week, though it was unsaid, Asma understood she needed to stay home, to stand guard, to be there in case they needed her. She and Salma didn’t play outside on their swing set. They didn’t go to the park across the street to watch the older kids play basketball or read a book in the bleachers or lie in the tall meadow grass to watch the birds build nests in the adjacent oak tree. Taking care of her family was part of her responsibility.

For a long time, she carried the image of her father’s discolored face and her mother’s terrified voice. It made Asma want to be the person her parents wanted her to be, to live up to their hopes and expectations, so at least that part of their life was not a disappointment. And for a long time, she wanted to be the person that justified their sacrifices.

After dinner and rehearsal, Asma and Salma returned to Asma’s dorm.

“Where’d you get all this stuff?” Salma asked, letting the sheer curtains ripple delicately through her hands.

The room looked totally different from the day when her family had moved her in. It now had a look. Asma’s roommate had disappeared the second week of school among rumors that she’d attempted suicide, and now Asma effectively had a large single room. Her bed was lofted with her desk underneath. The mattress from the roommate’s loft was now on the floor, functioning as a place to lounge with pink-and-purple pillows of various shades leaning against the wall. Gauzy pale-purple fabric hung down from the loft above, tied back to look like curtains, making a protected space underneath. The overall effect was like a sultry harem tent.

“I mean, I like it,” Salma said.

Asma rummaged through the bottom drawer of her dresser. She tapped her mouth with her finger, brows furrowed. Distractedly, she stood up and said, “I’m going to take a quick shower.”

When she came back, towel still wrapped around her, she pushed a chair against her wardrobe and pulled down an old oversize suitcase, the one they had brought from Pakistan, vinyl with old-fashioned locks and “Chaudhry” written on it in large block print in lieu of a name tag.

“What are you doing?” Salma asked, sitting on the makeshift couch.

Asma smiled brightly and held up a plaid double-breasted blazer with huge shoulder pads. “Do you want to wear this tonight?”

“What?”

“I got it, and it’s too short for me. It’s supposed to go to your upper thigh. I think it would fit you perfectly.”

“What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?” Salma asked.

Salma’s jeans were too tight around the waist but otherwise too big, hanging loose at her hips and legs, her plain white shirt blockish and nondescript. Asma knew how Salma had gotten these clothes, the same way they got all their clothes—the Walmart in the next town over or, if it was for a nice occasion, the sale bin at JCPenney. “Nothing. There’s nothing wrong with what you’re wearing. I had just put this in the suitcase to bring home to you, and when I was thinking about what I was going to wear tonight, I remembered it. That’s all.”

“Did you get it the same place you got all this other stuff?” Salma waved her arm around.

Asma’s head popped out of the top of a tight black T-shirt. Long gone were the days of hidden miniskirts and crop tops donned in the back of the school bus. Now, without her parents constantly watching her for any sign of American frivolity or skin baring, Asma found herself gravitating toward army pants and combat boots paired with tight tops that accentuated her sharp collarbones and revealed a hint of navel.

“Aunty takes me shopping,” Asma said flatly.

She stood in front of the full-length mirror hanging behind the door, ran a handful of foamy gel through her short hair, and then ruffled it so it stood on end. She thought of the first time she had met Ruby. It was at tryouts for the fall play, and Ruby had projected an easy confidence, striking a balance between providing clear and direct instructions without sounding controlling or bossy. They were almost the same height, and after a lifetime of feeling like she was towering above others, Asma found it thrilling to look directly into Ruby’s eyes. Even then, Asma wanted to be seen by Ruby, and not just as Catherine, or Fastrada, or any of the other female characters Ruby was casting for Pippin. “Your hair is stunning,” Ruby had said. And when, later, Asma was at the salon with Aunty, it was Ruby she had thought of as the first clump of hair thudded softly to the ground.

“I think I need to cut it again. I like it when it’s spiky.” Asma put on a heavy black eyeliner, making her large eyes look even bigger in her angular face. Using her pinky finger, she dabbed on some lip gloss, her lips large and shiny.

She went over and sat next to Salma, who was pulling at her shirt. The easy rapport that had marked their relationship didn’t feel so easy at the moment. “I’m sorry, Sal.” Asma couldn’t tell how much of it was her and how much of it was just that they were in different points in their lives. All she knew was that there were now hidden meanings behind their words that hadn’t been there two months ago.

“For what?” Salma’s voice sounded petulant.

“That I’m here. That you’re still there. Wait till you get to college.”

Salma shrugged. “You probably hang out with Aunty’s real nieces and nephews too.”

Asma threw her head back and laughed. “Now, you’re just being a baby. I never see them because they live in Wisconsin. Besides, we are her real nieces.”

“I don’t think we should go to the party tonight.”

“Why? What are you so scared of?”

Salma meticulously combed the fringe on a throw pillow with her fingers.

Asma bent to meet her eyes. “Look, if you’re nervous because you don’t know people there, I get it. But these are my friends, and they’re really great. I want you to meet them.” And then, almost as an afterthought, she said, “I can’t wait for you to be out of that house and out of Rosebud. Real life is amazing. You’ll see.”

Asma leaned into Salma’s side, somewhere between playful nudging and aggressive love, until Salma pushed back.

They turned down a dead-end street a short walk from campus. One house stood out—a deep, cozy porch, a string of small bare bulbs crisscrossing the beams, and small white Christmas lights festooning two plants. Chimes rang in the balmy wind, caught somewhere between summer and fall. Two boys swung languidly on a porch swing. Asma kept checking the address on a small piece of paper tucked inside her palm. She felt her energy build and remembered years ago, on her way home from a friend’s, seeing a slim tornado meandering sexily across a field. The air, like now, had felt heavy and charged, running like an electric current through her body. It felt like anything could happen.

The inside of the house was as ’70s chic as the outside was warm and craftsman. People sat on the low sofa facing a fireplace with deep-green tiles. A stack of hardcover art books with a group of lit candles sat on a polished coffee table. Two worn leather armchairs faced each other across the long end of the coffee table. Accent lights, placed underneath plants, cast shadows on the ceiling. Off the living room, there was an enclosed sunroom painted a vibrant, deep green. Inside was a desk with an amber lamp shining a warm glow and a hammock in the corner someone was trying to lie down in.

Ruby was at the dining room table pouring bags of chips into plastic bowls. She looked up when Asma walked in and smiled that smile of hers, wide and open, left cheek imprinted with a deep dimple and eyes that crinkled at the corners. Her lips matched her silvery-blue eyeshadow. Asma’s body was a drum, the beat building and thickening.

She glanced sideways at Salma and quickly looked away. Asma was an expert at splitting herself in two. For years, the person her parents expected her to be had been living uncomfortably side by side with the person she actually was. God knows she knew how to sequester parts of herself. She had just never needed to do that with Salma. Her sister knew her better than anyone, perhaps even better than she knew herself.

The room was already full. Asma didn’t want to walk straight to Ruby, so she introduced Salma to her friends. There was Mary with the people whose hair and makeup she had done. Each person in the group was bubblier and more strikingly made-up than the next. Pink eyeshadow, fake lashes, glitter everywhere. They oohed and aahed over Salma as though she was much younger, and Mary asked if she could do her makeup next time. “Asma! You didn’t tell us about your sister. Look at her eyes!”

Salma dropped down in an armchair and touched her eyes. Someone offered her a drink, and she said quickly, “Only Coke.”

Asma smiled sheepishly at her friends and said, “I’ll get it.” She walked to the table and took a red Solo cup off the top of the inverted stack and opened the ice bucket. It was empty.

“There’s more ice in the freezer,” Ruby said from behind her.

Asma felt her entire body swell, like wood in rain. How had she never noticed how husky Ruby’s voice was? How had she not noticed that she smelled of oranges and soap? She turned and was surprised to see that Ruby was a normal-person-distance away and not whispering in her ear.

She looked straight ahead, scared to look at anyone for fear of what her face might give away. Asma had chalked up these stirrings to her new environment, thinking that, with no watchful eyes judging, labeling, and shaming, she was simply experiencing things in a different way. But here, in this room, there was no escaping it. The realization thrilled her and made her panic. She wasn’t a prude. She had just never been attracted to a woman.

Since arriving at college, she had gotten a crash course in the many varieties of sexual couplings. There were her friends Val and Paul, who lived on the fourth floor of the men’s dorm. Paul had never been with a woman. He had known since he was a little boy that he only ever wanted to kiss other boys. His mother, too, had always known and put no obstacles in his path to living the way he wanted. Yet he was still a virgin. Val had had a serious girlfriend through most of high school and was now trying to find the safety and acceptance he’d had with her but this time with the physical and emotional connection of a man. And then there was Val’s roommate, a strapping boy whose only religion was The Clash. His girlfriend was strictly Catholic and wanted to save herself for marriage, and so they compromised and had only oral and anal sex. It didn’t make much sense to Asma, but if it made them happy, what did she care?

In fact, the longer she lived closely among people who were open about their feelings and learned who she was, no matter how intense and brash, the more she found she didn’t need to be as oppositional to make a point. She didn’t need to gird herself to be ready to be challenged. And in the absence of that opposite, negative force, she found herself engaging with the world around her, feeling new things in an entirely different way. Like whatever this thing was with Ruby.

Asma was passed a bottle of beer to open. She propped it against her leg to put more torque with the bottle opener, and the neck broke off. Someone screamed, and everyone in her vicinity jumped back from the shattered glass and splashed liquid.

“Sorry!” Asma bent down to hide her embarrassment as much as to help the crowd that had gathered to clean up.

She felt a warm hand on her right wrist and looked up.

“Let’s look at that hand,” Ruby said.

Asma glanced at her hand; it was covered in blood. “It’s okay. It’s nothing. I don’t even feel it.” She was already mortified for having caused an accident, but seeing her blood on the floor, and knowing people’s sensitivity these days, made her want to disappear.

Ruby tugged at her.

“Let me clean this up first.” Her mother’s silent and not-so-silent training made it hard for Asma to walk away from a mess, especially one that she had created.

“I’ll take care of it,” Salma said, appearing next to her.

Ruby put a towel around Asma’s hand and led her down a dark, narrow hallway to her bedroom and then a bathroom. Asma was only vaguely aware of the stinging in her hand; the proximity to Ruby in the passage dampened all other feeling. Asma looked around greedily for evidence of a husband or boyfriend: a low platform bed made up neatly with a white duvet; an entire wall of bookshelves; two small tables with matching lamps, their dark lampshades concentrating their light downward; a few framed black-and-white pictures. There was nothing that said that someone shared this room with her. There was also nothing that said someone didn’t.

Ruby pushed Asma down on the toilet seat and put her hand in the sink and started rinsing it.

“I’m sorry. I made a huge mess.”

Ruby examined Asma’s hand intently, turning it this way and that slowly. Distractedly, she said, “Don’t think you need any.”

“Don’t think I need any what? What are you doing?” Asma asked, her eyes glued to her hand being held so gently, so tenderly.

“Stitches,” Ruby said. Ruby held Asma’s hand tight while she opened the medicine cabinet and took out peroxide, gauze, and tape, setting them up in a line on the countertop. She turned Asma’s hand under the faucet, the water running pink. “You know I’m a nurse, right?”

“What? No. I . . . I didn’t know that.” Asma realized she knew nothing about this woman that made her feel shaky. She felt inarticulate and clumsy next to her.

“It’s a bleeder.” Ruby rewrapped the hand in the towel while she talked and pressed down firmly but gently. “You don’t mind if I hold your hand for a bit, do you?” Ruby asked, her eyes sparkling mischievously.

Asma shook her head mutely. She wanted to lick that dimple. Yeah, this is what the songs were about. Not that clinical, dry thing she’d experienced with boys. This come-from-behind feeling that made her legs feel like she’d ridden her bike too long and too fast. “So wait. How are you the director?”

“In undergrad, I directed the spring musical my senior year. The school asked me to step in and help out with Pippin because the theater director is on leave for health issues.” Ruby leaned her hip against the sink countertop and looked down at Asma, still sitting. They sat in a fraught silence, smiling shyly at each other. Ruby periodically opened the towel to see if the bleeding had slowed.

Asma felt dazed, seeing all her blood in the sink, and turned her head to the side. A petite shelf loaded with lipsticks hung on the wall. “Are those all yours?”

“Uh, yeah. I have a problem.” Ruby laughed sheepishly.

“How many are there?”

“One of my brothers says if I end up with one for every day of the year, I need to get help.” She laughed good-naturedly.

“How many do you have? Brothers.”

Ruby leaned forward and said, “Four!” as though she still couldn’t believe it.

Now that Asma knew a little, she wanted to know more. “Are you from here?”

“No. Chicago. How about you?”

“I’m from a small town about an hour away called Rosebud.”

“Rosebud, huh? I like that.” Ruby removed the pressure and checked Asma’s hand again.

Asma’s curiosity spiraled. “Are you married?” she asked softly.

Ruby let go of Asma’s hand so abruptly that it fell in the sink. The silence fell awkwardly. Asma felt like she had committed a grave offense, her hand suddenly cold from the withdrawal of Ruby’s warmth.

Later, when she would think back on this moment, she would feel embarrassed anew. She knew this from her upbringing. People simply did not ask personal questions about the status of couplings or how people met. In their culture, people were children, married, or on the way to getting married and having children. Perhaps, even in America, there were circumstances when it wasn’t okay to voice these types of questions.

Ruby finished taping the cut with a matter-of-fact precision, and they walked back to the party. In their absence, more people had arrived. The lights were dim, music thumped, and voices yelled over music. The table and ground were all cleaned up as though nothing had happened. Life was going on normally. Asma scanned the room and found Salma sitting on the couch surrounded by the crew. How fitting that she had found herself with the people who preferred to work in the background. Asma sat next to Salma, who looked at her worriedly and wanted to see her hand.

“You doing okay?” Asma asked.

Salma’s eyes were shiny. “Yes! Everyone has been so great!”

Asma smiled, taken aback at Salma’s enthusiasm.

Ronny walked over and said, “You took my seat.”

Asma now understood why Salma was so animated. She stood up, and Ronny poured himself into the small spot she had previously taken on the couch. Her insides were jangly. She didn’t want to share space with someone who was too chatty or intrusive. She wanted to be alone with her thoughts of Ruby holding her hand. She would have liked to have a drink, but Salma was there. Asma rarely drank to excess, somehow her stomach always giving out before she got to the point of abandonment, but Salma would be able to smell her breath, and Asma didn’t feel like explaining her when-in-Rome rule tonight. She made her way from group to group, making small talk, her inner compass always oriented to Ruby. She went outside and had a few puffs of a joint. It took the edge off the pain, but it made her want to be next to Ruby even more.

Later in the night, people started leaving, and those that remained started moving furniture to create a dance floor. Someone plugged in a strobe light, which lazily threw light around the room. Pizza arrived, and the smell of doughy bread and sauce filled the room.

“New Song” came on the stereo with its staccato, happy rhythm. Asma loved this song. She glanced around the room and saw Ruby leaning against a wall, one arm crossed against her middle and the top of a bottle of beer resting against her full lips. It felt like Howard Jones’s words about having waited so long were meant for her. The bird inside her was no longer fluttering; it was thrashing itself against her rib cage. They stared fixedly at each other. They were each taller than most people in the room, their view unimpeded. Asma’s chest hurt.

Ruby made the slightest motion of her head to the front door and raised one eyebrow. My God, that look. Asma felt like a character in a Spike Lee movie, gliding through the room through no volition of her own, slightly wobbly, with no obstacles in her path.

The temperature outside had dropped as steadily as it had risen inside. Ruby sat in the corner of the porch swing, one leg pulled up and the other pushing against the rail. Asma sat down gingerly in the opposite corner. The cold was bracing and a welcome relief. She trembled and stroked the short, soft hair on the back of her neck.

Ruby went inside and returned with a brightly colored quilt. “If we get cold.”

She sat back down, this time closer to Asma. Asma ventured a glance at Ruby, who was still in a short-sleeve shirt. How was she not cold? Had she known how long, how graceful, Ruby’s neck was? And had she just put in those silver hoop earrings, or had she been wearing them the whole night?

“How’s your hand feel? Do you want some Tylenol?” Ruby asked, breaking into Asma’s reverie.

Asma looked away quickly. “It doesn’t hurt.” Her nerve endings felt dilated, and she couldn’t pinpoint any feeling other than her beating heart.

They sat for a while, rocking slowly. The music was loud but not so much that they had to raise their voices. The shadows of twisting, jumping bodies cast outside through the windows. Asma felt like she was in another world.

In the streetlight, Ruby was the most extraordinary gold, her smile like a beacon. “So what’s your story, Asma Chaudhry? I want to know everything.”

They left the party around two in the morning. Asma could have stayed outside talking to Ruby all night, but Salma had eventually wandered outside to the patio yawning. There were still a few people inside. Some slow danced, someone was passed out in the hammock, and others sat around drunkenly talking about the play. It was probably for the best that she was with Salma. If she had been by herself, she might have been tempted to stay. The thought of what might have happened made her feel equal parts ecstatic and fearful. She had never felt so alive and so weighed down at the same time.

“I stink of smoke,” Asma said.

Salma grunted.

“Did you have fun?” Asma asked.

“Yeah, I mean, I guess. I didn’t know anyone, and I’ve not really been to any parties before. But yeah, I did.”

“You did great.”

“What’s up with Ronny? What’s his story?”

Asma side-eyed Salma. “He’s a mess. His dad died last spring from cancer or something, and he’s a little out of control.”

“What does that mean? What’s out of control?”

“Do you like him?”

“No! No. I don’t even know him.”

“Yeah, okay. He’s a nice guy but pretty into drugs, alcohol, guys, girls, you name it.”

“Oh.” They walked in silence. Finally, Salma said, “Ruby was really nice. She paid a lot of attention to you.”

“I have a main part,” Asma said with a stupid grin plastered on her face, as though that explained it. She was glad for the dark.

They walked back to campus quietly.

Asma had always assumed she was straight. She had kissed a few boys. One had even held her right breast. But she had felt nothing. In fact, she had felt less than nothing. Going through the mechanical movements, she felt removed from her body, watching herself from a distance and wondering if she was supposed to be feeling. Was she supposed to look past, feel past, the stale breath of the person she was kissing? Was she supposed to press into the hands that held her, or was a certain amount of repulsion normal?

She’d attributed her curious feelings of detachment to the events of that long-ago night when she had been fourteen. She had assumed that the experience had shut things down in her, burned off the ends of the neural pathways required to feel the heady combination of head, heart, and groin. But on the porch, she understood that it was more than that. Whatever had happened in her past, whatever had happened with males—this—this thing with Ruby was a different animal. She didn’t have the words for it, or maybe she was too scared to name it, even to herself. The only thing she could identify was a pull. She was pulled in a way that she had never felt. Pulled by her center, by some spot deep in her being, to Ruby.

The fact was that there was nowhere for this to go. Asma was reminded of what Salma had said about Free to Be . . . You and Me. Those songs, these experiences, these choices were simply not meant for them. She couldn’t even picture what it would be like to fall for a guy of her own choosing. Not without her parents disowning her. The thought of it being a non-Muslim? A white boy? A Black boy? A woman? A Black woman? The continuum of unimaginable choices stretched before her to the vanishing point, each more improbable than the next.

Campus was mostly asleep, a few late-night stragglers here and there. The lobby on the first floor of the dorm was up a half flight of steps and was brightly illuminated. As they walked up, Asma started noticing police officers. One stood outside on the landing at the top of the stairs. One was talking to Bobby at the front desk and another to a group of kids who sat on the couches. Asma slowed down, wary. Maybe there had been a fight. She had witnessed two fights in her life, one in high school and one in the quad her second week of college, and never again wanted to see men hitting one another. The grunting and sickening sound of human hitting human, the spectacle of people standing and cheering, made her physically ill.

She walked slowly up the stairs, afraid of what she might see. Inside, a girl silently pointed at her. Asma turned around to see what she was pointing to, but there was no one behind her other than Salma.

Bobby said to the officer, “That’s her.”

Then things started moving in slow motion. The few people in the lobby turned to watch Asma and Salma approach the front desk. The fluorescent lights were too bright. Asma felt Salma’s death grip on her left forearm.

The burly, red-nosed officer asked, “Are you Asma”—he looked down at his notepad and then back at Bobby—“Chowder?”

“What’s wrong?” Fear coursed through her. What had happened? Was it her parents? Mamoo?

“You need to call your father, young lady,” he said, not unkindly.

“Why? What’s happened?”

“Nothing. Now that you’ve been found.”

Asma cocked her head to the side, confused. What did he mean by “found”? She looked at Bobby.

“Your dad called looking for you. Both.” His eyes flitted to Salma.

“What are you talking about?” Asma could understand the sentences but not what they meant.

“He called saying his daughters were missing. We take those calls very seriously these days,” the officer said.

Bobby said, “He called your room, and no one answered, so he called up here and asked that I check your room.”

“Did you tell him I was at a party?” Asma was caught between rage and mortification.

“My job is to make sure everyone has a badge before they get in. I’m not your damn receptionist.”

The officer motioned to the other officers. He said, “I’m pretty sure your dad is on his way here. You need to tell him that this is not an appropriate use of resources.”

“Sorry, sorry,” Asma muttered.

She hurried through the turnstile, dragging Salma behind her, and rounded the corner to her dorm room. “Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. What do we do?” Asma asked. She had visions of officers descending on Ruby’s house. Her friends knew her parents were strict in a general sense but not like this. This was psycho. She wasn’t twelve years old and not at the friend’s house where she was supposed to be. She was nineteen years old and in college, for Chrissake. The thought of her family’s unique strain of dysfunction coming this close to her personal space, the space she had so carefully created, made her want to die.

“Should we call Mamoo?” Asma asked.

“What’s that going to do?” Salma packed her few things in her backpack.

“What are you doing?” Asma asked.

“I told you this was a bad idea.” Salma took Asma’s hand and pulled at her.

It took Asma a second to understand, and when she did, she started crying. It was all too much. Confusion about Ruby. Gratitude for Salma. Fear of disappointing her parents laced with rage. She was dizzy.

“Let me talk. There’s no need to cry.” They walked outside.

By now, it was 3:00 in the morning.

“Did you eat any of the pizza?” Salma asked.

“What pizza?”

“You know. The pizza that came at the end of the night.”

“What? No, it had pepperoni on it.”

Tiredness crested her like a wave. Asma could have fallen asleep on the bottom stair of the dormitory steps if she wasn’t shaking so hard. From the cold. From fear of what her father would do. Salma stood guard, watching over her. “I know it may not seem like it, but I’m doing this for us, Sal. You and me.”

“Why do you keep stroking the back of your neck?”

“Oh, you should feel it. It’s so soft and I don’t know. Like, there’s something really nice about it.”

Salma touched the back of Asma’s neck and rubbed her fingers against the grain of her hair. “Ooh, that is nice.”

“See?”

They sat on the stairs quietly and waited. Asma replayed Ruby saying, “Tell me everything” over and over in her mind.

And then her father rounded the corner from the parking lot. He wore his bedtime salvar kameez—big, black, and billowing—looking like a crow descending upon them. Salma walked toward him, but there was no diverting him. He brushed past Salma and strode to where Asma sat on the stairs.

“Where were you?” he asked.

“We’re fine, Abu. We were here.”

“No. You weren’t. I called, and no one answered.”

“We were on campus, just not in my room. You didn’t have to drive all the way back in. We’re fine. See?” Asma tried soothing him, but she was no good at it.

“I call your room, and then I call the front desk. Are you lying?”

“What are you doing calling the front desk asking for me anyway?”

“Then I call school police.”

“Yeah, I know. They were crawling all over the lobby looking for us like we’d done something wrong! People are going to be talking about this all week. Do you know how embarrassing this is?” All of a sudden, she didn’t care about his judgment or if he was disappointed and started getting angry. When would it be her turn to just get to live without constantly worrying about her parents and their reactions?

“It was nothing, Abu,” Salma said in a calming voice. “We went to dinner with Mamoo and Aunty, and then I came with Asma to rehearsal.”

“That again?”

“What do you mean ‘that again’? You can pretend like I’m not doing this, just like you can pretend I’m not who I am.” Asma’s voice slurred from exhaustion, too tired to have this conversation again. “But that doesn’t make it real.”

“Abu, let’s go home,” Salma said. “We need to call Ami in the morning and tell her you already picked me up.”

“And then what? Where did you go?” he asked. He was not going to be so easily sated.

“We went to a cast party,” Asma said defeatedly.

He narrowed his eyes. “A party. I know it! Do you drink a beer? Is that what you do now? Your sister. You’re responsible for her.”

Asma pointed at Salma. “She’s right there! Does she look hurt to you?”

“This is not how Muslim girls act. If you don’t act right, she can’t either. Can’t you see that? She doesn’t have this same bad seed you do. She knows right from wrong.”

Asma stared back and forth from Salma to her father. What was he saying? For all her parents’ faults, she could honestly say that she had never felt like they favored one child over the other. There was no competition between them, not around resources, not around attention; their parents were equally expansive in their lack of emotiveness. Maybe because it was always the two of them against their parents, the fault lines ran north and south, not east and west. Suddenly, she felt like the lesser child, the one who failed them more, the one they loved less, and to her surprise, it hurt. She knew this wasn’t Salma’s fault and that she didn’t ask for this, but for the first time, she felt alone, an island.

“How do you not know who you are?” he asked. He sniffed the air like a hound catching a scent and stepped toward her. “Do you smoke?”

Asma laughed. He was grasping for something, anything, on which to crack down.

“Is this funny to you? Besharam!”

Asma willed herself to stand her ground even though every instinct told her to run.

Salma pulled at his arm. “Abu, it’s late. We have a long drive home. Come on.”

Asma pivoted and ran up the stairs, where a group of girls from her floor were watching her. “I know exactly who I am. It’s you who doesn’t.”