Chapter 1: Salma (2007) - The Daughters of Rosebud

Aging is like many accidents. No one believes it will happen to them. Over time, I have developed the remarkable and disorienting ability to remember different moments through time overlaid on top of each other. A trick mirror of memory. Asma on her bicycle, hair lifted off her back in the slipstream of her happiness. Asma clutching my hand tight, eyes locked on the horizon, as she drags me past a barking dog on a leash. Asma standing, head cocked, one hand on a hip while the other strokes the soft tendrils at the back of her neck, looking equal parts confused and steely.

When did things start going wrong? If I look hard enough, can I detect the beginning of the end? Did it start when Asma went to university? Or is it even further back? Was our fate sealed when we came to this country? Was immigration my family’s original sin?

We came to America the year of the bicentennial, a moment in history thirty years after two world wars and scarcely a generation from the birth of a new country, Pakistan. I thought we were special. That each flag and bunting, every song proclaiming America’s majesty and vast open arms, was a welcome meant for us.

First came Abu and then, a month later, Ami, Asma, and me. I remember the heft of Asma’s arm around my shoulder as she ran us through the gauntlet of the customs line. Ami pushed the cart weighed down with our worldly belongings. I looked back to make sure she was with us still, and the fear and confusion sewn on her face terrified me. Even then, I understood that we were her lifeline. Without us, who would she be? When Mamoo stepped out of the line and claimed us as his own, Ami fell to the ground crying.

Within a few months of our arrival, we moved to a town on the edge of the woods. Rosebud was rural and quaint, and housing was inexpensive. It was as different from the city as Pakistan was from America. Population 375, the town was made up almost entirely of German descendants who woke at four thirty in the morning to start the day’s work, ventured to the city once a decade, and died within a mile of where they had been born.

The first time we took that route, it had felt like we were starting a new life in a way that flying halfway across the world hadn’t. In the back seat of the car, Asma had hunched over the coloring book Mamoo and Aunty had given us, carefully selecting the most vivid colors from the shared crayon box. Fuzzy silver-white buds perched fat and content on branches. Springtime daffodils and tulips, in various stages of bloom and decay, littered the sides of the wooded highway. Looming rock cuts, multicolored and sparkling in the sunlight, traveled alongside us like giants on their path to somewhere in geologic time. It felt like we were slipping passage to another land.

If I were to take that trip today, I believe it would conjure the same feelings, like some kind of childhood magic. Some memories are stamped on us, as permanent as tattoo ink.

The call from my father reminds me of how far I’ve come from the husk of a person that I was the last time I saw him. I am terrified of going back to that time. I have fought so hard for my equilibrium, small as it is.

My life is simple. I live in a teacup of a house that is out of a storybook, all crenellated edges and peaked roofs, arched entryway, and girded windows. The sparsely populated and utilitarian interior meets none of the house’s exterior promise. My curtains are almost always drawn. My daily companion is an orange tabby cat named Leonora. Sleepy and warm, she is a living weighted blanket, padding behind me as I wander the house. Mamoo lives behind me, our backyards connected by a well-lit walkway and a waist-high iron gate.

I have been a second-grade teacher for ten years at a small public elementary school, Sunnyside Elementary, in the shadow of a major university. The children leaven my life and are the antidote to the death grip my history holds on me. It is hard to feel depressed in their presence. Their wide-eyed curiosity and literal interpretation of the world inoculate me. Teaching them is my small way to help fix the world. They remind me that life is lived in the small moments.

Last year, as I led my class to recess, we saw a kindergartener stride out of the bathroom with a pair of Bob the Builder underwear on his head like a skullcap, brown glossy curls poking through the leg holes, confident as a rooster. I knew what I was supposed to do—reprimand him and explain proper school conduct—but how could I not laugh along with the rest of my class, our hee-hawing running up and down the hallway?

The new school year starts next week. Over the next nine months, the gaping hole that is my inside will develop a thin skin to the world, and I will find some relief from the relentless weight of being me. At the end of every interminable summer, I am sick of myself.

The fresh start a new year promises never disappoints. The blank slate of a room, the class roster quickly scanned for younger siblings already known and which countries children hail from, the displays of crayons and markers and notebooks at the grocery store. It works a kind of magic on me, flushing me with something more than excitement and anticipation, something more elemental than raw hope. For a time, it allows me to feel that all is right with the world. Another class of young ones, as steady and as predictable as the sunrise.

There is an air of joy thrumming through the school, like a heartbeat. It is impossible to not get caught up in its spirit. Mrs. Morris and Ms. Rhodes, the other two second-grade teachers, and I confer and plan, caught in the fever of teacher prep week. There are impromptu lunches and conversations about children and their families passed down from one grade to another. I do not participate in those conversations. I do not want my perceptions colored by others’ views. On this, I am firm. Each child deserves an open mind, the opportunity to be seen as someone more than who they were three months ago. I am widely respected and liked by my fellow teachers and administrators for my unfailing dedication. But the truth is, I have nothing else.

The second-grade classes are housed in the early elementary wing of the school. Our lunch and recess are with the kindergartners and first graders, and next to them, my students look like giants. That is, until I see them next to the fifth graders. It is my own definition of the theory of relativity. They, with their round faces and barely concealed babyhood, make me feel loved and allow me to express care for another in a safe way. I am careful to not get too attached. After all, they are my students for only a little while; twelve months later, another wave of seven-year-olds will wash up on my shore. That does not mean that they do not get attached. Some children are just like that. I am always surprised when it happens. I will forever see myself as tainted.

Outside of school, my life is curtailed. Some of it is a function of my personality. But mostly, it is purposeful. I don’t think I could survive another tragedy. Aunty died almost two years ago from cancer. It was tragic to lose her at such a young age. Mamoo says dying in old age is a privilege.

Other than my students during the school year, I allow myself very little. I read. I garden in the backyard. The grave solitude, the cultivated wild drift of flowers, and the mineral earth are my companions. I see young couples walking hand in hand, the girl wrapped around the boy’s arm, looking up at his face, all smiles. I wonder what that must feel like. Sometimes, on balmy nights, I have an urge to wear a cute outfit and sit on the patio of a buzzy restaurant with friends. Emil, the closeted gym teacher who knows something about secrets and quiet suffering, is one of my closest friends. We do things outside of school, but our outings are largely oriented around activities like attending talks and watching movies where we can stay in our own heads.

What would Asma say if she could see me now? Would she look at me with pity? Would she say that I am just like our mother? Is it not enough to wander the woods of my mind asking who might Asma have become? She would have said, no, it is not enough. She would have said to get off the sidelines and get busy living the one life I’ve been given. Should I meet our father? On this she remains stubbornly silent.

* * *

It is the first day of school, and I stand outside ready to welcome my new class. Instead of a typical August morning in our landlocked suburb—already hot and sticky—it is one of those rare Midwestern mornings in which one could be mistaken for thinking they live in Santa Barbara. The sky is rinsed clean of humidity, and the leaves look waxy and bright green. Before long, the leaves will start to fall, and there will be a hint of coolness in the morning air. But today is close to perfect.

I wear my first-day-of-school outfit—a brightly colored dress with images of cats and dogs and birds and lizards printed all over it. I will have three English-as-a-foreign-language learners, and I find that nothing transcends language and culture better than small animals.

Parents take pictures of their children—faces grimaced, smiling into the sun, and too-large backpacks hanging off their slight shoulders—sometimes with siblings and sometimes with friends. The first bell rings, and parents and children start their shy approach toward me. A slow mob starts forming. Excitement and anxiety at the coming separation are palpable in the air. It’s not like kindergarten or even first grade where children are crying, but you can see it just under the surface.

Here is Hong, a diminutive and stoic little boy from China whose parents requested a meeting before school started at which they introduced me to Hong and his grandmother, neither of whom speak English. The parents are researchers and will rarely be picking up. He is one of the three students who will need extra help in navigating school activities until he understands the language, which will be alarming in its speed.

I look for the children that need extra attention or love. The ones who already show feelings of otherness heavy in their posture and their downcast eyes, children who come from a deficit. It is difficult for a child to learn if they are suffering. It is a simple fact.

I introduce myself to parents and children and tell them I look forward to meeting them at curriculum night in a few weeks. There are couples dropping off their children, but it is mostly mothers. In one case, a very awkward nanny. I make a note to give extra attention to the overly boisterous Tommy, whose parents were unable to show up for the first day of school. Once I had a family in a similar situation, and I found out later that the parents were at the children’s hospital with their younger child getting a chemo treatment. Who am I to judge?

Seventeen of my eighteen students are here. I tell them to hug their parents goodbye; they will see each other in a few hours. The second bell rings, and we start filing inside. All around me, I hear, “See you soon.” “Listen to your teacher.” “Be good.” “Have a great day.” “I love you.” The one missing child will have to walk into a full class by themselves. How hard is it for a parent to just do the right thing and show up on time for the first day of school? On this, I do judge.

As I turn to lead my class inside, I see a car drive by much too fast on the one-way lane in front of the school. There are children on this street. And then I see the driver, and I swear I know her from somewhere. I can’t readily place her. It makes me feel unsettled.

When we get to our classroom, I tell the students to place their school supplies in accordance with the directions on the wall. Collective supplies, such as five dozen sharpened pencils, glue sticks, and tape, go in bins. Individual supplies, such as markers, crayons, and notebooks, go in cubbies.

At morning meeting, each child introduces themselves. They say their first name, their family name, if they have any siblings, and if they are a cat person or a dog person or a lizard person. I give them a sense of how our first day will go. I give them all a math worksheet to work on independently for ten minutes while I assess where each student is in understanding basic concepts and if they have had any summer learning loss. It is just the first day. I don’t really expect anything. My goal is to just start building a routine and muscle memory.

As I walk around, a statuesque woman with piercing green eyes and long reddish-goldish-brownish hair, hanging in greasy strands, rushes into the class without warning.

“Hi. I’m Marlene.”

In one arm is a writhing toddler, trying to lunge to the ground. The other hand is being pulled behind her back by a child with a mane of her own. This must be my remaining child, Poppy.

The mother starts to apologize, but I cut her off. This is not the time to be engaging in discussion. I have seventeen other students watching the new child, and I am sensitive on Poppy’s behalf. I look behind the mass of her mother and ask Poppy to join the rest of the class. She steps out, trembling like a leaf in a breeze.

I squat down so we are eye to eye and say, “Hi, Poppy, I’m Miss Chaudhry.” She cocks her head like she’s heard something. “I’m so happy you’re here.” She looks at me warily. “Why don’t you start organizing your supplies? The others are just finishing up a math worksheet.”

“I didn’t bring any.” Her voice is deep and husky, the sound of a fifty-year-old smoker, not a seven-year-old.

I look up to glare at the mother, but she has slinked away. “That’s okay.” She is a stunning child. Wild, curly hair that radiates out from her entire head like one of those Greek saints. Heavily lidded eyes that possess an adultlike awareness. No wide-eyed wonder in this one. “Do you want to know something? I started at a new school when I was about your age also.” What I do not tell her is that Aunty made sure I knew where my cubby was and met my teacher well before the first day of class.

“I want to go back to Chicago,” she says.

“I’m sorry, Poppy. I can’t help you with that. But guess what? After lunch, you can plan your next trip to Chicago.”

I walk her over to a large tablet on the wall loaded with software that is a glorified map of the world that lets kids plot a path to anywhere by boat, by plane, by car, by walking, by swimming. My class abounds with maps, globes, and scenes from around the world, extraordinary landscapes to scenes of ordinary life. Unlike other teachers, I have class themes each year, and this year, it is Around the World.

I change the class theme every year to keep things fresh for myself and to have a special memory for each class that they can retain as their unique experience. I think it would feel terrible for a fifth grader to visit my classroom, as upper students love to do, and see the same log cabin from the Mountaintop Retreat theme. There is a reason parents request me as a teacher.

Around the World is one of my favorite themes in this school, where there are students from dozens of countries. A place where Miss Chaudhry does not feel like a foreign name, just another signal, another echo, from another place on the planet. If prior years are a guide, soon my kids will start calling me MissCh, making me sound halfway mischievous. This year, I have installed a mini-hot-air balloon in the corner with an actual balloon that can be blown up and illuminated. I like to create small spaces for gathering and building community. There is a basket big enough for two or three students, lots of pillows, and a latched door. It will be a special place that will be an earned reward. In addition, there is a lofted area I call the Nook, a quiet place to read or get some space when there are too many stimuli, especially for my introverted students.

Mamoo is the benefactor who allows me to make my classroom rich with wonder. He is also the model Sunnyside Elementary volunteer, assisting wherever and whenever is needed. Within months of Aunty’s passing, Mamoo was diagnosed with lymphoma. He suffered from the twin engines of grief and chemo until he took an early retirement. Even though he is still grieving and experiences the aftereffects of the treatment, he now looks for things to occupy his time. Once the school year gets underway, he will be in my class one afternoon a week. He will host a book club with a group of my high-ability reading students and work with the children who need extra help with math. He doesn’t follow the district’s math curriculum, and I pretend not to notice. In addition to the time he spends in my class, he spends one afternoon in art and one whole day in the library.

Wherever he is, the kids love him. He says, “Really, all they need at this age is radical acceptance. You just never know what that might do for a child.”

Some time ago, Emil and I had arranged to go to the art museum after class prep. I don’t really want to go, but I will because that’s what we do for each other. I arrive before him and take in the magnitude of the space. The art museum is a turn-of-the-century neoclassical building, majestic and imposing on a big hill that overlooks treetops and hundred-year-old mansions. Inside, it is like a movie set. Windows up high let in light that flushes the lobby a rich amber.

Why has Abu contacted me now, after all these years? What could we possibly have to say to each other? Too much happened. Too much time has passed. There is no going back. And yet. I hear his hacking cough. With his call, the long-held dam of my past has started showing signs of crackage. My years of attempting to reconstruct memories in search of the real truth have taught me that clarity and certainty are elusive.

A beautifully dressed mom with bright-red dry lipstick pushes a stroller. Does she not kiss her baby? A gaggle of middle-aged women are quietly giggling, trying to figure out how to make their audio-tour devices work. An old white-haired man sits unmoving on a leather-covered bench and views the painting in front of him. I am always self-conscious, certain that people are watching and judging me, so I start imitating the old man and stare fixedly at a painting that takes up almost an entire wall.

The painting is not particularly interesting, a dark and gloomy war scene with horses and people dying in the midst of a battle. But as I sit there, something happens. Slowly, I see things I hadn’t noticed in the beginning. A soldier’s face holds an expression of joy. A raised sword catches a ray of sun. An impossibly ornate tassel on a horse stands out. Little dramas on the edges reveal themselves—a woman giving a soldier a ladle of water, a lone man on horseback looking down on the fighting in the distance, a presence or force behind the clouds.

I am struck that the image has not changed, merely my ability to see. Maybe because of the scale of the work or the cacophonic scene or the darkness of the painting, it didn’t exist to me until I made myself sit still and observe in solitude and silence.

What else is like this? In my history but not seen by me? Maybe the secret to being released from my grief is to go back to the beginning and look more closely rather than avoid?

* * *

After our first few months in the city, we moved into a house in Rosebud that my parents bought with Mamoo’s help. Our house was simple, and even though it was largely a sea of empty space, it felt like a mansion to us. We loved it, one of those things on which we could all agree. The front door opened to a landing, with a half-flight set of stairs leading up and another half-flight set of stairs leading down. Ami and Abu’s bedroom was upstairs, which, in the beginning, contained only a hand-me-down bed and dresser set from Mamoo and Aunty. The shared dining area and living room had a sliding-glass door which led to a patio and looked out over the large lawn, which backed up to the Kohlmanns’. There was an old kitchen table with legs that could fold away underneath, four mismatched chairs, and a love seat left behind by the previous owners. Downstairs had a large living space, which became our TV room and play area, and our bedrooms. Even though we each had our own room, connected by a dark and musty Jack-and-Jill closet, in the beginning, Asma and I shared a single mattress in her room.

Our first week, Ami moved our few belongings from cabinet to cabinet, closet to closet, part reveling in the sheer volume of space that was now her dominion and part repetition born of anxiety. One day, while Asma and I were helping Ami move our one love seat around the room, there was a knock on the door. We were home alone; Ami was in charge while Abu was gone long days driving taxis in the city. Wild-eyed, her gaze flitted between Asma and me. We stood there frozen with the sofa aloft until Asma placed her end down decisively. Back then, it felt like Ami was a teenager who was taking care of us while waiting for the real adult to show up. Asma strode to the door and threw it open. On the other side of the screen stood an elderly couple, our new neighbors, Marianne and Cleo Kohlmann.

The Kohlmanns became our entry point into the wider community, teaching us about all kinds of American things, such as how, when Americans asked for tea, they were referring to tea with ice in it. In summer, they made Asma and me grilled cheese sandwiches with a slice of orange tomato warm from the sun. But that first day, they brought us cinnamon rolls as a housewarming gift and told us about a flea market in the next town where we could pick up things to help fill our life.

Every Saturday, the one day Abu didn’t work, we started going to the bug market, which was how my parents referred to the flea market, no matter how many times we corrected them. The bug market was halfway between Rosebud and the next town and was held in an old corrugated-metal barn, open on one side. The first time, we pulled our car into the makeshift parking lot at the bottom of the hill and parked like everybody else, in neat, self-imposed order. Townspeople, in jeans and worn shirts, trudged up the small hill to the barn chatting with farmers in overalls and muddy boots. Ami in her salvar kameez, Abu in trousers and a button-down shirt, and Asma and I, in a combination of things too big and too small, all huddled together and followed suit.

The barn smelled sweet and dry and was filled with three rows of tables. Two rows lined the sides of the barn, and one row ran down the middle. If people had noticed us outside, it wasn’t apparent as we all marched toward a common destination. But inside, as if on cue, all heads turned to look at us. Some people looked like they were trying to turn their heads away out of politeness, but others didn’t bother. We walked down the aisles, aware of people pausing their conversations as we approached. Ami and Abu just imitated what everyone else did, wandering by the tables slowly, giving each its personal space unless there was an item that caught their interest and warranted an approach. Abu recoiled from picking through the souvenirs of a remnant life, hands pushed into pockets, refusing to touch.

Over time, the bug market became a family ritual. People stopped staring at us and smiled like they did at each other. Our first stop was always to look at a matching pair of wagon wheel headboards, which leaned against the barn wall. Inevitably, Asma would disappear to go look at kittens in a box or play outside with random children. Abu would wander away to look at the equipment outside—riding mowers, Weedwackers, tractors. Ami, who never lost her delight at the detritus of other lives, pulled me close and wandered about, lifting items and peering at their underneaths for a price. By then, we had already established the pattern of Asma or me speaking on her behalf. At the market, I asked the seller about the item to test if the price was firm.

If Aunty Marianne and Uncle Cleo were with us, my parents asked questions about the purpose of certain items new to them, like a deviled-egg dish with its half shells. We purchased things like old Nancy Drew books, serving dishes, or a set of glasses. Often, we left empty-handed. If Abu had a good week, we each got a dime to buy a soda, cold with condensation, from the steel vending machine.

But on that first trip, we left the market with a large pot and a small end table with drawers for me and Asma. Driving home with the windows down, our new items in the trunk, Abu tapped the steering wheel and sat a little taller while Ami tried to hide her smile in the side mirror.

* * *

Sometimes I wonder what might have been if Asma and I had gone to an elementary school like Sunnyside. What if we’d had peers who were also straddling cultures, norms, and families? What if my mother had been surrounded by the kind of community evident all around me? Where people of different colors, socioeconomic statuses, cultures, and religions mix and befriend one another, bound by a shared commitment to education and the beauties of plurality? How might our lives have turned out differently? While there are social stratifications in this neighborhood, there is also an anti-otherness mentality. The parents at Sunnyside have little hardship and take the home visits and parenting support all around them for granted, where two miles away, there live parents working two jobs who get no support. The unfairness of it all can be galling.

If we had grown up like my students, would my parents have been able to accept us as we were? In America, children are given a long time to settle into their adult forms. In our family, we were expected to know who we were from a young age and to behave consistently as that person. The idea of growing up somehow didn’t mean to actually grow; it meant to be. To be the person our parents wanted us to be. To be the person they expected us to be. A white canvas on which they could project the vision—the least threatening version of us—that was the most palatable.

We were kids who made sure to be studying the Quoran when Abu walked in from work, going through the motions of writing Arabic characters—right to left on the tissue-thin, dotted, and solid-lined paper in the Quoran primers, treasured and brought from Pakistan. In the way that children know every inflection of their mother’s voice and understand what every look means, we knew we were diligently practicing, not because it was important to Ami, but because she wanted to give the right impression to Abu. And it worked. It usually got us a “good girl” or a pat on the head as he went out for a walk after a long shift.

We were also the kids who were sent to Bible camp at the local Lutheran church for one week so that Ami could get a break from us over the long summer. After-school specials told the stories of kids spending their summers running lemonade stands, going to sleepaway camps, and having parties at the beach. Not in Rosebud. Our summers were much like the rest of the year but with less structure. The 4-H Club didn’t offer programming because children of farmers were needed on the farm. The Junior National Rifle Association held a shooting camp in the local elementary school the week before it started where they handed us rifles and told us to shoot at targets across the gym. Other than that, there was only Bible camp.

Once, a girl named Amy asked us whether we’d been baptized.

“No,” Asma had said.

“You know you’re going to hell, right?”

“We’re not Christian, but that doesn’t mean we’re going to hell,” Asma said, pulling me close.

“If you don’t get baptized, you go to hell,” Amy said. There was no judgment or hostility, just a statement of an objective, irrefutable fact. The girls walking with Amy slowed down and nodded in unison. Amy was simply saying something they were all thinking. “My mother says it’s okay to be friends with you but to not get too attached because that’s where you’re going,” she said with a one-armed shrug.

Asma asked Ami if we were going to go to hell.

“Asta far! What a thing to say! Maybe you shouldn’t have gone to that camp,” Ami said, as though we’d had any choice.

Once, when I was around sixteen or seventeen, I heard Ami ask Abu if they expected too much of us. “They’re still only children.” Her voice warbled with insecurity.

“You had children at her age,” Abu said.

In the memories of those moments, I can see that Ami was flailing from the very beginning. A highly anxious young mother, still learning how to be a wife and a parent, with no role models and trying to figure out how to get by in this strange new world, with no understanding of the rules, isolated, and without culture, language, or extended family as community.

Who knows? Maybe we would have muddled through if we had remained little. But little kids grow up. While she was trying to figure out who she was, we were becoming teenagers in America with its culturally sanctioned and national imperative to rebel, find a unique interest, and be independent. She was as in breach of culture as we were and had no idea how to raise us. Maybe because of her insecurity she was influenceable and easy to manipulate. Or maybe she was just a mom who had a hard time saying no to her children. Either way, it felt like she was one of the girls rather than our parent.

Even now I seek to understand them. That is the greatest legacy they bequeathed me, a lifetime of struggling to understand. A lifetime of keeping the emotional wolves at bay. With the past set loose, I can’t help but see Asma and me in these children I am surrounded by.

By the end of the day, the kids are fraying, impatient, and whiny. Their finite store of self-control is spent. The last bell of the day rings, and the class leaves in a single file line, hands to themselves. They are the picture of well-behaved.

As soon as the exterior doors open, the poise evaporates. Children call out to their parents and caregivers as though they are returning from a great voyage, the joy so overstated and genuine. Working mothers, in their business attire or scrubs and still on their phones, maximize their facial expressions—big eyes and exaggerated smiles—to give their child the welcome their words can’t. Kids with nannies look at me and say, “My person is here.” Parents wave and say, “Thank you,” but no one tries to pull me aside to talk.

There is a not-small part of me that is envious. As a child, I longed for touch, a warm word, a hug. The only time they were freely given was when Mamoo and Aunty visited. And now, as an adult, around children all day, I long for someone to embrace without the boundaries that we teachers must maintain. Poppy remains at my side as she has most of the day. Twice she reached for my hand subconsciously, as though she forgot that I was still, in essence, a stranger. I don’t like how good it felt to have her warm, moist little hand in mine.

There are holes in me that will never fill. The mere thought of seeking connection makes me queasy. I can never be that dependent on someone again.

Within five minutes, the crowd outside the school has thinned out considerably. Children with parents in tow have wandered off to the playground. Mothers stand in small circles talking. This is a neighborhood school. There is no bus service, and parents are neighbors and friends. A handful of teachers and a handful of students remain until a shared teachers’ aide comes out to relieve us. But I have nowhere to go and no family to get home to. Besides, I want to see Poppy’s mother again to properly introduce myself and to assess whether she will be one of those parents. There is always one. “How was your first day?” I ask Poppy.

“Eh. It was all right,” she says.

I can’t help but smile at how world-weary she sounds. “What would have made it better?”

“If I could have brought Lenny.”

This time she sounds like the child that she is.

“Is that your little brother I saw earlier?”

She looks at me as though I’m an idiot. “No, he’s my cat!”

“No way! My cat’s name is Leonora!”

Her eyes light up, and we’re on the cusp of trading the etymology of our cats’ names and funny cat stories when I see Marlene hurriedly walking toward us, this time with no toddler on her hip.

“I’m coming,” she yells. She has taken a shower since I saw her this morning because her hair has lightened by several shades and is illuminated in the afternoon sun, which has the effect of making her eyes pop even more. Poppy runs at her hard. “Sorry, sorry!” she calls to me as Poppy barrels into her.

I don’t want to say anything that implies that it is okay to drop off your child late and pick them up late.

She swoops Poppy up, mid-stride, and continues walking unfazed. She is strong.

“How was your day?” she asks. It is unclear whether she’s talking to me or Poppy.

Poppy squeezes her neck in return.

“Miss Chaudhry.” She pronounces my name perfectly. “Really, I’m terribly sorry about the late drop-off . . . and the late pickup.” There is a slight singsong in her voice, a lilt. She smiles sheepishly. “I’m hopeless.”

She’s trying to charm me. Whether by her physical appearance or how she walks into a space, there is something dramatic about her that attracts attention. I know this type, the kind of person who drags intrigue, emotion, and drama in her wake. I am self-aware enough to know I am drawn to people like this and should keep my distance. I end up becoming a de facto counselor, the steady to their spiral. It makes me wary. It would be rude for me to turn and walk away, but that is what I want to do.

She steps closer to me. “I still haven’t gotten Poppy’s school supplies. Can I bring them tomorrow?”

I find this so frustrating. Every year there are parents who don’t seem to understand that the home-school partnership actually requires them to be a partner. “Hm.”

“I’m not usually so disorganized, but we just moved here from Chicago,” Marlene says. She is cheerful, but with a forced air.

“Yes, Poppy told me.” That is where my father has said he lives. “Well, welcome.”

“I grew up here, but my wife is from Chicago.” She says the second part of the sentence softly and gingerly, as though testing me.

“We’re just like Chicago here, other than the lake, the restaurants, the big-city energy, and the diversity,” I say breezily. I want to tell her that she needn’t worry, that this community, out of the casual tolerance that comes from the highly educated affluent, will not judge her.

Marlene guffaws a little too enthusiastically and takes my statement as license to draw closer. “My wife went to university here and said that she always dreamt of living in one of these hundred-year-old houses.”

“Got it.” I take a step back.

“And it’s just so hard raising two little ones in the city.”

If I don’t stop her, she is liable to go on. I still have notes to take about my students to help me learn about them, and transport the communal supplies from the bins to my cabinets for use later in the year, and get the room organized for tomorrow. “Poppy, it’s been so nice to spend the day with you. I’ll see you tomorrow.” I turn around and start going up the steps.

“Is Chaudhry a common name?” Marlene blurts out.

I turn around. She is a lonely extrovert. I can spot them from a mile away. “I don’t really know,” I say patiently.

“Oh, Miss Chaudhry, sorry, one more thing.” Marlene glances at Poppy, who is playing in the wood chips under a tree, and approaches me hesitatingly. Quietly, she asks, “How did she do?”

I don’t like talking about children like they’re not there. “Poppy, how did you like school today?” She is old enough to speak for herself.

Poppy is deep in imaginary play and doesn’t even register my voice.

Marlene is now standing on the same step as me. I have to look up at her, and the sun is shining in my eyes. I move up one step to get more space.

“It’s been a bit of a tough move . . .” There is something she wants to say but is holding herself back from saying. This is her real voice, not the one that she uses to keep the air light and bubbly. Her accent is more noticeable. British? Irish?

“Sounds like there are a lot of changes. Thanks for letting me know,” I say. “I’ll keep a close eye on Poppy. Once we get into a routine and Poppy makes friends, school will be very consistent.”

“Right.” She resumes her overly chipper voice. “We’ll see you tomorrow. Thanks for everything.” She walks back down the few steps and says, “Come on, Poppy. Say goodbye to Miss Chaudhry. Let’s go get those school supplies. I have a snack in the car.”

I walk inside and watch mother and daughter, standing back from the window so they don’t see me spying. Poppy skips, her voluminous hair moving with a life of its own. A biracial child with two moms. Marlene seems to have shrunk, and it’s not just the trick distance plays on perspective. No, her shoulders slump, and when she turns to get in the car, she looks worn out and depleted. The woman with torch hair is not burning so bright now, out of the gaze of others.

I feel the savior in me being called forth. I will have to be careful. I sense these two could need me, and the last thing I want is to feel needed.