Chapter 3: Salma (2007) - The Daughters of Rosebud

Every year, I fall in love with almost all of my students. It takes time to get to know their idiosyncrasies and uniqueness, but once I learn them, I can’t help but see all of their behaviors through that lens. Virtually all children are good kids, even those making bad choices.

I understand why Tommy’s parents send him to school with a nanny. The child is kinetic and is delayed in developing impulse control. Winifred from Hong Kong is a marvel. I don’t know who taught her to raise her hand that way—left hand across her body, right elbow cupped in her left hand—but it shoots up to answer every question, always correctly. Winifred also translates for Hong, who, even though he doesn’t speak English, has picked up “what the” as his utterance of choice, a one-stop phrase that somehow manages to express disbelief, frustration, and happiness.

And then there’s Kirsten V. Every day, I work with her on her kindness journal where she has to reflect on one kind thing she did or said all day. She has an empathy problem, in that she has none. There are many days when she can think of nothing, so I help her identify small actions she can take to develop that muscle. Holding the door open for the person behind her. Telling someone that she likes what they’re wearing, yes, even if it’s clearly from Target. She has a way to go. Some kids who are antisocial come from wonderful families who are clearly troubled at their children’s behaviors. They are great partners with whom to collaborate on developing home-school rules for consistency. This is not the case with Kirsten V.

Poppy has a bad case of the be-by-mes and has claimed me as her own. We are developing a bond over our daily comparisons of our almost-twin-named cats, Lenny and Leonora. Lenny is as naughty and hyper as Leonora is sweet and sleepy. I must admit that hearing the story of how they found Lenny at the top of a bookshelf, terrified to get down—a mystery how he got there—is a delight. The child has a gift for narrative, intuitively understanding how and when to parse out information.

The other day I showed her my driver’s license and asked her if she noticed anything. It took her a few minutes, but then she looked up at me with those eyes that are almost too big for her head and said with wonder, “You have my birthday?”

I laugh. “I think you have mine. I had it first.”

Poppy drags a beanbag next to my desk whenever possible and works sitting close to me. She is not needy or intrusive. In fact, the closer she is to me, the more certain she seems to be. She is a controlled and watchful observer. She does not compete with others; she just waits them out. If I ask a question in class, she is not the first to raise her hand. She waits until everyone else has stopped talking and then, only if she is absolutely certain that she knows the right answer, offers it reticently.

She is in the process of creating a timeline showing how old we’ll be at each of our next fifty birthdays. “When I turn thirteen, you’ll be . . .”

On days I don’t have playground duty, she asks to sit inside with me and quietly tidies up the room. Without the presence of the rest of the class, Poppy is talkative and chatty. On days I’m outside during recess, she never leaves my side. I walk her to the girls and one boy who engage in complex and long-form imaginary play in the shadowy space between three trees, but she only stands there watching them quizzically. When I walk away, she follows and says in her wizened-old-man voice, “Everyone knows fairies don’t exist.” I lead her to the field where mostly boys are kicking a soccer ball, where she watches raptly, with her fingers hooked into the chain-link fence. I will need to do something to help her become more independent, but for now, I leave her to do that which makes her feel the most comfortable.

I think a lot about the line between dependence and independence. Kids need independence to try new things and learn what they are capable of. The more they try and gain competency, the more they will be willing to try until, I suppose the idea is, they gravitate to the interests and curiosities that will drive them to fulfilling careers and hobbies. In my years of teaching, there are precious few examples of parents engaging in healthy cheering-from-the-sidelines encouragement while allowing their kids to fail and supporting them as they grapple with the sting of failure. Far more frequent are examples of overdependence or codependence, where the parent, hyperwatchful, looks for the opportunity to swoop in and fix the problem for Johnny before he even knows there is a problem. I acknowledge that I have never been a parent, so my opinions on this matter are somewhat theoretical. I have not had to walk this line.

There is also another kind of dependence, one that feeds the parents’ need for control. On this, I am an expert. Our parents wanted us dependent on them because, perhaps, it was one of the only spheres in which they actually had any control. And maybe it would have worked if they’d been able to live up to the contract that is dependence. I will let you be independent, but only up to the point that I’m comfortable, at which point I’ll pull back the reins or step in and create a boundary. I have seen parents from different cultures who maintain a hard line on segregating outside of school with no after-school activities or playdates.

In our family, as with so much, we were caught in between. Abu wanted us dependent so he could maintain control over our influences, but he didn’t want to be the enforcement arm. That was left to Ami, a woman who either didn’t know how to or was simply incapable of being the chain yanker. That required a special kind of boundary setting and strictness that she couldn’t muster. I think she tried. As much as I don’t want to see it or give her any grace, I genuinely think she tried in her own way to live up to my father’s, and my culture’s, expectations of wife and mother, without fully understanding either.

At pickup one day, Marlene comes close and asks me to go for a drink or dinner. I just look at her dumbly.

I am a recipient of ill-gotten information, a voyeur. Children at this age are still unfiltered, and the more comfortable they get, the more boundaries between school and home become increasingly porous. I hear all kinds of things. Last year, there was a boy who made lewd motions in class and was teaching other students how to thrust their hips. When asked, he told me that he had seen it on his father’s computer. That was an awkward phone call home. I know which children don’t have bedtimes and fall asleep in front of the television long after their parents have gone to bed. I know whose families are racists and whose parents scream obscenities at each other. And again, conflictingly, nauseatingly, it makes me appreciate all the small ways my parents didn’t mess us up.

Poppy discloses things, assuming I know her life. I have learned that Marlene, her Mawmaw, moved here to be closer to Mawmaw’s parents. That her other mom is called Mamby. She still lives in Chicago and can’t keep a job. That her grandparents do not like Mamby. That she and Bear see her grandparents almost every day. That even though they are living apart, Mawmaw and Mamby still yell at each other, and when they do, she takes Bear and they play Fort in the closet. That Mawmaw told Mamby last night that she won’t stand by and watch her destroy herself. That Poppy likes it when Mamby is with them because, otherwise, Mamby doesn’t eat or get hugs. I feel a deep empathy for this child trying to be everything to everybody.

Other than the first day, Marlene has not asked me how Poppy is faring in her new school. I don’t think it’s a lack of interest in how her daughter is doing as much as she is caught up in her own maelstrom; she is always preoccupied and harried, as though pickup has been an interruption.

I want to understand Poppy better to assist her in her transition to her new school and become a little more independent, although I’m not entirely sure that a lack of independence is the issue. Perhaps she is too independent already, assured and confident in her own ability to self-soothe. I would like to ask Marlene what Poppy’s interests are, other than Lenny, because parents’ insights are critical in such an effort. But Marlene did not complete the parent survey I circulated at the beginning of the school year. It is difficult for me to find a time for such a conversation with Marlene without Poppy present. Unlike most kids, Poppy does not race off to the playground, yelling at her mother or caregiver over her shoulder about where to find her. No, when Marlene arrives, Poppy simply separates from me and reattaches herself to her mother’s side.

I do not share what I hear with anyone other than my dear Mamoo. He knows all about my students from my stories and, eventually, from working with them in the classroom. For nine months, those kids are like our family. We talk about them at the dinner table, and he is as vested in their progress and daily trials as I am. I bring home the juicy morsels to share, anything to get his eyes to sparkle again. Nothing shocks us anymore. Sometimes we laugh until we cry. Sometimes we conduct a little private investigation work on our own to see what else we can learn from the internet. Sometimes we are sad for the children who are forced to grow up too quickly.

In conversations with Mamoo, there are passing references to events in the past, but because of the minefield that is our emotional landscape, we tread carefully. Besides us, there is no one left who knew Asma. There is no one left with whom I can trade memories or assuage my guilt.

I have not told Mamoo about the call from my father. He is precious to me and increasingly fragile after Aunty’s passing and his diagnosis. Why burden him? He and Aunty have been the most important people in my life. That is the constant and unabated truth. There is no important memory that I can call up in which they are not present.

When we were little, they lightened the air through some kind of alchemy. Never appearing empty-handed, they brought a box of donuts, a book, a game, or as we got older, a new shirt for each of us, leg warmers, and small things to help us fit in.

Their visits were necessary for all of us. For our parents, Mamoo and Aunty were the translators of all things American. Mamoo helped Abu get his driver’s license, taught Ami how to drive and open a bank account, and helped us buy our house. When we were with Aunty, we were a little more American. She registered us for school with Ami. The school secretary’s eyes traveled from each of us to Aunty and back again, as though she was trying to figure out if we were together or we had just happened to walk into the office at the same time. In response, Aunty took Asma’s hand in hers and placed her arm around my shoulder.

Once, Mamoo stood on the back patio and looked up at the sky as it slid from twilight to indigo. The early stars emerged clear and sharp for their nightly vigil. In my memory, Asma and I flank him and, as in so many things, copy him. Legs wide, hands on hips, head tilted back. Someone has just mown their lawn, the air sweet and sharp. He says something like, “You don’t get this in the city.”

By then, whatever few memories of Pakistan I had were already written over. The smell of stale oil and spices in a dark stairwell and lone swing in a dusty field had been supplanted by the wide-open freshness of country air with a hint of animal dung, dew on grass, the sounds of crushed gravel and cacophonic birds, and the dark and woodsy mystery of the woods. This was all there had ever been.

Once, he asked, “Tell me. What’s your favorite thing?”

Asma said, “It’s like living in Little House on the Prairie.”

That was the highest compliment. We had received the full set of the books from the bug market, and Asma and I had read them over and over.

“People can play music on a piece of grass and shoot the heads off weeds so they go flying. And there’s a family of deer that come to the side of the house!”

Mamoo clapped his hands with enthusiasm. “Then you’re in the right place.”

Once, he asked, “What did you cook for me, Sadia?”

Ami said, “Your favorite, bhindi with lots of mirch and aloo parathas.”

Mamoo looked at Aunty and mouthed, “Sorry.” She just smiled and took his hand. My parents never touched each other, not a pat on the back, not a hand on the arm.

Late that night, Asma faced me in our makeshift bed, the whites of her huge eyes luminous in the near darkness, and asked if I had seen them holding hands. “Why do you think Mamoo said sorry to Aunty?”

Asma processed information quickly and intuitively, but sometimes she missed the most obvious things. I had to tell her it was because Aunty didn’t like spicy food and Ami had purposefully made it spicy.

Once, shortly after we arrived, there was a big event at the park across the street. From our living room window, we could see the pavilion softly aglow with strings of light. As the night stilled, the sounds of twangy, soulful country music and relaxed laughter, dampened by the humidity of the summer night, traveled back to us. Aunty asked if anyone wanted to go over and check out the music at the fair. No one moved. We did not understand that language of easy pleasure and relaxed joy. I still don’t.

The only thing that marred those visits, which became rarer over time, was the low-level animosity Abu felt toward them. When Mamoo and Aunty were there, Asma and I slept upstairs on the living room floor so that they could sleep in our bed. On those nights, we fell asleep to Ami and Abu talking through the open door of their bedroom. Ami’s full softness and hushed consonants of Urdu responding to Abu’s harder, more guttural Punjabi, irascible and complaining about Mamoo and Aunty.

In the beginning, the thing Abu seemed to hold against Mamoo was that he had married Aunty Priya, who had two strikes against her. One that she was American and the other that she was Indian. He judged them for their travel, for their money, for their weight. But over time, there were other fissures. Maybe Abu could tell that Asma and I secretly wished Mamoo was our father. Maybe he envied Mamoo’s success and good-naturedness and ability to navigate the world. Maybe he resented how easy Mamoo made things look.

Mamoo’s and Abu’s personalities were as different as their physical appearances. Mamoo was short and round where Abu was tall and lanky. His lack of hair, with a receding hairline, was all the more noticeable against Abu’s thatch of straight, thick hair, which Ami trimmed every three weeks. Mamoo’s eyes were a sparkly light-brown with a naked curiosity, and in summer he became a dark tan, in contrast to Abu’s black-nugget eyes and pale skin.

Aunty had been born and raised in America by her Indian father and American mother. Her mother had sought to encourage a culture of Indian-ness in Aunty’s family and wanted her children to feel proud of their heritage. But these things have a habit of settling to the mean. Like Abu and Ami learned too late, American culture was an invasive species that takes over. Aunty was one of three and joked that if her parents had had one more child, it would have been albino, because each sibling got successively fairer with lighter hair and eyes. Aunty’s oldest brother had black hair and was darker complexioned; her middle brother looked like a Spaniard. And then there was Aunty, with her light-brown hair and green eyes and complexion that burned in the sun.

While other little girls dreamed of princes and fairy tales, I fantasized about being sick and taken care of by Mamoo and Aunty, to have their ministrations and love focused solely on me. In my dreams, I lay in a hospital bed, the sheets tucked tightly around my body. I never moved. I just watched the goings-on in the hospital in slow motion. The only action in the dream was Mamoo, who looked at me sadly and lovingly while handing me presents and calling me Salamander the Great, and Aunty, who pressed her cool hands to my forehead.

Marlene is always late. Sometimes a minute, sometimes ten. She carries Bear on her hip in the morning but rarely in the afternoon. She is always cheerful, even when apologizing. Although the more I get to know her, the more it feels like she’s putting on a brave face. Usually, chronic tardiness annoys me to no end. Not only because it inconveniences me, but because of the message it sends to the child. You were not important enough for me to show up on time. Say what you will about my parents, they were always early in picking us up, always striving to be the model American parents.

But with Marlene, curiously, I find myself tolerant. I can’t tell who the real Marlene is; there is something about her that escapes easy description. Like her accent that fades in and out, so, too, does her personality. She is always full of warmth and charm, making me wonder if she is all veneer; I don’t trust anyone who tries to woo me.

Sometimes, she is dazzling. I notice the way people watch her. The tall, muscular woman who wears an unabashedly wide smile and bold prints, striding down the sidewalk, greeting everyone like she’s running for mayor. Other times, she looks wrecked, like life is simply too much. She reminds me of my own mother in the way she stands apart from the small cliques, arms wrapped around her middle like she’s holding herself together. She does not stand with the Southeast Asian moms or the grandmothers or nannies or the stay-home moms with twig legs in their uniform of exercise clothes who worry out loud about how bloated they feel. No, Marlene is more javelin thrower than hot-yoga waif.

I know something of being on the outside. I have lived in this country for virtually my entire life and yet still feel like a pretender. I have few to no actual memories of the place where I was born, just some sensory recollections—a string of lights in the dark-velvet night sky, drumming, jasmine heavy in the air. I can understand Urdu through no choice of my own, but speaking the language is not so easy, the words thick and meaty on my tongue. I am a functional member of society. I work hard. I pay my taxes. I know how to buy a car. I can still sing every word to the opening songs of Gilligan’s Island and WKRP in Cincinnati. I love-hate hot dogs. I understand the spoken and unspoken rules of this country. I am cut from this cultural cloth. I am as American as my neighbors were in Rosebud.

And yet, I am still an immigrant. I will always be an immigrant, which simply means that you’re more confused. North is not always north. Contradictory things can be and frequently are true at the same time. It is knowing that you’re supposed to feel grateful to your parents for their sacrifices but resenting their small mindset. It is knowing that you are loved by your parents, even though they would never say those words out loud. Discussions about the appropriate length of skirts and whether it is okay to have your shin show quickly morph into arguments about the role of women in society and inevitable comparisons between how women are treated in America and how women are treated in Pakistan. It is speaking two languages that are not understood by the other. The English you speak like a native never quite extending to understand colloquialisms. And the Urdu you speak so bastardized that native speakers laugh good-naturedly at your grammar mistakes while shaking their heads.

You are left a receiver, trying to filter and synthesize wildly disparate signals, always unsure about both.

I understand being culturally homeless and recognize it in Marlene.

I wake up to the phone ringing. My father has not yet given up in his efforts. I will not be dragged back to that time. The school year has begun, and I have these children and their learning I’m responsible for. I am aware that I am being given an opportunity for closure. Yet I still do not reach for the phone.

As our days start to settle into a pattern and my students come to understand what is expected of them in the classroom environment, they develop greater focus and attention span. At the same time, as they become more familiar with each other and the class develops its own community with alliances and fissures, there is more arguing and bickering in the way of siblings. When the latter happens, I have a few tricks up my sleeve.

My favorite is, I stand on my head. I started doing this many years ago to combat my old friend despair, who comes and sits on my chest for weeks at a time. They say that if your elbow hurts, stubbing your toe will make the elbow pain disappear. Somehow, the blood rushing to my head has the same effect, making the malaise take leave, if even for just a little while.

In the classroom, it has the added benefit of focusing my students’ attention when they have too much yaya energy and cannot settle. If no one is listening to me or taking the cues that it’s quiet time, or there are pockets of disputes around the room, I go silent, grab the cushion on my chair, walk to the middle of the red-circle rug around which we have our morning meetings, tuck my shirt in, and with no fanfare, stand on my head. It has a singular effect. Whispers of “MissCh is standing on her head!” travel the room like brush fire, and the kids go crazy, jumping up and down.

“Please take your math workbook out and start working,” I say quietly and placidly. My voice sounds different when I speak upside down. It brings the children back into paying attention. It brings me back into my body.

At pickup one day, Marlene’s eyes are red, and she appears physically smaller. It reminds me of the way she looked that first day when I spied on her. Poppy runs to her mother, and instead of running into her arms, she puts her arm around her as though she is holding her up.

“Marlene? Are you okay?” I have to be careful about the overtures I make with parents; it can be a slippery slope. Parents can be even more needy than children, needing affirmation and support, wanting parenting advice and me to be their parenting coach. Who am I to tell anyone how to raise their child? Look at my life. But Marlene looks so positively defeated that I can’t help but ask.

She smiles wanly.

I still feel bad about how I responded to her previous invitation and blurt out, “I am available. For a drink.” I’m such an idiot. As though what pained her was my declination.

It’s like I’ve poured water into a drooping plant. Almost imperceptibly, she stands taller. It is easy to imagine her as a child.

“Can you tonight? My parents are already babysitting.”

“Uh, sure.”

“Great! Where shall we go?”

Her eagerness makes me cringe. “Wherever you want.”

“I can pick you up. From here or from your house.” She hurriedly adds, “I haven’t gotten out much.”

The woman just moved here. Why am I asking her to select a place? “How about we meet up in an hour? There’s the restaurant up at the corner of Wanley and Hydown.”

“Can’t wait!” As she walks briskly to her car, there’s no question. She is a flower reaching for the sun.

All I want to do is go home and be by myself with the cat. I’m supposed to go to Mamoo’s for dinner. What was I thinking? I have nothing to do with Marlene’s sadness, so why did I feel the need to rescue her? I feel the warm weight of Poppy’s hand in the cocoon of mine.

Four thirty on a late-September afternoon, I wait outside on the patio of a local restaurant. Predictably, Marlene is late. It is cool enough to sit outside and warm enough to not need a jacket. The season is changing, the light already a little weaker and lower in the sky. I find this time of the year so sad. For so many reasons.

Marlene arrives, and gone is the hangdog expression from earlier. She is wearing makeup and has styled her hair, making it hard for me to look away. She sits down, and before the waitress has even brought us drink menus, starts chattering like she’s been at a silent retreat for the last three days. “I’m so sorry, Miss Chaudhry! What a beautiful night. I really needed this. I haven’t been out in months! It was hell getting out of Chicago. There was no plan. Just get up and go. And then trying to find a place here. I did not want to move in with my parents. I mean, I’m so grateful to them and all their help, but my God, can you imagine? And the school year was just about to start. I wanted Poppy to start on the first day and not be late coming, you know? It was rush rush rush.” She throws herself back in her chair and groans.

I wait to see if she’s done or if she’s just taking a breath. “Two things. One, your hair. Do you color it? It’s almost unnatural. Two, ‘Not be late’?”

For a second, I worry she might think I’m being mean-spirited, but she bursts out laughing, throwing her head back so far, I can see a crooked molar. She has a great laugh, full of belly and bubbles. She doesn’t take herself too seriously.

She orders an old-fashioned, and I order a club soda.

“Thanks, I think? I hated my hair as a kid.” She sits up straight. “Wait. You’re not getting a drink?”

“It’s a school night.” I demur.

“Do you not drink?”

“Sure, I do. I just don’t drink very much.”

She takes me in, almost suspiciously.

I tell the waitress, “I think I saw a cider on the menu. I’ll have that.” And then turn to Marlene. “You happy? If I have a hangover tomorrow in class, it’ll be your fault.”

She deadpans, “A hangover? From one cider?” She gauges my reaction to her sarcasm, and again, we start laughing.

“I just don’t drink often.” I can hear that I sound whiny.

“Actually, I think it’s . . . refreshing. You’re so . . . so . . .” She peers at me like she’s trying to see into my soul or find the right words.

“Boring?”

“Oh my God, no! You’re so interesting,” she gushes and leans across the table. It’s clear that she wants to be closer.

I am fairly certain she’s being sarcastic again, and I’m preparing to start giggling again, but no, she is serious.

“I think you may not know what that word means.”

“This sounds stupid, but you’re so, I don’t know, pure.”

I turn red. She has no idea the sins I’ve committed.

She goes on. “Poppy loves you. She comes home every day talking about you. MissCh this. MissCh that. I admire your work. Really. My father’s a doctor, and my mom has always said that some people just have a calling. He’s been called to help heal people. I think you’ve been called to teach children. It’s obvious.”

I am a good teacher. I know that and am proud of it. I’ve always told myself it’s because I have nothing else, nowhere else to go, no other family or commitments to rush off to, that I can pour all of myself into my classroom and my kids. But hearing Marlene reflect on me as a teacher makes me feel understood, uncomfortably so. It is so unexpected that I can feel my throat start to tingle. I look away and watch a car clumsily trying to parallel park in front of us. “It’s only because I have no other life,” I say softly.

She must think I’m being hyperbolic, because she says, “I hear you. Sometimes I wonder is this it? Is this really all there is? I mean, don’t get me wrong. I love my kids.” She closes her eyes. “I love them so much that sometimes it feels unnatural. Like, am I supposed to love them that much? But about the rest of it. I have no life. What about me? Is this marriage-and-family thing supposed to be this hard?”

Our life circumstances are entirely different, yet I understand the general sentiment. The waitress brings our drinks. I take a sip. Marlene takes a guzzle.

“Did you work in Chicago? Outside of the house, I mean.”

She sinks in her seat. “Before kids, I was a speech pathologist. I thought I’d go back to it when Bear was a toddler, but now . . . he’s a toddler, I’m responsible for everything, and I can’t imagine going back to work.” She guzzles some more.

She looks so defeated that I, once again, feel compelled to ask her more personal questions than I normally would. “Poppy says that your, er, partner, is still in Chicago. I imagine that would be hard, trying to single parent and go back to work.”

“She’s my wife, actually. But yeah, she’s still in Chicago. She’s just wrapping up everything.”

There is something false about her statement.

“Will she be joining you soon?”

She looks at my almost-full bottle of cider and motions to the waitress to bring her another drink. “You know so much about me. Tell me about you.”

I am caught off guard. “I don’t know anything about you, though, do I?” It is also a well-honed skill. Keep the focus of the conversation on the other person.

Her green eyes shine after her first drink, and her accent becomes stronger. “I am married to a woman named Roberta who loves her drink more than she loves our children or me. She’s depressed or has PTSD. Or something. She’s unwilling or unable to get help. In the beginning, it was romantic. I thought I could save her. But ten years later, it’s lost its charm.” She finishes the last watery bits of her drink and thumps the glass down on the iron table.

“That’s a lot, Marlene. I’m so sorry.”

She shrugs. “I gave up my career, my family, everything for her. And now, I’m back in a city I swore I would never come back to, and she’s in Chicago reading her old lover’s diaries and watching videos of her.”

“Whoa.”

“Yep.”

There is nothing I could say to put a positive spin on this, nor is it my job to do so. We both lean back in our chairs and study the menu. A group of women in exercise clothes gathers in front of the restaurant. One stretches her arm across her chest. One has her leg bent behind her while she tries to grasp her ankle to stretch her quad, except her nails are too long, and she struggles to do so. They are all impossibly skinny and wear lipstick. They take off at a slow canter.

Marlene and I look at each other and raise our eyebrows, judging without exchanging a single word. Somehow, I know for a fact that what has caught both of our eyes is the lipstick. To run. And then we both start laughing. Oh, how I have missed this easiness and rapport. I can’t remember the last time I’ve been with a woman and yukked it up. I’m friends with female teachers at school, but they are professional relationships. There is no expectation to share your heart. Over the years, I have found it easier to be friends with men who have no need to plumb emotional depths. But this is more than that. This feels painfully and wonderfully familiar.

“Do you want another drink, Miss Chaudhry? Or get a bite to eat? My parents are putting the kids down, and God knows I don’t want to get home too early.”

“Marlene, I’ve told you, please call me Salma. I can’t even finish this drink.” I hold up my half-full bottle.

She looks at me like she doesn’t know whether to believe me. Either that or whatever charm I had earlier presented has worn off.

“Right then. Let’s order food. Otherwise I’m going to be good and drunk in short order.”

There it is again. She reminds me of Mamoo. A clipping off the ends of words. The jolly-chap-ness of the language. “Where’s your accent from?” I ask. “England? New Zealand?”

“You are good, Miss Chaud . . . Salma . . . you’ll always be MissCh to me,” she singsongs, smug and playful. She picks up the menu.

We order a flatbread and calamari for appetizers. Marlene looks hesitant.

“You never answered. Where is your accent from?”

“You ought to meet my wife. She’s also very good at avoiding my questions. South Africa.”

“Wait. Really? You’re South African, and you have a Black child. That’s incredible.”

“Roberta’s Black.”

“Wow. That’s trippy.”

“I’m Jewish, not an Afrikaner.”

She has an edge in her voice, and I think I might have crossed a line. Maybe that cider is getting to me. She butters a piece of bread that’s been delivered to the table.

“I’m sorry, Marlene. I didn’t mean to offend you.”

“Oh for God’s sake. You didn’t offend me! My kid is Black. That’s not exactly a state secret.”

I stay silent, wondering whether she is actually drunk and whether I should extract myself from this evening.

“Come on, MissCh. You’ve got to give me something.”

Ah. She sees through me. “Oh, sorry. It’s just that there’s nothing much to tell. Never been married. No kids. Not seeing anyone. It’s just me and my uncle and my cat.” I shrug. “Footloose and fancy free.” I attempt a casual laugh.

Marlene doesn’t seem to buy it, but thankfully our food arrives.

As Marlene serves me a piece of the flatbread, she asks, “Has Poppy said anything to you about what some of the girls call her?”

My stomach drops. “No . . . what?”

“Poopy.”

“What?” I shake my head with disbelief. “What?”

Marlene visibly relaxes. “Thank you for that reaction. Obviously . . .”

“Who? Who’s saying this?” I demand.

“She won’t tell me because she doesn’t want to get them in trouble.”

I tick quickly through the kids in the class. If someone was making fun of Winifred or Hong, I would be upset, but my teacher brain and professional sense of responsibility would help me take constructive action. What I am feeling is far more visceral, something vengeful. I am enraged that someone would be cruel to Poppy. She is such a sweet kid. She keeps to herself. She goes out of her way to not infringe on anyone. She’s a rule follower and caretaker. I’ve seen how she responds to Marlene when Marlene is low. Why would someone want to hurt her? We did the name activity the first week of school to avoid exactly this type of thing. I do not feel like a detached professional. I want to thump the kids who would do this. Maybe it’s the shared birthday.

I work hard at tackling the bully mindset. Some years and with some groups of kids, it can take a substantial and consistent amount of time. I am always upset if kids make fun of someone, especially those that are different or don’t fit in as easily. The feeling of being excluded, or on the outside, is a core personality trait, not just reserved for those of a different skin color or accent. There are the children who, within a year of arrival from some far-flung shore, become leaders in the classroom and on the playground, utterly free and comfortable in their own skin and preternaturally aware of social dynamics and how to navigate within them. And then there are the children, blond-haired, blue-eyed, born and bred in this country, who are so sensitive, they believe that they are different from everyone around them and that something must be wrong with themselves. No, the internal feeling of otherness is a universal human condition. But there is no excuse for bullying.

I am fairly certain I know the culprits. It’s Kirsten V. and her little sidekick, Kristin B. “I think I know who it is, and, oh, trust me, I’ll take care of it.” I am steely. “And Poppy won’t know.”

The waitress clears our plates and asks if we’d like something else.

“Thanks. I’m done.”

“You’re full?” Marlene looks at me, dumbfounded.

My mind is on Kirsten and how I’m going to deal with this situation. “I’m just not that hungry. This making-fun-of-Poppy thing is really upsetting. But get something else if you’re hungry. Seriously.”

“I’m covering dinner, okay? You’ve hardly eaten or drunk anything.”

So this is what she’s worried about. That this meal may be too expensive for my teacher salary. “You are so silly. Get what you want. We’ll work it out.” What I don’t say is that I do not have to worry about money. I have what I need and, as Mamoo’s heir, always will. I work because I want to. Ten years ago the seven-year-olds saved me, and I’m sticking with them.

Marlene orders a burger and fries and mutters, “Just like those skinny little runner bitches.”

I throw a sugar packet at her. I came out of a sense of obligation but am enjoying myself more than I have in a very long time. Emil and I don’t tease each other, and we certainly don’t laugh like this. For some reason, I have not told Mamoo yet about this woman. I think he would love her.

“How old were you when you came?”

“Nope. Not doing this.”

Now what have I done?

“For everything I tell you, you need to tell me something. This is quickly developing into a one-way relationship,” she says.

I hear an echo of Asma bossing me around and am shocked at how good it feels, how much I’ve missed it.

“I was seven when we came to America. Your turn.”

Her burger comes, and she drowns it in ketchup.

“Nice. Was that so hard? Eleven. Do you have a boyfriend?” Quickly, she tags on, “Or girlfriend.”

I laugh. “Neither. Happily so.” That’s just a line. I have no idea if I’m happily single. But I have no opportunity to test this hypothesis. What can I ask her that won’t get asked of me? I must be careful. “Seriously, next time just order a bowl of ketchup. You said you grew up here. Is this where you immigrated to?”

“Yep. All those little kids whose parents are postdocs? I was one of those. Do you remember much about coming?”

I get fidgety talking about my childhood. It is too geographically proximate to the topic of family. “Not really, not much. You?”

“I started in middle school. Sadly, I remember every painful memory. I was already this height, weighed 110 pounds, and my hair was even more red. It was a rough transition. Why not?”

“Why not what?”

“Why aren’t you with someone? Do you date? You’re beautiful, Salma. Inside and out. You’re a real catch.”

Beautiful? Seriously? She never knew my sister.

“Come on. It’s getting late. I still need to prepare for class tomorrow.”

“I’m getting the bill. You ate nothing.”

“Marlene, please let me contribute.”

“No. Go. I’ll pay up and then head home.” She slides her credit card out of her wallet. “Did I tell you that Poppy wants to get her hair cut? I said no way. It’s too beautiful. And besides, she gets nothing else from her other mom. At least she can get this.”

I stand up abruptly. There are safe memories and not safe memories. How I slide from one to the other is never predictable or in my control. It is too late. I am already back in a car with my parents, driving back to Rosebud and hearing my father venting about Asma’s hair.

* * *

There was no competition between Asma and me about anything, but by God, I envied her hair. Thick and swingy, it moved like rippling water. For some reason lost to memory, Ami and I had gone to mosque for Friday prayer with Abu, a rarity for us to attend as a family for anything other than holidays. The last time we had seen Asma, her hair had hung midback. The girl at the mosque had hair like a rock star, spiky and disheveled. After we left her, Asma getting smaller in the rear window, I sat in the back seat and watched the world race by me and listened to my father rant about Asma.

When we were young, Abu would take advantage of any time we were trapped together in the car to grill us on our surahs or math problems. By all accounts, Asma was smarter, faster, and cooler under pressure, so she would respond breezily to whatever test was being put to us. I faltered. Unable to recount a prayer that I had blindly memorized or the nine-times table, I worked myself into a state of anxiety, stalling until Asma saved me. As we got older, it was to lecture us on things we should always or never do. Never be by yourself with a group of boys or men. Always change your oil before thirty-three hundred miles. Listen to your parents; they always know what’s best for you. There were no discussions, no nuances, no gray areas, just a series of mandates.

The summer before Asma left for college, I realized that I would soon be living with my parents without Asma as a buffer. My friend Krissy, who had for so long feared the idea of being alone with her parents, refused to have dinner with them after her brother moved out of the house. I, who did not have the cultural luxury of being permitted to refuse my parents, girded myself for their unrelenting attention. The effect of their sole focus was never more acute as when I was stuck in the car by myself with them. Enclosed in the small space with no escape, I had to confront the things that were the hardest thing for me—their attention, their fear, their neediness—and the corresponding conflicted reaction in myself. To do the thing that would make them proud or to do the thing I wanted.

What must the men in the mosque think of him? Asma had walked in without even covering her head. How was he raising his daughters? She had no sense of what was appropriate. She looked like one of those men in that music band that wore all that makeup and had that hair.

Even though I knew it was best to not engage, I couldn’t help it. “Kiss?”

His eyes kept flitting up to catch mine in the rearview mirror. “Don’t you think?”

“Not really, no. Maybe New Kids on the Block . . .” I muttered to myself.

“You won’t cut your hair, right?” he asked.

Before I could say anything, Ami interjected, “Of course she won’t.”

My halo of frizzy hair with zero style framing my too-round face stared back at me from the side mirror. Secretly, every quality of Asma that Abu felt affronted by, I celebrated. The less affirmation I gave him, the more heated he became. The more heated he got, the more I forgave Asma for not telling me about her hair in advance. In our life, information was a currency of favor, and even though I was still bothered by her telling me only at the same time she told our parents, I refused to empathize with him.

And then, because it happened so frequently, the discussion slipped to his favorite complaint. How was it possible that everything was so expensive in America? How could anyone get ahead? Did Ami know that Mamoo was paying certain expenses for Asma? How could she have let that happen? Why didn’t she tell him? Somehow all upsets led to this same argument. Although argument makes it sound like someone was arguing with him. Maybe he should go back to the job at the doctor’s office, as though it was a career path he had just stepped off for a temporary pause and not a job he had held for only a few weeks. The money would be more steady, and then they could pay for college. If Asma was more dependent on them, they would hold more sway over her actions. If only he made more money. If only this country permitted people to make a livable wage. His thoughts, like water, ran into the same ditch.

Later that night, after we returned home from the mosque, I called Asma twice in quick succession from the wall-mounted phone in the basement and hung up each time after one ring. It was our code for her to call me back so the long-distance charges wouldn’t show up on our parents’ phone bill.

More than her hair had changed in the brief period of time we’d been separated, and I was still adjusting to the absence of her presence. I weighed what I would say to her about my parents’ reaction. I didn’t want to mar our limited time with complaints or being a nag. We so rarely disagreed that when we did, it felt uncomfortable and against nature. I found it hard to be truthful with her. I am a peacekeeper and naturally conflict averse. But even more than that, Asma and I, through some unspoken understanding, handled each other with care. Our family culture was steeped in survival, an upbringing premised on “no time for feelings.” Or at least that was our parents’ mindset. Asma’s and my relationship was a reprieve. With each other, we tried to be gentle.

The phone rang, and I snatched it up halfway through its first ring.

Before I could say anything, Asma said, “You still mad at me?”

I considered engaging in our old game of I Told You So. There were countless examples of Asma pushing the edge—even though I counseled her otherwise—and then getting in trouble. I have spent my life feeling like there was some essential experience that was foreclosed to me. Something that wasn’t available. But Asma didn’t see that. This world was for her, and she was of this world. She would be denied nothing.

“Eh. After listening to Abu rail on you for an hour, I guess I’m fine.” The truth was that I would have caused myself more pain if it could have saved Asma the same. I would rather have been uncomfortable by keeping my opinions to myself than to make her feel judged. Finally, because I meant it and I knew she was waiting for my opinion, I said, “It does look amazing.”

She squealed in my ear. She had that haircut for only a short time, but when I think of her, I see her absently rubbing her fingers along the short, smooth edges on the back of her head.

“Seriously, did he yell at you? I’m sorry, baba.”

“It was fine. Same as always.” It reminded me of when she had gotten her ears pierced at thirteen without permission and I’d been permanently forbidden from ever getting my ears pierced. I don’t know that I had any desire to get my hair cut short. But that option was now off the table. “I don’t know what you’re doing.”

Asma took a drink. I could tell it was water because of the sound. She drank water heartily, with deep, long gulps, like a lumberjack in the woods after a long day of cutting down trees. If she was home, to make me laugh and to carry forward an old joke from when we studied Paul Bunyan, she would have drunk the water while standing, legs astride, one hand on her hip, and after finishing, wipe her upper lip with the back of her hand.

I went on, “You’re basically out. Just do your thing.” I slid down the wood-paneled wall between our bedrooms. The long phone cord settled heavily into a snake coil next to me.

“I told you I was going to try out for the play. They need to accept me for who I am. I figured if I came to the mosque, it might help. You know, if I met them on their turf, blah blah blah.”

“You want them to accept you for who you are, or you just wanted to push their buttons?” I asked.

After a long pause, she said, “Maybe both?”

We both started laughing. Abruptly and in unison, our voices rose and fell as though choreographed. As different as Asma and I were physically and temperamentally, we shared the same sense of humor and a laugh that people couldn’t tell apart. Deep and rumbling, it started at the same note and escalated with the same rhythm and cadence, acting as a call and response. Among all the things I miss about Asma, perhaps this is what I miss most of all. I am supposed to be part of a pair. I am a saltshaker pining for my pepper. I am Robin with no Batman. I am a discarded sock.

The air felt looser between us.

“You keep pushing because you want them to accept this theater thing. They’re never going to. You know that.”

“Why not?” Asma asked. “I’m majoring in their stupid premed biology.”

“Maybe because this isn’t a negotiation?” I imitated Abu’s accent. “‘Oh, let’s let Asma do theater so long as she becomes a doctor.’ This is about something way bigger.”

We listened to each other breathe. We could do that and find comfort. The phone handle felt like it weighed five pounds. We shared a mode and type of communication—spoken and unspoken——that we didn’t share with anyone else. It acted as a protective barrier and armor to keep others out. How many times had our mother walked into a room and thrown her hands up in the air on seeing us across the room talking, or silently reading with our feet touching on the couch? As though our intimacy was an affront to her, a silent challenge.

“Isn’t it our job to figure out what our passion is and then go for it?”

“You’re really taking the Free to Be . . . You and Me thing seriously,” I said. When we were little, Aunty and Mamoo had given us a kids’ record player and the Free to Be . . . You and Me album. We used to listen to it quietly in our rooms. Over and over Marlo delivered her subversive message through benign melody about how every girl in this country grows up to become her own woman. “I don’t think that was written for us.”

We had a complicated relationship with the idea of self, as in doing things for oneself and thinking of, or for, oneself. It’s not that it wasn’t allowed. It was just that it was supposed to take a back seat to family—those we knew and those we didn’t. Our choices supposedly cast a shadow over all of them. As we’d become teenagers, Abu lectured us on the underbelly of American society, the false god of self. But everywhere we looked, in books, on television, on the radio, and among friends, we saw all success underpinned by the single, solitary truth: that to get anywhere in this world, we were supposed to think first of ourselves. No one was going to do that for us. America taught us that it was our job to figure out our gifts and unleash them on the world.

I say all of this as if it had been clear to us at the time. It was not. We were each grappling with becoming American, whatever that meant, and how to honor the siren song of the culture of want and me-first while still honoring our parents and the culture we came from.

Asma’s voice hardened. “So what are you suggesting, Sal? I’m so tired of hiding from them.”

“I don’t know.” I twirled the lime-green cord of the phone around my finger and released it, setting it to bounce like a yo-yo. “Maybe tell them you decided to not do it after all.”

“I’m not not doing the play just to make them happy.”

“I didn’t say to not do it. I said to tell them you’re not going to do it. And then do it anyway,” I said.

“Oh, you mean like prom? That worked out great for me.”

“I’m the one that told you that was a stupid idea, remember?” I paused. “There’s a big difference. You don’t live at home anymore, and they’ll never find out.”

Even then, I wasn’t able to name myself in the list of people who were affected by Asma’s actions. The habit of protecting her ran deep.

“I’m not backing out of this play, Sal. I got a big part. And besides, I’m not letting him think he won.”

There it was. The real reason. Asma locked in her eternal battle with the one person who could deny her what she was striving to become. What could I say?

After that trip to the city, Abu started leaning into complimenting my hair, which was weird because he was not a man given to compliments, and my hair was not the type to be complimented. I perpetually wore it in a low ponytail because I didn’t know what else to do with it. Neither straight nor curly, it was just a mass of thick, wavy hair that I later learned, through an unfortunate haircut, would get even more bushy and shapeless if cut into layers. Whenever I saw him, he said things like, “I like your hair,” or “Your hair looks so nice,” the words as awkward and strange in his mouth as they were in my ears.

One night, we found ourselves at the dinner table together. Since Asma’s absence, our practice of eating together at 8:30 three to four times a week had gradually fallen apart. Part vestigial practice from Pakistan, where it was normal to eat dinner late after the heat of the day, and part to accommodate Abu’s driving schedule, it was the one time of the day we were forced to be together. By then, Ami was working a few days a week at the local seamstress’s, and she liked the extra time to either cook or heat up dinner.

Ami asked whether they needed to attend my parent-teacher conference. Ever since a coach had waylaid Abu at a parent-teacher conference about letting Asma play basketball, the stress of hearing about the expectations put on us by American culture had become too much for them to bear. I told them there was no need since it was my senior year.

Abu asked about the status of my college applications. He really had no idea what he was asking. He had gone to a college for civil servants in Pakistan in the 1950s. Everything he learned about the American college admission process came from Asma’s experience the year before, which had been guided by Aunty and Mamoo. I was only going to apply to the four colleges and universities in the city. Applying to colleges in places like California or New York didn’t occur to me. That was for the movies, or nonimmigrants.

And then Abu asked, “What about the college in Chester?”

Chester was a town about thirty minutes away and considered a big town relative to the farming community in which we lived. It was where farmers’ lawyers worked and where farmers did their banking.

“That’s a community college, Abu.”

“Yes.”

“A community college is a two-year program for things like being a secretary. College is four years. Like, I get a proper education and can then go to medical school or law school or something.”

Unlike us, kids in my little country high school did not aspire to college. Community college, for 20 to 30 percent, was the highest level of education they even considered. Kids commuted there a few times a week to take classes in agricultural science or accounting. Something useful that could be applied to the family farm.

“Do you need more than that?”

I tried to overcome my annoyance and formulate an argument for why I couldn’t go to a community college, but the only thing I could come up with was it felt unfair. I wanted the broad, open experience college promised. I needed to not live with my parents. I deserved that. My trajectory was not the same as all the other kids in Rosebud. Not that I knew what my trajectory was, but if I had hazarded a guess, it would have been a life much like Mamoo’s and Aunty’s, in a city or suburb with other professionals. I was not going to grow up, work at the local post office, and live at home until I got married.

“I’m applying to four-year colleges, Abu.”

“What are you going to study?”

“Uh. Um. Probably English.”

Abu snorted.

My eyes stung. It was so easy for me to forget what it felt like to be the object of Abu’s judgment, because it was so rarely turned on me. I had an unexpected wave of empathy for Asma, who lived in the aura of that gaze.

“It makes sense for your sister. Look at her. Studying to be a doctor.”

I wished Asma had heard him. Obedience was probably the quality my parents valued most of all. But there were times like this that I realized they were not immune from taking pride in their children’s accomplishments. Asma was an amazing student, certainly by the standards of our small country school and, if college admissions tests were any measure, also against the larger world. I didn’t show the same promise, and therefore the idea of me not getting a degree didn’t merit the same sense of injustice.

“Apply to Chester. I can stop by and pick up an application when I go for my shift.”

I forced my face into no expression and glanced at Ami to see if this was something they had discussed or if Abu was speaking only on his own behalf. She met my gaze placidly, her fingers picking at her eyebrow. But she wasn’t there. She was lost in her own head, as though she was engaged in some other conversation with someone off-screen.

* * *

My body aches. I am wrung out. On the infrequent occasion when the past lets itself in and makes remembering a mandatory event, I feel like I am hungover.

On the way to school, I see a tall and skinny woman with close-cut hair filling her tank at a passing gas station, and I swear it is Ruby. I pull my car forward to take in her profile or drive away quickly if she turns. The same medium-dark skin that looks gold and the same impossibly high cheekbones, fine and sharp. The woman turns. It is not Ruby. I release my death grip on the steering wheel and fall back in my seat. It takes until I have arrived at my destination to recognize the feeling quietly eating away at my insides. Disappointment. I surprise myself.