Cornered (5 page)

He grins. “Awesome,” he says, and opens his car door. “I'll see you around.”

“See you around.”

One thing is painfully clear—he didn't kiss me because he secretly liked me. That little fantasy of mine has been completely crushed. I keep walking to my car, and with every step it's like I'm sinking. I tell myself not to be so stupid; of course my kiss with Oliver would be just that, a kiss, because high school is like a snow globe: sometimes it gets shaken and strange and wonderful things can happen, but soon enough, everything settles back down to where it was. In the end, gravity always wins.

• • •

I'm lying in bed mourning my existence when someone tries the door. I know it's my mother because my father always knocks first. “Go away!” I yell, but she doesn't, so I stomp to the door.

“What were you doing?” she asks in Urdu after I let her in. My mother doesn't understand locked doors. When my father goes to conferences, I sleep next to her because she doesn't like being alone.

“Nothing,” I say.

“We're taking Chacha jaan to the Afghani restaurant,” she says.

“Have fun.”

“What, have fun? You're coming with us.” My mother places her hand on her hip. We have the same hands, square palms and short fingers. But that's about the only thing we have in common. I wished I had inherited more from her: her long
face, her thin frame, her fine, straight hair. When I was little, she had no idea what to do with my curls, so she kept my hair really short. There isn't a single picture of me as a kid that isn't utterly embarrassing.

The last thing I want to do is go to the Afghani restaurant with my parents and Chacha jaan. I only stopped crying an hour ago. “I don't feel like it. Please, Amma, don't make me go.”

“Why?”

Any chance I might have of convincing her is ruined by the arrival of my father.

“Rukhsana, something's wrong with this zipper,” he says. My mother starts fiddling with his sweater, and he frowns at me. “Why are you not ready? Chacha jaan is waiting downstairs.”

“She doesn't want to go,” my mother says.

“Nonsense. Of course she's going.”

“But I don't feel like going,” I protest.

“Life is not about what you feel like doing. You think your mother and I feel like going to work every day?” he replies. “And what will Chacha jaan think if you stay in your room only? It's abnormal.”

“I don't care what Chacha jaan thinks. He looks like a mullah anyway.”

“Chacha jaan is no mullah. He is an educated man. He was the vice president of a pharmaceutical company.”

“Maybe he was, but he still looks like a mullah.”

My mother is still trying to fix my father's zipper but he
steps away so he can focus fully on reprimanding me. “And what would you like? Would you like me to go downstairs and tell Chacha jaan, who was so good to me when I was young, that my daughter will not go to dinner with him because of the way he looks?”

“Yes.”

My father turns to my mother. “Rukhsana!” he says, which is his way of asking her to please do something before he loses his temper.

My mother sighs. “He didn't used to have a beard, but he's become quite religious since his wife died. He's a very nice man and he's lonely, Shabnam. He loved his wife very much. And he is our guest. So get ready. Now.”

And I hate both of them, for giving my uncle's loneliness precedence over my pain, for making this day even more difficult, for making everything about my life difficult. “Jesus,” I mutter as I walk to my closet.

“Jesus!” my father cries after me. “Why does she always say this? She's a Muslim! What kind of Muslim goes around saying Jesus, Jesus?”

“
Bus
, Sohail,
bus
. Enough.” My mother places her palms against his back and gently pushes him toward the door. “Let her get ready.”

• • •

After we get in the car and I think life can't get any worse, my mother mentions that we're stopping at the mall first because
Chacha jaan wants to buy his granddaughter an iPod. I know better than to complain in front of Chacha jaan, so instead I fume silently in the backseat listening to my father say, “Over there is the town hall. And there is Dunkin' Donuts—they make America's best coffee. Have you tried it? And that is a diner—New Jersey is famous for its diners, they are open all night. And down that road is Shabnam's school. She is one of their top students,
masha'allah
.” I wish he wouldn't make me part of his stupid tour. I wish I wasn't here.

Chacha jaan is wearing a crisply ironed black vest over a long white
kameez
and a wide, white
shalwar
stiffened with starch and those same ugly polished leather sandals. He must have put something in his beard because it's a little shinier than before. I watch him stare out the window and wonder if he's even listening to what my father is saying. In his right hand, he's holding a
tasbih
, a Muslim version of a rosary. The beads are made of stone, deep orange in color. He hasn't let go of it the entire car ride, moving through it bead by bead. The beads might make a nice bracelet, but it's too feminine to be used by someone like him.

My father takes an exit, and I realize he's heading toward the most upscale mall in our area, with marble floors, expensive stores, and organic options in the food court. We almost never come here. “Why are we going to this mall?” I say quietly to my mother, but she ignores me.

When we arrive, I debate refusing to get out of the car, but I know my parents won't stand for it. Thankfully it's Monday, so
not many people are around. I walk a safe distance from my parents and Chacha jaan, who still has that stupid
tasbih
in his hand. I'm more than half an escalator behind them when I see who else but Natasha on the landing above. She's leaning against the railing, a little Louis Vuitton purse on one shoulder and a brown Bloomingdale's shopping bag on the other, wearing cowboy boots and a denim skirt that barely covers her ass. My family steps onto the landing, but instead of continuing on they stop to wait for me. That's when Natasha notices Chacha jaan.

I want to run backward down the escalator, but I'm frozen and moving closer. Natasha hasn't noticed me yet, but my father exclaims, “
Jaldi karo
, Shabnam!” and Natasha turns to see who he's talking to.

I don't make eye contact with her as I step off and am forced to acknowledge my parents and Chacha jaan as my own, but I can still feel the revulsion on her face all the way to the electronics store. There, my parents instruct me to help Chacha jaan, and I'm relieved when he directs his questions, in fluent English, to a sales clerk. After a little while he walks over to me, holding two iPods, one lime green and the other hot pink.

“Which one do you like?” he asks.

I point at the pink one.

“Are you all right?” he says. If you can get past the beard, which is hard to do, his face isn't actually that bad—there are some pockmarks on his cheeks, but he has a nice nose and light hazel eyes. If he was clean-shaven and a lot younger, he might even be handsome.

“I'm fine.”

“My wife's hair was just like yours. You remind me of her. Especially when you smile,” he says, and I wonder when Chacha jaan has ever seen me smile, because I certainly haven't done so tonight.

We make it to dinner without any more mishaps. The Afghani restaurant used to be a diner and has a neon sign that says HALAL in the window, booths of ripped red vinyl, and a menu with everything from Afghani meat stews and kabobs to hamburgers and chicken wings. We sit down in one of the booths and my father orders too much, as usual.

Before he begins eating, Chacha jaan says, “
Bismillah ar-rahman ar-rahim.
” In the name of Allah, the most merciful, the most benevolent. Yeah right. If Allah really was so merciful and benevolent, He wouldn't have made me a Pakistani American girl with frizzy hair. I stare at the two chicken wings on my plate. Natasha wouldn't eat chicken wings. Natasha would never set foot in this restaurant.

My father stops decimating his food to ask me, “Why aren't you eating?”

“I'm not hungry.”

He pushes the plate of rice with meat, raisins, almonds, and slivers of carrot toward me. “Try the
pilau
. It's good.”

“I don't want any.” I say this nicely, because I know my parents don't want Chacha jaan to think I'm some American teenage brat who is disrespectful to my elders and disconnected from my heritage.

“Chacha jaan,” my mother says, taking a chicken wing from my plate. “They say that the Pakistani restaurants in Houston are very tasty. Was the food good?”

“It was okay,” Chacha jaan replies.

My father drinks his water in one gulp. “Why don't you give Houston another try? It's a very nice city.”

“I did try,” Chacha jaan replies. “But my heart could not become attached to that place.”

“But there are so many problems in Pakistan, Chacha jaan,” my mother objects. “In Houston, you have two sons, and such excellent health care in case, Allah forbid, you become ill.”

Chacha jaan sighs a little. I notice he hasn't eaten very much either, which is really annoying because he's the reason we're at this restaurant instead of at home, where there are walls and doors and curtains and no one can see us. “My barber in Pakistan has been telling the same old jokes since the first Bhutto,” he says. “I thought I was tired of them, but I went to a barber in Houston and it didn't feel right. I miss the old jokes, my old barber.”

Everyone's quiet, then my dad holds up the plate of rice and says, “More
pilau
?” and my mother asks for the check. Of course it's sad that my father's uncle is an old widower who misses his wife and his corny barber, but he said it himself—he belongs over there, in Pakistan, not here, next to me.

• • •

I'm late for English because I get my period and have to hunt
for a tampon since the dispenser is out. It's first period on Tuesday morning and most of the students usually act like zombies on muscle relaxers, but when I walk in a bunch of them suddenly wake up. Elliot stops his doodling to stare; Ryan is looking at me like I have horns on my head; and I swear Jenna is smirking at me. I'm worried that maybe there's a blood stain on my pants, but I can't see anything.

“Have a seat, Shabnam,” Ms. Haverford says, and returns to her dramatic reading of Keats. “‘Oh what can ail thee, knight-at-arms, alone and palely loitering? The sedge has wither'd from the lake, and no birds sing.'”

When I get to my desk, Maggie, who sits across from me, starts mouthing something.

What are you saying?
I mouth back.

She scribbles in her notebook and tilts it toward me.
Have you seen the e-mail?
she writes.

What e-mail?
I write back.

Maggie winces and starts playing with her phone under her desk. She slips her phone inside a library book and hands the book to me. I open it and there's Chacha jaan and me, right there on Maggie's phone. It's a photo of us at the electronics store. Chacha jaan is holding up two iPods and I'm pointing at the pink one. I look annoyed and my hair is taking up a third of the frame. Chacha jaan's eyes are squinting in concentration at the iPods, his beard and Pakistani clothing in full view. At least you can't see his
tasbih.

The subject line of the e-mail is:
LINCOLN HIGH SCHOOL
SENIOR HELPS AL-QAEDA BUY AN IPOD
!

I scroll up. The e-mail's been forwarded a few times, but the address it originates from is a bunch of jumbled letters and numbers. Of course Natasha's too smart to use her own e-mail address. What I didn't realize is that she'd be this mean.

“Shabnam.”

Ms. Haverford has to say it again before I hear her.

“Yes?” My throat feels dry. On the board, Ms. Haverford has written “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.”

“Can you tell us—” She stops. “Are you okay?”

Is it that obvious?

I swallow the little saliva I have. “I'm fine.”

The whole class is staring at me now to figure out whether I'm fine or not. How many of them have seen the photo? Did any of them believe it?

“Is that guy your uncle you said was coming to visit?” Maggie demands after class. “Shabs—do you have any idea who did this? And what happened? I go away for one weekend and there's an e-mail going around about you?”

I haven't told Maggie yet about the kiss or what happened at the mall, and I'm not about to now. Maggie's way more confident than me, the kind of confident that lets her rock thrift store bell bottoms at school when everyone else is wearing skinny jeans. If I tell Maggie, she'll get upset and immediately confront Natasha, and that will only make everything worse.

“I don't know. Honestly,” I tell her. “Someone saw me in the mall, I guess.”