“What will happen now?” one of the men finally asks. There’s a moment of silence; then everyone starts speaking at once. I pull on my father’s sleeve, and he translates for Belle and me as best as he can. People wonder why the terrorists launched this awful attack, what the government will do in response, how this will affect our home countries, and what will happen to us all. They talk of people who are dead now, some of whom they knew. Folks who began this day by brushing their teeth and drinking their coffee, waving good-bye to their families, taking the subway to work. What did they feel when they realized they were going to die? Jespal—when did he come in?—comments that this is bound to change the lives of everyone who lives in this country. And Sonny—I’m surprised to see him sitting near the door—says in a harsh tone, in English, Some people’s lives will change more than others.
When the voices fall silent, one of the old men begins a low chant, a drawn-out mourning song, or maybe a prayer. The rest bend their heads. Perhaps they’re remembering other tragedies. The chant grows louder. More people join in, swaying back and forth, clapping to keep time. Though I don’t understand the words, there’s something about this sharing of grief that comforts me. When the chant ends, the men file out silently. We don’t thank one another.
After the fire, when I’d tried to express my gratitude for their kindness to our customers, they’d been awkward, uncomfortable. My father had had to explain to me that giving thanks is not a common practice in India.
“Then how do you know if people appreciated what you did?” I’d asked.
“Do you really need to know?” my father had asked back.
T he two things happen almost simultaneously.
Belle and Jespal are straightening chairs, I’m about to pour the leftover tea (no one drank any) into the sink. My father’s putting away cookies. Sonny is sitting in a corner with Jona, playing finger games that make her giggle. We all stop what we’re doing and stare at the men.
They’re ordinary enough—tall, close-cropped, one blond, three brown-haired. They wear jeans, just like our departed customers. One has on a leather jacket. Two carry baseball bats, one a chain wound around his hand. The fourth one—I don’t know what he carries. His hand is in his pocket.
They’re shouting something. I can’t understand them because they’re all talking at the same time. Or maybe it’s that my brain refuses to function right, like my shaking hands. There’s tea all over the floor. Sonny pushes Jona behind the counter. Belle grabs her and presses Jona’s face into her stomach so Jona can’t see what’s going on.
Sonny raises his hands in a pacifying gesture. He’s trying to talk to the men. Do they want money? He gestures to the cash register.
One of the men shoves him out of the way. “We’re not thieves, shitface,” he says, his mouth a crooked line of distaste. “We’re patriots.”
“We’ve been watching you and your terrorist pals,” another one says. “Celebrating, huh?”
I’m ashamed of how scared I am. My throat feels like it’s closed up permanently. But I’ve got to try to explain that they’ve misunderstood. It’s our only hope. “We weren’t celebrating,” I make myself say. My heart pounds so loudly I can’t hear my voice.
“Shut up, bitch,” the man with his hand in his pocket says. He nods and one of them brings down his baseball bat, cracking the glass counter. There are cookies all over the floor. My father manages to step back just in time, or the bat would have broken his hand. Jona is crying, and so is Belle.
“Stop!” Jespal says. “We haven’t done anything wrong. Those men in here—they were mourning. We’re Americans, just the way you are. We all feel terrible about what happened.”
Two of the men grab him. “Looked in a mirror lately?” one of them spits. “You ain’t no American! It’s fuckers like you who planned this attack on the innocent people of this country. Time someone taught you faggots a lesson.”
“You’re crazy,” Jespal yells. He struggles free for a moment and manages to hit one of them in the face. His turban comes undone. Belle is screaming.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” the man with his hand in his pocket says. Except now his hand is outside, and it’s holding a switchblade. Two of the men begin to drag Jespal outside. Sonny starts forward, but one of the men holds up his baseball bat with a grin. The man with the switchblade cuts the telephone line with a flick of his wrist. “Stay inside and no one else gets hurt,” he says as he leaves, closing the door with exaggerated care.
I’m rummaging frantically in the drawers, looking for something to fight with. The only thing I can find is a bread knife. I’m not sure I have what it takes to use it, but I grab it anyway. Sonny emerges from the back room with a metal pipe, and my father carries a length of wood. Belle holds tight to a struggling Jona with one hand while she upends her purse on the countertop. At one time she used to carry pepper spray. I pray she still does.
Jespal is doubled up on the pavement, his hands protecting his head. “Let’s put our mark on him, boys,” someone shouts. “So his little pals will remember us every time they look at him.” One of the men swings the chain, and I can hear the soft thwack of metal hitting flesh. Sonny runs forward with a yell, and the man turns. The chain whips toward Sonny, catches the metal pipe. For a moment I’m afraid it’ll get wrenched from his hand, but he manages to hold on. He thrusts the end of the pipe into the man’s chest and the man goes down with a surprised grunt. But a different man’s behind Sonny now, hitting out with a bat. I shout a warning as I run toward him. I catch a glimpse of my father helping Jespal up, then I hear him cry out. One of them aims his bat at my knife hand. I pull back, but I’m not fast enough. Hot pain shoots up my arm; the knife goes flying. He’s moving toward me, a murderous look on his face. I back away. I hear Sonny yell, “Watch out, Riks!” But it’s too late. Someone’s got me in a choke hold. I hear him laugh in my ear. Sonny’s rushing at us, an intent look on his bloodied face. He lunges with the pipe. My attacker curses, his arm loosens, I can breathe. Now two men are coming at Sonny together. I grab one, a fist strikes the side of my head, and I learn there’s truth to the saying about seeing stars.
I must have passed out for a few moments. When I come to, groggily, I’m lying on the pavement. The man with the switchblade is kneeling over Jespal. Someone’s holding Sonny with his arm twisted behind his back. He’s yelling for help, but of course no one comes. The man raises his knife and Jespal screams.
Then I hear sirens, and a moment later I see flashing lights as a police car comes around the corner. The men are yelling. They let go of Jespal and Sonny, pull up one of their companions who’s sitting on the ground, holding his head, and jump into their car— an ordinary-looking car, except it’s got an American flag tied to the antenna. Will I ever be able to look at a flag without remembering this moment that I can’t believe is happening, this taste in my mouth like copper, which later I’ll discover is blood? Then they’re gone.
The police car screeches up to the pavement, and the officer leans out the window.
Get inside and lock the door,
he yells. There’s something familiar about him. But before I can work out what it is, he’s gone, too, sirens screaming. We’re left on the empty street to take care of ourselves the best we can.
Belle runs out of the store. In her hand is a cell phone. Thank God she was able to call the police! Jona follows her.
“Daddy, Daddy,” she cries as she hurls herself at Sonny. My head’s still throbbing, and bright yellow dots swim in front of my eyes, but I manage to drag myself over to them. Sonny’s cheek is bleeding a lot. I pull out some Kleenex and try to stanch it.
“It’s a flesh wound, I think,” he says. “Could have been worse.”
When I think of how much worse it could have been, I throw my arms around him.
“You know I love it when you do that,” he says, with a laugh that’s half a cough. “But my ribs are an unromantic lot, and they’re complaining!”
“Are they broken?” Jona asks anxiously.
“Let’s hope not,” he says.
Belle is tending to Jespal, who has a cut under his right eye. His other eye is swollen shut. One of his arms hangs at an unnatural angle—but overall he, too, is lucky. My father sits on the edge of the pavement, massaging his arm. He looks as if he’s in shock. He slurs his words as he says someone might have hit him on the head, he can’t quite recall.
Sirens again—it’s a different police car this time, with two men in it. One of the policemen asks what happened, jots down notes, tells Belle to drive Sonny and Jespal to the emergency room.
“If you’re not feeling too bad,” he tells me, “I recommend you go home with your little girl and the old gentleman. It’s a mess at the hospitals tonight, all sorts of craziness going on.”
When he asks me to describe our attackers. I find that I can’t come up with many details. They were so ordinary—men I’d pass on the street without looking at twice. It’s the same with their car—I can’t even remember the color. Except for the flag, which is absolutely clear in my mind, everything else has blurred into mush.
“But your colleague who got here first saw them,” I say. “He’d know what they look like. He may even have caught them by now—he took off after them right away.”
The policeman stares at me. “This is the only police car that was sent here.”
“Can’t be! It was because of him those men took off. Otherwise they might have killed us.”
His companion shakes his head. “The dispatcher would have told us if she’d already asked someone else to come here. Besides, they wouldn’t have sent two cars to the same place, not tonight. Too many people calling for help.”
I watch their taillights recede through the light fog that’s settling over the empty street. The September night has turned chilly. Belle has left for the hospital. I help my father to the parking lot, where my car waits alone. Jona holds tight to my other hand. What kind of stain will a night like this leave on her? A wild bird shrieks somewhere. We all flinch. But it’s not the night that is frightening, nor its birds, however wild they may be. There’s nothing out there that’s worse than human beings.
I pull out the sofa bed for my father and settle Jona in her room, where I’ll sleep with her tonight. When Belle drops Sonny off, I tell him he can have my bed.
“Wow! Never thought I’d hear you say that, Riks!” he says.
“I can tell you’re feeling better.”
He gives me a lopsided grin. One side of his face is bandaged. When he moves, I can tell he’s in pain. But at least he doesn’t have any broken bones, not like Jespal, who’s going to be in the hospital for several days. The doctors are worried about his eye, too.
I offer to make Sonny some chamomile tea.
“That wimpy stuff does nothing for me. I’ll have a couple of your sleeping pills instead. You do still take them, right?”
I bring him one. That man knows too much about me for his own good.
Afterward, I stand at Jona’s window, too wound up to sleep. I look out at the darkness, the still sky with its untouched stars. In my room, Sonny is tossing and turning, trying to get comfortable on a strange bed. I look at my reflection in the glass—the brown skin, the Indian features, the dark eyes with darker circles under them, the black crinkles of my hair. It’s familiar and yet, suddenly, alien.
You ain’t no American,
one of the men had said.
He’s a racist idiot, I tell myself.
Is that so?
my whisper voice gibes.
And how many others in this
country would have agreed with him today?
But if I wasn’t American, then what was I?
Sonny calls my name, breaking the chain of my thought.
“What’s wrong?” I ask from the door. “Does it hurt?”
“Yeah, but that’s not it. I was wondering—” He hesitates. In the dark I cannot see his expression. “I was wondering if you’d sit with me for a little while.”
I’m about to plead tiredness, but then I change my mind. Some things are more important than old grudges. I sit on the edge of the bed, and he takes my hand and holds it. After a while, he says, “It’s a strange thing, facing a man who wants to kill you. It’s never happened to me before.”
I remember the look on his face, savage and focused, as he swung his pipe at the man who was choking me. I hadn’t known Sonny could look like that. It had shocked me, but then I’d been glad, and that also had shocked me.
He lets out a sigh that is partly a shudder. “I was ready to kill him, too, you know.”
“I know,” I say. I consider thanking him for saving my life. Instead I give him a small push. “It’s uncomfortable sitting on the edge of the bed,” I say.
He moves over to make space for me, and when I lie down, he puts his arm around me with a different kind of sigh. I place a cautious arm around him, too, trying to avoid his bruises. It surprises me how easily our bodies fit into each other, as though they remember. He nuzzles my hair lightly. I can tell he’s thinking.
After some time he says, “So many people lost so much today.”
I nod. I think of the people in the towers and in the airplanes, who lost their lives. The people grieving tonight, who lost their loved ones. Leaders and decision makers, who lost belief in their invincibility. And people like us, seeing ourselves darkly through the eyes of strangers, who lost a sense of belonging.