The Girl With Borrowed Wings (22 page)

“What do you think you’re doing?” he said. He grabbed at the cart and held it between us and the stream of people, like a barrier.

I had never seen my father mortified before. I nearly pitied him. And that was the best thing in the world, because it meant that he was reduced to something
pitiful
.

“I’m done,” I said. “Let’s finish grocery shopping.”

I was obedient Frenenqer for the rest of the night. I still got sent to my room without any food and a strict command not to read, but it didn’t matter. I couldn’t have eaten or concentrated on reading anything anyway. My blood was humming in my veins.

He wasn’t a god. Not even an overpowering father who could make me cramp up all my feelings into a painful knot. He was just a man. Just a repressed man who, in his own way, was a dreamer, who had sat beside sunflowers and thought that he ought to fix nature, and who had made me in his own image. But I wasn’t his imaginary daughter, I was
real
. I wasn’t going to turn myself into him, not anymore.

The next morning he wouldn’t look at me. Mom came out and arranged the breakfast dishes and all the table mats around him in their proper order, and finally he was back in his safe, organized spot, like a person frozen in time. But he looked pale. Or maybe he always looked pale and I was only seeing it now.

For seventeen years, I’d been a plant growing straight toward his sun, or at least that’s how he wanted to see me. Did he realize he’d lost his project now? Or was he still holding on to the fantasy? Was that why he wouldn’t look at me?

The thought made me sad. I tried to chat with him, following all his rules. I even held my spoon properly. But it didn’t work. He ignored me until I let him be. As calmly as he kept himself clamped down, my father, I saw, had the sort of mind that scratches incessantly at itself.

At last I set my spoon down and just looked at him, really
looked
.

His hair had been sheared close to the skull, but it curled anyway, and his face was long. He had wrinkles, just about every kind except laugh-lines.

My eyes moved down. His fingers were carefully positioned around the handle of his fork. It seemed more important to him than eating, I realized.

I wondered if he’d had a similar parent. Maybe it went all the way back through our family tree, a disease inherited from the first ancestor unable to deal with an uncontrolled life, transforming child after child into a bulleted list of rules.

Except I’d broken away.

My father went on avoiding me a little uncomfortably for days afterward. If I loved him, that meant I didn’t fear him; and if I didn’t fear him, I couldn’t respect him the way he wanted. My love had disgraced him.

As for my mother—I think she looked at me with a kind of awe. She saw that I had done something, but she didn’t really understand what.

I didn’t get to tell Anju about my triumph because she was gone from school. She had already finished her last week. But I knew she would keep her promise at the moment when Sunday turned to Monday. Anju was always reliable. That was why she’d made such a good secretary. She would do this last thing for me.

Saturday and Sunday went by dizzily. I was adjusting to myself. No itch in my back. No imaginary, pointing fingers. No pretend wings either. I didn’t feel them pulsing and bulging at my back anymore. I was light enough not to need them. The heat pressed in and the wadis were dry and scaly and the color green was actually a dull shade of khaki. But it didn’t matter. I waited for the birth of Monday. Trembles went through me constantly. I told myself to be patient. Maybe, even if I had healed, I still wouldn’t fall in love with Sangris. And it wouldn’t come suddenly. I tried not to push myself. I was too afraid. For all I knew, breaking my father’s spell might not have helped.

But I felt different. More open. I waited for midnight with a quick, fluttering feeling in my stomach. The excitement came more easily and more naturally than I expected. It crept up on me when I wasn’t looking, and at seven o’clock on Sunday evening I found myself in the bathroom, staring worriedly at the mirror. He probably wouldn’t like my new hair. My mother had hacked through it with an old pair of scissors so that it hung straight and short, just below my chin. And my glasses—I’d been too absentminded to wear contact lenses lately. I put the glasses away and used my contacts for the first time in months.

Automatically, I felt embarrassed for being so vain. Then I stopped myself. I didn’t want to be embarrassed.

I went into my bedroom and closed the door. I took stock of myself. I’d never been so nervous while waiting for Sangris before. But surely that was a good sign too.

I paced and paced.

CHAPTER TWENTY

In Which There Is a Dark Green Room

By ten o’clock I had changed my mind. My parents were asleep in their room. The house felt empty. The light in my bedroom was artificial and too brittle. I went out into the hallway, put on my shoes, hesitated for an instant with my hand on the knob, and then, softly, let myself out the door.

I didn’t want to pace alone in my room for the next two hours, and I didn’t want to wait. I planned to go to Sangris for once instead of waiting for him to come to me. Anju’s house was only a few streets away. Because I wasn’t stupid, I had taken a shawl from my room and used it to cover my head. In the darkness, it could pass for a veil, and it made me less likely to be disturbed by men in their cars.

The night outside was hot and still, as though the world was holding its breath. I set off down the street, clutching the shawl around me. The moon was round and tinged with gold, and the streetlamps were everywhere, burnishing the palm trees with a warmer glow. Bright lights of cars slid by. Of course I had never walked to Anju’s house before, but I knew the way. The only problem was that there were no traffic lights or crosswalks on the streets (nobody ever walked outside, so why have crosswalks?) and I had to wait for a lull in the flow of cars and simply run.

Soon I rounded a corner and saw Anju’s house down another street. Lamps were everywhere, leading the way. Her house was small and square, painted a peeling, almost-white yellow, half hidden beneath the shadow of a frangipani tree. Right outside her window the flowers opened smooth and white and clean. Their smell was like vanilla but sweeter and freer. I brushed my way through clouds of the fragrance and, heart thudding fast, touched the shabby wood of Anju’s window. She’d already opened it for Sangris. I didn’t want to startle her, so I looked inside to the faint glow of her room and whispered, “Anju?”

She was sitting at her desk, brooding over an enormous textbook. That made me smile. She looked up as soon as she heard her name. She jumped when she saw my veiled figure, then her jaw dropped as she recognized me. She glanced at her bedroom door to make sure it was closed. “Frenenqer? How did you get here?”

I lifted myself in through the window. “I walked.”

“That’s dangerous!” she said in admiration.

“Not really,” I said. “It wasn’t far. And even if cars follow you, they usually don’t mean business . . . Believe me, I should know.” I took off my shawl and bundled it up.

Her room was smaller than mine. The walls were painted dark green, making it look still smaller. Most of her stuff had been cleared out, leaving only the bed, a few textbooks on a desk, and a night-lamp. I liked the soft, mellow glow a lot better than the blaze in my bedroom.

“I had to come,” I said, scrambling onto her bed, where she joined me. “This way you won’t have to send Sangris over, see?”

White teeth showed in her grave dark face as she grinned. “You did it, then?”

“Yes.”

Fiddling with my hands, I told her all about it. She sat at the foot of the bed, arms around her knees.

“What does your father do now?”

“Ignores me, mainly. But that’s the same as before.” I glanced at the window again. “When do you think Sangris is coming?”

“Soon,” she said. “I asked him to come in human form this time. I told him it made me uncomfortable to speak to a cat.”

I shook my head at her. “You had this all planned out, didn’t you?”

“I also gave him some of my brother’s old clothes,” she admitted. Anju had an older brother who had moved out long ago. “I’m sure he thought I was a bit weird.”

“He thought correctly,” I said, smiling.

I didn’t want to talk about Sangris anymore. My insides were tight enough already. We chatted for a bit about Anju’s new school in Qatar, but too soon we fell silent. Anju sat at her desk near the window, where the lamp was, and resumed studying. I think it was her way of giving me some space. I was in a darker corner of the room, trying to be calm. The scent of frangipani in her room grew heavier and outside, the crickets serenaded the silence.

When Sangris came, I wasn’t prepared for it.

There was a sound as if wind had gone through the branches of the acacia tree outside, and then a tap on the window frame. Then Sangris slipped into the room, lightly, the way he used to enter mine. A shock of familiarity went through me. He looked just as I remembered, and it might have been yesterday that we had stood in a field of Spanish sunflowers and teased each other. The only change was that he didn’t look as happy as he had looked then. There was no spark in his eyes when he faced Anju. The black hair fell across his forehead and I saw his cheekbone and the straight line of his nose as he turned to look at her. She continued to work at her desk.

“Anju,” he said, and his voice was exactly the same.

At the sound, my heart started to knock at my chest.

“Hello,” Anju said in her steady voice. She closed her textbook reluctantly. “I suppose you want to ask about Frenenqer.”

“Yes,” he said. He became a bit more animated. “How is she?”

“She’s fine,” Anju said in her blandest, most unresponsive manner.

“What about that art project of hers?”

“She’s done. Finished it a few days ago. The new head of administration took it to hang it up in the main office without telling her. She wasn’t very happy about that.”

“I bet not,” he said. “What did she do?”

“She says she’s hatching plans for stealing it back.”

From what I saw of Sangris’s face, it looked like he was beginning to smile. “What else?” he said. There was some of the old tenderness in his voice. “What else is she up to?”

Anju glanced into the corner where I sat. I stared back with sudden panic.
Not yet
. If I had to talk right now I’d choke. She rolled her eyes and returned her attention to Sangris. “I don’t really know. I haven’t gone to school for the last couple of days. I’m done.”

“Oh,” he said, and the room went very quiet again. He drew back, and the light of the lamp splintered in the dark mess of his hair and slid along the hollow area under his eyes. It reminded me of the moonlight on his face, the first time he’d come into my room. But now he looked drained. I’d never thought Sangris could look that drained.

“I can’t thank you enough, Anju. I know I’ve been bugging you. But it makes a big difference to me. When I don’t know what’s going on, I just . . .” He shook his head with impatience at himself. “Now that you’re leaving, I don’t know what I’ll do.”

“You could always try talking to her yourself,” Anju said. She was probably bored of covering for me. I stopped breathing.

But he didn’t even pause to consider it. “You know I can’t do that.” Absently, still gloomy, he reached out to pick up one of the textbooks. “It’s better if she doesn’t have to worry about me. It’s not fair to hang around like some lovesick kid who just can’t let go.”

“Isn’t that pretty much what you’re doing?” Anju said without a visible trace of cruelty. She was probably laughing inside.

Sangris didn’t deny it. “I guess,” he said. “But at least I never go to see her.”

It would have been the perfect time to introduce me, but Anju was having fun now, in her own impassive way.

“Why don’t you?” she said.

“Because . . . that would be creepy.”

“Don’t you think it’s slightly creepy to ask her best friend about her every single week?” Anju said. Oh, she was enjoying herself.

“Probably,” he admitted. Then, quickly: “You’re not going to tell her, are you? You promised.”

“I’m not going to tell her,” Anju agreed, choosing her words carefully.

“Good.” He relaxed. “I know I shouldn’t be here. But . . . it’s harmless. At least it’s from a distance, right?”

She leaned back in the chair. “What would Frenenqer say if she found out?”

Stung, he said, “What I told you. That I’m hanging around like some lovesick little kid.”

“Frenenqer,” Anju said, looking directly at me with her black almond-shaped eyes, “is that what you would say?”

“No,” I whispered.

Sangris dropped the book. He whirled around and saw me. I stared back from my corner, curled up in Anju’s blanket. The darkness beat around us. Anju, ignored, got up from her desk and walked out of the room. She took her textbook with her, picking it up off the floor with a long-suffering air.

Sangris. He was all of my fading memories made solid. It was as if we still stood on the floor of my bedroom while he told me that I smelled of milk and honey, as if we still caught frogs in the hidden wadi of the mountains, as if I had just taken him home from the Animal Souk and cradled him in my arms to warm him. As if I was showing him the guppies swarming between my fingers in Thailand. And this was a new memory too. The faint light and the yellow-hearted frangipani in the night and the little green room that was Anju’s. And Sangris—he stared at me as if he was unsure whether he was hallucinating or not. He didn’t move for a long time.

“Hi,” I said, clutching the edges of Anju’s blanket.

“Nenner?” he croaked.

“Yeah.”

“I—I’m sorry,” he said in confusion. “I didn’t know you’d be here. I’ll just—” He moved toward the window.

“Don’t go,” I said. I dropped the blanket around my knees.

“But—”

“Don’t,” I said earnestly.

He stopped.

His eyes didn’t leave me for a moment. His expression wasn’t so much one of shock now. It was more the way that a man in the desert would look at a mirage. Wary, waiting for it to disappear, but at the same time, caught. “How . . . long were you there?” he said.

“The whole time.”

“You heard . . . ?”

“Yes.”

He flushed. “I didn’t mean for you to hear.”

“I know. Anju told me. She told me all about it. I came here on purpose to see you again.”

He sank down slowly onto the other end of the bed. “I thought you didn’t want me anywhere near you,” he said. His eyes were still fixed on me.

“No,” I said. “I missed you.”

“I missed you more,” he said hoarsely. “Much more.”

Maybe it was true. I had a feeling like all the air in the room was sucking me toward him.

Here I was, sailing on a dark green sea, because Sangris had missed me.

My father was just a father. The sunflowers were just sunflowers. And Sangris and I were sitting on the same bed, in the semi-darkness, with Anju’s blanket strewn thread-like between us.

The white petals of the frangipani flamed outside the window.

“Why did you want to see me?” he said. “Are you all right? Has anything happened?”

“Something happened,” I said dreamily.

Alarm took over his face. He leaned forward. “What? Do you need my help?”

“No,” I said. “I’ve taken care of it.”

His keen face. His slanted yellow eyes. The hair that framed his head in blackness. I found it hard to keep myself calm. I wondered if this was what Sangris felt like every time he looked at me. How did he stand it?

“I can’t believe she told you about me,” he said.

“I wish she’d done it sooner.”

“Really?” he said, uncertainly.

“Yeah.” I swallowed. “I wanted to hear about you too. Tell me how you’ve been.”

He chewed at his mouth. “But I haven’t done much,” he said. “My life’s been a bit incoherent, like before the Animal Souk. I jump around from place to place without any particular reason.”

“Humor me,” I said.

He did as I asked.

“This is the first time I’ve turned human since Heritage.”

“Why?”

He looked at me. I understood.

“And you?” he said.

“My mother cut my hair,” I said, choosing something he already knew.

He hesitated, then said to the embroidered pattern on the blanket: “I think it looks cute.”

“My mom practically cut it with a pair of pliers,” I said. “You’re biased.”

We both smiled, but not at each other. He didn’t see me. He was studying the blanket, twisting it in his fingers. And I was watching his long nervous hands. “No, really,” he said. “It looks like you’re wearing a cap. And it shows your neck.” He stopped suddenly, probably remembering Heritage. I wasn’t sure what I felt, but warmth was a major part of it. He changed the subject hurriedly. “I’ve been going to new countries. I was angry at first, for—you know. In the closet. But then I thought, it’s not your fault if you don’t—you know.” He winced at how awkward it sounded, and rushed on. “So I thought of revisiting the places where we went together, but that was too much. I went to that sunflower field near Santiago, and . . . Um. It was bad. So I’ve stayed away since then.” He stopped himself again. “Sorry,” he said, still not meeting my eyes. “Too much information?”

“No.” I had to tell him. Now.

I drew a frightened breath. Everything was very vivid now. I took in the clumsily built, deep green walls around us. They leaned in, as if they were green hands clasping us together. I took in the night-lamp on the desk and the textbooks in the corner and the closed wooden door. I saw the white flowers gleaming outside like moons caught in the tangled foliage. And Sangris, on the edge of the bed, his head bent as he fingered the blanket. The lamplight directly behind him made him appear dark in contrast, but his eyes were clear, clear yellow, aflame in his face, brighter than anything else in the room. And I was aware of the light sliding along my own arms and down my exposed neck as the hair tumbled short and helpless around my ears. A pain like a high, thin note of music slanted through me, straight through the chest and down, deep inside.