The Big Kahuna (Fox and O'Hare #6)(63)

I kicked off the black pumps and tried on the tan sandals. They were comfortable, and would be perfect for summer. “I’m getting these,” I said.

We drove back from Palm Desert in silence. Whatever lightness the day held had been dimmed by our argument; I couldn’t wait to be alone again. I dropped my mother off at the house and with a quick goodbye wave headed back onto the highway. It was the middle of the afternoon now and the sidewalks were empty, but passing the party supply store where my father had bought me a pi?ata for my eighth birthday, I felt his absence anew. At the Stater Brothers, where I stopped for milk, the smell of his aftershave on a random customer nearly brought me to tears. Even when I walked into the cabin, the memory came back to me of a hike we had taken to Willow Hole together. I missed him.





Salma




The first thing you see when you wake up is the Pan Am bag hanging from your mother’s shoulder. It is blue and white and has a hole in one corner. You’re in your father’s arms, still groggy with sleep, and as he carries you off the plane, you ask, “Is this where I go to school?” School is all you’ve been talking about for weeks, the carrot your parents dangled to get you to leave home. All you had to do was take the plane, they said, school would be at the other end. “Yes, here,” your father says, but distractedly. At the gate, your uncle is waiting. He hoists you up, kisses you, rubs his unshaved chin against your cheek. He smells like cigarettes, and he laughs easily, like your father. Yet not like your father at all.

Your uncle and his wife live in Culver City. They have a foldout couch, a backyard with a lemon tree and a swing set, and two boys who pinch you when no one is looking. On their days off, the adults cook elaborate meals, drink mint tea, and talk for hours about the king and Ronald Reagan. They make the king sound like he’s in the next room, and Reagan like he’s in another house. The children are supposed to play outside, but most of the time you have no idea what your cousins are saying, so you mimic the way they walk, the way they laugh, and finally the way they talk. They dress you up in costumes and parade you around the yard. You become a perfect little ape.

In the spring, you move with your parents to a small town in the Mojave, where they buy a donut shop. The sun and the wind are impossible to escape. Within days, your skin burns, your lips chap, your hair grows two shades lighter. You ask about school again. “Maybe next year,” your father says, casually. “Right now, you’re too young.” Betrayal is still new to you, and hard to swallow. Leafing through the realtor magazines from the dispenser outside the shop, you pretend to read. Eventually you learn to recognize the letters that go with the pictures: h-o-m-e. You ask for more magazines. Your mother gets a library card, checks out five books at a time, and sticks you in a corner with them. She has a shop to run, trays to wash, floors to clean, and no time to play. But at night, when everything is quiet, she sings you lullabies in Arabic and lets you fall asleep with your head in her lap. You press your face against her belly, amazed at how warm it must have been inside. If only you could go back in there. One weekend, your uncle and his family come for a visit. When your cousins try to pinch you, you bite them.

The day finally arrives: you start school at Yucca Mesa Elementary. You already know your alphabet and raise your hand and answer correctly every time Mrs. Hamilton calls on you. You are not an ape anymore. Now you are a circus seal. In your repertoire, there are many tricks: you sing “I’m a Little Teacup”; you spell girl and home and want; you get an A on your first test. Your mother starts taking you everywhere with her. You say words like semolina and delicatessen without stumbling, ask where the zucchini is without giggling. You take after the Amazigh side of the family and every spring your hair grows lighter. Grocery-store clerks ask if you’d like a sticker, young lady. Bank clerks ask if you’re excited about the Easter egg hunt. It will be years before you encounter the word passing.

Then all of a sudden, there is a crib in your parents’ room, a stroller in the hallway, a yellow activity mat you’re not allowed to touch. Your father coos over the new baby like she’s something special, even though she can’t add two and two, or tell the time, or win Scariest Pumpkin at the first-grade Halloween festival. She has dark skin and chubby legs and big eyes that seem to track you everywhere you go. When no one is looking, you pinch her. She cries inconsolably. Your mother wonders aloud what is wrong with that child.

You still speak Arabic, but you no longer dream in it.

You grow to be tall, almost six feet by the time you’re in the ninth grade. You play volleyball, compete in the science fair, collect box tops for the school’s fundraiser, correctly guess the number of jelly beans in the jar. You’re never late, never sick, never rude. All your friends’ parents love you. “Such a sensible girl,” they say. One afternoon, while your family is at the neighbors’ pool party, you run off with the other girls to try on makeup, and leave your sister behind. She falls into the deep end of the pool and nearly drowns. In that moment, you realize you’re not a sensible girl, and immediately hide this fact from everyone.

The summer you turn twenty, while you’re home from college, the king dies. His funeral is broadcast live on CNN and your parents watch in disbelief, as if they need proof that it really is happening. Two million people line up on the streets of the capital, hoping to catch a glimpse of the velvet-draped coffin as it makes its way from the royal palace to the mausoleum. Your father yells at the television: “Did you forget what he did?” Your mother shushes him and raises the volume on the set. Bill Clinton and Jacques Chirac are in attendance. So are Hosni Mubarak and Rifaat al-Assad. One by one, they praise the deceased monarch, call him a man of peace, a champion of tolerance. “Well,” your father says, in a small voice, “I guess I can go visit my mother now.”