The Other Americans(18)

“He didn’t like L.A. It’s full of crazy drivers.”

“You know what’s ironic, Mom? The 62 is three times as deadly as the average road in California. I didn’t know that until this week. So we could have lived in L.A. or anywhere else and he would have been safer there. And we’d have been away from all those hicks.”

“But he liked the desert. When he was a boy, he used to go to Marrakesh every spring to visit his grandmother. And he loved hiking in Joshua Tree, you know that.”

“Joshua Tree isn’t Yucca Valley.”

“It’s ten miles away.”

“Might as well be a hundred.”

We were already at the East L.A. interchange, negotiating the switch to the 60. It was a little after eleven in the morning and the freeway was clear, with cars whizzing by at speeds that made my mother clutch the handle above the passenger door. In the cup holder, my phone buzzed again with a new message. I picked it up.

“Nora, you’re driving.”

“It’s okay.” I glanced at the screen—it was another text of condolence. I dropped the phone back in its place. Even now, a month after Max had told me he needed to figure out what he wanted to do, my heart still seized whenever I received a text. I wanted so much to hear his voice, hear him say that he loved me, that everything would be all right. And I think, too, a part of me held out some hope that he would choose me over his wife.

“You want me to read the text to you?”

“Sorry? Oh, sure.”

My mother picked up the phone. “It’s from Andrea. I’m sorry I couldn’t be there today, but…How do I get the rest?”

“You need to unlock the phone.”

“Give me the password.”

“It’s okay, I’ll just read it later. We’re getting close now.”

I followed my sister’s car into Rose Hills Memorial, then down perfectly manicured lanes toward the Cedar Crest Lawn section. A row of oak trees sprouting new leaves bordered the parking lot. Beyond it, the lawn sloped into a valley, all of it a deep shade of green, in spite of the drought that had plagued the state for months. “This place is so big,” my mother whispered, looking at the burial grounds that seemed to stretch endlessly around us. Then she put her face in her hands and began to weep. I reached across the seat divider and touched her knee. The strange thing was that I’d always cried easily—watching Little House on the Prairie or listening to Umm Kulthum. Now I had a ball in my throat and my chest hurt, but my eyes were dry. What was happening to me? Why couldn’t I grieve like the rest of my family?

I stayed with my mother until she was ready to step out of the car. Tareq and Salma were already waiting, he in a black suit and she in a blue shirt and an ankle-length skirt. The twins were in the prim clothes they usually wore for school recitals. But from head to toe, my mother was in widow’s white. The color of absence. The color of mourning. We all started down the path toward the gravesite and the sound of our footsteps cut through the vast silence of that part of the cemetery. On the grounds, a gardener stopped pulling weeds to stare at us.

Salma turned to me. “Did you remember to bring a scarf?”

“Yes, of course.” I rummaged through my purse, but couldn’t find it. “I think I left it in the car. I’ll go back.”

She pulled a blue scarf from her own purse.

“You brought an extra one?” I asked.

“Just in case.”

A small group of people was waiting at the gravesite—my aunt and uncle from Culver City, two cousins, some friends of Salma and Tareq’s, and three or four people I didn’t know. A gaping hole in the ground waited, too. Then the coffin arrived, and the imam faced east, cupped his ears with his hands, and called the faithful to prayer. God is great, he chanted. God is great. At these words, my uncle and Tareq gathered with the other men in the front, and I had to stay in the back with my mother, my sister, and all the other women.

In the name of God, most Compassionate, most Merciful, the imam began. His voice was a beautiful baritone, but as he recited the Fatiha it rose to nearly an F, a greenish blue. The ritual words, once as familiar to me as a lullaby, did not come easily—the last time I had gone to prayers was for Eid services when I was sixteen years old. The outing had ended with another argument between my parents, in the car on the way back.

The sight of a cleric in robes praying over him would not have moved my father. But he would have liked Rose Hills, I decided. There were willow trees everywhere, the air was brisk and clear, and beneath my feet the ground felt soft. Bluebirds chased one another across the lawn. It was a good place to rest for a while. The voice of the imam brought me back to the present moment: he chanted a prayer for the Prophet, a prayer for the dead, and a prayer for the living.

Then the coffin was lowered into the grave, and my father was gone.





Driss




This is what happened. Eid fell in mid-December that year, and Maryam wanted the whole family to go to the mosque in Riverside for morning services. Take the girls if you want, I said, but why would I go? I’m an atheist. She doesn’t like it when I use that word, especially when her brother visits us from Los Angeles, but it’s the truth. Sometimes, I hear her apologizing to him in the driveway, telling him that I don’t mean it, that I just say these things to get a rise out of him. But of course I mean it. I don’t pretend to be someone I’m not. And yet I agreed to go that day, because Maryam insisted, and Salma was home from college for winter break, and I wanted to keep everyone happy.