The Other Americans(26)
After our friend Brahim was arrested, I told Driss we should move to California, but he disagreed with me. He was still in thrall to his Marxist ideas, and couldn’t see how foolish he was, placing his future in the hands of others. I am not proud of what I did next, though I had no other choice, how else was I going to convince him that he was putting his family at grave risk and that we needed to leave right away? When he came home from work the next day, I met him at the door. “The moqaddam was here,” I said, wiping my hands on my apron.
“What did he want?”
“He said there had been a car break-in down the street, so we should be careful where we park the Renault at night, but after I thanked him and was about to close the door, he started asking me questions about you. How you were doing these days, whether you took your exams, what your plans were.”
“Exams were canceled, he must know that,” Driss said with a frown. He pulled a cigarette from his packet of Casa Sport and peered at me anxiously. “You think he wants to report me?”
“Why else would he come here, asking all these questions?”
Driss walked past me to the balcony, where he sat smoking and thinking until the muezzin called the evening prayer, the streetlights turned on, and the neighbors began telling their children that it was time to come home.
All I ever wanted was to keep my family together. And we were, for several years after we came to this country, because Driss and I spent eighteen hours a day together, working at the donut shop, and as a result we grew very close, there were many moments when we could read each other’s mind or finish each other’s sentences. At night, we would tell Salma stories until she went to sleep, then we’d practice phrases from our English book, call my brother on the phone, compose letters to my sisters, gossip about our customers. But when I got pregnant with Nora, I was diagnosed with preeclampsia, probably caused by my blood pressure, which unfortunately is very high, Driss used to say it’s because I eat too much salt, but of course it’s also genetic, my mother suffered from it, too. The doctor ordered bed rest for the remainder of my pregnancy, imagine, no housework, no walking, not even to take Salma to school, no exercise of any kind.
I can still recall how long and lonely those six months were, being confined to my room all day, almost like being in a prison cell, especially because I am an active person, I enjoy doing things, not lying in bed, knitting or sleeping. I couldn’t even watch my afternoon talk shows because I had flashing lights in my vision, and the television made them worse. Every night, I waited for my husband to come home. “Talk to me, Driss,” I would say. “How was your day?”
But all he wanted to do after a long day at work, followed by cooking and cleaning at home, was to have some rest himself. Night after night, he would sit in his armchair, close his eyes, and say, “I’m too tired to talk.”
After I gave birth, I expected things would go back to the way they were before, but Nora cried all the time, and it wasn’t for the usual reasons, she didn’t have colic, she wasn’t hungry, her diaper wasn’t dirty. She could be in her crib, sleeping or playing, and suddenly she would start wailing, I could never figure out what was wrong with her. Eventually, I gave up working at the shop. I’m not saying I regret staying at home, how could I, my daughters are the light of my life, it’s just that I thought after all these sacrifices, at least my family would be close, but it surprised me to discover that my daughters lived in their own worlds.
Maybe it was their age difference. By the time Nora was old enough to play with dolls and toy trucks, Salma had already moved on to Clue and Monopoly. Or maybe it was their personalities. Nora loved to listen to music alone in her room, but Salma was always with her friends from the volleyball team. They didn’t even look like sisters, because Salma has light skin, like her father, and Nora is dark like me. As the years passed, I spent most of my time alone, while my husband was at work, one daughter at practice, the other with her music. We were like a thrift-store tea set, there was always one piece missing.
After Driss died, Nora came back home, which was a comfort to me, because I couldn’t stand being alone in the house, and I let her take care of all the small things, like mailing out payments to the mortuary, going to the dry cleaners to pick up a suit her father had dropped off a week before the accident, driving his car home from the street where he had parked it. In between all these errands, she would go into the master bedroom, run her fingers on the bristles of her father’s hairbrush, open the closet and smell the sleeves of his jackets, or take one off its hanger and wrap herself in it. That was how I found her the day before the school play, sitting on the bed, wearing her father’s suit jacket, staring at her feet. “Nora,” I said, but she didn’t hear me, I had to touch her shoulder before she noticed me standing there beside her.
She looked lost, and in a way, she was lost. She always had her head in the clouds, that one, and I think this was why her father left her a bit of money, to help her make a fresh start, maybe choose a better career this time, though of course the money only upset her sister, and caused them to have this terrible argument in the school cafeteria. I could hardly pay attention to the play that night, my heart was aching from hearing my daughters fight, like strangers rather than sisters, and I slowly let myself sink into the fog again, that hazy place where Driss and I were still young, still together, still a family.