A Girl Like That(20)
I emptied my bag. Books fell out onto the bedspread, along with a few pencil shavings and a folded piece of paper. I unfolded it again and stared at it. The result of the Class IX aptitude test had come the week before, hours before Mother had one of her fights with Father over the phone and locked herself in her room.
The test suggested that I had a good grasp of body language and human interactions. Psychology or counseling was one of the recommended career paths—one that instantly made me the butt of an Abdullah joke. “You?” Abdullah had said with a laugh. “A psychologist? Those poor, poor patients!”
I leaned out my bedroom window now, the way I sometimes did when left alone, bending my waist as far as my upper body would go without losing my balance and somersaulting two stories down onto the paved driveway, where the cars were parked.
Normally I would have been watching the sky. I always loved watching the sunsets in Jeddah. Sometimes the sky turned orange or pink or violet and soaked everything—the iron gates and white outer walls of our villa, the potted palms at the entrance, the driveway—in a single pastel shade. It was like seeing the world through different-colored lenses, depending on the day.
Years before, when the weather wasn’t too hot or humid, my parents, Abdullah, and I had spent hours in our small garden. While my parents talked over pitchers of nonalcoholic Saudi champagne made with oranges, apples, and mint or rose-flavored Rooh Afza, Abdullah and I often sneaked away to the back, where the gardener kept his ladder, and climbed up to peek at the world outside the villa’s walls. We both stood there, precariously balanced, Abdullah always one rung below me, and pointed out familiar sights to each other. The tall minaret of the masjid we went to every Friday with Father and Mother. The brightly painted walls of Al-Fajr Elementary School. The Indian and Somali construction workers on the steps of the building next to it, their hard hats and blue coveralls coated with dust, cigarettes glowing between their fingertips. Back then, I did not know that once Father left, our visits to the masjid as a family would stop as well. I did not know that Al-Fajr Elementary would reject Abdullah’s school application, sending my father into a rage.
“Qala Academy?” He had bristled at Mother’s suggestion. “That school for Indians?”
Mother had said Father did not mean to be that insensitive. “It’s family pressure and disapproval. It can take a toll on him, you know,” she had told us both.
Going down memory lane added to the storm broiling inside me. To distract myself, I examined the cars parked in the driveway. Abdullah’s GMC was there, of course, along with a shiny black car I’d seen there once before. I squinted my eyes against the setting sun, trying to make out the logo on the car’s hood.
The owner of the black car was a friend of Abdullah’s, I knew. A boy slightly taller than my brother, with black hair and hazel eyes. A month earlier, he had been standing outside next to his car, smoking a cigarette. He had looked up. I’d sprung back like a jack-in-the-box, guilty by instinct, even though I was sure he hadn’t seen me.
This evening when I looked out, no one was there. I was leaning out even farther, testing the limits of my balance, when a knock sounded on the door. My fingers tightened on the sill and as I fumbled back inside, I grazed my arm on a sharp metal edge. I winced—a cut had appeared on my skin, a thin line interspersed with dark, blooming beads of red.
“What?” I wanted to yell. It was probably Mother or Abdullah wanting something or another. But for some reason, my mind warned me to keep my mouth shut, and my mouth obeyed. I slipped out of the pink sequined slippers I usually wore indoors and quietly made my way to the door.
Another knock, this time louder. “Hell-lloo? Anyone home?”
A male voice, low and deep. One of my brother’s friends. The voice made me uncomfortable. I moved closer and, without really thinking, clicked the lock in place. Beyond the door, a laugh and then more—there could have been three, maybe four of them there.
“Come on, little girl,” the boy said again, and I suddenly knew it was him. The boy who owned the black car. “We’re all friends here.”
He hammered the door now; it shook within the frame. I caught hold of the badminton racket lying on the floor next to me and held it close. My left eye twitched. Blood pulsed at the bases of my ears.
“Rizvi!” a sharp voice said. My brother’s.
I let out the breath I had been holding.
“I’m fooling around, ya Aboody.” The boy used the nickname Father used for Abdullah, his voice clearer now, less deep. “We meant no harm.”
“I told you not to come up here.” Abdullah’s voice tightened my insides more than Rizvi’s had. “I told you that my mom is sick and that my sister is studying for exams.”
“Come on, man, you’re acting like—”
“GO!” Abdullah shouted.
There was a pause for a moment and then Rizvi laughed again. “Okay, man. Your house, your sister, your rules!”
I slid down to the floor and pressed my ear against the door, listening to the squeak of a sneaker on the tiled corridor outside and then footfalls on the carpeted stairs, retreating to the living room once more.
Another knock on the door, hesitant this time. “Mishal?” Abdullah said. “Mishal, are you okay? They were kidding—they didn’t mean anything, okay? It was—I’m sorry, Mishal. I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again.”