A Girl Like That(67)
I paused for a moment. There was silence in the room. Not a dead one, but a living one, the collective breath of the audience filling the space.
“When people say you’re wrong so many times over so many years, when they call you a bad person, you begin to believe them. You begin to hide out of the fear that if you show your face again—to anyone—you will be judged. Sometimes, it gets so bad that you begin to wonder if life is worth living.”
I forced myself to smile, hoping no one could see the tremor that had passed through me. “But then you realize—who are these people anyway, who make you feel ashamed of yourself? Do they even matter? Do you even care what they think or say about you behind your back? You didn’t before. My name is Zarin Wadia and I am sixteen years old. I am a student at Qala Academy and my favorite subject is English. I do not know what the future holds for me. But today, I’m going to start living in the present again. As of today, I will come out of hiding and go back to being the person you know so well and hate.”
The silence continued for a long moment. Long after Khan Madam thanked me in a flustered voice, long after I walked back to my seat. I could feel Mishal staring at me, but I did not look at her. After the period ended and Khan Madam exited the room, a flurry of voices broke out, loud and clear, no longer concerned about whether I could hear them or not.
“No remorse in that girl,” someone cried out. “No remorse whatsoever. Any other girl would have been reduced to tears. But she? She has no conscience.”
“What does she think?” someone else said. “That she’ll scare us into silence with some vague mumbo jumbo? Come on. Everyone knows about her sneaking off with Rizvi earlier last month!”
“Layla, didn’t you…”
I did not know when I actually stood up, or how I managed to leave the classroom without running into any teacher. Moments later, I found myself locked in a stall at the very end of the girls’ bathroom, my head sinking into my hands.
What had I been thinking? That my speech would actually change something? That being defiant and angry would win me respect when, in actuality, everyone wanted me to cower and burst into tears?
To live in this world, you needed to follow a certain set of rules and behave in ways society deemed appropriate. My mother did not, of course. Neither did my father. I had spent most of my life seeing Masi trying to compensate for their actions by controlling her own and Masa’s, by controlling me. And now, in this stall, I finally began to understand why.
I folded my knees to my chest, my heels resting against the edge of the closed toilet seat. It would be easy enough to stay here, I decided. To remain locked up for the rest of the day. No one would come looking for me anyway. No one cared. Except maybe Porus.
Moments later, though, the bathroom door slammed open, followed by the harsh voice of a girl bursting into the space outside my stall: “… that awful Verghese Madam! Who does she think she is?”
“Shhh,” another voice said. “Do you want someone to hear you?”
“Who cares?” the first girl said. “Everyone knows how mean she is. But forget that, did you hear about Zarin Wadia? My cousin Layla told me she had another tantrum today. A couple of days ago I heard her crying in the bathroom down the—oh my God, what’s that smell?”
My heart hammered. Her words jarred my senses, and for the first time, I registered the dank odor of the bathroom, the stench of urine rising from the stall next to mine, the sweat drenching the front of my uniform.
I remembered the look Masa had given me outside the clinic, right after Masi had had her episode. It was the sort of look he had once reserved solely for my aunt on her bad days—a mix of fear and anger, mingled with disgust.
I could no longer blame him for it. I was disgusted with myself. Disgusted by how quickly I’d come undone, how easily I’d let their words affect me. I was doing exactly what I’d said I wouldn’t do in my speech that morning. Going into hiding. Cowering like an animal in a stinking public lavatory because of some dumb Facebook posts and e-mails, because a bunch of girls were saying crappy things about me.
Five minutes later, when I stepped out of the stall, the bathroom was empty. My hands were shaking so badly that I was tempted to race back and lock myself in the cubicle again.
No, I told myself firmly. No. I would not go back into hiding.
I opened the door and forced myself to step outside.
Porus
“What are you doing here?” My boss, Hamza, eyed the bruise on my jaw, my broken nose held in place with a white splint and bandage. “I thought I told you to go home and relax after the break-in.”
His hard gaze told me otherwise. It told me that he knew the break-in at the deli was not a break-in, but a targeted attack on me. An eye for an eye. A nose for a nose. There was no point in proving that Rizvi had been the one behind the attack, even though I’d recognized his voice, even though he’d uncovered his face after kicking mine in.
I was well aware of how precarious my position was in this country. A non-Muslim Indian boy who’d made a false birth certificate for a legal work permit. If the authorities discovered that I’d falsified my documents, I would be deported before I could say ma’salaama.
Two new security guards now stood by the door of the deli, one with a gun in his belt. I half expected Hamza to call them over and march me to the nearest police station.