“Visiting my family,” I said. “My grandfather has a brain tumor.”
Customs Officer II nodded and wrote something down. He didn’t look particularly sorry about my grandfather’s brain tumor.
There was a dark window behind his seat—one of those windows that you can see through from only one direction.
I didn’t get why they were called two-way mirrors when they were really one-way windows.
“How long are you here for?”
“Um. Leaving April third.”
“You have your papers? Airline tickets?”
I swallowed. “My dad has everything.”
“Where is your father?”
“Outside.” I hoped.
I assumed Mom had stopped him, but it would not be the first time Stephen Kellner had accidentally left me behind.
Mom still liked to tell the story of my first real trip to the grocery store. Apparently I managed to climb out of the shopping cart on my own and start wandering the aisles, and Daddidn’t realize I wasn’t sitting in the cart until he reached the cash register.
I scratched my ear. Customs Officer II was still writing. I couldn’t read Farsi at all, not even food words, but it made me nervous.
There were four lights.
“What is in your bag?”
I was so nervous, I dropped it.
“Sorry. Um. It’s my homework. For school. And a book. And my medicine.”
He opened and closed his hand, gesturing for me to hand it over. I picked the messenger bag off the floor and passed it to him. He dug through it, pulling out my school papers andThe Lord of the Rings.
He thumbed throughThe Lord of the Ringsfor a minute and then tossed it aside, digging deeper until he pulled out my little orange child-proof medicine bottle.
“You have prescription?”
I nodded. “Yeah. Um. At home. It’s written on the bottle.”
“What is this for?”
“Depression.”
“That’s all it’s for? What are you depressed about?”
My ears burned. I glanced up at the four lights and hoped I wasn’t going to be chained to the ceiling and stripped naked.
I hated that question:What are you depressed about?Because the answer wasnothing.
I had nothing to be depressed about. Nothing really bad had ever happened to me.
I felt so inadequate.
Dad told me I couldn’t help my brain chemistry any more than I could help having brown eyes. Dr. Howell always told me not to be ashamed.
But moments like this made it hard not to be.
