My sister never kept her door closed, not even at night. She always left it cracked open.
But when I went to see her, the door was all the way shut.
I guess I always knew there would be a point where she closed a door between us. When she would grow too tall for me to carry piggyback, or for Mom and Dad to tuck in at night.
I knocked, but there was no answer.
“Laleh? It’s me. Can I come in?”
“I guess,” she murmured.
I opened her door and poked my head into her room. The only light came from the night-light on her bedside table—this weird carousel-looking thing that played creepy tinkling music when you cranked a knob on it.
Laleh never used that feature, except on Halloween, when she would play the music and I would pretend to be terrified of it, and she would shriek with laughter at the way I cringed and flailed and hid under her blankets.
Laleh was already in bed, the lump of her facing away from me, toward the lamp.
I sat on the edge of her bed, and then kind of laughed at myself, because Mom and Dad always did that.
Standard Parental Maneuver Alpha.
“Don’t laugh at me,” Laleh mumbled.
“I’m not. Mom and Dad always sit like this when they come talk to me.”
Laleh didn’t say anything.
“You wanna tell me what happened?”
Nothing.
“Did I ever tell you about the time I got in trouble for hitting someone?”
At that, Laleh turned over, leaving her book open behind her. “You hit someone?”
“This guy named Vance Henderson.” I scrunched up my nose. “He always made fun of me, which was bad enough. But one time he started making fun of Mom. Her accent.”
Laleh scrunched up her face too.
“I know. So I gave him a kotak.”
Laleh giggled. “Kotak mekhai? Ba posta das?”
While we were in Iran, one of our cousins taught Laleh that phrase. It means “Do you want a slap? With the back of my hand?”
For months after we got home, she kept saying it to peoplewhenever they annoyed her. And after a while she started saying it whenever she wanted to be funny. And then eventually her use kind of petered out.
But I liked that the memory of it could still make my sister smile.
“Technically I hit him with my palm. But still.”
Laleh giggled.
“Will you tell me what happened? I promise not to judge. Or get mad.”
Laleh looked at her hands for a moment, and then her shoulders loosened up a bit.
“I didn’t hit anyone,” she said. “Not even a kotak.”
