I wave my hand, accidentally knocking over a plastic bottle of strawberry champagne perfume. “I don’t know, some kind of ghost? Demon, maybe?” Our family isn’t religious, but I’ve watched enough horror movies to glean the general gist.
“Right. Look, can you come over here? I think it’s safe to assume your curse doesn’t affect me.”
My cramping calves readily agree with Jesse. My whole body has gone through the ringer, and the thought of flopping on my queen mattress is very, very tempting.
“Have it your way,” Jesse mutters. He maneuvers a hand into his pocket and pulls out a small, black object. With a flick of his wrist, a gleaming blade slides free. A switchblade.
I hurriedly check his eyes, but they’re still a flat, flinty black.
“Use this. If it takes me, do what you gotta do.”
Aghast, I sputter, “I’m not going tostab you!”
“Good. I’m not exactly in the mood to bleed out on a floral bedspread. But it’s there if you need it.”
Emerging from around the dresser, legs shaking like a newborn foal’s, I hop onto the foot of my bed. When I refuse to take the switchblade, Jesse leaves it next to my hand. Up close, the force of his full attention is nearly too intense to bear. I try not to squirm.
“Do you wear sunscreen?” he asks, apropos of nothing.
Um. “Yes?”
“You have a lot of freckles.”
I touch my temple, the freckle point of concentration. “I napped in the sun a lot when I was a kid.” Mama thought it was hilarious. Though she named me after a jasmine flower, she wasn’t expecting I would soak up the sun every chance I could.
“Huh.” Jesse taps the handle of the switchblade. “Tell me what happened over spring break.”
I play with the fringe at the bottom of my bumblebee sweater. A giant wad of apprehension sticks to the roof of my mouth, leaving my tongue flat and boneless. Outside, the storm howls. The paltry rays of sunshine from this morning are long gone. Ward residents will be unplugging all their appliances in case the electricity falters and fries their wirings. Calls will be made to family to check in, jokes exchanged about how this isn’t a Ward Wailer, it’s practically swimming weather!
Tucked away in a two-story house on Eighth Street, I glance at the rain and wonder why standing in a storm seems a thousand times safer than my own bedroom.
“You can’t repeat it to anyone,” I say. I can’t believe I’m about to share my worst mistake with Jesse of all people. But I have to tell him, don’t I? If there’s even a chance he can help? If he knows about the possessions, maybe he knows how to stop them.
Jesse makes a crossing motion over his heart.
“Three weeks ago, I told my dad I was camping with a friend and went to Masr instead.” At his puzzled frown, I clarify. “Masr means Egypt in Arabic.”
Rather than lighten the weight pressed stubbornly over my heart, recounting the tale only lodges it deeper. I force myself to tell Jesse everything: how my parents left Masr when my mother became pregnant, how they never spoke about their parents or their childhoods.
“When people like Mr. Clay look at me, they see Masr. All my life, I was defined by a country I never even knew. Every time I asked Mama or Baba questions about our history, they’d change the subject.” I tug on my fingers one by one. A habit I had developed to replace chewing on the ends of my curls. Before, whenever I would start pulling at my fingertips, Alex would gently take hold of my hand and draw my knuckles to his lips. “Baba hates Mama’s side of the family. I mean, like, seriously despises the whole lot. Mama herself rarely talked about them. I think they’re super rich—the kind of wealth that owns a fourth of the country or something.”
Baba’s bizarre anger to any mention of Mama’s family only spurred my curiosity. Hatem Mansour isn’t a man prone to dramatic fits of emotion. I’ve seen him show less reaction after getting doused by a cup of scalding coffee.
“My mom died when I was nine, during a visit to Masr. Her first visit.” I still remember the day in brutal, painstaking detail. Trying to make a dress out of stained bed linens in the living room while SpongeBob played on the television. Fishing out the pink animal crackers from the bag and hiding the rest under the coffee table. I fancied myself a seamstress, using the measuring tape I found in the garage to snip and fold the linens into a ballgown.
I heard Baba make a sound from the kitchen. I’ll never forget that sound. A hoarse, guttural cry, torn straight from the depths of his soul.I rushed into the kitchen to find him on his knees, forehead pressed to the heels of his hands. He wasn’t crying, wasn’t breathing. He’d gone still as stone, utterly unresponsive to my nervous touch to his shoulder. The phone dangled from the cord, a tinny voice speaking on the other side.
“A car accident in Tanta, they said. Funerals work differently in Masr, so her body was prepared and buried the next day.” In less than twenty-four hours, I went from having a mother and semi-functional family to asking Baba a question three times because he forgot I was in the room.
Jesse’s still listening. I know I shouldn’t, know it’ll only make me seem unhinged, but the words rush out before I can stop them. “The thing is, my mom landed at Borg Alexandria Airport. I just don’t understand how my mother was near Tanta unless she was on her way to Cairo. She doesn’t evenlikeCairo.”
I chance a glance at Jesse. I almost never talk about Mama, even to my friends. The pity rakes poison under my skin, makes me get overly bubbly and cheerful to compensate. Look at me, well-adjusted Mina Mansour. Save your sorries. Save your sympathetic smiles.
But pity isn’t what I find lingering in Jesse’s gaze. He waits for me to continue, a subdued understanding in his silence.
I forget sometimes, that under all the different rumors, is a single truth: Jesse lost his mother, too.
“I begged Baba to let me visit Masr. For years, I wondered about my mother’s death, about the cousins and uncles and aunts I’ve never met. I wanted to walk into a room and not think about how the way I look affects everyone else around me. I wanted to sit at my mom’s grave. I’ve always felt like there were two parts of me, two halves of my soul that have never met. Do you know what it’s like when you can see an entire life you might’ve had stretched out in front of you? A life where—”
