My whole life I’ve done nothing but try to belong. If I couldn’t be Masriya Mina, I’d take American Mina to her extreme. Homecoming queen, dance captain, leader of the Girl Scouts. In preschool, I’d write my name in the sandbox during recess and cry if another kid tried to wipe it away.This is mine,I would cry.You can’t just sweep me away.
I desperately wanted to plant roots in Ward. What’s wrong with Jesse that he’s not remotely interested in doing the same?
“Sit down, Mansour,” is all Jesse says. Mild, despite my insult. He points to the threadbare rocking chair by his window. “Let’s get to business.”
I plop myself into the chair. The eyeliner is still clenched in my fist. I’m keeping it. He doesn’t deserve lusciously lined lashes.
A somberness settles over Jesse. “What I’m about to tell you can’t leave this room. Do you understand?”
A strange, childlike urge to make myself as small as possible has me drawing my knees to my chest. What I want to say isplease don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. I have this terrible feeling I won’t leave this room the same person I was when I walked into it, and I want everything to go back to the way it was. You have so much darkness, crawling in this house and inside you, and if you spread it to me, I’ll never be the Mina Mansour I was.
Instead, what comes out is a tiny, “I understand.”
Jesse searches my face. Whatever he finds seems to satisfy him, and he takes a deep breath before he straightens.
“You aren’t the only one who’s cursed.”
Nadine was the first to find the body.
She stopped just inside the gates, her backpack sliding from her arm to drop at her feet.
The body dangled below the balcony on the second floor, the wind snatching at its abaya and exposing the pale skin of its legs.
Nadine stood alone in the garden for long minutes, watching the hairstylist’s corpse gently sway from the end of the rope. She didn’t scream. She didn’t make a single sound.
Truthfully, Nadine was disappointed. Nobody had been a bigger thorn in Teta’s side than this woman. She’d been after the Haikal family for years, ever since her daughter’s disappearance in 1977. The police hadn’t helped—Teta made sure of that. Every avenue of justice the hairstylist sought had been a dead end. Janna’s disappearance was simply one of many. Without evidence, the paltry investigation withered within a month.
The hairstylist hadn’t quit, of course. She had pestered them continuously. Chased down their household staff, snooped through their garbage, even slept on the bench at the end of their road. Once, Nadine had found her waiting beside the gate, clearly intent on catching Nadine coming back from school. She had grabbed Nadine’s shoulders andsmoothed her calloused hands over Nadine’s finely pressed school uniform. “It’s okay to be scared of your family,” she’d said with the balady accent Teta so disdained. “I won’t let them hurt you if you tell me the truth.”
Nadine had listened with a scared, uncertain expression until the hairstylist finished speaking. Then, she’d allowed her features to slide back into cold neutrality. “What truth do you want to hear? None of them will bring Janna back. Maybe you should focus on making sure your next child is less of a fool.”
The hairstylist had recoiled, staring at Nadine like she’d never seen her before.
A slipper fell from the hairstylist’s rigid right foot, landing in front of Nadine. With a vague curiosity, Nadine wondered what had finally broken the woman’s spirit. After all those years, what was her last straw?
The gate creaked behind Nadine, footsteps squelching over the wet garden path. A head of wavy brown hair covered in butterfly clips appeared by Nadine’s elbow. “Who’s that?” Safa asked, sipping from her Juhayna milk box.
Nadine shook her head, drawing up her backpack. “Tell Mama to ring the sheriff,” she said.
She crossed under the shadow of the hairstylist’s corpse and spared her one final glance. When she lowered her gaze, she found the hairstylist’s face leaning inches away from her.
Nadine’s stomach dropped. Bulging, desperate eyes bored into Nadine’s. The woman’s neck dangled unnaturally, a thick bone protruding against her skin. Rancid breath slipped into Nadine’s nose, souring her mouth.
Nadine had walked into one of the shadows. The imprints of time, as Mama called them.
“The shadow tricked you,” Safa sang behind her. “What do you see?”
A tear trickled from one of the bloodshot, staring eyes. It trailed sideways over the hairstylist’s face.
“Nothing important,” Nadine said, and walked through the shadow.
“You aren’t the only one who’s cursed.”
Rage vibrates in my chest. I fly to my feet.
“Are you making fun of me again?”
“Look, I’m fully aware of how this sounds.” Jesse scrubs a hand across his jaw. “Just hear me out, okay? I listened to you, didn’t I?”
