“You can tell me, you know. I’m your mother.”
I shake my head. It’s the only action I can bring myself to take.
She studies me, searching for the lie. I know what she’ll say next. We’ve had some version of this conversation a million times. Judging by the sweater, this one is from my last day in the fourth grade, when I’d come home with a bloody nose and a teacher’s note.
“Yasmina, you are not weak.” Her voice hardens, something cold and distant flashing over her features. “I did not bring you here to be weak. If someone hurts you, you hurt them back.”
A distant thud draws my attention from Mama for a second. I glance at the roof, brows furrowing.
When I glance back down, her face leans inches from mine.
“What kind of home is this if you can’t even fight back?” she demands. Her breath wafts across my cheeks. “If I can’t protect you here, then what was the point of any of it?”
My fourth-grade self hadn’t had a clue what she was talking about, and my teenage self isn’t faring much better.
I force myself to hold her gaze. My lips tremble as I part them, my teeth struggling to unclench.
“You. Aren’t. Real.”
A fissure cracks Mama’s skull open like a chisel taken to a statue.
“My mother is dead,” I hiss.
Another crack, this time down her throat and across her chest. The tears spilling down her cheeks fall faster, a fountain without end. She wipes them away. When she lowers her hands, empty eye sockets stare back at me.
The metal door rattles. The sliding pieces of my mother’s face rearrange into a gruesome grin.
“How did I die, Mina?” She bounces on her knees, pieces of her breaking off like glass and falling onto my bedspread. Blood pours through the cracks, winding through her in rivulets of red. Her voice deepens with each repetition, becoming an inhuman snarl. “How did I die? How did I die?”
“I don’t—I don’t know!” I scramble off the bed, clipping my elbow against the dresser. On the bed, her silhouette ripples and tugs.
“Liar!” she howls. The sound scrapes through me, knives hacking into my skull.
The shriek of hinges finally snaps me from the last of my shock, and I scream. I scream until it feels like my insides liquefy, rising like molten lava seconds from an eruption.
A cold hand closes over my mouth.
“Mansour!” Jesse growls. Rain dampens his hair, clinging to his cheekbones. Dark eyes roam over my petrified features. “Hey, hey, look at me! You’ve gotta calm down. Your dad—oh, crap.”
Heavy footsteps thunder down the hall, headed straight for my room. “Mina!” Baba calls. “Are you okay? What’s wrong?”
I push Jesse off and roll to my knees, crawling to the door just in time for Baba to twist the handle. The lock I installed strains, the metal bar bending as Baba pushes against it. “Yasmina!” he bellows. I can’t remember the last time I heard him shout. “When did you get a lock? Open this door!”
I drag myself to my feet and rest my forehead against the door. “Nothing’s wrong, Baba. I just had a bad dream. I’m so sorry to have woken you.”
The lock strains again as Baba pushes open a tiny gap between the door and the frame. “You don’t sound right. Let me in.”
From the corner, I spot Jesse pushing the metal door shut. Is that how he came inside? Is he determined to slip off my roof and break his neck?
The door thuds, the gap widening as the lock struggles not to snap. “Mina,” Baba snarls, and it hits me with the force of a truck.
For the second time tonight, my heart stops.
The fetid odor of rot and sewage slips through the gap in the door, curling into my nose.
“Mina, Mina, Yasmina,” Baba sings, and bile surges into my throat. It has him.
And itcan talk.
