I relax into the seat, watching them repeat the same patterns we’ve had for years.
Before we cross the border out of Ward, Rainie swings into the gas station. I follow them into the store, my heart beating at double speed when I realize we’re alone with the attendant. Three others in the store should be more than enough, but the curse is getting strong. Less bound by the rules I’ve grown accustomed to. Each minute inside the gas station store passes like an eternity, and I hover by the donuts until Rainie and Lucia finish checking out.
Lucia pulls out the snacks as soon as we return to the car, handing out Corn Nuts and M&M’s like a junk food fairy godmother.
Muttering something about mileage, Rainie reroutes us back onto the highway. Lucia tosses the rest of the snacks on the seat between us and spreads the empty plastic bags over the car’s floor. “To catch the crumbs,” she says.
“You know we’re gonna get lunch while we’re there,” Rainie points out, pausing to snarl at a weaving trucker.
“I like gas station food. Makes me feel like we’re on an adventure,” Lucia says. She smiles apologetically at the same trucker.
The music changes, a slow song filling the car. Lucia sings along to the Italian lyrics, and I catch Aida’s raised brows in the rearview mirror. Equally impressed, I elbow Lucia lightly. “Someone’s been practicing.”
She laughs, but it trails off into a sigh. “My dad has been so weird ever since my nonna died. He and my mom only speak Italian in the house, but he never cared if I responded to them in English. Now, he says it’s like watching our heritage die before his eyes when I struggle to put together a sentence or haven’t heard of some famous poet he grew up reading. The other day, he said each generation after me would lose more and more of their identity as Italians, like a dishrag being wrung out with the next set of children, until the only thing we knew about being Italian is what other people told us.”
Rainie whistles. “Yikes. That isharsh.”
“I get it, though,” she says softly. “I memorize popular songs because it’s the only time I speak Italian without stuttering, and my mom always plays them around the house. I spent twenty minutes arguing with my cousin the other day because I told her Italians like spicy food, and when she asked me where I got that from, I was too embarrassed to say I saw it online. I watch videos and follow the news; Itry. I really do. But at the end of the day, it still feels like I’m trying to crowdsource my own identity. Like I’ll never be able to reach one hundred percent, and my dad will be right.”
“Yeah,” Aida says, her pencil paused over her sketchpad. I wonder if she’s thinking of her mom, who nearly cut contact with Aida’s older sister after she married a guy without “a lick of Ethiopian in him.” Aida’s nieces don’t speak Amharic. It grieves Aida’s mom endlessly. “We understand.”
“My mom literally could not care less,” Rainie says. “She doesn’t listen to me no matter what language I talk to her in.”
Lucia squeezes Rainie’s shoulder.
I wonder, if I look around, how many shadows would be filling this car. How many of them trap these moments of heartbreak, haunting us with fleeting reflections of who we might have been.
Lucia’s dad is right about one thing: It won’t be the same for our kids. We might not be able to pass along all the stories, we might mix up the details of some traditions, but we will pass along a new kind of strength. For better or worse, our children won’t grow up like this, frozen on the threshold between two worlds. They won’t be made to feel like they’re on the outskirts of their own identities, afraid to venture too far into one side and lose sight of the other.
“Do you think we’re the kids our parents imagined we’d be when they were young?” Lucia murmurs.
They won’t ask questions that break your heart, because you know exactly what kind of guilt inspired it.
We aren’t spare parts of an identity or uneven pieces struggling to fit anywhere they’re placed. We will never be fully one or the other, but we can be something third. Something new and special and just as whole as those who came before us.
The song ends. Rainie thumbs a button on the steering wheel, and it starts playing again.
“We’re way better than they could have imagined. You’re co-captain of the varsity soccer team and head of the spirit committee. You bake forfunand don’t suck at it. You’re so freaking sweet, it’s like being friends with a walking root canal.” Rainie takes a bridge too fast, and we collectively lean to the left as she rounds the bend. “You’re a whole person, Lucia. You’re not a fragment or adishrag.” Her tone brooks no argument, and it brings a small smile to Lucia’s face.
“Now, finish serenading us with this depressing-ass song,” Rainie orders.
A green sign signals the end of Ward’s perimeter.THANK YOU FOR STOPPING BY, it declares. Spray painted an inch beneath it, in rebellious black, are the words “DON’T COME AGAIN.”
The baby was due one month from today.
Nadine paced her room, rubbing circles into her protruding belly. They were leaving for California tomorrow. Hatem had booked their tickets, gotten their visas. He’d shown her photos of a tiny house in a town called Ward.
Nadine knew the burst of productivity had as much to do with their new family as it did with losing his other one. Getting disowned by his parents had hit Hatem hard. He wouldn’t let Nadine apologize, told her over and over that “they just don’t know you like I do” and promised they’d come around once they had some time.
The personal distaste of Hatem’s parents meant nothing to Nadine. Her mother and Safa were the real danger. They had no idea what she was planning. No idea they were losing one of the last Haikals capable of feeding the curse.
It was all set. Every loose end tied. So why couldn’t she shake the feeling that she’d miscalculated?
Hatem might have the advanced degree, but nobody strategized like Nadine. For her fiancé, she let herself seem soft and sweet, a small-town girl dreaming of far-flung shores. With time, she hoped to become that woman. The soft Nadine Mansour.
But until then, she was still Nadine Haikal, and she would bet her right arm that something was amiss.
An hour before dawn, the animals began to howl. A flicker above her bed stopped Nadine mid-pace. The air warped, folding open like the spine of a book. A girl took shape, perched on the edge of the bed. She frowned at the window and covered her ears.
