Let’s talk to him first, she said.
My father went purple.
Talk to him? Talk to him? I don’t need to talk to him.You think I don’t know? You think I don’t know? He thinks I’m an idiot, that he can hide things from me, that I don’t know what he smells like every day, what his eyes look like? Everyone thinks I’m stupid, that I don’t know what’s going on? Talk to him? Talk to him about what?
My brother hadn’t been home all day.
My parents were still waiting for him to get back, waiting to ambush him. I’d let him know, of course. I’d texted him. Told him what happened.
I’m so sorry, I’d written.
I’m so sorry
I didn’t know
Baba had to go to work
I didn’t know
I’m so sorry
I’m so, so so so sorry
Mehdi, I’m so sorry
It’s okay, he’d written back.
It’s not your fault.
I’d stared at that message a thousand times, pressed the screen to my throat on desperate nights. I could never have known how things would escalate. Could never have anticipated the proceeding argument, the explosive screaming match that met my brother’s reluctant arrival back home.
It was late.
I remember, when my dad threw open the front door, that the crickets would not quiet. Streetlamps were bright and blurry, streaking the sky in the distance, cold air piercing everything. I remember, when my father told him to get out, Mehdi did not hesitate. My mother screamed. My brother shoved on his shoes, his face grim with determination, and though my mother begged him to be reasonable, begged him to come back inside, Mehdi did not hear her. He wasn’t looking at my mother. He was looking at my father, my prideful father who did not seem to understand that he and his son suffered from the same affliction, that my brother would not break.
Mehdi left.
My mother chased her firstborn child into the dark, chased him barefoot down the driveway. My mother, for whom propriety and privacy meant a great deal, ran through our neighborhood screaming his name. If Mehdi was the sea, my father was an immovable object, human stone standing in the living room, unwilling to be eroded.
I retreated to the stairs, sat on the narrow, carpeted step with my arms wrapped around my shins, cried with my head buried in my lap.
Mehdi was killed, not ten minutes later, by a drunk driver.
I came back to my body with a sudden gasp of awareness, startling at the cold drip. Tentative raindrops tested out the sky, the trees, the slope of my nose, made way for the others. It wasn’t much, just a drizzle. Still I shivered, violently.
I didn’t know where I’d left my phone.
I had no intention of actually looking for it; I just wanted an excuse to walk, clear my head, think in peace—and I hoped that themehmoonitaking place at my house would be diverting enough to buy me some time. My feet walked a familiar pattern, a pattern my feet knew but my mind could not remember. I stared occasionally at the sky, searching for the moon.
It was true, I thought. I did want my father to die.
My heart sagged a little more in my chest.
I realized, when I was suddenly blinded by a dot diagram of lights, that I’d walked into a local park. I’d been to thispark a hundred times with Zahra, the two of us pretending to be children, sitting on swings and climbing backward up the slide. We sat in the sand and discussed school and boys and minor social dramas that held critical importance in our lives. We’d spent days here. Weekends. Untold hours of my life, gone up in flames.
My friendship with Zahra had long been imperfect.
She’d been cruel to me in a thousand small ways for years, had proven herself a fickle, disloyal friend many times over. I should’ve been the one to walk away, should’ve done it long ago. But she’d been one of the few solid things in my life, and I hadn’t been ready to let go. I clung with the tips of my fingers to the fast-crumbling cliff of our friendship, and when she finally kicked me down, into the chasm, I experienced a strange, disorienting relief.
