I saw the marks on her shins, the cuts that scored the skin but had not yet split. She was not bleeding.
“Maman,” I breathed.
When she looked up, she looked no older than me. Terrified, shame-faced. Alone. Tears had stained her cheeks, her clothes.
“I couldn’t do it,” she said in Farsi, her voice breaking. “I didn’t do it. I couldn’t do it.”
I dropped to my knees in front of her. Took her hand. Pried the cuticle scissors from her fingers, tossed them aside.
“I kept thinking of you, and your sister,” she was saying, tears falling fast down her face. “I couldn’t do it.”
I lifted her up, braced her head against my chest as she shattered in my arms. Her cries were desperate, ragged, gut-wrenching sobs. She clung to me like a child, wept like a baby.
“It’s going to be okay,” I whispered. “You’re going to be okay.”
I felt, but did not hear, a soundless movement. I turned my head carefully, slowly so my mother wouldn’t notice. Shayda was standing in the broken doorway, staring at the scene in a state of paralyzing disbelief. I felt true love for her in that moment, felt our souls solder together, knew our lives would be forever forged by a similar pain.
We locked eyes.
She covered her mouth with her hands, shook her head. She was gone before her tears made a sound.
My mother went to work an hour later. Shayda and I went to our respective schools. For all the world we were your garden variety of incomprehensible Muslim, one-note and easily caricatured. We articulated limbs, moved our lips to make sounds, smiled at customers, said hello to teachers.
The world continued to spin, taking with it, my mind.
I felt true delirium as I moved, exhaustion unlike any I’d ever known. I couldn’t even fathom how I was still upright; I felt like I was hearing everything from far away, felt like mybody was not my own. My mind had the processing speed of molasses, my eyes blurring constantly. I needed to find a way to focus, needed to remember how to pay attention. I had failed, once again, to complete any of the homework due today, and I felt shame as I watched other students turn in their essays and worksheets, raise their hands to answer questions in clear and focused sentences. This month was suddenly more critical than ever and I was drowning, drowning when I needed, desperately, to keep my head above water.
As long as my father stayed alive, I planned on going away to college. I didn’t want to stay here, spend two years at the community college, transfer eventually. I wanted to leave as soon as possible. I wanted to leave and maybe never, ever come back. And I wanted to get into a good school.
I nearly screamed at the sound of a gunshot.
I sat up suddenly, hyperventilating, heart racing in my chest. I heard a roar of laughter, looked up, looked around, realized I’d fallen asleep. My seat was in the far right corner of this class, but it was in the first row, and my AP Chemistry teacher, Mr. Mathis, was standing in front of my desk now, arms crossed, shaking his head. At his feet was a massive textbook—a textbook, I realized, he’d dropped on purpose.
It was a cruel joke.
I felt my face flush, heat jolting through my body. People were still laughing. I sat up in my seat, kept my eyes on my desk. I wanted to turn my skin inside out.
“I’m sorry,” I said quietly.
“You want to stay out late? That’s not my problem,” Mr. Mathis said sharply. “Get your sleep at home. Not in my class.”
“Of course. I’m sorry.”
He shot me a dark look. Carried on with his lecture. I spent the rest of the period staring at the textbook at my feet, feeling as though all the blood had drained from my body, pooled onto the floor.
My father was not coming home today.
He was not dying just yet, but he was also not coming home today, and that was all I really understood at the moment. My mom hadn’t talked much, hadn’t explained more than was absolutely necessary, and flatly refused my suggestion that she go to a support group for grieving parents. She’d audibly gasped when I proposed she see a therapist. She’d looked so outraged I actually panicked; I thought for a moment she might never speak to me again. But then she ate the eggs I made her for breakfast.
Something had changed between us that morning, and I still didn’t know what it was, had not yet figured out how to define it. But I could tell, just by looking into her eyes, that my mother had unclenched an iota. She seemed relieved—relieved, perhaps, to no longer be living with such a crushing secret.
“I’ll be okay,” she kept saying. “I’ll be fine.”
I did not believe her.
I spent my lunch period sleeping at a table in the library, head bowed over my folded arms. I felt like I’d only just closed myeyes when someone shook my shoulder, rattled my skeleton back to life. I awoke suddenly, my nerves fraying in an instant.
When I looked up, I saw a blur of color. Eyes. Mouth.
