It was supposed to behers.
But these tears are different. They’re a heaviness disappearing, rain falling from congealed clouds that part. These tears are healing.
I sniff, blow my nose into a tissue, and gather my hair together before finding a plastic bag and putting it in. It was a part of me, and now that it’s not, it needs to be buried.
I take another shower, washing and scrubbing the day off me until my skin is raw and pink. I slip into my favorite green pajamas that sayflowers for a healthy lifeand lie in my bed, twirling my hair between my fingers. The absence of the rest of my hair is jarring, like a ghost limb.
I don’t bother checking my phone. If Alexis texted, I don’t care. Once upon a time our friendship was real, but the years and her passiveness wore it down. I didn’t see the signs at first, because I wanted to see her as the six-year-old girl who had lunch in my apartment. The one who asked about the blessings, until she didn’t.
In the corners of my heart, I hope she reaches out.
But I know she won’t.
All the lies I told myself are uncovered. The way her motherwould look at me and how she hated saying my name. The passive-aggressive comments about my hair and hijab. How one-sided this friendship was, me bending over backward for her and Alexis never lifting a finger in return. Not standing up for me, so she doesn’t ruffle any feathers. Never asking about me and being Muslim, like that part of me doesn’t exist. Like it was a burden.
My chest hurts when I remember that my way into Opus is gone. The frustration nearly cleaves my heart in two. I press my pillow against my face, gripping it so tightly, I nearly tear through it.
“No,” I half scream in a broken voice.
I roll to my side, facing my desk, where Mama’s sketchbook waits patiently for me.
The anger is still in my bones. Enough has been taken from me. Enough has been done to me.
My fingers itch, and it’s like my room becomes doused in sunlight. The colors are on fire, burning.
A thought blooms in my mind, spreading all over from me and into the room around me in rivulets.
I don’t think twice and get up to grab the sketchbook, open it to an empty page, and start sketching.
Red, White, Blue, and Green
I don’t sleep muchthat night.
It might be my imagination amplifying everything around me, but I can almost hear my mural come to life on the buildings outside. This will cause an outrage, I’m sure. Somehow this will get me caught.
I hear Baba shuffling back home around midnight. My bedroom door opens a fraction, and I hear him murmuring a prayer for me before closing it again.
I doze off around three in the morning and wake up just as suddenly at six. My heart hammers in my chest as I lie awake, staring at the ceiling and debating whether I should go to school or not.
If I do, I’ll be fodder for jokes at best and prey for racism at worst. If I don’t go, then Nicole and her friends will know they got to me. That they won.
It hurts to get up and trudge to the bathroom, but I know it’s the right thing to do. I do a double-take when I see my reflection. I forgot I cut my hair. Now that I slept with it half wet and sheared short, it curls around my neck, each strand pointing in a different direction. I twirl my finger through one, liking the way it clings to me,wrapping around my finger like a cocoon. Like a jellyfish’s tentacles. Even my bangs are individual curls, clinging to my eyelashes. I never knew my hair could be like this.
My heart gives a low pang when I remember I won’t be telling Alexis about this.
I go through the motions of getting ready for school, putting it out of my mind. There’s something much bigger awaiting me outside.
My mural should be up all over, and for the first time since the first one, I resist the urge to check online to see people’s reaction.
I want to see the mural on my own for the first time.
The lights aren’t on, so the apartment is in alternating shadow and light. It reminds me of Saturday mornings when Mama would wake up before all of us and prepare a whole Syrian breakfast. I’d get up to keep her company, knowing those moments were when she was happiest. When her family was all together at home sleeping and she was there to take care of them.
“Why don’t we turn on the lights?” I asked once when I realized she always worked without them in the kitchen.
Mama spun around, wearing a white-and-pink apron that Amal and I had bought for her birthday around her waist; she had sewn ruffles on the shoulders and hem. Those were the days before she realized something was wrong. She woke up feeling better and thought whatever sickness was there had left.
“It’s more romantic this way,” she said in Arabic, and pointed at the onion frying in the cooking pot. “Can you please make sure the onion doesn’t burn? I don’t want to have burned keshk.”
