She punched me hard in the face until I bled, until my right eye felt raw.
They all stood and watched, and Mason made me look into the camera and smile.
My stomach heaves, and I want to scrub that memory out of my mind. I don’t want to think about that. I don’t want to think that he has a picture of me humiliated like this.
The last period bell rang twenty minutes ago. There’s no way I’m walking out of the room looking like this.
I use up my last tissue to wipe away the puddle of blood, but it’s not enough, so I use the end part of my hijab. I willnotleave a mark of my pain here. My legs tremble when I stand, and I grab my bag. I don’t go to the bathroom. I don’t want to see how I look. To see what they did. I just want to go home.
I walk quickly but not fast enough. A couple of students in the hallway do a double take when they see me.
A tissue pressed to my nose, a swollen eye perhaps, looking like I just escaped hell. If the picture Mason took of me is spreading throughout the school, I don’t want to be here. He took it knowing he’d get away with what they did. A trophy of me in that position. Audrey warned me it would get worse. Jabs that became more vicious, that turned into my hijab being stolen, that mutated into physical assaults. The natural progression of bullying that feeds off passivity.
When I reach the stairs of the first floor, a hand holds my arm, and I look up to see Jamie, staring down at me with a horrified look. “What happened?”
Oh God, not again.
I press the tissue harder against my mouth, trying to get out of his grip. I just want to leave.
The color drains from his face. “Was it Nicole?”
My jaw is too heavy and bruised to talk without bursting into tears, and I’m barely keeping it together. With my last iota of strength, I jerk out of his grasp and run down the stairs and out of the school.
Back home, I inspect the damage. Thankfully, New York isn’t a stranger to eccentric people, so no one asks me about the bruised eye and the bloodied nose on my way home. I wish I was able to hide my face a bit better, because I think I’ve enforced some stereotypes.
The blood has stopped flowing, but there’s a smattering of a blooming purple around my nose and upward to my right eye. I’m going to have a black eye. Tentatively, I raise my hand to touch my nose, praying it’s not broken. Relief weakens my muscles when I find it’s not.
I take a shower, letting the water run as hot as I can bear it. When I get out, my skin is blotchy and red, but it’s soothing. I’m glad my hair is shorter now. Less to deal with.
I flop down onto my bed, exhausted to the bone and at a loss on what to do.
Do I stop going to school?
What do I do?
School is ending soon. Finals are coming up.
I can do this.
I can do this. I am brave. I am Jihad.
My breath shudders out of me, racking my lungs like a ghost running its finger along my ribs.
There are no tears in me. I may have cried when Nicole punched me, but I can’t remember. The tears may have mixed with the blood. I try to cry now, try to let out this pent-up anger inside me. This volcano burning me alive, this earthquake destroying the fragile hope I built, this tsunami drowning me on land. But my tear ducts are dry.
What I feel is disgust. At myself for the way I ran after Alexis’s friendship and love. How she had this place in my life when she didn’t deserve any of it. I groan, covering my eyes with my hand,embarrassment making my chest constrict. Why did I spend an hour on public transportation for a week to go to her house to paint that stupid art on her wall? Why did I praise her bare-minimum efforts? Why did I smother the way it bothered me how she never tried to get to know me? Never asked to come over to my home?
I slide off the bed and take the sketchbook from the drawer.
Nothing I draw in it will hurt them, but I can get out of here.
Jamie was right.
This sketchbookcanbe the answer.
I want to draw something that heals me. There are four pages left. I want to fill them with Mama, and while her life was cut short, I know she’s in heaven. I know her soul is immortal. I know it’s not goodbye. And that gives me comfort, knowing the person who did it won’t get away with it. Knowing no matter how much I miss her and want her to be here, I will meet her again. Iwillmeet her again.
I draw Mama with her lungs trying to breathe an air that’s not Syrian. I draw jasmine flowers on her hands, pomegranate seeds trying to fight the cancer growing in her. I draw them succeeding. I draw the battles lost and the wars won. I draw her beautiful and alive and smiling because the one thing they can’t do is take away her smile. It disappeared so many times, but it always came back.
