“Nothing.”
“Will you go somewhere with me?”
I nod.
He smiles and goes back to his notes. When I look around, I see Nicole starring daggers at me.
After school, I find myself trailing after him out the school gates.
Autumn has let the cold in, and it bites at my fingers. I pull the sleeves of my coat over them. Jamie notices and he takes off his own gloves before shoving them in my direction.
“I don’t—” I begin, but stop at his intense staring. “Thank you.”
“Of course.”
I put them on, smiling to myself at the warmth seeping into my skin. The gloves are bigger than my hands but as soft as an alpaca’s wool and already warm from him wearing them.
We walk to another subway station and ride it for several stopsbefore getting off. He doesn’t say a word the entire time, and I don’t ask where we’re going. There’s something comforting about turning off my brain for a while and just following.
The streets outside the subway are filled with people commuting home, and the sun creeps out from behind the clouds, although her warmth doesn’t reach us. I raise my gloved hands to my face, rubbing circles on my cold cheeks.
I recognize we’re beside Washington Square Park, where we met that one time, eons ago. But he doesn’t go there and instead takes another turn until we’re in a half-empty alleyway where balconies are stacked in the opposite buildings.
I look to where he’s standing.
It’s as if the restaurant was born into the building fighting tooth and nail. Just like everything else in New York. It’s a bit crooked, like it was built into an uneven street. The aroma from the cooking hits my nose and makes my stomach growl. There’s no name above the restaurant. There are a couple of people inside, slurping noodles from large bowls. One is waiting on a takeout order. I get the sense its customers are loyal. I bet this place feeds the entire building it’s based in.
Jamie walks up the little brick stairs, swiping away the plastic curtain.
One of the cooks, a middle-aged man with graying hair, notices him and grins wildly. He starts speaking in another language, and only when Jamie replies in the same one do I realize they’re speaking Vietnamese. He says something, and the cook laughs.
Jamie’s demeanor becomes softer, like the Jamie I’ve come to know, the one who talks freely to me about his life and dreams.
But there’s something else. He’s showing me a side of him I don’t think anyone at the school has seen. Just as I’ve hidden my Arab culture, he’s hidden his Vietnamese heritage. I hid my true self from Alexis. I realize now it’s because I never felt safe with her. Not really.But even before Jamie became Muslim, I didn’t feel any snags, any hesitation to talk about myself entirely.
He looks whole here. This place, speaking his grandmother’s language, it makes his color shine brighter.
The cook nods at me before suggestively raising his eyebrows, and Jamie splutters a reply, his face growing pink. The cook laughs again.
I can assume what he asked, but I’m pretending I don’t know.
Jamie turns to me. “This is a Vietnamese restaurant.”
I look around. “Yeah, I figured.”
“I found it one day when I was just walking around, discovering the neighborhood. I smelled the noodles from a mile away. They reminded me of Bà Ngo?i’s food, and I just followed the smell until I got here. Chef Vuong was the only one working then, and there was no one else here but me. I’ve been coming here ever since.”
“Gave me a scare when you started speaking Vietnamese.” Chef Vuong chuckles while chopping the onions at the speed of light. His English is lightly accented. “I thought, where did a white boy learn all of that so perfectly?”
Jamie gives me a sheepish smile, and I say, “Nah, Jamie is Vietnamese through and through.”
“You don’t have to tell me,” Chef Vuong replies, smiling at Jamie fondly.
Jamie looks at me, his eyes soft with gratitude, and I shake my head lightly. I know exactly what he was feeling. The fear of not belonging in a culture you grew up in. The fear you’re too American to be Vietnamese or Syrian and too brown to be American. I often wondered whether the jellyfish would talk to me like they talked to Mama. Would they reject me because my words didn’t sound like hers?
Chef Vuong tells us we can sit anywhere we want, and Jamie leads me to a table that’s by the window. We take off our coats and place them over the chairs. I stuff the gloves into the pocket of my coat.
“This place has many halal options.” Jamie sits opposite me. “Chef Vuong isn’t Muslim, but he wants everyone to be able to eat here.”
