He inhales sharply. “What do you want to talk about, Jihad? How the police didn’t do anything? How there’s no justice for us? What do you want to do? Because talking about it won’t solve anything. Your mother is gone, and the world moved on. That’s all.” He takes out his shoes from the closet.
“So we pretend she never existed?”
He stares at me. “You think that’s even possible? Jihad, I see her in my dreams every night.”
“Then talk about her!” I cry out. “Okay, nothing came out of the investigation, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t talk about her.”
His face is ashen now. “I don’t have it in me to do that yet.”
“When, then?” I ask, heart hammering. “Because I will not letany of us go on with our lives with her being someone we can never mention. I nearlyforgothow she used to cook.”
He stares at me for a long time and then gives a slow nod. “I have to go.”
He closes the door behind him.
I breathe through my nose, hold the air in before letting it out. Over and over again until the nausea ebbs away and I run to my room.
I open the sketchbook to a new page and take one color.
Red.
Because that’s how Mama’s life ended. In a flash of red spilled over the pavement.
I draw the memories. The cancer had left her alone. Her lungs were strong enough to breathe on their own. The color was coming back to her face. Her hair was growing. She was putting on her mascara and lipstick. Her voice was stronger, singing all over the apartment. She even brought out her easel once to paint. My mother was coming back to life. The dark cloud that had engulfed my family was dissipating. For good this time.
And then one late afternoon, she was coming back home from getting groceries. She was waiting for the bus when someone decided she didn’t deserve to live. Four gunshots, and she fell to the ground. The bullets punctured her lungs that had tried so hard to fight the cancer, but they couldn’t fight metal. She bled out on the streets with no one daring to help her. People stood by and watched because they were scared. No one dared take the first step. The murderer was gone. The police said it was a mugging incident, and the case was closed.
In just ten minutes, I lost Mama, and the colors vanished with her.
I don’t remember where I was when they told me she was killed. I don’t remember who told me. My brain has blocked that out, and I’m in no hurry to find out. All I know is fear stopped people from doinganything. Maybe they could have helped, or perhaps it would have had no effect. But there’s no way to know.
I breathe deeply and glance down at what I drew. Mama alive but shrouded in a red cape that’s wrapped around her like a shield. The cape is made from individual red droplets, like a waterfall of blood, going into her veins, keeping her alive.
Mama’s expression isn’t serene. It’s angry. A quiet anger like the rumbling of the ocean before a storm. A righteous anger. She’s staring directly at whoever looks at her, her lungs translucent, with four holes in them.
My chin trembles, and I move the sketchbook away from me, so my tears don’t smudge the art. I grab my phone and call Amal before thinking twice about it.
She picks up on the second ring.
“Hey,” she says. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah,” I answer, my voice scratchy.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asks gently.
I sniff. “You know, for a long time, I didn’t think about how Mama died.” I hear Amal breathing deeply. “I couldn’t, you know? She was in remission, and I felt our life was starting again. I had hope. And that hope was stolen. Is there a bigger word thanstolen?Ripped, I guess.”
“I know,” she says quietly. “I couldn’t leave the apartment for a whole month after.”
“I ran everywhere and was always home before sunset.”
“I didn’t answer the phone.”
“I couldn’t wash the glass Mama drank from that morning.”
“I kept hoping the blessings she talked about were real, and I would be able to see her. You know, like one of the distant aunts who knew when someone was going to die.”
The tears pause. “I don’t remember her.”
