I make a pleading face at her.
“No thanks, sweetums. And how will we eat it while we’re doing this?” Mom says, dribbling chocolate kisses into the three open boxes in front of her.
“But you love Firecracker Popsicles.”
Mom looks taken aback. “But not now.”
Somebody has to want ice cream so that Dad’s not right. Somebody. “Layth?”
“Okay, get me an ice-cream sandwich?” He puts his hand in the pocket of the jacket on the bench beside him and pulls out a ten. “And get Dania and Lamya snow cones. They’re just being polite, but they love ice cream in the morning.”
He glances at Dad before holding out the bill to me.
I take Layth’s money, grateful.
* * *
The window slides open, and the ice-cream-truck driver is… a woman. A woman with a huge smile on her face, under a baseball cap.
“Hi, friends! What treat may I bestow to brighten your day?” she asks.
I trade glances with Haytham. “Two snow cones and one ice-cream sandwich, please.”
Haytham gives his order, which is another ice-cream sandwich, and then adds, “We didn’t see you yesterday. New to this route?”
“Yeah, just filling in for Alex. He’s taking a rest. Poor guy’s sick.” She adds syrup on the crushed ice in the paper cone and then holds it out to me. “I’m his sister, Katarina.”
“Oh, sorry to hear. Is he okay?” I take the cone. “We thought he hadn’t been feeling his best.”
“It was his migraines. They’ve gotten worse in the last few days. Yesterday was terrible, so I told him I’d do his run today.” She hands me the second slushy cone and tilts her head. “He’d been extra grumpy, huh?”
“Which wasn’t like him,” I say, and look at Haytham pointedly. “He’s usually so jolly.”
“Really? Alex, jolly?” Katarina laughs and opens the freezer to take out two ice-cream sandwiches. “That would be news to me. I always say what a perfect job this ice-cream truck is for him, in an ironic way, mind you.”
Haytham lets out a laugh, shoots me an aha! glance, and accepts the sandwiches.
I ignore him and decide to get this settled once and for all. “Do you think he’ll be well enough to come out tomorrow? My brother’s having an informal weddingish gathering here, and it would so cool for the kids to get ice cream after.”
“You know what, I think that can be arranged.” Katarina leans against the window and smiles at us. “Did you guys know this is Alex’s favorite route? He calls it the Golden Peninsula, this bit of road that goes out into the water. He says you guys on this street are always buying ice cream. I’ll come with him to help out for your event.”
“Perfect, then we’ll see you tomorrow. Preferably around seven, if it’s not too late?” I say. She nods, and I spy the soft-serve machine inside the van. “Wait, one more ice cream, please. A vanilla cone dipped in chocolate. Actually, also a Firecracker Popsicle.”
I’m going to add coconut flakes on the cone in the kitchen and give it to Dad. I hope he gets the ice-cream commentary on his prejudice: that he’s a coconut. Brown on the outside, white on the inside.
Sometimes when Muhammad and Dad used to fight before, Muhammad would mutter “coconut,” and once Dad heard him. My brother stopped saying it that day, but I know it hurt Dad.
And I want to hurt him now.
And then I’m going to give the Popsicle to Mom and say, Because you’re the best, Mom!
When I return from the kitchen detour to dress his ice cream, Dad receives his customized coconut cone with a confused look on his face. Mom does the same when I gift her with a Popsicle, but because I follow hers up with a hug, she pauses from her assembly-line work to unwrap her treat.
I’m so glad no one asks about the whereabouts of my ten a.m. ice-cream cone.
I don’t want to admit I agree with Dad that it’s a weird time to eat it.
I don’t want to admit to having anything in common with him.
* * *
After we finish boxing three hundred favors, Mom announces that she needs to leave to get ready for Jumah. That opens up a whole discussion of how everyone will get to the mosque, the one Muhammad and I go to for Jumahs when we’re with Dad, twenty minutes from Mystic Lake. In the end, we decide on a caravan of cars with a combination of people in each car.
Dad watched all this organization to go to Friday prayers from over the top of his reading glasses, over the top of his laptop, ice cream completely melted into his coffee cup, and I couldn’t help saying aloud, “So glad to go with you, Mom!”
Mom hugged me, oblivious to my intent to wound Dad, but Muhammad gave me a look.
Now, as everyone scatters to get prepped to leave, and we go inside the house to change, Muhammad beckons me into the family room.
Once I’m inside, he pulls the pocket door closed. “Okay, what’s going on with you and Dad?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, the ice cream thing? When you said, ‘Here’s a coconut cone, like you’? And the other digs?”
“It’s not my fault Dad’s racist. And you used to call him that! A coconut!”
“What?” Muhammad looks surprised. “Racist? I called him a coconut because he wanted me to not use my hands to eat and stuff. When he wanted me to be more bougie.”
Oops. I shouldn’t have blurted it out. This means he’s going to know about Nuah.
And he can’t know about Nuah.
He’d never let me live it down.
But, wait, that’s only if something had to be lived down.
I mean, once all goes well, Nuah and I will actually be okay with people knowing. Right?
I look at Muhammad. He’s still staring at me with his eyebrows knotted in confusion.
“Dad doesn’t like that Nuah likes me. You know, in that way. Because he’s Black,” I say. And when I finish this short—not simple—statement, my eyes fill up immediately, my hands making their way to my eyes to try to stop them from spilling over.
The next thing I know, I’m blubbering.
Because it’s awful. Horrendous. Despicable.
That Dad can sum up someone based on their race.
When I shift my hands away from my eyes, Muhammad has moved to sit down on the couch, his face still. “I can’t believe it. But I can, at the same time.”
“That Nuah likes me?”
“No, dummy, that Dad would be prejudiced like that.” He leans back.
“He gave me some BS about how if you’re not of the same cultural background, you get treated like crap by each other’s families.” I sit on the sofa across from him. “He said he wasn’t treated well by Mom’s family because he’s Indian and they’re Arab.”
Muhammad shakes his head. “Not true. You know Amu and Teta and everyone’s not like that.”
“Yeah, exactly. He’s just justifying his racism. And then he said Sarah’s family doesn’t treat you well because you’re not Syrian like Sarah.” I lean forward. “BS.”
Muhammad doesn’t say anything.
“BS, right?”
“That doesn’t matter. What matters is that you don’t listen to Dad on this. He’s completely wrong. You don’t choose someone based on their culture, ethnicity, race, or some superficial thing like that.”