Khadija gets up, and I stop her from getting the doughnut box and picking up the garbage and just being a mom, so she follows Layth out.
As I gather all the stuff on the table, my phone beeps with a message from him.
Too late to text Muhammad? About crashing at the barn?
No, I’ll do it right now.
I dump all the garbage and dial my brother.
It’s a beyond-texting emergency.
And then, for good measure, I text Haytham. Layth’s going to stay at the barn. He needs space but also a friend. Just don’t ask me why.
Ok on all three. Watching a movie so he can join us if he wants.
I’m glad Haytham’s awake, so I didn’t have to try Nuah, also at the barn.
* * *
Layth drops us off, and before he drives away, but after Khadija’s begun walking to the hotel doors, I knock on the passenger’s window. When he lowers it, I say the words I couldn’t find before, when he told us about his brother. “You know how you loved your brother? I don’t think you need to bear not loving him now. You can still love him, you know?”
He doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t give me that closed-soul look either, so I go on.
“So far I’ve never lost anyone except an old, really old friend. He was ninety-three. I told you a bit about him before. He’s the one who got me to read critically. Anyway, I still think about him and write about him too. And read the books he gave me before he died. It’s a way to still love him.” I pause and look behind me, and yup, sure enough, Khadija’s waiting for me inside the hotel double doors. Man, she’s one powerful mosque study circle leader. I turn back to Layth. “I don’t know if I make sense.”
“Yeah. You’re just saying I don’t need to forget him.”
“And maybe I’m saying you don’t need to push the memories away whenever they hit you? That you can be active about remembering him?” I set the box of doughnuts in my hands on the hood of the car, take the yellow handkerchief from on top of it and fold it neatly once more. “Sorry if I don’t know what I’m talking about. I’ve never felt pain like yours. But you should have this. Thank you for letting me using it in my moment of need.” I laugh slightly, but my eyes are filling up. And when I hold out the handkerchief, Layth sees them.
He reaches for the cloth and nods, and I back away with the box of doughnuts, but I don’t turn to go inside until I see which way he exits the parking lot.
I want to make sure he doesn’t turn right to head to the highway.
I want to make sure he turns left to the road leading to Dad’s house.
I guess I want to make sure I get to see him one more day.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Back in our room, I notice that even though the rest of the girls are still here, Tats has already fallen asleep—on top of the bedspread, her hands still painted with dried henna paste. Lamya told her the longer you leave it on, the darker the color.
I wonder what it’s going to look like in the morning, the swirly designs on her pale palms.
After everyone else leaves, about ten minutes after the doughnuts get shared and a subsequent yawn-fest set off by the first contagious yawn from Khadija, I brush my teeth, pray Isha, and climb into bed with Mom.
I let her stroke the hair off my forehead for a bit before I turn around, deciding not to tell her any Nuah news today. She seems glowy and happy, and I don’t want to make her worried about me.
I’m thinking of a list of new happy things (Tats is here, sloths, dancing with Zayneb) to settle my mind down, to get it to not veer into unhappy territory like Layth’s little brother or Nuah, when Mom starts rubbing my back. “Sweetums, Tats set her alarm for six so you can go swimming after Fajr. But now that it’s so late, are you sure you want to go to the pool?”
“I don’t know if I can,” I mumble into the pillow. “I’m tired.”
“Okay, well, make sure you wake up in time to join us for breakfast in the restaurant before we head to Dad’s at eight. I already packed all our wedding clothes to take with us. Tats’s clothes as well. Linda insisted we get ready there.”
“Who’s us?”
“Us?”
“Us for breakfast?”
“Dania and Lamya, Uncle Bilal and Layth.”
“Layth left,” I say, wondering if I should bring up the fight between Uncle Bilal and Layth. In case she erroneously thinks they’re such a happy family.
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.”
From a split in the window drapes that allows parking lot lights to cast into our room, I see Tats’s form on the bed. Gentle snores accompany the lift and fall of her chest. Maybe watching the rhythm of her sleep will also help me fall asleep.
Mom stops stroking me and lets out a big sigh. “Uncle Bilal was so happy Layth was staying for the wedding, he even went and bought him a jacket today. He was trying his best to help Layth.”
“Do you like Uncle Bilal?” I whisper into the pillow.
“What was that?”
“Uncle Bilal?” I ask a bit louder.
“What about him?”
“Do you like him?”
She doesn’t answer.
I look at the digital alarm clock and record the time in my head: Saturday, July 17, 3:18 a.m.
The night before my brother’s wedding. Well, officially the day of his wedding.
And my mom’s gone quiet when I asked her if she likes someone.
“I was honest with you,” I remind her, still talking mostly into the pillow. “I told you who I liked.”
“But my answer affects your life in a bigger way, Janna.” Her voice is so quiet, even though she’s not speaking into the pillow but to the back of my head.
“I think I know the answer, then.” I can’t stop my body from deflating—which is strange, because I’m lying in bed.
It deflates, even though it’s actually filling up with all the unknowns ahead.
It feels like the security and safety I began to let myself feel after Mom and Dad’s divorce, the sense of home being Mom and me, is beginning to escape through a tiny puncture.
Mom puts a hand on my back once more and starts to massage it again, but I do the one thing I don’t want to do, that my mind and heart don’t want me to do, but that my body on its own, completely by free will, by instinct, does: I shake her touch off.
Hard.
She removes her hand, and there’s a frozen stillness behind me that I can feel.
I watch Tats’s breathing and mimic it and pretend to have fallen asleep, but my eyes are wide open, my brain imagining Dania and Lamya and Uncle Bilal in our lives always and forever, intruding on the way things are with Mom and me and Muhammad, and even Sarah now.
That’s my family.
It’s 3:32 a.m. when I hear a noise.
It’s a pulled breath. And then a swallow. And then Mom gets off the bed and goes to the bathroom quietly.
When the door closes, I turn around for a moment to rest on my other side.
The lights from the window show her pillow squashed, a strange blotchy shadow on it.
I sit up and touch the dark spot.
It’s wet.
I flip back around quickly and close my eyes and close myself so I don’t think about what it feels like to cry so much so quietly.