Tats smiles and nods and holds up her hand for a five. I meet my hennaed hand to her hennaed one—the design startlingly dark on her pale palm—and smile big.
Then I sink back into the bed, back to staring at the ceiling.
“Your mom left for breakfast. She told me to tell you we need to meet at the restaurant to eat with everyone,” Tats reminds me. “If you don’t want to swim, let’s at least go down to eat. I’m hungry.”
“I saw the girl Nuah likes. She’s beautiful and so much better than me in all ways.” I say this plainly, with no sadness. At least on the outside.
“Whatever. Janna, you are so not going down that path,” Tats says. “Let’s go get breakfast.”
“ ‘Ocean Eyes.’ Please. It’s going to help me get ready for today. If I can feel sad here, get it all out, then I’m not going get sad when he’s around today.”
She sighs and plays the song and changes out of her burkini right there into a strapless short white cotton summer dress that she pairs with a big, bulky, super-faded jean jacket. “It’s Jeremy’s,” she whispers with a sly smile. “I stole it from his car.”
I nod, completely lost in the song. No tears fall, but I let myself feel the rejection. I close my eyes and wallow in it.
Then I imagine my recovery—which starts today.
At the wedding. A happy occasion that I’ll rise to the challenge of.
When I see Nuah today, I’m going to give him a smile with blank eyes. A blisteringly polite but cool gaze like the ones Layth delivers so well.
Like the someone you’re looking at is there but not in a fully charged way. It’s like they’re fading into the surroundings, and you’re acknowledging their aura—present but not robust. Flimsy.
After I let the song loop five times, Tats takes her phone back, and I go to the bathroom to change.
For last-minute wedding prep, I’m wearing big black sweatpants and a big black sweatshirt and a big black scarf. I’m aiming to fade into the surroundings too.
* * *
When we get to Dad’s, I head upstairs to my room to get the clipboard Sarah gave me. I’m going to be all work, all steely.
Wear a pretty dress, wear a glazed gaze, lock up my heart, and get this wedding done is going to be my mantra.
Just as I get to the second-floor landing, Dad comes out of his room holding several suit jackets on hangers.
Great, perfect timing.
Just get the clipboard from the room. Just check off those to-do boxes one by one.
“So, you can’t stay home with me anymore? I’m too old-school for you?”
Old school? Is that what they call racism nowadays?
I’m so glad I’ve got headphones on. I orient myself toward my room and make my way to it like I don’t see Dad.
“You’re not going to answer me?” Oh my God, he’s still standing there like he expects me to respond. “All because of some boy? Now I’m absolutely nothing to you?”
I open my door and go inside and close it and lean against it.
He’s so angry I snuck out to stay with Mom.
I hate this wedding.
* * *
Can you please keep Dad away from me
I look out the window while I wait for Muhammad to answer.
There are hired people setting up chairs and running wires and, far off, raking the grass near the lake where the rectangular tables for dinner will be set.
Muhammad must be super busy. He’s supposed to be coordinating stuff and arranging rides for friends from airports and doing the million other things grooms have to do.
Tats is downstairs waiting for me. I’ll ask her to come up. To walk me down.
Dad will never say anything if she’s with me.
Hey come up for a sec
I look out the window again.
Mom’s out there now on the grass. With Tats. They’re talking to Linda, who’s by the chairs being set up in rows, with an aisle in the middle, in front of the gazebo.
Now it’s being widened. The space between the two sets of chairs.
Just as I’m thinking that my job is going to be to watch all the action and not participate, right under my window, Dad walks out onto the patio.
YES.
He still has the suits in his hands. He’s heading to the barn.
I grab my clipboard and run out of my room, down the stairs, and out the front door to the other side of the house, away from the driveway and the barn and the gazebo, to the space where, when we first drove in, I saw the florist organizing herself.
With Hope Ravson amid her bundles of blue and yellow flowers, I’m pretty sure I’ll be safe from Dad.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
After a “hi,” Hope leaves me alone to contemplate my checklist.
Besides my four main tasks for tonight—welcoming guests, organizing the passing-out of favors, delivering the roast with (cringe) Nuah, training the laddoos and Dawud for their tasks—I have to make sure my uncle, Amu, is all set up for delivering the nikah sermon.
I shoot him a quick e-mail on my phone asking if he needs anything.
On autopilot, I click his website where people ask questions about Islamic topics. Every Thursday, I edit a few for him, and I like to check over how those questions look on the site. It appears this week’s questions haven’t been uploaded yet, but I do a quick scroll-through to see what’s hot right now.
Answers that are read a lot get a flame icon that grows bigger with each hundred views.
The hottest one right now is Wiping on Socks for Wudu Before Prayer. Its flame is almost an inch high.
I keep scrolling through topics and watch the fires get smaller and smaller.
If God Doesn’t Give You a Burden You Can’t Bear, Then Why Do I Feel Like I Can’t Bear It has a small flame.
I click it, remembering what Khadija said to Layth and how he responded that he doesn’t know what he believes anymore.
Dear Imam, we’re always told at the mosque that God doesn’t give you a burden you can’t bear. But I can’t bear what’s happening to me. I don’t want to list all the hardships in my life right now as it will fill more than the space I’m given. My question: Why do so many bad things happen to some people more than others? Is it that I’ve been affected by the evil eye? And why does God say I can bear it?
Answer: Thank you for your most sincere question. I believe it shows a deep longing to understand your faith better, to understand the message of the Divine, to better your situation within the realm the One has created.
On the other hand, it may indicate that you’re on the ebb part of conviction—as our faith ebbs and flows throughout our lives. It may indicate that you’re grappling with how to make sense of where the difficulties of your life lie in the wisdom you’ve been taught about hardships in our lives. It may even communicate a moving toward a dissolution of your faith, which I pray isn’t the case.
Throughout our lives, pain visits us in turns. There isn’t a human alive who hasn’t been touched by pain. We all carry scars and wounds, but only some rise to the surface to be seen and commented on.
Simply put, the story of pain is common to us all. And no, it’s not the evil eye that causes some of us more hardships than others—for a foundation of our faith is that we are not to believe that anything has the power over God to harm us.