Is she zipping Dania’s and Lamya’s dresses up?
I pick my dress up by the hanger from the suitcase and lay it on the bed. Tats is still in the shower, so I sit beside my dress and, without thinking, start tapping on my phone.
What are you guys up to?
There’s typing happening on Dania’s end.
Getting ready
Just you guys?
No
Typing happening.
We’re in Khadija’s room, helping her.
Zayneb’s there? And my mom? There. Slide it in like that so there’s no notice of my insecurity.
Typing.
Typing.
Typing. Still?
Zayneb’s with her fiancé and brother. They got ready early so they already left. I think she promised Sarah she’d do something for her so look for her there. And Adam, her fiancé. We’ll be over soon too.
She didn’t say anything about Mom.
My mom?
I thought she was with you?
I smile. Unconsciously.
* * *
“Tats?” I say when she emerges from my bathroom in my bathrobe, a towel around her head. “Is it okay if we drive to the hotel? To go get ready with Mom? Haytham said we can use his car.”
“Now? Is there enough time?”
“If we leave this minute, there is.”
“Okay,” she says, sliding into my yellow flip-flops. “Let’s go!”
“Like that? You’re in my bathrobe.”
She opens the door. “Janna, do you know me or not?”
I pull the suitcase, and we go out the door, down the stairs, and out into the day.
Chapter Thirty-Three
When Mom opens the hotel room door in her bathrobe, Tats wheels in the suitcase and beelines for the bathroom. We worked out that she’d change first.
I need to talk to Mom.
* * *
Maybe because I let her, Mom tells me everything.
How Uncle Bilal and she reconnected when she sent the wedding invitation to him and his family in the spring. How she got to know him better in the last three weeks while I’ve been at Dad’s.
And how, just last week, he asked her to marry him.
“But only when I was ready, he said. And I’m not ready until you are,” Mom says.
We’re lying down on the bed, staring at the ceiling like when we talked about Nuah in my room.
“What about when Muhammad is ready too?” I ask, wondering if she’s told Uncle Bilal that I’m the “difficult” one.
“I spoke to Muhammad last week. He thought we should wait until after the wedding to introduce everyone to each other.” Mom sighs. “The dinner on Thursday was supposed to be for me to meet Dania and Lamya. I wasn’t trying to hide it from you. I just knew there was a lot going on with the wedding, and I wanted you to be ready to hear about it.”
“Why did you tell Muhammad last week and not me?”
“Because you’re my baby,” Mom says. “And you feel things in a different way than Muhammad does. And just so you know, he’s not completely convinced about Uncle Bilal either.”
It’s my turn to sigh now. I feel Mom’s pain.
She’s gotta check in with so many people, even though she knows how her heart feels.
I decide to be the mature one now.
I reach out and touch her shoulder to turn her around to face me. “The important thing is, do you like him? Is he a good person with similar values? Do you both like running mini marathons for charities? And wearing T-shirts to outdo each other’s commitments to bettering the world?”
She laughs and then looks at me with a probing mom look. “I’m sure I like him. Really like him, alhamdulillah. But do you really mean that?”
“I don’t want to stop you from being loved, Mom,” I say. “I know you’ll still love me.” I pause before adding, “Right?”
“Don’t even ask me that. Nothing will ever come between me and my kids. Are you sure?”
“Yes, because I don’t want you to be alone.”
“I’m not.”
“I want you to have someone to go on your charity walks and stuff with. He seems to be into that as well.”
Mom laughs. “He isn’t. He actually works for a nonprofit that connects corporations with merchandise for charity initiatives and sometimes he gets leftovers.”
“Oh, well, he’s into eating breakfast and authentic Italian, like you, so…”
“That he is.” We both lean forward for a hug at the same time.
I draw away first because I can’t help adding something. Because I need to be honest. “But remember, I don’t know him, so it’s going to take me a while to, you know, go with the flow of it all.”
“Of course, sweetums. You have to come to your own conclusions. And let your own heart open as it wills.” She sits up as Tats emerges from the bathroom, all dressed. “Let’s get ourselves changed?”
* * *
My dress is dark navy blue with thin dark ribbons around the waist, at the neck, and high above the wrists—all these ribbons end in perfectly looped bows, and that’s the simple elegance of this dress. That and its gossamer fabric that just falls lightly all the way to the top of my feet, like it’s made from darkly dyed fairy wings.
It’s just a perfectly goth dress, the only dress that screamed Janna Yusuf! from all the dresses we looked at in the five stores Mom and I visited.
Each time I tried the dress on at home, I felt like walking taller, straighter, prouder.
Mom lifts my hair and zips the dress up in the back, and I instantly feel better. More alive.
I help her with hers, a periwinkle-blue silk that has a flounce at the bottom. She’s so pretty with a darker blue hijab to top it off.
Tats also looks pretty in her off-the-shoulders sunny mustard-yellow dress, which hangs in ruffles around her chest and then flows down to right above her knees, with a thin gold belt cinching her waist. On her feet are gold gladiator sandals and at her left wrist, a gold cuff, her only jewelry.
She—very beachy, boho-looking, with her now-blond hair spread wavy all around her shoulders, two thin braids at the sides that meet in the back and hang in a slender single braid all the way down to her waist—looks the opposite of me.
She looks perfectly Tats: approachable, sunny, with no pretenses.
Me: reserved, still learning to open my heart to a bigger circle of people. Still learning about my capacity to give and love.
* * *
As Mom drives us back, I see that Haytham’s posted his latest haiku.
He must have just finished his shower.
To spend time with you
Means to fill the sky with blooms
Then to disappear
The sky with blooms?
Is he talking about the floral ceiling? That we made together?
Oh no, Tats’s questions about him are getting to me.
But, I ask my stupid heart, do you actually like him in that way?
No, I don’t, my stupid heart answers. He’s cute, but we’re on different wavelengths.
Then why make a narrative, a love story, a world in your head? If your heart isn’t officially ready to participate in one in real life?