Does My Head Look Big in This?

  “Please, Aunty?” I beg. I’ve gone straight into third gear The grovelling state. “It’s something she’ll love. It’s a very respectable restaurant and we won’t be back late. We promise. She’ll be home by ten thirty. Please, Aunty? It’s her birthday.”

  “No. Leila no go out at night. I no want my daughter bring shame on family. Walking streets at night. Like disgrace. You have dinner in house OK. But outside? Impossible. If people saw her! They talk! What shame.”

  My heart is squashed up in my socks as I agree to change our plans to dinner at my place.

  Leila rings me that night.

  “We’re going to Chapel.”

  “What? How do you know about it?!”

  “Mum spilled it. I can’t take this crap any more. I know I’m not doing anything wrong.”

  “But . . . what if . . . Leila, what if she finds out? She’ll go ballistic!”

  “Completely ballistic.”

  “It’s too risky.”

  “I’m going insane. She’s twisting it all around. Driving me crazy. And Dad spends twenty-four/seven at the factory or he’s at home on the couch, smoking his Marlboro and watching the Turkish version of Candid Camera on satellite. We don’t mix with other people. Everybody is a ‘bad’ influence. I met this woman at the mosque on the weekend. She’s a med student. I told her she should come over for a coffee. Mum flipped it. Said it was shameful that a Muslim girl would study medicine and look at male bodies! Can you believe it?

  “And my brother, Hakan? He gets to do whatever he likes. He’s changed his name to Sam and I’m the one with cultural denial! He got home at four in the morning yesterday and she had food wrapped in foil for him in case he was hungry. Yeah, I’m guessing he would have worked up an appetite considering he’d probably drunk the bar dry. Oh, but mention to her that her son drinks like an alcoholic and she conveniently forgets that’s one of the biggest sins. And what about his bimbo girlfriend? He picked her up at some bar and she comes over with half her tits hanging out for the world to see, and my mum lets him get away with it! He doesn’t even have enough respect for his family to ask her to put a cardigan on in front of my mum and dad. It’s sick. Her idea of telling him off is, Oh Hakan, find good girl and settle down. But then she’ll laugh when he brags about how his girlfriend’s crazy about him. I don’t know what that bimbo sees in him. And I know he smokes pot because he comes home high sometimes and my mum thinks he’s just had a hard day at work. They all make me sick! I don’t understand how I have a genetic connection with them.”

  “What if she calls my parents?” I ask anxiously.

  “I’ll tell her to call my mobile because we’ll be on the net and using the phone line. I’ll tell her we’re on an online Turkish match-making chat room trying to find me a potential husband. That’ll make her happy.”

  The next day at school I’m walking through the hallway when I see Adam bouncing a basketball on his way out of the building. He looks at me awkwardly, I look back at him awkwardly and then we both look away awkwardly. Then something really embarrassing happens. He goes to walk to my right, but I think he’s going to walk to my left. We do the right/left thing two more times and I’m so mortified I want to melt to the floor quicker than a biscuit dunked in Milo. Then, as he’s about to walk out of the door, something comes over me and I yell out for him to wait a minute.

  “What?” he asks impatiently.

  “What is it with you lately?”

  “What are you on about?”

  “Oh, so it’s all in my head, is it? Some chick thing, hey?”

  “Give me a break, Amal. I don’t know what you’re on about.”

  “How about you cut me some slack, hey? You’ve been acting so up yourself lately. I didn’t mean to . . . I mean it wasn’t about me rejecting you. This is who I am. This is what I believe in. Does that give you the right to ignore me? Why have you been acting like I’m some stranger?”

  “I haven’t.”

  “Yes you have.”

  “Have not.”

  “Have so.”

  “Amal, do you think I’m going to walk around like a wuss just because you didn’t – because of what happened at my party? So I tried to kiss you and you didn’t want to because your religion says you can’t have a normal relationship with a guy before you find the one. That’s fine and good luck to you. It’s your life. I mean, it was something that just happened in the moment so don’t stress, I’m really very over it.”

  “Oh. . .”

  This is the wrong moment to be speechless. Where is my comeback line? Come on brain.

  “Anyway,” he says, shuffling his feet impatiently, “the guys are waiting for me out on the court.”

  “Mmm. . .”

  This is just treacherous. My brain has totally betrayed me.

  After he leaves I rush to the toilets and lock myself in a cubicle and fight back stupid, pathetic tears. It seems my body is in total traitor mode. My chin realizes I need to stay composed and it does the wobbling thing. My tear ducts know that I can’t return to class with red puffy eyes and they insist on going Niagara Falls on me.

  As I’m washing my face, Tia and Rita walk in. They see me and their conversation immediately comes to a halt.

  “What’s wrong?” Rita asks with concern.

  Not.

  “Yeah.” Tia says. “What’s up with you?”

  I take a deep breath and turn the taps off. “Why don’t you both go back to doing what you’re good at? Go give somebody an eating disorder, spin some rumours, sacrifice an animal to the devil, but just piss off.”

  “You know, Amal,” Tia says, “you’ve got the worst temper.”

  “Yeah, how premenstrual are you?” Rita says.

  “Well done,” I say. “Another piece of original thought by Rita Mason.”

  “Maybe we’re being insensitive,” Tia says. “Did somebody dump you, Amal?”

  “Yeah,” Rita says, giggling, “was it Adam?”

  “You’ve all become a little lovey-dovey, haven’t you now?” Tia says, smirking. “Adam and you, Josh and Simone. Well, there’s something to say for opposites attract. Fat and thin. Hip and daggy. Hey Rita, maybe I should wear a tablecloth on my head and live on Snickers bars and I’ll get a man too!”

  Rita bursts out laughing and I flash them a knowing smile.

  “It must burn you, hey Tia? I mean, there you are chucking up your bottled water, applying your fake tan, conditioning your hair and throwing yourself at Josh and he picks Simone.”

  She crosses her arms and looks at me with narrow, angry eyes. “Let’s get one thing straight, I’ve never been after Josh. If I wanted him, I would have had him.”

  “You must be joking, right? Tia, you are beyond a cliché. I mean, does it come naturally to you or do you stay up late at night and practise this whole Hollywood-soapie-drama-queen-bitch act?”

  Before giving her a chance to respond I walk out. If there’s ever been a time when home education sounded appealing, this is it.

  32

  It’s a warm October night and Mrs Vaselli and I are seated outside on her front porch drinking hot chocolate. She’s wearing the shawl. It took her a while to appear in front of me with it on. I kept seeing a tassel or two protruding from the hall cupboard every time I visited. One evening I walked up to the cupboard, took the shawl out and put it around her shoulders.

  “Should have been black,” she said gruffly, trying to salvage some pride.

  “Should have been any colour but blue?” I joked knowingly, and she looked at me for a moment and then let out a short, hard laugh.

  “Yes, any colour but blue,” she said, hugging it closer around her.

  “Don’t you ever feel like calling him?” I ask her tonight.

  “Sometime,” she says curtly.

  “Won’t Jesus be upset with y
ou for lying, Mrs Vaselli?” I wag my finger at her.

  “Don’t joke to me wis Jesus,” she says sternly.

  “Don’t lie to me about your son.”

  She sighs and leans back into her chair, playing with the tassels on her shawl.

  “He no call me.”

  “But he must have at first. What happened?”

  “I tell him I no want him call me.” We look at each other gingerly. She’s unsure how much to give out. I’m unsure how much of a right I have to interfere.

  “But . . . that’s obviously why he doesn’t call.”

  “Huh!” She’s not impressed.

  “Mrs Vaselli, I know it must hurt you. That he rejected your religion—”

  “His religion.”

  “OK, his religion. But everybody . . . you can’t cut off from him like this!”

  “I know he no have salvation now. How I be happy? How I see him and knowing he going hell? All because zat woman he marry!”

  “But . . . but . . . nobody knows where they’ll end up. Nobody can play God with other people’s destiny.”

  “I know he choosing wrong religion.”

  “Yeah but then everybody would be cut off from everybody else if we sorted people out into hell and heaven.”

  “Huh! You no understanding. When you have child, maybe you understanding. He become other religion and you sit easy?”

  I scrunch my face up in thought. “I don’t know . . . but don’t you miss him? I don’t get it. Are you telling me that if your son were to walk up to your front door now you’d slam it in his face?”

  “You tinking life like movie. You people born here, you no understanding what life is. You having life easy. You no going through what we went through. You changing your religion and your mama and papa culture like changing clothe. My son he no showing his papa and mama respect . . . you, you tinking, I know, I bad woman. Reject my son and no talk to him. But I am a mama. Yes?”

  I nod.

  “You asking if my son come door I close in his face?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I am a mama. I . . . I will . . . Iisten to me. He will never coming door first place! I angry at him and I saying tings and he saying tings. I blaming him for his papa dead. His papa die from heart attack and I blaming my son. And somewhere inside me I still blaming him. And I angry and so sad and pray for him to return to Jesus. But too late. I no call him. After all I do for him he reject. And he no call me . . . he no call me any more . . . so . . . no fixing ze problem, Amal.” She looks at me pensively and sighs.

  “Look, I know you built your life here from scratch, without English or your mum and dad or your friends. So I kind of get that maybe loyalty means the world to you. Especially seeing as you only had one son.”

  “Yes! You understanding now!”

  “And you worked really hard and you heard about your parents’ death through the mail and you never knew what it felt like to have an extended family around you.”

  “Yes, exact. My life very, very hard.”

  “And your husband he worked so hard for you and your son, to build a new life for you here.”

  “Jesus bless him.”

  “Well then, what I don’t understand is why you’re punishing yourself with loneliness when your reward in old age should be your son and his family! I don’t get it. Why can’t you just call?”

  “No!” she cries, throwing her face in her hands and shaking her head. “Why he no call his mama?”

  “How will you know unless you call? Maybe he thinks you’re going to hang the phone up on him.”

  “Always stupid answer! Why I listen to you? You a child. You no understanding.”

  “I think I do understand, Mrs Vaselli. . . I understand that you left your homeland without even knowing what you were coming to and that you lost your babies without a mum’s shoulder to cry on. I understand that you’re really religious and your son broke your heart when he converted. I come from a religious family. I can only imagine how my parents would react if I did the same thing.”

  She looks up at me in surprise.

  “But you’re alone now. . . Some people live in agony wishing they had just one minute more with someone they love who’s left them. It’s in your hands . . . you have an only son out there and you can spend the rest of your life reunited with him.”

  She looks at me intensely and I expect her to slap me or tell me to shut up. But then her body just kind of shrivels. Her frame collapses into a heap and her eyes well up with tears. “I no knowing what to do. . .” she murmurs, staring at the concrete. “I just no knowing what to do. . .”

  It’s so dark out in the garden. All we have on is a single porch light, capturing us in a whirl of shadows and pools of artificial light or evening darkness. The cicadas are partying hard all around us, breaking the silence of our street

  I approach her cautiously. I reach out to touch her but shrink back, scared, of what, I don’t know. Am I scared her pain will somehow transfer from her skin to mine? I reach out again, and place one hand on her shoulder, sitting on the armrest of my seat. She doesn’t stir, just sits shrunken, deflated of energy and rage. She doesn’t say anything so I talk.

  “My mum’s had three miscarriages. I don’t even know if I would have had a brother or a sister.” She stirs slightly but doesn’t speak.

  “She told me some people said some really dumb things when they came over and tried to make her feel better. They’d tell her God was saving her from a bad child. How awful is that? Or they would tell her that she never got to know her child so it shouldn’t hurt her so much, she’d get over it. How idiotic can people get? Because I know for a fact that it aches inside my mum until today. . . Maybe you’re really upset because you think your son is lost to you. But isn’t that, like. . . Look, don’t make him a miscarriage, Mrs Vaselli. Not over religion. Nothing’s worth that.” We sit in silence. And then I let out a startled laugh.

  “I don’t know why I’m telling you all this, Mrs Vaselli. Why should I care? I’ve never even met your son. ’Cause when I think about it, actually, I reckon you’re the grumpiest grouch of a neighbour I’ve ever had.” She looks up at me and I almost detect a twitch of a smile.

  “You cheeky girl,” she says slowly.

  “Look, if you don’t call him, I think I will, ’cause you are so stubborn! You put my dad to shame! There’s this Arabic saying my mum always tells my dad when he’s really stubborn. She says his mind is like a shoe.”

  “A shoe?”

  “Yep,” I shrug. “Lost in translation, I guess.”

  She bursts into laughter. She doesn’t stop, her chest heaves up and down and she leans over, wiping her eyes and shaking as her lungs gasp for air. I see her and I crack up, and we’re sitting on the porch, an old woman with her tasselled shawl, me with my hijab, and we’re finding out that we’re connected enough to affect each other. And it makes us laugh harder to realize we’d ever doubted it.

  33

  Survival through high school is all about appendages, specifically, the hand (left or right is irrelevant). Let me explain: whether you overcome ridicule, acne, cellulite, rejection, unrequited lust, bitchiness and the rest of what can make high school awesome fun (not) is entirely dependent upon who maintains the upper hand. For example, Tia and I, in our long-standing efforts to destroy each other, are really involved in a struggle to establish who has the upper hand. Some days her comeback lines are infinitely more eloquent than mine and we both know that she’s come out on top. Other days I, to put it bluntly, kick arse.

  This is what I am thinking as I watch Mr Piper flap his arms about and pace the classroom in his excitement over the Somme offensive in World War I. I really don’t understand how teachers manage to conduct themselves in such a deluded state of mind. How can he possibly believe, with any degree of sincerity, that we’re interested? Doesn
’t he realize that he has managed to put Tim, Rachel and Carlos to sleep in the back row? And over to my right we have Tia, Rita and Claire hiding magazines in their textbooks and pretending to be absorbed in Chapter Six.

  Well hello, hello. Adam, who is sitting at the desk next to me and has barely made eye contact with me since class started, has suddenly caught my eye and, check this out, rolled his eyes. Not rolled-his-eyes-at-me scenario. But rolled-his-eyes-at-teacher-in-united-solidarity-with-fellow-student scenario. I wonder if this is an opportunity for me to gain the upper hand again. Because until now he has undoubtedly had exclusive possession of it. At first, I did, when I rejected him. But after the rejection-due-to-principles-not-aversion-to-Adam incident, Adam’s two-week sulk/macho act enabled him to regain the upper hand. I think I might attempt to normalize things again. So I slip Adam the following note, squashed in the lid of my liquid paper pen to avoid Mr Piper’s watchful eyes: Do you think he wears that toupee to bed? Incidentally, what’s with the verbal constipation?

  The rest of our literary conversation goes like this:

  Adam: No, he would take it off. Probably put it down for the night in a kennel. PS: Ran out of Mylanta.

  Me: There’s always prune juice.

  Adam: It would interfere with my consumption of sardine and banana sandwiches.

  Me: Yummo. . .

  Adam: I’ve just noticed that your handwriting is pretty ugly for a girl.

  Me: Thanks! So, kissed anyone lately? Ha ha

  Adam: Heaven forbid! It’s SINFUL! PS: I hate it when people (especially girls) draw stupid smiley faces. There are plenty of words in the thesaurus which express joy. Expand your vocab and stop with the bad art.

  Me:

  Adam: Mature.

  Me: Do you think he realizes that the colour of his toupee doesn’t match the colour of the hair fuzz on his ear?

  There are two things I’d like to say about our scholarly exchange. First: that I think things are back to normal between us. Second: that I just got busted by Mr Piper.