But that’s not what I do.
Instead, I watch my mother try to explain something to them. I see her point to herself and shake her head. I see her steal a quick glance out the window but only when they have turned their backs to her momentarily. She fumbles through her purse and touches the back of her neck. The men in the blue jackets have asked her to come out from behind the counter. They bring her outside. They don’t have their hands on her but they’re controlling her movements all the same.
Once she’s outside, my mother looks in my direction, and I wonder if she can see me. I don’t know how to signal her. There isn’t much time for me to figure it out. Mr. Fazio, the owner of the laundromat, has just come down the street. He is shaking his head. He has one hand on his forehead and another on his hip. He stands with the men—they must be some kind of police officers. They ask him something, but he shakes his head again and shrugs his shoulders.
He doesn’t help her.
I press myself against the vending machine, its tiny vibrations mixing with the nervous energy in my bones. I want to believe that a twelve-year-old can be a hero, but my gut tells me my mother wants me to stay hidden.
She’s on the sidewalk. They are right behind her. She turns her gentle brown eyes back to Mr. Fazio. She crumples for just a half second before she lifts her head and looks around. She’s looking for me. She doesn’t see me, but I can see her lips say my name from across the street.
My Shah.
A million times before she’s called me her king, but I’ve never been so desperate to hear it.
I love you, I want to shout, but instead I put a hand over my mouth. One of the men leans into the car and then returns to have another word with Mr. Fazio. They give him some papers. He is still shrugging, bewildered. He’s wiping his forehead with a handkerchief. The smooth, hairless center of his head reflects the morning sun. The two women in the laundromat stay so close to the machines they look like they might crawl into them. One of them has a cell phone pressed to her ear. My mother hangs her head low enough to hide her eyes. Sunlight makes her hair shine and, although it’s impossible, I can smell her shampoo from here, fruity and sweet. I want to bury my head in her shoulder and feel her hair tickle my cheeks.
Had my mother known? Had she seen this coming? Was she warning me of this moment?
I want to cry when I see her nudged into the back seat of their black car. I want to chase after that car and bang on its windows, slam my fists on its trunk. I want to scream that she’s all I have and beg them not to take her, but she’s broken a rule. What can I possibly say?
I’m terrified to see my mother being taken away. I want to pull her out of there and hold her hand as we run back to our apartment. I don’t do any of that. I’m scared and angry and sad.
I’m a lot of things, but shocked is not one of them, because my mother, on her birthday, told me we could lose each other.
Four
Every breath I take will be to move the mountain between us.
The mountain was invisible until now. With my mother gone, I see the mountain she talked about. It is rising, rising from the ground until it is so big that it blots out the sun.
Mother, I think with my balled hands covering my eyes. What made you think you could move the earth?
The black car pulls away. There are no flashing lights or blaring sirens. How could this be? How could my mother be taken from me without the entire world noticing? One of the women inside the laundromat transfers an armful of damp clothes into a dryer. A minivan moves past me with two children in car seats. They are waving toys in the air in some kind of back seat celebration. One of the customers joins Mr. Fazio in the street, and they look all around. I stay concealed behind the soda machine.
I have nothing against Mr. Fazio, but he just let the officers take my mother away, and I don’t know what he’s going to do if he finds me. With my mother gone, I’m going to have to start making big decisions, and hiding from Mr. Fazio is my first.
What should I do? What can I do?
I look down and see that I’m wearing jeans, a green polo shirt, and gray sneakers. I have a few quarters in my pocket and a key to our house tucked into a pocket my mother has sewn into the inside of my jeans after I lost my third key. I do not have a cell phone or a backpack or anything that might be helpful for a kid who is now on his own. I have a bottle of apple juice that I don’t want anymore.
What should I do, Mom?
Leaning against the whirring soda machine, I think of the million times I wanted my mother to stop telling me what to do. I slide to the ground and wait for my mother’s voice to reach me.
Jan-em, I hear. I told you this could happen.
I don’t want to cry. I can’t risk someone coming around the corner and finding me here in tears. Maybe they would call the police. Would they take me to my mother?
You are American. I am not. I’m not supposed to be here. I don’t have papers.
She made it very clear last month what would happen if people with badges ever showed up and asked her to show papers.
I stay in this country. My mother doesn’t.
I don’t understand how a piece of paper can mean the difference between us being together and us being torn apart. It seems like it should take something a lot scarier or stronger than a piece of paper to do that.
I wipe my face and take a deep breath. Being alone is scary. That’s why Auntie Seema didn’t want my mother to feel alone. That’s why she became family to us.
Auntie Seema.
Suddenly the clouds in my head clear. I need to get to Auntie Seema. I know that she lives in New York City, but I don’t know her address.
I push myself off the ground and wipe the seat of my jeans. It’s still early, and there aren’t as many cars on the road as there will be in a few hours. I’ve got to get to my aunt. That’s what my mother would want me to do. But to get to Auntie Seema is no easy feat. We don’t visit her because Mom can’t shake the feeling that New York is a dangerous place since the evening news is always reporting a crime there. It makes Auntie Seema furious to hear Mom say things like that, but it’s one of those things that they forever disagree on. Auntie Seema comes to visit us every couple of months. She takes the train and we meet her at the station, which is a few blocks from our apartment.
I have a plan. I need to get into New York City and find Auntie Seema, but to do that I’m going to need a few things. I’ve got to go home first. I pray that the men with badges are not there waiting for me.
It takes me only ten minutes to make my way back home. I keep my head low and my hands stuffed in my pockets. I don’t know if anyone’s looking for me, but I don’t want to take any chances. I look out of the corner of my eye when I hear a car whizzing past me, checking to make sure it’s not the officers, the guys who took my mother away. When I hear someone shout, my heart flies into a frenzy. It’s just a man talking loudly on a cell phone, but my heartbeat takes a long time to recover.
The walk gives me time to think, which is not necessarily a good thing. I’ve got something scary to do and, I realize as I put one foot in front of the other, it’s a lot easier to do than think. I’m just grateful to be moving, even if I’m not sure I’m going in the right direction.
Ms. Raz is sweeping the front steps of our building. I see her from a distance and take a deep breath. I have to get past her without letting on that something’s happened. I’m also not sure if the officers have already been here.
“Jason D,” she says when I place my foot on the first step. She adjusts the thin-framed glasses that are forever drifting down her nose. She’s been looking at me suspiciously ever since the day she found me on the roof with the pigeons. She hasn’t said anything to my mother about it yet, and I don’t know if she will.
Ms. Raz learned my name only last year, when I delivered containers of my mother’s cooking to her door. She was bedridden after breaking her hip, and the only person coming in or out of her apartment was a nurse who
stopped by for one hour each day. She was annoyed that I’d knocked on her door, but took the foil-covered plate all the same. We sent food every day until we saw Ms. Raz walking around outside the way she used to. She told me that day that we didn’t have to send food anymore. She wasn’t an invalid, she snapped. I asked my mother what an invalid was. My mother wasn’t sure, but decided Ms. Raz didn’t need any more food. That might be the only reason why she hasn’t complained about my being on the roof.
“Everything okay? Mom okay?”
“Hi, Ms. Raz. Everything’s good, thanks,” I say, trying to keep my voice even and casual as I move up the stairs. “Mom’s at work.”
Ms. Raz nods approvingly and takes a momentary break, putting a hand on her back and squinting at the morning sun.
“Mom works hard.”
I nod in agreement, squeeze my lips into a forced smile, and slip past her before she can ask any other questions.
I walk up the two flights of steps to our apartment. I use the key, warm from being pressed against my hip, to open the door, then I close the door behind me and flip the deadbolt closed too. I run to the window of our living room and steal a glance down at the street. No one’s followed me, and there are no threatening-looking cars around. I look at our home and it suddenly feels like a museum full of artifacts from a former life.
The pictures on our bookshelf are portraits. The dishes my mom left drying on the rack are an exhibit. What will happen to all of our stuff? What will happen to our home? I can’t think about it too much. Doing is better, I remind myself. Keep doing and moving.
I walk into the room I share with my mother. We used to share one big bed, but two years ago I raised a fuss, asking for my own bed. I came home from school to find our queen-size bed had been replaced with two twin beds. I felt pretty cool to finally have my own bed. Then again, I always end up in Mom’s bed whenever I get sick, even if it’s just a case of the sniffles.
I pull my backpack out of my closet and stuff a change of clothes in it. Then I open the plastic frames and take the photograph of my father in his gray shirt and the one with his laughing friend. Next, I take the picture of my mother holding a one-year-old me on her lap in a grassy park. I tuck them between the pages of a small notebook and slip them into my backpack.
In the kitchen, I open a cabinet and take out the small tin that used to hold tea leaves. This is the money my mom has given me for the occasional ice cream cone. I pull out a small bunch of one-dollar bills and a few coins and stuff them into the pocket of my pants. I pick up the strainer I’ve knocked off the counter in my haste and hold it in my hands.
Drops of rain fall from my sky full of stars. What am I?
I lift the strainer over my head. It is a metal sky, light shining through the holes like twinkling stars.
This one took me a while to figure out but I did it. How I’m going to get to Auntie Seema’s house is a much more complicated puzzle, but I’ll figure it out too.
Auntie Seema.
I run back into my bedroom and dig through my shoes to get to a cardboard box. I fold the flaps back into place and find the return address. Auntie Seema sent me a pair of sneakers for my birthday, and I kept the box because it’s not too often that I get packages addressed to me, Mr. Jason D. Riazi. On the top left corner is half of Auntie Seema’s name and her address. I tore part of it when I ripped the tape off the box that day, eager to see what my aunt had sent me.
74th St., Apt. B5
New York, New York
I tear off the square with her address on it and feel a rush as I stuff it into the front pocket of my backpack. I’m a little less afraid now that I have an address, but I’m also a little more afraid because I don’t know if I’ll make it to this address.
Just keep moving, I tell myself. Stop thinking.
Back in the kitchen, I toss three granola bars and a juice box into my backpack, then pause for a moment. I don’t know if I’ll ever see this place again. I don’t know if I’ll ever see my mother again. I don’t know if I’ll actually be able to find my aunt. I don’t know much at all.
I look at the blue-and-gray sofa, the sun-faded curtain over the kitchen window, and the small bowl of potpourri that stopped smelling like anything three years ago. I look at the hook where I sometimes but not always remember to hang my jacket, and the kitchen chair where my mother sets her handbag. There’s a green line on the wall from when I tripped holding an open green marker. There’s the fridge full of my mother’s cooking: stewed okra, white rice with cumin, and meatballs.
“Good-bye,” I whisper with my back pressed against the door to the small but perfect world that was my mother and me. And while I don’t know much, there is one thing I know for sure. As soon as my mother’s feet hit Afghanistan, she’ll find a way for us to be together again. All I’ve got to do is be somewhere that she’ll find me.
Five
I adjust the straps of the backpack on my shoulders and make it down the steps and out of the building without seeing Ms. Raz. Each step feels like a thousand. Am I doing the right thing?
I’m passing by the bagel store where my mother sometimes gets us breakfast.
“Hey, there! Kid!”
My heart leaps into my throat. The voice is coming from behind me. I consider running but turn my head just a bit so I can see if the voice belongs to someone in a blue windbreaker.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
An elderly man is waving a finger at me. I want to keep walking, but my mother would lose her mind if she saw me ignoring someone that age. The man has just come out of a shoe repair shop and is shaking his head. He’s not one of the blue-jacket men, but I’m still ready to make a dash.
“Run while you can,” he mumbles, his hands trembling in a steady rhythm. “Are you skipping school?”
“No, sir. There’s no school today,” I reply nervously.
“No school,” he mutters and taps his cane angrily on the sidewalk. “Kids have it so easy these days. Nothing to worry about except video games and cell phones. When I was young . . .”
He walks away from me, heading back into the shoe repair shop. That’s when I feel something grab at the back of my jeans, right around my calves. I yelp and my backpack falls off my shoulders. There’s a small dog tied to a parking meter. I back up so he can’t jump on me again. He’s perched on my backpack, barking triumphantly.
“Hey, that’s my bag!” I reach over to pick the bag up but pull my hand away when his jaw snaps at me.
“I need that!” I say desperately. I reach over again but this time the dog flashes me a sharp-toothed warning.
I take a step back. He looks angry, as if I’ve threatened him instead of the other way around.
“What’s going on out there, troublemaker?”
Someone is coming to the door of a shop. I don’t want to be forced to explain where I’m going or why I’m not in school. The door starts to swing open, sending a bell dinging. As if the bell was a signal, I take off, racing down to the end of the block and turning the corner. I put my hands on my knees, panting, and peek around the corner. The sidewalk is empty.
I let out an angry groan. How could I have lost my backpack already? I kick at the wall and take a deep breath. I need to put distance between me and this place. The train station is still a few blocks away. At least I have the money in my pocket. I close my eyes for a second to picture the cardboard scrap I’d put into my backpack and burn Auntie Seema’s address into my brain.
74th St., Apt. B5
New York, New York
The train will take me to Auntie Seema’s apartment in New York City, a place my mother refused to go out of fear. That means I have to be even braver than her. On the other hand, if I don’t do this, I could end up lost or picked up by the police for being without a mom. That’s a lot scarier than going to New York City, so maybe I’m not brave. Maybe I’m just choosing between being afraid and being more afraid.
The train station has a wide entrance. I
walk in along with a handful of other people. No one’s paying attention to me so far, but I’m still anxious.
There are platforms on both sides. I’ve heard Auntie Seema talk about getting a train ticket, so I know I’ll need one. I look at the ticket booth and see a woman sitting inside. She looks annoyed to be there, and I can see why. I wouldn’t want to sit in a glass box all day either.
My palms are sweaty, so I wipe them on my jeans before I get in line to approach her. Will she sell a ticket to a kid alone, or will she call the cops?
She could call the cops and I could get taken away. What do they do with kids who don’t have parents? I think of the orphanage from the movie our music teacher made us watch. That girl with the big curly hair did everything she could to get away from that place. I don’t feel much like singing or dancing when I think of it, so I step out of the line and look around. Maybe I can just run onto the train? If I get caught, I’ll go straight to jail for breaking the law, so that idea isn’t a very good one.
C’mon, Jason D, I tell myself. Figure this out.
That’s when I spot three blue-and-orange machines along the side wall. There’s a sign above them with letters big enough that I can read from where I stand: TICKETS. I walk over to the machines, stealing a quick glance over my shoulder to be sure the ticket booth lady isn’t watching me.
The machine has a huge touch screen, kind of like the world’s biggest tablet. I follow the directions and purchase a one-way ticket to the last stop, New York City. I keep sliding one-dollar bills into the machine until it spits out a ticket. That leaves me with only a few coins, but I can’t think about that now.
I’ve seen Auntie Seema’s apartment once. She texted my mother a picture of herself standing in front of her home, a narrow building with a Dominican restaurant on the ground level and two apartments over it. Auntie Seema’s apartment is the very top one, my mother told me. In the photograph, there are hulking concrete buildings with narrow windows along the block. When my mother would let me use her phone, I would look at that picture and try to imagine what it would be like to visit Auntie Seema in New York City.