The Vow

Chapter 6

Mo

I’m going home.

I’m sitting in the dark, watching Annie hurry down the steps of Mr. Twister, but I’m not really here at all. I’m still at the kitchen table, staring at the steam curling off my tea, marveling at the perfect flatness of my dad’s voice. The way he said it—We’re going home—he could have been asking for more stew or telling me I needed a haircut.

I glance at the clock. It’s lying. It can’t have been just one hour. I’ve had a week’s worth of thoughts and a year’s worth of emotions since then, and yet I’ve landed at nothing—thinking nothing, feeling nothing. Is this what shock is? I can’t remember actually driving here, so it’s lucky I didn’t get pulled over for speeding since my autopilot mode is twenty over the limit.

He tried to make it sound like it was for the best, like the tanking of ReichartTek was not the end of the world.

My mother said nothing, of course. She just stared over my shoulder, out the French doors, through the pool chairs and the freshly painted fence, and into the blur of horizon and sunset. She already knew. That was clear. Her eyes were dry but bloodshot under swollen lids. More than once during his speech, she picked up the teapot with trembling hands, then realized nobody needed more tea and put it down again.

“It’s actually a good time to be going home,” he said after rambling about research opportunities in Jordan for someone of his education and experience.

“But this is home,” Sarina whispered. Then eyeing her nasty little cat, “Can I bring Duchess?”

At the time I was too dazed to be appropriately pissed off, but now I’m ready to punch the steering wheel. Can I bring Duchess? What kind of idiotic response is that? She’s fifteen—too old for her biggest concern in life to be proximity to her little cat. And as for But this is home, she has to see that it isn’t home. We’ve been pretending. Home claims you.

According to my passport, Jordan claims me, but by my third summer of visiting home, I knew I didn’t belong there anymore. Whatever admiration my Jordanian cousins had for my fancy American accent and clothes had turned sour by the time I was a teenager.

Their disgust wasn’t subtle. The cherry-red Nike basketball shoes I’d been giddy to show off were not items to be coveted but damning proof that I thought I was better them. And the fact that my best friend wore a bra made me haram—never mind that my cousins were only slightly more religious because they lived closer to Teta and Jido. America had rotted my soul.

Annie appears.

I exhale slowly. She’s walking toward the truck with her head down, bobbing as she steps over a bike propped against the railing. She walks like a twelve-year-old boy, probably because her legs are too long for her torso and her arms swing like a primate’s, plus she hasn’t got enough muscle holding her bones together.

She looks up at me and glares. The honking.

This is going to kill her. I feel it, and suddenly my mouth is so dry I can’t swallow, can’t breathe. Why haven’t I been planning what to say to her? She’s right in front of me, just a few more seconds of ignorance between us, and I didn’t even think about how upset she’s going to be. I don’t want to tell her.

The passenger side door squeals as she pulls it open. “Was that really necessary?”

“You don’t want to drive?”

“You can,” she says. “I’m so tired I don’t even care.”

Usually she does care. Very much. She says I drive like a crack-crazed maniac.

She climbs in and I can see the exhaustion in the slump of her shoulders, the way her hair is fuzzy on top and falling out of her ponytail around the other side. Maybe I should wait till tomorrow to tell her.

“Take me home, driver. Don’t get a ticket and I’ll forgive you for the honking.”

What if I don’t have to tell her? There are crazy stoic people out there who keep terminal illnesses to themselves, and they just drop dead one day and surprise everyone who knew them. I could be one of them. I’d just disappear.

Except I can’t pretend with Annie.

“Something bad happened,” I say. My voice doesn’t even sound like my own. “Really bad.”

She cracks her neck. I hate it when she does that, but I’m too distracted to lecture her about arthritis in her spine right now. “As long as it doesn’t involve you hitting a pedestrian with my truck, I’m sure it’ll be okay,” she says. “Did Bryce finally beat you at foosball or something?”

“No. He left for Argentina yesterday.”

She waits, but I don’t have a place to start. It doesn’t seem fair to give her the same abrupt explanation my dad gave us. I owe her more. I wish it were over. “It’s really bad,” I repeat.

“What do you mean?” she asks quietly. She’s staring at me now. Her skin is bone white except for the vein at her temple that looks like a river on a map. “You’re scaring me,” she says. “What happened?”

“My dad lost his job.”

“Oh, Mo,” she says, and in the lamplight I see relief soften her face. “I’m so sorry.” She reaches over and hugs me. She smells like Lysol and butterscotch. The combination is unsettling.

“My mom’s losing it,” I mumble into her shoulder. It’s true but not relevant, just something to say while I stretch out the telling.

Annie lets go of me. She swallows and nods. She thinks she understands, because my mom is always in some state of losing it.

“You think she’s going to be okay?”

“No. He just told us at dinner, and then . . .”

And then we sat and stared at our stew. Finally Sarina got up and scraped the cold bowls into the disposal. Mom started to sniffle, Dad cleared his throat, Mom started wailing, and Dad retreated to the den.

“. . . then I had to come pick you up,” I finish.

“Did something happen, or are they just downsizing?”

“They’re going under, or trying not to by letting a bunch of employees go.”

“Your dad will get another job, though,” Annie says. “He’s a genius big shot, right? And you guys are pretty well-off. I mean, it’ll probably be tough for a while, but I’m sure it’ll all work out.”

“You don’t get it.”

It’s the wrong thing to say to Annie. She bristles and straightens like someone’s pulling her up by the spine. I don’t know who’s to blame for making her think she’s stupid—probably that dumbass seventh-grade math teacher Mr. Crickshaw—but she won’t let it go.

I try again. “I mean I haven’t told you everything yet. It’s about our status.”

She rolls her eyes. “Seriously? That’s crap, Mo. Nobody’s going to think less of your family just because your dad lost his job. It happens to people all the time. I don’t mean it’s not terrible, but it doesn’t affect your status.”

“No. Immigration status.”

Insects shriek and pulse in the blackness beyond the truck. I see her shoulders rise and fall, but her face stays perfectly still. Annie is the master of the serene surface. I can’t even tell if she’s understanding what I’m saying.

“But you have a green card, right?”

“No.”

“But you’re legal.”

“Right now, yeah. My dad has a work visa, so we’re legal until he’s no longer working for ReichartTek.”

She folds her arms over her chest. I can see her pinching the skin at the backs of her arms between her index finger and thumbs. “So you all have to apply for green cards now, right?”

I want this conversation over. I don’t want to see her response when it clicks.

“Right?” she insists. “It’s not like you snuck into the country in the back of a pickup. And you’ve been here forever!” The cords in her neck are straining beneath her skin.

“That doesn’t matter.”