We both stared down at the floor. I had known for a long time that Jonathon had some kind of crush on me but he was never going to do anything about it. He was just too unsure of himself to try. At least until I started to need his help.
I bit my lower lip to keep it from trembling. What was I doing? How had it gotten so out of control? I couldn’t look up at Jonathon, couldn’t face his anger, the pain in his face.
“I’m not leaving for another few weeks, Mina,” Jonathon said, his head bowed. “I want to see you. Just give me another chance.” He raised his head. “I think you owe me that.”
I slowly shook my head. “I don’t think so, Jonathon.”
His upper lip curled slightly. “Damn, Mina. I just want a chance to talk. Look at everything I’ve done for you. You can’t even force yourself to talk to me? Look, I still have to give you the computer program to forge the report cards. I’ll get the disk ready and then we can hang out and talk. Okay?”
I swallowed back the bile rising in my throat. I had heard all this before. And every time I relented a little, he asked for more. Of my time, my thoughts. My body. Until. Until I found myself just going along with what he wanted because I didn’t know how to ask for his help without giving something in return.
“Okay?” he asked, louder.
“Fine.”
I opened the door and walked out.
Alone in the empty hallway, with each step, I feared Jonathon might rush out to follow me, but the only sound in the foyer was the faint music escaping from under Jonathon’s closed door.
At the bottom of the stairs, I glanced up at the hallway. The mute statuette of Jesus hung on the wall, his hands clasped together in prayer.
We left before Mrs. Kim had a chance to call down Jonathon to say good-bye. He was packing, I told Uhmma and Mrs. Kim. Uhmma would not hear of us interrupting him again. We left, but not before Mrs. Kim had taken one dark blue suit, ripe with the stench of lobster, out from the hall closet.
suna
MINA AND UHMMA WALK into the stifling apartment, their clothes limp with sweat, creased with the lines of sitting in the car. Mina walks quickly to their bedroom while Uhmma stands at the door, staring around the apartment, sniffing at the damp ripe odor rising up from the old carpet and secondhand furniture. The lines of her forehead deepen. Uhmma’s narrowed eyes come to rest on Suna. And before Uhmma’s anger can lash out, find a target for all the miserable heat, Suna runs to her room.
The borrowed dress from the dry cleaners lays crumpled on the floor of their bedroom. They will have to launder it anyway. Mina stands at the dresser in her cutoff shorts and her bra. The drawer with all her shirts is pulled open. Yet, Mina simply stands there, lost in thought, lost in the rectangular patch of night sky framed by their one window. At the sound of Suna closing the door behind her, Mina quickly reaches into the drawer, pulls out a shirt and throws it on. Mina grabs her CD player and headphones from the top of her bureau and goes to the closet. The sliding door creaks in protest as Mina shoves it open and steps inside, sliding the door shut behind her.
Suna sits alone on her bed and stares out the window. She knows music has always helped Mina find a place other than here. She waits for Mina’s voice. The singing is soft at first, but then Mina’s voice, like the amber glow of a fire, lights out into the room, deep and burnished. Suna wraps the warmth around her shoulders.
mina
SOMETIMES WHEN THE WORLD felt out of control, when it was all going too fast, or not fast enough, or there was too much yelling about what we didn’t have, or Suna had grabbed my hand one too many times that day, I would hide in the closet. Just close the door and sit in the dark. When I was younger, I used to plug my ears and sing quietly, “These are a few of my favorite things,” from The Sound of Music. Now I put on my earphones and listen to my music.
Sometimes I could listen to the same song over and over again for months. Joni Mitchell, “River.” I listened to that for the first half of my junior year. My English teacher was getting a divorce and had it on whenever we walked into her class after lunch. It was also the year when my grades fell. Starting with math. I just couldn’t get my head around the proofs. And the more time I spent on math, the less time I had for other subjects. By the time finals came around, I had lost control. I tried to explain to Uhmma, but her way of dealing was to take me straight to Mrs. Kim’s house. And Jonathon. If anyone could tutor me, it was perfect, genius Jonathon. What Uhmma failed to understand was that it was too late. My grades had slipped beyond what I needed to get into the best colleges.
All my life Uhmma had held up Harvard as the way to my future. She had told me this myth so many times that I had come to believe it was true. If I couldn’t get into Harvard, what was the point? For when you have dreamed and talked about a goal, hoped for so long, anything in comparison did not hold a light.
I focused on Joni’s voice. On her heartbreaking cry, that one note trailing
