I turned on the lights.
I dropped my backpack by the door, kicked off my shoes. My chest was tightening like a vise around my lungs, my vision blurring. In my mind I saw a stethoscope, a brown smudge, a scuffed gold wedding band.
Has she ever said anything to make you think she might be a danger to herself?
I felt heavy and cold.
I stared at an ancient, painted nail buried in the wall by the door, stood in the entryway staring at it for what felt like forever. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I was hungry, I had homework, I needed to shower, I had to find my phone, I wanted to put on a sweater, and I needed to change the bandage on my knee, the wound of which had been throbbing since yesterday. I was cold and damp and shivering, my head hot, my hands unsteady. I had a thousand human needs that needed tending to and I felt paralyzed by the weight of those needs, felt impotent in the face of all that I required. I’d been starting to scare myself lately, worrying that I perhaps I wasn’t eating enough or sleeping enough. I couldn’t afford to fall apart, which meant I needed to do better, but my heart and mind were so full these days they were stretching at the seams, leaving little room for the efforts I’d once made to participate in my own life, in my own interests.
Somehow, I dragged myself upstairs.
I locked myself in the bathroom and tugged off my scarf, stripped off my clothes, stepped into a scalding shower. I stood under the water until my legs could no longer hold my weight, sat down on the shower floor until my head grew heavy. I pressed my forehead to the tile, the rough grout abrading my skin. I breathed deep, inhaling water. Closed my eyes.
Dear God, I thought. Help me.
My tears made no sound.
I didn’t know how long I spent there, my body poorly heated by a weak showerhead, didn’t know how long I’d been crying. I’d gone back in time, turned into a fetus, laid there on the shower floor like an infant unclaimed. Soundless sobs wracked my body, tore open my chest. I did not know what to do with all this pain. I did not know whether I wanted to be born.
I was startled suddenly by a sharp knock at the door.
Another knock—no, a heavy pounding—and I was upright so fast I nearly slipped in the tub. My mind had grown accustomed to panic and went there easily now, with little encouragement. My heart was racing, my eyes felt swollen. I scrubbed violently at my face, made a concerted effort to remain calm. When I felt ready, I turned off the water.
“Yes?”
“You’ve been in there for like two hours,” my sister said. “I need to use the bathroom.” I marveled at the exaggeration. Then, distracted, I wondered when she’d arrived home, what time it was, whether my mother was back from work.
“You can use the other bathroom,” I said, clinging to the plastic shower curtain. “I’m almost done.”
“Let me in,” she said. “I don’t want to keep shouting.”
That was unusual for Shayda.
Gingerly, I stepped out of the shower, grabbed a fresh towel, and unlocked the bathroom door. I’d just jumped back into the tub and pulled the shower curtain closed when I heard the door rattle and swing open.
“Okay get out, right now,” my sister said sharply.
“I’m about to,” I said, hastily wrapping the towel around my body. “Why? What’s going on?”
“Hassan’s mom is here.”
“So?” I said. And then: “Oh.”
“Yes. Exactly. So get your lazy ass out of the shower and come make tea.”
I frowned, about to argue, then changed my mind. I realized that, in her own weird way, Shayda was asking for my help. She wanted me around for support during a stressful situation.
I was touched.
I felt it in truth, like a finger of heat pressed to my chest. But when she left half a second later, slamming the door so hard I felt the shower rod shake, I was decidedly less enthused. Still, it was something.
Shayda really seemed to despise me most days.
It was easy to dismiss our strained relationship with a shrug and a platitude about how she and I were just different, but I knew it was more complicated than that. We’d never been very close, but our paths had only recently split in earnest, and only because we couldn’t agree on a single matter of great importance.
I blamed my father, unequivocally, for Mehdi’s death.
Shayda did not.
I’d been stunned by her position on the matter. I’d never before had cause to know, in detail, our many differences, hadn’t reason to ask Shayda what she considered most important in life, faith, family. I’d never known exactly how she felt about dogma, or our parents, or even how harshly she’d judged our brother’s life. But when Mehdi died, the four of us left behind were forced to tear ourselves open, to examine the innards that made us tick. Death demanded we question the privately held, still-forming philosophies that shaped our hearts. We studied one another’s weak flesh and festering minds in the harsh, unflattering light of a midday sun, and when the moon rose, we’d found ourselves alone on different quadrants of the earth. I stood as far away from my sister as my mother did from my father, and I’d spent the last year trying and failing to bridge those distances.
The trouble was, I was often the only one making the effort.
I tiptoed to my bedroom in a towel, combed my fingers through damp, clean hair. The bandage on my chin had come off in the shower, and I was happy to discover the wound beginning
