“Shayda,” I said desperately. “There are people downstairs. They can hear you. Maman will hear you.”
“So you’re not even going to answer my questions?” She shook her head, disgusted, and with that movement the fight left her body. She looked bereft in the aftermath. Bereft and cruel. “You’re not going to answer my questions, but you’re going to stand there and pretend to be righteous, pretend to be better than me, than all the rest of us?”
“Shayda. Stop.”
“You didn’t even cry at his funeral,” she said, and I heard her breath hitch. “Sometimes I think you don’t even care that he’s dead.”
I was suddenly breathing so hard I thought my chest would explode. I stared at the carpet under my feet, tried desperately to keep my anger in check. This time, I failed.
“Get out.”
“What?” She startled.
“Get out. Get out of my room. Go get married. Good luck.”
“I’m not getting married,” she said, still confused. “I’m just—”
I looked up, locked eyes with her. She visibly flinched.
“You don’t know anything about me, Shayda. You don’t know anything at all.” I walked past her, yanked open the door. “Now leave.”
She wouldn’t.
So I did.
I pulled on a pair of jeans and an old hoodie, tugged a wool beanie over my wet hair. Shayda was telling me that I’d lost my mind, that I’d officially gone insane, that I couldn’t go downstairs looking like that without embarrassing her, and that I couldn’t leave without saying hello to Hassan’s mom or else disrespect their entire family, and that this—this—was only further proof that I didn’t care about anyone but myself, that I was a monster, a monster of a human being who didn’t care about anyone, didn’t care about anyone—
These were the words she shouted at me as I barreled down the stairs.
My mother stood erect, waiting for me as I entered the living room, the look on her face violent enough to commit a double homicide.
I’d missed that look.
“I’m sorry,” I said breathlessly, and forced a smile.
I did my best to make quick work of the extremely polite and overly formal hellos and apologies necessary, my stilted, accented Farsi making the scene even more ridiculous. I thanked the woman I assumed was Hassan’s mom for honoring our home with her presence, for being gracious enough to overlook my appearance, and to please, please sit down and make herself comfortable. Her lips kept twitching as I talked, as she took me in, staring at me as though she were trying hard not to laugh.
My mother sighed.
But when I started putting on my shoes, she sharpened.
“Koja dari miri?” she said. Where are you going?
I knew it was only out of courtesy for her guest that she didn’t rip open my spleen right there on the living room floor, and it filled me with no small amount of joy to see her like this, something like herself. I didn’t mind at all that she would no doubt kill me later.
“I forgot my phone at Zahra’s house,” I said quickly, affecting nonchalance. Insouciance. Indifference. I hated Shayda. “I need to run back and grab it.”
“Alaan?” Right now?
My mother peered out the window, at the increasing darkness. Zahra’s house wasn’t far from here, only about four streets down. For a few months Zahra’s proximity to our new house had been the only fringe benefit in moving. Three months ago, when I’d been sent to the nurse’s office after passing out in the middle of second period, I couldn’t get ahold of anyone. Instead, I called Zahra’s mom, who sent her husband to pick me up. He left work, bought me five different kinds of medicine I didn’t need, and let me sleep in Zahra’s bed. I was so astonished by their kindness I wrote them a letter right there in Zahra’s bedroom, at her desk, using her paper and pen. It was a long letter, the contents of which were an exaggeration of emotion, embarrassing in their sincerity. I’d left the letter in their mailbox. Walked home. Said nothing to my own family about my day.
Zahra told me, when I went back to school, that her parents had found my letter. She told me at lunch. She kept peering at me over her sandwich, looking at me like she’d never seen me properly before, like maybe I was crazy.
“That was a weird letter,” she’d said, and laughed. She kept laughing. My parents thought it was sweet, but I thought it was so funny. It was a joke, right?
My mom didn’t know that Zahra and I were no longer friends.
I never told her what happened, because telling my mom what happened would only cause her to worry about me, which would break my vow to spare her the need to ever worry about me. I didn’t want her to worry. Not about me. Not about anyone. And yet—
Even in this, I was occasionally a failure.
My mother was still staring out the window, and I could tell she was about to forbid me from leaving the house. I could feel it, could see the words forming—
“Zahra’s waiting for me,” I said quickly. “I’ll just run there and be back. Ten minutes!”
I slammed the door shut behind me.
Fifteen
The day my brother died, my mother was making ghormeh sabzi. The kitchen was warm with the heat of the stove, the air heavy with the smells of caramelized meat and fresh rice. I was sitting at the kitchen table, offering no assistance at all as she cleaned up the mess. I was in a daze, watching her with unusual fascination as she took apart the food processor she’d used to mince a half ton of parsley. I’d seen her do this a thousand times before—had done it myself—but that day I felt numb as I sat there. Incomprehensibly paralyzed.
My father was pacing, lecturing the air as my mother