All We Have Left (8 page)

“You must really be into it,” Dave says. “I’ve gone out a couple of times, but it was never my thing.”

“I’m pretty into it,” I agree, though it’s a far cry from how I really feel about climbing. It’s the best thing in the world.

“I think she did good last night,” Nick says, sneaking one of my chicken bites.

“You going to help get us some paint?” Dave asks.

“What?”

“We have to be careful about the paint,” Nick explains. “We can’t just go down to the hardware store and buy a case. So we either find someone to buy it for us, or steal it.” Nick watches for my reaction, and I carefully keep my face blank. “She’ll help us get paint,” he says to Dave.

I nod, because of course I will, and he knows it. I’m blowing up the box, and it feels dangerous, and wonderful, and completely necessary.

“Hailey is not going to like it,” Dave says.

“Hailey’s just going to have to deal,” Nick says. “Jesse’s part of the crew now.”

As I walk back toward my building, the trees sway in the light breeze, occasionally sending down a single gold leaf or a sprinkle of drops left over from last night’s rain.

I walk slowly, stepping aside to let a group of clean-cut Jehovah Witnesses pass. Unless I want to run into my mother again, I’ll have to wait until she leaves for her office. A part of me whispers,
Lia wouldn’t be hiding down the road from her building. Lia would breeze in and face her mother with her head held high.

As if on cue, my mother comes out of our building. She’s talking on her cell, and she balances it against her ear with her shoulder as she stops under the green awning and fusses with her bag.

She has to pass me to get to her office, and I dive between
two parked cars and crouch down. I wish I had Lia’s camouflage burqa; I’d just drape the voluminous folds of the cloak around me and I’d magically fade into the car behind me.

I hold my breath as my mother gets closer and duck my head. Mama’s almost even with me, but she’s so caught up in her conversation—I wonder which auntie she decided to call to complain about me—she’s not paying attention to anything else. She almost steps in front of a cab, and then steps back onto the curb, waiting for the morning traffic to lighten up so she can cross the street.

She’s past my hiding place, so unless she turns around she won’t see me. I can hear her though, her low, musical voice agitated as she punctuates each word with a quick jab of her hand.

“That’s what I told her, Maysan, but did she listen? Of course not.”

Maysan. One of my aunties from California. She’s my mother’s best friend, with an easy smile, long brown hair, and beautiful eyes. Not actually a relative, but one of the big circle of aunties and uncles that make up my extended family.

I was fifteen when Mama landed her dream job in Brooklyn as an immigration lawyer. Dad is a computer whiz, so he can find a job anywhere, and I remember long conversations between them on our sunny porch, my mother talking fast, her hands flying, and my father nodding, saying, “Asmara, if you need this, we will go.” So it was
her
fault that we moved here, so far away from everybody we knew and loved.

After we moved, I began hanging around Carla Sanchez and her girls, and Mama and I went from not fighting, ever, to having these epic blowouts that blew up the walls of our apartment.

Mama glances at the traffic and looks down at her watch. “I just keep thinking of her running away last year, Maysan,” she says, and really?
Really?
Why does her voice suddenly sound watery, as if she’s trying not to cry?

When Mike Stanley asked me out near the end of my sophomore year, I made the big mistake of telling my parents, instead of making up some fake story like Carla told me to do. I don’t know why I thought they would say yes, maybe because they’d never made a big deal about me not dating before. It was just understood that I wouldn’t. Things spiraled out of control, and I fled to Carla’s for two nights. But I learned my lesson, I came home, and
why does it sound like she’s about to cry?

My mother’s voice fades as she heads across the street. I remain crouching between the cars, knowing it’s safe to go back to the apartment to get my gym clothes but suddenly wanting to hear what else my mother has to say about me. So many of the words lately have been brutal and hard; hearing her talk about me in that soft voice felt like peering into a secret part of her that has been closed to me for a long time.

I stand and watch my mother, a short, determined woman even in heels, her head held high, disappear down the street.
Part of me wants to run after her, give her a hug, tell her I’m sorry.

Sorry for what, though?

I mean, I’m sorry for running away, but I’ve apologized for that over and over again.

Now it seems like I should be apologizing just for being Alia.

Instead of going after my mother, I throw my half-empty coffee cup away and head for home.

Our corner apartment is in an old prewar building, full of high ceilings and pretty decorative molding, and stacked with colorful paintings. It’s smaller than where we lived in LA, but I love being able to go up to the roof. Sometimes my father will come up when he gets home from work, and we’ll stand in the soft silence, taking in all those buildings. My father would breathe “Allahu Akbar” as the moon slipped into view, and I would slide my hand into his.

In my room, I gather my clothes and tennis shoes, already dreading the conversation with my new gym teacher about why I can’t wear the issued shorts and T-shirt. Wearing the hijab full time means that I will also be wearing clothes that cover up my chest, arms, and legs, at least while I’m in public. I sigh as I look at my closet full of cute short-sleeved tops.

The end of my scarf catches on the corner of the desk, pulling it across my face. I blow out in exasperation, the
silky material puffing away from my mouth, and try to fix it. I wish Nenek were here to help me with it.

I wonder what my grandmother would think of me today. I miss her warm hugs, sweetly pragmatic wisdom, and bakso soup, full of golf-ball-sized meatballs and garnished with fresh shallots and boiled egg. Most of all, I miss her love, which is big enough to embrace me and all my mistakes. It’s not that I think my parents don’t love me, no matter how many mistakes I make, but it’s their job to teach, to judge, to correct. I know this because they’ve told me enough times.

My grandmother’s job is just to love.

I go into the kitchen and pick up the phone, dialing the familiar number.

“Nenek?”

“Lala!” my grandmother says, and I feel her love for me flooding through the telephone line. I realize belatedly that it must be super early in California, but she sounds wide awake.

“I decided to wear the scarf today, Nenek.”

I imagine her sitting in her cozy kitchen, her round, wrinkly face framed by a scarf the color of sea foam. I used to be so embarrassed walking with her when I was a kid. Not that anyone seemed to pay any attention to her scarf, but I didn’t understand why she wanted to look different from everyone else, why she wanted to stand out.

Now I understood. Because I
am
different, but the same, and it’s all mixed up in my head.

“I am proud of you,” Nenek says. “I know it can be a very hard decision.”

“Were you mad when Mama decided not to wear it?” I ask, settling my butt against the edge of the counter and twirling the phone cord through my fingers.

“Mad?” she asks and laughs, melodic and tinny with distance. “Why would I be angry about a choice that was your mother’s alone?” She is silent for a moment. “I suppose,” she says, “in some ways it felt as if she was letting her culture slip away like sand through her fingers. But I understood. And she is a good Muslim, and that is what matters.”

I know that there are some women who believe that wearing the scarf is their duty, that God asks it of them. There are also Muslim women like my mother who think that wearing the hijab is a personal choice, and that the tradition of covering a woman’s hair is a cultural interpretation of the Quran. It’s all pretty confused in my head, and I really don’t know what to believe. But I think wearing it will make me a better person, and that’s what I want desperately right now.

“Everybody is so mad at me,” I say softly as I wind the cord so tight around my hand that the tips of my fingers turn white.

“And why is that?”

I tell her what happened with Carla yesterday, and she lets me talk, lets me tell my side of the story, and when I am done she doesn’t start talking right away. I’m thinking about how my grandfather used to carve masks out of wood. When I was younger I would try on the different masks, royally
nodding as Princess Candra Kirana, or clowning around as a jester in a half mask with a big black mustache. In the end though, I always had to go back to being ordinary Alia.

“I have never told you the story of how I came to be in America,” my grandmother says after a moment.

I know my family is from Indonesia, and that my grandmother and grandfather had come here when my mother was just a kid, and that my father and mother married soon after college. I didn’t realize that there was more to the story than that.

“The country we come from is beautiful,” Nenek says, “more beautiful than I can put into words. Thousands of islands strung like pearls on a necklace, pink petals floating in the rain puddles, and the water touches the sky. Your mother was only four years old when everything went bad. There was a coup, and your grandfather was thought to be a sympathizer. We had to go into hiding. Thousands of people died, and the streets ran with blood. Literally, I am saying. Your mother wandered out one morning before I was awake, and when I finally found her, her feet were red with the blood of the people who had been murdered and left in the street. I scrubbed and scrubbed them, but even when they were pink and clean, I cried, because I knew it would never come off.

“Your grandfather was able to bring us to America, and I remember walking around that first year feeling like I was in a dream. Everything was so normal, while in my home country, people, my friends and family, were still dying. I
felt guilty for living in peace. It was hard adjusting at first. I could not speak English, and everything was so different here. But I learned the language, and eventually your mother was old enough to go to college, and we were so proud. A lawyer! Imagine! We wanted to make sure she never felt powerless, that she had a secure place in this country.”

We are both quiet after she stops speaking. It’s a horrible story, and I almost want to cry thinking about my mother’s little-girl feet covered in blood. I can’t imagine living in a place where things like that happened. I have only been to Indonesia once, and it
is
a beautiful country, but who would I be if my grandparents hadn’t come to America? Those teenage girls I saw in the streets of Jakarta seemed so different from me.

But were they really?

“I think you need to understand where you came from, that these bad things that happened have shaped your parents. Remember, Lala, that to love is to be frightened every minute of every day.”

“I don’t know what they expect from me! I don’t
want
to be a lawyer like Mama, and I think I might want to write comic books, but that won’t ever be good enough for them.”

“You are afraid too, Lala. You are afraid of disappointing your parents, but you cannot let fear keep you from being the person you need to be.”

We sit in the rich, light-filled silence for a moment, thousands of miles apart but still in the same place.

“I need to get to school, Nenek,” I say eventually.

“Yes,” she says. “What I wanted to say is this: you are stronger than you think you are. We all are.”

“I’ve made so many mistakes, Nenek. I’m not sure my parents will ever be able to forgive me,” I say.

“Of course they will forgive. It’s harder to forget though. I love you very, very much, Lala. So do your mother and father.”