A Word For Love Part 23

Stuck in the house, the children became restless and moody, like Madame and me. Lema fought with her mother for a new swimsuit. She put on her jeans and threatened to leave, then took them off and wore her pajamas again, the whole time yelling at her mother, roaming around in her underwear, then her jeans, then her pajamas, then her underwear again, then her jeans. "It doesn't matter to me, someday I'll go home to my husband's house," she smirked, as if she were not only fourteen.

Nisrine and I conferred in the bedroom.

"What do we do? The door's locked."

We were not supposed to leave until the afternoon, though.

"There's time," she told me, and smoothed down a sheet.

In the living room, Lema dressed to go out. She tried to leave without saying good-bye, but the front door was still locked.

Madame fried eggplant for our breakfast. "She'd just leave?" Madame muttered about Lema. "Very nice, she'd just leave like that." She washed the parsley. She stirred the fava beans. She fried almonds. She poked at the eggplant.

Lema searched for the key, but she couldn't find it, so she shut herself in the bedroom. Madame cut parsley. She tasted the almonds.

After a few minutes, Lema came back out to the kitchen with a bright face and laughed and talked to everyone. She was making up to her mother by laughing and talking to everyone, except me, because her mother was mad at me. When she came to me, she pouted.

I sat at the table with the family, and all through breakfast there was an in-joke, and I was out. Madame and the children stuck together, laughing and talking, and they only stopped when they remembered I was there. They made jokes about feeding Baba coal if he didn't come home for dinner. Abudi took a raw eggplant from the counter and threw it in the air.

"Is that your dinner, Abudi?" I joked, but no one laughed because Nisrine was still in the bedroom and no one else was talking to me.

I gathered our tea gla.s.ses from the table to wash them, but Madame wouldn't let me.

"Go to sleep, Bea, you look tired."

It was only ten a.m.

"I'm not tired," I said, but no one was listening to me. They treated me like a guest. Madame told me not to clean up, but I did anyway, and it was a silent cleanup war.

"Leave those, Bea, you look tired."

"I'm not tired."

"Go to sleep, Bea."

I went to the bedroom and pulled the covers over my head, to be alone. I thought, Maybe I could lie here all day, until I went to Imad in the afternoon, and then I could come home from Imad and pretend I was sick and go back to bed and never get up again, and then I'd never have to see anyone. I began to worry for the first time about Nisrine's and my plan. Would it work for her to just walk out? I closed my eyes beneath the covers, and tried to imagine what it might be like if Nisrine left, but I couldn't; she was still of this place to me, the one I woke with in the mornings, who kissed me and each child before spooning out our milk. This was what she wanted. I tried to put myself in her place: What would I miss, if I were to leave? But, right then, I couldn't think of many things; Madame was mad, so I thought only of problems. Under the covers, I smirked like Lema. I had a family reunion. If I wanted, I could leave here right now, and then I wouldn't have to worry about Baba, or miss Nisrine so acutely, because I wouldn't be here either, we would both be gone, and so none of it would matter to me. Outside, the call to prayer sounded through the window, and even it was annoying, not pretty, and time loomed before me, and then even though I wasn't tired, I fell asleep.

When I woke it was afternoon, and there was n.o.body. Usually we'd eaten our big meal by now, but n.o.body woke me.

I dressed very quickly and walked down the hall to tell Madame I was leaving for cla.s.s. Madame was nowhere. Neither was Nisrine. Neither were the children.

I wandered the rooms of our apartment, carefully opening the door of each one, and calling out. They must be somewhere. Madame never left the apartment, she was too busy. The children never left, because Madame worried when they were gone. I tried the front door, which was locked as always.

I wandered through the parlor and the kitchen, until I heard a voice in the children's bedroom. So that's where they were. It was m.u.f.fled and low, as if the children were hiding under the bed. I set down my books, and began to walk very quietly to the bedroom, to surprise them. From the hall, I could see the door was closed. I would open it, and rush in. I rolled up my pants so they wouldn't swish, and crept silent as dust to the door- "Bea? Is that you?"

The voice was Nisrine's.

I tried the door. It wouldn't open.

"Nisrine?"

"I'm locked in. Bea, is there anyone? It's the hour to meet Adel."

"Where's Madame?"

"She left."

"She left?"

Madame never left.

"Where'd she go?"

"Shopping."

She never went shopping.

"For Lema's swimsuit, Bea, you fell asleep. I've been calling and calling. I've been here for hours, I couldn't wake you. Why'd you fall asleep, Bea, I'm locked in, it's time to leave."

I jiggled Nisrine's door. It didn't budge. I pushed from one side, she pulled from the other. Still nothing.

"There must be a key," I said. I had cla.s.s, Madame wouldn't lock us in when she knew I had cla.s.s.

I ran to the front door; it was also locked. I tried Nisrine's door again. I called Madame's cell phone from the house line, but her cell phone rang in the kitchen. I called Baba's work phone, but he must have been at the Journalists' Club, where he said they kept the doc.u.ment, because his work phone kept ringing.

I went to the bedroom and pulled down the covers on all the beds to search for the key.

In the children's room, I heard Nisrine's soft movements. "Check the laundry," she told me from behind her door. I checked the laundry. "Check the bookshelf."

I said, "They can't just lock us in. There must be a key. She must have left a key."

From the other side of the door, I could hear Nisrine slowly exhaling. We felt the hazy afternoon. Time was pa.s.sing. Through the door, she said, "Don't worry, you'll find it, Bea."

Over the next hour, I hunted all the places Nisrine and I could think of for the key, and instead everywhere I found dust and pills and creams. On the table in the kitchen. In the closet of Madame's bedroom. In my underwear drawer and Madame's underwear drawer, and on the stand by the sofa, where Baba put his wallet before he went to sleep. Madame had pills, and she had creams for every occasion, and she was always scolding the children with her cream half on and she was so busy having a maid and the children and me, that sometimes she didn't get to the other half of the cream, so her face would flake and turn brown. There was a cream for crow's-feet, and a cream to make big b.r.e.a.s.t.s, which she didn't need, coated with dust that clung around the edges despite Nisrine's daily sweepings, but no key.

I searched and searched. I ran back and forth before Nisrine's locked door, and she directed me. In the cupboard, with the turmeric. In the storage s.p.a.ce beside the jam. I tore up drawers and closets, and only halfheartedly put them together again, rehiding the schoolbooks and trinkets. I looked between all Baba's newly printed bindings, and inside the children's outgrown shoes.

In the parlor was a picture of Baba with his first son when he was young, and Baba's hands at his sides weren't yet swollen like baby cheeks. I found a picture of Madame without her headscarf, holding Lema. I found a belt and the two bottles of perfume that I once tried to give Madame and Nisrine. I found that Lema had written a poem and received a teddy bear.

As I searched, I forgot how earlier in the day I had worried that if I left I would miss Madame's, and everything began to look to me like a sign of leaving: The garbage that went out in the morning had left us. The V's of the doves that Nisrine watched at the call to prayer, when we saw only their backs as they flew away. The shift changes on the roof of the police station. All these were small forms of leaving, and the garbage and the doves and the policemen did them every day without thinking, naturally, and no one got hurt.

I unfolded and refolded the laundry in search of the key. I began to feel light like Madame's face when she put on new creams; pieces of me were flaking off and floating downstream, back across the ocean to where I came from. I thought up small ways, once Madame got home and this was solved, to get Nisrine out, and always be able to leave: How to go out for an hour to buy bread or tampons when we ran out of them. How to leave for two hours to see Imad and read the astonishing text. How to leave for days or even weeks with Imad on a vacation. I thought, This city has become hard, I need a vacation. But where would I go? I took out all the places I'd ever lived and tried them on: America with my parents, the university, Madame's. Every home seemed either lonely or stifling.

When I couldn't think of where else to look, I poured a gla.s.s of juice and sat before Nisrine's door in the hallway to call Imad and tell him I wasn't coming.

On the phone, Imad was disappointed.

"I was counting on seeing you today."

"I know, I'm sorry."

"I thought you wanted to go to the library together. I thought you wanted to read the astonishing text."

"I do, I'm sorry. I'm locked in."

"What do you mean, you're locked in? What about the father?"

"I can't reach him. He's at the Journalists' Club."

Silence.

I said, "I know, it's crazy. I'm sorry."

On the other end, Imad sighed deeply.

"Bea, you're a paying guest. Get a key."

I sat before the door on one side, and Nisrine sat on the other, and we watched light glint off all the buildings outside that were beyond our reach. Every now and then, I could hear her shift.

She said about Imad, "He'll come around. Don't worry. He's short with you because he wanted to see you."

The children's room door was thin. I tried again at the handle. "You push from the other side," but it was no use.

Silence. It had been a silly plan, anyway. How could she leave without a pa.s.sport?

But, we had both been counting on it. I hadn't realized until now how much I, too, had begun to count on our plan, any plan.

Through the door Nisrine said, "I miss my child. You know when he was born, he cried and cried, and the only thing that stopped him was my pinky? He liked to suck on it."

Her child. What would become of him, if she left? Would she find a family and still send money like Adel promised? I thought of her, locked on the other side of the door. What would become of them if she stayed?

"Do you want a child, Bea?"

I wanted a child. Not now; now, I wanted a key.

"I miss my mother," I told her.

"I miss my mother. I miss my husband, and my nice life in Indonesia."

"I miss winter."

"I miss mangoes."

"I miss my warm house. In winter there's nothing better than a nice warm house."

"I miss sunsets, and sweet coffee."

"I miss drip American coffee, and my books."

"I miss Adel."

Pause. I told her, "Don't worry, you're going to see Adel."

"But not now. I was supposed to be with him now. He didn't mean to hurt Baba, Bea. You must know he didn't mean it. I miss touching him. He's never really touched me, only once, for a moment. I want him to run his hands up and down my shoulders."

Is it possible to miss something you've never felt?

I said, "I miss Imad's hands."

"Does he have nice hands?"

I thought of my own hands, and his voice last night through the phone. "He has nice hands," I said. "I miss the astonishing text."

"You've never read that text."

"But it's like you with Adel, I still miss it."

Through the door, I could hear Nisrine breathing. I closed my eyes and imagined the way she would sit: b.u.t.t out, feet crossed. There are many kinds of intimacy. I knew all about Nisrine's small routines, the curl of her dark hair on our white porcelain sink. That hair had been an ache in so many ways, deep in my heart; but if she left, I would miss it, too.

"New plan," I joked, "cut a hole in the wall. Walk out when they get home. Tell Madame you have a date!"

Nisrine laughed. "I miss you, Bea."

And even though she was right here, only a door between us, I knew exactly what she meant. "I miss you, too."

For a moment, we were silent. Then she said, "Let Imad love you, Bea, it teaches you more than any text."

I thought about this, about how I had been trying to learn from a text for so long. I closed my eyes and tried to remember what I'd learned, but all I could think of was Nisrine's warm presence and then, unbidden, Imad's kisses.

And it occurred to me that Qais and Leila had never kissed; that the text I wanted to read, which was supposed to tell me all about love, was a text without kisses. Suddenly, I felt a great sadness for those ancient lovers, and all they had missed out on. I had always thought Nisrine and Adel were like Qais and Leila; of necessity, they lived with a faraway love. Before, this had seemed romantic, but now, locked here, I saw how it was a liability; how it limits love to rely only on words, poetry; for a moment, I saw all their love's imperfections.

"Nisrine, do you think you're like Leila?"

On the other side of the door, she was quiet, thinking. "I don't know," she said at last. "You know in that story I always wanted to be the shepherd?"