Cornered Read online

  I want to run backward down the escalator, but I’m frozen and moving closer. Natasha hasn’t noticed me yet, but my father exclaims, “Jaldi karo, Shabnam!” and Natasha turns to see who he’s talking to.

  I don’t make eye contact with her as I step off and am forced to acknowledge my parents and Chacha jaan as my own, but I can still feel the revulsion on her face all the way to the electronics store. There, my parents instruct me to help Chacha jaan, and I’m relieved when he directs his questions, in fluent English, to a sales clerk. After a little while he walks over to me, holding two iPods, one lime green and the other hot pink.

  “Which one do you like?” he asks.

  I point at the pink one.

  “Are you all right?” he says. If you can get past the beard, which is hard to do, his face isn’t actually that bad—there are some pockmarks on his cheeks, but he has a nice nose and light hazel eyes. If he was clean-shaven and a lot younger, he might even be handsome.

  “I’m fine.”

  “My wife’s hair was just like yours. You remind me of her. Especially when you smile,” he says, and I wonder when Chacha jaan has ever seen me smile, because I certainly haven’t done so tonight.

  We make it to dinner without any more mishaps. The Afghani restaurant used to be a diner and has a neon sign that says HALAL in the window, booths of ripped red vinyl, and a menu with everything from Afghani meat stews and kabobs to hamburgers and chicken wings. We sit down in one of the booths and my father orders too much, as usual.

  Before he begins eating, Chacha jaan says, “Bismillah ar-rahman ar-rahim.” In the name of Allah, the most merciful, the most benevolent. Yeah right. If Allah really was so merciful and benevolent, He wouldn’t have made me a Pakistani American girl with frizzy hair. I stare at the two chicken wings on my plate. Natasha wouldn’t eat chicken wings. Natasha would never set foot in this restaurant.

  My father stops decimating his food to ask me, “Why aren’t you eating?”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  He pushes the plate of rice with meat, raisins, almonds, and slivers of carrot toward me. “Try the pilau. It’s good.”

  “I don’t want any.” I say this nicely, because I know my parents don’t want Chacha jaan to think I’m some American teenage brat who is disrespectful to my elders and disconnected from my heritage.

  “Chacha jaan,” my mother says, taking a chicken wing from my plate. “They say that the Pakistani restaurants in Houston are very tasty. Was the food good?”

  “It was okay,” Chacha jaan replies.

  My father drinks his water in one gulp. “Why don’t you give Houston another try? It’s a very nice city.”

  “I did try,” Chacha jaan replies. “But my heart could not become attached to that place.”

  “But there are so many problems in Pakistan, Chacha jaan,” my mother objects. “In Houston, you have two sons, and such excellent health care in case, Allah forbid, you become ill.”

  Chacha jaan sighs a little. I notice he hasn’t eaten very much either, which is really annoying because he’s the reason we’re at this restaurant instead of at home, where there are walls and doors and curtains and no one can see us. “My barber in Pakistan has been telling the same old jokes since the first Bhutto,” he says. “I thought I was tired of them, but I went to a barber in Houston and it didn’t feel right. I miss the old jokes, my old barber.”

  Everyone’s quiet, then my dad holds up the plate of rice and says, “More pilau?” and my mother asks for the check. Of course it’s sad that my father’s uncle is an old widower who misses his wife and his corny barber, but he said it himself—he belongs over there, in Pakistan, not here, next to me.

  • • •

  I’m late for English because I get my period and have to hunt for a tampon since the dispenser is out. It’s first period on Tuesday morning and most of the students usually act like zombies on muscle relaxers, but when I walk in a bunch of them suddenly wake up. Elliot stops his doodling to stare; Ryan is looking at me like I have horns on my head; and I swear Jenna is smirking at me. I’m worried that maybe there’s a blood stain on my pants, but I can’t see anything.

  “Have a seat, Shabnam,” Ms. Haverford says, and returns to her dramatic reading of Keats. “‘Oh what can ail thee, knight-at-arms, alone and palely loitering? The sedge has wither’d from the lake, and no birds sing.’”

  When I get to my desk, Maggie, who sits across from me, starts mouthing something.

  What are you saying? I mouth back.

  She scribbles in her notebook and tilts it toward me. Have you seen the e-mail? she writes.

  What e-mail? I write back.

  Maggie winces and starts playing with her phone under her desk. She slips her phone inside a library book and hands the book to me. I open it and there’s Chacha jaan and me, right there on Maggie’s phone. It’s a photo of us at the electronics store. Chacha jaan is holding up two iPods and I’m pointing at the pink one. I look annoyed and my hair is taking up a third of the frame. Chacha jaan’s eyes are squinting in concentration at the iPods, his beard and Pakistani clothing in full view. At least you can’t see his tasbih.

  The subject line of the e-mail is: LINCOLN HIGH SCHOOL SENIOR HELPS AL-QAEDA BUY AN IPOD!

  I scroll up. The e-mail’s been forwarded a few times, but the address it originates from is a bunch of jumbled letters and numbers. Of course Natasha’s too smart to use her own e-mail address. What I didn’t realize is that she’d be this mean.

  “Shabnam.”

  Ms. Haverford has to say it again before I hear her.

  “Yes?” My throat feels dry. On the board, Ms. Haverford has written “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.”

  “Can you tell us—” She stops. “Are you okay?”

  Is it that obvious?

  I swallow the little saliva I have. “I’m fine.”

  The whole class is staring at me now to figure out whether I’m fine or not. How many of them have seen the photo? Did any of them believe it?

  “Is that guy your uncle you said was coming to visit?” Maggie demands after class. “Shabs—do you have any idea who did this? And what happened? I go away for one weekend and there’s an e-mail going around about you?”

  I haven’t told Maggie yet about the kiss or what happened at the mall, and I’m not about to now. Maggie’s way more confident than me, the kind of confident that lets her rock thrift store bell bottoms at school when everyone else is wearing skinny jeans. If I tell Maggie, she’ll get upset and immediately confront Natasha, and that will only make everything worse.

  “I don’t know. Honestly,” I tell her. “Someone saw me in the mall, I guess.”

  “It’s cruel!” Maggie says. “Even if someone was out to get you, though I can’t imagine why, to do it like this is so . . . low and dumb and so . . . not chivalrous.”

  “Jesus, Maggie, this isn’t one of your Merlin fantasy books. There’s no chivalry in high school!”

  Danny, Maggie’s sometimes boyfriend, puts his arm around her and kisses the top of her head, which means they must be on again. “Shab-a-dub-dub,” he says to me. “What’s up with that photo? Who is that guy?”

  “He’s my uncle.”

  “Is he some kind of cleric?”

  “No.”

  “Nor is he al-Qaeda,” Maggie says.

  “You’re sure, right?” Danny says, winking at me.

  “Yes, I’m sure.” I wish I didn’t sound so defensive, but I can’t help it.

  The rest of the morning is torture. It’s easy to tell who’s received the e-mail and who hasn’t; the ones who have either stare at me, or, if they know me, ask me the same things Danny did. It’s my uncle, visiting from Pakistan. He’s not a cleric. He was the vice president of a pharmaceutical company. He’s not really that religious; he just likes the beard. Some find it funny; some feel sorry for me. “But you look so normal,” Paige says to me. Ali, who I don’t know very well but who’s also Muslim, tells m
e one of his uncles in Kerala looks a lot like Chacha jaan. Jacob asks me how they even let my uncle in the country, and some sophomore I don’t even know asks me if I’m from Afghanistan.

  By the time I get to gym, I never want to say the words “uncle” and “Pakistan” again, and thankfully Mr. Polk has set up a circuit course, so I don’t have to talk to anyone. I push myself really hard, hoping the physical exertion will distract me from everything that’s been going on. And it works, sort of, until I reach the squats station. I hate squats because they’re hard and it’s scary to watch your thighs double in size as you go down. Somewhere around squat ten, the first tear falls. For God’s sake, pull it together, Shabnam. Don’t you dare cry in the middle of gym class. Mr. Polk blows the whistle, signaling us to move to the next station, and I hope no one can tell that it’s not only sweat I’m wiping off my face with my T-shirt.

  After gym I’m in the bathroom, sitting on the toilet in the stall, where it’s safe, trying to figure out what I should do. My biggest fear is that Natasha has more planned for me, that she has even more photos and who knows what she’ll do with them—post them on the Internet maybe, and then some parent would see them and tell my parents. Or, since it’s the era of “if you see something, say something,” the FBI might come knocking on our front door. If my parents found out, my dad would flip and the principal would get involved. There would be an investigation and maybe my parents would find out it all started because of my kiss with Oliver and then I don’t even know what they would do. The possibilities are terrifying.

  Two girls come in laughing. They pee, flush, meet at the sinks.

  “I’m going to surprise Adam by shaving it all off,” one says. “Or I was thinking I could do an A.”

  “An A? That’s so cheesy.”

  A phone beeps. “This is the second time I got this e-mail.”

  “You mean the photo of that girl with that guy who looks like a terrorist? I saw it. Why would you go around with someone like that?”

  “Maybe it’s her father.”

  “If my father looked like that, I’d move out.”

  “Maybe it’s her boyfriend.”

  Laughter.

  “I think I saw her at Aidan’s party on Saturday.”

  “She was there?”

  “Yeah, I remember that hair.”

  “Someone should tell her to straighten it.”

  “Seriously.”

  Silence. Then, more quietly, “Someone’s been in that stall the whole time.”

  I tense, hold my breath.

  “They’re probably taking a dump.”

  More laughter. I stay perfectly still, my cheeks burning with shame and wishing that this was one of Maggie’s books, where the stall would turn into a portal and I’d be transported to a better world. One with chivalry. There’s the sound of the paper towels being pulled, and the squeak of the door, and finally the bathroom’s empty again.

  I have to end this, before it gets any worse. I can’t make the photo that’s out disappear, but I can talk to Natasha, ask her to forget all this and to please not take this any further. I’ll get down on my knees if I have to. Except I can’t do it at school; if I actually have to humiliate myself by begging, I want it to be in private.

  • • •

  Illuminated waterfalls flank the entrance to Harmony Woods, the development where Natasha lives. The plots are so big it takes a minute to drive from one meticulously landscaped lawn to the next. Natasha’s house is different from the others; it’s modern and boxy, made of steel and a lot of glass that you can’t see it at all from the road, which suits me fine.

  After I ring the bell, a little girl answers. She’s clutching a stuffed stegosaurus and a red bowtie hair clip is slipping out of her whitish-blond hair. “Yes?” she says.

  The door opens wider. It’s Natasha. She has another little girl in her arms who’s an exact replica of the one who answered the door, minus the stegosaurus. Natasha puts the girl down. “Go play,” she says to the twins, but neither of them move.

  “I don’t want to play,” stegosaurus twin says.

  “Eleanor has something to show you in the kitchen,” Natasha says.

  “Eleanor smells,” the other girl says.

  “She’s making butterscotch cookies. You better go before all the dough is gone,” Natasha tells them. They run off giggling and Natasha steps outside. “What are you doing here?” she says. “I didn’t say you could come to my house.”

  “I . . .” Come on. You can do this. 1, 2, 3, go. “I wanted to talk to you.”

  “We’ve got nothing to talk about.”

  “I know you sent the e-mail.”

  Natasha folds her arms over her velour hoodie. I take comfort in the small red zit on the narrow bridge of her nose; the only thing marring an otherwise flawless complexion. “I may have seen you with that . . . that man at the mall. But I didn’t send any e-mail.”

  She isn’t going to admit it. Why would she? It doesn’t matter anyway. I came here for a reprieve, not an admission. “Okay. What I wanted to talk to you about—what I wanted to tell you, I mean, is that I’m sorry.”

  She raises her thin eyebrows. “Sorry about what?”

  “I’m sorry . . .” I hesitate. Now that I have her attention, I have to say the right thing. What should I be sorry for—no, what would she like me to be sorry for? Should I apologize for momentarily disturbing the high school hierarchy? And then I realize what it is she really wants.

  My kiss.

  So I give in. “I’m really sorry I kissed Oliver that night. It’s just that he’s so cute and popular and out of my league that when I saw him drunk at the party I . . . I took advantage of him without even thinking. I’m sorry. It was totally wrong of me.”

  There. I said it. I feel a little queasy, and I definitely feel like crying, but I’m fighting the tears, because what little dignity I have left does not want Natasha to see me cry.

  “It was wrong of you,” she says, nodding. My confession has pleased her. “Well, I really hope you learned your lesson.”

  “I have.” This time, I’m not lying. I’ve learned some lessons all right. To make sure to distance myself from anyone who looks too Muslim. How easy it is to sacrifice your pride. “Anyway, I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay. Everyone makes mistakes. Stick to guys on your own level and I’m sure you’ll find someone.” Natasha’s smiling at me now, the way you smile when you get a letter from a child you’ve sponsored for fifty cents a day. She thinks she’s being magnanimous. Let her believe it. Just please let her move on.

  “Yeah. I will.” I take a deep breath. “But . . . I’m really embarrassed about that photo and I don’t know what to do—what guy is ever going to want to date me after seeing that?”

  “Oh, don’t worry about it. I’m sure everyone will forget about it soon,” she says. It may not be an outright promise, but it’s the best I’ll get.

  The stegosaurus twin comes outside and announces, “She’s not making cookies! She’s making lima beans. I hate lima beans more than taxes.”

  “You don’t even know what taxes are, silly.” Natasha scoops the girl up in her arms. “Say bye.”

  The girl waves her dinosaur at me. “Bye-bye!”

  “Bye.”

  The door shuts.

  I’ve never felt so alone, or so worthless.

  • • •

  The sun is starting to set by the time I walk into the kitchen. “Where were you?” my mother asks. “You didn’t pick up your phone.”

  “Spanish club meeting ran late.”

  My mother doesn’t question this. She’s not the suspicious type. “When Chacha jaan and Abba get back from their walk Chacha jaan is taking us to Red Lobster.”

  “Red Lobster? Are you serious?”

  “I know,” my mother says. “I was going to cook, but it’s Chacha jaan’s last night with us and he wants to take us out. Plus your father feels like shrimp.”

  My father feels like shrimp.
I’ve had the worst day of my life and all that matters in my house is that my father feels like shrimp. “And what about me? What about what I feel like? Does anyone care about what I feel like?” Though I’m trying hard to remain calm, I’m on the verge of exploding. I can’t remember the last time I was this upset, when this world seemed this horribly unfair, and all I want to do is scream.

  My mother steps forward, concerned. “Shabs? Kya hua? What’s happened?”

  “I’ve had the worst day of my life, that’s what’s happened, and it’s all because of him!”

  “Because of who? Chacha jaan? But what could he have done?”

  “Someone at school saw me at the mall with him and now everyone in school thinks I’m related to a terrorist and they were all asking me these ridiculous questions!” Even though it’s a relief to tell my mother what happened, I can’t tell her the part that hurts the most, that I gave back the best kiss of my life to a girl who doesn’t deserve it.

  “A terrorist?” My mother’s forehead creases with confusion. “I don’t understand.”

  That’s when I finally snap. “That’s what Chacha jaan looks like, Amma!” I yell, and my mother recoils at the tone of my voice, but I’m way past caring. “It’s embarrassing! He’s embarrassing! He needs to go to Pakistan and stay there! I don’t want to ever be seen with him again! I don’t want to be seen with any of you!” I kick my backpack. Pens spill out of it, and I kick those too.

  “Shabnam.”

  I turn around to see my father and Chacha jaan standing in front of the door to the garage, which I’ve of course forgotten to shut. I’ve never seen my father so angry, and Chacha jaan, he looks stunned, and hurt, and also sad—like he feels sorry for me—which upsets me more. I’ve had enough of people’s sympathy. And anyway, how dare he feel sorry for me! He doesn’t even know me.