A Sister to Honor (11 page)

Afia's face burned. She tried to focus on the green pods, the seeds. She had not smelled fresh cardamom in months. “Have you seen this photo, Moray?” she said weakly.

Her mother set about grinding the nuts. She grunted with the effort. “Your brother would not show it to me.”

“Shahid told you about—”

“Not Shahid.”

“Oh.” Afia's hand rested on the cardamom pods, their brittle skin, the secret treasure inside. Khalid, then, for all the kindness he'd shown. “Am I to be punished,” she said to her mother, “for a photo you cannot see?”

“You are not being punished. You are being considered for marriage.” Moray stopped. She wiped her hands on a cloth. The cook would be in soon, to clean up the mess they were making, but the important thing was that Afia and her mother prepare all the trappings for tea themselves. “People are loath to spread stories about an engaged girl,” she said. “An engaged girl can finish her studies without trouble. Now if it were up to your father—”

She broke off. She shook her head. In the chair, Anâ had tangled her knitting needles; Moray stepped over and gently straightened them out. A phrase came into Afia's head. “There is no
I
in
team.
” Shahid's American coach had said that. Afia had heard her, once when she came to watch Shahid play and the coach was lecturing. Funny how it applied to Farishta. There was no
I
for her. Everything she did was for someone else, for family. Family was a team. And she bent backward, it always seemed, for Khalid, who wasn't even her own son.

Afia went after another pod, piercing the husk then tearing it apart. She swept the seeds into the mortar. From the other room came men's voices, muffled. Khalid was out there. Khalid, Afia thought, who had opposed her going to Smith because Shahid supported it. Was any of this—Maryam's family's visit, letting her mother know of the photo—really about her? Or was it all about her brothers? Was there an
I
for her? “Has Shahid said anything?” she asked.

“He claimed,” Moray went on, drawing a breath, “that it was not an objectionable photo. He says he has guarded your
namus
, and we are not to worry.”

Afia split open another seed. Shahid was angry with her, but in this he was on her side. “I have done nothing wrong, Moray,” she said. She sank her fingers into the bowl of cardamom pods, rubbed against them as if the curved husks gave off comfort.

“You have given the appearance of wrong.”

“Not over there, I haven't. It's all different, over there.”

From the corner, Anâ began hawking and spitting onto the floor. Afia took a cloth and went to wipe her grandmother's chin. When the old woman lifted her eyes to Afia's face, the glassy blue bore through her. Anâ no longer recognized her grandchildren. She could barely swallow, had to be fed by hand. But she appeared to know a lie when she heard one. “Water?” Afia asked, but her grandmother pressed her lips together; her long nose flared.

Her mother set the knife aside and wiped her hands on a clean cloth. She set them on Afia's shoulders, and Afia could feel the warmth of the palms, the blunt fingers with their cropped nails. At Smith she had heard the girls talk about Muslim women, how oppressed they were, how the Smith girls needed to help them. But Moray had never seemed oppressed. Everything in their home was her creation. A glance from her could rip a hole in a moment of false pride; an approving nod was all it took to gather hope. “All the more reason,” she said, her palms firm against Afia's cherry-red kameez, “to give you an anchor here. A future you can prepare for.”

“Moray, I have a future.” Afia tried to wriggle from her mother's embrace. Hot tears stung her cheeks. “Only two years to go after this one, then medical school. I have not seen this photo,” she added hastily, “but it must be part of a collage, or something. They like to show how diverse they are, at Smith. I'll ask the administration to remove it.”

“Erasing the photo will not erase the story of the photo,” Moray said, almost gently. “And that story could put a knife to our hearts, child. You wouldn't do that to us.”

“Of course not.”

“Then do your duty. Start cooking the sugar. Our visitors should know what a gifted baker you are. Remember when you used to make us all
chana
?”

It was only a visit, Afia told herself as she mixed the ground almonds and cardamom in with the melting sugar. A visit from a family who might find her nose too long or her tea service too clumsy and not choose her after all. Or if they did choose her, might find that Zardad—was it Zardad?—preferred a taller girl, a younger girl, a girl with more flesh on her. Or if he had no such preference, it was only an engagement. An engagement was a span of time. It was a long breath. It would not scar her face, like Lema's. And later she would be away, far away, too far for their knives to reach.

T
he long winter break tended to unravel the varsities. Even though Lissy's players came back two weeks before the rest of the students, they'd gotten enmeshed with their families or their old heartthrobs on New Year's, and all they wanted to talk about was spring break. Lissy had to work them back up to speed and into shape as teams. But this year, men's squash sprang back like a new rubber band, mostly because Shahid Satar returned from Pakistan with a spring in his step and a laserlike focus. “You must have loved seeing your family,” Lissy said to him after the first practice.

“They are growing up so fast. My little sisters, I mean,” he said. “And my sister Afia has been engaged.”

“Engaged!” Lissy's voice betrayed her shock. “I didn't know she was . . . seeing anyone.”

Shahid hoisted his squash bag from the floor. “No, no, Coach,” he said, tucking his water bottle into the outside pocket. “It's all arranged. This is how we do things. Nothing will happen for some years. She is promised, that is all. To marry my second cousin. The families are very happy about it.”

That night, giving Chloe her bath, Lissy tried to keep her good humor. “I'm drowning,” Chloe said, flopping back into the water after Lissy washed her hair. “Save me, save me, I'm
drowning
.” She paddled her hands like a pair of useless flippers.

“Aren't you Dora the Explorer?” Lissy said. “Dora can swim.”

“No soy Dora. Soy Sleeping Beauty. And I am
drowwnning
.”

“Okay, Sleeping Beauty. I'm coming to save you!” Lissy said in a hollow chest voice that had somehow become the voice of Beluga, the blue plastic whale, who dived into the bath from the toy basket. Chloe tipped her head up as Beluga leapt over the ripples and nudged at her underarms. “Don't drown, Sleeping Beauty!” said the whale. “I'll teach you to swim!”

As the whale entreated, Lissy lifted up Chloe's head until Chloe giggled and grabbed the whale to squeeze its spout. “Thank you, Beluga,” she said. She kissed its nose. “Now,” she said, “I will marry you.”

“What, are you a whale now?” Lissy asked.

“No. But he rescued me.”

When she'd put Chloe to bed, Lissy poured herself a V-8 and vodka and nestled in front of the fire with Ethan. She had a report due to Don Shears tomorrow, but it could wait. Outside, fat flakes of snow had begun to fall. “Our daughter wants a prince to save her,” she said. “She'll grow up like your sisters, married to a Wall Street mogul.”

Ethan chuckled drily. “If Chloe falls in with the wrong guy, I'll rip out his fingernails.”

She sat up. “Would you really?”

“No. I'd get her into therapy and lock her in her room at night.”

Lissy sighed. She returned her head to his shoulder. “They'll just marry that girl off,” she said.

“What girl?”

“Shahid's sister. Afia.”

“Did you ever talk to the boy?”

“Gus, you mean?” When he nodded, she sighed. “That's not an area I interfere in.”

“Wise move, Coach.”

“But how can she—if she doesn't even know this guy back home—can they really make something like that work?”

“You worried about the girl? Or about Shahid?”

“I don't know.” She took a sip of laced V-8. “He seems so suddenly happy. But if his sister doesn't behave—”

“You might not have your star player at peak performance.”

She glared at him. “I'd be a pretty selfish coach to think that way.”

“Or a coach mindful of her priorities.” He pulled her head to his shoulder and stroked her hair. “You're the coach,” he said. “Not God.”

•   •   •

S
he didn't want to be God. She just wanted a smooth season, a winning season, a dazzling future for Shahid Satar, and a new fitness center. That night she slept fitfully. Outside, the snow continued, whitening the lake. She rose before dawn and worked on the figures for her first-semester report—how many enrolled in phys ed classes at all levels, how many on the varsities, how much club-level activity was up and running. When she'd dropped Chloe at day care, she fishtailed across campus to Don Shears's office.

It was lucky for Don, Lissy often thought, that he'd been able to spend fifty-one of his fifty-six years in academe. In no other world would his natural limits have combined so successfully with his ambition. He had moved a lot, but always within College Land—like Airport Land, a sprawl of concourses with secured entrances and privileged clubs for those who'd earned their stripes. Waiting outside the president's office, Lissy wondered if she, too, was lost on the concourse.
She had potential once; now she's a bureaucrat.
No, no, no. She was breaking barriers, paving pathways. She remembered Shahid playing Afran on the court yesterday, whipping the ball back and forth. Chess at ninety miles an hour, her coach used to call it.

Don flung his door wide and waved her in. “Coffee?”

“Done that, thanks.”

The office was overheated. Don was down to shirtsleeves and a crooked bow tie. Lissy felt her underarms grow damp. “I sent you this by e-mail too,” she said, laying the folder on Don's desk before sitting down. “We don't have all the add/drops yet, but the numbers should be stable.”

Don lifted the cover and glanced at the report, then set it aside. “Basketball team's off to a good start, I hear,” he said.

“Both women and men, yes. We've been lucky with recruiting.”

“And of course you've got your internationals, on the squash squad.”

“Highest GPA of all the varsities,” she said. “Not that we can take credit for that. Those kids come prepared.”

“Which is more,” Don observed, “than we can say of the football team.”

Lissy felt the soft, ragged edge of misgiving scrape against her wall of assurance. Something was up. Something had happened between the elegant dinner in New York and this snowy morning in the Berkshires. “I'm not sure—” she began.

“Look, I don't want a football team any more than you do.”

She frowned, tried to smooth the misgiving. “I've never said I didn't want—”

“But we get a lot of pressure. A lot of pressure, Lissy. Admissions lets these guys in, and they struggle to get up to speed—”

“And when they don't cut it, Coach Salazar throws them off the team. We're not Penn State.”

“But Charlie Horton thinks we should devote more time to the big sports. Set aside the yoga studio and get regular tutoring for the kids who're struggling.”

Lissy tried not to let her jaw drop. Don Shears knew his faculty would revolt if athletics got a tutoring budget and minority programs were left to flutter in the wind. Then she remembered. “Drew Horton's on the football squad.”

Don adjusted the pens on his desk. “We've got to let the legacies in,” he said. “And people like Horton remember a time when football took the conference title.”

She wanted to rail at him. Not that she cared so passionately about yoga, or a fitness center, or any of the million-dollar touches that made a four-year college into a country club. But what she knew of Charles Horton was his direct regard of her breasts; she'd forced a smile at
Madame Director
and
La Directresse
. She didn't take well to billionaires in tuxedoes telling her how to run a sports program.

“You're telling me they want boys kept on the teams,” she said, “and they want those teams to win.”

“If we could make that happen, I think we'd have a better chance with the fitness center.”

“Well, squash is winning.” When Don started to object, she held up a hand. “Go ahead. Call it un-American. But every country club in the Northeast has a squash court. And this year we've got a chance against Harvard.”

She had never made such a claim to herself, much less voiced it aloud. But when she watched Shears's shiny head lift, his chin thrust forward with interest, she knew she'd found something to work with.

“I've never had a men's squad like this before,” she went on, trying to keep her voice casual. “You heard my player at the dinner.”

He nodded. “South Asian kid.”

“He impressed Jeff Stubnick. Jeff's pledging a hundred grand toward the fitness center.”

“And you think—with this kid—you can beat Harvard.” Don had edged out from around his desk. He straightened his bow tie.

“I said we had a chance.”

“Charlie Horton hates Harvard.” A rare smile played across Don's pallid face. “Don't know why. Maybe they turned him down when he was eighteen.”

“Then he should come up from New York and cheer for us.”

“Not just that.” Don put a finger to his mouth and turned a circle, Sherlock Holmes without a pipe. “Do this for me,” he said. “Forget football. Pull out a win against Harvard.”

This wasn't the effect she'd hoped for. “Don, I can't guarantee—”

He waved a small hand. “Victory is written all over your face. I'll lay a bet with Horton. He loves a gamble. The man's in hedge funds, for Chrissake.”

“What kind of bet?”

“You win against his nemesis. He forgets football for a New York minute and buys us a fitness center. I'll slap his name on it.”

In the warm office Lissy felt a chill down her spine. Compete with everything you've got, she always told her teams. She met Don's bright eyes, enlarged by his glasses. “And if we lose?” she said.

“Then you and I'll have to talk again,” Don said, “about football.”