Hot Pink in the City (2 page)

"You look sad," Uncle says at a subway
station, where we'll take a train for the rest of our journey.

I zip my purse closed and then fiddle with my
neon bracelets. "I forgot to pack something," I say.

"Your aunt and I will provide," he says.
"Don't worry about anything." His slight accent and deep voice are
no comfort.

After numerous stops, which involves me
studying people and the advertisements above my head, we're in the
city of cities, the borough of boroughs. My worries over the lost
tape and lost hunk vanish. The city calls to me and I'm answering.
And whereas I live in the middle of nowhere in my Miami suburb,
where I have to be driven or take a bus somewhere to do anything,
New York has everything within reach. I'm sure I'll come across
more than one record store. Then I can buy myself some Madonna. My
parents gave me money for this trip; not enough for my liking, but
they gave me some spending money. I won't waste anything on clothes
or snacks. Madonna is worth a little bit of discomfort, and I shall
have her music on this trip.

Chapter Two

Uncle lives in a basement apartment. We don't
have basements or a subway system in Florida on account of the high
water table -- there's the stale joke my science teachers repeat
about how if Florida were to be cut off from the rest of the states
it would float away. I'm going to share a room with my cousin,
Nasreen. She has a bunk bed, and since she's afraid of heights I
always get the top bunk when I'm here. I get to watch people's
torsos as they walk past the barred window.

A short flight of steps leads to a heavy
metallic door. Inside I smell onions, garlic, and a whiff of
walnuts. The first thing I see is a coat closet, and nailed to it
is a framed collage of Egyptian singer Umm Kulthum. There are four
pictures of her inside the frame. Uncle has several of these
collage shrines around the apartment. I'm not the only one obsessed
with a particular singer.

Everyone rushes to greet me with salaams.
Cousin Nasreen is dressed in black, which is nothing new. She's
into The Cure and channeling Robert Smith -- I must look like
Rainbow Brite next to her. Her eyeliner is heavy, which gives me
hope that Uncle's home is a makeup-friendly place, so I can wear it
for the next few weeks.

Nasreen's raccoon eyes brighten up, and she
smothers me in a hug. Aunt Fatima's housedress flutters around her
chubby legs. She greets me with kisses on both cheeks and a hug
that squeezes the air out of me. Next is Cousin Omar. His dusky
skin, large eyes, and long lashes face me. I want to hug him, even
though I don't have the best history with him. The hug never
happens. Instead of greeting me properly, the first thing that
comes out of his mouth is, "What did you get me?"

If that were to happen in my house, he would
receive a slap, but Uncle and Auntie are quite lax with him. "Don't
be hasty," Uncle says in Farsi.

"Silly boy," Auntie chides.

Nasreen rolls her eyes.

"Baba, I want my presents."

I give Omar a nervous laugh, but I don't hand
him his presents yet. Whenever I travel, my mother makes sure our
suitcases are as heavy as bricks since she weighs them down with
gifts for the family. I'm carrying jewelry, clothes, candies, and
an assortment of things, but Omar can wait. He can play with his
Atari or Transformers. Until I hand him his presents, he can bask
in the glory of being the only boy in the family, which he's
already been doing in his eight years of existence.

"Nasreen, take Asma to your room so she can
rest after her flight," Auntie says.

I breathe a sigh of relief. I love my family
and I'm grateful they're letting me stay here for a while, but
being in this apartment is not much different from being at home.
There are rules. Auntie is a housewife, like my mother. Uncle is
unsmiling, same as my father. The only difference is my brothers
are far more civilized than Omar. Behind the closed door of
Nasreen's bedroom, I hear Omar run around, causing the floor to
rumble. It's good that no one lives under them.

I leave my suitcase and duffel bag closed.
Instead of unpacking right away, I jump to the top tier of the bunk
bed. Omar used to sleep here, but he was complaining that Nasreen
bothered him -- yeah, right -- and Auntie added a curtain to the
family room alcove so he could have his own space. For all the
tattling Omar does, one good thing came out of it. Nasreen has some
privacy, with the exception of me being here now.

The room is so small that when I look down, I
can see the top of Nasreen's inky black head as she sits at her
desk, which looks like a card table with a tablecloth thrown on it.
Piled on top of her desk are ripped-open envelopes. I see that the
senders are all colleges and universities.

"Oh, you're shopping around for colleges
since you'll be a senior soon," I say. That's totally responsible
and ambitious of her. I have two more years to go, but have no clue
what I'll be doing after high school. "Do you have your heart set
on anyplace?"

Nasreen looks up, her eyes pitch-black in a
pale face. She takes after Auntie, who's ghostly pale, while Omar
and Uncle are tanned. Her stiff, hair-sprayed hair points up in
spikes, as if multiple scissors are protruding from her head. "Like
my parents are really going to let me go to the schools I want,"
she huffs.

"What do you mean?" I ask.

She shakes her head, her eyes brimming with
tears. "I want to leave New York, go to Boston or Chicago or maybe
even California, but Mom and Dad want me chained by their side.
They want me to go to college here and live with them until I
finish a degree program. But I want to travel and get out of this
basement apartment."

"I like it here, but I can see how it's
stifling."

"That's the right word for it. This is the
only home I know, and it's like living in a sarcophagus. Dad
doesn't even want to move because he's happy with how much he pays
for rent, but we've been here since the seventies. In a few years,
when it's 1990, I don't want to be here. I don't want to spend
another decade in this apartment!"

"Aw, I'm sorry, Nasreen. I know how you feel.
I don't want to live with my parents when I hit eighteen. I also
want to see the world and do... things."

"They think I'll turn American and stuff.
It's not like all Americans drink and do drugs. Anyway, we are in
America. I wish they would get with the times."

My parents are the same. They're afraid I'll
become too Amriki. They're always eyeballing my clothes, even the
shorts and jeans I like to wear, and giving me the first degree
about my friends and whereabouts. "I hope they see things your
way."

"Well, I've talked until I'm blue in the
face. I don't see them changing."

I don't see them changing their minds either,
but I want to pep her up. "Maybe they will by the time you hit the
end of your senior year."

Nasreen snorts. I don't blame her for being
pessimistic. "I'm sorry for being such a downer," she says, her
unshed tears clearing up. "Let's not talk about my problems. How
was your trip?"

I tell her about the greasy guy, the huge
walrus-like man who sat next to me, dreamy Abe who I barely got to
know -- I ramble on a few minutes about him -- and then the Madonna
mixtape that's missing. "I'm such a dingy to have forgotten it. I
feel depressed that I don't have my favorite music with me!"

"I would feel lost if I didn't have my
favorite songs with me."

"Don't rub it in."

"Hey, I know I'm not into Madonna like you,
but I want to help you out. Let's make a new cassette with the
blanks my father has. We just have to wait for Madonna songs to
come on the radio and record them."

I'm sure that's a great idea. "What about
your father?" I ask.

"He always hangs out with friends around this
time of day," she says. "When the coast is clear, we'll use his
radio. Mom doesn't mind. Dad is the one who doesn't like
noise."

That sounds like a good plan. As I learned
from my previous visits, Uncle is a noise Nazi. Unless it's his TV
or radio playing, he accuses everyone else of being loud. "Turn it
off right this minute!" he'll order. Nasreen uses his radio when
he's out and then plays her tapes on her Walkman. Other than
Uncle's music, Omar generates the only other tolerated noise. He
can play his video games at a high volume and Uncle says nothing
about it.

As Nasreen checks to see if the coast is
clear, I unpack, placing my clothes in the two empty bottom drawers
of Nasreen's dresser. My scrapbook goes under the two pillows of
the top bed. I don't keep a diary, but in pictures and words the
details of my life go in that book. What's great about a scrapbook
is that because it's highly personal, with mainly images, only I
can understand it. For example, there's a playbill from my school's
performance of
The Mikado
, when my crush at the time, Keith,
was performing. Instead of writing
I'm so in love with Keith
Forsythe
in a diary, I have this playbill to remember him
forever. My scrapbook is in a code only I understand.

I place the presents on top of a chair. I'll
reluctantly give Omar packages of Matchbox cars and Gobots later.
He has enough toys as is. Uncle and Omar have plastered their
playthings over the entire living room. This apartment is
definitely an all-boys terrain. This tiny bedroom is Nasreen's
space and Auntie has the kitchen, while everything else revolves
around the guys. Even my house is more liberal, because my mom has
the family room to herself and I have a spacious bedroom. This will
be my longest stay in New York. I'm sure I'll be out most of the
time. I hope the cramped quarters of this basement won't make me
stir-crazy.

After unpacking and placing my empty bag and
case under the bunk bed, I sigh. When I turn around to see if I
left anything on the floor or bed, I see the door is ajar and a
lone brown eye is looking at me. I almost shriek. Pesky Omar,
snooping to look at his presents. I hear the thump of his feet as
he runs off. I clutch my heart and calm down. He's only a harmless,
bratty little boy.

***

Uncle is gone. It's Sunday, and he spends
weekend afternoons with friends at the McDonalds two blocks away.
He used to take Nasreen and me with him years ago in between
sightseeing. He and his friends -- mainly Iranians -- occupy a
booth, talking for an hour or so about politics and finances,
subjects that don't interest me in the least bit. My Farsi is a bit
rusty since over the years I've been talking English to my parents,
but I understood Uncle and his friends when he took me to hang out
with them. Now that we're older and don't need babysitting, he no
longer takes us, thank goodness. I used to be bored out of my
mind.

Auntie is in the kitchen making something
delicious. She pays us no mind as Nasreen and I explore the living
room. Uncle sure has many electronics. He used to keep them in the
family room before it was converted to Omar's room. Behind closed
curtains we hear the brat playing a game. It sounds like
Mario
Brothers
-- the jumping sound effect confirms it. I wish I
could play it, since I have the games at home, but Omar is
territorial, same as his father.

Uncle has his own games since he's the gadget
man. One side of the living room has shelves and an entertainment
system devoted to his musical pleasures. He has bootleg cassettes
from Turkey, Iran, Lebanon... every Middle Eastern country is
represented. There's Vigen Derderian, Shohreh Solati, Ibrahim
Tatlises, and Umm Kulthum. There are names I recognize, since some
of these tapes are the same ones my family has, and others are new
to me. The cassettes have white inserts with the names of the
singers and bands scribbled on the side, or poorly made inserts
with cheesy graphics and photos of the singers.

What we're after is sitting by itself
adjacent to the TV: a shortwave radio with a cassette player. Uncle
likes to listen to news straight from the Middle East. When Nasreen
turns the radio on, we hear someone speak Arabic in a staticy
voice. Nasreen turns the dial until we're hearing the BBC.

"Cool," I say. My parents also have a
shortwave radio, but they barely use it. Uncle, on the other hand,
plays his several times a day. He's very much into keeping abreast
of news from the homeland. There's a stack of newspapers printed in
Farsi and Arabic on the coffee table.

I look through his boxes of cassettes,
gravitating to the ones that have an actual insert. I see
mustachioed men and gorgeous women heavily made up. To the right of
me, I'm eye to eye with Umm Kulthum. Uncle has a second collage of
her in the living room next to his entertainment center; there are
four pictures, two color and two black and white, of her in various
stages of life, from her youth all the way to the seventies before
her death. There's a third collage in the master bedroom. Uncle
sure loves her. He's had these framed collages since I could
remember. I pull my eyes away from her image so I can focus on my
own music idol.

"Okay, let's find a blank tape," Nasreen
says. "I don't want my cousin to stay here without anything to
listen to."

I look through a different box and pull out
several blank tapes. I just need one since we only have an hour or
two until Uncle comes home, but I have a vision that I'll record
each one of Madonna's songs, and she has many songs. The woman is a
prolific goddess. Each album is an entity onto itself as her style
of music and fashion changes. She's like ten women rolled into
one.

Nasreen flips the switch to FM and pulls the
antennae up. We tune into a station that plays freestyle. I bop my
head and shimmy my shoulders to the dance music of Exposé, but
Nasreen changes to a rock station. Her body sways to rancid guitar
music, which sounds like a symphony of saws to me.